wers of the Inquisition. No other country
in popedom was at that time more deeply imbued with disaffection of the
doctrines and worship of the Church of Rome. Then in 1477, one Brother
Philip de' Barberi, a Sicilian inquisitor, came to the court of Ferdinand
and Isabella, who were sovereigns of Sicily, to solicit the confirmation
of some privileges recently granted to the Holy Office in that island;
and, having observed the peril of the Church within the enlarged and
united dominions of "the Catholic kings" under whose rule nearly all
Spain was comprehended, advised the creation of one undivided court of
inquisition, like that of Sicily, as the only means of defence against
the maranos, Moriscoes, Jews, and Mussulmans.

The advice was quickly taken. First of all, the Dominicans, and after
them the dignitaries of the secular clergy, crowded round the throne to
pray for a reformation of the Inquisition after the Sicilian model. They
appealed to the greed of King Ferdinand by offering him the proceeds of
a confiscation, which might be rapidly effected, in pursuance of laws of
the Church to that intent provided. They appealed to the piety of Queen
Isabella, and were careful that tales of Jewish murders and Jewish
desecrations should be poured incessantly into the royal ear. Ferdinand
had no scruple. He sincerely prayed the Pope to sanction such a measure,
and, swiftly as couriers could bring it, came the desired bull. Isabella
could not blame the zeal of priests and monks; for she, too, was a
zealot. She could not gainsay the urgency of the nuncio. She could not
quench in her husband's bosom the thirst of gold. But she had brought
half the kingdom as her dower; and therefore some deference was due to
her conscience and judgment, and both in conscience and judgment she
desired gentler measures. During two or three years her orator and
confessor wrote books, and preachers were permitted to publish arguments,
and disputants to enter into conferences, for the conviction of the Jews.

At her majesty's request, Cardinal Mendoza issued a constitution in
Seville, in 1478, containing "the form that should be observed with a
Christian from the day of his birth, as well in the sacrament of baptism
as in all other sacraments which he ought to receive, and of what he
should be taught, and ought to do and believe as a faithful Christian,
every day, and at all times of his life, until the day of his death. And
he ordered this to be publis