itors to
preside over all the provincial tribunals. Each of those inferior
inquisitions was managed by three inquisitors, two secretaries, one
under-sheriff, one receiver, and a certain number of triers and
consulters. Their functions were considerably restricted, leaving
all capital cases and ultimate decisions in the hands of the Madrid
"Supreme."

But while Ferdinand, Isabella, Torquemada, and the nuncio were concerting
their plans and preparing death for heretics, what said Spain to it?
Neither was clergy nor laity content. After the bull of Sixtus IV
empowering the King to name inquisitors furnished with absolute
authority, and to remove them at pleasure, had arrived, but lay
unpublished in consequence of the Queen's repugnance, a provincial synod
sat at Seville, where the regal court then was, 1478. Had the clergy of
Castile desired the Inquisition, the synod would have said so; but so far
were they from approving of such a tribunal, to which every bishop would
be subject, but where no bishop would any longer have a voice, that they
passed over the affair of heresy in silence, not consenting to accept the
Inquisition, yet not presuming to remonstrate against it. Then would have
been the time for the clergy to add their power to that of the throne for
the suppression of false doctrine, believing, as they did believe, that
forcible suppression was not only lawful, but meritorious in the sight of
God; and so they would probably have done if inquisitor and bishop were
to have had cooerdinate jurisdiction, as in the first inquisition of
Toulouse, and in the early Italian inquisition; but they saw, with alarm,
that the episcopate was to be despoiled of its authority at a stroke.

A few months before the publication of the bull, but long after every
person in Spain knew the purport of its contents, and in the certainty
that it would be carried into execution, the Cortes of Toledo met;
but, instead of avoiding any act that would interfere with the new
jurisdiction then to be introduced, they made several provisions for
separating Jews and Christians by the enclosure of Jewries in the towns,
and for compelling the former to wear a peculiar garb, and abstain from
exercising the vocation of surgeon or physician or innkeeper or barber
or apothecary among Christians. The parliament plainly ignored the
Inquisition in making this enactment on their own authority.

And what said the magistracy and the people? Seville represente