mention. It was under his auspices in the year 1478 that the Inquisition
was founded in Spain for the extermination of Jews, Moors, and
Christians with a taint of heresy. During the next four years 2,000
victims were burned in the province of Castile. In Seville, a plot of
ground, called the Quemadero, or place of burning--a new Aceldama--was
set apart for executions; and here in one year 280 heretics were
committed to the flames, while 79 were condemned to perpetual
imprisonment, and 17,000 to lighter punishments of various kinds. In
Andalusia alone 5,000 houses were at once abandoned by their
inhabitants. Then followed in 1492 the celebrated edict against the
Jews. Before four months had expired the whole Jewish population were
bidden to leave Spain, carrying with them nothing in the shape of gold
or silver. To convert their property into bills of exchange and movables
was their only resource. The market speedily was glutted: a house was
given for an ass, a vineyard for a suit of clothes. Vainly did the
persecuted race endeavor to purchase a remission of the sentence by the
payment of an exorbitant ransom. Torquemada appeared before Ferdinand
and his consort, raising the crucifix, and crying: 'Judas sold Christ
for 30 pieces of silver; sell ye him for a larger sum, and account for
the same to God!' The exodus began. Eight hundred thousand Jews left
Spain[1]--some for the coast of Africa, where the Arabs ripped their
bodies up in search for gems or gold they might have swallowed, and
deflowered their women--some for Portugal, where they bought the right
to exist for a large head-tax, and where they saw their sons and
daughters dragged away to baptism before their eyes. Others were sold as
slaves, or had to satisfy the rapacity of their persecutors with the
bodies of their children. Many flung themselves into the wells, and
sought to bury despair in suicide. The Mediterranean was covered with
famine-stricken and plague-breeding fleets of exiles. Putting into the
Port of Genoa, they were refused leave to reside in the city, and died
by hundreds in the harbor.[2] Their festering bodies, bred a pestilence
along the whole Italian sea-board, of which at Naples alone 20,000
persons died. Flitting from shore to shore, these forlorn specters, the
victims of bigotry and avarice, everywhere pillaged and everywhere
rejected, dwindled away and disappeared. Meanwhile the orthodox
rejoiced. Pico della Mirandola, who spent his life in