Titans of History

TORQUEMADA

1420–98

If anyone possesses a certain amount of learning, he is found to be full of heresies, errors, traces of Judaism. Thus they have imposed silence on men of letters; those who have pursued learning have come to feel, as you say, a great terror.

Don Rodrigo Manrique, son of the inquisitor general, letter to Luis Vives, 1533

The very name of Tomás de Torquemada, the first inquisitor general in Spain, was enough to induce a tremor of fear among even the most hardened of his contemporaries. Since then, Torquemada—the persecutor of Jews, Moors and other supposed heretics under the intolerant and repressive rule of Ferdinand and Isabella—has become a byword for religious fanaticism and persecuting zeal.

Little is known of his early life, other than the fact that the man who would become the bane of Spain’s Jews was himself of Jewish descent: his grandmother was a converso—a Jewish convert to Catholicism. During his youth Torquemada joined the Dominican religious order, and in 1452 he was appointed prior of a monastery in Santa Cruz. Though he continued to occupy that post for the next two decades, he also became a confessor and adviser to King Ferdinand II of Aragon and Queen Isabella I of Castile, whose marriage in 1479 effectively united the two principal Spanish kingdoms. Under their dual monarchy, a renewed effort was made to complete the Reconquista (the re-conquest of Spain from Muslim rule) that had stalled some two centuries earlier. This endeavor ended in success in 1492 with the fall of Granada, the last Muslim outpost in Spain.

In the meantime, Torquemada had convinced the government that the continued presence in Spain of Jews, Muslims and even recent converts to Christianity from those faiths represented a dangerous corruption of the true Catholic faith. As a result of Torquemada’s urging, repressive laws had been passed aimed at forcing the expulsion of Spain’s non-Christian minorities.

The Spanish Inquisition was established on November 1, 1478 by Pope Sixtus IV. Its job was to root out deviance and heresy from within the Church, and every girl over the age of twelve and every boy over the age of fourteen was subject to its power. It was not the first time such an entity had been created—an inquisition had temporarily existed in 13th-century France, to deal with the remnants of the Cathar heretics in the aftermath of the Albigensian Crusade. This new Inquisition, however, was to be far more enduring and methodical in its operation.

The first two inquisitors were appointed in 1480, and the first burnings followed a few months later, in February 1481, when six people were executed as heretics. Thereafter the pace of killing picked up, and in February 1482, to cope with the increasing workload, a further seven inquisitors—including Torquemada—were appointed by the pope. Within a decade, the hearings of the Inquisition were operating in eight major cities across Spain.

Inquisitors would arrive in a town and convene a special Mass, which all were obliged to attend. There they would preach a sermon before calling on those guilty of heresy to come forward and confess. Suspected transgressors were given a period of thirty to forty days to turn themselves in. Those who complied were liable to be “rewarded” with a less severe penalty than those who proved recalcitrant. Nevertheless, all who did confess were also required to identify other heretics who had not complied. Denunciation was thus as integral to the working of the inquisition as confession. In consequence, the inquisition quickly became an opportunity to settle old scores.

The accused were arrested and thrown into prison, and their property, and that of their family, was confiscated. Interrogation then followed, the inquisitors being instructed to apply torture according to their “conscience and will.” A suspect could have water forced down his throat, be stretched on the rack, or hung with his hands tied behind his back—whatever was deemed necessary to extract a confession. Many were maimed in the process; countless others died. And for those who broke under the pressure, there was only one outcome: death by burning. Before being burned alive at the euphemistically named auto da fé (act of faith), the victim had two choices. They could repent and kiss the cross, or remain defiant. In the former case they were granted the mercy of being garroted prior to the flames being lit; otherwise, a protracted and hideously painful death was sure to follow.

In 1482 Torquemada was appointed as one of the inquisitors, and shortly afterward he became inquisitor general, the most senior position in the entire organization.

Torquemada was now almost as powerful as Ferdinand and Isabella themselves; certainly, he was more feared than the temporal authorities. Under his guiding hand the inquisition hit new heights of activity. In 1484 he oversaw the proclamation of twenty-eight articles, listing the sins that the inquisition was attempting to expose and purge. They ranged from apostasy and blasphemy to sodomy and sorcery—though many were focused on identifying and exposing Jews. During the course of their investigations, inquisitors were empowered to use all means necessary to discover the truth—a ruling that de facto legitimized torture in pursuit of a forced confession.

The result was a policy of violent persecution. In the month of February 1484 alone, thirty people in the city of Ciudad Real were found guilty of an assortment of “crimes” and burned alive. Between 1485 and 1501, 250 were burned in Toledo; and on one occasion in 1492, in Torquemada’s home town of Valladolid, thirty-two people were burned in one inferno.

Arguing that the soul of Spain was in jeopardy, Torquemada declared that the Jews, in particular, were a mortal threat, and in 1492 Ferdinand and Isabella decreed that all Jews who had not accepted the truth of the Christian revelation were to be expelled from Spain. Some 30–80,000 left the country—many of them rescued and given sanctuary by the tolerant Islamic Ottomans in Istanbul, Izmir and Salonika (modern Thessaloniki in Greece).

Torquemada still did not deem his work done, and even refused the bishopric of Seville to continue in his role. In so doing, he found that the rewards of his exertions were not solely spiritual; indeed, he amassed a large personal fortune from the confiscated wealth of those whom the Inquisition had found guilty of heresy. Wherever he traveled, he was accompanied by fifty mounted men and 250 foot soldiers, a force that reflected his growing unpopularity, but which also added to the terror and awe inspired when he arrived in a new town to root out its heretics.

Ultimately, only death removed Torquemada from office. Over the previous two decades his relentless zeal had led to as many as two thousand people meeting a hideous end in the flames. Torquemada will forever be remembered as religious bigotry personified—the living incarnation of Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Grand Inquisitor who seeks to burn Jesus Christ himself for the sake of his beloved Catholic Church, but who ends up in a spiritual abyss.