Torquemada and The Spanish Inquisition

The Spanish Inquisition was established on 1 November, 1478, by Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castille, as an ecclesiastical tribunal designed to ensure religious orthodoxy in Spain. But it was always more than just a religious body becoming over time the political bulwark of the Spanish State preserving not just Sangre Limpia (clean blood) at home but also dictating both domestic and foreign policy. In its zeal to root out heresy it has become a by-word for intolerance and religious fanaticism down the ages. One man, more than any other, came to encompass all the evils of that intolerance, that man was Tomas de Torquemada.

Born in 1420, to a wealthy and well-connected family, his uncle was Cardinal Juan de Torquemada, the religious life was always the one true way for Tomas, and at an early age he entered the Dominican Order of Friars. Indeed, his whole life he would insist that he was nothing more than the humble friar toiling in the fields of the Lord, though the vast wealth that he accrued for himself over the years would seem to say otherwise.

He did, to be fair, turn down many higher offices within the Catholic Church, even so he rose to be Prior of the Monastery of Santa Cruz in Segovia, and was the Confessor to Queen Isabella of Castille, and it was his connection to the Royal Court that was to secure for him, at the age of 63, the role of Grand Inquisitor of the Spanish Inquisition. For a man of little imagination, rigidly orthodox in his views, and intolerant of difference, it was the perfect role and he threw himself into it with a gusto and relish that left many of those working with him breathless. 

It was apparent from the outset that the campaign to root out heresy and religious unorthodoxy from Spain was little more than thinly veiled anti-Semitism. The main target of the Inquisition were the so-called conversos, Jews who had converted to Catholicism following the anti-Jewish pogroms of July, 1391. It is ironic, therefore, that the Inquisition, as a Christian body, had no jurisdiction over Jews, but only over those who had since been baptised as Christians. Those Jews who had converted to Catholicism to avoid persecution were now to be persecuted for having done so.

Torquemada was appointed Inquisitor General of Spain on 17 October, 1483, and was soon to earn the soubriquet ” Hammer of the Heretics .” He was a humourless man who had little respect for rank and would even talk down to and lambast the Queen on occasions. Though he by no means led a spartan lifestyle he was believed to be by those who knew him incorruptible, and was known to wear a hair-shirt under his fine robes.