that he commenced there in the anticipation of meeting less obstinate resistance than in the older and stronger provinces of Aragon and Catalonia. He was, however, not yet fully satisfied with his control over appointments and he applied to Sixtus IV for some larger liberty, but the pope, who was beginning to recognize that the Castilian Inquisition was more royal than papal, refused, by a brief of January 29, 1482, alleging that to do so would be to inflict disgrace on the Dominicans to whom it had always been confided.1

The reorganized tribunal speedily produced an impression by its activity. The Conversos became thoroughly alarmed; opposition began to manifest itself, while the more timid sought safety in flight. A certain Mossen Luis Masquo, one of the jurats of Valencia, made himself especially conspicuous in exciting the city against the inquisitors and in stimulating united action in opposition by the Estates of the kingdom. A letter to him from Ferdinand, February 8, 1482, censures him severely for this and vaguely threatens him with the royal wrath for persistence. Another letter of the same date to the Maestre Racional, or chief accounting officer of the kingdom, shows that the severity with which the property of those arrested was seized and sequestrated was arousing indignation, for it explains the necessity of this so that not a diner shall be lost; if the inquisitors have not power to do this, it shall be conferred on them.2 The Maestre Racional had suggested that for those who should spontaneously come forward and confess a form of abjuration and reconciliation might be adopted which should spare them the humiliation of public penance while still keeping them subject to the penalties of relapse. To this, after consultation with learned canonists, Ferdinand assented and sent him the formula agreed upon, with instructions that it should appear to be the act of the local authorities and not his-doubtless to prevent his Castilian subjects from claiming the same exemption from the humiliating penitential processions in the autos de fe."

Allusions in this correspondence to special cases of arrests and

Valencia, los quals e no mas es nostra voluntat que en la forma dessus dita se paguen á les sobredits persones. Dada en la vila de Medina del Campo á XVII dias de febrer del any de la nativitat de nostro senyor MCCCCLXXXII. Yo el Rey. Dominus Rex mandavit mihi Petro Camanyas."

1 Printed by Llorente, Hist. crít. Append. 1.

2 Arch. Gen. de la C. de A., Reg. 3684, fol. 3, 4.

3 Ibidem, fol. 1, 2, 4, 5.

fugitives and sequestrations show that Ferdinand was succeeding in moulding the old Inquisition as he desired and that it was actively at work, when suddenly a halt was called. In the general terror it is presumable that the Conversos had recourse to the Holy See and furnished the necessary convincing arguments; it may also be conjectured that Sixtus was disposed, by throwing obstacles in the way, to secure the recognition of his profitable but disputed right to entertain appeals and that he was unwilling, without a struggle, to lose control of the Inquisition of Aragon as he had done with that of Castile. There are traces also of the hand of Cardinal Borgia seeking to recover his episcopal jurisdiction over heresy in Valencia. Whatever may have been the impelling cause, the first move of Sixtus was to cause the Dominican General, Salvo Caseta, to withdraw the commission given to Fray Gaspar Juglar to appoint inquisitors at Ferdinand's dictation. At this the royal wrath exploded in a letter to the General, April 26, 1482, threatening the whole Order with the consequences of his displeasure; Gualbes and Orts had done their duty fearlessly and incorruptibly, while Fray Francisco Vitalappointed to Catalonia by the Dominican General-had been taking bribes and had been banished the kingdom; he will never allow inquisitors to act, except at his pleasure; even with the royal favor they can accomplish little in the face of popular opposition and without it they can do nothing; meanwhile Gualbes and Orts will continue to act. This heated epistle was followed, May 11th, by one in a calmer mood, asking that Juglar's commission be renewed or another one be issued, failing which he would obtain papal authority and overslaugh the Dominican Order.1

The next move by Sixtus was the issue, April 18, 1482, of the most extraordinary bull in the history of the Inquisitionextraordinary because, for the first time, heresy was declared to be, like any other crime, entitled to a fair trial and simple justice. We shall have abundant opportunity to see hereafter how the inquisitorial system, observed since its foundation in the thirteenth century, presumed the guilt of the accused on any kind of so-called evidence and was solely framed to extort a confession by depriving him of the legitimate means of defence and by the free use of torture. It was also an invariable rule that sacramental confession of heresy was good only in the forum of conscience and

1 Arch. Gen. de la C. de A., Reg. 3684, fol. 7, 8.

was no bar to subsequent prosecution. There was brazen assurance therefore in Sixtus's complaining that, for some time, the inquisitors of Aragon had been moved not by zeal for the faith but by cupidity; that many faithful Christians, on the evidence of slaves, enemies and unfit witnesses, without legitimate proofs, had been thrust into secular prisons, tortured and condemned as heretics, their property confiscated and their persons relaxed to the secular arm for execution. In view of the numerous complaints reaching him of this, he ordered that in future the episcopal vicars should in all cases be called in to act with the inquisitors; that the names and evidence of accusers and witnesses should be communicated to the accused, who should be allowed counsel and that the evidence for the defence and all legitimate exceptions should be freely admitted; that imprisonment should be in the episcopal gaols; that for all oppression there should be free appeal to the Holy See, with suspension of proceedings, under pain of excommunication removable only by the pope. Moreover, all who had been guilty of heresy should be permitted to confess secretly to the inquisitors or episcopal officials, who were required to hear them promptly and confer absolution, good in both the forum of conscience and that of justice, without abjuration, on their accepting secret penance, after which they could no longer be prosecuted for any previous acts, a certificate being given to them in which the sins confessed were not to be mentioned, nor were they to be vexed or molested thereafter in any way-and all this under similar pain of excommunication. The bull was ordered to be read in all churches and the names of those incurring censure under it were to be published and the censures enforced if necessary by invocation of the secular arm; while finally all proceedings in contravention of these provisions were declared to be null and void, all exceptions from excommunication were withdrawn and all conflicting papal decrees were set aside. It is evident that the Conversos had a hand in framing this measure and they could scarce have asked for anything more favorable. In fact Ferdinand in December, 1482, writes to Luis Cabanilles, Governor of Valencia, that he learns that Gonsalvo de Gonsalvo Royz was concerned in procuring the bull for the Conversos: he is therefore

1 Archivio Vaticano: Sisto IV, Regestro 674, T. XV, fol. 366.

As Llorente states (Hist. crít. Append. n. 2) that the contents of this bull are unknown and as ignorance of its purport has wholly misled him, I give it in the Appendix.

to be arrested at once and is not to be released without a royal order, while Luis de Santangel, the royal escribano de racion, will convey orally the king's intentions concerning him.'

In this elaborate and carefully planned decree Sixtus formally threw down the gage of battle to Ferdinand and announced that he must be placated in some way if the Inquisition of Aragon was to be allowed to perform its intended functions. That it was simply a tactical move-rendered doubly advantageous by liberal Converso payment—and that he is to be credited with no humanitarian motives, is sufficiently evident from his subsequent action and also from the fact that the bull was limited to Aragon and in no way interfered with the Castilian tribunals. Ferdinand promptly accepted the challenge. He did not await the publication of the bull but addressed, on May 13th, a haughty and imperative letter to Sixtus. He had heard, he said, that such concessions had been made, which he briefly condensed in a manner to show that his information was accurate, and further that the inquisitors Gualbes and Orts had been removed, at the instance of the New Christians who hoped for more pliable successors. He refused to believe that the pope could have made grants so at variance with his duty but, if he had thus yielded to the cunning persuasions of the New Christians, he, the king, did not intend ever to allow them to take effect. If anything had been conceded it must be revoked; the management of the Inquisition must be left to him; he must have the appointment of the inquisitors, as only through his favor could they adequately perform their functions; it was through lack of this royal power that they had hitherto been corrupted and had allowed heresy to spread. He therefore asked Sixtus to confirm Gualbes and Orts and the commission to Gaspar Juglar, or to give a similar commission to some other Dominican, for he would permit no one to exercise the office in his dominions except at his pleasure.2

Sixtus seems to have allowed five months to elapse before answering this defiance, but in the meanwhile the Inquisition went on as before. Ferdinand had formed in Valencia a special

1 Archivo Gen. de la C. de A., Reg. 3684, fol. 9.—It is significant that in the papal register there is a note appended to this bull "Duplicata sub eadem data et scripta per eundem scriptorem et taxata ad xxx" [grossos?], showing that an authentic copy was obtained and paid for at the time by some one, doubtless to provide against accident or fraud.

2 Arch. Gen. de la C. de A., Reg. 3684, fol. 7. See Appendix. Bergenroth (Calendar of Spanish State Papers, I, xliv) gives an incorrect extract from it.

council for the Holy Office and this body ventured to remonstrate with him about the confiscations and especially the feature of sequestration, by which, as soon as an arrest was made, the whole property of the accused was seized and held; this was peculiarly oppressive and the council represented that it violated the fueros granted by King Jaime and King Alfonso, but Ferdinand replied, September 11th, that he was resolved that nothing belonging to him should be lost but should be rigidly collected, while what belonged to others should not be taken. Another letter of September 6th to the Governor Luis Cabanilles refers to an arrangement of a kind that became frequent, under which the Conversos agreed to pay a certain sum as a composition for the confiscations of those who might be proved to be heretics.1

At length, on October 9th, Sixtus replied to Ferdinand in a manner to show that he was open to accommodation. The new rules, he said, had been drawn up with the advice of the cardinals deputed for the purpose; they had scattered in fear of the impending pestilence but, when they should return to Rome, he would charge them to consider maturely whether the bull should be amended; meanwhile he suspended it in so far as it contravened the common law, only charging the inquisitors to observe strictly the rules of the common law-the "common law" here being an elastic expression, certain to be construed as the traditional inquisitorial system. Thus the unfortunate Conversos of Aragon, as we shall see hereafter were those of Castile, were merely used as pawns in the pitiless game of king and pope over their despoilment and the merciful prescriptions of the bull of April 18th were only of service in showing that, in his subsequent policy, Sixtus sinned against light and knowledge. What negotiations followed, the documents at hand fail to reveal, but an understanding was inevitable as soon as the two powers could agree upon a division of the spoil. It required a twelvemonth to effect this and in the settlement Ferdinand secured more than he had at first demanded. It was no longer a question of commissioning a fraile to appoint inquisitors at his pleasure, but of including in the organization of the Castilian Inquisition the whole of the Spanish dominions. On October 17, 1483, the agreement was ratified by a bull appointing Torquemada as inquisitor of Aragon, Valencia and Catalonia, with power to appoint subordinates. In this, with characteristic

1 Arch. Gen. de la C. de A., Reg. 3684, fol. 8, 9.

* Llorente, Hist. crít. Append. n. 2.-Fidel Fita (Boletin, XV, 467).