Entered according to the Act of Congress, in the year 1901, by

HENRY CHARLES LEA,

In the office of the Librarian of Congress. All rights reserved.

DORNAN, PRINTER.

PREFACE.

THE material on which this volume is based was collected for a chapter in a general history of the Spanish Inquisition which I hope in due time to prepare. On reviewing it the subject has seemed to me to possess interest and importance deserving fuller treatment than it could receive as a mere episode in a larger narrative, for it not only embodies a tragedy commanding the deepest sympathy, but it epitomizes nearly all the errors and tendencies which combined to cast down Spain, in little more than a century, from its splendor under Charles V. to its humiliation under Carlos II.

The labors of modern Spanish scholars have made public a mass of documentary evidence which throws much light on the inner history of the movements leading up to the final catastrophe, but this has been mostly drawn from state papers and unconsciously minimizes the part taken by intolerance and embodied in the Inquisition. To some extent I have therefore been able to supplement their researches and to make more prominent what was perhaps the most efficient agency in rendering