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Start of the Inquisition

Fray Alonso de Ojeda, a Dominican friar from Seville, convinced Queen Isabella of the existence of Crypto-Judaism among Andalusian conversos during her stay in Seville between 1477 and 1478. A report, produced by Pedro González de Mendoza, Archbishop of Seville, and by the Segovian Dominican Tomás de Torquemada —of converso family himself—corroborated this assertion.

Spanish monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella requested a papal bull establishing an inquisition in Spain in 1478. Pope Sixtus IV granted the bull Exigit sincerae devotionis affectus permitting the monarchs to select and appoint two or three priests over forty years of age to act as inquisitors. In 1483, Ferdinand and Isabella established a state council to administer the inquisition with the Dominican Friar Tomás de Torquemada acting as its president, even though Sixtus IV protested the activities of the inquisition in Aragon and its treatment of the conversos. Torquemada eventually assumed the title of Inquisitor-General.

Ferdinand II of Aragon pressured Pope Sixtus IV to agree to an Inquisition controlled by the monarchy by threatening to withdraw military support at a time when the Turks were a threat to Rome. The pope issued a bull to stop the Inquisition but was pressured into withdrawing it. On 1 November 1478, Sixtus published the Papal bull, Exigit Sincerae Devotionis Affectus, ("Sincere Devotion Is Required ") through which he gave the monarchs exclusive authority to name the inquisitors in their kingdoms. The first two inquisitors, Miguel de Morillo and Juan de San Martín, were not named until two years later, on 27 September 1480 in Medina del Campo. The first auto de fé was held in Seville on 6 February 1481: six people were burned alive. From there, the Inquisition grew rapidly in the Kingdom of Castile. By 1492, tribunals existed in eight Castilian cities: Ávila, Córdoba, Jaén, Medina del Campo, Segovia, Sigüenza, Toledo, and Valladolid. Sixtus IV promulgated a new bull (1482) categorically prohibiting the Inquisition's extension to Aragón, affirming that:

... in Aragon, Valencia, Mallorca and Catalonia the Inquisition has for some time been moved not by zeal for the faith and the salvation of souls, but by lust for wealth, and that many true and faithful Christians, on the testimony of enemies, rivals, slaves and other lower and even less proper persons, have without any legitimate proof been thrust into secular prisons, tortured and condemned as relapsed heretics, deprived of their goods and property and handed over to the secular arm to be executed, to the peril of souls, setting a pernicious example, and causing disgust to many.

Outraged, Ferdinand feigned doubt about the bull's veracity, arguing that no sensible pope would have published such a document. He wrote the pope on May 13, 1482, saying: "Take care therefore not to let the matter go further, and to revoke any concessions and entrust us with the care of this question."

According to the book A History of the Jewish People,

In 1482 the pope was still trying to maintain control over the Inquisition and to gain acceptance for his own attitude towards the New Christians which was generally more moderate than that of the Inquisition and the local rulers.

In 1483, Jews were expelled from all of Andalusia. Though the pope wanted to crack down on abuses, Ferdinand pressured him to promulgate a new bull, threatening that he would otherwise separate the Inquisition from Church authority. Sixtus did so on 17 October 1483, naming Tomás de Torquemada Inquisidor General of Aragón, Valencia, and Catalonia.

Torquemada quickly established procedures for the Inquisition. In 1484, based in Nicholas Eymerich 's Directorium Inquisitorum, he created a twenty-eight-article inquisitor's code, Compilación de las instrucciones del oficio de la Santa Inquisición (i.e. Compilation of the instructions of the office of the Holy Inquisition), essentially unaltered for more than three centuries following Torquemada's death. A new court would be announced with a thirty-day grace period for self confessions and denunciations, and the gathering of accusations by neighbors and acquaintances. Evidence that was used to identify a crypto-Jew included the absence of chimney smoke on Saturdays (a sign the family might secretly be honoring the Sabbath), the buying of many vegetables before Passover, or the purchase of meat from a converted butcher. The court could employ physical torture to extract confessions. Crypto-Jews were allowed to confess and do penance, although those who relapsed were executed.

In 1484, Pope Innocent VIII attempted to allow appeals to Rome against the Inquisition, which would weaken the function of the institution as protection against the pope, but Ferdinand in December 1484 and again in 1509 decreed death and confiscation for anyone trying to make use of such procedures without royal permission. With this, the Inquisition became the only institution that held authority across all the realms of the Spanish monarchy and, in all of them, a useful mechanism at the service of the crown. The cities of Aragón continued resisting, and even saw revolt, as in Teruel from 1484 to 1485. The murder of Inquisidor Pedro Arbués (later made saint) in Zaragoza on 15 September 1485, caused public opinion to turn against the conversos and in favour of the Inquisition. In Aragón, the Inquisitorial courts were focused specifically on members of the powerful converso minority, ending their influence in the Aragonese administration.

The Inquisition was extremely active between 1480 and 1530. Different sources give different estimates of the number of trials and executions in this period; some estimate about 2,000 executions, based on the documentation of the autos de fé, the great majority being conversos of Jewish origin. He offers striking statistics: 91.6% of those judged in Valencia between 1484 and 1530 and 99.3% of those judged in Barcelona between 1484 and 1505 were of Jewish origin.