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by vexatious laws, and abhorred by the people, whom
they ruined with their iisurj% perverted, and scandal-
ized with their sacrileges, they were finally expelled
from Spain by the Catholic Sovereigns, who regarded
them as dangerous to the religious unity and the secur-
ity of the count rj^ on account of the relations which
they maintained with the Moors.
Connected with the persecutions of the Jews is the institution of the Inquisition. It was introduced into Spain by Jaime I the Conqueror, King of Aragon, to stop the invasion of the same Albigensian heretics against whom it had been established by Innocent III. The Count of Foix and the Viscount of Cas- tellb6, with many of their subjects, embraced the Albigensian errors. .Vrnaldo of Vilanova and some Beghards of Aragon were punished by the Inquisition. There were also in Catalonia Fraticelli and other heretics, like Raimundo of Tdrrega, as the Holy Office was informed. In 1376 Padre Nicolas Eymer- ich published the "Directorium Inquisitorum". But the Spanish Inquisition did not acquire its true char- acter and importance until the Catholic Sovereigns established it in Castile under authority obtained from Pope Sixtus IV (1478). It was a mixed tribunal, in which the ecclesiastical element took cognizance of the orthodox)- or heterodoxj- of doctrines and, con- sequently, of offences .against Catholic faith or morals; after sentence was pronounced, the culprit was handed over to the .secul.ar arm to be punished according to the laws of the realm. Such a law was that of title 26 of the seven Partidas, which provided the punish- ment of death by fire for heretics who refused to be converted, and, again, those of book IV, title 1, of the Fuero Real, which imposed the same penalty for heresy and apostasy. The laws regulating the pro- cesses of the Inquisition, indeed, were Spanish, and not laws of the Roman Church. The Spanish In- quisition, although established by virtue of a pontifi- cal Bull, became to some extent indejiendent of Rome, as appeals lay to the Archbishop of Seville, who passed sentence in the pope's name. The Tribunal of the Holy Office, as it was called, was made up of thirteen — afterwards fifteen — provincial tribunals, with ter- ritorial jurisdiction, and a supreme council, which supervised them and pronounced on appeals. The procedure was minutely regulated and was far supe- rior to the procedure of other tribunals of its time. It is not certain that anonymous accusations w'ere con- siderefl, although the names of the accusers and wit- nesses were concealed from the accused. Torture was not arbitrarily employed, but only when sufficient proof already existed, and even then it was applied less barbarously than in the contemporarj- civil tribunals. The pri.sons were of the most humane kind. The sentences pronounced were : abandonment to the temporal arm (rcUijncinn) for the impenitent heretic; reconciliation for the repentant; abjuration, when there was a suspicion of heresy; and absolution. Only the impenitent were condemned to the stake, and the number of condemnations has been much exaggerated.
H. Modern Period. — The political and religious de- velopment which we have outlined abo\e resulted in Spanish national unity, and explains the character of Spain as a Catholic nation. The struggle of eight centuries to recover the territor\- wrested from them by the Mussulmans, who were enemies at once of their land and of their faith, effected in the Spanish people that intimate fusion of i)atriotic and religious feeling which distinguished them during many cen- turies. Non xine numine, it may be saiil, did a Span- ish pope (.\lexander VI) give the title of Catholic, by eminence, to the sovereigns who first united recon- quered Spain under their sceptre, for they and their successors deemed it the first duty of the Crown to maintain the purity of the Catholic Faith in their realms, to propagate it in the vast countries which
they colonized, and defend it in Europe against the
assaults of heretics. The same pope, Alexander VI,
issued in 1493 a Bull, in which, to prevent the disputes
that might arise between Spaniards and Portuguese
in regard to their discoveries in the East Indies and
(as America was then called) the West Indies, he
established as a fine of demarcation between them the
meridian running 100 leagues west of the Azores, de-
creeing that the newly discovered lands west of that
Ime should belong to the Sp,aniards, and those east of
It to the Portuguese. .Vfterwards, in the Treaty of
Tordesillas, another line, 360 leagues west of the Cape
\'erde Islands, was substituted — an arrangement
which gave Brazil to Portugal.
The Catholic Sovereigns, by reuniting the Crowns of Castile and .\rag()n, annexing Navarre, and com- pleting the Reconquest with the reduction of Granada (1492), established the poUtical unity of Spain; with
The Old Cathedral, Salamanca, from the East
the Inquisition and the expulsion of the Jews they
achieved its religious unity; the marriages of their
children with the Kings of Portugal and of England
and the son of the Km])iTor Maximilian, secured to
Spain the friendship of the leathng states; by the dis-
coverj- of America and the conquests in Africa a
broad road was opened for Spain's colonial expansion.
But the death of their son Prince John caused the
Crown to pass to Charles I (the Emperor Charles V),
son of Juana la Loca, and entirely changed the course
whichthe magnanimous Isabella had traced for Spanish
policy. Charles \', attracted to Italy by the ancient
strife with France for the possession of the Italian
states, and to (lermany by his inheritance of the im-
perial Throne from his grandfather Maximilian, was
more the Emperor of (iermany than the King of Spain,
and completely diverted Spanish policy from .Vmerica
and Africa. Philip II, though he ilidnot succeed his
father in the empire, coiild not extricate himself from
his father's European policy, atid Spain was exhausted
by the wars in Flanders .against I'rance and England.
Nevertheless, unUke his father, Philip II was a thor-
oughly Spanish king, and united the whole Iberian
Peninsula under his sway by the incorporation of
Portugal.
