Aragon and Castile.
The Inquisition was established in Aragon in 1238, but a long time elapsed before it was organized with anything like efficiency. A nest of Catharans had been rooted out in 1237, but the records are scanty, the principal incident being the stoning to death of an Inquisitor by the inhabitants of Urgel, the chief centre of heresy. Greater vigour was shown at the beginning of the fourteenth century, and Pope Clement VI urged the kings of Aragon and Navarre to track down the many Waldenses who had fled from Toulouse. About the middle of the century the Inquisition was concerned in a heated dispute which arose between the Dominican and Franciscan Orders regarding one of those fatuously futile subjects on which men were roused to the extremity of passion in the Middle Ages. The Franciscans maintained that the blood of Christ after his death remained on earth—a proposition which filled the Pope and the Dominicans with horror. After this interesting question had been wrangled over for 122 years a great debate took place at Rome, when the warmth of the disputants was not moderated by the bitterly cold weather. Neither party could prove its case, but neither would give way, and as the Pope at last forbade further discussion the vital question of what became of Christ’s blood remains to this day unsolved. In Aragon neither the Crown nor the bishops supported the Inquisition with any particular ardour; the burning of heretics was an occasional luxury, confiscations were few, and the Inquisitors had failed to gain the popular sympathy. Not until about 1481, when the Spanish Inquisition was established on a sound commercial basis, did the persecutors show great activity or inspire profound terror.
Castile also was little troubled by the Inquisition until the latter part of the fifteenth century. In 1401 Pope Boniface issued a Bull for the repression of heresy, but only a slight effect was produced. It is worth noting that the heresy was not that of daring to think for one’s self (such boldness was then rare in Spain), but the idolatrous worship of plants, trees, and stones—the relics of pagan practices which the Church had incautiously permitted to survive. Aversion to the Papal Inquisition continued until the energetic measures of Ferdinand and Isabella rendered its manifestation dangerous, and smoothed the path of the orthodox.