Twelfthly, that the inquisitor should establish the Inquisition in all towns where it did not already exist.
Thirteenthly, that in all difficult cases the inquisitors should consult the council.
Fourteenthly, that the women should have a prison separated from that of the men.
Fifteenthly, that the officers of the tribunal should perform their functions six hours in a day, and that they should attend the inquisitors whenever they were required.
Sixteenthly, that after the inquisitors had received the oath of the witnesses in presence of the fiscal, he should be obliged to retire.
Besides these ordinances, Torquemada established several particular regulations for each individual belonging to the tribunal: all the persons employed were obliged to take an oath that they would not reveal anything they might see or hear: the inquisitor was not allowed to remain alone with the prisoner; the gaoler could not allow any person to speak with him, and was obliged to examine if any writings were concealed in the food which was given him. These were the last regulations framed by Torquemada, but Diego Deza, his successor, published a fifth instruction at Seville, in 1500.
Such were the laws of the holy office in Spain. This code caused the emigration of more than a hundred thousand families useful to the state, and the loss of many millions of francs which were spent at the court of Rome, either for the bulls which it expedited, or by those who repaired thither to solicit their absolution from the Popes. The holy see was far from complaining of this practice, as it brought immense sums to the treasury, and no person who presented himself with his money before the apostolical penitentiary, failed of obtaining the absolution he solicited, or an order for absolution elsewhere.
This conduct displeased the inquisitors: depending on the protection of Ferdinand and Isabella, they expostulated with the Pope, who annulled the absolutions already granted, thus deceiving those who had spent the greatest part of their fortunes in endeavouring to obtain them. He then promised new pardons on new conditions, contrary to the engagement he had entered into with Ferdinand, to abolish every means of appeal to the Court of Rome. Such was the constant practice of the holy see during thirty years after the establishment of the Inquisition in Spain.
CHAPTER VIII.
EXPULSION OF THE JEWS.—PROCEEDINGS AGAINST BISHOPS.—DEATH OF TORQUEMADA.
IN 1492 Ferdinand and Isabella conquered the kingdom of Grenada. This event offered a multitude of victims to the holy office in the persons of the Moors, who were converted merely in the hope of obtaining consideration, and after their baptism returned to Mahometanism. John de Navagiero, in his travels in Spain, states, that Ferdinand had promised the Morescoes, (as those Moors were called who became Christians,) that the Inquisition should not interfere with them for the space of forty years, but that the Inquisition was established in the kingdom of Grenada, on the pretence that many Jews had taken refuge there. This statement is not exact; the sovereigns only promised that the Moorish Christians should not be prosecuted except for serious crimes, and the Inquisition was not introduced among them before 1526.