In Toledo, Valladolid, Avila, Segovia, and other cities there were inquisitors already of the Pope’s appointing. Some of these failed to show the complete submission to his orders which Torquemada demanded, with the result that they were promptly deposed and their places filled by others whom he nominated. Those who manifested obedience to his rule he confirmed in their appointments, but usually he sent a nominee of his own to act in conjunction with them.
Torquemada himself remained at Court; for now that the Inquisition was established upon its new footing it became necessary that he should be in constant communication with the Sovereigns for whom he acted. Consultations were necessary on the score of the measures to be taken for the administration of what was rapidly become a corporation of great importance in the realm. From this it presently resulted that to the four royal councils already in existence for the conduct of the affairs of the kingdom, a fifth was added especially to deal with inquisitorial matters. Whether the suggestion emanated from the Sovereigns or from Torquemada, there are no means of ascertaining, nor does it greatly signify.
This Supreme Council of the Inquisition was established in 1484. It consisted of three royal councillors: Alonso Carillo, Bishop of Mazzara, Sancho Velasquez de Cuellar, and Poncio de Valencia, all doctors of laws, and of Torquemada’s two assessors. To preside over this “Suprema”—as the council came to be called—Torquemada was appointed, thus enormously increasing the power and influence which already he wielded.
The three royal councillors had a definite vote in all matters that appertained to the jurisdiction of the Sovereigns; but in all matters of spiritual jurisdiction, which was vested entirely in the Grand Inquisitor by the papal bull, their votes were merely consultative—amounting to no more than an expression of opinion.
It was Torquemada’s desire that his subordinates should act with absolute uniformity in the discharge of the duties entrusted to them, and that the courts of the Holy Office throughout Spain should one and all be identical in their methods of procedure, the instruments of his will and the expression of his conceptions. With this end in view he summoned the inquisitors by him appointed to the Tribunals of Seville, Cordova, Jaen, and Villa Real to confer with him and his assessors and the royal councillors.
The assembly took place in Seville on October 29, and its business was the formulation of the first instructions of Torquemada for the guidance of all inquisitors.
In the library of the British Museum there is a vellum-bound copy of the edition of this code, which was subsequently published at Madrid in 1576.[83] It contains, in addition to Torquemada’s articles of 1484 and subsequent years, others added by his successors, and there are marginal notes giving the authorship of each. The work is partly printed, partly in manuscript, and a considerable number of pages remain in blank, that further instructions may be filled in as the need occurs. The printed matter is frequently underscored by the pen of one or another of the inquisitors through whose hands this copy passed during its active existence.
The twenty-eight articles compiled by Torquemada at the assembly of 1484, and constituting his first “Instructions for the Governance of the Holy Office,” demand a chapter to themselves.
CHAPTER X
THE JURISPRUDENCE OF THE HOLY OFFICE—THE FIRST “INSTRUCTIONS” OF TORQUEMADA
The first manual for the use of inquisitors was probably written somewhere about 1320. It was the work of the Dominican friar Bernard Gui—“Practica Inquisitionis Heretice Pravitatis—Bernardo Guidonis, Ordinis Fratrum Predicatorum”—and it summarised the experience gathered during a hundred years by the inquisitors of Southern France.