Tomás de Torquemada

Biography

Tomás de Torquemada was born in 1420, perhaps in the town of Torquemada (Spanish torre quemada , in Latin turris cremata , “the burned tower”), in the province of Palencia, Castille-and-León, in the north of Spain. Other historians consider that it was born with Valladolid. It is in any case in Valladolid that it grows, and, like his uncle Cardinal Juan de Torquemada, he became monk Dominicain in the convent San Pablo of the city. He was named at a still young age Prieur of the monastery of Santa Cruz in Segovia, a function which he occupied during 22 years (1460-1482).

Famous for its austerity, its devotion and its scholarship, he became confessor of the princess Isabelle, heiress of the Castille, whereas she was yet only one child. He undertook to inculcate the duty to him which she would have, as a future sovereign, to defend the religious unit of the Kingdom, and the political benefit that she could withdraw.

After having married Ferdinand II of Aragon in 1469, it was crowned queen in 1474. Torquemada was very close to the sovereigns, becoming also confessor of the king, but he refused the honorary stations which were proposed to him, like the évêché rich person of Seville, and was satisfied with a function to advise. Mainly at its instigation, those which one will call “the catholic kings” decided to follow a coercive religious policy, in the name of the unit of Spain. They convainquirent the pope Sixte IV to reorganize the courts of enquiry in Spain, and to place them under the exclusive control of the Crown.

In 1483, Torquemada is named Grand Inquisiteur by a papal bubble. It will occupy this function until its death in 1498, discharging its mission with a frightening zeal and a determination relentless. (See below, Torquemada and Spanish Enquiry )

With the assistance of legists, it wrote a “code of the inquisitor” of twenty-eight articles, which it promulgated on November 29th, 1484 at the time of the general meeting of the inquisiteurs in Seville. He will work until his death to refine this code according to the gained experience (these rules are gathered in the Compilación of mow instrucciones LED officio of Santa Inquisitión ).

Torquemada also played a decisive part of initiator in the Reconquista of Moslem Spain, like in the persecution and the expulsion of the Jews of Spain in 1492. (See below, War against the Moslems and persecution of the Jews )

At the end of its life, it was withdrawn with the convent Saint-Thomas d' Ávila, which it had made build, taking again the simple life of brother, while continuing to occupy the function of Large Inquisiteur and to think of the best rules to lead and frame the Enquiry. It accepted with the several begun again visit of the sovereigns (and went to Salamanque in October 1497 to be at the sides dying prince Don Juan and to comfort the king and the queen). In 1498, it governed its last general meeting of the inquisiteurs.

He died on September 16th, 1498.

Torquemada and Spanish Enquiry

In 1483, the " The Council of the Supreme Enquiry and Générale" (summary Suprema ) was instituted. To chair it, the function of Large Inquisiteur ( General Inquisidor ) was created, to which Torquemada was named the same year, by a papal bubble. Although under the theoretical authority of the Spanish monarchs, Large Inquisiteur, as a representative of the Pope, had the upper hand on the whole of the inquisitorial courts and could delegate its powers to inquisiteurs of its choice, who were responsible in front of him. It is interesting to note that the function of Large Inquisiteur was the only public office from which the authority extended to all the kingdoms composing Spain, thus constituting a useful relay to be able it of the sovereigns. During its fifteen years as Large Inquisiteur, Torquemada could give to the Spanish Enquiry an importance and a power without precedent.

Starting from a simple court in Seville in 1481, a network of inquisitorial courts (" Saint-Offices") was developed through the country, unquestionable permanent, other itinerants, allowing to net the territory - in particular in Cordoue, Tolède, Valladolid, Ávila, Jaén for Castille and Saragossa, Valence, Barcelona, and Majorque for the kingdom of Aragon. After Torquemada, other courts will be still created, in particular in the new American possessions of Spain.

In addition, confiscation of the goods of the " hérétiques" (or declared such) for the exclusive profit of the Enquiry got for this one a very great richness - and thus a capacity and means of action even wider. It was besides a source of tensions with the sovereigns Isabelle and Ferdinand, however agents of Torquemada, who had hoped that part of this money would come to feed the Treasury. One needed the intervention of the pope Alexandre VI so that the Spanish Enquiry agree to be dispossessed of part of its spoils.

Initially, the installation of the Enquiry caused resistances, as well among the noble ones as ordinary people, in particular in the kingdom of Aragon - going until causing revolts, in particular in Valence and Lerida (there will be also violent anti-Spanish reactions when Ferdinand tries to impose the Enquiry in the Spanish possessions in Italy). But, the capacity of Torquemada was still reinforced after the murder of the inquisitor Pedro de Arbués in Saragossa in 1485, qu ' one allotted to heretics and to the Jews, like by supposed the ritual murder - probably imaginary - of Santo Niño of Guardia (" the Saint Child of Guardia") in 1490, whose Jews were marked.

The capacity of the Enquiry on the life of the Spaniards was immense. Each old Christian heart of more than twelve years (for the girls) or fourteen years (for the boys) was fully responsible in front of it. The heretics (or declared such) and the Conversos (Jewish and Moslems converted) were the first targets, but any critical person of the Enquiry was regarded as suspect.

The Enquiry, under the crook of Torquemada, was characterized by its pitiless character and its brutality. The anonymous denunciations, the recourse to torture to extort consents were current practices. " formes" were however respected - even if today these subtleties can appear hypocritical to us or simply absurd: the Church not having the right to pour blood, of tortures " adaptées" were employed at the time of the Question intended to extort consents from the suspects (for example torment of water, or the crushing of the members); same manner, the Church formally did not have the right to give death, and the people condemned for the crimes of heresy considered to be most serious (in particular the Relaps) were given to the " arm séculier" (civil authority) to be carried out by fire or other methods (hanging…).

Because it feared for its life, and also to impress and intimidate, Torquemada moved in company of an escort of 40 riders and 200 soldiers with foot.

The summary character of the judgments given by the Spanish inquisitorial courts, the brutality of the methods employed, shocked in Spain as outside the kingdom. Thus, the pope Sixth IV itself, since 1482, written in connection with the inquisiteurs of Seville:

“Without taking account of the legal regulations, they imprisoned many people in violation of the rules of justice, inflicting severe tortures to them and charging to them, without the least base, the crime of heresy, confiscating their goods with those which they condemned to death, so that to flee such a rigor a great number of them took refuge near the Apostolic Seat, while protesting of their orthodoxy. ”

Rome received a constant flood of requests for rehabilitations emanating people condemned by the Spanish inquisitorial courts and by three times, Torquemada had to send an emissary at the Holy See to be justified on its practices.

War against the Moslems and persecution of the Jews

The Reconquista

Torquemada had lengthily thought of the confusion in which Spain was; it allotted it to kindness towards the " infidèles" and with the close relations between those and the Christians, in the name of the trade.

The Spanish historian Juan de Mariana (1536-1624) supports that the recasting of the Enquiry, while conferring a new dynamics on the idea of a unified kingdom, made the country able to conclude its war against the Moors.

Torquemada, there still, was of all its weight to convince the sovereigns of the need for removing Spain from the Moslem occupant. The catch of Zahaia by the enemy in 1481 provides the occasion of reprisals. Torquemada brought an unwavering support in Isabelle and Ferdinand throughout the countryside of Reconquista, which was connected for him with a Holy war. Finally, it will be at the side of the catholic Kings at the time of their entry as winners in Grenade on January 2nd, 1492, which will mark the end of the Moslem presence in Spain. It will found a convent of its kind (the Dominicains) in this city.

Persecution of the Jews

Theoretically, the Enquiry had authority only on the baptized Christians, but in the Torquemada facts considered the fight against the “infidels” one of its main missions.

The Juifs were one of the essential targets of the zeal inquisitor of Torquemada, and in particular the Conversos - those which had converted with Christianity, but which was suspected of not being sincere or to be secretly returned with the Judaism (the conversos were distinguished between marranos, for those of Jewish origin, and moriscos, for those of Moslem origin). The fight against these “false Christians” (or perceived as such) was one of the major motivations of the revival of the effort of Enquiry, and they were the main victims.

Torquemada was one of the principal partisans of the Décret of Alhambra, enacted on March 31st, 1492 by Isabelle and Ferdinand. This decree gave four months to the Jews of Spain to convert with Christianity or to leave the country. In addition, the next month (April), Torquemada gave orders prohibiting any contact between the Christians and the Jews, under penalty of severe sanctions, leading to the impossibility in fact for exiled to sell their goods before their departure, and leading to the seizure of those by the Enquiry.

The Spanish tradition reports that a delegation of representatives of the community of the Jews of Spain, carried out by very influential Don Isaac Abravanel proposed to the king 300.000 ducats of “ransom” in exchange of the abolition of the edict of expulsion. Ferdinand hesitated to accept the offer, being given the central place which the Jews in the trade of the country occupied. It is told that Torquemada intervened personally in front of the king, holding in hand a crucifix, and exclaiming: “Judas Iscariote sold Christ for 30 silver coins; and your Excellence is on the point of selling it for 300.000 ducats. Here it is; take it and sell it! ” On what it left the crucifix on a table and left the part.

To prevent the diffusion of the heresies, Torquemada ordered that one burned the judged books not-catholics, in particular the Jewish Talmuds and, after the final defeat of the Moors in Grenade, also of the Arab books (leading to the irremediable disappearance of most of the traces of the history of the country from 711 to 1492). These ceremonies constituted the original form of sadly famous the " car of fe" (which will take also thereafter the form of public ceremonies of “reconciliation” of the sinners with the Church; the subsequent execution of those - in particular by fire, on roughing-hew it - did not form however technically part of it).

Whereas certain Jews of Spain accept this forced conversion, a big number chooses to leave the country following the decree of Alhambra. Their number is not known exactly. The historian Juan de Mariana (1536-1624), which writes shortly after the event, speaks about 1.700.000, but this figure is regarded today as too much high. He will be brought back by the later historians to 800.000. Today, it is estimated that between 50.000 and 150.000 Jews chose conversion, and 150.000 to 200.000 others the exile. At all events, the damage for Spain was considerable, and the expulsion of the Jews of the kingdom was one of the elements releases of the Spanish commercial decline.

This exile is the origin of the community Ladino in the Mediterranean east (especially in the Ottoman Empire). This community continues to practice the Judéo-espagnol, archaïsante variety of the Castillan.

A Jewish ascent?

Hernando del Pulgar, historian official of the Court, wrote in its Los Claros Varones of Castilla (" Famous men of Castille"), that ancestors of Juan de Torquemada, uncle de Tomas and he also Dominican monk, " were of a chalk-lining of Jews converted with our holy faith catholique". This assertion however could not be documented with reliability by later historical research.

An emblematic figure and discussed

Torquemada passed to the posterity like one of the symbols of intolerance and religious fanaticism.

Assessment of the Spanish Enquiry under Torquemada

In its critical History of the Spanish Enquiry (1817-1818), Juan Antonio Llorente, which was a secretary of Holy Office between 1790 and 1792 and had access to the files, estimates that while Torquemada was Grand Inquisiteur, 10.220 people were burned, 6860 others condemned to be burned in effigy, and 97.321 were " réconciliées" with the Church. These figures are however regarded as largely exaggerated by the modern historians. They estimate today the number of people sent to roughing-hew as being probably closer to 2000 people, a great majority being conversos of Jewish origin. What represents a number far from being all the same negligible - " in oneself a horrible holocaust with the principle of religieuse" intolerance; , according to the words of the Encyclopedia Brittanica (edition of 1911, today in the public domain).

Defense of Torquemada

However voices, in particular at its time, rose to take the defense of Torquemada. The Spanish chronicler Sebastián d' Olmedo called it " the hammer of the heretics, the light of Spain, the saver of his country, honor of sound ordre".

The philosopher counter-revolutionary Joseph de Maistre, in his Lettres with a Russian gentleman on the Spanish Enquiry (1815), advances the idea that the Enquiry was founded by the sovereigns of Spain because the existence even of the Spanish nation was threatened, because of the Moslem presence and the influence (supposed) of the Spanish Jewish community. He specifies what is according to him an axiom of the political action: " Never the great political evils, never especially the violent attacks carried against the trade, can be prevented or pushed back only by means pareillement violents". Consequently, according to him, the action of Torquemada must be put out of balance with the dangers which threatened the kingdom: " If you think of severities of Torquemada, without thinking of all that they prevented, you cease of raisonner." (op.cit.)

In addition, there exists a current modern history of " révision" history of the Spanish Enquiry, carried out in particular by the British historian Henry Kamen (see References ). These historians try to show that there exists well a " black Legend " Spanish Enquiry (and more generally of the Spanish history of the last centuries), painting this one under one day particularly brutal and malefic. This " caption noire" would be mainly due to Protestant intellectuals, such as for example the English writer John Foxe (1516-1587), shocked by repression against the Protestants, and intentionally blackening the feature at ends of propaganda against the Catholic church. This " caption noire" also was largely exploited by England and Holland, rival policies and commercial of Spain.

But, estimate these historians, the Spanish Enquiry was neither also powerful nor as cruel as one agreed to say it. Thus for example, concerning torture, it was also the standard in the Spanish royal courts, and when it was abolished there, the courts of Enquiry also gave up it. The prisons of the Enquiry were generally of a comfort higher than the civil prisons of the time (size of the cells, windows letting pass the light…). Lastly, the capital punishment remained rather exceptional, held to the people considered as irremediable cases - in particular the Relaps.

An incarnation of fanaticism?

The defenders of Torquemada also underline his absolute devotion with the causes which it defended - the unit of Spain and the purity of the Catholic religion. It never grew rich personally through the considerable richnesses obtained by Holy Office through the seizure by the goods by condemned. On the contrary, he even battled to withdraw this money to the sovereigns, and used it to still increase the effectiveness and the extent of the inquisitorial courts, like opening convents of its kind (Dominican). At the end of its life, it even took again the stripped and austere life of simple brother to the convent Saint-Thomas d' Ávila.

However, one can notice all the same that it is perhaps there one of the definitions of fanaticism. The fanatic is not somebody who uses a cause for his personal interest, but on the contrary a person which is ready with all to sacrifice to the cause that she considers crowned, including itself - and the others.

In addition, as he were pointed out higher, the intractable character of Torquemada and the brutality of its action caused many incomprehension and protests, including alive sound. So much so that, by three times, it had to send an emissary to be furnished proof to the pope.

In 1836, the Spanish liberals broke his fall into the vault of the convent of Ávila, and dispersed the bones of that which they estimated to be one of the worst incarnations of intolerance and fanaticism.

Torquemada in the fiction

Romance : In The Brothers Karamazov of Dostoievski is a famous parabola, in which Christ returns to Seville, the time of the Spanish Enquiry, and finds herself confronted with Large Inquisiteur. See: Large Inquisiteur.

Theater : Torquemada, a part of Victor Hugo.

Cartoon : In Requiem, Knight Vampire, of Stalemate Millets and Olivier Ledroit, Torquemada is réincarné as a werewolf, typical reincarnation of the religious fanatics in the universe of this cartoon. He makes sometimes, with the wire volumes, office of mounting to Claudia Blackwell , key character of this universe.

References

Encyclopedia Britannica , edition of 1911 (maintaining in the public domain), whose this article incorporates certain elements (translated since English). * Bartolomé Bennassar, Spanish Enquiry, 15th-19th century , Hatchet, Paris, 1979.
Francisco Bethencourt, Enquiry at the time modern (Spain, Portugal, Italy: XVe-XIXe century) , Beech, Paris, 1995.
Henri Maisonneuve, the Enquiry , Desclée-Novalis, 1989.
Henry Kamen, The Spanish Enquiry: In Historical Revision , Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1997. (First edition: 1965).
Edward Peters, Enquiry , The Free Near, New York, 1988. (Note: like the precedent, this work fits in the modern current of " révision" history of the Enquiry).
Juan Antonio Llorente, Histoire criticizes Enquiry of Spain: since the time of its establishment by Ferdinand V, until the reign of Ferdinand VII, drawn from the original parts of the files of the Council from Supreme, and those of the courts subordinates of the Holy Office , Alexis Pellier, Paris, Treuttel and Würz, 1817-18. (Note: this work has a long time refers, but he is regarded today by the current historians as insufficiently rigorous (in particular quantified assessments, largely overestimated); there remains however an interesting historical document.)
Joseph de Maistre, Lettres with a Russian gentleman on the Spanish Enquiry (1815). Available on line.

Internal bonds

Spanish Enquiry
black Legend
Manual of the inquisitor
Decree of Alhambra
Reconquista

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