Note 376 — Chapter IX · CHRISTENDOM IN THE MIDDLE AGES

It was immediately after this, in the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, that the Inquisition was newly and effectively established in Spain; and the determining motive was the avarice of the king and queen, not the Catholic zeal of the people. The Inquisitor-General of Messina came to Madrid in 1477 in order to obtain confirmation of a forged privilege, pretended to have been granted to the Dominicans in Sicily by Frederick II in 1233—that of receiving one-third of the property of every heretic they condemned. To such a ruler as Ferdinand, such a system readily appealed; and as soon as possible a new Inquisition was established in Spain, Isabella consenting.376 From the first it was a system of plunder. “Men long dead, if they were represented by rich descendants, were cited before the tribunal, judged, and condemned; and the lands and goods that had descended to their heirs passed into the coffers of the Catholic kings.”377 The solemn assertion by Queen Isabella, that she had never applied such money to the purposes of the crown, has been proved from State papers to be “a most deliberate and daring falsehood.”378 The revenue thus iniquitously obtained was enormous; and it is inferrible that the pecuniary motive underlay the later expulsion of the Jews and the Moriscoes as well as the average practice of the Inquisition.