Note 746 — Chapter I

Cardinal Ximenes was really equal to the position these extraordinary offices gave him, and exercised his great authority with sagacity and zeal, and with a confidence in the resources of his own genius that seemed to double his power. It should, however, never be forgotten, that, but for him, the Inquisition, instead of being enlarged, as it was, twenty years after its establishment, would have been constrained within comparatively narrow limits, and probably soon overthrown. For, in 1512, when the embarrassments of the public treasury inclined Ferdinand to accept from the persecuted new converts a large sum of money, which he needed to carry on his war against Navarre,—a gift which they offered on the single and most righteous condition, that witnesses cited before the Inquisition should be examined publicly,—Cardinal Ximenes not only used his influence with the king to prevent him from accepting the offer, but furnished him with resources that made its acceptance unnecessary. And again, in 1517, when Charles V., young and not without generous impulses, received, on the same just condition, from the same oppressed Christians, a still larger offer of money to defray his expenses in taking possession of his kingdom, and when he had obtained assurances of the reasonableness of granting their request from the principal universities and men of learning in Spain and in Flanders, Cardinal Ximenes interposed anew his great influence, and—not without some suppression of the truth—prevented a second time the acceptance of the offer. He, too, it was, who arranged the jurisdiction of the tribunals of the Inquisition in the different provinces, settling them on deeper and more solid foundations; and, finally, it was this master spirit of his time who first carried the Inquisition beyond the limits of Spain, establishing it in Oran, which was his personal conquest, and in the Canaries, and Cuba, where he made provident arrangements, by virtue of which it was subsequently extended through all Spanish America. And yet, before he wielded the power of the Inquisition, he opposed its establishment. Llorente, Hist., Chap. X., Art. 5 and 7.