THE INQUISITION OF SPAIN
WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR
A HISTORY OF THE INQUISITION OF THE MIDDLE AGES.In three volumes, octavo.
A HISTORY OF AURICULAR CONFESSION AND INDULGENCESIN THE LATIN CHURCH. In three volumes,octavo.
AN HISTORICAL SKETCH OF SACERDOTAL CELIBACY INTHE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. Third edition. (In preparation.)
A FORMULARY OF THE PAPAL PENITENTIARY IN THETHIRTEENTH CENTURY. One volume, octavo. (Out ofprint.)
SUPERSTITION AND FORCE. Essays on The Wager of Law,The Wager of Battle, The Ordeal, Torture. Fourth edition,revised. In one volume, 12mo.
STUDIES IN CHURCH HISTORY. The Rise of the TemporalPower, Benefit of Clergy, Excommunication, The EarlyChurch and Slavery. Second edition. In one volume, 12mo.
CHAPTERS FROM THE RELIGIOUS HISTORY OF SPAIN,CONNECTED WITH THE INQUISITION. Censorship ofthe Press, Mystics and Illuminati, Endemoniadas, El SantoNiño de la Guardia, Brianda de Bardaxí.
THE MORISCOS OF SPAIN. THEIR CONVERSION ANDEXPULSION. In one volume, 12mo.
A HISTORY
OF THE
INQUISITION OF SPAIN
BY
HENRY CHARLES LEA. LL.D.
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IN FOUR VOLUMES
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VOLUME I.
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New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., Ltd.1922
All rights reserved
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Copyright, 1906,
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
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Set up and electrotyped. Published January, 1906.
PREFACE.
IN the following pages I have sought to trace, from the original sourcesas far as possible, the character and career of an institution whichexercised no small influence on the fate of Spain and even, one may say,indirectly on the civilized world. The material for this is preserved sosuperabundantly in the immense Spanish archives that no one writer canpretend to exhaust the subject. There can be no finality in a historyresting on so vast a mass of inedited documents and I do not flattermyself that I have accomplished such a result, but I am not without hopethat what I have drawn from them and from the labors of previousscholars has enabled me to present a fairly accurate survey of one ofthe most remarkable organizations recorded in human annals.
In this a somewhat minute analysis has seemed to be indispensable of itsstructure and methods of procedure, of its relations with the otherbodies of the State and of its dealings with the various classes subjectto its extensive jurisdiction. This has involved the accumulation ofmuch detail in order to present the daily operation of a tribunal ofwhich the real importance is to be sought, not so much in the awfulsolemnities of the auto de fe, or in the cases of a few celebratedvictims, as in the silent influence exercised by its incessant andsecret labors among the mass of the people and in the limitations whichit placed on the Spanish intellect—in the resolute conservatism withwhich it held the nation in the medieval groove and unfitted it for theexercise of rational liberty when the nineteenth century brought in theinevitable Revolution.
The intimate relations between Spain and Portugal, especially