a subject.  He alone consulted with the King concerning the appointment of inquisitors to preside over all the provincial tribunals.  Each of those inferior inquisitions was managed by three inquisitors, two secretaries, one under-sheriff, one receiver, and a certain number of triers and consulters.  Their functions were considerably restricted, leaving all capital cases and ultimate decisions in the hands of the Madrid “Supreme.”

But while Ferdinand, Isabella, Torquemada, and the nuncio were concerting their plans and preparing death for heretics, what said Spain to it?  Neither was clergy nor laity content.  After the bull of Sixtus IV empowering the King to name inquisitors furnished with absolute authority, and to remove them at pleasure, had arrived, but lay unpublished in consequence of the Queen’s repugnance, a provincial synod sat at Seville, where the regal court then was, 1478.  Had the clergy of Castile desired the Inquisition, the synod would have said so; but so far were they from approving of such a tribunal, to which every bishop would be subject, but where no bishop would any longer have a voice, that they passed over the affair of heresy in silence, not consenting to accept the Inquisition, yet not presuming to remonstrate against it.  Then would have been the time for the clergy to add their power to that of the throne for the suppression of false doctrine, believing, as they did believe, that forcible suppression was not only lawful, but meritorious in the sight of God; and so they would probably have done if inquisitor and bishop were to have had cooerdinate jurisdiction, as in the first inquisition of Toulouse, and in the early Italian inquisition; but they saw, with alarm, that the episcopate was to be despoiled of its authority at a stroke.

A few months before the publication of the bull, but long after every person in Spain knew the purport of its contents, and in the certainty that it would be carried into execution, the Cortes of Toledo met; but, instead of avoiding any act that would interfere with the new jurisdiction then to be introduced, they made several provisions for separating Jews and Christians by the enclosure of Jewries in the towns, and for compelling the former to wear a peculiar garb, and abstain from exercising the vocation of surgeon or physician or innkeeper or barber or apothecary among Christians.  The parliament plainly ignored the Inquisition in making this enactment on their own authority.

And what said the magistracy and the people?  Seville represented the general state of feeling at the time.  There, when a company of inquisitors presented themselves, conducted into the city by men and horses which had been impressed for the purpose by royal order, the civil authorities refused to help them, notwithstanding the injunctions of the bull, the obligations of canon law, and a mandate from the Crown.  The new inquisitors found themselves unable to act for want of help; meanwhile the objects of their mission forsook the city, and found shelter in the neighboring districts; and Ferdinand had to issue specific orders to overpower the hostility of all the classes of the people and to compel the magistrates to assist the new set of officers ecclesiastic.  These orders were most reluctantly obeyed.