But what shall we say of a faith that could only hope to be kept alive in the world by the extinction of charity, honor, pity, and humanity?  Llorente describes the immediate issue: 

“Such opportune measures for multiplying victims could not but produce the desired effect.  Hence, on January 6, 1481, there were burned six unhappy persons; sixteen on March 26th; many on April 21st; and by November 4th, two hundred ninety-eight in all.  Besides these, the inquisitors condemned seventy-nine to perpetual imprisonment.  And all this in the city of Seville only; since, as regards the territories of this archbishopric and of the bishopric of Cadiz, Juan de Mariana says that, in the single year of 1481, two thousand Judaizers were burned in person, and very many in effigy, of whom the number is not known, besides seventeen thousand subjected to cruel penance.  Among those burned were many principal persons and rich inhabitants, whose property went into the treasury.

“As so many persons were to be put to death by fire, the Governor of Seville caused a permanent raised pavement, or platform of masonry, to be constructed outside the city, which has lasted to our time [until the French invasion, if not later], retaining its name of Quemadero (’Burning-place’); and at the four corners four large hollow statues of limestone, within which they used to place the impenitent alive, that they might die by slow heat.  I leave my readers to consider whether this punishment of an error of the understanding was consistent or not with the doctrine of the Gospel?

“Fear caused an immense multitude of others of the same class of New Christians to emigrate to France, Portugal, and even Africa.  But many others, whose effigies had been burned, appealed to Rome, complaining of the injustice of those proceedings; in consequence of which appeals the Pope wrote, on January 29, 1482, to Ferdinand and Isabella, saying that there were innumerable complaints against the inquisitors, Fray Miguel Morillo and Fray Juan de San Martin especially, because they had not confined themselves to canon law, but declared many to be heretics that were not.  His holiness said that, but for the royal nomination, he would have deprived them of their office; but that he revoked the power he had given to the sovereign to nominate others, supposing that fit persons would be found among those nominated by the general or the provincial of the Dominicans, to whom the privilege belonged, and in prejudice of whose privilege the former nomination by Ferdinand and Isabella had been allowed.”

So adroitly did the Pope take the absolute control of the Inquisition into his own hands under pretence of impartial justice, and leave the weaker tyrant to eat the fruit of his doings.  But since that time pope and king have been again united in the management of the Holy Office, the latter, however, in abject subservience to the former.  Neither in the appeals nor in the brief was there anything that could divert