The crimes of which the second or Dominican Inquisition had taken cognizance were designated under the generic name of heresy.  Heretics were either patent by profession of some heterodox cult or doctrine; or they were suspected.  The suspected included witches, sorcerers, and blasphemers who invoked the devil’s aid; Catholics abstaining from confession and absolution; harborers of avowed heretics; legal defenders of the cause of heretics; priests who gave Christian burial to heretics; magistrates who showed lukewarmness in pursuit of heretics; the corpses of dead heretics, and books that might be taxed with heretical opinions.  All ranks in the social hierarchy, except the Pope, his Legates and Nuncios, and the bishops, were amenable to this Inquisition.  The Inquisitors could only be arraigned and judged by their peers.  In order to bring the machinery of imprisonment, torture and final sentence into effect, it was needful that the credentials of the Inquisitor should be approved by the sovereign, and that his procedure should be recognized by the bishop.  These limitations of the Inquisitorial authority safeguarded the crown and the episcopacy in a legal sense.  But since both crown and episcopacy concurred in the object for which the Papacy had established the tribunal, the Inquisitor was practically unimpeded in his functions.  Furnished with royal or princely letters patent, he traveled from town to town, attended by his guards and notaries, defraying current expenses at the cost of provinces and towns through which he passed.  Where he pitched his camp, he summoned the local magistrates, swore them to obedience, and obtained assurance of their willingness to execute such sentences as he might pronounce.  Spies and informers gathered round him, pledged to secrecy and guaranteed by promises of State-protection.  The Court opened; witnesses were examined; the accused were acquitted or condemned.  Then sentence was pronounced, to which the bishop or his delegate, often an Inquisitor, gave a formal sanction.  Finally, the heretic was handed over to the secular arm for the execution of justice.  The extraordinary expenses of the tribunal were defrayed by confiscation of goods, a certain portion being paid to the district in which the crime had occurred, the rest being reserved for the maintenance of the Holy Office.

Such, roughly speaking, was the method of the Inquisition before 1484; and it did not materially differ in Italy and Spain.  Castile had hitherto been free from the pest.  But the conditions of that kingdom offered a good occasion for its introduction at the date which I have named.  During the Middle Ages the Jews of Castile acquired vast wealth and influence.  Few families but felt the burden of their bonds and mortgages.  Religious fanaticism, social jealousy, and pecuniary distress exasperated the Christian population; and as early as the year 1391, more than 5000 Jews were massacred in one popular uprising.  The Jews,