1498 Death of a Grand Inquisitor
Tomás de Torquemada (1420-98) was the legendarily ruthless Grand Inquisitor of Spain during a time when the persecution of Jews, Muslims, and conversos in that country accelerated.
The population of medieval Spain consisted of a majority of Catholics with significant minorities of Jews, Muslims and those who had converted to Christianity from those faiths. The latter were called “New Christians”, marranos (if Jewish), moriscos (if Muslim), or conversos. Non-Christians were subject to intermittent persecution and converts were always under suspicion for secretly clinging to their original religion. “Purity of blood” — a line of family descent free of Jewish or Muslim ancestors — was a social advantage; in medieval and early-modern Spain Christianity and racism went hand-in-hand.
Torquemada himself had Jewish blood but his influential relations in the Spanish church smoothed his career path. He rose inside the Dominican Order and eventually became confessor and advisor to Queen Isabella of Castile. When the papacy created a separate Spanish Inquisition at the request of Isabella and her husband Ferdinand of Aragon, Torquemada soon became its head and directed its efforts against those who openly professed a religion other than Christianity and those converts who were suspected of being crypto-Jews or -Muslims.
The Reconquista, the 700-year drive to expel Islamic states from the Iberian peninsula, was completed in 1492 with the surrender of the last Moorish stronghold in Granada. The surrender terms guaranteed freedom of religion for non-Christians but within months the Alhambra Decree, engineered by Torquemada, demanded the instant conversion or expulsion of all Spanish Jews under very cruel terms. The Catholic Encyclopedia of 1911 says that the Jewish community had offered a large sum of money to Ferdinand not to enforce the decree but “when Ferdinand was about to yield to the enticing offer, Torquemada appeared before him, bearing a crucifix aloft, and exclaiming: “Judas Iscariot sold Christ for 30 pieces of silver; Your Highness is about to sell him for 30,000 ducats. Here He is; take Him and sell Him.” Leaving the crucifix on the table he left the room. Chiefly through his instrumentality the Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492.” Though Torquemada died in 1498 the Spanish Inquisition’s persecutions of Jews, Muslims and converts continued for centuries. In 2012 the Spanish government granted automatic citizenship to anyone who could prove descent from the banished Jewish population.