MASTER OR MONSTER

The name Torquemada has become synonymous with the worst excesses of the Inquisition

Tomas de Torquemada was born into a prominent Catholic family in 1420. Despite his later campaigns targeting conversos, one of his ancestors had converted from Judaism. Torqemada struck up a friendship with Princess Isabella and became her personal confessor, giving him access to the highest levels of government when she ascended to the throne.

It was during a royal visit to Seville that Torquemada convinced the king and queen of the dangers posed by the city’s large population of former Jews and Muslims. When the Inquisition was given papal approval it was Torquemada who became the first Grand Inquisitor, governing the whole operation of hunting down heretics. For his zeal he was called ‘the hammer of heretics, the light of Spain, the saviour of his country, the honour of his order’.

Torquemada created the handbook that would shape Inquisition investigations and set out the punishments doled out to heretics. He ruled that torture could only be used once on a suspect, though the Inquisition managed to get around this by declaring a session of torture ‘suspended’ to allow them to restart it later. His work did say that “reconciled heretics and apostates should be treated with much mercy and kindness”, yet many complained of his harshness.

Torquemada may have been less zealous than some of those who followed him as Grand Inquisitor, but he was decisive in getting his monarchs to expel all Jews from Spain in 1492. Those Jewish people who converted in order to stay in Spain then found themselves under the tender ministrations of Torquemada and his Inquisition.