Page:History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Vol. I.djvu/409

THE INQUISITION. 265 VII. tribunal of Toledo alone, under the superintend- chapter ence of two inquisitors, disposed of three thousand three hundred and twenty-seven processes in little more than a year. ^^ The number of convicts was greatly swelled by the blunders of the Dominican monks, who acted as qualificators, or interpreters of what constituted heresy, and whose ignorance led them frequently to condemn as heterodox, propositions actually derived from the fathers of the church. The prisoners for life, alone, became so numerous, that it was necessary to assign them their own houses as the places of their incarcera- tion. The data for an accurate calculation of the num- ber of victims sacrificed by the Inquisition during this reign are not very satisfactory. From such as exist, however, Llorente has been led to the most frightful results. He computes, that, during the eighteen years of Torquemada's ministry, there were no less than 10,220 burnt, 6,860 condemned, and burnt in effigy as absent or dead, and 97,321 reconciled by various other penances ; affording an average of more than 6,000 convicted persons an- nually. ^^ In this enormous sum of human misery 53 1485-6. (Llorente, Hist, de Cuenqa being comprehended in that rinqaisition, torn. i. p. 239.) — In of Murcia. (Tom. iv. p. 252.) Zu- Seville, with probably no greater rita says, that, by 1520, the Inquisi- apparatus, in 1482, 21,000 pro- tion of Seville had sentenced more cesses were disposed of. These than 4,000 persons to be burnt, and were the first fruits of the Jewish 30,000 to other punishments. An- heresy, when Torquemada, al- other author whom he quotes, ear- though an inquisitor, had not the ries up the estimate of the total supreme control of the tribunal. condemned by this single tribunal, 54 Llorente afterwards reduces within the same term of time, to this estimate to 8,800 burnt, 96,504 100,000. Anales, tom. iv. fol. 324. otherwise punished ; the diocese of VOL. I. 34