esides
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 Torquemada
from the prosecution of his purposes; and therefore he hastened to bring
Aragon under his jurisdiction. Ferdinand convened the cortes of that
kingdom in the city of Tarragona, April, 1484; in that assembly appointed
a junta to prepare measures for the establishment