Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 2.djvu/196

 IQO THE SPANISH PENINSULA. quemada as Inquisitor-general, it was requisite to get rid of Cris- tobal Gualvez, who had been Inquisitor of Valencia since 1452, and who had disgraced his office by his crimes. Sixtus lY. had a special enmity to him, and, in ordering his deposition, stigmatized him as an impudent and impious man, whose unexampled excesses were worthy of severe chastisement ; and when Sixtus, in 1483, extended Torquemada's authority over the whole of Spain, with power to nominate deputies, he excepted " that son of iniquity, Cristobal Gualvez," who had been interdicted from the office in consequence of his demerits, and whom he even deprived of the function of preaching.* The great kingdom of Castile and Leon, embracing the major portion of the Spanish peninsula, never enjoyed the blessing of the mediaeval Inquisition., It was more independent of Kome than any other monarchy of the period. Lordly prelates, turbulent nobles, and cities jealous of their liberties allowed scant opportu- nity for the centraUzation of power in the crown. The people were rude and uncultured, and not much given to vain theological speculation. Their superfluous energy, moreover, found ample occupation in the task of winning back the land from the Saracen. The large population of JeAVS and of conquered Moors gave them pecuhar problems to deal with which woukl have been complicated rather than solved by the methods of the Inquisition, until the union of Aragon and Castile under Ferdinand and Isabella, fol- lowed by the conquest of Granada, enabled those monarchs to un- dertake seriously the business, attractive both to statecraft and to fanaticism, of compelling uniformity of faith. It is true that the Dominican legend relates how Dominic re- turned from Rome to Spain as Inquisitor -general, on the errand of estabhshing there the Inquisition for the purpose of punishing the renegade converted Jews and Moors; how he was warmly seconded by San Fernando III. ; how he organized the Inquisition throughout the land, celebrating himself the first auto de fe at em Portugal, I, 44.— Ripoll III. 422.— Paramo, p. 187.
 * Llorente, Ch. vii. Art. ii. No. 2.~Herculano, Da Origem, etc., da Inquisi^ao