Page:History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Vol. I.djvu/410

266 266 THE INQUISITION. I. PART is not included the multitude of orphani^, who, from the confiscation of their paternal inheritance, were turned over to indigence and vice. ^^ Many of the reconciled were afterwards sentenced as relaps- ed ; and the Curate of Los Palacios expresses the charitable wish, that " the whole accursed race of Jews, male and female, of twenty years of age and upwards, might be purified with fire and fagot ! " ^^ The vast apparatus of the Inquisition involved so heavy an expenditure, that a very small sum, comparatively, found its way into the exchequer, to counterbalance the great detriment resulting to the state from the sacrifice of the most active and skil- ful part of its population. All temporal interests, however, were held light in comparison with the purgation of the land from heresy ; and such aug- mentations as the revenue did receive, we are as- sured, were conscientiously devoted to pious pur- poses, and the Moorish war ! " 55 By an article of the primitive ing, on the imputation of Judaism, instructions, the inquisitors were sorcery, or heresy, at the autos da required to set apart a small por- fe of Salamanca, the very nur- tion of the confiscated estates for sery of science. (Llorente, Hist, de the education and Christian nur- I'lnquisition, tom. i. chap. 8, art. ture of minors, children of the 5.) This may remind one of the condemned. Llorente says, that, similar sentence passed by Lope in the immense number of proces- de Barrientos, another Domini- ses, which he had occasion to con- can, about fifty years before, upon suit, he met with no instance the books of the marquis of Vil- of their attention to the fate of lena. Fortunately for the dawn- these unfortunate orphans ! Hist, ing literature of Spain, Isabella de I'lnquisition, tom. i. chap. 8. did not, as was done by her suc- 5G Reyes Catolicos, MS., cap. cessors, commit the censorship of 44. — Torquemada waged war the press to the judges of the Holy upon freedom of thought, in every Ofiice, notwithstanding sucii occa- form. In 1490, he caused several sional assumption of power by the Hebrew bibles to be publicly burnt, grand inquisitor, and some time after, more than ^^ Pulgar, Reyes Cat61icos, part. 6,000 volumes of Oriental learn- 2, cap. 77. — L. Marineo, Cosas