In vain Don Juan de Seville, who had procured the promulgation of the favorable bull, endeavored to circulate it. He failed to find any clerical official in Spain to copy and confirm it. He, therefore, applied to the Portuguese archbishop of Evora, who caused it to be copied by his notary and recognized as authentic. The Inquisition, however, was extremely suspicious of those who had sought and obtained indulgences at Rome, and Don Juan de Seville and his companions fell at length into its hands, and were severely punished.
Terrible though the tribunal had hitherto been; though many thousands of compulsory proselytes and their descendants, during its three short years of existence, had been cast into the flames, left to rot in its dungeons, driven from their country, or reduced to beggary, it was child's play compared with what it became when placed under the control of a priest whose heart was closed to every sentiment of mercy, whose lips breathed only death and destruction, and who united the savagery of the hyena with the venom of the snake. Until now the Inquisition had been confined to southern Spain, to the districts of Seville and Cadiz, and the Christian province of Andalusia. In the remaining provinces of Spain it had hitherto been unable to get a footing, in consequence of the resistance offered to its introduction by the cortes. Through the opposition of the people, the wicked will of the inquisitors Morillo and Juan de San Martin had remained inoperative; their uplifted arm was paralyzed by innumerable difficulties. If here and there a few courts were held in the remaining districts of Spain, they were isolated and without organization, and were thus unable to furnish each other with victims. King Ferdinand thus had not yet collected treasure enough, nor had the pious Isabella beheld a sufficient number of new-Christians writhing in the flames. For their joint satisfaction they now persuaded the pope to appoint an inquisitor-general who should constitute, direct, and supervise the several courts, that none of the suspected Marranos might avoid their fate, and that the opposition of the populace might be broken down by every species of terrorism. In cold blood, and with little interest even for the faith itself, the pope assented; and in May, 1483, appointed the Dominican, Thomas de Torquemada, hitherto prior of a monastery in Segovia, inquisitor-general of Spain. There are certain men who are the embodiment of good or evil sentiments, opinions and principles, and fully illustrate their extremest consequences. Torquemada was the incarnation of the Holy Inquisition with all its devilish malice, its heartless severity, its bloodthirsty ferocity.