(center), with
Thomas Aquinas symbolically holding the Catholic Church and
Domingo de Guzmán, the Spanish founder of the
Dominicans, with a book and a white lilly.
Ferdinand is with the prince of
Asturias and the inquisitor;
Isabella with their daughter,
Isabel de Aragón. Along with the desire of the Catholic Monarchs to extend their dominion to all the kingdoms of the Iberian Peninsula, their reign was characterised by the religious unification of the peninsula through militant Catholicism. On receiving a petition for authority,
Pope Sixtus IV issued a bull in 1478 to establish a
Holy Office of the Inquisition in Castile. This was to ensure that Jews and Muslims who converted to Christianity did not revert to their previous faiths. The papal bull gave the sovereigns full powers to name inquisitors, but the papacy retained the right to formally appoint the royal nominees. The Inquisition did not have jurisdiction over Jews and Muslims who did not convert. Since the kingdom of Aragon had existed since 1248, the Spanish Inquisition was the only common institution for the two kingdoms.
Pope Innocent VIII confirmed Dominican
Tomás de Torquemada, a confessor of Isabella, as Grand Inquisitor of Spain, following in the tradition in Aragon of
Dominican inquisitors. Torquemada pursued aggressive policies toward converted Jews (
conversos) and Muslims
moriscos. The pope also granted the Catholic Monarchs the right of
patronato real over the ecclesiastical establishment in
Granada and the
Canary Islands, thereby granting the state control over religious affairs. The monarchs initiated a series of campaigns known as the
Granada War (1482–92), which was supported by Pope Sixtus IV, who granted tithe revenue and implemented a crusade tax to finance the war. After 10 years of fighting, the Granada War ended in 1492 when Emir
Boabdil surrendered the keys of the
Alhambra Palace in Granada to the Castilian soldiers. With the fall of Granada in January 1492, Isabella and Ferdinand pursued further policies of religious unification of their realms, in particular the expulsion of Jews who refused to convert to Christianity. In 1492, Ferdinand and Isabella issued the
Alhambra Decree, which gave
Jews in Spanish-ruled territory four months to either
convert to Catholicism or leave the territory. Tens of thousands of Jews emigrated to other lands such as the
Kingdom of Portugal,
North Africa, the
Low Countries, the various countries of
Italy, and, in particular, the
Ottoman Empire. People who converted to Catholicism were not subject to expulsion, but between 1480 and 1492 hundreds of
conversos and
moriscos were accused of secretly practising their original religion (
crypto-Judaism or
crypto-Islam) and arrested, imprisoned, interrogated under torture, and in some cases
burned to death, in both Castile and Aragon. Jews whose ancestors were subject to this expulsion and the subsequent
Persecution of Jews and Muslims by Manuel I of Portugal are known as
Sephardic Jews, and are roughly divided into the
Spanish and Portuguese Jews of Western Europe and the
Eastern Sephardim of territories along the Mediterranean. The Inquisition was created in the twelfth century by
Pope Lucius III to fight
heresy in the south of what is now France and was subsequently established in a number of European kingdoms. The Catholic Monarchs decided to introduce the Inquisition to Castile and requested the Pope's assent. On 1 November 1478, Pope Sixtus IV published the papal bull
Exigit Sinceras Devotionis Affectus, by which the Inquisition was established in the Kingdom of Castile; it was later extended to all of Spain. The bull gave the monarchs exclusive authority to name the inquisitors. During the reign of the Catholic Monarchs and long afterwards, the Inquisition was active in prosecuting people for violations of Catholic orthodoxy such as crypto-Judaism, heresy, Protestantism, blasphemy, and bigamy. The last trial for crypto-Judaism was held in 1818. == Foreign policy ==