Pharisees

teachings of the leaders of their faith, and found it at variance with their limited understanding, they arose to perpetrate such unseemly acts.... Consider Moses! Armed with the rod of celestial dominion, adorned with the white hand of Divine knowledge, and proceeding from the Paran of the love of God, and wielding the serpent of power and everlasting majesty, He shone forth from the Sinai of light upon the world. He summoned all the peoples and kindreds of the earth to the kingdom of eternity,…

Two courses of action, it was argued, were required. First, crypto-Judaism could only be overcome by the introduction of an Inquisition; second, Jewish influence over the conversos could only be overcome by their expulsion. These ideas, adumbrated in works such as Alonso de Espina's Fortalitium Fidei, continued to gain ground, and on 27 September 1480 the Catholic Monarchs appointed Inquisitors in Castile who began their work in Seville shortly after (1481). Conversos, often subjected to torture…