A visceral account of the Grand Inquisitor Tomas Torquemada, and this method of torture during the murder of thousands of heretics throughout the Spanish Inquisition.

This is an incredible history focusing on the role of Tomás de Torquemada in the Spanish inquisition. Torquemada was a Castilian Dominican friar and the first Grand Inquisitor in Spain's movement to standardize religious conventions with those of the Catholic Church in the late 15th century. In 1483, Ferdinand and Isabella appointed a state council to administer the inquisition with Torquemada acting as its head and he ultimately acquired the title of Inquisitor-General. The accounts presented in this work are raw but factual and solid. Sabatini debunks some popular misconceptions about the inquisition and gives his own views on the time's prominent political and religious figures. This history is illustrated with trials and examples of Torquemada and the Holy Office at work. It is well-written and often surprising in its revelations.

From property forfeiture to public flogging to burning at the stake, persecution and torture were all in a day's work for Tomás de Torquemada-- a monk without mercy for anyone who broke the laws of the Church.

Tom�s de Torquemada (Thomas of Torquemada), O.P. (1420 - September 16, 1498) was a Castilian Dominican friar, and the first Grand Inquisitor in Spain's movement to homogenize religious practices with those of the Catholic Church in the late 15th century, otherwise known as "The Spanish Inquisition."Mainly because of persecution, Muslims and Jews in Spain at that time found it socially, politically, and economically expedient to convert to Catholicism, (see Converso, Morisco, and Marrano). Although small in number,[citation needed] the existence of superficial converts, (i.e., Crypto-Jews), was perceived by the Spanish monarchs of that time, (principally King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella), as a threat to the religious and social life of Spain. This led Torquemada, who himself had converso ancestors, to be one of the chief supporters of the Alhambra Decree that expelled the Jews from Spain in 1492.

From the very moment that the new religion found itself recognized and invested not only with civil rights but actually with power, from the very moment that the Christian could rear his head and go openly and unafraid abroad, from that very moment do we find him engaging in persecutions against the votaries of other cults-against pagan, Jew, and heretic. For although Christianity was but in the beginning of the fourth century of its existence, not only had it spread irresistibly and mightily in spite of the repressive measures against it, but it was already beginning to know dismemberment and divisions in its own body. Indeed, it has been computed that the number of schisms in the fourth century amounted to no less than ninety.

A narrative history of the Inquisition, and an examination of the influence it exerted on contemporary society, by the author of ARE WE ROME?

Electrifying personal and career histories of the principal Grand Inquisitors of the Inquisition.