Catholic in seeming, that the court, the camp, the council, even the
monasteries themselves, counted them amongst them. And this had been
the case for years--we should say for centuries--and yet so inviolable
was the faith pledged to each other, so awful the dangers around them,
were even suspicion excited, that the fatal secret never transpired;
offices of state, as well as distinctions of honor, were frequently
conferred on men who, had their faith or race been suspected, would
have been regarded as the scum of the earth, and sentenced to torture
and death, for daring to pass for what they were not. At the period
of which we write, the fatal enemy to the secret Jews of more modern
times, known as the Holy Office, did not exist; but a secret and
terrible tribunal there was, whose power and extent were unknown to
the Sovereigns of the land.

The Inquisition is generally supposed to have been founded by
Ferdinand and Isabella, about the year 1480 or '82; but a deeper
research informs us that it had been introduced into Spain several
centuries earlier, and obtained great influence in Arragon. Confiding
in the protection of the papal see, the Inquisitors set no bounds to
their ferocity: secret informations, imprisonments, tortures, midnight
assassinations, marked their proceedings; but they overreached
themselves. All Spain, setting aside petty rivalships, rose up against
them. All who should give them encouragement or assistance were
declared traitors to their country; the very lives of the Inquisitors
and their families were, in the first burst of fury, endangered; but
after a time, imagining they had sunk into harmless insignificance,
their oppressors desisted in their efforts against them, and
were guilty of the unpardonable error of not exterminating them
entirely.[A]