been stated in a previous chapter, since the middle of the thirteenth
century, but seems to have lost all its venom in the atmosphere of that
free country; scarcely assuming a jurisdiction beyond that of an ordinary
ecclesiastical court. No sooner, however, was the institution organized on
its new basis in Castile, than Ferdinand resolved on its introduction, in
a similar form, in his own dominions.

Measures were accordingly taken to that effect in a meeting of a privy
council convened by the king at Taracona, during the session of the cortes
in that place, in April, 1484; and a royal order was issued, requiring all
the constituted authorities throughout the kingdom to support the new
tribunal in the exercise of its functions. A Dominican monk, Fray Gaspard
Juglar, and Pedro Arbues de Epila, a canon of the metropolitan church,
were appointed by the general, Torquemada, inquisitors over the diocese of
Saragossa; and, in the month of September following, the chief justiciary
and the other great officers of the realm took the prescribed oaths. [5]

The new institution, opposed to the ideas of independence common to all
the Aragonese, was particularly offensive to the higher orders, many of
whose members, including persons filling the most considerable official
stations, were of Jewish descent, and of course precisely the class
exposed to the scrutiny of the Inquisition. Without difficulty, therefore,
the cortes was persuaded in the following year to send a deputation to the
court of Rome, and another to Ferdinand, representing the repugnance of
the new tribunal to the liberties of the nation, as well as to their
settled opinions and habits, and praying that its operation might be
suspended for the present, so far at least as concerned the confiscation
of property, which it rightly regarded as the moving power of the whole
terrible machinery. [6]