Tomás de Torquemada

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For others with similar names, see Torquemada (disambiguation)

Tomás de Torquemada (1420 – September 16, 1498) was a fifteenth century Spanish Dominican, First Grand Inquisitor of Spain, and confessor to Isabella of Spain. He was famously described by the Spanish chronicler, Sebastián de Olmedo, as "The hammer of heretics, the light of Spain, the saviour of his country, the honour of his order". He is known for his campaign of persecution against the Jews and Moors of Spain. He was one of the chief supporters of the Alhambra decree which expelled all Jews from Spain in 1492.

Contents 1 Biography 2 Question of Jewish descent 3 Modern allusions to Torquemada 4 References

[edit] Biography

Tomás de Torquemada was born in the municipality of Torquemada in the province of Palencia, Castile-Leon, Spain. He grew up in Valladolid, and like his uncle (Cardinal Juan de Torquemada) he became a Dominican Friar. Pious, learned and austere, he was still young when he was sent to be prior at the monastery of Santa Cruz at Segovia, where he became confessor to Princess Isabella, the heiress of Castile. She was crowned in 1473 and he became Spain's Inquisitor General a decade later.

There is very little sound information about Torquemada's personal life, which has always been subject to speculations. "As an honest interpreter and efficient administrator of the popular will, Torquemada was superb. In the fifteen years of his sometimes quite violent reign the Spanish Inquisition grew from the single tribunal at Seville to a network of two dozen 'Holy Offices'" (Longhurst).

The Inquisition touched every individual in Spain with a thoroughness scarcely equalled before the 20th century. Every Christian over the age of twelve (for girls) and fourteen (for boys) was fully accountable to the Inquisition. Heretics (Christians, particularly those converted from Judaism, holding or acting on religious views differing from the tenets of the Catholic church) were the targets, but anyone who spoke against the Inquisition fell under suspicion. To help guard against the spread of heresy, Torquemada promoted the burning of non-Catholic literature—especially Jewish Talmuds and, after the final defeat of the Moors at Granada in 1492, Arabic books as well.^{[citation needed]}

After distinguished service as a monk and scholar, Torquemada grew close to the rulers—Ferdinand and Isabella—and was appointed Inquisitor General in 1482. The extension of his power over the whole of Spain was assisted by the murder of the Inquisitor Pedro de Arbués in Zaragoza in 1485, attributed to a band of heretics and Jews, and by the alleged ritual murder of the so-called Santo Niño de La Guardia, or Holy Child of La Guardia, in 1491, which was again attributed to Jews.

One group of Spanish Jews tried to pay the Spanish government 30,000 ducats to leave them unmolested. According to Spanish tradition, Ferdinand was thinking about accepting the offer when Torquemada appeared before him, holding a crucifix aloft, and exclaiming: "Judas Iscariot sold Christ for 30 pieces of silver; Your Highness is about to sell him for 30,000 ducats. Here He is; take Him and sell Him." He left the room, leaving the crucifix behind on the table.

In 1492 he was one of the chief supporters of the Alhambra decree, which resulted in the mass expulsion of Jews from Spain. He and the Spanish Inquisition generally caused suffering by their use of torture, anonymous denunciation, and handing over of convicted heretics to the secular arm for execution by fire. The Inquisition and the Church did not spill blood (barbarous tortures which did not spill blood were used) and did not themselves kill those convicted.[1]

Accusations of excesses can be supported by reference to Pope Sixtus IV's observation, early in 1482, that the Inquisitors at Seville,

without observing juridical prescriptions, have detained many persons in violation of justice, punishing them by severe tortures and imputing to them, without foundation, the crime of heresy, and despoiling of their wealth those sentenced to death, in such form that a great number of them have come to the Apostolic See, fleeing from such excessive rigor and protesting their orthodoxy.

To impress and intimidate, Torquemada travelled with 50 mounted guards and 250 armed men. He died in 1498 in Ávila, Castile. For his role in the Spanish Inquisition, Torquemada's name has become a byword for cruelty and fanaticism in the service of the Catholic Religion.

[edit] Question of Jewish descent

Torquemada was said to have had Jewish ancestry: the contemporary historian Hernando del Pulgar, writing of Torquemada's uncle Juan de Torquemada, said that his ancestor Alvar Fernández de Torquemada had married a first-generation Jewish converso (convert). It should be noted that del Pulgar was a converso himself.

[edit] Modern allusions to Torquemada

• In Orthodoxy (book), G.K. Chesterton writes: "Torquemada tortured people physically for the sake of moral truth. Zola tortured people morally for the sake of physical truth. But in Torquemada's time there was at least a system that could to some extent make righteousness and peace kiss each other."

• Using the connotation of "torturer", "Torquemada" was the pseudonym of Edward Powys Mathers, a long-running compiler of crossword puzzles for The Observer. His successors took pseudonyms from other inquisitors: "Ximenes" was followed by the current compiler "Azed", whose name is punningly based on Deza, being both a reversal of the name and a reference to the alphabet. Coincidentally, "torqueo" is Latin for "I twist", "I torture" (cf. [2]). However the surname comes from torre quemada, "burnt tower".

• Thomas Mann mentions him during Goethe's stream of consciousness in chapter 7 of the novel Lotte in Weimar

• In the British play Black Comedy the main character of Brindsley jokingly comments how his relationship with another character was like the Spanish Inquisition and goes on to say: "We didn't have an affair you and I, it was just four years of nookie... With Torquemada."

• "Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition" is the well-known catchphrase of a sketch on Monty Python's Flying Circus. It features 3 padres dressed in crimson vestments and showing up unannounced in several interrelated sketches, mercilessly subjecting their victims to such evils as "The Comfy Chair" and "The Soft Cushions".

• In the science fiction comic strip Nemesis the Warlock the Earth is ruled by the dictator Torquemada, a descendant of the inquisitor.

• In the 1981 film History of the World, Part I, Mel Brooks plays Torquemada in a Busby Berkeley-esque song-and-dance number, complete with puns ("Let's face it--you can't Torquemada anything!"). Brooks himself is Jewish and has many refrences and jokes about it in his movies.

• Mike Malloy regularly uses the name Torquemada to describe Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez.

• "Attorney General John Ashcroft has earned himself a remarkable distinction as the Torquemada of American law. Tomas de Torquemada...was largely responsible for... [the] torture and the burning of heretics – Muslims in particular. Now, of course, I am not accusing the Attorney General of pulling out anyone’s fingernails or burning people at the stake (at least I don’t know of any such cases). But one does get the sense these days that the old Spaniard’s spirit is comfortably at home in Ashcroft’s Department of Justice." -- Walter Cronkite [3]

• The October 24, 2005 episode of The Colbert Report recommended that Torquemada be brought back from the dead to both extract the truth about the Valerie Plame affair, and to force an also-resurrected Charles Darwin to recant his Theory of Evolution.

• The Star Wars Expanded Universe contains an organization similar to the Inquisition, called the Inquisitorius, whose sole purpose is to hunt down Force-users and subdue them. Fittingly, the Inquisitorius is lead by a High Inquisitor "Tremayne".

• The Requiem-Vampire Knight comic books feature a reincarnation of Torquemada as a werewolf, werewolves being the religiously hypocritical in the series' setting of Resurrection.

• In the table-top strategy game of Warhammer 40K, a character belonging to the Ordo Malleus, a branch of the Imperial Inquisition bears the name of Inquisitor Lord Torquemada Coteaz. Possessed by unparalleled faith in the God-Emperor, he is the unforgiving leader of the Inquisitional order charged with the pursuit and purging of daemonic entities and manifestations.

• The Sisters of Mercy song Detonation Boulevard contains the line "I've a brother of sorts in Torquemada".

• Marillion's song Emerald Lies contains the line "To don the robes of Torquemada, resurrect the inquisition"

• Tomás de Torquemada is one of the main protagonists of Jerzy Andrzejewski's novel "And Darkness Covered the Earth" (also translated as "The Inquisitors")

• Mentioned in tracks: "Torquemada" (quote: "Tomas de Torquemada asesina con sangre bautiza - Toda América Latina con la impotencia - Y también con el odio de toda mi gente que quedó - en el oprobio indio negro con religión de blanco - negro zambo con bozal y candado") Lyric and Sueño de Solentiname (quote: "Soñé la espada, soñé Torquemada soñé Sepúlveda, soñé la viruela") featured on the album "Casa Babylon" by Mano Negra.

• Mentioned in Neal Stephenson's novel "The Confusion" by protagonist Jack Shaftoe in Manila in 1700, referring to "the Sons of Torquemada," or the Spanish Inquisition present in the Philippines at the time.

• Armando Quesada, a member of Cuba's Stalinist National Council of Culture in the early 1970s, earned the nickname "Torquesada" for his passion for purging Cuban intellectuals.

• An early and powerful Macintosh-based text-munging engine was named Torquemada (ca. 1994).

• The song "Church of Madness", released on the Inkubus Sukkubus album "Wytches", mentions Torquemada in his role as Inquisitor. (Quote: "A new dark age descending, it’s Torquemada’s dream.") The music video contains scenes of an Inquisitor who may also be an allusion to Torquemada.

• The song "Still Here" by New Model Army on the album "Lost Songs" contains the lyric, "Can you hear us Torquemada--we're still here."

• Clyde Haberman's column in the March 2, 2007, edition of The New York Times, titled "End Our Pain: Hold Primary Right Now," makes a reference to Torquemada when he (jokingly) asks whether John McCain has to go so far as to "sponsor a bill declaring Torquemada's birthday a national holiday" to regain favor with conservative groups.

[edit] References

• William Thomas Walsh, Characters of the Inquisition, (Tan Books and Publishers, 1987). ISBN 0895553260
• Henry Kamen, The Spanish Inquisition: A Historical Revision, (Yale University Press, 1999). ISBN 0300078803
• Alphonsus Maria Duran, Why Apologize for the Spanish Inquisition?, (Eric Gladkowski, 2000). ISBN 0970223501
• Biography by Beth Randall
• Tomás de Torquemada, article in Catholic Encyclopedia (1910)
• Thomas Torquemada, article in 1911 Britannica
• The Age of Torquemada, by John Edward Longhurst (1962)
• Letters on the Spanish Inquisition by Joseph de Maistre