Who ran the Spanish Inquisition?
The Spanish monarchy had asked the pope to set up the Inquisition but kept a firm hold on its activities. They nominated the Inquisitor General and remained personally involved as well. The first Grand Inquisitor appointed by Ferdinand and Isabella was the notorious Thomas Torquemada who was in charge from 1483 until 1498. In this period, the Inquisition was at its bloodiest with an estimated two thousand executions up to 1504. Most of the victims were conversos whose faltering allegiance to Christianity was seen as making them dangerous to the regime and who were also subject to racist anti-Semitism. In time, concern about conversos diminished and the Inquisition turned its attention to moral matters of the sort that church courts had been dealing with for centuries. Cardinal Ximenez, who was Grand Inquisitor from 1506 to 1517, instituted widespread reform to correct some of the abuses that had taken place in earlier years.
