The election of Martin V. having put an end to the great schism of the West, the Portuguese monks ought to have submitted to the authority of the Provincial of Spain, who was then a monk of their nation, named F. Juan de Santa Justa; but the Dominicans who were at Constance persuaded the Pope that his jurisdiction was too extensive, which induced the pontiff to subdivide the province of Spain into three parts: the first part was named the province of Spain, and comprised Castile, Toledo, Murcia, Estremadura, Andalusia, Biscay, and the Asturias de Santillana; the second, Santiago, was composed of the kingdom of Leon, Galicia, and the Asturias of Oviedo; and the third, that of Portugal, extended over all the dominions of the monarch.
Martin V. established a provincial Inquisition at Valencia, in 1420, at the request of Alphonso V., King of Aragon; hitherto commissioners had only been sent there.
The Inquisitor of Aragon, 1441, was F. Michael Ferriz, and that of Valencia, F. Martin Trilles, who reconciled in their districts several Wickliffites, and condemned many others to be burnt. Several inquisitors succeeded these till 1474, when Isabella, wife of Ferdinand of Aragon, King of Sicily, ascended the throne of Castile, after the death of Henry IV. her brother. John II., King of Aragon, dying in 1479, his son, Ferdinand, united that kingdom to Sicily; he soon after conquered the kingdom of Grenada, which belonged to the Moors, and lastly that of Navarre, which was secured to him by the capitulation of the inhabitants.
OF THE GOVERNMENT OF THE OLD INQUISITION.
Although the Popes, in establishing the Inquisition, had only proposed to punish the crime of heresy, yet the inquisitors were commissioned to pursue those Christians who were only suspected, because it was the only means of discovering those who were really guilty. There were many crimes which came under the jurisdiction of a civil judge, which the Popes considered no one could be guilty of without being tainted with a false doctrine; and although they were pursued by secular tribunals, the inquisitors were enjoined to consider the accused as suspected of heresy, and to proceed against them, in order to ascertain if they committed these crimes from the depravity natural to man, or from the idea that they were not criminal; which opinion caused a suspicion that their doctrine was erroneous. A species of blasphemy which was called heretical, belonged to this class of crimes; it was committed against God or his saints, and showed in the offender erroneous opinions of the omniscience or other attributes of the Deity. It rendered the blasphemer liable to be suspected of heresy, as the inquisitor might consider it a proof that his habitual thoughts were contrary to the faith.