History abounds in "private inquisitors" who took the lives of heretics from time to time in an excess of religious zeal, but no other organization for religious persecution ever equaled the Spanish Inquisition in intensity, scope, or efficiency of operation. In 1478 Pope Sixtus IV issued the fatal Bull empowering the Spanish sovereigns to set up tribunals to extirpate heresy within their realms, and from then until its abolishment in 1834 the Inquisition pursued a career of blood whose goal was no less than the destruction of every person who was not a true Roman Catholic Christian. First and foremost this meant Jews, but the Holy Office later expanded its range of victims to include Protestants, mystics, and nonconformists of every sort. The long series of events leading up to the establishment of the Inquisition and the following three and a half centuries of torment that spread from Spain to Portugal and even to the New World are here documented by Cecil Roth of Oxford, one of the world's great authorities on Jewish history. The text is illustrated with documents and prints from the author's private collection, and two appendices provide the text of an actual "program" of an auto da fe as well as excerpts from a specific trial. - Back cover. Documents the events leading up to the Spanish Inquisition beginning in 1478 and the events that followed for the next three and a half centuries.