(The Martyrs of Otranto were canonized on May 12, 2013.)(3) The next month, on September 26, shortly after the news of this massacre would have reached Spain, Isabel and Fernando instated the Inquisition in Spain, and appointed the members of its first Tribunal in Castilla: Cardinal Mendoza, Fray Tomas de Torquemada, and two other Dominicans, Fray Miguel Morillo and Fray Juan de San Martin. Then, on August 13th 800 citizens of Otranto were taken to the hill of Minerva and beheaded when they refused to convert to Islam.
The Ottoman soldiers entered the Cathedral in Otranto and killed Archbishop Stefano Agricola and others inside, while Bishop Stephen Pendinelli and the garrison commander, Count Francesco Zurlo, were sawn in two alive. In fact, in August of 1480 Ottoman forces attacked the city of Otranto, in Southern Italy (which was under the joint rule of Naples and Aragon), and killed thousands of its inhabitants. Moreover, there was a very real threat of Ottoman attack along the coastlines of Southern Europe, where Christians lived in fear of being killed or sold into slavery. Meanwhile, Muslims still held Granada in the south of Spain, and could at any time invade the rest of the peninsula with reinforcements from Africa, as they had 700 years before. For the next two years they tried to improve catechesis among the conversos, hoping that this would bring them to accept the fullness of the faith they had been baptized in.
Pope Sixtus IV granted them permission in 1478, but Isabel and Fernando decided to put off beginning an Inquisition in Spain. In the year 1478 Isabel and King Fernando II of Aragon asked Pope Sixtus IV for the authority to begin an Inquisition in Spain (there was already an Inquisition governed by the Pope to defend the Church against heresies in other parts of Europe). Queen Isabel I of Castilla (1451-1504) was informed that many of the conversos were not sincere Christians, that they had converted only for the advantage it would give them in society, and that they could not be trusted in a time of war.(2) During this time tensions were mounting all over Spain between Catholics and Jews, and violence and riots were becoming commonplace. By the 1400s the conversos had gained a lot of power in Spain – in business, property, and government.
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