Saint Pedro de Arbués

Pedro de Arbués, also known as Peter of Arbués (c. 1441 – 17 September 1485) was a Spanish Roman Catholic priest and a professed Augustinian canon. He served as an official of the Spanish Inquisition until he was assassinated in the La Seo Cathedral in Zaragoza in 1485 by Jews and conversos. The veneration of him came swiftly through popular acclaim. His death greatly assisted the Inquisitor-General Tomás de Torquemada's campaign against heretics and crypto-Jews. His canonization was celebrated on 29 June 1867. As a result, a popular movement against the Jews arose in which nine were executed, two killed themselves, thirteen were burnt in effigy, and four punished for complicity, from 30 June to 15 December 1486, according to the historian Jerónimo Zurita. Leonardo Sciascia in Morte dell'inquisitore (1964) writes (erroneously) that Arbués along with Juan Lopez de Cisneros (d. 1657) are "the only two cases of inquisitors who died assassinated". Pedro de Arbués was born at Épila in the region of Zaragoza to the nobleman Antonio de Arbués and Sancia Ruiz. He studied philosophy perhaps in Huesca but later travelled to Bologna on a scholarship to the Spanish College of Saint Clement which was part of the Bologna college. He obtained his doctorate in 1473 while he served as a professor of moral philosophical studies or ethics. Upon his return to Spain he became a member of the cathedral chapter of the canons regular at La Seo where he made his religious profession in 1474. At around that time Ferdinand and Isabella had obtained from Pope Sixtus IV a papal bull to establish in their kingdom a tribunal for searching out heretics, the Inquisition had been first established in Spain in Aragón, 14th century, to counteract the Catharism heresy. Those Jews who had received baptism were known as conversos; some might have continued to practice Judaism in secret, called 'judaizantes'.