ABSTRACT
The crown established the first audiences of the Holy Office to impose religious uniformity over its newly consolidated state, and the Inquisition’s first victims were persons suspected of practicing the two religions—Judaism and Islam—perceived as the gravest threats to the consolidation. The Supreme Council of the Holy Office mandated that the Edict be read aloud at regular intervals in urban centers to inform and alert citizens about suspicious religious practices in order to elicit their denunciations of religious deviancy. The Edict’s implementation in New Spain, however, proved to be impractical. The Catholic kings, Ferdinand and Isabella, founded Iberia’s first tribunal of the Holy Office of the Inquisition in Castile in 1478. Mexico’s first General Edict of the Faith was published in November 1571 at the time of the founding of the Mexican tribunal. Nearly three hundred subsequent versions of the Edict have been located in Mexican archives.
