Diego Rodríguez de Lucero

Diego Rodríguez de Lucero was a priest and inquisitor of the Kingdom of Castile based in Córdoba between 1499 and 1507.

[3] The Spanish Inquisition was created in 1478 to persecute Jewish converts to Christianity and their descendants, accused of secretly retaining their ancestral faith.

[6] As described in the Catalog of the Bishop of Cordoba, "After the death of the first inquisitors, Diego Rodríguez Lucero, schoolmaster, came from Almería in the year 1500".

"[2] Gómez Bravo wrote of him:[2] he had a pungent and hard genius; and to accredit himself as a jealous minister in the faith, and to accumulate merit for promotion to greater dignities, he began to treat inmates of prison with exquisite rigor so that they could denounce others as accomplices, which resulted in so many numbers of indicted persons, both converts and from other pure families, the city was scandalized and came to tumult.At this time the tribunal had jurisdiction throughout the new Archdiocese of Granada.

[2] Lucero waited for Queen Isabel to die on 26 November 1504 before involving the archbishop of Granada, Hernando de Talavera and his family in a case of alleged heresy.

His testimony of the massacre said, "when he burned a hundred and seven men they were shouting to God and the Virgin to forgive them and saying that they never committed the sin of heresy, and called on the scribes to testify that they died as Christian Catholics and in the faith of Jesus Christ.

Rodríguez de Lucero stepped up his activities and ordered demolition of numerous houses in Córdoba that he claimed were synagogues.

In November 1506 some nobles, including Diego Fernández de Córdoba y Mendoza, Count of Cabra and Pedro Fernández de Córdoba y Pacheco, Marquis of Priego, instigated a riot in which the inquisition's prison was assaulted and the prisoners released.