Juan de Torquemada (cardinal)

(1388 – 26 September 1468), Spanish ecclesiastic, defender of Jewish conversos, has been described as the most articulate papal apologist of the fifteenth century.

[2] Though those converso origins are very often stated without providing any source,[3] they are "based primarily on Hernando del Pulgar’s statement that Juan de Torquemada’s abuelos were converts from the Jewish faith".

[6] Torquemada participated in the Council of Florence, speaking on theological issues involving the eastern churches and defending papal primacy in a debate with Cardinal Giuliano Cesarini.

As Cardinal of San Sisto, Torquemada supported papal Crusade policy in opposition to the Ottoman Turks.

A faction led by one Pedro Sarmiento imposed a law that deprived conversos of government and church posts and disqualified them from testifying in legal proceedings.

In 1450 Torquemada published a tract[7] — a "sharp and relentless" theological attack — in which he labelled Sarmiento and his followers as Midianites and Ishmaelites, the biblical enemies of the Israelite people, comparing them to the evil persecutor Haman.

The medieval papacy's supremacy was challenged both by Hussites (early Protestants) and by conciliarists (who held that an ecumenical council of the Church had more authority than a pope).

In 1456, the new Pope Callixtus III, aka Alfonso de Borja, gave him, in commendam, the position of Abbot of the monastery of Santa Scolastica in Subiaco.

Most notably, his Summa de ecclesia defended the Church against the Hussites and the Roman pontiff against conciliarism.

A painting by Antoniazzo Romano showing the Annunciation has in its background Torquemada presenting girls who received dowry funds from a guild he founded to the Virgin Mary.

(At an earlier age he was painted by Fra Angelico in a Crucifixion scene now at Harvard University's Fogg Museum.)