A monastic writer of Andalusia, where the “new Christians” were most numerous and now most miserable, quoted by Prescott, summarises contemporary feeling regarding them in the following eloquent lines: “This accursed race were either unwilling to bring their children to be baptized, or, if they did, they washed away the stain on returning home. They dressed their stews and other dishes with oil, instead of lard; abstained from pork; kept the Passover; ate meat in Lent; and sent oil to replenish the lamps of their synagogues; with many other abominable ceremonies of their religion. They entertained no respect for monastic life, and frequently profaned the sanctity of religious houses by the violation or seduction of their inmates. They were an exceedingly politic and ambitious people, engrossing the most lucrative municipal offices, and preferred to gain their livelihood by traffic, in which they made exorbitant gains, rather than by manual labour or mechanical arts. They considered themselves in the hands of the Egyptians, whom it was a merit to deceive and plunder. By their wicked contrivances they amassed great wealth, and they were often able to ally themselves by marriage with noble Christian families.” Here we find all the old sources of the Gentile’s hatred towards the Jew: antipathy due to diversity of character—as manifested in occupation, daily diet, and conduct; steeled by economic jealousy, and edged by religious bigotry.
♦1469 Oct. 19♦
Such was the frame of the public mind, when short-sighted statecraft, in the person of Ferdinand, King of Aragon, was wedded to narrow piety in that of Isabella, heiress to the Crown of Castile. The legitimate offspring of such a union could be no other than persecution. But, even if the sovereigns were enlightened and tolerant, it is doubtful whether they could have stemmed the current. In 1473 the mob massacred the Constable of Castile at Jaen, because he attempted to repress its fury, and, after Isabella the Catholic’s accession to the throne, petitions poured in from all sides clamouring for the extirpation of the “Jewish heresy.” The bigots of Seville, headed by the Dominican prior of the monastery of St. Paul, agitated for the introduction of the Inquisition—a tribunal originally established during Innocent III.’s pontificate at the beginning of the thirteenth century for the suppression of heresy—and their demand was seconded by the Papal Nuncio. In 1477 Friar Philip de Barberi, Inquisitor for Sicily, arrived in Seville to persuade the Spanish monarchs of the manifold virtues of his remedy for infidelity. The prospect of plunder lured Ferdinand, while Isabella’s feminine tenderness was assailed by the importunities and the casuistry of her spiritual advisers. Torquemada, the narrow-hearted Dominican of universal notoriety, had already poisoned the Queen’s mind with his pernicious maxims of intolerance, when he acted as the guardian of her conscience in early youth. In that susceptible age he had extorted from his pupil the promise that she would devote her life “to the extirpation of heresy, for the glory of God and the exaltation of the Catholic faith.” He now reappears on the scene to claim the fulfilment of the fatal vow. The young queen, noble and generous though she was by nature, could not long withstand the unanimous exhortations of persons whose sanctity her religion taught her to revere, and the superiority of whose wisdom her own modesty prompted her to accept without question. Much less could she resist her own beloved husband’s solicitations. All that was good or engaging in her conspired with all that was ignoble in her counsellors to warp her judgment, to silence the voice of her heart, and to force her to give her consent to one of the greatest crimes of any time.
It required but little effort to induce Pope Sixtus IV. to allow the establishment of the Holy Office in Castile for the detection and punishment of backsliders to Judaism, and the necessary Bull was issued on November 1st, 1478. But the Queen still hesitated to make use of the dread weapon, while her husband was not without misgivings regarding the absolute power claimed by the tribunal. As a last resource, before proceeding to extremes, the monarchs commanded Cardinal Mendoza, the Archbishop of Seville, to set forth the doctrines of the Catholic faith in a short catechism, and to cause his clergy to diffuse the light among the benighted Marranos throughout his diocese. This worthy and humane ecclesiastic gladly obeyed the royal command, and betook himself to the work of friendly persuasion. But with little success. The Christians were incited to acts of hostility by rumours of Jewish plots against the Church and the State, and of Jewish crimes of the traditional type, such as sacrifices of children and insults offered to the Host. The Government, yielding to public clamour, expelled the Jews from Seville and Cordova in 1478, and renewed the severe measures of repression in 1480. Furthermore, an ill-advised Jew, by the publication of a caustic criticism of Christianity at that inopportune moment, threw oil into the fire, and precipitated a catastrophe which perhaps no power on earth could have averted in any case. A people whose inflexibility had triumphed over the temptations and the persecutions of fifteen centuries was hardly likely to be bent by the good Archbishop’s catechism; and, after two years’ fruitless endeavour, a Commission appointed for the purpose returned a highly disappointing report. The term of grace having expired, the only remaining alternative was the Inquisition.[71]
On September 17th, 1480, the tribunal was constituted of two Dominicans and two other ecclesiastics appointed by the Crown, and was ordered to commence operations at Seville without delay. The civil authorities were instructed to lend the assistance of the secular arm to the Judges; but, owing to the opposition which the latter at first encountered on the part of the high-spirited Castilians, they were obliged to confine their activity for a while within those districts of Andalusia which depended directly from the Crown. However, limited as the field at first was, it proved more than sufficient for the purpose. The new year, 1481, was inaugurated with an edict, published on January 2nd, bidding all true Catholics to aid the tribunal in the fulfilment of its mission, by indicating any person that might be known as, or suspected of, entertaining heretical opinions. The result was a monster hunt with men for quarry and hounds, and Satan for their master. Soon the number of victims grew to such an extent that the court was obliged to exchange its seat in the monastery of St. Paul, within the city of Seville, for the larger castle of Triana, in the environs. There it established its headquarters and blasphemed the Deity whom it professed to serve by the following inscription, engraven over the portal: Exsurge, Domine; judica causam tuam; capite nobis vulpes, “Arise, O Lord; judge thine own cause; capture for us the foxes.”
Day after day the Satanic sport went on, and the number of “foxes” increased apace. The Jews were not even allowed the privilege accorded to the animal. Flight was forbidden under penalty of death, and was prevented by guards posted at the gates of the city. None the less, some of the victims succeeded in escaping to Granada, France, Germany, and Italy, where they made an appeal to the Holy See from the barbarity of the Holy Office. Sixtus IV. contented himself with a gentle rebuke of his subalterns for their excessive zeal, soon followed by a request for more strenuous “purification,” addressed to Ferdinand and Isabella.
Never, perhaps, since the fall of the Roman Empire did the detestable trade of the informer flourish so lustily as it did during the ensuing years in Castile. Bigotry, malice, cupidity were all invited to contribute to the havoc, and, as the accuser’s identity was sedulously concealed from the accused, the last motive for self-restraint was removed. A new coat or a clean shirt on Saturday morning, a cold hearth on Friday evening, avoidance of food popular among the Christians, or a taste for a kind of drink affected by the Jews, a visit to a Jewish house,—these were some of the proofs of Judaism accepted as conclusive evidence by this model court of justice. The grave itself afforded no refuge from its clutches. A person who was observed to turn his face to the wall when dying was at once pounced upon, and his body shared the fate of living heretics.
The Inquisition had been in existence for three days when six wretches suffered at the stake. Seventeen more followed in March, and at the end of ten months the “bag” had reached the number of two hundred and ninety-eight, in Seville alone, in addition to many effigies of those who had been fortunate enough to escape. The plague which devastated Seville in that year of evil omen did not interrupt the other plague. The Inquisition once more moved its racks, and continued its infernal work in Aracena. Meanwhile, its branch establishments carried on a brisk business in human lives in other parts of Andalusia, and their diligence is proved by the fact, which we owe to the Jesuit historian Mariana, that the net total of victims for the year amounted to two thousand burnt alive, and seventeen thousand sentenced to loss of property, loss of civil rights, or incarceration—mercies which figured in the balance sheet under the comprehensive euphemism “reconciliation.” ♦1483♦ In the third year Thomas de Torquemada was appointed by Sixtus IV. Inquisitor-General of Castile and Aragon, invested with full powers to draw up a new constitution for the Holy Office. His labours resulted in the modern Inquisition, which for centuries after blasted the Iberian Peninsula and supplied historians, novelists, and dramatists with an inexhaustible mine of horrors. The Spaniards were not pleased to see the extension of the grim tribunal’s operations, and Pedro Arbués, the first Inquisitor who, in spite of popular protests, ventured to make his appearance in Aragon, was murdered in the Cathedral of Saragossa. ♦1485♦ But all opposition was soon silenced.
Year after year edicts were issued and read in every church on the first two Sundays of Lent, spurring the faithful, on pain of eternal damnation, to denounce their fellow-citizens, and often their nearest and dearest; for loyalty to the cause cancelled all other bonds. Neither friendship nor family affection was permitted to interfere with the course of fanaticism, and the vilest crimes against nature and morality were hallowed by the blessings of the Church. The Marranos and their Jewish sympathisers and abettors, against whom the terrible engine continued to be almost exclusively directed under Torquemada’s management, were decimated, mulcted, and mutilated at the average annual rate of six thousand roasted or “reconciled,” not including an unknown number of orphaned children doomed to starvation or vice by the confiscation of their patrimony.
None were spared, but the most exalted were the first to be laid low; judges and municipal officers, noblemen, and even clergymen suspected of Judaism were mysteriously snatched from their homes, conveyed to the subterranean dungeons of the Inquisition, and there, amid the terrors of darkness and solitude, were kept for a while in strict ignorance of the specific crime with which they were charged. When sufficiently bewildered in his lonely, cold, and lightless cell, the prisoner was dragged before the court and asked to give straight and lucid answers to crooked and vague questions. It was accepted as a principle of judicial procedure that every prisoner was guilty until he proved himself to be innocent, and that it was better that ten innocents should suffer than one infidel escape. Denial of guilt was visited with torture, persistence in denial with more torture, and confession of sin—to obtain which was an essential element in the Inquisitorial process—with sentence of death or confiscation of goods, the greater part of which went to defray the expenses of the prisoner’s trial and to fill the pockets of his judges, while the remainder was swallowed up by the Royal Treasury.