As soon as the first victims fell under the Inquisition in Saragossa, influential new-Christians brought pressure to bear upon the cortes to induce them to protest, both to the king and to the pope, against the introduction of the tribunal into Aragon. Commissioners were sent to the royal and papal courts to effect in person the repeal of the ordinances. They expected but little trouble in Rome, for there everything was to be had for money. With the king it seemed to be a matter of much greater difficulty. Ferdinand remained obstinately fixed in the resolution to exterminate the Jewish Christians by means of the Inquisition, and to acquire their property. When the commissioners sent news to their friends in Aragon of the failure of their efforts, Perez Sanchez conceived a plot to remove Pedro Arbues, chief inquisitor for Aragon, in order to cripple the activity of the Inquisition by terrorism, and to force the king to give way. He imparted his project to his friends, and many bound themselves to stand by him. In order to win over the entire body of new-Christians, and to induce them to stand firmly together, the leaders of the conspiracy laid them under contribution for the expenses of carrying out the project. A hidalgo, Blasco de Alagon, collected the money, and Juan de Abadia undertook to hire the assassins, and to see that the death of Arbues was achieved. This conspiracy was joined by many distinguished persons of Jewish descent in Saragossa, Tarazona, Calatayud, Huesca and Barbastro.

Juan de Abadia procured two trustworthy men, Juan de Esperaindo and Vidal de Uranso, with four assistants, to accomplish the death of the inquisitor Arbues. The intended victim appears to have suspected the plot, for he protected his body with a shirt of mail and his head with a species of steel cap. Before daybreak on the 15th of September, 1485, as he was entering the church with a lantern to hear early mass, the conspirators followed him. As soon as he had fallen on his knees, Esperaindo struck him on the arm with his sword, while Vidal wounded him in the neck. He was borne out of the church bathed in blood, and died two days later. The conspirators took instant flight. As soon as the news of the attack on the chief inquisitor spread in Saragossa it produced a violent reaction. The orthodox Christians assembled in crowds crying in tones of fury: "To the flames with the Jew-Christians! They have murdered the chief inquisitor!" The Marranos would have been massacred in a body there and then, had not the royal bastard, the youthful Archbishop Alfonso of Aragon, mounted his horse, and restrained the crowd by an armed force, promising them the fullest satisfaction by the severe punishment of the guilty persons and their accomplices.

King Ferdinand made good use of the unfortunate conspiracy in the establishment of the Inquisition in Aragon. The sovereigns carried public mourning for the murdered Arbues to the verge of idolatry. A statue was consecrated to his memory, in honor of his services to religion and the extermination of Jewish heretics. The Dominicans were by no means displeased at the death of the chief inquisitor. They were, in fact, in need of a martyr to enable them to surround their tribunal of blood with a halo of glory. They used every effort to raise Pedro Arbues to the rank of saint or Christian demi-god. It was not long before they fabricated a divine communication from the sainted heretic-slayer, in which he exhorted all the world to support and carry forward the Holy Inquisition, and soothed the scruples of the members of the tribunal, on account of the enormous number of men they had consigned to the flames, by assuring them that the most honorable places in heaven awaited them as the reward of their pious efforts.

The unsuccessful conspiracy of the Marranos in Saragossa afforded a vast number of fresh victims to the Christian Moloch. A few of the conspirators made full confession, and so the inquisitors soon had a complete list of the culprits. These were pursued with redoubled vigor as Judaizing heretics and enemies of the Holy Office. Those who had borne a leading part in the conspiracy, as soon as they fell into the hands of their judges, were dragged through the streets of Saragossa, their hands were hewn off, and they were then hanged. Juan de Abadia escaped this dishonorable fate by killing himself in prison. More than two hundred Jewish Christians were burnt as accomplices, a yet greater number were condemned to perpetual imprisonment, among them a high dignitary of the Metropolitan Church of Saragossa, and not a few women of gentle birth. Francisco de Santa Fé also died at the stake. Even those who had given shelter to the conspirators for a brief period during their flight were compelled to attend an auto-da-fé as penitents, and lost their civil rights. How far the inhumanity of the persecutors went is especially shown by one of the punishments inflicted. A conspirator, Gaspard de Santa Cruz, had been successful in making his escape to Toulouse, and there died in peace. The Inquisition, not content with burning him in effigy, laid hands upon his son as an accomplice in his father's flight, and condemned him to travel to Toulouse to communicate his sentence to the Dominicans of that city, and to desire them to exhume the body of his father and burn it. The weak son performed his disgraceful mission, and brought back to Saragossa the certificate of the Dominicans to the effect that the corpse of the father had been dishonored on the prayer of the son.

Certain towns of northern Spain, such as Lerida and Barcelona, still obstinately resisted the introduction of the Inquisition. Their resistance proved vain. The iron will of Fernando and the bloodthirsty fanaticism of Torquemada overcame every obstacle, and the papal court was obliged to give its assent to every proposal. From that time forth the number of victims continued to increase. On the 12th of February, 1486, an auto-da-fé was celebrated in Toledo with 750 human burnt-offerings, while on the 2d of April in the same year, 900 victims were offered up, and on the 7th of May, 750. On the 16th of August twenty-five Jewish heretics were burnt alive in Toledo; on the following day two priests suffered; and on the 10th of December 950 persons were condemned to shameful public penance. In the following year, when the Inquisition was established in Barcelona and on the island of Majorca, two hundred Marranos suffered death by fire in these places alone. A Jew of that time, Isaac Arama, writes on this subject as follows: "In these days the smoke of the martyr's pyre rises unceasingly to heaven in all the Spanish kingdoms and the isles. One-third of the Marranos have perished in the flames, another third wander homeless over the earth seeking where they may hide themselves, and the remainder live in perpetual terror of a trial." So the tale of victims grew from year to year under the eleven tribunals which transformed the fair land of Spain into a blazing Tophet, whose flames soon reached and devoured the Christians themselves.

The pitiless persecution of the new-Christians had its origin perhaps even more in the racial hatred of the pure-blooded Spaniards towards the children of Judah than in religious fanaticism. Persons of Jewish descent, whom it was impossible justly to accuse of heresy, were included in the accusations simply because they held high offices. They were not permitted to enjoy any dignity or to exercise any influence in the country. The inquisitor-general, Torquemada, even laid hands upon two bishops of Jewish blood, De Avila and De Aranda, so that, if it were impossible to consign them to the flames, he might at least expel them from their sees.

[CHAPTER XI.]
EXPULSION OF THE JEWS FROM SPAIN.

Friendship of Marranos and Jews—Torquemada demands of the Rabbis of Toledo the Denunciation of Marranos—Judah Ibn-Verga—Jewish Courtiers under Ferdinand and Isabella—Isaac Abrabanel: his History and Writings—The Jews of Portugal under Alfonso V—The Ibn-Yachya Brothers—Abrabanel's Flight from Portugal to Spain—The Jews of Granada: Isaac Hamon—Edict of Banishment promulgated by Ferdinand and Isabella—Its Consequences—Departure from Spain—Number of the Exiles—Decline in the Prosperity of Spain after the Banishment of the Jews—Transformation of Synagogues and Schools into Churches and Monasteries—The Inquisition and the Marranos—Deza, the Successor of Torquemada.