All this time Molcho was untiringly persecuted by his fellow-believers, more especially by his enemy, Jacob Mantin, the learned but unscrupulous physician and philologist. This revengeful man came from Venice to Rome for no other purpose than to cause the ruin of him whom he gratuitously hated. He took the Portuguese ambassador fairly to task for allowing a former Portuguese Christian, who preached against Christianity, to remain at liberty in Rome. As the ambassador would not listen to him, Mantin carried his complaint to the Inquisition. He procured witnesses from Portugal who testified that Solomon Molcho had lived as a Christian in Portugal, and managed to have him cited before the congregation. Hereupon Molcho exhibited his passport from the pope, trusting with such support to remain unmolested; but the Inquisitors tore it from his hands, and betook themselves to the pope, to whom they represented how indecent it was that he should protect a scoffer at Christianity. Clement replied that he needed Molcho for a secret purpose, and requested that he be left undisturbed. When the Inquisition showed itself inclined to disregard his denunciation, Mantin raised new points against Molcho. He contrived to get possession of the letter which some years before Molcho had written from Monastir to Joseph Taytasak, respecting his past life and his return to Judaism, translated it into Latin, and laid it before the tribunal. As the letter undoubtedly contained abuse against Edom, i.e., against Rome and Christianity, the Inquisition was forced to take notice of it, and Clement also no longer dared set his face against Mantin's denunciation. The congregation now proceeded with the case, and sentenced Molcho to be burnt to death. A funeral pile was built up, and the fagots kindled. People came in crowds to the place to witness the attractive sight. A wretched victim brought thither in penitential shroud was thrown without ceremony into the fire. One of the judges informed the pope that the act of faith had been completed by the offender's death. The judge and the witnesses of the execution are said to have felt no small astonishment when Solomon Molcho alive was encountered in the pope's apartments.
It seems that Clement, to save his favorite's life, foisted in some one else, who ascended the scaffold, whilst Solomon Molcho was kept hidden in the pope's chambers.
The pope himself communicated this fact to the perplexed judge, enjoining silence in order that Jews and Christians might not have fresh fuel to feed their excitement. Solomon Molcho was saved, but he dared no longer remain in Rome; that was plain even to him, and he begged the pope to let him go. Escorted by a few faithful servants of the pope, Solomon Molcho rode out of Rome at night (February or March, 1531).
After Molcho's departure from Rome, especially after the death of Cardinal Lorenzo Pucci (August, 1531), a different feeling towards the Marranos sprang up. A Portuguese agent obtained from the pope, who was urged thereto by Emperor Charles and the grand penitentiary, Antonio Pucci, the successor to his uncle, the bull establishing the Inquisition, so long prayed for (December 17th, 1531), although Cardinals Egidio de Viterbo, Elias Levita's disciple, and Geronimo de Ghinucci, had declared against it. As though this mild-tempered pope were ashamed of allowing his former protégés to be persecuted, he bracketed the Lutherans with them. He was careful, too, not to permit the fanatical Dominicans to acquire power over the Marranos. The king's confessor, a Franciscan, the gentle-minded Diogo de Silva, was appointed inquisitor general of Portugal. Three tribunals were established, at Lisbon, Evora, and Coimbra, with the "Constitutions" of the Spanish courts introduced by Torquemada, and improved, that is, made severer, by his successors. After the king and the grandees had withdrawn their protection, the Portuguese Marranos were in a far worse plight than their Spanish brethren. The populace had long so hated them that even otherwise upright Christians turned informers, whereas in Spain spies had to be specially hired for the purpose.
When the Inquisition began its execrable work many of the Marranos naturally contemplated leaving the country. But flight was not easy; it was with them as with their forefathers when they came out of Egypt—the foe behind, the sea, with all its dangers and terrors, in front. A law was made (June 14th, 1532) strictly forbidding emigration to Africa, not even excepting the Portuguese colonies. Captains were warned, under penalty of death, not to carry Marranos, and all Christians were prohibited from buying real estate of new-Christians; these were not permitted to send their goods away to foreign countries, nor effect exchanges at home. Nevertheless, many of them prepared for emigration, in order "to flee from the land touched by the poisonous serpent" (the Inquisition); but before they could even set foot on board ship, they and their wives and children were seized, and hurried away to gloomy dungeons, whence they were dragged to the stake. Others perished in the waves of the sea before they could reach the vessel which was to bring them to a place of safety. Many were drawn forth from the most hidden retreats, and burnt to death. Those who escaped from the claws of this bloodthirsty monster found no relief in strange lands—they were imprisoned in Flanders, arrested in France, unkindly received in England. In addition to such torments many lost their fortunes, and, in consequence, their lives. Those who reached Germany succumbed in extreme misery on the Alps, leaving wives about to become mothers, who, on cold and deserted roads, brought forth children, and endured a new form of misfortune.
Nevertheless, the Marranos did not intermit their attempts to escape, but prosecuted them with increased caution. No other way out of their troubles was left. Appeals to justice and humanity, and the urging of their chartered rights and privileges, found none but deaf ears in the cabinet.
Marranos who escaped to Rome made bitter complaints to Pope Clement of the inhumanity with which the Inquisition persecuted them and their brethren, and urged that the king had obtained the bull by fraud, inasmuch as the facts of the case had not been set before the papal consistory in a proper light. They especially complained that emigration was prohibited, in direct opposition to the legal equality which had been granted. Clement VII, who regretted that he had issued the bull, to which he had been forced, sympathized with their grievances. He may have felt, too, that the fires of the Inquisition, employed against those who were neither Catholics nor willing converts, branded the Catholic Church, and gave the Lutherans more material to continue their hostile assaults, to depict it as bloodthirsty and a just object of hatred. Moreover, he was well aware that the Inquisition had been introduced into Portugal only because Spain and his arch-foe, Emperor Charles, desired it, with the object of placing Portugal in an unequivocally dependent condition. Hence Clement revolved a plan to revoke the bull. At this time Solomon Molcho and David Reubeni resumed their mystical activity, and conceived the daring scheme of going to the emperor at Ratisbon, where the Reichstag was then assembled. With a floating banner, embroidered with the letters "Machbi" (initials of the Hebrew words of the verse, "Who is like unto thee among the gods, O Lord"), they traveled from Bologna, by way of Ferrara and Mantua, to Ratisbon. Emperor Charles gave them audience, and they probably pleaded the cause of the Jews earnestly. An unwarranted and improbable report affirms that they attempted to convert the emperor to the Jewish faith. But they were not so heedless as to make this attempt. They simply petitioned the emperor to permit the Marranos to arm themselves, and, joining the Jewish tribes, attack the Turks. Joslin of Rosheim, who was also in Ratisbon, vainly warned them not to make this request. The end was that Charles put them both in chains (June-September, 1532), and carried them fettered to Mantua. The banner was left at Ratisbon. An inquisition, at the emperor's wish, was set on foot at Mantua, and Molcho was condemned to be burnt to death for relapse and heresy. While the emperor was diverting himself by triumphal processions, festivals, hunting, plays, and all imaginable merry-makings, the funeral pile of the Lisbon Marrano was built up, and set on fire. They led him to the place of execution with a gag in his mouth, for his eloquence was so powerful and persuasive that emperor and tribunal feared its effect on the crowd. He was, therefore, forced to keep silence. But when the executioners were ready to throw him into the blazing fire, a courier from the emperor arrived, removed the gag, and asked him in the emperor's name, whether he repented of his transgressions and was willing to return to the bosom of the church; if so, he should be pardoned. As might have been expected, Molcho replied that he had longed to die a martyr, "a burnt-sacrifice, of a sweet savour unto the Lord," that he repented him of only one thing—that he had been a Christian in his youth. Come life, come death, he commended his soul unto God. Then he was thrown into the midst of the flames, and died with unshaken constancy.
Molcho was the victim of a phantasmagoria, a delusion, into which, at feud with reality, he allowed himself to fall. The rich gifts bestowed on him by nature—a handsome person, glowing imagination, quick perception, ready enthusiasm—which would have been steps on the ladder of fortune for any character less fantastical, only served to ruin him, because, swept into the vortex of the Kabbala, he fondly hoped to accomplish the work of redemption. David Reubeni had not even the martyr's crown. Charles carried him to Spain, and cast him into a dungeon of the Inquisition, in which he was still living three years afterwards. It appears that he was at length put to death by poison. As a Jew, the Inquisition had no power over him. But many of the Spanish Marranos who had had intercourse with him, and whose names he probably betrayed on the rack, were burnt to death.
Enthusiasm for Molcho was so great that a mistaken faith was pinned to him, and various fictions respecting him were invented. In Italy and Turkey numbers believed that he had on this occasion, as once before, escaped death. Some said that they had seen him a week after his auto-da-fé; others gave out that he had visited his bride at Safet. Joseph Karo, whose name was soon to be widely known, longed for martyrdom like Molcho's. Even the circumspect Joseph Cohen of Genoa, a careful historian, averse to belief in miracles, was dazed, and knew not what to think of the affair. An Italian Kabbalist, Joseph of Arli, would not abandon the hope that the time of the Messiah, as announced and prepared by Molcho, would soon dawn on the Jewish world. Molcho's death, according to him, would soon find avengers. By a childish transposing of the letters of two verses in Isaiah (Notaricon), he predicted the downfall of the religion of Jesus from various causes: Luther's agitation, the many new sects springing up among Christians, the recent sack of Rome, and the mutually inimical attitude of the pope and the emperor.
The Kabbalist of Arli was ill-disposed towards the pope, though unreasonably so, for he was certainly not guilty of Molcho's death; on the contrary, the pope had to look on while the emperor, to gain his own ends, executed one, and imprisoned the other, of his favorites. However, Clement seems to have made a countermove. He strove to bring about the revocation of the fatal bull authorizing the institution of the Inquisition in Portugal, or at least to make it less drastic in its effects. The Marranos knew this, and made every effort to win the papal curia to their side. As soon as they understood that Solomon Molcho, their most successful advocate, was no longer to be reckoned upon, they sent another envoy to Rome, to bring their grievances before the pope and defend their cause. This new advocate of the Marranos, Duarte de Paz, was the very opposite in character to Molcho: cool-headed, far removed from any extravagance, cunning, calculating, bold, and eloquent, initiated into all the trickery of diplomacy, possessing profound knowledge of human nature, and able to make use of men's foibles for his own ends. Duarte de Paz for nearly eight years looked after the interests of Portuguese new-Christians. He was himself of Marrano descent, and as a reward for his services to the Portuguese court in Africa had obtained an important post and the confidence of King João III. Chosen by the king to perform a secret mission, and made a knight of the order of Christ (styled also Commendatore) on the day of his departure, he set out, not for the appointed place, but for Rome, to work for the Marranos. Duarte de Paz entwined the threads of his intrigues so intricately that to this day it is impossible to ascertain exactly whom he deceived, whether the king or the Marranos. His clients, the Marranos, kept him well supplied with money, which, for good or evil, was almighty at the pope's court. Duarte de Paz obtained substantial successes in return for his pains and his presents. Clement was convinced anew that most atrocious injustice was done the new-Christians in demanding Catholic orthodoxy from those who had been dragged with brutal force to be baptized, and in denying them liberty to journey beyond the confines of Portugal. The pope issued an apostolical brief (October 17th, 1532) stopping the proceedings of the Inquisition until further notice. Duarte de Paz continued his efforts in order to procure a general pardon for all Marranos denounced or imprisoned. It appears that intrigues were set on foot in favor of the Marranos even at the court of João III. The party in favor of the Inquisition worked for Spanish interests, and, in view of the probability of the king's remaining without issue, was eagerly bent on making the Portuguese crown one with the Spanish. On the other side, the national party, which sought to preserve the independence of Portugal, seems to have been against the Inquisition. Hence plotting and counter-plotting continued for several years to such an extent, that the inquisitor general, Diogo de Silva (appointed by the pope himself), declared that he would not undertake so great a responsibility, and resigned his office. Duarte de Paz obtained a second extraordinarily important brief from Pope Clement. The pope recognized as fair and legitimate the reasons urged by new-Christians to justify their lack of attachment to the church.