A History of the Inquisition of Spain; vol. 1

by Henry Charles Lea

DEVELOPMENT OF INTOLERANCE

In view of Spanish abhorrence of Jews and Saracens during the last five or six centuries it is a fact worthy of note that the Spanish nations of the medieval period were the latest to yield to this impulsion of the Church. The explanation of this lies partly in the relations between the several races in the Peninsula and partly in the independent attitude which Spain maintained towards the Holy See and its indisposition to submit to the dictation of the Church. To appreciate fully the transformation which culminated in the establishment of the Inquisition, and to understand the causes leading to it, will require a brief review of the position occupied by the Jew and the Saracen towards the Church and the State.

PROGRESSIVE INTOLERANCE

In the primitive Church there would seem to have been a feeling of equality, if not of cordiality, between Christian and Jew. When it was deemed necessary, in the Apostolic canons, to forbid bishops and priests and deacons, as well as laymen, from fasting or celebrating feasts with Jews, or partaking of their unleavened bread, or giving oil to their synagogues, or lighting their lamps, this argues that kindly intercourse between them was only to be restricted in so far as it might lead to religious fellowship.[102] This kindly intercourse continued but, as the Church became mostly Gentile in its membership, the prejudices existing against the Jew in the Gentile world gathered strength until there becomes manifest a tendency to treat him as an outcast. Early in the fourth century the council of Elvira, held under the lead of the uncompromising Hosius of Córdova, forbade marriage between Christians and Jews, because there could be no society common to the faithful and the infidel; no farmer was to have his harvest blest by a Jew, nor was any one even to eat with him.[103] St. Augustin was not quite so rigid, for while he held it lawful to dissolve marriage between the Christian and the infidel, he argued that it was inexpedient.[104][105] St. Ambrose was one of the earliest to teach proscription when he reproved Theodosius the Great for the favor shown by him to Jews, who slew Christ and who deny God in denying his Son, and St. John Chrysostom improved on this by publicly preaching that Christians should hold no intercourse with Jews, whose souls were the habitations of demons and whose synagogues were their playgrounds.[106] The antagonism thus stimulated found its natural expression, in 415, in the turbulent city of Alexandria, where quarrels arose resulting in the shedding of Christian blood, when St. Cyril took advantage of the excitement by leading a mob to the synagogues, of which he took possession, and then abandoned the property of the Jews to pillage and expelled them from the city, which they had inhabited since its foundation by Alexander.[107] That under such impulsion these excesses were common is shown by the frequent repetition of imperial edicts forbidding the maltreatment of Jews and the spoiling and burning of their synagogues; they were not allowed to erect new ones but were to be maintained in possession of those existing. At the same time the commencement of legal disabilities is manifested in the reiterated prohibitions of the holding of Christian slaves by Jews, while confiscation and perpetual exile or death were threatened against Jews who should convert or circumcise Christians or marry Christian wives.[108] The Church held it to be a burning disgrace that a Jew should occupy a position of authority over Christians; in 438 it procured from Theodosius II the enactment of this as a fixed principle, and we shall see how earnestly it labored to render this a part of the public law of Christendom.[109] This spirit received a check from the Arianism of the Gothic conquerors of the Western Empire. Theodoric ordered the privileges of the Jews to be strictly preserved, among which was the important one that all quarrels between themselves should be settled by their own judges, and he sternly repressed all persecution. When a mob in Rome burned a synagogue he commanded the punishment of the perpetrators in terms of severe displeasure; when attempts were made to invade the right of the Jews of Genoa he intervened effectually, and when in Milan the clergy endeavored to obtain possession of the synagogue he peremptorily forbade it.[110] So long as the Wisigoths remained Arian this spirit prevailed throughout their extensive dominions, although the orthodox were allowed to indulge their growing uncharitableness. When the council of Agde, in 506, forbade the faithful to banquet or even to eat with Jews it shows that social intercourse still existed but that it was condemned by those who ruled the Church.[111] In the East the same tendency had freer opportunity of expressing itself in legislation, as when, in 706, the council of Constantinople forbade Christians to live with Jews or to bathe with them, to eat their unleavened bread, to consult them as physicians or to take their medicines.[112]

Gregory the Great was too large-minded to approve of this growing spirit of intolerance and, when some zealots in Naples attempted to prevent the Jews from celebrating their feasts, he intervened with a peremptory prohibition of such interference, arguing that it would not conduce to their conversion and that they should be led by kindness and not by force to embrace the faith, all of which was embodied in the canon law to become conspicuous through its non-observance.[113] In fact, his repeated enunciation of the precept shows how little it was regarded even in his own time.[114] When, moreover, large numbers of Jews were compelled to submit to baptism in southern Gaul he wrote reprovingly to the Bishops Virgil of Arles and Theodore of Marseilles, but this did not prevent St. Avitus of Clermont, about the same time, from baptizing about five hundred, who thus saved their lives from the fanatic fury of the populace.[115]

These forced conversions in Gothia were the first fruits of the change of religion of the Wisigoths from Arianism to Catholicism. The Ostrogoths, Theodoric and Theodatus, had expressly declared that they could not interfere with the religion of their subjects, for no one can be forced unwillingly to believe.[116] The Wisigoths, who dominated southern Gaul and Spain, when adapting the Roman law to suit their needs, had contented themselves with punishing by confiscation the Christian who turned Jew, with liberating Christian slaves held by Jews, and with inflicting the death penalty on Jewish masters who should force Christian slaves to conversion, besides preserving the law of Theodosius II prohibiting Jews from holding office or building new synagogues.[117] This was by no means full toleration, but it was merciful in comparison with what followed the conversion of the Goths to Catholicism. The change commenced promptly, though it did not at once reach its full severity. The third council of Toledo, held in May, 589, to condemn the Arian heresy and to settle the details of the conversion, adopted canons which show how free had hitherto been the intercourse between the races. Jews were forbidden to have Christian wives or concubines or servants, and all children sprung from such unions were to be baptized; any Christian slave circumcised or polluted with Jewish rites was to be set free; no Jew was to hold an office in which he could inflict punishment on a Christian, and this action was followed by some further disabilities decreed by the council of Narbonne in December of the same year.[118] That freedom of discussion continued for some time is manifested by the audacity of a Jew named Froganis, not long afterwards, who, as we are told, in the presence of all the nobles of the court, exalted the synagogue and depreciated the Church; it was easier perhaps to close his mouth than to confute him, for Aurasius, Bishop of Toledo, excommunicated him and declared him anathematized by the Father, Son and Holy Ghost and by all the celestial hierarchy and cohorts.[119]

THE JEWS UNDER THE WISIGOTHS

The greatest churchman of the day, St. Isidor of Seville, whose career of forty years commenced with the Catholic revolution, did what in him lay to stimulate and justify persecution. His treatise against the Jews is not vituperative, as are so many later controversial writings, but he proves that they are condemned for their fathers’ sins to dispersion and oppression until, at the end of the world, their eyes are to be opened and they are to believe.[120] That he should have felt called upon to compose such a work was an evil sign, and still more evil were the conclusions which he taught. They could not fail of deplorable results, as was seen when Sisebut ascended the throne in 612 and signalized the commencement of his reign by a forcible conversion of all the Jews of the kingdom. What means he adopted we are not told, but of course they were violent, which St. Isidor mildly reproves, seeing that conversion ought to be sincere, but which yet he holds to be strictly within the competence of the Church.[121] The Church in fact was thus brought face to face with the question whether the forcible propagation of the faith is lawful. This is so repugnant to the teachings of Christ that it could scarce be accepted, but, on the other hand, the sacrament of baptism is indelible, so the convenient doctrine was adopted and became the settled policy that, while Christianity was not to be spread by force, unwilling converts were nevertheless Christians; they were not to be permitted to apostatize and were subject to all the pains and penalties of heresy for any secret inclination to their own religion.[122] This fruitful conception led to infinite misery, as we shall see hereafter, and was the impelling motive which created the Spanish Inquisition.

Whatever may have been the extent and the success of Sisebut’s measures, the Jews soon afterwards reappear, and they and the conversos became the subject of an unintermittent series of ecclesiastical and secular legislation which shows that the policy so unfortunately adopted could only have attained its end by virtual extermination. The anvil bade fair to wear out the hammer—the constancy of the persecuted exhausted the ingenuity of the persecutor. With the conversion to Catholicism ecclesiastics became dominant throughout the Wisigothic territories and to their influence is attributable the varied series of measures which occupied the attention of the successive councils of Toledo from 633 until the Saracenic invasion in 711. Every expedient was tried—the seizure of all Jewish children, to be shut up in monasteries or to be given to God-fearing Christians; the alternative of expulsion or conversion, to the enforcement of which all kings at their accession were to take a solemn oath; the gentle persuasives of shaving, scourging, confiscation and exile. That the people at large did not share in the intolerance of their rulers is seen in the prohibitions of social intercourse, mixed marriages, and the holding of office. The spectre of proselytism was evoked in justification of these measures as though the persecuted Jew would seek to incur its dangers even had not the Talmud declared that “a proselyte is as damaging to Israel as an ulcer to a healthy body.” The enforced conversions thus obtained were regarded naturally with suspicion and the converts were the subjects of perpetual animadversion.[123]