All this is of supreme importance in estimating the benignity and mercy of which the Inquisition was constantly boasting. The sentences rendered may frequently appear to us trivial, but the penance was the smallest part of the penalty. Villanueva, as we have seen, was condemned merely to abjure for light suspicion of heresy and to a few years’ absence from Madrid, but that cast disgrace upon his whole kindred; he and his descendants fell into the class of pariahs and could form no alliance outside of that caste; through generations they were branded with an ineffaceable stigma. To Spanish pundonor the scaffold were merciful in comparison. The mercy of the Inquisition was more to be dreaded than the severity of other tribunals and men might well beware of incurring the enmity of those who could at discretion consign them and their posterity to infamy.
The limpieza test survived the Revolution and purity of blood was as essential under the Restoration as under the old monarchy, but there was some relaxation of rigidity. Thus, if a man and wife proved their limpieza, it sufficed for their children, only a legal certificate of baptism being required, and in the same way the proofs presented by one brother answered for another on his furnishing evidence of their common paternity.[906] A couple of years was also allowed to appointees in which to put in their proofs, and there is even a case of secretaries admitted without proofs, but with a warning that it would not be allowed again.[907] In the extreme penury of the time the Suprema imposed a fee, for its own benefit, of 60 reales on every investigation, which the receivers were required to collect and to remit yearly.[908] It was also in receipt of the two per cent. levied by the depositarios de los pretendientes, and one of its last acts was the acknowledgement, February 10, 1820, of 360 reales remitted by the depositario of Seville, which would show that 18,000 reales had passed through his hands.[909] The part of the business which fell to the Suprema was not large. Its first certificate is dated January 3, 1816 and the last one January 4, 1820, the whole number being only one hundred and eight.[910] From these certificates it would appear that the investigation was scarce more than a formality.
The demand for limpieza survived the Inquisition, though with its closure it is not easy to conjecture where any serious proofs could be found. Up to 1859 it was still requisite for entrance into the corps of cadets but, in 1860, the Córtes unanimously abolished this survival of prejudice and intolerance.[911]
MAJORCA
Yet there is still a corner of Spain where that prejudice has proved superior to law. We shall have occasion hereafter to refer to the terrible persecution of the Judaizing New Christians of Majorca, in 1679 and 1691. Padre Francisco Garau, S. J., who promptly printed an exulting account of the four autos de fe celebrated in the latter year, tells us that the descendants of Conversos formed a community of some two hundred families, living huddled together in the calle and apart from the rest of the population, for there never was intermarriage between them and the Old Christians. The people called them Jews and, on their complaining of this, an offensive nick-name was speedily invented and they were termed chuetas in allusion to their avoidance of pork. They were not allowed to hold public office, although great efforts, supported by the government, were made by the wealthy and influential among them. The same proscription was exercised by the guilds and brotherhoods, especially by the surgeons, confectioners, candle-makers, grocers and silk-weavers, so that they were virtually all traders.[912] Thus there was a solid foundation of inveterate prejudice which was stimulated, in 1755, by the malicious reprint of Father Garau’s book, followed by the circulation of lists, furnished by the secretary of the tribunal, of all Conversos punished by the Inquisition, comprising all the families of Jewish extraction. This caused a recrudescence of ill-feeling, and complaint was made to Carlos III, who responded in cédulas of December 10, 1782, October 9, 1785 and April 18, 1788, ordering that they should not be impeded from residing in any part of Palma or of the islands, that the entrance-gate of the calle should be destroyed, and that insults or calling them Jews or chuetas should be punished with four years of presidio. They were declared fit for service in army or navy or any other department, and free to exercise all arts and trades, and all this was extended to the descendants of Conversos throughout Spain.[913]
Yet even an autocratic monarch could not overcome prejudices so deep-rooted. Church and State in Majorca had bitterly opposed the appeal to the throne and had succeeded in postponing action for ten years. The University, in 1776, had revived its statute of limpieza and had closed its doors to the proscribed class. When the royal decrees came they provoked warm opposition on the part of the municipal authorities who resolved not to yield obedience. It was the force of events rather than the growth of tolerance that gradually brought relief. In 1808, when the nation rose against the French, they were admitted to military service, but when the local levies were ordered to the mainland, there was a mutiny in which the barrio del Segell was sacked.
After the reaction of the Restoration, under the revolution of 1820 they were enrolled in the National Guard, but when came the counter-revolution of 1823 they were disarmed and the rabble promptly sacked their houses and made bon-fires of what was too cumbrous to steal. After the death of Fernando VII the enforced constitutionalism of the Cristina government restored them practically to citizenship and military service and gradually their exclusion from civil office disappeared.
Popular aversion however was not to be overcome by statute. It was rekindled, in 1856, by a suit brought to establish their right to membership in the Circulo Balear, or Balearic Club, which led to republication of the essential portions of Father Garau’s book. This was answered, in 1858, by Tomás Bertran Soler, from whom we learn that the New Christians were still excluded from Christian society and continued to dwell in the calle; they were refused all public offices and admission to guilds and brotherhoods so that they were confined to trading; they were compelled to marry among themselves, for no one would contract alliance with them, nor would the ecclesiastical authorities grant licences for mixed marriages. Since then there has been some abatement of popular prejudice, but the latest accessible view of the situation, in 1877, by Padre Taronji, a priest of the proscribed class, represents the clergy as still obstinately impervious to all ideas of extending fellowship to their fellow-believers and as busily fanning the dying embers of class hatred, based on events two centuries old.[914]
Wise statesmanship in Spain would have sought the unification of the races within its borders. In place of this, race hatred was stimulated in the name of religion, with the deplorable results recorded in Spanish history.