A History of the Inquisition of Spain; vol. 3

by Henry Charles Lea

The brief was received in Valladolid about October 1st, but was not published in Lisbon until January 16, 1605. A royal cédula, however, was obtained, prohibiting the publication or execution of any sentences until this brief should take effect, thus including in its benefits all Portuguese who were in the hands of the Spanish tribunals, as well as in those of Portugal.[745] The effect of this was dramatically exhibited without delay. On October 20th the Seville tribunal announced a great auto de fe for November 7th. The stagings erected were on an unusually large scale; on the evening of the 6th took place the procession of the Green Cross, in which more than five hundred familiars participated; the people flocked in from the country in numbers beyond the capacity of the city to accommodate them. At night the confessors were introduced in the cells of those condemned to relaxation and, after completing all the preparations for the solemnity, the junior inquisitor, Fernando de Acebedo, sought his bed about eleven o’clock. Suddenly a courier arrived, armed with an order to admit him to the inquisitors, wherever they might be, whether in their houses or their beds, in consulta de fe or on the staging at the auto. He had left Valladolid at midnight on the 3d and, at break-neck speed, had made the distance to Seville in seventy-two hours, getting through the closed gates of the towns on the road, and arriving in time to serve on the inquisitors a royal cédula forbidding the celebration of the auto. Some there were who held that a royal decree was not to be obeyed unless rubricated by the Suprema, but this was an opinion not as yet established and, after a brief consultation, measures were hurriedly taken to suspend the celebration, to the blank astonishment of all Seville. Surmises were various, some explained it by the recent treaty with England, under which Englishmen in Spain were not to be troubled on account of heresy; others attributed it to the planets; others thought that among the condemned there was some one of lofty station and influence, whose friends had been able to save him, but the suggestion which found the widest acceptance was that it was due to the Portuguese New Christians, numerous and wealthy, who had offered large sums, estimated at eight hundred thousand ducats, to stave it off, and this was supported by the fact that the midnight horseman, before going to the Inquisition, had stopped at the house of Etor Autunez, a wealthy Portuguese merchant, who had given him fifty ducats for his good news.[746]

Under this perdon general, the three tribunals in Portugal liberated four hundred and ten prisoners simultaneously on January 16, 1605,[747] and there can be no doubt that the great body of Portuguese Judaizers in Spain obtained valid absolution for all past sins during the twelvemonth of its duration, although the Inquisition threw what obstacles it could in their way. In 1605, at Toledo, Antonio Fernández Paredes, a Portuguese on trial with three witnesses against him, was obliged to insist on his right under the pardon, and to argue that his wife Isabel Díaz had been released at Coimbra in virtue of it, until the tribunal referred the matter to the Suprema, which ordered his discharge, although subsequently, during the same year six other Portuguese were tried and sentenced without any reference being made to it.[748] Still, the hands of the Inquisition were tied and it lent its energies to detecting the Portuguese in new delinquencies. It sent out the brief to the tribunals, April 15th and, on April 20, 1606, it called their attention to the fact that the year had expired on January 16th, wherefore they were immediately to examine their records as to the Portuguese who had been discharged in virtue of the brief and to proceed against all who had not taken advantage of it as well as against those who had been guilty of heresy after its expiration.[749] Notwithstanding this, there must have been for some years a marked interruption of persecution. A writer remarks, in 1611, that in Seville the Castle of Triana was used as a penitential prison, for there was no one on trial, the Judaizers having all been pardoned, the Moriscos expelled and the Protestants suppressed.[750]

This episode, however could have no permanent influence and its chief interest lies in its manifestation of the numbers and wealth of the new class of offenders coming forward to replace the expelled Moriscos in furnishing material for autos de fe and in stimulating activity with the prospect of fines and confiscations. After this we hear little of the old Spanish Conversos; nearly all Judaizers are Portuguese and all Portuguese are presumably Judaizers—suspects who existed only on sufferance. In 1625, at Salamanca, the corregidor, in his nightly round, entered a tavern to arrest a priest who had committed murder. He had words with a party of Portuguese and forthwith arrested them all, charging them with being fugitives from the Portuguese Inquisition. He reported this to the Suprema, which communicated with the tribunal of Coimbra and they were all sent to it for trial.[751] When, in 1633, an effort was made to remove the disabilities under which the New Christians labored, the Licenciate Juan Adan de la Parra, in an argument against it, urged as his principal reason the obstinacy of the Portuguese neophytes: even the advocates of the measure admitted that it would be inapplicable to them, and Parra pointed out the impossibility of distinguishing between them and the Castilians.[752]

PORTUGUESE JEWS

Some efforts were made to check this influx and to prevent transit through Spain to France and Holland, where the refugees were of material assistance to the national enemies. In 1567, during the minority of Dom Sebastian, the old laws were revived forbidding New Christians to leave the kingdom, or to seek the colonies, or to sell real estate without a special royal licence. Sebastian subsequently repealed this, but it was renewed by Philip II, in 1587, and remained at least nominally in force, though difficult of execution. Partial relief was obtained, in 1601, when they paid Philip III two hundred thousand ducats for an irrevocable free permission to go to the colonies of both crowns, and to sell landed property but, with the faithlessness customary in dealing with the proscribed race, this irrevocable permission was withdrawn in 1610 and, in 1611 and 1612, the Suprema forwarded to the viceroy of Goa a royal provision ordering him to expel all of Jewish blood, to which he refused obedience, saying that all commerce was in their hands and the colonies would be ruined by their expulsion.[753]

Another decree of Philip III, April 20, 1619, called the attention of the inquisitor-general to the evils resulting from the multitudes of Portuguese passing, with their families and property, to France. All who could not show a licence under the Portuguese crown to leave that kingdom were to be seized and their property sequestrated without further orders, in accordance with which the Suprema promptly issued the necessary instructions to its commissioners in the sea-ports and frontier towns.[754] This doubtless led to increased restrictions in Portugal on emigration, and to it we may probably attribute an eloquent memorial, without date, from the Portuguese New Christians, asking for the removal of all limitations. Gentlemen of the noblest houses, they stated, had intermarried with them, both in Portugal and the colonies, and they had lavished their substance in the good work of founding churches, embellishing cofradías, endowing chapels, and liberal almsgiving. Free permission to enter Spain would work no harm to religion, for the Inquisition was everywhere, and the benefit arising from unrestricted intercourse was manifested in the revenues derived from the frontier towns, which were formerly farmed out for thirteen millions of maravedís, irregularly paid, and now were farmed for thirty-six millions, attributable to the spices, perfumes, porcelains, stuffs and other wares brought in by them. It was the same with the Spanish manufactures exported through Biscay—the wools and cloths of Segovia, the silks and other goods. The only objection to free intercourse was that they might take advantage of it to seek other prohibited lands, and this was sufficiently answered elsewhere, in addition to the fact that Portugal had so many ports that emigration could not be prevented, as two hours sufficed to reach the sea and embark, while land travel was slow and expensive, and could be stopped at the frontier towns. The New Christians had greatly enriched the kingdom and the colonies by their labors. In Brazil, where they could hold real estate, nearly all the sugar plantations were in their hands, and these they were constantly increasing, to the great profit of the colony and of the revenue. As by law they were excluded from all offices and dignities, commerce was their only resource.[755] Possibly these representations may have been convincing, for the prohibition was withdrawn, to be subsequently renewed as we shall see.

PORTUGUESE JEWS

If they desired to escape from Portugal, Portugal was quite as anxious to get rid of them, by extermination or otherwise. The pious intensity of hatred towards them finds expression, in 1621, in a ferocious work by Vicente da Costa Mattos, of which the declared object was to drive them from the land. All the old stories of their malice to Christians were raked together and set forth as uncontradicted truths. They were enemies of mankind, wandering like gypsies through the world and living on the sweat of others. They had possessed themselves of all trade, farming the lands of individuals and the royal patrimony, with no capital but industry and lack of conscience. They live only for the perdition of the world; of old, God punished those who ill-treated them, but now he punishes those who endure them; the decline of the Spanish kingdoms was the punishment sent by God for tolerating them. They were all idolators and sodomites, and wherever they went they infected the land with their abominations, and were constantly seeking to convert Christians to their foul belief. Luther commenced by Judaizing; all heretics were either Jews or descendants of Judaizers, as was seen in England, Germany and other parts where they flourished; Calvin called himself the Father of Jews, like many other deniers of the Trinity, and Bucer in his will declared that Christ was not the Savior promised. Their perverse obstinacy was sufficiently proved, by the numbers who were every day burnt, and the still greater numbers who escaped by penance after conviction.[756] This crazy ebullition of ignorant hate accorded so well with the prejudices of the time that a second edition was called for in 1633; in 1629 it was translated into Castilian by Fray Diego Gavilan Vera, and this was reprinted in 1680.

The hatred, indeed, was quenchless which was not satisfied with what the Inquisition was doing. In 1623 we chance to hear of the tribunal of Evora arresting a hundred New Christians of the little town of Montemor o Novo.[757] The autos de fe were frequently conducted on a scale unknown in contemporary Castile. The tribunal of Coimbra held one, August 16, 1626, with two hundred and forty-seven penitents and relaxados, another on May 6, 1629, with two hundred and eighteen and another on August 17, 1631 with two hundred and forty-seven. The statistics between 1620 and 1640 are not complete, for there were ten autos of which the details have not been preserved but, even without these, the fearful aggregate is two hundred and thirty relaxed in person, a hundred and sixty-one in effigy and forty-nine hundred and ninety-five penanced—and this is in addition to several hundred prisoners discharged under two pardons granted in 1627 and 1630, which no doubt were heavily paid for.[758] Besides these pardons an Edict of Grace was published in 1622 but, as we have seen, such mercies were burdened with intolerable conditions, and only sixteen persons came forward under it—twelve in Lisbon and four in Evora—and all these had already been testified against.[759] In 1630, the royal confessor Sotomayor reported that, in interviewing the deputies of the New Christians, he found that they wanted no more Edicts of Grace; the last one, they said, had done them no good but much harm, as it brought infinite denunciations against them and filled the prisons.[760] There is very likely exaggeration, but nothing more than exaggeration, in the assertion of Luys de Melo that, in this period, the activity of the Inquisition had virtually depopulated the cities of Coimbra, Oporto, Braga, Lamego, Braganza, Evora, Beja and part of Lisbon, and the towns of Santarem, Tomar, Trancoso, Avero, Guimaraens, Vinais, Villaflor, Fundan, Montemor o Velho and o Novo and many other places, while the prisons of the three tribunals were always full and the autos so frequent that each tribunal celebrated one almost every year. One in Coimbra occupied two days, there being more than a hundred each day, and among them professors, canons, priests, curas with cure of souls, vicars-general, frailes, nuns, knights, including some of the Military Orders of kin with the highest of the land, and there was even a discalced Franciscan so pertinacious that he was burnt alive.[761]