A History of the Inquisition of Spain; vol. 3

by Henry Charles Lea

PORTUGUESE JEWS

Notwithstanding these superhuman exertions the inquisitors complained that their labors were unavailing; Judaism was steadily increasing; the misfortunes of the land were attributable to the idolatry of this evil rabble, and they clamored for more drastic measures. The Supreme Council, January 17, 1619, addressed to Philip III a consulta urging that prompt action was necessary in view of the contamination, and of the infinite sacrileges committed, to the scandal of the faithful. The king, it said, did not want vassals only, but good vassals, and it therefore suggested that, when a penitent was condemned to confiscation, he should also be banished; he would thus be stripped of everything and would not take wealth to enrich the enemy as now was the case. It also said that a general visitation was on foot which had already produced much result; presumably there were many in Madrid who should be investigated, and the king was asked to order a visitation there. One member of the council, Mendo de la Mota, went even further, and wanted banishment for all required to abjure for vehement suspicion. Philip responded to this with chilling indifference; if those who abjured for suspicion were banished, they would take their money with them; it was a doubtful measure and he wished the council to consider it further; as regarded the Portuguese in Castile, if a list was furnished, with notes as to grounds for suspicion, he would have them investigated. The list was duly supplied, but the investigation was not made.[762]

The effort was resumed the next year. On April 30, 1620, the tribunals of Lisbon and Evora sent to Philip relations of the autos held by them on the previous September 29th, so that he might see the large numbers punished on those occasions, and recognize the necessity of more active measures of repression. Among them were three canons of Coimbra, three frailes and several lawyers. Six canons of Coimbra, all New Christians, had been arrested; they were all appointees of the pope, and the king was prayed to ask him to close the door on all applicants for benefices of that race; also to order that none should be admitted to the Church, either as seculars or regulars, and none to public office—which indicates how little the prohibitory laws were respected.[763]

The youthful Philip IV was scarce more than seated on the throne when, in 1622, Fernando Mascarenhas, Bishop of Faro, urged him to provide some remedy for the political dangers apprehended from the New Christians. It was in evidence, he said, that they were all secretly Jews and the state was in great peril from them as they were very numerous. There was no city in which they were not powerful through their wealth and the important positions held by them, while the danger of detection and punishment might lead them to cause serious trouble through alliance with enemies. It was found that they secretly invested their capital in dealings with the Dutch, and in Dutch commercial companies and, if they ventured their wealth with these rebels, they would conspire with them, especially as the Inquisition was pushing them hard, arresting them all and they had no other remedy.[764] Israel has rarely had a more flattering tribute to its intellectual superiority than the fears excited by this remnant surviving through near a century of pitiless persecution.

Doubtless there were other urgent warnings which have not reached us and, in 1628, Philip called for a formal expression of opinion from his Portuguese prelates. By his order they assembled at Tomar and summoned to their aid all who were most distinguished in the kingdom for learning and virtue. After prolonged debates they submitted to him a series of suggestions to which he replied seriatim. In view of the failure of all previous efforts to abate the evils wrought and threatened by the New Christians, the remedy they preferred was the thorough expulsion of the whole race; if this were not practicable, at least those who were full-blooded Jews, excepting such as could prove their Christianity, should be banished, and their property be confiscated; as for those of half or quarter blood, all should go who had been, or who in future should be reconciled, or sentenced to abjure de vehementi, unless inquisitors were satisfied of their true repentance and conversion. To this Philip replied, proposing delay in the case of the full-blooded Conversos, and assenting to the exile of the reconciled and vehemently suspect. For the further relief of the kingdom, the bishops proposed that all who desired could, within a year, irrevocably expatriate themselves, selling their property and taking with them the proceeds, but not in jewels or the precious metals. To this the royal answer was that already there was unrestricted liberty to go, but as evils had arisen from their return, in future it should be prohibited. The next suggestion was significant; to check the spread of Judaic infection, by intermarriage, which was destroying the lustre of the nobility, no dower in such unions should exceed two thousand cruzados, and the husband should be disabled from holding positions of honor and dignity. To the first clause the king assented; to the latter he said that the existing laws in favor of the nobility should be enforced. To prevent the constant profanation of the sacraments it was proposed that papal briefs should be procured prohibiting all entrance into the Church of all who were New Christians, even in the tenth degree. To this the king promised to apply for such briefs and meanwhile the bishops should refuse to install persons bearing dispensations and report to him, and also represent to the pope the evils attendant on such preferment. The next suggestion was that the king should ratify and enforce the prohibition to hold secular offices and dignities, to which he replied that it should be strictly enforced. Finally, the bishops proposed that the New Christians should be wholly excluded from trade and commerce or, if this was not possible, at least from that which concerned the royal revenues, but to this Philip answered rather curtly that it was none of their business.[765]

Such were the views of Christian prelates, and even the partial concessions of the king seemed sufficient to threaten the New Christians with virtual extinction, but the whole portentous transaction served only to put on record the extremes to which bigotry could reach. As Luys de Melo suggestively says, after giving the documents in full, the orders issued by the king were not executed, and it would be superfluous to explain the cause of this to any one acquainted with the methods of government of the period. Yet it had one result, for the New Christians, in fear of the threatened consequences, paid to King Philip eighty thousand ducats for the privilege of leaving Portugal and, under this, some five thousand families emigrated to Castile, besides a countless number of individual stragglers, so that it would be a wonder to find any place in Spain not filled with Portuguese Jews.[766] They felt themselves in perfect safety, for the Castilian tribunals refused to honor requisitions from those of Portugal.[767] Efforts were also made to obtain modification of procedure, but in vain. By a cédula of December 20, 1633, Philip expressed his approbation of the existing rules and refused all change; moreover, he gave to Inquisitor-general de Castro all the memorials, petitions and arguments presented to him, thus furnishing to the Inquisition the names of those upon whom to wreak its vengeance.[768]

The question of transit to France came up again in 1632, when the Suprema notified Philip that the commissioner at Pampeluna reported that troops of Portuguese families were passing into France, many of them people of wealth, with litters and coaches, and the Inquisition did not interfere with them, as the last instructions were that they should not be impeded. The result of this representation was that the orders of 1619 were repeated.[769] Not content with retaining those who wished to expatriate themselves, when the Admiral of Castile, in 1636, captured Saint-Jean de Luz, and there were hopes of conquering Guienne, which was ripe for revolt, the Inquisition took steps to seize the refugees who might have settled there, though it had no evidence that they were Judaizers. It assumed that they were apostates and as such not included in the promises held out to the inhabitants at large, and that anyhow the cause of the faith was privileged. The king was therefore asked to order the admiral to send to the border all whom its agents might designate, so that they could be seized without attracting attention.[770] It is possible that some victims may thus have been procured during the brief time in which the Spaniards held their advantage.

PORTUGUESE JEWS

The refugees, however, mainly bent their steps to Holland, where they enjoyed free toleration and could work for their own advancement and the detriment of their oppressors. This was the leading cause of the effort to prevent emigration, and it was a matter of much concern. Luys de Melo says that there had passed to Holland more than two thousand families and, in those rebel states, they had purchased the right to establish synagogues. Those who publicly Judaized there were the same as those who, quitting Portugal as sanbenitados, published that their confession of Judaism was under coercion of the Inquisition. Many who had lived in misery in Portugal were rich in Holland; they paid contributions to those rebel states, and assisted to maintain their fleets and armies; they invested largely in the East India Company, and thus were absorbing a great part of Spanish commerce and, under feigned names and in vessels of the United Provinces, they did a large trade in contraband goods.[771] In short, their commercial aptitudes were impoverishing Spain and enriching her enemies. The writer unconsciously points out how large a part intolerance played in the decadence of the state.

Nor was this the only mischief wrought by their hostility to the land that had driven them forth. In 1634, the Capitan Esteban de Ares Fonseca, in a memorial to the Suprema, represents the refugees in Holland as aiding actively the enemies of Spain, and as holding constant correspondence with spies residing there in the guise of merchants. The Dutch West India Company, he says, was controlled by Jews, who were large stockholders, and its chief profits were derived from piracy in the colonies, especially those of Portugal on the Brazilian coast, where the New Christians were numerous and were in correspondence with the enemy. It was two Jews, Nuño Alvarez Franco and Manuel Fernandez Drago, residents of Bahía, who planned and executed the capture of that place by the Dutch in 1625. Franco, he adds, now lives in Lisbon as a spy, under orders from Holland, and his brother Jacob Franco carries intelligence back and forth disguised as a Fleming of Antwerp. Drago is still in Bahía; he is a great rabbi and teacher of the Jews, and moreover is a spy who last year sent word to the Dutch to return there. The capture of Pernambuco was the work of the Jews of Amsterdam, chief among whom was Antonio Vaez Henriquez, known as Cohen, who had lived there, who arranged the plans and accompanied the expedition; he is now residing in Seville as a merchant, but is nothing but a spy. Last year he went to Amsterdam with a plan for the capture of Havana, where he has a correspondent named Manuel de Torres. At present a large fleet of eighteen sail is fitting out for the relief of Pernambuco, under command of David Peixoto, a Jew, who proposes to call at Buarcos and penetrate to Coimbra, where the Inquisition is to be burnt and the prisoners are to be liberated. It was a Jew of Amsterdam, named Francisco de Campos, who took the island of Fernando de Noronha; it could readily be recaptured, as it has a garrison of only thirty-four men with four cannon. In San Sebastian, there is a Jew named Abraham Ger, who calls himself Juan Gilles, under Dutch pay; he works much mischief to Spain and keeps a man named Rafael Mendez, who is constantly travelling back and forth.[772]