A History of the Inquisition of Spain; vol. 3

by Henry Charles Lea

The tribunal ordered all New Christians to dwell in the call and required them, on all feasts of precept, to attend mass in the cathedral in a body, preceded by a minister of the Inquisition and in charge of an alguazil. Impoverished, dishonored and watched, the position became intolerable. A number resolved to expatriate themselves and secretly made arrangements with an English ship lying in the harbor to carry them away. The passage-money was paid and they succeeded in embarking, but rough weather detained the ship; they had not procured the necessary licences to leave Spain, they were seized and cast into prison with the members of their families. This occurred in 1688 and three years were consumed in their trials. The result was seen in the four autos held in March, May and July, 1691. For those who had been reconciled in 1679 and were now convicted of relapse there could be no pardon. A huge brasero, eighty feet square and eight feet high, with twenty-five stakes, was prepared on the sea-shore, two miles from the city, in order that the people might not be incommoded by the stench. In all thirty-seven were relaxed in person, of whom only three were pertinacious to the last and were burnt alive. Eight were relaxed in effigy, of whom four were fugitives and four were dead—three of the latter having died in prison. There were fifteen reconciliations in person and three in effigy. Finally there were twenty-four who, although among the reconciled of 1679, escaped with abjuration de levi and fines amounting to sixty-four hundred libras.[832] This shows that the little community had already begun to repair its shattered fortunes, and renders it probable that the confiscations of the relaxed and reconciled rewarded the tribunal abundantly for its labors. The lesson seems to have been sufficiently severe to serve its purpose. We hear nothing more of Judaism in Majorca; during the height of persecution elsewhere, the tribunal celebrated two autos, May 31, 1722 and July 2, 1724, in which nine penitents appeared, but none of them were Judaizers.[833] Although the New Christians were still confined to their separate quarter, in time, as we have seen, they became thoroughly Catholic.

With the opening of the eighteenth century it looked as though the victory over Judaism had been virtually won. The War of Succession must of course have interfered with the operations of the Inquisition, but this does not suffice to explain the marked falling off in the number of Judaizers in the autos, so far as manifested by the records before me. In Catalonia, which held out long after the rest of Spain was pacified, the Inquisition was fairly re-established in 1715, after which, for three years, the Barcelona tribunal, out of a total of twenty-five cases, had but three of Jews—a mother and two daughters who had fled from Seville and had been traced to Catalonia.[834] In Córdova the records are imperfect but, as far as they go, from 1700 to 1720, they show but five cases.[835] In Toledo, during the same twenty-one years, out of a total of eighty-eight trials, only twenty-three were for Judaism.[836]

REVIVAL OF PERSECUTION

The fires of persecution, however, were only slumbering and broke out again suddenly with renewed fierceness. Possibly this may be attributable to the discovery in Madrid of an organized synagogue, composed of twenty families who, since 1707, had been accustomed to meet for their devotions and, in 1714, had elected a rabbi, whose name they sent to Leghorn for confirmation. Comparative immunity had brought recklessness and we are told that they observed the Christian fast-days with dancing and guitar-playing. Five of them were relaxed in the auto of April 7, 1720.[837] It was probably this discovery that aroused the other tribunals to renewed activity, which was abundantly rewarded, for there seems at this time to have been little concealment by Judaizers. In the Toledo auto of March 19, 1721, Sebastian Antonio de Paz, administrador del tabaco, is asserted to have married the daughter of his wife, and Francisco de Mendoza y Rodríguez his first cousin, “according to the Law of Moses.”[838]

For some years this revival of persecution raged with a virulence rivalling that of the earlier period. In a collection of sixty-four autos, held between 1721 and 1727, there were in all eight hundred and sixty-eight cases, of which eight hundred and twenty were for Judaism, nor did the tribunals err on the side of mercy. There were seventy-five relaxations in person and seventy-four in effigy, while scourging, the galleys and imprisonment were lavishly imposed.[839] The geographical distribution of the culprits is worthy of note. The kingdoms of the crown of Aragon show few traces of Judaism. Valencia contributed but twenty cases, Barcelona five, Saragossa one and Majorca none—or twenty-six in all. Among the tribunals of the crown of Castile, Logroño held no auto during these years; Santiago furnished only four cases, while Granada had two hundred and twenty-nine, Seville a hundred and sixty-seven and Córdova seventy-eight. The years 1722 and 1723 were those in which persecution was most active, the number diminishing rapidly afterwards.[840] It still, however, continued at intervals. In Córdova there were autos in 1728, 1730 and 1731, in which there were in all twenty-six cases of Judaism; then there was an interval until 1745, when only two cases occurred.[841] In Toledo, after 1726, there was no case of Judaism until 1738, when there were fourteen. This seems to have exhausted the material for prosecution, for until the Toledan record ends in 1794, there was but a single subsequent case, which occurred in 1756.[842] In Madrid there were several Jews relaxed in 1732, charged with scourging and burning an image of Christ, in a house in the calle de las Infantas.[843] In Valladolid, at an auto, June 13, 1745, there was one Judaizer relaxed and four reconciled, while in Seville, July 4, although there were four Moslems there was not a single Jew.[844] At Llerena, in 1752, we hear of the relaxation of six effigies of fugitives and one of a dead woman, which must evidently have been cases of Judaism.[845]

FOREIGNERS EXCLUDED

These scattering details can make no pretension to completeness, and yet they suffice to show that Judaism at last was substantially rooted out of Spanish soil, after a continuous struggle of three centuries. How complete was this eradication is manifested by a summarized list of all cases of every kind, coming before all the tribunals, from 1780 until the suppression of the Inquisition in 1820, embracing an aggregate of over five thousand. In these forty years, the whole number of prosecutions connected with Judaism was but sixteen, and of these ten were foreigners who had evaded the laws prohibiting entrance to Jews while, of the six natives, four were prosecuted for suspicions and propositions. The latest case was at Córdova, in 1818, of Manuel Santiago Vivar for Judaizing acts—the final scene in the long tragedy which had secured uniformity of faith at the cost of so much blood and suffering.[846]

During this later period, the exclusion of foreign Jews was exercising the Holy Office much more than the detection of native ones. The savage law will be remembered by which, in 1499, Ferdinand and Isabella prohibited the return of the expelled Jews or the entrance of foreigners under pain of death and confiscation.[847] Although this law was retained on the statute-book, it probably was not enforced in all its ferocity, but the maintenance of the exclusion was inevitable when such unremitting pains were taken to exterminate Judaism. When the visitas de navíos, or examination of all ships arriving at Spanish ports, were organized, the keeping out of Jews was held in view as much as that of Lutheran heretics and books; if a Jew were found on board, he was to be examined; if he admitted baptism he was to be seized and his goods were to be confiscated; if unbaptized and he made no attempt to land, he was to be allowed to depart with the ship.[848] Still, the indefatigable mercantile energy of the Jews and the venality of officials, to a limited extent, neutralized these precautions. In 1656, the trial at Murcia of Enrique Pereira, whose domicile was in Lucca and who was arrested while trading at Beas, shows that there was intercourse between the Portuguese in Spain and their brethren in Italy; those of Spain would go by sea to Nice or elsewhere to enjoy freedom of worship, while Italian Jews came to Spain to trade, in spite of inquisitorial vigilance.[849] These furtive attempts, with their perils, were but tantalizing to those who looked with longing on the tempting Spanish market; licences to come were much more desirable and we have seen that, in 1634, under Olivares, they were sometimes issued. They were grudgingly recognized by the tribunals, as in the case mentioned above in 1645. More unlucky, in 1679, was Samuel de Jacob, who was thrown in prison, although he held a licence, and we are told that, although those who held licences could not be prosecuted as heretics, still, if they blasphemed or derided the faith, they could be chastised with fines, scourging or the galleys, according to the resultant scandal, while attempts to proselyte incurred capital punishment.[850] In 1689, special orders were issued to disregard an agreement which Don Pedro Ronquillo, under powers from the king, had made with an English Jew, enabling him to land at any port in Spain.[851]

FOREIGNERS EXCLUDED