The most serious business of the tribunal, in the line of its proper functions, was with the apostasy of the Jewish New Christians. From the very foundation of the colonies, as we have seen in the preceding chapter, restrictions were laid on the emigration of Conversos and a law of 1543, preserved in the Recopilacion, orders that search be made for all descendants of Jews who were to be rigorously expelled.[711] In spite, however, of the jealous care observed to preserve the colonies from all danger of Jewish infection, the commercial attractions were so powerful that the New Christians eluded all precautions. At first, however, they occupied but a small portion of the energies of the tribunal. It is true that among the earliest denunciations received, in 1570, were those of the Licenciate Juan Alvarez, a physician, and of his brother-in-law Alonso Alvarez with his wife, children and servants, for Judaism, but as their names are absent from the subsequent auto it is presumable that they were found innocent.[712] The first appearance of Jews is in the auto of October 29, 1581, when Manuel López, a Portuguese, was reconciled with confiscation and perpetual prison, and Diego de la Rosa, described as a native of Quito, was required to abjure de levi and was exiled—showing that the evidence against him was very dubious.[713] After this there are none until the great auto of April 5, 1592, in which there were two, Nicholas Morin, a Frenchman, and Francisco Díaz, a Portuguese, the former required to abjure de levi and the latter reconciled.[714]

The conquest of Portugal, in 1580, had led to a large emigration to Castile, where Portuguese soon became synonymous with Judaizer, and this was beginning to make itself manifest in the colonies. The auto of December 17, 1595, gave impressive evidence of this. Five Portuguese—Juan Méndez, Antonio Núñez, Juan López, Francisco Báez and Manuel Rodríguez—were reconciled. Another, Herman Jorje, had died during trial and his memory was not prosecuted. There were also four martyrs. Jorje Núñez denied until he was tied upon the rack; he then confessed and refused to be converted, but after his sentence of relaxation was read he weakened and was strangled before burning. Francisco Rodríguez endured torture without confessing; when threatened with repetition he endeavored unsuccessfully to commit suicide; he was voted to relaxation with torture in caput alienum, and under it he accused several persons but revoked at ratification. He was pertinacious to the last and was burnt alive. Juan Fernández was relaxed, although insane; the Suprema expressed doubts whether he had intelligence enough to render him responsible. Pedro de Contreras had been tortured for confession and again in caput alienum; he denied Judaism throughout and was relaxed as a negativo; at the auto he manifested great devotion to a crucifix and presumably was strangled; in all probability he was really a Christian.[715]

This bloody work affords a foretaste of what was to come. At the auto of December 10, 1600, there were fourteen Portuguese Judaizers. Twelve of them had professed conversion and were reconciled; with two, convictions were too strong and they were burnt alive—Duarte Núñez de Cea and Baltasar Lucena, whose last words were that he denied Christ.[716] The auto of March 13, 1605, exhibited sixteen Judaizers reconciled in person and one in effigy. Six who had fled were burnt in effigy and three less fortunate were burnt in person. Besides these was Antonio Corrca who, during his trial, was converted by the inspiration of God; he was reconciled with three years in prison, which he served in the convent of la Merced and then was sent to Spain, dying, in 1622, as a fraile in Ossuna, in the odor of sanctity, which has rendered him the subject of several biographies.[717]

The auto of June 1, 1608, afforded but one case, and that an unusual one—Domingo López, tried for Judaism and acquitted. This may be explained by the fact that the Portuguese New Christians had purchased, in 1604, a general pardon in Spain, which reached Peru in 1605 and for a time repressed inquisitorial activity in this direction. In 1610 there was a noteworthy case of Manuel Ramos, one of the fugitives who had been burnt in effigy in 1605. He had been captured and on being tried was now acquitted.[718] In an auto of June 17, 1612, there were five reconciliations for Judaism.[719] From this time for some years there were only scattering cases. Possibly the terrible energy manifested by the tribunal had served as a deterrent and checked the Portuguese influx, but if so the impression was but temporary. We have seen (p. 337) the complaints that arose about this time concerning the Portuguese immigration by way of Brazil and Buenos Ayres. This increased greatly when, in 1618, a Portuguese inquisitor came to Rio de Janeiro, published an Edict of Faith and then in a few days made many arrests and sequestrated property to the amount of more than 200,000 pesos. The frightened Judaizers sought refuge in Spanish territory and kept the commissioner at Buenos Ayres, Francisco de Trejo, in a state of continual anxiety. He reported, January 15, 1619, that since the new governor, Diego Martin, had come the visitas de navíos had been interrupted and he asked for such positive instructions that the authorities should understand that no foreigners could land until he had inspected the ship. His protests were unavailing. By the middle of April there had arrived eight ships bringing Portuguese passengers, who had paid Castilians to take them as servants so that they might enter. Governor Martin was alert and threw them in prison, in order to send them back, but many managed to get through. Some of them were married in prison to Buenos Ayres women, so as to give them a standing in the community; others broke gaol and took refuge in convents, when the frailes refused to surrender them, giving security to the governor that they would prove themselves to be not of the prohibited class, whereupon they scattered to the interior and the man who had furnished the security calmly paid the forfeit. It is true that forty of them were sent back, but it was evidently impossible to exclude these proscribed and hunted beings who were so persistent and resourceful. The tribunal, in fact, was apparently not averse to obtaining fresh material for condemnation and confiscation, for it did not authorize the commissioner to arrest suspects and send them back, but only to compile information about them and forward it to Lima, keeping advised as to their destinations so that they could be seized when wanted.[720] The immigration continued and, in 1623, the tribunal called the attention of the Suprema to the increasing numbers of Portuguese, who were spreading throughout the interior provinces. This continued and, in 1635, the fiscal of the Audiencia of Charcas represented forcibly to the king the evil of the innumerable Jews who had entered and were constantly coming.[721]

The tribunal resumed its labors and, by December 21, 1625, it was ready with an auto in which ten Judaizers were reconciled. Two had committed suicide in prison and were burnt with their bones. Two more were relaxed—Juan Acuña de Noroña, who was described as impenitent and must have been burnt alive, and Diego de Andrada who gave signs of repentance at the last and was probably strangled before burning.[722]

In 1626 there commenced a trial which illustrates forcibly the inexorable discipline of the Church, rendering it the supreme duty of the Christian to persecute and destroy all heresy. Francisco Maldonado de Silva was a surgeon of high repute in Concepcion de Chile. He was of Portuguese descent. His father had suffered in the Inquisition, had been reconciled and brought up his children, two girls and a boy, as Christians. Francisco was a good Catholic until, at the age of 18, he chanced to read the Scrutinium Scripturarum of Pablo de Santa María, Bishop of Búrgos—a controversial work written for the conversion of Jews.[723] So far from confirming him in the faith it raised doubts leading him to consult his father, who told him to study the Bible and instructed him in the Law of Moses. He became an ardent convert to Judaism, but kept his secret from his mother and two sisters and from his wife, for he was married and had a child, and his wife was pregnant when he was arrested. During her absence, a year or two before, he had circumcised himself. At the age of 35, considering that his sister Isabel who was about 33, was mature enough for religious independence, he revealed his secret to her and endeavored to convert her, but in vain, and he was impervious to her entreaties to abandon his faith. They seem to have been tenderly attached to each other; he was her sole support as well as that of her mother and sister, but she could not escape the necessity of communicating the facts in confession to her confessor. The prescriptions of the Church were absolute; no family ties relieved one from the obligation of denouncing heresy, and she could not hope for sacramental absolution without discharging the duty. We can picture to ourselves the torment of that agonized soul as she nerved herself to the awful duty which would cost her a lifetime of remorse and misery when she obeyed her confessor’s commands and denounced her brother to the Inquisition.

The warrant for his arrest was issued December 12, 1626, and executed at Concepcion April 29, 1627. His friend, the Dominican Fray Diego de Ureña, visited him in his place of confinement, May 2, and sought to convert him, but he was resolved to die in the faith in which his father had died. So when transferred to Santiago, the Augustinian Fray Alonso de Almeida made similar efforts with like ill-success; he knew that he should die for the faith, he had never spoken to any one but his sister and she had betrayed him. He was received in Lima July 23d and was admitted to an audience the same day. When required to swear on the cross he refused, saying that he was a Jew and would live and die as such; if he had to swear it would be by the living God, the God of Israel. His trial went on through all the customary formalities, protracted by the repeated conferences held with theologians who endeavored to convince him of his errors. Eleven of these were held without weakening his pertinacity until, on January 26, 1633, the consulta de fe unanimously condemned him to relaxation.

A long sickness followed, caused by a fast of eighty days which had reduced him almost to a skeleton covered with sores. On convalescing, he asked for another conference, to solve the doubts which he had drawn up in writing. It was held June 26, 1634, and left him as pertinacious as ever. Meanwhile the prison was filling with Judaizers, of whom a number had been discovered in Lima. He asked for maize husks in place of his ration of bread, and with them made a rope by which he escaped through a window and visited two neighboring cells, urging the prisoners to be steadfast in their law; they denounced him and he made no secret of it, confessing freely what he had done. It was a mercy of God, we are told, that his prolonged fast had rendered him deaf, or he would have learned much from them of what had been going on.

The tribunal was so preoccupied, with the numerous trials on foot at the time, that Maldonado was left undisturbed, awaiting the general auto that was to follow. We hear nothing more until, after an interval of four years, a thirteenth conference was held at his request, November 12, 1638. It was as fruitless as its predecessors and, at its conclusion, he produced two books (each of them of more than a hundred leaves), made with marvellous ingenuity out of scraps of paper and written with ink made of charcoal and pens cut out of egg-shells with a knife fashioned from a nail, which he said he delivered up for the discharge of his conscience. Then on December 9th and 10th were held two more conferences in which his pertinacity remained unshaken. The long tragedy was now drawing to an end after an imprisonment which had lasted for nearly thirteen years. He was brought out in the great auto of January 23, 1639, where, when the sentences of relaxation were read, a sudden whirlwind tore away the awning and, looking up, he exclaimed “The God of Israel does this to look upon me face to face!” He was unshrinking to the last and was burnt alive a true martyr to his faith. His two paper books were hung around his neck to burn with him and assist in burning him.[724]

This auto of 1639, the greatest that had as yet been held in the New World, was the culmination of the “complicidad grande”—the name given by the inquisitors to a number of Judaizers whom they had discovered. As they described the situation, in a report of 1636, large numbers of Portuguese had entered the kingdom by way of Buenos Ayres, Brazil, Mexico, Granada and Puerto Bello, thus increasing the already numerous bands of their compatriots. They became masters of the commerce of the kingdom; from brocade to sack-cloth, from diamonds to cumin-seed, everything passed through their hands; the Castilian who had not a Portuguese partner could look for no success in trade. They would buy the cargoes of whole fleets with the fictitious credits which they exchanged, thus rendering capital unnecessary, and would distribute the merchandise throughout the land by their agents, who were likewise Portuguese, and their capacity developed until, in 1634, they negotiated for the farming of the royal customs.