Isabel of Castile and the making of the Spanish nation, 1451-1504

by Ierne L. Plunket

This policy of amendment and repression met with Cisneros’s full approval; but the reform in which as a friar he was most interested was that of the monastic orders. In 1493 the sovereigns had obtained a papal brief, authorizing them to appoint “visitors,” who should inspect the various Religious Houses, correct the errors that they found, and punish evildoers.

From this tour the Conventual section of the Franciscans did not emerge scatheless; and the indignation, aroused amongst its members, at the penalties inflicted and changes introduced was so great that an appeal against the Archbishop’s tyranny was finally lodged at Rome. Four hundred friars, it was declared, rather than submit to the new order of things had been driven to turn Mahometan and seek refuge in Africa. Such a tale might well have inspired the conviction that the drastic measures of the Queen and her adviser were fully justified; but in Alexander VI. it only prompted a heartfelt sympathy with the Conventuals; and in January, 1496, he dispatched a bull, forbidding further reform until he was satisfied as to its necessity. Isabel replied by sending special ambassadors to plead her side of the case; a transaction in which they succeeded so admirably that the Pope withdrew his opposition.

In the meanwhile she and Cisneros had continued with unwavering energy the task they had begun. Her own share was no sinecure; for, taking her needlework or her spinning, she would visit the convents and, seated amongst the nuns, strive by her personal influence to win them back to a sense of their duties, and the devotion that could alone inspire their calling. According to his biographer, success also attended the harsher treatment meted out to the Franciscans by Cisneros, till at length “few monasteries remained where the rules of the Observants were not kept, to the great satisfaction of the Archbishop and edification of the people.”

The reform of the morals and customs of the Spanish Church was now well in train; but it formed only a part, and the smaller part, of the sovereigns’ general scheme for the promotion and safeguard of the Catholic Faith within their realms. If the foundations of a building are insecure, the beauty and strength of its walls will soon prove valueless; and Ferdinand and Isabel, regarding “right belief” as the foundation of “right action,” and identifying “right belief” with “acceptance of the doctrines and practice of the Holy Catholic Faith,” were led by logical reasoning to establish the monstrous tyranny of the Inquisition. There can be few things so pitiless as logic when carried to its extreme, and few so faulty when the conclusions concern the soul; perhaps because it is in this sphere that human intelligence most often fails to test the truth of its premises. Heresy was to the mediæval mind “the unpardonable sin”; the heretic in the language of the day, “a venomous reptile requiring to be exterminated, lest he should spread contagion by his very breath.” And in Spain this unpardonable sin was more diffused and difficult to eradicate than amongst her neighbours; for, through the centuries of reconquest, her population had been exposed to constant intercourse with races of alien creed, endowed moreover with the subtlety of mind that is the heritage of the Oriental. However high the barriers built by racial prejudice, so long as Christian, Jew, and Moor stood side by side on Spanish soil, a certain amalgamation and interchange of ideas were inevitable. The Church, jealous for the safety of the Catholic Faith, made the construction and maintenance of barriers her lifework, and issued frequent canons prohibiting mixed marriages as well as the friendly intercourse arising from shared feasts and common dwellings. This proved unavailing; and finally Jews and Moors were segregated in special quarters, called “Juderías” and “Morerías,” and compelled to wear a dress or a badge, that would distinguish them from their Christian neighbours when they walked abroad.

Such legislation was to have far-reaching results, little foreseen by those who framed it, though the immediate effect was highly satisfactory. Some there were amongst the subject races, who preferred to keep their own religion and suffer ignominy, rather than accept the Faith they had learned to hate; but the majority, faced by a choice between conversion and the scorn, disabilities, and even danger, that became the daily portion of the professed Jew or Mahometan, chose the easier path. At first the movement was gradual; but an outburst of Christian fanaticism and racial prejudice towards the close of the fourteenth century, led to a general massacre of the Jews, throughout all the large cities of Spain, and this in turn to a wholesale conversion of the survivors.

The “Conversos,” or “New Christians,” as they were often called in contradistinction to the “Old Christians” of unblemished Catholicism, were to introduce another jarring element into the already complicated society of Spain. Welcomed by the Church as “brands plucked from the burning,” they took full advantage of the opportunity to enter offices and professions hitherto closed, as well as to continue unmolested in the commerce and business they had formerly carried on under sufferance. Since conversion affected neither their natural industry, nor their racial capacity for making money, the New Christians soon developed the wealth and power that have followed the footsteps of the Jew in all ages and countries, where he has been free to pursue them. From the collection of rents and taxes to the control of the King’s treasury, they invaded every corner of the financial and economic life of Spain, wringing from the carelessness of the Spaniard and their own foresight the wealth that was one of the causes of their future ruin.

The Jew has always believed himself “the chosen of God,” and regarded Gentiles with a scorn akin to that felt by the Greeks of old for their “barbarian” neighbours. He might under pressure forsake his religion, but his inborn sense of racial superiority remained; and the envy excited in “Old Christians” by the accumulated honours of “the New” was often fanned to the white heat of passion by the arrogance with which these honours were borne.

An additional barrier was religious distrust that, removed in theory by conversion and baptism, existed still in a more insidious form. Enforced conversion is rarely sincere; and though some of the New Christians out-heroded Herod in their hatred and denunciations of the religion they had abandoned, the majority were content with a nominal or lukewarm profession of the Catholic Faith. Old habits and customs cling; and the Conversos, while attending Mass and other services of the Church, would often observe in private the Jewish sabbath, and practise the rites and ceremonies of their forefathers.

This laxity tended to increase during the reigns of weak or tolerant kings, such as John II. and Henry IV. of Castile; while the anger it excited amongst the mass of the people became proportionately more violent as they watched their unorthodox neighbours “wax and grow fat.” The growing spirit of fanaticism left its trail in riots instigated by the “Old Christians” against “the New” in Toledo, Segovia, Ciudad Real, Cordova, and Seville; rebels made use of it to threaten the unorthodox Henry IV., and at length, in the Concord of Medina del Campo of 1465, a resolution was passed, advocating that power should be given to the archbishops and bishops of the kingdom to imprison, fine, and punish “evil Christians and those whose faith was suspect.”

The Concord failed, but the desire for the castigation of heresy did not die with the resolutions. When, in 1477, Ferdinand and Isabel came to Seville, they were approached by a body of leading laymen and clergy, who petitioned that “as Catholic Princes they would punish this detestable sin, because if they left it ... unchecked, it would grow so rapidly that great harm would befall the Holy Catholic Faith.”