This brief offended the deputies, but they continued their importunities at the Court of Rome with so much ardour, that their credit balanced the power of Charles V.; and though they did not obtain the extension of the articles, they prevented the revocation of the reforming briefs, and Charles was obliged to be satisfied with that addressed to Cardinal Adrian.
Leo X. died on the 1st of December, 1521, and Cardinal Adrian succeeded him on the 9th of January, 1522: he did not quit his office of inquisitor-general until the 10th of September, 1523, when he bestowed it on Don Alphonso Manrique, Archbishop of Seville.
According to the most moderate calculation from the inscription at Seville, it appears that 240,025 persons were condemned by the Inquisition during the five years of the ministry of Adrian; 1620 were burnt in person; 560 in effigy; and 21,845 subjected to different penances. If the year 1523, which may be considered as an interregnum until the inscription of Seville, which is of the year 1524, is added to this, the number of victims sacrificed by the Inquisition may be estimated at 234,526 persons, an immense number, though it is far below the truth.
CHAPTER XII.
CONDUCT OF THE INQUISITORS TOWARDS THE MORESCOES.
THE New Christians of Jewish origin flattered themselves, at the commencement of the ministry of Don Alphonso Manrique, that they should obtain the publication of the names and charges of the witnesses, as he had supported their request in 1516: but the inquisitors persuaded him that such a proceeding tended to the destruction of the holy office, and the triumph of the enemies of the faith; and that the appearance of two new sects of Morescoes and Lutherans rendered a great degree of severity indispensable.
It has been already stated, that an order from Ferdinand and Isabella, in 1502, had compelled all those Moors who refused to become Christians, to quit Spain. Although this law was executed in Castile, it did not affect the Moors of Aragon, as the King had yielded to the solicitations of the nobles, who represented the immense injury which it would do them, in destroying the population of their domains, where there were scarcely any baptized inhabitants.
The two sovereigns renewed their promise in 1510, and Charles V. took an oath to the same effect in the Cortes of Saragossa in 1519.
A civil war soon after broke out in Aragon, similar to one in Castile, about the same time. The factious were almost all common people, who hated the nobles: they endeavoured to injure them as much as possible; and knowing that the Moors, who were their vassals, were obliged to serve them in a more laborious manner, on account of the difference of their religion, they baptized all the Moors who fell into their hands. Above sixteen thousand thus received baptism; but as they were forced to it, many afterwards returned to their former creed. The emperor punished the chiefs of the insurrection, and many Moors, fearing the same fate, quitted Spain, and retired to the kingdom of Algiers; so that in 1523, more than five thousand houses were left without inhabitants.
Charles V., irritated at this conduct, persuaded himself that he ought not to suffer any Moors to remain in his dominions, and demanded a dispensation from his oath to the Cortes of Saragossa. The Pope at first refused, on account of the scandal of such a proceeding; but the emperor insisted, and it was granted in 1524: the Pope, however, engaged him, at the same time, to charge the inquisitors to accelerate the conversion of the Moors, by announcing, that if they did not become Christians within a certain period, they would be obliged to quit Spain, on pain of being reduced to slavery. Doubts were afterwards raised, of the validity of the baptism administered to the Moors in Valencia by the rebels; but Charles assembled a council, which, after many debates, decided, on the 23d of March, 1525, that it was valid, as the infidels had not offered any resistance.
The greatest part of the Moorish people fled to the mountains and the Sierra de Bernia, and resisted the arms of Charles, until the month of August, when they surrendered, after obtaining an amnesty. The Moors of Almonacid refused baptism, and took up arms; their town was taken, and several put to death, and the rest became Christians.