8. Some Statistics of the Inquisition.—On its first establishment 15,000 arrests were made. From January 1481 to November of the same year, 2,000 people were burned in the province of Cadiz, and 400 in the city of Seville alone. The prisons overflowed, and even the dead were not let lie in peace, for graves were opened and desecrated. In 1483 a monk of the order of St. Dominic, named Thomas Torquemada, was appointed chief Inquisitor, and the powers of the office were extended to Arragon. Under the direction of Torquemada the work went on, faster and fiercer than ever. In eighteen years of Torquemada’s Inquisitorship over 10,000 persons were burnt at the stake, and over 97,000 underwent varying degrees of ‘punishment.’ The Pope himself trembled at the monster he had raised, and wished, perhaps, that he had heeded the stern Jewish command, ‘Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil.’ But the scruples of the Pope were powerless before the passion of Torquemada, and the Inquisition continued denouncing and confiscating and burning, and in this awful reckoning, 6,000 victims are counted to Torquemada’s personal share.
9. Edict of Expulsion.—‘When thou passest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned.’ ‘No weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper; this is the heritage of the servants of the Lord.’ Did Ferdinand and Isabella, by chance, in chapel or at confession, hear some echo of these words in the year 1492? Did they reflect how utterly futile were thousandsof mortal burnings against God’s eternal will? Did they tremble for the ‘prosperity’ of that threatened ‘weapon’ of theirs, the Inquisition? And was it in hate, or in fear, or only in desperate foolishness that they resolved upon another method of rooting out the Jews? We shall never know; but in the March of that year, 1492, a royal edict was suddenly published that all Jews, men, women, and children, on that day four months were to be expelled from Spain. They were to take no property with them, except such as they could carry; and one alternative only, that of being converted to Christianity, was offered to them. It was an awful sentence. Not only had Spain for centuries been home to the Jews, but in all Europe at that date there seemed no chance of finding another. It was exile without hope. And yet, to the everlasting credit of Jews and Judaism, that alternative of conversion was never entertained for a minute, and for conscience sake, the whole body of Spanish Jews, some 300,000, literally and truly left all to follow after righteousness. All history cannot show a finer example of national steadfastness and suffering for the truth.
10. Abarbanel’s Intercession.—An effort was made at the last moment to soften the hard hearts of Ferdinand and Isabella. They had a Jewish treasurer called Abarbanel, a learned, upright man, who used all the weight of his influence and his character and his services on the side of his unhappy people. He even condescended to bribe the king, and offered to pay 3,000 ducats into the treasury as a ransom. The mercenary Ferdinand hesitated. The property of the Jews was asprecious to him as their souls—perhaps, on the whole, more so, and the edict might have been repealed after all, had not Torquemada passionately broken in on the interview. He held a crucifix on high, and exclaimed, ‘Behold him, whom Judas sold for thirty pieces of silver! Are you bargaining to sell him yet again, and at a higher price?’ The king and queen were frightened at this threatening eloquence, and held to their resolve. And on the 30th of July, 1492, to the disgrace of the rulers and to the ruin of their country, every unbaptized Jew and Jewess was turned out of Spain.
Edwd. Weller
Edwd. Weller
EUROPE
in the
MIDDLE AGES
London Longmans & Co.