The inquisitors of Valencia complained of this action to the Suprema, whereupon Torquemada imperiously ordered the Captain-General to appear before that council and render an account of what he had done. He was supported in this by the King, who wrote commanding the offender and all who had aided him in procuring the release of Santa Cruz to submit themselves to arrest by the officers of the Inquisition.
Not daring to resist, that high dignitary was compelled humbly to sue for absolution of the ecclesiastical censure incurred, and he must have counted himself fortunate that Torquemada did not subject him to a public humiliation akin to that undergone by the Infante of Navarre.
The brilliant and illustrious young Italian, Giovanni Pico, Count of Mirandola, had a near escape of falling into the hands of the dread inquisitor. When Pico fled from Italy before the blaze of ecclesiastical wrath which his writings had kindled, Pope Innocent issued a bull, December 16, 1487, to Ferdinand and Isabella, setting forth that he believed the Count of Mirandola had gone to Spain with the intention of teaching in the universities of that country the evil doctrines which he had already published in Rome, notwithstanding that, having been convinced of their error, he had abjured them. (Another case of the “e pur si muove” of Galileo.) And since Pico was noble, gentle, and handsome, amiable and eloquent of speech (Pseudopropheta est; dulcia loquitur et ad modicum placet), there was great danger that an ear might be lent to his teachings. Wherefore his Holiness begged the Sovereigns that in the event of his suspicions concerning Pico’s intentions being verified, their highnesses should arrest the Count, to the end that the fear of corporal pains might deter him where the fear of spiritual ones had proved insufficient.
The Sovereigns delivered this bull to Torquemada that he might act upon it. But Pico, getting wind of the reception that awaited him, and having sufficient knowledge of the Grand Inquisitor’s uncompromising methods to be alarmed at the prospect, took refuge in France, where he wrote the apologia of his Catholicism, which he dedicated to Lorenzo de’ Medici.[159]
We have said, on the subject of the Inquisition’s introduction into Spain, that to an extent and after a manner this must be considered the most justifiable—by which we are to be taken to mean the least unjustifiable—of religious persecutions, inasmuch as it had no concern save with deserters from the fold of the Roman Church. Liberty was accorded to all religions that were not looked upon as heretical—i.e. that were not in themselves secessions from Roman Catholicism—and Jew and Moslem had nothing to fear from the Holy Office. It was only when, after having received baptism, they reverted to their original cults, that they rendered themselves liable to prosecution, being then looked upon as heretics, or, more properly speaking, as apostates.
But this point of view, which satisfied the Roman See, did not at all satisfy the Prior of Holy Cross. His bitter, fanatical hatred of the Israelites—almost rivalling that of the Dean of Ecija in the fourteenth century—urged him to violate this poor remnant of equity, drove him to overstep the last boundary of apparent justice, and carry the religious war into the region of complete and terrible intolerance.
The reason he advanced was that as long as the Jews remained undisturbed in the Peninsula, so long would a united Christian Spain be impossible. Despite penances, imprisonments, and burnings, the Judaizing movement went on. New-Christians were seduced back into the error of the Mosaic Law, whilst conversion amongst the Jews was checked by respect for the feelings of those who remained true to their ancient faith. Nor did the Hebrew offences against Christianity end there. There were the indignities to which holy things were subjected at their hands. There were criminal sacrileges in which—according to Torquemada—they vented their hatred of the Holy Christian Faith.
Such, for instance, was the outrage upon the crucifix at Casar de Palomero in 1488.
On Holy Thursday of that year, in this village of the diocese of Coria, several Jews, instead of being at home with closed doors at such a season, as the Christian law demanded, were making merry in an orchard, to the great scandal of a man named Juan Caletrido, who there detected them.