The spy, moved to horror at the mere thought of these descendants of the crucifiers daring to be at play upon such a day as that, went to inform several others of what he had witnessed. A party of young Spaniards, but too ready to combine the performance of a meritorious act with the time-honoured sport of Jew-baiting, invaded the privacy of the orchard, set upon the Jews, and compelled them to withdraw into their houses.
Smarting under this indignity—for, when all is said, they had been more or less private in their orchard, and they had intended no offence by their slight evasion of the strict letter of the law—they related the event to other members of the synagogue, including the Rabbi.
From what ensued it seems plain that they must there and then have determined to avenge the honour of their race, which they conceived had been affronted.
Llorente, basing himself upon the chronicler Velasquez and the scurrilous anti-Jewish writings of Torrejoncillo, supposes that their aim was to repeat as nearly as possible the Passion of the Nazarene upon one of His Images. That, indeed, may have been the prejudiced view of the Grand Inquisitor.
But it is far more likely that, to spite these Christians who had added this insult to the constant humiliations they were putting upon the Israelites, the latter should simply have resolved to smash one of the public symbols of Christianity. The details of what took place do not justify the supposition that their intentions went any deeper.
On the morrow, which was Good Friday, the circumstance of the day contributing perhaps to the more popular version of the story, whilst the Christians were in church for the service of the Passion, a party of Jews repaired to an open space known as Puerto del Gamo, where stood a large wooden crucifix. This image they shattered and overthrew.
It is alleged that before finally breaking it they had indulged in elaborate insult, “doing and saying all that their rage dictated against the Nazarene.”
An Old-Christian, named Hernan Bravo, having watched them, ran to bear the tale of their sacrilegious deed. The Christians poured tumultuously out of church, and fell upon the Jews. Three of the latter were stoned to death on the spot; two others, one of whom was a lad of thirteen, suffered each the loss of his right hand; whilst the Rabbi Juan, being taken as an inciter, was put to the question with a view to inducing him to confess. But he denied so stoutly the things he was required to admit, and the inquisitors tortured so determinedly, that he died upon the rack—an irregularity this for which each inquisitor responsible would have to seek absolution at the hands of the other.
All those who took part in the sacrilege suffered confiscation of their property, whilst the pieces of the crucifix, which had become peculiarly sanctified by the affair, were gathered up and conveyed to the Church of Casar, where, upon being repaired, the image was given the place of honour.[160]
It is extremely likely that the story of this outrage, exaggerated as we have seen, would be one of the arguments employed by Torquemada when first he began to urge upon the attention of the Sovereigns the desirability of the expulsion of the Jews. He would cite it as a flagrant instance of the Jewish hatred of Christianity, which gave rise to his complaint and which he contended rendered a united Spain impossible as long as this accursed race continued to defile the land. Further, there can be very little doubt that it would serve to revive and to lend colour to the old stories of ritual murder practised by the Jews and provided for by one of the enactments in the “Partidas” code of Alfonso XI.