It seems to us that in arriving at this conclusion, M. Loeb has either overlooked or else not sufficiently weighed the following statement in Yucé’s confession: “Yucé Tazarte ... went to perform an enchantment so that the inquisitors could not hurt any of them, or if they attempted to do so they must, themselves, go mad and die within a year.” This means, of course, within a year of attempting to hurt any of them, which again means within a year of the arrest of any of them.
Now, the fact of our not believing to-day in the efficacy of Tazarte’s incantations and in the power of his magic spells with the heart and the Host to accomplish the things he promised, is no reason to suppose that Tazarte himself was not firmly persuaded that his enchantments would take effect. Indeed, he and his associates must firmly have believed it, or they would never have gone the length of imperilling their lives in so dangerous a business.
Tazarte’s belief was that these sorceries would invest them all with an immunity from inquisitorial persecution, and that should any inquisitors attempt to violate that immunity, such inquisitors must go mad and die within a year of arresting any of Tazarte’s associates. Therefore in the event of arrest, all that would be necessary to procure ultimate deliverance would be stubbornly to withhold from the inquisitors all information on the subject of this enchantment until the period within which it was to work should have expired.
When this is sufficiently considered, it seems to us that such an oath as Yucé says was imposed by Tazarte becomes not only likely but absolutely inevitable. Some such oath must have been imposed to ensure the efficacy of the enchantment in the event of the arrest of any of them.
It is difficult to think that Tazarte was a mere charlatan performing this business with his tongue in his cheek for the sake of the money he could extract from his dupes; difficult, because he was dealing with comparatively poor people, from whom the remuneration to be obtained would be out of all proportion to the risk incurred. But even if we proceed upon that assumption, are we not to conclude that, being a deliberate charlatan, Tazarte would be at great pains to appear sincere and to impose an oath which he must have imposed if he were sincere?
It is rather singular and it seems to ask some explanation, which it is not in our power to afford, that not until now do the inquisitors make any use of that grave admission of Yucé’s to the supposed Rabbi Abraham in Segovia. It is true that it was extremely vague, but in Ça’s admissions of July 19—if not before—they had obtained the connecting link required.
But not until September 16, when they pay Yucé a visit in his cell, do they touch upon the matter. They then ask him whether he recollects having talked when under arrest in Segovia, upon matters concerning the Inquisition, and with whom.
His answer certainly seems to show that even now he has no suspicion that the “Rabbi Abraham” was an emissary of the Holy Office. He says that being sick in prison and believing that he was about to die, he asked the physician who tended him to beg the inquisitors to allow him to be visited by a Jew to pray with him, and his further admissions as to what passed between himself and the “Rabbi” entirely corroborate the depositions of Frey Alonso Enriquez and the physician Antonio de Avila.
The inquisitors ask him to explain the three Hebrew words he used on that occasion: mita, nahar, and Otohays. He replies that they referred to the crucifixion of the boy, as related by him in his confession.[196]