Torquemada and the Spanish Inquisition: A History

by Rafael Sabatini

It was, as we have already suggested, the very opportuneness with which the trial and sentence of those concerned in the affair of La Guardia came to afford Torquemada an additional argument to plead with the Sovereigns his case against the Jews, which has led so many historians—prior to M. Fidel Fita’s discovery—to reject the story as an invention. Another reason to discredit it lay in the circumstance that it was circulated in Spain together with a number of other stories that were obviously false and obviously invented expressly for the purpose of defaming the Jews and exciting popular indignation against them.

Meanwhile Ferdinand and Isabella pressed triumphantly forward on their conquering progress through Andalusia. Lucena, Coin, Ronda, and scores of other Moorish strongholds in the southern hills had fallen before the irresistible arms of the Christians; and the Sovereigns, aided by Jewish gold—not merely the gold extorted by confiscations, but moneys voluntarily contributed by their Hebrew subjects—pushed on to the reduction of Malaga, as the prelude to the leaguer of Granada itself, the last bulwark of Islam in Spain. This fell on January 2, 1492, and with it fell the Moslem dominion, which had endured in the peninsula, with varying fortunes, for nearly 800 years.

It might well have seemed to the Catholic Sovereigns that the conquest of Spain and the victory there of Christianity were at last accomplished, had not Torquemada been at their elbow to point out that the triumph of the Cross would never be complete in that land as long as the Jews continued to be numbered among its inhabitants.

He protested that the evils resulting from intercourse between Christian and Jew were notorious and unconquerable. He declared that in spite of the Inquisition, and in spite of all other measures that had been taken to keep Christian and Jew apart, the evil persisted and was as rampant as ever. He urged that the Jews continued unabatedly to pervert the Christians, and that they must so continue as long as they were tolerated to remain in the peninsula. Particularly was this notorious in the case of the Marranos or New-Christians, to whom the Israelites gave no peace until—by indoctrination or by the scorn and abuse they heaped upon them—they had seduced them back into error.

And in proof of what he urged he was able to point to the affair of La Guardia, to the outrage to the crucifix at Casar de Palomero, and to other matters of a kindred nature that had lately been brought to light.

He called upon the Sovereigns to redeem the promise they had made to give consideration to this matter—a consideration which, in answer to his earlier pleadings, they had postponed until the war against Granada should have been brought to its conclusion.

In the meantime the Jews themselves had fought strenuously against the banishment with which they saw themselves threatened. Eloquent had been their appeals to the Sovereigns. And the Sovereigns could hardly turn a deaf ear to the intercessions of subjects to whom they owed so much. For was it not the very Jews who had supplied the Spanish crown with the sinews for this campaign against the enemies of the Cross? Was it not owing to wonderful Hebrew administration—an administration gratefully surrendered to them—that the army of the Cross was equipped, maintained, and paid out of moneys that the Jews themselves had provided?

They found means to bring this to the attention of the Sovereigns, as a proof of the loyalty of their devotion, as a proof of their value to the Spanish nation. And the Sovereigns had other experiences of the loyalty and affection which had ever been manifested towards them by their long-suffering Hebrew subjects. When, for instance, their son, the Infante Don Juan was proclaimed in Aragon, after the Cortes of Toledo, the Jews had been foremost in the jubilant and loving receptions that everywhere met their Highnesses in the course of their progress through the kingdom of Ferdinand. Whilst the Spaniards were content to greet their Sovereigns with acclamations, the Jews went to meet them with valuable gifts.[226] Bernaldez tells us[227] of the splendid offering made to their Highnesses by the Aljama of Zaragoza. It consisted of twelve calves, twelve lambs, and a curious and very beautiful service of silver borne by twelve Jews, a rich silver cup full of gold castellanos[228] and a jar of silver—“all of which the Sovereigns received and prized, returning many thanks.”

Loyalty so tangibly manifested, of which this is but an instance, must have some weight in the scales against fanaticism; further, it seems impossible that the Sovereigns should have been altogether blind to the possible jeopardizing of the industrial prosperity of the kingdom if those chiefly responsible for it were driven out.

So they had put off their decision in the matter, urging that the present war demanded their full attention. But now that the conquest of Granada was accomplished, they were forced to look the matter in the face. For Torquemada was giving them no peace. Hard-driven by his fanatical hatred of the Israelites, the Grand Inquisitor had resolved upon his course and was determined that nothing should turn him aside.