Meanwhile, however, and by his own act, his enemies at home had found two powerful mediators with the Pope, two powerful advocates to plead their cause before the Apostolic Court. These were Juan Arias Davila, Bishop of Segovia, and Pedro de Aranda, Bishop of Calahorra.
Torquemada’s frenzied intolerance of men of Jewish blood was by no means confined to those who practised the Law of Moses. It extended to those who had accepted baptism and to their descendants, and it kept alive his mistrust of them.
Very markedly is this exhibited in the proceedings he instituted against the two bishops mentioned, notwithstanding the Papal decree which inhibited inquisitors from proceeding against prelates save by special pontifical authority.
The Bishop of Segovia—Juan Arias Davila—was the grandson of a Jew who had received baptism in the reign of Henry IV, and had held an honourable position at the court of that king by whom he had been ennobled. Considering the ecclesiastical eminence attained by his grandson—now a very old man—one would imagine that the latter should have been secure from inquisitorial attacks on the score of alleged offences committed by his ancestor against the Faith. But the terrible Torquemada contrived to rake up some matters against the long-deceased converso, accused him of having re-Judaized before his death, and instituted proceedings which must have resulted in the destitution, degradation and infamy of the bishop, his descendant.
“It sufficed,” says Llorente on this subject,[253] “that a deceased Jew should have been fortunate and wealthy to seek cause of suspicion upon his faith and religion, such was the ill-will against those of Jewish blood, such the desire to mortify them, and such the covetousness to absorb their property.”
To these proceedings Davila set up a stout resistance and made appeal to the Pope, whereupon Torquemada experienced his first serious check. The Pope ordered him to stick to the letter of the law, and to lay the matter before the Apostolic Court, as was due. Thither went the Bishop also, to defend his grandfather’s bones from the accusation lodged. He was well received by the Pontiff, who ultimately gave him the victory over Torquemada, for when the case was tried his father’s memory was cleared of all guilt.[254]
In the meanwhile, however, Davila had not only received a very kindly welcome at the Vatican, but, pending his trial, he was given a position of honour, and he was associated with Cardinal Borgia of Monreale (Alexander’s nephew) when the latter went as papal legate to Naples, to crown Alfonso II of Aragon.[255]
Less fortunate was Pedro de Aranda, the other accused Bishop. In his case, too, the proceedings instituted were based upon the alleged Judaizing of his deceased father—a Jew who had been baptized in the time of St. Vincent Ferrer.
His case was tried at Valladolid, but the inquisitors and the diocesan ordinary disagreed in their findings, and in 1493 the Bishop, accompanied by his bastard son Alfonso Solares, set out for Rome, to present in person his appeal to the Pontiff. Him, too, the Pope received with the utmost kindliness. His Holiness issued a brief inhibiting the inquisitors, and relegating the case to the Bishop of Cordova and the Prior of the Benedictines of Valladolid.
The case being tried by them, a verdict entirely favourable to the Bishop was obtained, and his father’s memory was acquitted of the charge preferred against it. But the tribulations of the living son were not permitted to end there. Torquemada would not suffer that his prey should escape so easily.