Susan and his fellows were led forth barefoot, in the ignominious, yellow penitential sack, a candle in the hand of each. Hemmed about by halberdiers, they were paraded through the streets of a city in which they had won the goodwill and respect of all, to be gazed upon by a people whose eyes must have been filled with horror and dismay. To head the procession went a black-robed Dominican holding aloft the green cross of the Inquisition, now swathed in a veil of crape; behind him, walking two by two, came the familiars of the Holy Office, members of the Confraternity of St. Peter the Martyr; next followed the doomed men amid their guards; and last came the inquisitors with their attendants and a considerable body of Dominicans from the Convent of St. Paul, headed by their prior, the fanatical Ojeda.
The procession headed for the Cathedral, where the sufferers were taken to hear Mass and forced to listen to a sermon framed for the occasion which was preached by Ojeda, and must have increased the exquisite torment of their protracted agony. Thence they were conducted—once more processionally—out of the city to the meadows of Tablada. There they were attached to the stakes that had been erected, fire was set to the faggots, and thus they perished miserably, to the greater honour and glory of the Catholic Apostolic Church.[67]
Ojeda may have looked with satisfaction upon that holocaust, upon those cruel flames which more than any man in Spain he had been instrumental in kindling, and which being kindled would continue to cast their lurid glow over that fair land for close upon four centuries. It was the first burning that Ojeda witnessed, and it was the last. His own hour was at hand. His mission, whatever ends it had to serve in the eternal scheme of things, was completed there on the meadows of Tablada, and he might now depart. A few days later he lay dead, stricken down by the plague that was ravaging the south of Spain, and sought him out for one of its first victims.
And from the pulpits of Seville the Dominicans thundered forth declarations that this pestilence was a visitation of God upon an unfaithful city. They never paused to consider that if that were indeed the case either God’s aim must be singularly untrue since the shafts of His wrath overtook such faithful servants as Ojeda, or else....
But an incapacity to conduct its reasonings to a logical conclusion, and an utter want of any sense of proportion, are the main factors in all fanaticism.
Lest they should themselves be stricken by these bolts of pestilence launched against the unfaithful, behold next the inquisitors scuttling out of Seville! They go in quest of more salubrious districts, and, presumably upon the assumption that these—since they remain healthy—are escaping divine attention, the Dominicans zealously proceed to light their fires that they may repair this heavenly oversight.[68]
But that villegiatura of theirs did not take place until they had transacted a deal more of their horrible business in Seville. Great had been the results of the edict of January 2. The nobles, not daring to run the risk of the threatened ecclesiastical censure, proceeded to effect the arrests demanded, and gangs of pinioned captives were brought daily into the city from the surrounding country districts where they had sought shelter. And in the city itself the familiars of the Holy Office were busily effecting the capture of suspects and of those against whom, either out of bigotry or malice, delations had been made.
So numerous were the arrests that by the middle of the month of January already the capacity of the Convent of St. Paul was strained to its utmost, and the inquisitors were compelled to remove themselves, their tribunal and their prison to the ampler quarters of the Castle of Triana, accorded to them by the Sovereigns in response to their request for it.[69]
The edict of January 2 was soon succeeded by a second one, known as the “Edict of Grace.” This exhorted all who were guilty of apostasy to come forward voluntarily within a term appointed, to confess their sins and be reconciled to the Church. It assured them that if they did this with real contrition and a firm purpose of amendment, they should receive absolution and suffer no confiscation of property. And it concluded with a warning that if they allowed the term of grace to expire without taking advantage of it, and they should afterwards be accused by others, they would be prosecuted with the utmost rigour of the law.
Amador de los Rios is of opinion that Cardinal Mendoza was “instrumental” in having this edict published, in which case it would hardly be too much to assume that he was the instrument of Isabella in the matter. Nor is it too much to assume that the inspiration was purely merciful, and that there was no thought in the mind of either Queen or Cardinal of the edict’s being turned, as it was, to treacherous account.