At once the courage of despair roused the New-Christians to opposition. Amongst them were many who held high positions at court, persons of great influence and esteem, and these immediately determined to send a deputation to the Vatican and another to the Sovereigns to voice their protests against the institution of this tribunal in Aragon, and to beseech that it be abolished, or at least curtailed in its powers and inhibited from proceeding to confiscation, which was contrary to the law of the land.
This last was a shrewd request, based no doubt upon the conviction that, deprived of the confiscations upon which it battened, the tribunal must languish and very soon return to its former inoperative condition.
Nor were the conversos the only ones to denounce the procedure of the Holy Office. Zurita records that many of the principal nobles of Aragon rebelled against it, protesting that it was against the liberties of the kingdom to confiscate the property of men who were never allowed to learn the names of those who bore witness against them.
As well might they have appealed against death—for death itself was not more irresistible or inexorable than Torquemada. All the fruit borne by their labours was that those who had lent their names to the petition were ultimately prosecuted as hinderers of the Holy Office. But this did not immediately happen.
In the meanwhile Torquemada’s delegates, Arbués and Yuglar, went about the business entrusted to them with that imperturbability which the “Directorium” enjoins. They published their edicts, ordered arrests, carried out confiscations, and proceeded with such thoroughness that it was not long before Zaragoza began to present the same lurid, ghastly spectacles that were to be witnessed in the chief cities of Castile.
In the following May (1485) they celebrated with great solemnity the first Auto de Fé, penancing many and burning some. This was followed by a second Auto in June.
The despair and irritation of the New-Christians mounted higher at these spectacles. It is believed to have reached its climax with the sudden arrest of Leonardi Eli, one of the most influential, wealthy, and respected conversos of Zaragoza.
Those who had put the petition afoot, abandoning now all hope of obtaining any response either from the Sovereigns or from Rome, met to concert other measures. Their leader was a man of influence named Juan Pedro Sanchez. He had four brothers in influential positions at Court, who had lent their services in the matter of the petition to the Sovereigns.
A meeting took place in the house of one Luis de Santangel, and Sanchez urged a desperate remedy for their desperate ills. They must strike terror into their terrorizers. He proposed no less than the slaughter of the inquisitors, urging with confidence that if they were slain no others would dare to fill their places. In this he seems to have underestimated the character of Torquemada.
The proposal was adopted, an oath of secrecy was pledged, plans were laid, measures were taken, and funds were collected to enable these plans to be executed. Six assassins were chosen, among whom were Juan de Abadia and his Gascon servant Vidal de Uranso, and Juan de Esperandeu. This last was the son of a converso then lying in the prisons of the Inquisition, whose property had already been confiscated; so that he was driven by the added spur of personal revenge. There was, too, the further incentive of a sum of five hundred florins promised by the conspirators to the slayer of Arbués, and deposited by them for that purpose with Juan Pedro Sanchez.[127]