Spain and Her Colonies, Compiled from the Best Authorities

by Unknown

This strange apology, which seems to have to some extent imposed upon Prescott, is shown, by more recent examination of the State papers to be a most deliberate and daring falsehood, and would go far to justify the suggestion of Bergenroth that if Ferdinand never scrupled to tell direct untruths and make false promises whenever he thought it expedient, Queen Isabella excelled her husband in “disregard of veracity.”

If the Holy Office had existed in Aragon in an undeveloped state from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century, and if it was actually introduced into Castile at the suggestion of an Inquisitor of the Aragonese island of Sicily, the old independence of the inhabitants once more asserted itself when the time arrived for the introduction of the brand-new Castilian Tribunal into the old kingdom that is watered by the Ebro. Saragossa, indeed, may be nearer to Rome than Toledo; but the Catalan has ever been less submissive than his brother or cousin in Castile; less obedient to authority; more impatient of royal and ecclesiastical oppression. Yet Aragon, which had defied Innocent at Muret, and vanquished Martin at Gerona, was no match for the inquisitors of Ferdinand the Catholic.

The Inquisition, as we have seen, had once before been established in Aragon; but in one most important particular the new institution differed from the old. In former days, even in the rare cases when the heretic paid the penalty of his heterodoxy with his life, his property passed to his heirs. The ecclesiastical tribunal of Ferdinand was not only more efficient in the matter of burning or otherwise disposing of accused persons; but the property of all doubtful Catholics, even of those who were graciously permitted to live after their trial, was absolutely forfeit to the crown. And the number of rich men, not only converted Jews but prosperous Christians, whose orthodoxy failed to come up to the new standard, was even in those days considered remarkable.

Ferdinand at all times hated popular assemblies. He spent the greater part of his time in Castile; and he saw as little as possible of the people of Aragon. But in April, 1484, he summoned a Cortes at Saragossa, and decreed by royal ordinance the establishment of the new tribunal. The old constitutional spirit of the Aragonese seems to have evaporated; and a degenerate justiciary was found to swear to support the jurisdiction of the Inquisitors. Yet envoys and delegates of the Commons of Aragon were dispatched to Castile, whither Ferdinand had promptly retired, and also to Rome, to remonstrate against the new Institution, and more especially against the new provisions for the forfeiture of the property of the convicted. If these provisions, contrary to the laws of Aragon, were repealed or suspended, the deputies “were persuaded,” and there was a grim humor in the suggestion, “that the Tribunal itself would soon cease to exist.”

But the repression of heresy was far too profitable an undertaking to be lightly abandoned; nor was Ferdinand of Aragon the man to abandon it; and the envoys returned from an unsuccessful mission to Valladolid to find a Quemadero already blazing at Saragossa.

Yet the Aragonese were not at once reduced to subjection. A popular conspiracy led to the assassination of the Inquisitor-general, Pedro de Arbues, in spite of his steel cap and coat of mail, as he stood one day at matins in the Cathedral of Saragossa (15th September, 1457); but this daring crime served only to enrage Ferdinand and to strengthen the power of the Inquisition. A most rigorous and indefatigable inquiry, which was extended from Saragossa into every part of Aragon, was at once undertaken; and an immense number of victims, chosen not only from among the people, but from almost every noble family in Aragon, if it did not appease the vengeance of the Inquisitors, gratified at least the avarice of Ferdinand. Among the accused, indeed, was Don Jayme of Navarre, a nephew of the King of Aragon—a son of Eleanor, queen of Navarre, and her husband, Gaston de Foix—who was actually arrested and imprisoned by the Holy Office; and discharged only after having done public penance, as convicted of having in some way sympathized with the assassination of Arbues. But it may be noted that the young prince was anything but a favorite with his uncle, to whom this bit of ecclesiastical discipline was no doubt very gratifying.

But it was not only at Saragossa that opposition was offered to the establishment of the new Tribunal. In every part of Aragon and of Valencia; at Lerida, at Teruel, at Barcelona, the people rose against this new exhibition of royal and priestly tyranny. And it was not for fully two years, and after the adoption of the most savage measures of repression both royal and ecclesiastical, that the Inquisition was finally accepted in the kingdom of Aragon, and that Torquemada, fortified by no less than two special Bulls, made his triumphal entry as Inquisitor-general into Barcelona on the 27th of October, 1488.

Among all the tens of thousands of innocent persons who were tortured and done to death by the Inquisition in Spain, it is instructive to turn to the record of one man at least who broke through the meshes of the ecclesiastical net that was spread abroad in the country; for the mode of his escape is sufficiently instructive. Ready money at command, but not exposed to seizure, was the sole shield and safeguard against the assaults of Church and State. Don Alfonso de la Caballeria was a Jew by race, and a man who was actually concerned in the murder of the Inquisitor Arbues; but his great wealth enabled him to purchase not only one but two Briefs from Rome, and to secure the further favor of Ferdinand. He was accused and prosecuted in vain by the Holy Office of Aragon. He not only escaped with his life, but he rose to a high position in the State, and eventually mingled his Jewish and heretic blood with that of royalty itself.

Various attempts were made by the Commons of Aragon to abate the powers of the Inquisition; and at the Cortes of Monzon, in 1510, so vigorous a remonstrance was addressed to Ferdinand that he was unable to do more than avoid a decision by a postponement on the ground of desiring fuller information; and two years later, at the same place, he was compelled to sanction a declaration or ordinance, by which the authority assumed by the Holy Office, in defiance of the Constitution of Aragon, was specifically declared to be illegal; and the king swore to abolish the privileges and jurisdiction of the Inquisition. Within a few months, however, he caused himself to be absolved from this oath by a Papal Brief; and the Inquisition remained unreformed and triumphant. But the Aragonese had not yet entirely lost their independence, and a popular rising compelled the king not only to renounce the Brief, so lately received, but to solicit from the Pope a Bull (May 12, 1515), exonerating him from so doing, and calling upon all men, lay and ecclesiastical, to maintain the authority of the Cortes. Aragon was satisfied. And the people enjoyed for a season the blessings of comparative immunity from persecution.

To recall the manifold horrors of the actual working of the Inquisition in Spain would be a painful and an odious task. To record them in any detail is surely superfluous; even though they are entirely denied by such eminent modern writers as Hefele, in Germany, or Menendez Pelayo, in Spain. The hidden enemy, the secret denunciation, the sudden arrest, the unknown dungeon, the prolonged interrogatory, the hideous torture, the pitiless judge, the certain sentence, the cruel execution, the public display of sacerdotal vengeance, the plunder of the survivors, innocent even of ecclesiastical offense—all these things are known to every reader of every history. All other considerations apart, it is an abuse of language to speak of the proceedings before the Inquisition as a trial, for the tribunal was nothing but a Board of Conviction. One acquittal in two thousand accusations was, according to Llorente, who had access to all the records of the Holy Office in Spain, about the proportion that was observed in their judicial findings.