Be that as it may, the cry against the Jewish abominations now became general. Among those most active in raising it were Alfonso de Ojeda, a Dominican, prior of the monastery of St. Paul in Seville, and Diego de Merlo, assistant of that city, who should not be defrauded of the meed of glory to which they are justly entitled by their exertions for the new establishment of the Modern Inquisition. These persons, after urging on the sovereigns the alarming extent to which the Jewish leprosy prevailed in Andalusia, loudly called for the introduction of the Holy Office, as the only effectual means of healing it. In this they were vigorously supported by Niccolo Franco, the papal nuncio then residing at the court of Castile. Ferdinand listened with complacency to a scheme which promised an ample source of revenue in the confiscations it involved. But it was not so easy to vanquish Isabella’s aversion to such repugnant measures.
Queen Isabella persuaded to Persecution
Well had it been for the land if the queen’s conscience had always been intrusted to the keeping of persons of such exemplary piety as her confessor, Talavera. Unfortunately, in her early days, during the lifetime of her brother Henry, that charge was committed to a Dominican monk, Thomas (Tomas) de Torquemada, a native of Old Castile, subsequently raised to the rank of prior of Santa Cruz in Segovia, and condemned to infamous immortality by the signal part which he performed in the tragedy of the Inquisition. This man, who concealed more pride under his monastic weeds than might have furnished forth a convent of his order, was one of that class with whom zeal passes for religion, and who testify their zeal by a fiery persecution of those whose creed differs from their own; who compensate for their abstinence from sensual indulgence by giving scope to those deadlier vices of the heart, pride, bigotry, and intolerance, which are no less opposed to virtue and are far more extensively mischievous to society. This personage had earnestly laboured to infuse into Isabella’s young mind, to which his situation as her confessor gave him such ready access, the same spirit of fanaticism that glowed in his own. Fortunately this was greatly counteracted by her sound understanding and natural kindness of heart. Torquemada urged her, or indeed, as is stated by some, extorted a promise that, “should she ever come to the throne, she would devote herself to the extirpation of heresy, for the glory of God and the exaltation of the Catholic faith.” The time was now arrived when this promise was to be discharged.
It is due to Isabella’s fame to state thus much in palliation of the unfortunate error into which she was led by her misguided zeal; an error so grave that, like a vein in some noble piece of statuary, it gives a sinister expression to her otherwise unblemished character. It was not until the queen had endured the repeated importunities of the clergy, particularly of those reverend persons in whom she most confided, seconded by the arguments of Ferdinand, that she consented to solicit from the pope a bull for the introduction of the Holy Office into Castile. Sixtus IV, who at that time filled the pontifical chair, easily discerning the sources of wealth and influence which this measure opened to the court of Rome, readily complied with the petition of the sovereigns, and expedited a bull bearing date November 1st, 1478, authorising them to appoint two or three ecclesiastics, inquisitors for the detection and suppression of heresy throughout their dominions.
The queen, however, still averse to violent measures, suspended the operation of the ordinance, until a more lenient policy had been first tried. By her command, accordingly, the archbishop of Seville, Cardinal Mendoza, drew up a catechism exhibiting the different points of the Catholic faith, and instructed the clergy throughout his diocese to spare no pains in illuminating the benighted Israelites, by means of friendly exhortation and a candid exposition of the true principles of Christianity. How far the spirit of these injunctions was complied with, amid the excitement then prevailing, may be reasonably doubted. There could be little doubt, however, that a report, made two years later by a commission of ecclesiastics with Alfonso de Ojeda at its head, respecting the progress of the reformation, would be necessarily unfavourable to the Jews.
In consequence of this report the papal provisions were enforced by the nomination, on the 17th of September, 1480, of two Dominican monks as inquisitors, with two other ecclesiastics, the one as assessor and the other as procurator-fiscal, with instructions to proceed at once to Seville and enter on the duties of their office. Orders were also issued to the authorities of the city to support the inquisitors by all the aid in their power. But the new institution proved so distasteful to them in its origin that they refused any co-operation with its ministers, and during the first years it can scarcely be said to have obtained a footing in any other places in Andalusia than those belonging to the crown.
The Inquisition of 1481
On the 2nd of January, 1481, the court commenced operations by the publication of an edict, followed by several others, requiring all persons to aid in apprehending and accusing all such as they might know or suspect to be guilty of heresy, and holding out the illusory promise of absolution to such as should confess their errors within a limited period. As every mode of accusation, even anonymous, was invited, the number of victims multiplied so fast that the tribunal found it convenient to remove its sittings from the convent of St. Paul, within the city, to the spacious fortress of Triana, in the suburbs.
The presumptive proofs by which the charge of Judaism was established against the accused are so curious that a few of them may deserve notice. It was considered good evidence of the fact, if the prisoner wore better clothes or cleaner linen on the Jewish Sabbath than on other days of the week; if he had no fire in his house the preceding evening; if he sat at table with Jews, or ate the meat of animals slaughtered by their hands, or drank a certain beverage held in much estimation by them; if he washed a corpse in warm water, or when dying turned his face to the wall; or, finally, if he gave Hebrew names to his children—a provision most whimsically cruelly, since, by a law of Henry II, he was prohibited under severe penalties from giving them Christian names. He must have found it difficult to extricate himself from the horns of this dilemma.