Acts of intolerance are to be discerned from the earliest period in which Christianity became the established religion of the Roman empire. But they do not seem to have flowed from any systematized plan of persecution, until the papal authority had swollen to a considerable height. The popes, who claimed the spiritual allegiance of all Christendom, regarded heresy as treason against themselves, and, as such, deserving all the penalties, which sovereigns have uniformly visited on this, in their eyes, unpardonable offence. The crusades, which, in the early part of the thirteenth century, swept so fiercely over the southern provinces of France, exterminating their inhabitants, and blasting the fair buds of civilization which had put forth after the long feudal winter, opened the way to the Inquisition; and it was on the ruins of this once happy land, that were first erected the bloody altars of that tribunal. [1]
After various modifications, the province of detecting and punishing heresy was exclusively committed to the hands of the Dominican friars; and in 1233, in the reign of St. Louis, and under the pontificate of Gregory the Ninth, a code for the regulation of their proceedings was finally digested. The tribunal, after having been successively adopted in Italy and Germany, was introduced into Aragon, where, in 1242, additional provisions were framed by the council of Tarragona, on the basis of those of 1233, which may properly be considered as the primitive instructions of the Holy Office in Spain. [2]
This ancient Inquisition, as it is termed, bore the same odious peculiarities in its leading features as the Modern; the same impenetrable secrecy in its proceedings, the same insidious modes of accusation, a similar use of torture, and similar penalties for the offender. A sort of manual, drawn up by Eymerich, an Aragonese inquisitor of the fourteenth century, for the instruction of the judges of the Holy Office, prescribes all those ambiguous forms of interrogation, by which the unwary, and perhaps innocent victim might be circumvented. [3] The principles, on which the ancient Inquisition was established, are no less repugnant to justice, than those which regulated the modern; although the former, it is true, was much less extensive in its operation. The arm of persecution, however, fell with sufficient heaviness, especially during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, on the unfortunate Albigenses, who from the proximity and political relations of Aragon and Provence, had become numerous in the former kingdom. The persecution appears, however, to have been chiefly confined to this unfortunate sect, and there is no evidence that the Holy Office, notwithstanding papal briefs to that effect, was fully organized in Castile, before the reign of Isabella. This is perhaps imputable to the paucity of heretics in that kingdom. It cannot, at any rate, be charged to any lukewarmness in its sovereigns; since they, from the time of St. Ferdinand, who heaped the fagots on the blazing pile with his own hands, down to that of John the Second, Isabella's father, who hunted the unhappy heretics of Biscay, like so many wild beasts, among the mountains, had ever evinced a lively zeal for the orthodox faith. [4]
By the middle of the fifteenth century, the Albigensian heresy had become nearly extirpated by the Inquisition of Aragon; so that this infernal engine might have been suffered to sleep undisturbed from want of sufficient fuel to keep it in motion, when new and ample materials were discovered in the unfortunate race of Israel, on whom the sins of their fathers have been so unsparingly visited by every nation in Christendom, among whom they have sojourned, almost to the present century. As this remarkable people, who seem to have preserved their unity of character unbroken, amid the thousand fragments into which they have been scattered, attained perhaps to greater consideration in Spain than in any other part of Europe, and as the efforts of the Inquisition were directed principally against them during the present reign, it may be well to take a brief review of their preceding history in the Peninsula.
Under the Visigothic empire the Jews multiplied exceedingly in the country, and were permitted to acquire considerable power and wealth. But no sooner had their Arian masters embraced the orthodox faith, than they began to testify their zeal by pouring on the Jews the most pitiless storm of persecution. One of their laws alone condemned the whole race to slavery; and Montesquieu remarks, without much exaggeration, that to the Gothic code may be traced all the maxims of the modern Inquisition, the monks of the fifteenth century only copying, in reference to the Israelites, the bishops of the seventh. [5]
After the Saracenic invasion, which the Jews, perhaps with reason, are accused of having facilitated, they resided in the conquered cities, and were permitted to mingle with the Arabs on nearly equal terms. Their common Oriental origin produced a similarity of tastes, to a certain extent, not unfavorable to such a coalition. At any rate, the early Spanish Arabs were characterized by a spirit of toleration towards both Jews and Christians, "the people of the book," as they were called, which has scarcely been found among later Moslems. [6] The Jews, accordingly, under these favorable auspices, not only accumulated wealth with their usual diligence, but gradually rose to the highest civil dignities, and made great advances in various departments of letters. The schools of Cordova, Toledo, Barcelona, and Granada were crowded with numerous disciples, who emulated the Arabians in keeping alive the flame of learning, during the deep darkness of the Middle Ages. [7] Whatever may be thought of their success in speculative philosophy, [8] they cannot reasonably be denied to have contributed largely to practical and experimental science. They were diligent travellers in all parts of the known world, compiling itineraries which have proved of extensive use in later times, and bringing home hoards of foreign specimens and Oriental drugs, that furnished important contributions to the domestic pharmacopoeias. [9] In the practice of medicine, indeed, they became so expert, as in a manner to monopolize that profession. They made great proficiency in mathematics, and particularly in astronomy; while, in the cultivation of elegant letters, they revived the ancient glories of the Hebrew muse. [10] This was indeed the golden age of modern Jewish literature, which, under the Spanish caliphs, experienced a protection so benign, although occasionally checkered by the caprices of despotism, that it was enabled to attain higher beauty and a more perfect development in the tenth, eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries, than it has reached in any other part of Christendom. [11]
The ancient Castilians of the same period, very different from their Gothic ancestors, seem to have conceded to the Israelites somewhat of the feelings of respect, which were extorted from them by the superior civilization of the Spanish Arabs. We find eminent Jews residing in the courts of the Christian princes, directing their studies, attending them as physicians, or more frequently administering their finances. For this last vocation they seem to have had a natural aptitude; and, indeed, the correspondence which they maintained with the different countries of Europe by means of their own countrymen, who acted as the brokers of almost every people among whom they were scattered during the Middle Ages, afforded them peculiar facilities both in politics and commerce. We meet with Jewish scholars and statesmen attached to the courts of Alfonso the Tenth, Alfonso the Eleventh, Peter the Cruel, Henry the Second, and other princes. Their astronomical science recommended them in a special manner to Alfonso the Wise, who employed them in the construction of his celebrated Tables. James the First of Aragon condescended to receive instruction from them in ethics; and, in the fifteenth century, we notice John the Second, of Castile, employing a Jewish secretary in the compilation of a national Cancionero. [12]
But all this royal patronage proved incompetent to protect the Jews, when their flourishing fortunes had risen to a sufficient height to excite popular envy, augmented, as it was, by that profuse ostentation of equipage and apparel, for which this singular people, notwithstanding their avarice, have usually shown a predilection. [13] Stories were circulated of their contempt for the Catholic worship, their desecration of its most holy symbols, and of their crucifixion, or other sacrifice, of Christian children, at the celebration of their own passover. [14] With these foolish calumnies, the more probable charge of usury and extortion was industriously preferred against them, till at length, towards the close of the fourteenth century, the fanatical populace, stimulated in many instances by the no less fanatical clergy, and perhaps encouraged by the numerous class of debtors to the Jews, who found this a convenient mode of settling their accounts, made a fierce assault on this unfortunate people in Castile and Aragon, breaking into their houses, violating their most private sanctuaries, scattering their costly collections and furniture, and consigning the wretched proprietors to indiscriminate massacre, without regard to sex or age. [15]
In this crisis, the only remedy left to the Jews was a real or feigned conversion to Christianity. St. Vincent Ferrier, a Dominican of Valencia, performed such a quantity of miracles, in furtherance of this purpose, as might have excited the envy of any saint in the Calendar; and these, aided by his eloquence, are said to have changed the hearts of no less than thirty-five thousand of the race of Israel, which doubtless must be reckoned the greatest miracle of all. [16]
The legislative enactments of this period, and still more under John the Second, during the first half of the fifteenth century, were uncommonly severe upon the Jews. While they were prohibited from mingling freely with the Christians, and from exercising the professions for which they were best qualified, [17] their residence was restricted within certain prescribed limits of the cities which they inhabited; and they were not only debarred from their usual luxury of ornament in dress, but were held up to public scorn, as it were, by some peculiar badge or emblem embroidered on their garments. [18] Such was the condition of the Spanish Jews at the accession of Ferdinand and Isabella. The new Christians, or converts, as those who had renounced the faith of their fathers were denominated, were occasionally preferred to high ecclesiastical dignities, which they illustrated by their integrity and learning. They were intrusted with municipal offices in the various cities of Castile; and, as their wealth furnished an obvious resource for repairing, by way of marriage, the decayed fortunes of the nobility, there was scarcely a family of rank in the land, whose blood had not been contaminated, at some period or other, by mixture with the mala sangre, as it came afterwards to be termed, of the house of Judah; an ignominious stain, which no time has been deemed sufficient wholly to purge away. [19]