THE INQUISITION IN SPAIN.
Jewish Blood in the Veins of the Spanish Nobility--The Marranos
cling to Judaism and manifest Unconquerable Antipathy to
Christianity--Ferdinand and Isabella--The Dominicans, Alfonso
de Ojeda, Diego de Merlo, and Pedro de Solis--The Catechism
of the Marranos--A Polemical Work against the Catholic Church
and Despotism gives a Powerful Impulse to the Inquisition--The
Tribunal is established in 1480--Miguel Morillo and Juan
de San Martin are the first Inquisitors--The Inquisition
in Seville--The "Edict of Grace"--The Procession and the
Auto-da-fé--The Numbers of the Accused and Condemned--Pope
Sixtus IV and his Vacillating Policy with Regard to the
Inquisition--The Inquisition under the first Inquisitor
General, Thomas de Torquemada; its Constitutions--The Marranos
of Aragon--They are charged with the Death of the Inquisitor
Arbues--Persecutions and Victims--Proceedings against two
Bishops Favorable to the Jews, De Avila and De Aranda.
1474-1483 C.E.
A Jewish poet called Spain the "hell of the Jews;" and, in very
deed, those foul fiends in monks' cowls, the inventors of the Holy
Inquisition, made that lovely land an Inferno. Every misery, every
mortal pang, conceived only by the most extravagant imagination of
poet; every horror that can thrill the heart of man to its lowest
depths, these monsters in the garb of humility brought upon the Jews of
the Hesperian Peninsula.
These Calibans also said, "'Burn but their books;' for therein lies
their power." The Dominicans wished to destroy not only the bodies,
but the very soul and spirit of the Jews. Yet they were not able to
quench the life of Judaism. They only succeeded in transforming the
Spanish paradise into one vast dungeon, in which the king himself was
not free. The Inquisition, created by the begging friars, wounded the
Jew deeply, yet not mortally. His wounds are now almost healed; but
Spain suffers still, perhaps beyond hope of cure, from the wounds dealt
by the Inquisition. Ferdinand the Catholic and Isabella the Bigot,
who, through the union of Aragon and Castile, laid the foundation for
the greatness of Spain, prepared the way, at the same time, by the
establishment of the Inquisition, for her decay and final ruin.
The new-Christians, who dwelt by hundreds and thousands throughout
the kingdoms of Aragon and Castile, were so many thorns in monkish
flesh. Many of them held high offices of state, and by means of their
wealth wielded great and far-reaching influence. They were also
related to many of the old nobility; indeed, there were few families
of consequence who had not Jewish blood in their veins. They formed a
third part of the townspeople, and were intelligent, industrious, and
peaceful citizens. These Marranos, for the most part, had preserved
their love for Judaism and their race in the depths of their hearts.
As far as they could, they observed Jewish rites and customs, either
from piety or from habit. Even those who, upon philosophical grounds,
were indifferent to Judaism, were not less irreconcilably hostile to
Christianity, which they were compelled to confess with their lips.
Although they did not have their children circumcised, they washed the
heads of the infants immediately after baptism. They were, therefore,
rightly looked upon by the orthodox clergy either as Judaizing
Christians, or as apostate heretics. They took no count of the origin
of their conversion, which had been accomplished with fire and sword.
They had received the sacrament of baptism, and this condemned them and
their descendants to remain in the Christian faith, however hateful it
might be to them. Rational legislation would have given them liberty
to return to Judaism, and, in any case, to emigrate, in order to avoid
scandal. But the spiritual powers were full of perversity. That which
demands the freest exercise of the powers of the soul was to be brought
about by brute force, to the greater glory of God!
During the lifetime of Don Henry IV the clerical members of the cortes
of Medina del Campo had persistently advanced the proposal that a court
of Inquisition be instituted to bring recusant or suspected Christians
to trial, and inflict severe punishment with confiscation of goods.
Unfortunately for the clericals, the king was by no means zealous for
the faith or fond of persecution; and so this decision of the cortes,
like many others, remained a dead letter. The Dominicans, however,
promised themselves greater results under the new sovereigns--Queen
Isabella, whose confessors had reduced her to spiritual slavery, and
Don Ferdinand, who, by no means so superstitiously inclined, was
quite ready to use religion as the cloak of his avarice. It is said
that the confessor, Thomas de Torquemada, the incarnation of the
hell-begotten Holy Inquisition, had extorted from the Infanta Isabella
a vow that, when she came to the throne, she would devote herself to
the extirpation of heresy, to the glory of God and the exaltation of
the Catholic faith. She was now queen; "her throne was established; and
her soul was sufficiently beclouded to believe that God had raised her
solely to cleanse Spanish Christianity from the taint of Judaism."
The prior of a Dominican monastery, Alfonso de Ojeda, who had the ear
of the royal consorts, made fearful representations to them as to the
offenses of the new-Christians against the faith. Aided by two others
of like mind, he strained every nerve to set the Inquisition in motion
against the Marranos; and the papal nuncio in Spain, Nicolo Franco,
supported the proposition of the monk for a tribunal to call them to
account for their transgressions.
Without further consideration Don Ferdinand, seeing that his coffers
would be filled with the plunder of the accused, gave his assent to
the scheme. The more scrupulous queen hesitated, and the royal pair
decided to appeal to the pope for advice. The two Spanish ambassadors
at the court of Rome, the brothers Francisco and Diego de Santillana,
earnestly pressed the pope and the college of cardinals to grant the
request of their sovereigns. Sixtus IV, from whom anything, good or
bad, could be obtained for gold, immediately grasped the money-making
aspect of the Holy Inquisition. In November, 1478, he issued a bull
empowering the sovereigns to appoint inquisitors from among the clergy,
with full authority to sit in judgment on all heretics, apostates,
and their patrons, according to the laws and customs of the ancient
Inquisition, sentence them, and--most important point of all--
confiscate their goods.
Isabella, who had been somewhat favorably influenced in behalf of
the new-Christians, was not inclined to adopt rigorous measures to
begin with. At her direction, the archbishop of Seville, Cardinal
Mendoza, prepared a catechism in 1478 for the use of new-Christians,
and issued it to the clergy of his diocese, in order that they might
instruct the Marranos in the articles, the sacraments, and the usages
of the Christian religion. The authors of this measure displayed
strange simplicity in believing that the baptized Jews would allow an
antipathy, which every day found new incitement, to be appeased by the
dry statements of a catechism. The Marranos naturally remained in what
the church considered their blindness; that is to say, in the purity of
their monotheism and their adherence to their ancestral religion.
It happened that a Jew or a new-Christian grievously offended the
sovereigns by the publication of a small work in which he exposed at
once the idolatrous cult of the church and the despotic character of
the government. Hereupon the queen became more and more inclined
to assent to the proposals for the establishment of the bloody
tribunal. The work made so strong an impression that the queen's
father-confessor, in 1480, published a refutation by royal command. The
attitude of the court became more and more hostile to new-Christians,
and when the commission appointed by the sovereigns to inquire into
the improvement or obstinacy of the Marranos reported that they were
irreclaimable, it was authorized to frame the statute for the new
tribunal. The commission was composed of the fanatical Dominican,
Alfonso de Ojeda, and the two monks--one in mind and order--Pedro
de Solis and Diego de Merlo.
Had demons of nethermost hell conspired to torment innocent men to
the last verge of endurance and to make their lives one ceaseless
martyrdom, they could not have devised more perfect means than those
which the three monks employed against their victims.
The statute was ratified by the sovereigns, and the tribunal of the
Holy Inquisition was appointed on September 17th, 1480. It was composed
of men well fitted to carry out the bloody decree: the Dominican Miguel
Morillo, inquisitor in the province of Roussillon, and renowned as
a converter of heretics by means of torture; Juan de San Martin; an
assessor, the abbot Juan Ruez, and a procurator fiscal, Juan Lopez
del Barco. These men were formally confirmed by Sixtus IV as judges
in matters of faith, and of heretics and apostates. The tribunal was
first organized for the city of Seville and its neighborhood, as this
district stood immediately under royal jurisdiction, and, therefore,
possessed no cortes, and because it contained a great many Marranos.
Three weeks later the sovereigns issued a decree calling upon all
officials to render the inquisitors every assistance in their power.
It is noteworthy that as soon as the creation of the tribunal became
known, the populace everywhere looked upon it with displeasure, as
though suspicious that it might be caught in the net spread for
the Marranos. While the cortes of Medina del Campo proposed the
establishment of a court for new-Christians, the great popular assembly
at Toledo in the same year--the first after the accession of
Ferdinand and Isabella--maintained absolute silence on the question,
as though it desired to have no share in the unholy work. The mayor
and other officials of Seville proved so disinclined to assist the
inquisitors that it was necessary to issue a second royal decree on
December 27th, 1480, directing them to do so. The nobles, allied with
the converted Jews either through blood or friendship, stood stoutly
by them, and sought by every means to protect them against the new
tribunal.
As soon as the new-Christians of Seville and the neighborhood received
news of the establishment of the Inquisition, they held a meeting to
consider means of turning aside the blow aimed at them. Several wealthy
and respected men of Seville, Carmona and Utrera, among them Abulafia,
the financial agent of the royal couple, prepared to do battle with
their persecutors. They distributed money and weapons among the people,
to enable them to defend themselves. An old man urged the conspirators
to armed resistance; but the conspiracy was betrayed by the daughter
of one of its members, and all fell into the hands of the tribunal.
Others, who had collected their possessions, and fled to the province
of Medina-Sidonia and Cadiz, under whose governors they hoped to
receive protection against the threatened persecution, were deceived,
for the Inquisition went to work with remorseless severity. As soon as
it had taken up its quarters in the convent of St. Paul at Seville,
on January 2d, 1481, it issued an edict to the governor of Cadiz and
other officials to deliver up the Marranos and distrain their goods.
Those who disobeyed were threatened not only with excommunication,
but also with the punishment assigned, as sharers of their guilt,
to all who showed sympathy to heretics--confiscation of goods and
deprivation of office.
The Inquisition inspired so much terror that the nobility lost no time
in imprisoning those to whom they had lately promised protection, and
in sending them in custody to Seville. The number of these prisoners
was so great that the tribunal was soon obliged to seek another
building for its functions. It selected a castle in Triana, a suburb of
Seville. On the gate of this house of blood were inscribed, in mockery
of the Jews, certain verses selected from their Scriptures:--"Arise,
God, judge Thy cause;" "Catch ye foxes for us," which plainly showed
the utter heartlessness of their judges. Fugitives when caught were
treated as convicted heretics. So early as the fourth day after the
installation of the tribunal, it held its first sitting. Six Marranos
who had either avowed their old religion before their judges, or made
horrible confessions on the rack, were condemned and burnt alive. The
tale of victims grew to such proportions that the city authorities
set apart a special place as a permanent execution ground, which
subsequently became infamous as the Quemadero, or place of burning.
Four huge caricatures of prophets distinguished this spot, existing
to the present day to the shame of Spain and Christianity. For three
hundred years the smoke of the burnt-offering of innocence ascended to
heaven from this infernal spot.
With that mildness of mien which skillfully covers the wisdom and
the venom of the serpent, Miguel Morillo and his coadjutors gave to
the new-Christians guilty of relapse into Judaism a certain time in
which to declare their remorse. Upon doing this they would receive
absolution, and be permitted to retain their property. This was the
Edict of Grace; but it was not wanting in threats for those who should
permit the time of respite to elapse, and be denounced by others as
backsliders. The full vigor of the canonical laws against heresy and
apostasy would then be exercised against them. The credulous in crowds
obeyed the summons. Contritely they appeared before the tribunal,
lamented the awful guilt of their lapse into Judaism, and awaited
absolution and permission to live in peace. But now the inquisitors
imposed the condition that they declare by name, position, residence
and other particulars all persons of their acquaintance whom they knew
to be apostates. This declaration they were to substantiate on oath. In
the name of God they were asked to become accusers and betrayers--the
friend of his friend, the brother of his brother, and the son of his
father. Terror, and the assurance that the betrayed should never know
the names of their betrayers, loosed the tongues of the weak-hearted,
and the tribunal soon had a long list of heretics upon whom to carry
out its bloody work.
Not only the hunted Marranos, every Spaniard was called upon by an
edict of the inquisitors to become an informer. Under threat of
excommunication every one was bound to give, within three days, a list
of acquaintances guilty of Jewish heresy. It was a summons to the most
hateful vices of mankind to become allies of the court: to malice,
hatred and revenge, to sate themselves by treachery; to greed, to
enrich itself; and to superstition, to gain salvation by betrayal.
And what were the signs of this heresy and apostasy? The Inquisition
had published a very complete, practical guide on the subject, so
that each informer might find good grounds for his denunciation. The
following signs of heresy were set forth: if baptized Jews cherished
hopes of a Messiah; if they held Moses to be as efficacious for
salvation as Jesus; if they kept the Sabbath or a Jewish feast; if
they had their children circumcised; if they observed the Jewish
dietary laws; if they wore clean linen or better garments on the
Sabbath, laid tablecloths, or lit no fire on this day, or if they went
barefoot on the Day of Atonement, or asked pardon of each other. If
a father laid his hands in blessing on his children without making
the sign of the cross; if one said his prayers with face turned to
the wall, or with motions of the head; or if he uttered a benediction
(Baraha, Beracha) over the wine-cup, and passed it to those seated at
the table with him, he was to be deemed recalcitrant. As a matter of
course, neglect of the usages of the church was the strongest ground
for suspicion and accusation. Again, if a new-Christian repeated a
psalm without adding the Gloria; or if he ate meat on fast-days; or if
a Jewish woman did not go to church forty days after her lying-in; or
if parents gave their children Jewish names, the charge of heresy was
held proved.
Even the most innocent actions, if they happened to coincide with
Jewish usages, were regarded as signs of aggravated heresy. If anyone,
for instance, on the Jewish Feast of Tabernacles accepted gifts from
the table of Jews, or sent them; or if a new-born child was bathed in
water in which gold coins and grains of corn had been placed; or if a
dying man in his last moments turned his face to the wall--all such
actions were held to be signs of heresy.
By such means unscrupulous people were given ample opportunity for
denunciation, and the tribunal was enabled to accuse of heresy the
most orthodox proselytes when it desired to destroy their influence or
confiscate their property. Naturally the dungeons of the Inquisition
were soon filled with Jewish heretics. Fully 15,000 were thrown into
prison at the outset. The Christian priests of Moloch inaugurated
the first auto-da-fé, on January 6th, 1481, with a solemn procession,
repeated innumerable times during the following three hundred years.
The clergy in their gorgeous vestments and with crucifixes; the
grandees in black robes with their banners and pennons; the unhappy
victims in the hideous San Benito, short and clinging, painted with a
red cross, and flames and figures of devils; the accompanying choir
of a vast concourse--so the executioners with proud bearing and
the victims in most miserable guise marched to the place of torment.
Arrived there the inquisitors recited their sentence on the victims.
To the horror of the scene was added the ghastly mockery that the
tribunal did not execute the sentence of death, but left it to the
secular judge; for the church, though steeped to the lips in blood, was
supposed not to desire the death of the sinner. The Jewish heretics
were given to the flames forthwith, or, if penitent, they were first
strangled. In the first auto-da-fé, at which the bishop, Alfonso de
Ojeda, preached the inauguration sermon, only six Judaizing Christians
were burnt. A few days later the conspirators of Carmona, Seville,
and other towns, and three of the most wealthy and respected of the
Marranos, among whom was Diego de Suson, the possessor of ten millions,
and Abulafia, formerly a Talmudic scholar and a rabbi, were burnt
to death. On the 26th of March seventeen victims suffered death by
fire on the Quemadero. In the following month a yet greater number
were burnt; and up to November of the same year 298 burnt-offerings
to Christ gasped out their lives in flame and smoke in the single
district of Seville. In the archbishopric of Cadiz no less than 2,000
Jewish heretics were burnt alive in the course of that year, most of
them being wealthy or well-to-do, their possessions, of course, going
to the royal exchequer. Not even death afforded a safeguard against
the fury of the Holy Office. These ghouls of religion tore from
their graves the corpses of proselytes who had died in heresy, burnt
them, confiscated their possessions in the hands of their heirs, and
condemned the latter to obscurity and poverty that they might never
aspire to any honorable office. Here was a splendid field for the
avarice of the king. When it was impossible to convict a wealthy heir,
it was only necessary to establish proofs of a relapse to Judaism
against his dead father, and then the property fell partly to the king,
partly to the Holy Inquisition!
Many Marranos saved themselves by flight from the clutches of the
merciless persecutors, and took refuge in the neighboring Moslem
kingdom of Granada, in Portugal, Africa, Provence, or Italy. Those
who reached Rome approached the papal court with bitter complaints
about the savage and arbitrary proceedings of the Inquisition against
themselves and their companions in misery. As the complainants did not
come with empty hands, their cause usually obtained a ready hearing.
On the 29th of January, 1482, the pope addressed a severe letter to
Ferdinand and Isabella, censuring the conduct of the Inquisition in no
measured terms. He stated that he had been assured that the proceedings
of the tribunal were contrary to all forms of justice, that many were
unjustly imprisoned, and subjected to fearful tortures. Innocent people
had been denounced as heretics, and their property taken from their
heirs. In this letter the pope admitted that he had issued the bull for
the institution of the Inquisition without due consideration!
Sixtus further stated that, in strict justice, he ought to depose the
inquisitors, De Morillo and San Martin; but out of consideration for
their majesties he would allow them to remain in possession of their
offices, only so long, however, as no further complaints were made
against them. Should protests again be raised he would restore the
inquisitorial office to the bishops, to whom it properly belonged. The
pope refused the request of Don Ferdinand to institute in the other
provinces of the united kingdom extraordinary tribunals for the trial
of heretics.
But Don Ferdinand also knew how to apply the golden key to the
papal cabinet, and obtained a bull sanctioning the establishment
of the Inquisition in the provinces of Aragon. In this bull, dated
February 11th, 1482, Sixtus appointed six monks and clerics as chief
inquisitors, among them Thomas de Torquemada, general of the Dominicans
of Avilo, a monk already infamous for his bloodthirsty fanaticism.
In another letter, of the 17th of April, he invested these men with
discretionary powers, in virtue of which they were able to dispense
with certain forms of common law, the hearing of witnesses and the
admission of pleaders for the defense. Thus were fresh victims brought
to the stake.
In the kingdom of Aragon, however, where the nobility and the middle
class had a weighty voice in public matters, the condemnation of Jewish
heretics without formal trial raised such formidable opposition that
Cardinal Borgia, afterwards the infamous Alexander VI, and the king
himself, petitioned the pope for a modification of the conditions
governing the practice of the tribunal. In a letter of the 10th of
October, Sixtus excused himself from making any radical changes in
consequence of the absence of the cardinals, who had fled from Rome
in mortal fear of the plague. But he abrogated the conditions which
too flagrantly violated the principles of common law; that is to say,
he ordered that accuser and witnesses should be confronted with the
accused, and that the process should be conducted in public.
The Inquisition also met with great opposition in Sicily, an appanage
of the kingdom of Aragon. The people and even the authorities took the
part of the new-Christians, and shielded them from the persecution
of their bloodthirsty judges. Christians themselves openly charged
that the victims were not executed out of zeal for the faith, but from
insatiable greed which sought ceaseless confiscations. The bigoted
Isabella was sorely troubled at having her pious desire to devote the
proselytes to death thus evilly represented, and even the pope behaved
as though it wounded him to the heart. (February, 1483.)
Sixtus IV had the greatest interest in maintaining friendly relations
with the Spanish court, and, therefore, made every concession with
regard to the Inquisition. As it often happened that Christian
proselytes condemned by the tribunal, who had succeeded in escaping to
Rome, purchased absolution from the papal throne, with the infliction
of only a light, private penance, the sovereigns saw that their
efforts to purge the Christian faith by the extermination of Jewish
proselytes, especially by the confiscation of their goods, were most
unpleasantly thwarted. The court, therefore, insisted that the pope
appoint a judge of appeals in Spain itself, so that the rulings of the
Inquisition might not be reversed in foreign countries, where all kinds
of unfavorable influences might be brought to bear. The pope agreed to
this proposition, and appointed Inigo Manrique chief judge of appeals
in cases in which the condemned moved for a revision of their trial.
This measure was, however, of very doubtful benefit to the unfortunate
culprits, for upon what ground could they base their appeal when the
trial had been conducted in secret, and neither accuser nor witnesses
were known to them? It is altogether likely, too, that the tribunal did
not leave them very much time to institute proceedings for the revision
of the verdict. Between the passing of the sentence and the last act of
the auto-da-fé only a very short interval elapsed.
Another measure of the Spanish court, calculated to deprive the accused
of the last hope of acquittal, was approved by the pope. Baptized Jews,
or new-Christians descended from them, frequently held bishoprics, and
were naturally favorably inclined to their unfortunate and persecuted
brethren in race. At the request of the Spanish court, the pope issued
a bull decreeing that no bishop, vicar, or member of the upper clergy
descended from a Jewish family, whether paternally or maternally,
should sit as a judge in any court for the trial of heretics. From
this prohibition there was only a step to the condemnation of clergy
of Jewish blood to the stake. Both his own frame of mind and his
political position now inclined the pope to encourage the sovereigns in
the prosecution of their bloody work. He reminded them that Jesus had
established his kingdom on earth solely by the extirpation of idolatry
and the extermination of idolators, and he pointed to the recent
victories which the Spaniards had gained over the Moslems in Granada
as the reward of heaven for their efforts towards the purification of
the faith--that is to say, for the burning of new-Christians and the
confiscation of their goods.
Had his Holiness, Sixtus IV, not been infamous as a monster of
depravity, sensuality and unscrupulousness, who appointed boys that
he had himself abused to bishoprics and the cardinal dignity, and who
bestowed no clerical office without payment--as his contemporary,
Infessura, the chancellor of Rome, has recorded--his conduct with
regard to the Holy Inquisition would have been sufficient to brand
him with immortal infamy. Within a short period he published the most
contradictory decisions, and did not take the trouble to veil his
inconsistency with the most flimsy pretense. Scarcely had he proclaimed
the utmost rigors against Judaizing heretics, and appointed a tribunal
of appeals, than he partly abrogated these bulls, and issued another
prescribing milder proceedings to the Inquisition, only to alter this
policy in its turn.
The hated Marranos, among them the high-spirited Juan de Seville, had
exerted themselves to procure from the papal court a decree to the
effect that those who had undergone private penance in Rome should not
be submitted to the oppression and persecution of the avaricious king
and his bloodthirsty inquisitors, but should be regarded and treated
as orthodox Christians. At first the pope consented, and issued a
bull on August 2d, 1483, "to be held in eternal remembrance and as
guide for the future," in which he especially directed that rigor be
tempered with mercy in dealing with the new-Christians, seeing that the
severity of the Inquisition had overstepped the bounds of justice. The
bull enacted that all new-Christians who had confessed their remorse
to the confessor-general in Rome, and had been assigned a penance,
should not be pursued by the Inquisition, and should have their trials
suppressed. It exhorted the king and queen, "by the bowels of Jesus
Christ," to remember that in mercy and kindness alone may man resemble
God, and that, therefore, they might in this follow in the steps of
Jesus, whose peculiar attribute it was to show mercy and to pardon.
The pope permitted this bull to be copied indefinitely, each copy to
have the authority of the original, in order that the papal attitude
with regard to new-Christians might be made universally known. Sixtus
concluded with the statement that he issued this bull entirely of his
own motion, not in obedience to external influence, although it was
well known in high circles that it had been bought with new-Christian
gold. The sovereigns, however, would have nothing to do with mercy or
forbearance; they desired the death of the culprits and the possession
of their property. Nor was the pope really inclined to mild measures.
A few days later, on August 13th, he recalled this bull, excusing
himself to the king for its tenor, and said that it had been issued
in too great haste. Such was the consistency and infallibility of his
Holiness, Pope Sixtus IV!
In vain Don Juan de Seville, who had procured the promulgation of the
favorable bull, endeavored to circulate it. He failed to find any
clerical official in Spain to copy and confirm it. He, therefore,
applied to the Portuguese archbishop of Evora, who caused it to be
copied by his notary and recognized as authentic. The Inquisition,
however, was extremely suspicious of those who had sought and obtained
indulgences at Rome, and Don Juan de Seville and his companions fell at
length into its hands, and were severely punished.
Terrible though the tribunal had hitherto been; though many thousands
of compulsory proselytes and their descendants, during its three short
years of existence, had been cast into the flames, left to rot in its
dungeons, driven from their country, or reduced to beggary, it was
child's play compared with what it became when placed under the control
of a priest whose heart was closed to every sentiment of mercy, whose
lips breathed only death and destruction, and who united the savagery
of the hyena with the venom of the snake. Until now the Inquisition had
been confined to southern Spain, to the districts of Seville and Cadiz,
and the Christian province of Andalusia. In the remaining provinces
of Spain it had hitherto been unable to get a footing, in consequence
of the resistance offered to its introduction by the cortes. Through
the opposition of the people, the wicked will of the inquisitors
Morillo and Juan de San Martin had remained inoperative; their uplifted
arm was paralyzed by innumerable difficulties. If here and there a
few courts were held in the remaining districts of Spain, they were
isolated and without organization, and were thus unable to furnish
each other with victims. King Ferdinand thus had not yet collected
treasure enough, nor had the pious Isabella beheld a sufficient number
of new-Christians writhing in the flames. For their joint satisfaction
they now persuaded the pope to appoint an inquisitor-general who
should constitute, direct, and supervise the several courts, that
none of the suspected Marranos might avoid their fate, and that the
opposition of the populace might be broken down by every species
of terrorism. In cold blood, and with little interest even for the
faith itself, the pope assented; and in May, 1483, appointed the
Dominican, Thomas de Torquemada, hitherto prior of a monastery in
Segovia, inquisitor-general of Spain. There are certain men who are
the embodiment of good or evil sentiments, opinions and principles,
and fully illustrate their extremest consequences. Torquemada was the
incarnation of the Holy Inquisition with all its devilish malice, its
heartless severity, its bloodthirsty ferocity.
"Out of Rome hath arisen a savage monster of such wondrous shape and
hideous appearance that at the sound of its name all Europe trembles.
Its carcass is of iron, tempered in deadly poison, and covered with
scales of impenetrable steel. A thousand venom-dropping wings support
it when it hovers over the terrified earth. Its nature is that of the
ravening lion and the snake of the African desert. Its bite is more
terrible than that of the hugest monster. The sound of its voice slays
more speedily than the deadly glance of the basilisk. From its eyes and
mouth stream fire and ceaseless lightnings. It feeds on human bodies,
and its drink is human tears and blood. It excels the eagle in the
speed of its flight, and where it broods its black shadow spreads the
gloom of night. Though the sun shine never so clearly, the darkness of
Egypt follows in its track. Wheresoever it flies, every green meadow
that it touches, every fruitful tree on which it sets foot, withers and
dies. With its destroying fangs it roots up every herb that grows, and
with the poison of its breath it blasts the circle in which it moves to
a desert like that of Syria, where no green thing grows, no grass-blade
sprouts."
Thus did a Jewish poet, Samuel Usque, himself singed by its flames,
depict the Inquisition.
The inscription which the poet Dante placed upon the portal of Hell--
"All hope abandon, ye who enter here!"
would have been even more suitable to the dungeons of the Holy
Inquisition, which the cruel energy of Torquemada now established in
nearly all the great towns of Spain. He at once instituted three new
tribunals in Cordova, Jaen and Villareal (Ciudad-Real), and, later
on, one in Toledo, the capital of southern Spain. The offices of the
Inquisition were entirely filled by him with hypocritical and fanatical
Dominicans, whom he made the tools of his will, so that they worked
like an organism with a single head, ready at his word to perpetrate
the most hideous barbarities with a composure that cannibals might
have envied. In those days Spain was filled with the putrefaction of
the dungeon, the stench of corpses, and the crackling of the flames in
which were burning innocent Jews, forced into a faith the falsity of
which was demonstrated by every action of the servants of the church. A
wail of misery piercing bone and marrow went through that lovely land;
but their Catholic majesties paralyzed the arm of every man prompted
by mercy to put a stop to the butchery. At the court itself there
sat a commission on the affairs of Jewish Christians, of which the
inquisitor-general held the presidency.
Don Ferdinand wished to perpetuate the jurisdiction of the Inquisition
in his hereditary lands, in order to fill his purse with the spoils
of the new-Christians settled there. During the assembly of the
cortes at Tarazona, in April, 1484, he laid his plans before his privy
council, and canceled the ancient privileges of the country, which had
existed from the earliest times, and which provided that no native of
Aragon, whatever his crime, should suffer confiscation of his property.
The inquisitor-general accordingly appointed for the archbishopric
of Saragossa two inquisitors who rivaled himself in bloodthirsty
fanaticism, the canon, Pedro Arbues de Epila, and the Dominican,
Gaspard Juglar. A royal ordinance was now issued to all officials and
nobles, directing them to give every assistance to the inquisitors.
The grand justiciary of Aragon, though of Jewish origin, and other
dignitaries, were obliged to take an oath that they would spare no
efforts to exterminate the culprits condemned by the tribunal.
Torquemada, the very soul of the Inquisition, now decided to publish
a code for the guidance of the judges, so that the net might be
drawn as closely as possible round his victims. The whole body of
inquisitors was assembled to consider this design, and, under the
title of "Constitutions," issued, on October 29th, 1484, a code of
laws, calculated to inspire the utmost horror had no more been done
than commit them to paper. It has been asserted that the monkish
inquisitors merely copied the anti-Jewish enactments of the councils
under the Visigothic kings. It is true that the decrees of Receswinth
threatened with death, by fire or stoning, all new-Christians convicted
of adherence to Jewish customs. The comparison is, nevertheless,
incorrect. For not the enactments against heresy, but their
enforcement, distinguishes the "Constitutions" of the Inquisition as
the most hideous ever fashioned by human wickedness. It was as though
the most malicious demons had taken counsel to discover how they might
bring innocent human beings to destruction.
One decree ordained a respite of thirty days for those who of their
own free will would tender confession of their relapse to Judaism.
These were to be spared all punishment and confiscation of goods with
the exception of a moderate fine. They were, however, compelled to put
their confession into writing, to give exact answers to all questions
put to them, and especially to betray their fellow-offenders, and even
those whom they only suspected of Judaizing tendencies. Those who
confessed after the expiration of the time of respite were to lose
all their property, even that which they had possessed at the time of
their falling away from Christianity, and though it had passed into
other hands. Only new-Christians under twenty years old were exempted
from loss of property in the event of later confessions; but they were
compelled to bear a mark of infamy composed of flaming crosses, the
San Benito, upon their clothing, and to take part in the processions
and attend high mass in this guise. Those whose remorse awakened after
the appointed day were indeed to receive indulgence, but they were to
remain branded for life. Neither they nor their descendants were ever
to hold any public office, nor to wear any garment embroidered with
gold, silver or pearls, or made of silk or fine wool, and they were
condemned to bear the "fiery cross" for ever. Should the inquisitors
discover that the confession of a penitent was insincere, it was their
duty to deny him absolution, to treat him as a recalcitrant, and to
consign him to the flames. If a penitent made only a partial confession
of his sins, he, too, was condemned to death. The evidence against a
Judaizing Christian might, when not otherwise convenient, be taken
through other persons. It was not necessary to place this testimony
before the accused in full detail, but merely as an abstract. If, in
spite of the evidence laid before him, he maintained that he had never
relapsed into Judaism, he was condemned to the flames as impenitent.
Inconclusive proofs of relapse brought against a Marrano stretched him
upon the rack; in case he confessed under torture, he was submitted
to a second trial. If he then adhered to what he had confessed under
torture he was condemned; if he denied it, he underwent the torture
again. In those cases in which an accused person failed to answer to
the summons issued against him, he was condemned as a contumacious
heretic, _i. e._, his property was confiscated.
In the face of such proceedings--the parody of a trial--and the
pre-determination on the part of the judge to consider the accused
guilty, how was it possible for any Marrano to prove his innocence?
The dungeon and the rack frequently made the accused so indifferent
to their fate and so weary of life that they made confessions as to
themselves, their friends and even their nearest relatives which
appeared to vindicate the necessity for the Inquisition. The trial of
every new-Christian involved others in apparent guilt, and brought
new examinations and new accusations in its train, thus furnishing an
ever-increasing number of victims to the Holy Office.
The towns of the kingdoms of Aragon and Valencia had from the
first manifested the greatest displeasure at the introduction of
the Inquisition. Up to this period they had been less despotically
governed than Castile, and were exceedingly jealous of their freedom.
Above everything the Aragonese valued, as the apple of their eye, the
privilege which forbade the confiscation of goods even on account
of the gravest offenses. Now the officers of the Inquisition were
to be invested with unlimited power over life and property. The
new-Christians, who held high offices and influential positions in
Aragon, were naturally eager to foment and increase the discontent.
In Teruel and Valencia, in 1485, disastrous popular risings broke out
against the Inquisition, and were quelled only after great bloodshed.
The Marranos and those of Jewish descent did not, however, surrender
their project of paralyzing the Inquisition in Aragon. Some of the
highest dignitaries of state were numbered among them; as, for example,
Luis Gonzalez, royal secretary of state for Aragon; Alfonso de
Caballeria, the vice-chancellor; his brother, the king's major-domo;
Philip Clemente, chief notary; and such high hidalgos as the Counts of
Aranda, together with many knights, among whom were the valiant Juan
de Abadia, whose sister was burnt for heresy, and Juan Perez Sanchez,
whose brothers were at court.
As soon as the first victims fell under the Inquisition in Saragossa,
influential new-Christians brought pressure to bear upon the cortes
to induce them to protest, both to the king and to the pope, against
the introduction of the tribunal into Aragon. Commissioners were
sent to the royal and papal courts to effect in person the repeal of
the ordinances. They expected but little trouble in Rome, for there
everything was to be had for money. With the king it seemed to be a
matter of much greater difficulty. Ferdinand remained obstinately fixed
in the resolution to exterminate the Jewish Christians by means of the
Inquisition, and to acquire their property. When the commissioners
sent news to their friends in Aragon of the failure of their efforts,
Perez Sanchez conceived a plot to remove Pedro Arbues, chief inquisitor
for Aragon, in order to cripple the activity of the Inquisition by
terrorism, and to force the king to give way. He imparted his project
to his friends, and many bound themselves to stand by him. In order
to win over the entire body of new-Christians, and to induce them to
stand firmly together, the leaders of the conspiracy laid them under
contribution for the expenses of carrying out the project. A hidalgo,
Blasco de Alagon, collected the money, and Juan de Abadia undertook to
hire the assassins, and to see that the death of Arbues was achieved.
This conspiracy was joined by many distinguished persons of Jewish
descent in Saragossa, Tarazona, Calatayud, Huesca and Barbastro.
Juan de Abadia procured two trustworthy men, Juan de Esperaindo and
Vidal de Uranso, with four assistants, to accomplish the death of the
inquisitor Arbues. The intended victim appears to have suspected the
plot, for he protected his body with a shirt of mail and his head with
a species of steel cap. Before daybreak on the 15th of September,
1485, as he was entering the church with a lantern to hear early mass,
the conspirators followed him. As soon as he had fallen on his knees,
Esperaindo struck him on the arm with his sword, while Vidal wounded
him in the neck. He was borne out of the church bathed in blood, and
died two days later. The conspirators took instant flight. As soon as
the news of the attack on the chief inquisitor spread in Saragossa
it produced a violent reaction. The orthodox Christians assembled in
crowds crying in tones of fury: "To the flames with the Jew-Christians!
They have murdered the chief inquisitor!" The Marranos would have
been massacred in a body there and then, had not the royal bastard,
the youthful Archbishop Alfonso of Aragon, mounted his horse, and
restrained the crowd by an armed force, promising them the fullest
satisfaction by the severe punishment of the guilty persons and their
accomplices.
King Ferdinand made good use of the unfortunate conspiracy in the
establishment of the Inquisition in Aragon. The sovereigns carried
public mourning for the murdered Arbues to the verge of idolatry. A
statue was consecrated to his memory, in honor of his services to
religion and the extermination of Jewish heretics. The Dominicans
were by no means displeased at the death of the chief inquisitor.
They were, in fact, in need of a martyr to enable them to surround
their tribunal of blood with a halo of glory. They used every effort
to raise Pedro Arbues to the rank of saint or Christian demi-god. It
was not long before they fabricated a divine communication from the
sainted heretic-slayer, in which he exhorted all the world to support
and carry forward the Holy Inquisition, and soothed the scruples of the
members of the tribunal, on account of the enormous number of men they
had consigned to the flames, by assuring them that the most honorable
places in heaven awaited them as the reward of their pious efforts.
The unsuccessful conspiracy of the Marranos in Saragossa afforded a
vast number of fresh victims to the Christian Moloch. A few of the
conspirators made full confession, and so the inquisitors soon had
a complete list of the culprits. These were pursued with redoubled
vigor as Judaizing heretics and enemies of the Holy Office. Those
who had borne a leading part in the conspiracy, as soon as they fell
into the hands of their judges, were dragged through the streets of
Saragossa, their hands were hewn off, and they were then hanged. Juan
de Abadia escaped this dishonorable fate by killing himself in prison.
More than two hundred Jewish Christians were burnt as accomplices, a
yet greater number were condemned to perpetual imprisonment, among
them a high dignitary of the Metropolitan Church of Saragossa, and
not a few women of gentle birth. Francisco de Santa Fé also died
at the stake. Even those who had given shelter to the conspirators
for a brief period during their flight were compelled to attend an
auto-da-fé as penitents, and lost their civil rights. How far the
inhumanity of the persecutors went is especially shown by one of the
punishments inflicted. A conspirator, Gaspard de Santa Cruz, had been
successful in making his escape to Toulouse, and there died in peace.
The Inquisition, not content with burning him in effigy, laid hands
upon his son as an accomplice in his father's flight, and condemned him
to travel to Toulouse to communicate his sentence to the Dominicans of
that city, and to desire them to exhume the body of his father and burn
it. The weak son performed his disgraceful mission, and brought back
to Saragossa the certificate of the Dominicans to the effect that the
corpse of the father had been dishonored on the prayer of the son.
Certain towns of northern Spain, such as Lerida and Barcelona, still
obstinately resisted the introduction of the Inquisition. Their
resistance proved vain. The iron will of Fernando and the bloodthirsty
fanaticism of Torquemada overcame every obstacle, and the papal
court was obliged to give its assent to every proposal. From that
time forth the number of victims continued to increase. On the 12th
of February, 1486, an auto-da-fé was celebrated in Toledo with 750
human burnt-offerings, while on the 2d of April in the same year, 900
victims were offered up, and on the 7th of May, 750. On the 16th of
August twenty-five Jewish heretics were burnt alive in Toledo; on the
following day two priests suffered; and on the 10th of December 950
persons were condemned to shameful public penance. In the following
year, when the Inquisition was established in Barcelona and on the
island of Majorca, two hundred Marranos suffered death by fire in
these places alone. A Jew of that time, Isaac Arama, writes on this
subject as follows: "In these days the smoke of the martyr's pyre
rises unceasingly to heaven in all the Spanish kingdoms and the isles.
One-third of the Marranos have perished in the flames, another third
wander homeless over the earth seeking where they may hide themselves,
and the remainder live in perpetual terror of a trial." So the tale
of victims grew from year to year under the eleven tribunals which
transformed the fair land of Spain into a blazing Tophet, whose flames
soon reached and devoured the Christians themselves.
The pitiless persecution of the new-Christians had its origin perhaps
even more in the racial hatred of the pure-blooded Spaniards towards
the children of Judah than in religious fanaticism. Persons of Jewish
descent, whom it was impossible justly to accuse of heresy, were
included in the accusations simply because they held high offices. They
were not permitted to enjoy any dignity or to exercise any influence in
the country. The inquisitor-general, Torquemada, even laid hands upon
two bishops of Jewish blood, De Avila and De Aranda, so that, if it
were impossible to consign them to the flames, he might at least expel
them from their sees.