INTERNAL AFFAIRS OF THE KINGDOM.--INQUISITION IN ARAGON.
1483-1487.
Isabella enforces the Laws.--Punishment of Ecclesiastics.--Inquisition in
Aragon.--Remonstrances of the Cortes.--Conspiracy.--Assassination of the
Inquisitor Arbues.--Cruel Persecutions.--Inquisition throughout
Ferdinand's Dominions.
In such intervals of leisure as occurred amid their military operations,
Ferdinand and Isabella were diligently occupied with the interior
government of the kingdom, and especially with the rigid administration of
justice, the most difficult of all duties in an imperfectly civilized
state of society. The queen found especial demand for this in the northern
provinces, whose rude inhabitants were little used to subordination. She
compelled the great nobles to lay aside their arms, and refer their
disputes to legal arbitration. She caused a number of the fortresses,
which were still garrisoned by the baronial banditti, to be razed to the
ground; and she enforced the utmost severity of the law against such
inferior criminals as violated the public peace. [1]
Even ecclesiastical immunities, which proved so effectual a protection in
most countries at this period, were not permitted to screen the offender.
A remarkable instance of this occurred at the city of Truxillo, in 1486.
An inhabitant of that place had been committed to prison for some offence
by order of the civil magistrate. Certain priests, relations of the
offender, alleged that his religious profession exempted him from all but
ecclesiastical jurisdiction; and, as the authorities refused to deliver
him up, they inflamed the populace to such a degree, by their
representations of the insult offered to the church, that they rose in a
body, and, forcing the prison, set at liberty not only the malefactor in
question, but all those confined there. The queen no sooner heard of this
outrage on the royal authority, than she sent a detachment of her guard to
Truxillo, which secured the persons of the principal rioters, some of whom
were capitally punished, while the ecclesiastics, who had stirred up the
sedition, were banished the realm. Isabella, while by her example she
inculcated the deepest reverence for the sacred profession, uniformly
resisted every attempt from that quarter to encroach on the royal
prerogative. The tendency of her administration was decidedly, as there
will be occasion more particularly to notice, to abridge the authority
which that body had exercised in civil matters under preceding reigns. [2]
Nothing of interest occurred in the foreign relations of the kingdom,
during the period embraced by the preceding chapter; except perhaps the
marriage of Catharine, the young queen of Navarre, with Jean d'Albret, a
French nobleman, whose extensive hereditary domains, in the southwest
corner of France, lay adjacent to her kingdom. This connection was
extremely distasteful to the Spanish sovereigns, and indeed to many of the
Navarrese, who were desirous of the alliance with Castile. This was
ultimately defeated by the queen-mother, an artful woman, who, being of
the blood royal of France, was naturally disposed to a union with that
kingdom. Ferdinand did not neglect to maintain such an understanding with
the malcontents of Navarre, as should enable him to counteract any undue
advantage which the French monarch might derive from the possession of
this key, as it were, to the Castilian territory. [3]
In Aragon, two circumstances took place in the period under review,
deserving historical notice. The first relates to an order of the Catalan
peasantry, denominated vassals _de remenza_. These persons were subjected
to a feudal bondage, which had its origin in very remote ages, but which
had become in no degree mitigated, while the peasantry of every other part
of Europe had been gradually rising to the rank of freemen. The grievous
nature of the impositions had led to repeated rebellions in preceding
reigns. At length, Ferdinand, after many fruitless attempts at a mediation
between these unfortunate people and their arrogant masters, prevailed on
the latter, rather by force of authority than argument, to relinquish the
extraordinary seignorial rights, which they had hitherto enjoyed, in
consideration of a stipulated annual payment from their vassals. [4]
The other circumstance worthy of record, but not in like manner creditable
to the character of the sovereign, is the introduction of the modern
Inquisition into Aragon. The ancient tribunal had existed there, as has
been stated in a previous chapter, since the middle of the thirteenth
century, but seems to have lost all its venom in the atmosphere of that
free country; scarcely assuming a jurisdiction beyond that of an ordinary
ecclesiastical court. No sooner, however, was the institution organized on
its new basis in Castile, than Ferdinand resolved on its introduction, in
a similar form, in his own dominions.
Measures were accordingly taken to that effect in a meeting of a privy
council convened by the king at Taraçona, during the session of the cortes
in that place, in April, 1484; and a royal order was issued, requiring all
the constituted authorities throughout the kingdom to support the new
tribunal in the exercise of its functions. A Dominican monk, Fray Gaspard
Juglar, and Pedro Arbues de Epila, a canon of the metropolitan church,
were appointed by the general, Torquemada, inquisitors over the diocese of
Saragossa; and, in the month of September following, the chief justiciary
and the other great officers of the realm took the prescribed oaths. [5]
The new institution, opposed to the ideas of independence common to all
the Aragonese, was particularly offensive to the higher orders, many of
whose members, including persons filling the most considerable official
stations, were of Jewish descent, and of course precisely the class
exposed to the scrutiny of the Inquisition. Without difficulty, therefore,
the cortes was persuaded in the following year to send a deputation to the
court of Rome, and another to Ferdinand, representing the repugnance of
the new tribunal to the liberties of the nation, as well as to their
settled opinions and habits, and praying that its operation might be
suspended for the present, so far at least as concerned the confiscation
of property, which it rightly regarded as the moving power of the whole
terrible machinery. [6]
Both the pope and the king, as may be imagined, turned a deaf ear to these
remonstrances. In the mean while the Inquisition commenced operations, and
autos da fe were celebrated at Saragossa, with all their usual horrors, in
the months of May and June, in 1485. The discontented Aragonese,
despairing of redress in any regular way, resolved to intimidate their
oppressors by some appalling act of violence. They formed a conspiracy for
the assassination of Arbues, the most odious of the inquisitors
established over the diocese of Saragossa. The conspiracy, set on foot by
some of the principal nobility, was entered into by most of the new
Christians, or persons of Jewish extraction in the district. A sum of ten
thousand reals was subscribed to defray the necessary expenses for the
execution of their project. This was not easy, however, since Arbues,
conscious of the popular odium that he had incurred, protected his person
by wearing under his monastic robes a suit of mail, complete even to the
helmet beneath his hood. With similar vigilance, he defended, also, every
avenue to his sleeping apartment. [7]
At length, however, the conspirators found an opportunity of surprising
him while at his devotions. Arbues was on his knees before the great altar
of the cathedral, near midnight, when his enemies, who had entered the
church in two separate bodies, suddenly surrounded him, and one of them
wounded him in the arm with a dagger, while another dealt him a fatal blow
in the back of his neck. The priests, who were preparing to celebrate
matins in the choir of the church, hastened to the spot; but not before
the assassins had effected their escape. They transported the bleeding
body of the inquisitor to his apartment, where he survived only two days,
blessing the Lord that he had been permitted to seal so good a cause with
his blood. The whole scene will readily remind the English reader of the
assassination of Thomas à Becket. [8]
The event did not correspond with the expectations of the conspirators.
Sectarian jealousy proved stronger than hatred of the Inquisition. The
populace, ignorant of the extent or ultimate object of the conspiracy,
were filled with vague apprehensions of an insurrection of the new
Christians, who had so often been the objects of outrage; and they could
only be appeased by the archbishop of Saragossa, riding through the
streets, and proclaiming that no time should be lost in detecting and
punishing the assassins.
This promise was abundantly fulfilled; and wide was the ruin occasioned by
the indefatigable zeal, with which the bloodhounds of the tribunal
followed up the scent. In the course of this persecution, two hundred
individuals perished at the stake, and a still greater number in the
dungeons of the Inquisition; and there was scarcely a noble family in
Aragon but witnessed one or more of its members condemned to humiliating
penance in the autos da fe. The immediate perpetrators of the murder were
all hanged, after suffering the amputation of their right hands. One, who
had appeared as evidence against the rest, under assurance of pardon, had
his sentence so far commuted, that his hand was not cut off till after he
had been hanged. It was thus that the Holy Office interpreted its promises
of grace. [9]
Arbues received all the honors of a martyr. His ashes were interred on the
spot where he had been assassinated. [10] A superb mausoleum was erected
over them, and, beneath his effigy, a bas-relief was sculptured
representing his tragical death, with an inscription containing a suitable
denunciation of the race of Israel. And at length, when the lapse of
nearly two centuries had supplied the requisite amount of miracles, the
Spanish Inquisition had the glory of adding a new saint to the calendar,
by the canonization of the martyr under Pope Alexander the Seventh, in
1664. [11]
The failure of the attempt to shake off the tribunal served only, as usual
in such cases, to establish it more firmly than before. Efforts at
resistance were subsequently, but ineffectually, made in other parts of
Aragon, and in Valencia and Catalonia. It was not established in the
latter province till 1487, and some years later in Sicily, Sardinia, and
the Balearic Isles. Thus Ferdinand had the melancholy satisfaction of
riveting the most galling yoke ever devised by fanaticism, round the necks
of a people, who till that period had enjoyed probably the greatest degree
of constitutional freedom which the world had witnessed.
FOOTNOTES
[1] Lebrija, Rerum Gestarum Decades, iii. lib. 1, cap. 10.--Pulgar, Reyes
Católicos, part. 3, cap. 27, 39, 67, et alibi.--L. Marineo, Cosas
Memorables, fol. 175.--Zurita, Anales, tom. iv. fol. 348.
[2] Pulgar, Reyes Católicos, cap. 66.--A pertinent example of this
occurred, December, 1485, at Alcalá de Henares, where the court was
detained during the queen's illness, who there gave birth to her youngest
child, Doña Catalina, afterwards so celebrated in English history as
Catharine of Aragon. A collision took place in this city between the royal
judges and those of the archbishop of Toledo, to whose diocese it
belonged. The later stoutly maintained the pretensions of the church. The
queen with equal pertinacity asserted the supremacy of the royal
jurisdiction over every other in the kingdom, secular or ecclesiastical.
The affair was ultimately referred to the arbitration of certain learned
men, named conjointly by the adverse parties. It was not then determined,
however, and Pulgar has neglected to acquaint us with the award. Reyes
Católicos, cap. 53.--Carbajal, Anales, MS., año 1485.
[3] Aleson, Annales de Navarra, tom. v. lib. 35, cap. 2.
[4] Zurita, Anales, tom. iv. cap. 52, 67.--Mariana, Hist. de España, lib.
25, cap. 8.
[5] Llorente, Hist. de l'Inquisition, tom. i. chap. 6, art. 2.--Zurita,
Anales, lib. 20, cap. 65.
At this cortes, convened at Taraçona, Ferdinand and Isabella experienced
an instance of the haughty spirit of their Catalan subjects, who refused
to attend, alleging it to be a violation of their liberties to be summoned
to a place without the limits of their principality. The Valencians also
protested, that their attendance should not operate as a precedent to
their prejudice. It was usual to convene a central or general cortes at
Fraga, or Monzon, or some town, which the Catalans, who were peculiarly
jealous of their privileges, claimed to be within their territory. It was
still more usual, to hold separate cortes of the three kingdoms
simultaneously in such contiguous places in each, as would permit the
royal presence in all during their session. See Blancas, Mode de Proceder
en Cortes de Aragon, (Zaragoza, 1641,) cap. 4.
[6] By one of the articles in the Privilegium Generale, the Magna Charta
of Aragon, it is declared, "Que turment: ni inquisicion; no sian en Aragon
como sian contra Fuero el qual dize que alguna pesquisa no hauemos: et
contra el privilegio general, el qual vieda que inquisicion so sia feyta."
(Fueros y Observancias, fol. 11.) The tenor of this clause (although the
term _inquisicion_ must not be confounded with the name of the modern
institution) was sufficiently precise, one might have thought, to secure
the Aragonese from the fangs of this terrible tribunal.
[7] Llorente, Hist. de l'Inquisition, chap. 6, art. 2, 3.
[8] Llorente, ubi supra.--Paramo, De Origine Inquisitionis, pp. 182, 183.
--Ferreras, Hist. d'Espagne, tom. viii. pp. 37, 38.
[9] Llorente, Hist. de l'Inquisition, tom. i. chap. 6, art. 5.--Blancas,
Aragonensium Rerum Commentarii, (Caesaraugustae, 1588,) p. 266. Among
those, who after a tedious imprisonment were condemned to do penance in an
auto da fe, was a nephew of King Ferdinand, Don James of Navarre. Mariana,
willing to point the tale with a suitable moral, informs us, that,
although none of the conspirators were ever brought to trial, they all
perished miserably within a year, in different ways, by the judgment of
God. (Hist. de España, tom. ii. p. 368.) Unfortunately for the effect of
this moral, Llorente, who consulted the original processes, must be
received as the better authority of the two.
[10] According to Paramo, when the corpse of the inquisitor was brought to
the place where he had been assassinated, the blood, which had been
coagulated on the pavement, smoked up and boiled with most miraculous
fervor! De Origine Inquisitionis, p. 382.
[11] Paramo, De Origine Inquisitionis, p. 183.--Llorente, Hist. de
l'Inquisition, chap. 6, art. 4. France and Italy also, according to
Llorente, could each boast a saint inquisitor. Their renown, however, has
been, eclipsed by the superior splendors of their great master, St.
Dominic;
--"Fils inconnus d'un si glorieux père."