persecution of Damião de Goes, the foremost scholar of Portugal in the
sixteenth century. When a youth of 22, he had been sent to Flanders as
secretary to the Portuguese factory. It was not until 1528 that his
thirst for learning was awakened, he studied Latin, went to Padua, and
speedily made himself known to scholars throughout Europe. In 1545, João
recalled him to Portugal, where rivalry arose between him and Simon
Rodríguez the Jesuit Provincial, who had met him in Padua and now
accused him to the Inquisition for heretical utterances made there nine
years before, the details of which he could not remember, but had a
general impression that they were Lutheran. Nothing came of this and, in
1550, Rodríguez repeated his accusation, with the same result. Goes made
enemies in his literary career and, in 1571, the denunciation of
Rodríguez, made twenty-six years before, was resuscitated. He was now
seventy years old, he had been an invalid for twenty years, and was
scarce able to stand, but he was cast into a dungeon, April 4, 1571,
while his trial dragged on. No further evidence of any account could be
found against him, but he freely confessed that, when he went to
Flanders, he fell into the errors of considering indulgences of little
value, and that general confession sufficed, that after learning Latin
and studying, he had abandoned these errors and had since been strictly
orthodox, at the request of Cardinal Sadoleto he had written to
Melanchthon, in hopes of winning him over, and he had given a letter of
introduction to Luther to Frei Roque de Almeida, whose object was to
acquire a knowledge of the heresy so as to confute it. On this
confession exclusively was based the sentence, which declared him to be
a Lutheran heretic, but considering that it was when he was an ignorant
youth of 21 and that, on learning Latin, he had abandoned his errors, he
was mercifully condemned only to reconciliation, confiscation, and
perpetual prison, the abjuration to be private in view of his quality
and his reputation abroad. The monastery da Batalha was assigned as his
prison, and the certificate of his delivery there is dated December 16,
1572; on the 9th the _juez do fisco_ had already received the
certificate of confiscation. The "perpetual" prison of the Portuguese
Inquisition must have been temporary, like the Spanish, for Goes is said
to have died in his own house, either by apoplexy or killed by his own
servants, at a date which is not known.[734] If forty years of
orthodoxy could not atone for a youthful vacillation on one or two
points of faith, it can readily be estimated how potent an
instrumentality was the Holy Office in stunting the development of
Portuguese intellect.
[Sidenote: _INQUISITION OF PORTUGAL_]
When, in August, 1578, Cardinal Henrique succeeded to the crown of his
grand-nephew Sebastian, he did not resign the inquisitor-generalship for
fifteen months. He had previously, however, on February 24, 1578, on
account of age and infirmity, procured the appointment as coadjutor,
with the right of succession, of Manoel Bishop of Coimbra, but the
latter disappeared with his sovereign in the disastrous rout of
Alcazar-Quibir, and it was not until December 27, 1579 that, at
Henrique's request, Gregory XIII replaced him with Jorje de Almeida,
Archbishop of Lisbon.[735] Henrique's death soon followed, January 31,
1580, when he passed away, universally detested and only regretted
because, in the rivalry of claimants to the throne, and in the
exhaustion of the land through famine and pestilence, the way was open
to the easy conquest by Philip II. In the reorganization under the
Spanish crown, the Inquisition was not merged with that of Castile, but
was left as an independent institution under the Archbishop of Lisbon,
for Gregory XIII refused the request of Philip II for a brief adding it
to the jurisdiction of the Spanish inquisitor-general.[736] The
nomination, however, accrued to the Spanish crown and, in 1586, on
Almeida's death, the post was given to the Cardinal-Archduke Albrecht of
Austria, who was also Governor of Portugal.[737] With his advent, the
activity of the Inquisition increased. In the twenty years, 1581-1600,
the three tribunals held in all fifty autos de fe. Of these the records
of five are lost, but in the other forty-five there were a hundred and
sixty-two relaxations in person, fifty-nine in effigy, and twenty-nine
hundred and seventy-nine penitents.[738] As the penitents, for the most
part, must have suffered confiscation, we can estimate the severity of
the persecution in a population so limited.
Large as must have been the receipts, from the beginning, derived from
the confiscations of the wealthy New Christians, they were insufficient
to satisfy its exigencies, diverted as they had been by the compositions
paid to the crown. Sebastian, in continuing this practice, satisfied his
conscience by representing to Gregory XIII that the income of the
Inquisition did not exceed 5000 cruzados, which was insufficient for its
support, wherefore the pope granted to it two-thirds of the fruits of
the first prebend falling vacant in each of the Cathedrals of Lisbon,
Evora and Coimbra and one-half of one in each of the other sees of the
kingdom. It is probable that this evoked a sturdy resistance on the part
of the churches, for it was never carried into effect and, when Philip
II became master of Portugal, although the confiscations were no longer
compounded for, he renewed the request, stating that 14,000 cruzados a
year were requisite while the revenues did not exceed 10,000 ducats.
Gregory responded with a brief of June 28, 1583 in which he renewed the
grant, at the same time reducing it to one-half of a prebend in Lisbon,
Evora and Coimbra and one-third in the other sees, nor is it likely
that, under the stern rule of Philip, the grant was allowed to be
nugatory.[739]
* * * * *
It is not difficult to apprehend the impulses which led to a wholesale
emigration to Spain of those who felt themselves aliens in the land of
their birth. Under Spanish rule the condition of Portugal was
deplorable, as described, in 1595, by the Venetian envoy Francesco
Vendramini. Lisbon, which had been a rich and populous city, was almost
uninhabited; it formerly owned seven hundred ships, but five hundred had
been captured by the enemy (mostly by the English) and but two hundred
remained. All this was not, he says, displeasing to the king, who
desired to keep them impoverished, because they were unwilling
subjects.[740] Thus the rewards of commercial enterprise were more
promising in Spain, and the emigrant might hope that, in the absence of
knowledge of his antecedents, the danger of persecution would be less.
The immigration thus was large, and before long its effects began to
show themselves in the records of the Spanish Inquisition. Convictions
for Judaism, which had become comparatively few, increased rapidly and,
where the nativity of the delinquents happens to be specified, the term
Portuguese occurs with ominous frequency. In 1593, Toledo had seven
Portuguese on trial but, as there was but a single witness and they did
not confess under torture, their cases were suspended. The next year the
same tribunal held an auto in which appeared five Portuguese in person
and nine effigies were burnt of others, either fugitive or dead.[741] In
1595, at Seville, there was an auto in which were punished eighty-nine
Judaizers, besides four burnt in effigy, and soon afterwards, in
Quintanar del Rey (Cuenca), there were thirty discovered, of whom the
obstinate ones were burnt and the rest were reconciled.[742]
The Portuguese New Christians, both at home and in Spain, were growing
restive under increasing pressure; they were wealthy and could afford to
pay for a respite in the shape of a general pardon for past offences,
including cases on trial. In 1602 negotiations were opened with Philip
III for a papal brief to that effect; Portuguese orthodoxy took the
alarm, and the Archbishops of Lisbon, Braga and Evora hastened to
Valladolid, where the court lay, to present remonstrances. Spanish
piety, to which such transactions were a novelty, was no less exercised,
and direful predictions were made as to the evils that it would bring
upon the land. Philip and his favorite Lerma, however, were desperately
in need of cash, and all scruples were overcome by the dazzling bribe of
1,860,000 ducats to the king, besides fifty thousand cruzados to Lerma,
forty thousand to João de Borja and thirty thousand to Pedro Alvarez
Pereira, members of the Suprema Council, and thirty thousand to its
secretary Fernão de Mattos. The papal brief was issued, August 23, 1604
but, at the last moment, the bargain came near being wrecked by the
demand of the New Christians to have eight years in which to raise the
sum. A threat, however, to suspend the execution of the brief sufficed
to bring them to reason.[743]
It empowered the Portuguese inquisitor-general, the Archbishop of Lisbon
and the papal collector, or any two of them or their deputies, to
reconcile all Portuguese New Christians, whereever they might be
settled, with the injunction only of spiritual penances. It included all
who were on trial, or who had been condemned provided their sentences
had not been published. It released all confiscations that had not been
covered into the fisc, and it gave to the Portuguese in Europe a year
and to those outside of Europe two years, in which to come forward and
avail themselves of its provisions. The reconciliation thus obtained was
not to entail relaxation in case of relapse, and all inquisitors were
forbidden to interfere.[744]
[Sidenote: _THE PARDON OF 1604_]
The brief was received in Valladolid about October 1st, but was not
published in Lisbon until January 16, 1605. A royal cédula, however, was
obtained, prohibiting the publication or execution of any sentences
until this brief should take effect, thus including in its benefits all
Portuguese who were in the hands of the Spanish tribunals, as well as in
those of Portugal.[745] The effect of this was dramatically exhibited
without delay. On October 20th the Seville tribunal announced a great
auto de fe for November 7th. The stagings erected were on an unusually
large scale; on the evening of the 6th took place the procession of the
Green Cross, in which more than five hundred familiars participated; the
people flocked in from the country in numbers beyond the capacity of
the city to accommodate them. At night the confessors were introduced in
the cells of those condemned to relaxation and, after completing all the
preparations for the solemnity, the junior inquisitor, Fernando de
Acebedo, sought his bed about eleven o'clock. Suddenly a courier
arrived, armed with an order to admit him to the inquisitors, wherever
they might be, whether in their houses or their beds, in consulta de fe
or on the staging at the auto. He had left Valladolid at midnight on the
3d and, at break-neck speed, had made the distance to Seville in
seventy-two hours, getting through the closed gates of the towns on the
road, and arriving in time to serve on the inquisitors a royal cédula
forbidding the celebration of the auto. Some there were who held that a
royal decree was not to be obeyed unless rubricated by the Suprema, but
this was an opinion not as yet established and, after a brief
consultation, measures were hurriedly taken to suspend the celebration,
to the blank astonishment of all Seville. Surmises were various, some
explained it by the recent treaty with England, under which Englishmen
in Spain were not to be troubled on account of heresy; others attributed
it to the planets; others thought that among the condemned there was
some one of lofty station and influence, whose friends had been able to
save him, but the suggestion which found the widest acceptance was that
it was due to the Portuguese New Christians, numerous and wealthy, who
had offered large sums, estimated at eight hundred thousand ducats, to
stave it off, and this was supported by the fact that the midnight
horseman, before going to the Inquisition, had stopped at the house of
Etor Autunez, a wealthy Portuguese merchant, who had given him fifty
ducats for his good news.[746]
Under this perdon general, the three tribunals in Portugal liberated
four hundred and ten prisoners simultaneously on January 16, 1605,[747]
and there can be no doubt that the great body of Portuguese Judaizers in
Spain obtained valid absolution for all past sins during the
twelvemonth of its duration, although the Inquisition threw what
obstacles it could in their way. In 1605, at Toledo, Antonio Fernández
Paredes, a Portuguese on trial with three witnesses against him, was
obliged to insist on his right under the pardon, and to argue that his
wife Isabel Díaz had been released at Coimbra in virtue of it, until the
tribunal referred the matter to the Suprema, which ordered his
discharge, although subsequently, during the same year six other
Portuguese were tried and sentenced without any reference being made to
it.[748] Still, the hands of the Inquisition were tied and it lent its
energies to detecting the Portuguese in new delinquencies. It sent out
the brief to the tribunals, April 15th and, on April 20, 1606, it called
their attention to the fact that the year had expired on January 16th,
wherefore they were immediately to examine their records as to the
Portuguese who had been discharged in virtue of the brief and to proceed
against all who had not taken advantage of it as well as against those
who had been guilty of heresy after its expiration.[749] Notwithstanding
this, there must have been for some years a marked interruption of
persecution. A writer remarks, in 1611, that in Seville the Castle of
Triana was used as a penitential prison, for there was no one on trial,
the Judaizers having all been pardoned, the Moriscos expelled and the
Protestants suppressed.[750]
This episode, however could have no permanent influence and its chief
interest lies in its manifestation of the numbers and wealth of the new
class of offenders coming forward to replace the expelled Moriscos in
furnishing material for autos de fe and in stimulating activity with the
prospect of fines and confiscations. After this we hear little of the
old Spanish Conversos; nearly all Judaizers are Portuguese and all
Portuguese are presumably Judaizers--suspects who existed only on
sufferance. In 1625, at Salamanca, the corregidor, in his nightly round,
entered a tavern to arrest a priest who had committed murder. He had
words with a party of Portuguese and forthwith arrested them all,
charging them with being fugitives from the Portuguese Inquisition. He
reported this to the Suprema, which communicated with the tribunal of
Coimbra and they were all sent to it for trial.[751] When, in 1633, an
effort was made to remove the disabilities under which the New
Christians labored, the Licenciate Juan Adan de la Parra, in an argument
against it, urged as his principal reason the obstinacy of the
Portuguese neophytes: even the advocates of the measure admitted that it
would be inapplicable to them, and Parra pointed out the impossibility
of distinguishing between them and the Castilians.[752]
[Sidenote: _PORTUGUESE JEWS_]
Some efforts were made to check this influx and to prevent transit
through Spain to France and Holland, where the refugees were of material
assistance to the national enemies. In 1567, during the minority of Dom
Sebastian, the old laws were revived forbidding New Christians to leave
the kingdom, or to seek the colonies, or to sell real estate without a
special royal licence. Sebastian subsequently repealed this, but it was
renewed by Philip II, in 1587, and remained at least nominally in force,
though difficult of execution. Partial relief was obtained, in 1601,
when they paid Philip III two hundred thousand ducats for an irrevocable
free permission to go to the colonies of both crowns, and to sell landed
property but, with the faithlessness customary in dealing with the
proscribed race, this irrevocable permission was withdrawn in 1610 and,
in 1611 and 1612, the Suprema forwarded to the viceroy of Goa a royal
provision ordering him to expel all of Jewish blood, to which he refused
obedience, saying that all commerce was in their hands and the colonies
would be ruined by their expulsion.[753]
Another decree of Philip III, April 20, 1619, called the attention of
the inquisitor-general to the evils resulting from the multitudes of
Portuguese passing, with their families and property, to France. All who
could not show a licence under the Portuguese crown to leave that
kingdom were to be seized and their property sequestrated without
further orders, in accordance with which the Suprema promptly issued the
necessary instructions to its commissioners in the sea-ports and
frontier towns.[754] This doubtless led to increased restrictions in
Portugal on emigration, and to it we may probably attribute an eloquent
memorial, without date, from the Portuguese New Christians, asking for
the removal of all limitations. Gentlemen of the noblest houses, they
stated, had intermarried with them, both in Portugal and the colonies,
and they had lavished their substance in the good work of founding
churches, embellishing cofradías, endowing chapels, and liberal
almsgiving. Free permission to enter Spain would work no harm to
religion, for the Inquisition was everywhere, and the benefit arising
from unrestricted intercourse was manifested in the revenues derived
from the frontier towns, which were formerly farmed out for thirteen
millions of maravedís, irregularly paid, and now were farmed for
thirty-six millions, attributable to the spices, perfumes, porcelains,
stuffs and other wares brought in by them. It was the same with the
Spanish manufactures exported through Biscay--the wools and cloths of
Segovia, the silks and other goods. The only objection to free
intercourse was that they might take advantage of it to seek other
prohibited lands, and this was sufficiently answered elsewhere, in
addition to the fact that Portugal had so many ports that emigration
could not be prevented, as two hours sufficed to reach the sea and
embark, while land travel was slow and expensive, and could be stopped
at the frontier towns. The New Christians had greatly enriched the
kingdom and the colonies by their labors. In Brazil, where they could
hold real estate, nearly all the sugar plantations were in their hands,
and these they were constantly increasing, to the great profit of the
colony and of the revenue. As by law they were excluded from all offices
and dignities, commerce was their only resource.[755] Possibly these
representations may have been convincing, for the prohibition was
withdrawn, to be subsequently renewed as we shall see.
[Sidenote: _PORTUGUESE JEWS_]
If they desired to escape from Portugal, Portugal was quite as anxious
to get rid of them, by extermination or otherwise. The pious intensity
of hatred towards them finds expression, in 1621, in a ferocious work by
Vicente da Costa Mattos, of which the declared object was to drive them
from the land. All the old stories of their malice to Christians were
raked together and set forth as uncontradicted truths. They were enemies
of mankind, wandering like gypsies through the world and living on the
sweat of others. They had possessed themselves of all trade, farming
the lands of individuals and the royal patrimony, with no capital but
industry and lack of conscience. They live only for the perdition of the
world; of old, God punished those who ill-treated them, but now he
punishes those who endure them; the decline of the Spanish kingdoms was
the punishment sent by God for tolerating them. They were all idolators
and sodomites, and wherever they went they infected the land with their
abominations, and were constantly seeking to convert Christians to their
foul belief. Luther commenced by Judaizing; all heretics were either
Jews or descendants of Judaizers, as was seen in England, Germany and
other parts where they flourished; Calvin called himself the Father of
Jews, like many other deniers of the Trinity, and Bucer in his will
declared that Christ was not the Savior promised. Their perverse
obstinacy was sufficiently proved, by the numbers who were every day
burnt, and the still greater numbers who escaped by penance after
conviction.[756] This crazy ebullition of ignorant hate accorded so well
with the prejudices of the time that a second edition was called for in
1633; in 1629 it was translated into Castilian by Fray Diego Gavilan
Vera, and this was reprinted in 1680.
The hatred, indeed, was quenchless which was not satisfied with what the
Inquisition was doing. In 1623 we chance to hear of the tribunal of
Evora arresting a hundred New Christians of the little town of Montemor
o Novo.[757] The autos de fe were frequently conducted on a scale
unknown in contemporary Castile. The tribunal of Coimbra held one,
August 16, 1626, with two hundred and forty-seven penitents and
_relaxados_, another on May 6, 1629, with two hundred and eighteen and
another on August 17, 1631 with two hundred and forty-seven. The
statistics between 1620 and 1640 are not complete, for there were ten
autos of which the details have not been preserved but, even without
these, the fearful aggregate is two hundred and thirty relaxed in
person, a hundred and sixty-one in effigy and forty-nine hundred and
ninety-five penanced--and this is in addition to several hundred
prisoners discharged under two pardons granted in 1627 and 1630, which
no doubt were heavily paid for.[758] Besides these pardons an Edict of
Grace was published in 1622 but, as we have seen, such mercies were
burdened with intolerable conditions, and only sixteen persons came
forward under it--twelve in Lisbon and four in Evora--and all these had
already been testified against.[759] In 1630, the royal confessor
Sotomayor reported that, in interviewing the deputies of the New
Christians, he found that they wanted no more Edicts of Grace; the last
one, they said, had done them no good but much harm, as it brought
infinite denunciations against them and filled the prisons.[760] There
is very likely exaggeration, but nothing more than exaggeration, in the
assertion of Luys de Melo that, in this period, the activity of the
Inquisition had virtually depopulated the cities of Coimbra, Oporto,
Braga, Lamego, Braganza, Evora, Beja and part of Lisbon, and the towns
of Santarem, Tomar, Trancoso, Avero, Guimaraens, Vinais, Villaflor,
Fundan, Montemor o Velho and o Novo and many other places, while the
prisons of the three tribunals were always full and the autos so
frequent that each tribunal celebrated one almost every year. One in
Coimbra occupied two days, there being more than a hundred each day, and
among them professors, canons, priests, curas with cure of souls,
vicars-general, frailes, nuns, knights, including some of the Military
Orders of kin with the highest of the land, and there was even a
discalced Franciscan so pertinacious that he was burnt alive.[761]
[Sidenote: _PORTUGUESE JEWS_]
Notwithstanding these superhuman exertions the inquisitors complained
that their labors were unavailing; Judaism was steadily increasing; the
misfortunes of the land were attributable to the idolatry of this evil
rabble, and they clamored for more drastic measures. The Supreme
Council, January 17, 1619, addressed to Philip III a consulta urging
that prompt action was necessary in view of the contamination, and of
the infinite sacrileges committed, to the scandal of the faithful. The
king, it said, did not want vassals only, but good vassals, and it
therefore suggested that, when a penitent was condemned to confiscation,
he should also be banished; he would thus be stripped of everything and
would not take wealth to enrich the enemy as now was the case. It also
said that a general visitation was on foot which had already produced
much result; presumably there were many in Madrid who should be
investigated, and the king was asked to order a visitation there. One
member of the council, Mendo de la Mota, went even further, and wanted
banishment for all required to abjure for vehement suspicion. Philip
responded to this with chilling indifference; if those who abjured for
suspicion were banished, they would take their money with them; it was a
doubtful measure and he wished the council to consider it further; as
regarded the Portuguese in Castile, if a list was furnished, with notes
as to grounds for suspicion, he would have them investigated. The list
was duly supplied, but the investigation was not made.[762]
The effort was resumed the next year. On April 30, 1620, the tribunals
of Lisbon and Evora sent to Philip relations of the autos held by them
on the previous September 29th, so that he might see the large numbers
punished on those occasions, and recognize the necessity of more active
measures of repression. Among them were three canons of Coimbra, three
frailes and several lawyers. Six canons of Coimbra, all New Christians,
had been arrested; they were all appointees of the pope, and the king
was prayed to ask him to close the door on all applicants for benefices
of that race; also to order that none should be admitted to the Church,
either as seculars or regulars, and none to public office--which
indicates how little the prohibitory laws were respected.[763]
The youthful Philip IV was scarce more than seated on the throne when,
in 1622, Fernando Mascarenhas, Bishop of Faro, urged him to provide
some remedy for the political dangers apprehended from the New
Christians. It was in evidence, he said, that they were all secretly
Jews and the state was in great peril from them as they were very
numerous. There was no city in which they were not powerful through
their wealth and the important positions held by them, while the danger
of detection and punishment might lead them to cause serious trouble
through alliance with enemies. It was found that they secretly invested
their capital in dealings with the Dutch, and in Dutch commercial
companies and, if they ventured their wealth with these rebels, they
would conspire with them, especially as the Inquisition was pushing them
hard, arresting them all and they had no other remedy.[764] Israel has
rarely had a more flattering tribute to its intellectual superiority
than the fears excited by this remnant surviving through near a century
of pitiless persecution.
Doubtless there were other urgent warnings which have not reached us
and, in 1628, Philip called for a formal expression of opinion from his
Portuguese prelates. By his order they assembled at Tomar and summoned
to their aid all who were most distinguished in the kingdom for learning
and virtue. After prolonged debates they submitted to him a series of
suggestions to which he replied seriatim. In view of the failure of all
previous efforts to abate the evils wrought and threatened by the New
Christians, the remedy they preferred was the thorough expulsion of the
whole race; if this were not practicable, at least those who were
full-blooded Jews, excepting such as could prove their Christianity,
should be banished, and their property be confiscated; as for those of
half or quarter blood, all should go who had been, or who in future
should be reconciled, or sentenced to abjure de vehementi, unless
inquisitors were satisfied of their true repentance and conversion. To
this Philip replied, proposing delay in the case of the full-blooded
Conversos, and assenting to the exile of the reconciled and vehemently
suspect. For the further relief of the kingdom, the bishops proposed
that all who desired could, within a year, irrevocably expatriate
themselves, selling their property and taking with them the proceeds,
but not in jewels or the precious metals. To this the royal answer was
that already there was unrestricted liberty to go, but as evils had
arisen from their return, in future it should be prohibited. The next
suggestion was significant; to check the spread of Judaic infection, by
intermarriage, which was destroying the lustre of the nobility, no dower
in such unions should exceed two thousand cruzados, and the husband
should be disabled from holding positions of honor and dignity. To the
first clause the king assented; to the latter he said that the existing
laws in favor of the nobility should be enforced. To prevent the
constant profanation of the sacraments it was proposed that papal briefs
should be procured prohibiting all entrance into the Church of all who
were New Christians, even in the tenth degree. To this the king promised
to apply for such briefs and meanwhile the bishops should refuse to
install persons bearing dispensations and report to him, and also
represent to the pope the evils attendant on such preferment. The next
suggestion was that the king should ratify and enforce the prohibition
to hold secular offices and dignities, to which he replied that it
should be strictly enforced. Finally, the bishops proposed that the New
Christians should be wholly excluded from trade and commerce or, if this
was not possible, at least from that which concerned the royal revenues,
but to this Philip answered rather curtly that it was none of their
business.[765]
Such were the views of Christian prelates, and even the partial
concessions of the king seemed sufficient to threaten the New Christians
with virtual extinction, but the whole portentous transaction served
only to put on record the extremes to which bigotry could reach. As Luys
de Melo suggestively says, after giving the documents in full, the
orders issued by the king were not executed, and it would be superfluous
to explain the cause of this to any one acquainted with the methods of
government of the period. Yet it had one result, for the New Christians,
in fear of the threatened consequences, paid to King Philip eighty
thousand ducats for the privilege of leaving Portugal and, under this,
some five thousand families emigrated to Castile, besides a countless
number of individual stragglers, so that it would be a wonder to find
any place in Spain not filled with Portuguese Jews.[766] They felt
themselves in perfect safety, for the Castilian tribunals refused to
honor requisitions from those of Portugal.[767] Efforts were also made
to obtain modification of procedure, but in vain. By a cédula of
December 20, 1633, Philip expressed his approbation of the existing
rules and refused all change; moreover, he gave to Inquisitor-general de
Castro all the memorials, petitions and arguments presented to him, thus
furnishing to the Inquisition the names of those upon whom to wreak its
vengeance.[768]
The question of transit to France came up again in 1632, when the
Suprema notified Philip that the commissioner at Pampeluna reported that
troops of Portuguese families were passing into France, many of them
people of wealth, with litters and coaches, and the Inquisition did not
interfere with them, as the last instructions were that they should not
be impeded. The result of this representation was that the orders of
1619 were repeated.[769] Not content with retaining those who wished to
expatriate themselves, when the Admiral of Castile, in 1636, captured
Saint-Jean de Luz, and there were hopes of conquering Guienne, which was
ripe for revolt, the Inquisition took steps to seize the refugees who
might have settled there, though it had no evidence that they were
Judaizers. It assumed that they were apostates and as such not included
in the promises held out to the inhabitants at large, and that anyhow
the cause of the faith was privileged. The king was therefore asked to
order the admiral to send to the border all whom its agents might
designate, so that they could be seized without attracting
attention.[770] It is possible that some victims may thus have been
procured during the brief time in which the Spaniards held their
advantage.
[Sidenote: _PORTUGUESE JEWS_]
The refugees, however, mainly bent their steps to Holland, where they
enjoyed free toleration and could work for their own advancement and the
detriment of their oppressors. This was the leading cause of the effort
to prevent emigration, and it was a matter of much concern. Luys de Melo
says that there had passed to Holland more than two thousand families
and, in those rebel states, they had purchased the right to establish
synagogues. Those who publicly Judaized there were the same as those
who, quitting Portugal as _sanbenitados_, published that their
confession of Judaism was under coercion of the Inquisition. Many who
had lived in misery in Portugal were rich in Holland; they paid
contributions to those rebel states, and assisted to maintain their
fleets and armies; they invested largely in the East India Company, and
thus were absorbing a great part of Spanish commerce and, under feigned
names and in vessels of the United Provinces, they did a large trade in
contraband goods.[771] In short, their commercial aptitudes were
impoverishing Spain and enriching her enemies. The writer unconsciously
points out how large a part intolerance played in the decadence of the
state.
Nor was this the only mischief wrought by their hostility to the land
that had driven them forth. In 1634, the Capitan Esteban de Ares
Fonseca, in a memorial to the Suprema, represents the refugees in
Holland as aiding actively the enemies of Spain, and as holding constant
correspondence with spies residing there in the guise of merchants. The
Dutch West India Company, he says, was controlled by Jews, who were
large stockholders, and its chief profits were derived from piracy in
the colonies, especially those of Portugal on the Brazilian coast, where
the New Christians were numerous and were in correspondence with the
enemy. It was two Jews, Nuño Alvarez Franco and Manuel Fernandez Drago,
residents of Bahía, who planned and executed the capture of that place
by the Dutch in 1625. Franco, he adds, now lives in Lisbon as a spy,
under orders from Holland, and his brother Jacob Franco carries
intelligence back and forth disguised as a Fleming of Antwerp. Drago is
still in Bahía; he is a great rabbi and teacher of the Jews, and
moreover is a spy who last year sent word to the Dutch to return there.
The capture of Pernambuco was the work of the Jews of Amsterdam, chief
among whom was Antonio Vaez Henriquez, known as Cohen, who had lived
there, who arranged the plans and accompanied the expedition; he is now
residing in Seville as a merchant, but is nothing but a spy. Last year
he went to Amsterdam with a plan for the capture of Havana, where he has
a correspondent named Manuel de Torres. At present a large fleet of
eighteen sail is fitting out for the relief of Pernambuco, under command
of David Peixoto, a Jew, who proposes to call at Buarcos and penetrate
to Coimbra, where the Inquisition is to be burnt and the prisoners are
to be liberated. It was a Jew of Amsterdam, named Francisco de Campos,
who took the island of Fernando de Noronha; it could readily be
recaptured, as it has a garrison of only thirty-four men with four
cannon. In San Sebastian, there is a Jew named Abraham Ger, who calls
himself Juan Gilles, under Dutch pay; he works much mischief to Spain
and keeps a man named Rafael Mendez, who is constantly travelling back
and forth.[772]
We need not accept all this as literally true, but it had an undoubted
substratum of fact. In 1640, the tribunals of Lima and Cartagena de las
Indias reported that in recent autos de fe it had been discovered that
many Judaizing Portuguese in the colonies had correspondence with the
synagogues in Holland and the Levant, assisting the Dutch and the Turks
with information and money. To verify this, orders were given to open,
on a certain day, all letters addressed to Portuguese throughout Spain.
The information was found to be true; a cypher was discovered, used in
correspondence with the synagogues of Holland, and further, that a
million and a half of money had been pledged from Spain. The matter was
appropriately referred for investigation to the inquisitor-general and
two inquisitors.[773] What was the result, we have no means of knowing,
but we may be reasonably sure that the rumors, which attributed to the
New Christians of Portugal a share in the rebellion of 1640, were not
wholly without foundation.
[Sidenote: _PORTUGUESE JEWS_]
They certainly benefited at first by the change of masters. It is true
that João IV conciliated the Inquisition by intervening in its favor in
a quarrel which it had, in 1643, with the Jesuits of Evora, and by
attending, with his family and court, two autos de fe held in Lisbon,
April 6, 1642 and June 25, 1645, in one of which there were six
relaxations in person and four in effigy, with seventy-five penitents,
and in the other eleven relaxations in person and two in effigy, with
sixty-one penitents,[774] but this we may assume to have been a matter
of policy rather than of conviction, for his tendencies were towards
liberality. He is even said to have contemplated granting freedom of
conscience and liberty of residence to Jews, but to have been forced to
abandon the purpose by the stubborn resistance of the inquisitor-general
Francisco de Castro, Bishop of Guarda,[775] but this is probably a
Spanish exaggeration of an intention to modify the rigor of
inquisitorial procedure, which he was obliged to forego through the
impossibility of obtaining the requisite papal confirmation.[776]
Spanish influence in Italy sufficed to prevent the Holy See from
recognizing or holding relations with the House of Braganza, until, by
the treaty of Lisbon in 1668, Spain abandoned her futile efforts at
reconquest--a position which resulted in the vacancy of the Portuguese
sees, as the bishops dropped off, until there was but one left,
Francisco de Sotomayor, a Dominican who chanced to be bishop of Targa
_in partibus_ and who was made Bishop of Lamego in 1659.[777]
This impossibility of negotiating with Rome rendered necessary an
indirect method of accomplishing his desire to abolish confiscation,
which he recognized as a serious impediment to commercial credit and
prosperity, especially through the sequestration of property at arrest.
As it was provided by the canons it could only be abrogated by a papal
rescript, and to evade this difficulty, in his decree of February 6,
1649, he disclaimed all intention of interfering with the functions of
the Holy Office, which should continue to include confiscation in its
sentences but, after this declaration, he made to the culprits a free
gift of their forfeited property, which they could dispose of at will,
provided it was in favor of Catholics, and he also abolished
sequestration at arrest. But this was not only a free gift but a binding
contract, under which the merchants engaged to form a trading company to
enrich the country with colonial commerce and to provide, at its own
expense, thirty-six war ships to serve as convoys for the merchantmen,
all of which was impossible so long as the capital of the company was
liable to be imperilled by sequestration and confiscation imposed on the
shareholders. The inquisitor-general was ordered to have this decree
filed in the secreto of the tribunals, and to enforce its observance,
while João obligated himself never to revoke it.[778] The Inquisition
subsequently boasted that it had excommunicated all who advised the king
to this measure, and it actually succeeded in obtaining from Innocent X
a brief of October 25, 1650, thanking God for what it had done and
urging it to persevere.[779] Notwithstanding this, the Companhia da
Bolsa was organized and, through its means, Pernambuco was recovered
from the Dutch. There was flattering prospect of restoring Portuguese
commerce but, when João IV died, in 1656, leaving the kingdom under the
regency of his widow Lucía de Guzman, during the minority of Affonso VI,
the Inquisition not only resumed confiscation but proceeded to collect
the arrears since 1649. Altogether, Padre Vieira tells us, about 1680,
they had gathered in up to that time some twenty-five millions, of which
not more than half a million cruzados reached the royal treasury.[780]
[Sidenote: _PORTUGUESE JEWS_]
When Bishop de Castro died, in 1653, the attitude of the Holy See
towards Portugal precluded the appointment of a successor, and the
General Council acted from that date until 1672, when D. Pedro de
Lencastre, Archbishop of Side, _in partibus_, was appointed. The lack of
a head seems rather to have stimulated than to have repressed its
energies, and one can scarce comprehend how, after a century of such
earnest work, so small a territory can have furnished so unfailing a
supply of victims. Autos were held in each tribunal nearly every year,
with so copious a number of culprits that occasionally they occupied two
days, and one at Coimbra, in February, 1677, required three days to
despatch its nine personal relaxations and its two hundred and
sixty-four penitents. Peace or war seems to have made no difference.
Evora celebrated an auto, June 23, 1663, with a hundred and forty-two
penitents, although Don John of Austria, with a hostile Spanish army,
was occupying the city.[781]
The explanation of this exhaustless reservoir of material for autos is
to be found in the strictness with which the infection of blood was
reckoned, without limit of generations; all who had the slightest
admixture were reckoned as New Christians and were held to be Jews at
heart. Intermarriages had been frequent, and so large a portion of the
population was thus contaminated that foreigners generally regarded the
Portuguese as all Jews.[782] Thus the field of operation of the
Inquisition was almost unlimited, and every one whom it penanced became
a source of stronger infection. The death of João IV removed what little
restraint he may have ventured to exercise and, in 1662, the oppressed
population, comprising so large a portion of the wealth and intelligence
of the kingdom, made an attempt to purchase alleviation of suffering. A
New Christian named Duarte, who had been penanced, in the name of his
fellows, made a liberal offer of money and troops for the defence of the
land, in return for a general pardon, the publication of witnesses'
names and permission to found a synagogue in which professing Jews might
worship. Considering that in Rome there was a synagogue, there is some
inconsistency in the energetic brief of Alexander VII, February 17,
1663, denouncing the project and urging the Inquisition to resist it to
the utmost.[783] Of course the attempt was abortive. Then, in 1671, the
New Christians were suddenly threatened with a catastrophe. In the
church of Orivellas, a pyx with a consecrated host was stolen. We have
seen with what equanimity the Roman Inquisition regarded this offence,
but in Portugal the whole kingdom was thrown into consternation. The
Regent Pedro and the court put on mourning; an edict ordered that for
some days no one should leave his house, so that everybody might be
compelled to give an account of himself on the fatal night. All efforts
to identify the sacrilegious thief proving fruitless, it was assumed
that the New Christians must be guilty, and the regent signed an edict
banishing them all from Portugal--a measure opposed by the Inquisition,
doubtless because its occupation would be gone. Before the expulsion
could be enforced, however, it happened that a young thief near Coimbra,
named Antonio Ferreira, was arrested, and in his possession was found
the pyx with its contents. The most searching investigation failed to
discover in him a trace of Jewish blood; he was duly burnt and the New
Christians were saved.[784]
After this narrow escape, there came a gleam of promise. Few members of
the Society of Jesus, at that time, were more distinguished than Antonio
Vieira, who had earned the name of the Apostle of Brazil. He had long
regarded the New Christians with compassion and had urged João IV not
only to abolish confiscation but to remove the distinctions between them
and the Old Christians. He had made enemies and the Inquisition readily
undertook his punishment; his writings in favor of the oppressed were
condemned as rash, scandalous, erroneous, savoring of heresy and well
adapted to pervert the ignorant.[785] After three years of
incarceration, he was penanced in the audience-chamber of Coimbra,
December 23, 1667, and his sympathy for the victims of the Holy Office
was sharpened by his experience of its unwholesome prisons, where he
tells us that five unfortunates were not uncommonly herded in a cell
nine feet by eleven, where the only light came from a narrow opening
near the ceiling, where the vessels were changed only once a week, and
all spiritual consolation was denied.[786] Then, in the safe refuge of
Rome, he raised his voice for the relief of the oppressed, in numerous
writings in which he characterized the Holy Office of Portugal as a
tribunal which served only to deprive men of their fortunes, their honor
and their lives, while unable to discriminate between guilt and
innocence; it was known to be holy only in name, while its works were
cruelty and injustice, unworthy of rational beings, although it was
always proclaiming its superior piety.[787]
[Sidenote: _PORTUGUESE JEWS_]
The Society of Jesus could scarce fail to resent the affront put upon
one of its most distinguished members; it was still a power in Portugal,
and it made its influence felt. The New Christians took heart and, in
1673, they made an organized effort to gain relief. They asked to have
the procedure of the Inquisition modified to that of Rome and, in order
that the new system might have a fair start, that a general pardon be
granted to those under trial.[788] The extent of the considerations
offered for these very moderate concessions shows how desperate was the
condition of the sufferers, for they proposed to place within a year
four thousand troops in India, and then yearly to send twelve hundred
men, or fifteen hundred in case of war, besides an annual payment of
twenty thousand cruzados and various other considerable contributions,
including some important matters which there were reasons for keeping
secret.[789] Against this proposal the Inquisition protested in two
elaborate remonstrances, revealing the temper in which it habitually
exercised its powers. It could find no words too strong to describe the
wickedness of the New Christians, whose invincible adherence to their
errors showed that punishment and not pardon was the only means to be
employed; in place of mitigating the laws they should be sharpened, as
heresy was steadily increasing, and to ask for the Roman procedure was
scandalous, and in itself worthy of punishment. The regent was told that
he had no power to overthrow the laws and he was threatened, on the one
hand, with an uprising of the people, and, on the other, with an appeal
to the pope. In fine, the proposed reform would bring desolation on the
land and result in Portugal becoming a Judea. On the other side, the
arrangement was warmly supported by many ecclesiastics, to which Jesuit
influence doubtless contributed. Not only did the Archbishop of Lisbon
favor it, but also thirty masters and doctors of theology, the
professors of the University of Coimbra, seven ministers of the
Inquisition, and many men of high position among both the regular and
the secular clergy. The regent and his council gave it their approval
and the matter was referred to the pope for his decision.[790]
[Sidenote: _PORTUGUESE JEWS_]
The debate was thus transferred to Rome where, in 1674, both sides
submitted their arguments to the commission of Cardinals formed for the
purpose. The advocates of the New Christians presented a scathing
indictment of the Inquisition, doubtless one-sided and exaggerated and
yet affording an insight into the abuses inevitable when secret and
irresponsible power fell into unworthy hands. The great mass of victims,
they asserted, were fervent and loyal Christians, who either were burnt
for denying Judaism or obtained reconciliation by falsely confessing. A
case occurring only the year previous, 1673, at Evora, was that of two
nuns, burnt as _negativas_. One of them had lived for forty years in her
nunnery, with unblemished reputation and filling all the official
positions in turn; the confessors who heard her before the auto were
overcome by the fervent piety which she manifested and, when the
procession was formed, she recognized among the penitents her own sister
and nieces, who had saved their lives by denouncing her. She pardoned
them and made a most exemplary end, invoking Christ with her last breath
as the garrote was applied. Indeed, it was the evidence of many
confessors that the greater part of those to whom they ministered at the
autos were true and fervent Christians, and this was confirmed by the
University of Evora, by Padre Manoel Diaz, S. J., confessor of the
crown-prince, and numerous ecclesiastics of high standing.[791]
The trade of false witness was a thriving one, both for gain and the
gratification of enmity. There were regular associations of perjurers,
who made a living by levying black-mail on rich New Christians, accusing
those who refused their demands, so that the unfortunate class lived in
perpetual terror and purchased temporary safety by compliance. The
matter was reduced to a fine art. The accusing witness would give a
fictitious name and address, so that the accused could never recognize
and disable him. Sometimes, indeed, when additional evidence was
necessary, a witness would change his name and garments and give the
required corroborative testimony.[792]
As an illustration of the arbitrary abuse of power, allusion was made to
a notorious case occurring at Evora, in 1643. According to custom, a
student of the Jesuit college was appointed to superintend the market.
The servant of an inquisitor desired to buy a load of honey, in order to
retail it at an advance, but the student interposed, because it had
already been purchased for the use of the college, and would only let
the servant have enough to supply his master's table. For this he was
imprisoned, tried, required to abjure and penanced as unsound in the
faith. When the sentence was read in the presence of a number of
ecclesiastics, the professor of theology, a Jesuit of high standing,
appealed to the Holy See, to which one of the inquisitors replied that
from that holy tribunal the only appeal was to the Holy Trinity, and
the unlucky appellant was gaoled and severely handled. Jesuits were not
accustomed to such treatment; the matter was laid before Urban VIII, who
summoned the inquisitors to appear before him but, in the confusion of
the war with Spain, the affair blew over.[793]
The statements as to confiscation explain the tenacity of the
Inquisition in maintaining its position. The crown supported the
Inquisition and was entitled to the results of its industry, but
obtained little. The sequestrations were in the hands of the tribunals
during the trials, which were protracted for five, ten or twelve years
to the intense distress of the prisoners. During this time the
management of the property was irresponsible; no accounts were rendered
and, of the immense sums received, only occasional trifling payments
were made to the state. The inquisitor-general had authority to make
donations to the inquisitors, and this was liberally exercised in
granting them sums of six, or eight, or even fourteen thousand crowns at
a time. Commerce was most disastrously affected for, when a merchant
with foreign correspondents was arrested and his property was
sequestrated, his foreign consignors or creditors clamored in vain for
the goods or debts belonging to them and, as this was a fate overhanging
every man, Portuguese trade suffered accordingly. In short, while we may
not accept literally the assertion that the Inquisition brought
irreparable ruin upon Portugal, we cannot but regard it as one of the
largely contributing factors to the rapid decadence of the kingdom.[794]
The contest in Rome was stubborn, but the New Christians gradually
gained the advantage and, on October 3, 1674, Clement X, as a
preliminary, issued a brief reciting their complaints, in view of which
he evoked to himself all pending cases and committed them to the Roman
Inquisition, inhibiting further action in Portugal, under pain of
deprivation of office and other penalties, for all officials, including
the inquisitor-general. Coimbra treated this as a general pardon and, on
November 18th, discharged all those under trial, but the other tribunals
seem to have detained their prisoners. It was probably with the object
of releasing them that, in 1676, Innocent XI instructed his nuncio to
permit the inquisitors to finish the trials, but not to inflict
sentences of relaxation, confiscation, or perpetual galleys. If this was
the object, it was unsuccessful. The Inquisition was sullen and
celebrated no auto de fe between the years 1674 and 1682, save three
private ones in the Lisbon audience-chamber, in each of which there was
but a single penitent.[795]
The inquisitorial agents in Rome denied the assertions as to the
arbitrary injustice of procedure and the coercion of good Christians to
confess Judaism by the terrible alternative of relaxation as negativos.
In the conflict of statement, it was proposed that the truth could be
ascertained by the examination of the records, and Innocent consequently
ordered the transmission to Rome of the papers in some specimen cases of
convicted negativos. The inquisitor-general, Verissimo de Lencastre,
Archbishop of Braga, refused obedience, on the ground that it would
reveal the secrets of procedure. The pope naturally pronounced the
reason to be frivolous, and treated this imitation of Arce y Reynoso's
course in the Villanueva affair with greater decision than his
predecessor. After meeting repeated refusals, he peremptorily ordered,
by a brief of December 24, 1678, that, within ten days after notice,
four or five of the prescribed cases should be delivered to the Nuncio
Marcello, under pain of _ipso-facto_ suspension of the
inquisitor-general and all his subordinates; if they continued to act,
the inquisitor-general was interdicted from entering a church, and the
others incurred excommunication removable only by the Holy See, while,
during suspension, the episcopal Ordinaries were restored to their
jurisdiction with full powers. Even this did not break down
inquisitorial contumacy and, on May 27, 1679, another brief formally
suspended them, while letters of the same date to the nuncio instructed
him to prosecute them and report the result. This decisive action at
length brought the partial submission that two processes were sent to
the Portuguese ambassador to be delivered to the pope, but evidently
this was deemed insufficient, for the suspension was not removed until
1681, when a brief of August 22d gave as a reason that the episcopal
Ordinaries, owing to various impediments, had not been able to exercise
jurisdiction and the prisoners were suffering through the delay. The
raising of the suspension, however, was conditioned on the future
observance of numerous modifications of procedure, under threat of
reincidence of the penalties previously prescribed. The New Christians
had especially asked for a change in the rule respecting negativos but
this, as we have seen, was unfortunately an essential part of the system
and their desire was ungratified. The changes granted were of minor
importance, and are interesting only as evidence of some specially
iniquitous practices against which they were directed, and better
treatment of prisoners was enjoined.[796]
Whether these modifications were observed and mitigated the rigor of
procedure; whether the Inquisition was humbled and weakened by its
defeat in the struggle with the papacy, or whether the material for its
autos was becoming exhausted, it would be impossible now to determine,
but there is no question that, after its resumption in 1681, the number
of its victims diminished notably. The renewal of operations was
celebrated by autos de fe held in the early months of 1682, with
processions and illuminations and other demonstrations of rejoicing,
but, in the nineteen years including 1682 and 1700, there were but
fifty-nine relaxed in person, sixty-one in effigy and thirteen hundred
and fifty-one penanced--an aggregate deplorable in itself, yet
encouraging in comparison with its predecessors.[797]
* * * * *
[Sidenote: _PREJUDICE INFLAMED_]
From this sketch of the Portuguese Inquisition, we can readily estimate
its efficiency in keeping the Spanish institution supplied with material
as the native stock grew Christianized. Not the least unfortunate effect
of this was its influence in maintaining the prejudice that might
otherwise have subsided, and that consequently became one of race as
much as of religion. The venom which we have seen in the work of da
Costa Mattos was, if possible, exceeded in the _Centinela contra Judíos_
of Padre Fray Francisco de Torrejoncillos, published as late as 1673 and
reprinted in 1728 and 1731. In this popular exposition of Christian
rancor, no story is too wild and unnatural to be unworthy of credence,
if it illustrates the innate and ineradicable depravity of the Jew, and
his quenchless desire to work evil to the Christian. The fables of the
_Fortalicium Fidei_ are repeated as incontestable truths, and new ones
are invented to prove that the virus is as active as ever. It makes no
difference if the Jew is baptized, for this does not change his nature
and his faith, and he remains the same implacable enemy.[798] The same
temper is manifested in a memorial, drawn up about this time by an
inquisitor, in answer to a proposition for moderating the harshness of
inquisitorial procedure. The writer was evidently a man of learning and
culture, but his paper is a bitter tirade against the Jews, insisting
upon their diabolical nature and asserting them to be much worse now
than when they crucified Christ. The evil is in their blood, forcing
them to hate and rage against Christ, the Virgin and all who profess the
Christian faith.[799] Popular beliefs that they had tails, and that they
were distinguishable by a peculiar odor which they exhaled and that, as
physicians, they killed one out of five of their Christian patients,
were persistent outgrowths of the hatred thus inculcated.[800] Even to
call a man a Jew was an offence justiciable by the Inquisition, for
when, in 1646, Padre Boil, a royal preacher, in a sermon stigmatized as
a Jew Fray Enríquez, of his own Mercenarian Order, the tribunal of
Toledo promptly sent for him and, after detaining him for six months,
sentenced him to two years' exile from the court, during which he was
forbidden to preach.[801]
When, about 1632, the New Christians made an effort to procure a removal
of their disabilities, Juan Adan de la Parra who, though an inquisitor
was a poet and a man of culture, opposed it in an elaborate essay,
cautiously couched in Latin, for the matter was too delicate for popular
discussion. He did not pander to vulgar prejudice, but addressed himself
to arguments of state policy, which are a curious illustration of what,
on such a subject, an intelligent man regarded as conclusive. He
deplores the decline of population, of agriculture, of shipping and of
the mechanic arts, which he attributes to the insidious practices of the
Jews, their avoidance of manual labor and their addiction to usury. Look
at Portugal, he says, where this traitorous race stimulated the ardor of
foreign conquest, until it embraced the East and West Indies, and then
cunningly corrupted the native virtue with the wealth and luxury thus
acquired, until they have succeeded in eliminating the heroes and
destroying the heroic spirit which rendered Portugal so formidable. It
is this craving for oriental luxuries, shrewdly stimulated by the New
Christians, which is undermining the robustness of Spanish virtue; the
useful is neglected for the superfluous, and thus agriculture declines.
He scarcely seems to recognize the tribute which he pays to the superior
endowment of the Jew, when he winds up by foretelling that, if the
restrictions and disabilities imposed on the New Christians are removed,
they will acquire such power that they will reduce the Old Christians to
subjection.[802]
There was some foundation for the fear that the barriers between the
races would be removed. In the exhaustion of Spanish finance, Olivares,
in 1634, opened negotiations with the Jews of Africa and the Levant, and
royal licences were granted for the admission of individuals. In 1641,
relations were resumed; they sent representatives whom he received and
kept with him for a considerable time, silencing the remonstrances of
the Suprema with the assertion that they were there on the service of
the king. It was proposed that they should be allowed to reside in the
suburbs of Madrid, in a separate quarter, with a synagogue, as in Rome.
He won over some members of the Royal Council and some theologians to
his plans, but the Inquisition was inexorable, and Cardinal Monti, the
nuncio, told the king, in public audience, that Olivares must be
dismissed if the harvest of the Lord was to be cleansed of tares and the
risk be averted of ruining the faith of Spain. Incidentally Olivares
interfered with the Inquisition, by demanding the papers in certain
cases; Inquisitor-general Sotomayor refused but, finding himself
powerless to resist, placed the documents at the foot of a crucifix,
whence they were carried to Olivares, who burnt them and released a
number of prisoners. It is even said that he contemplated abolishing the
Inquisition, but Philip IV was too profoundly convinced of its necessity
to both Church and State to entertain the project, and there may well be
truth in the assertion that his quarrel with the Holy Office was
contributory to his downfall. This put an end to all negotiations and,
in 1643, we find the Suprema instructing the Valencia tribunal to forbid
the landing of the Jews who were coming from Oran.[803]
[Sidenote: _PROSELYTISM_]
Some stir was caused, in 1645, by two Jews, Salamon Zaportas and Bale
Zaportas, who presented themselves in Valencia with a royal licence,
dated in 1634, and one from the Marquis of Viana, Governor of Oran. They
applied to the tribunal for permission to attend to their business in
the city and to wear Christian garments, so as not to be mobbed. The
tribunal was puzzled and ordered them not to leave the city under pain
of two hundred pesos, while it consulted the Suprema. The latter
represented to the king the danger impending on the faith from this
disregard of his orders by ministers who issued licences, to which he
responded with instructions to send them back to Oran: the causes
leading to the cédula of 1634 no longer existed; if in future their
coming were considered necessary, the Governor of Oran must report and
await the royal decision and a special licence.[804] There is no reason
to suppose that the venturesome Israelites had anything more important
in view than private business.
One of the most prominent reasons urged for the establishment and
perpetuation of the Inquisition was the zeal of the crypto-Jews in
proselyting and the danger to which the purity of religion was thus
exposed--an argument which served its purpose, however discrediting to
the firmness of Spanish faith. Cases, however, were never cited in
proof, nor could they be, for Judaism is a matter of race as much as of
dogma; the Jews have never sought to convert the Gentiles and, in Spain
of all lands, it was clearly preposterous that men, who could only exist
by concealing their belief, would incur the certainty of detection and
of pitiless punishment, by the unpardonable offence of seeking the
apostasy of their Christian neighbors. What conversions there were were
spontaneous, and these served to intensify the horror of Judaism and to
keep alive the sense of danger arising from the presence of those
suspected of cherishing the ancient faith. Fray Diogo da Assumpçao,
burnt in Lisbon, in 1603, as a convert to the Law of Moses, is said to
have been led to this fatal step by witnessing the constancy in
martyrdom of those who suffered for their belief.[805] A more remarkable
case was that of Lope de Vera, which aroused universal interest
throughout Spain, and pointed the moral that the safety of religion lay
in the ignorance of the faithful, thus justifying the prescience of
Valdés, when he placed on the first Spanish Index a translation of
Josephus's Antiquities of the Jews.[806]
Lope de Vera was the son of a gentleman of San Clemente, of gentle blood
and limpieza. At the age of nineteen he was a student at Salamanca, so
deeply learned in Hebrew and Arabic that, in July, 1638, he competed for
a chair of Hebrew. His studies led him to embrace Judaism and, with the
zeal of a convert, he sought to win over a fellow student, who denounced
him to the Inquisition. There was a second witness, and yet the consulta
de fe of Valladolid was not unanimous in voting his arrest; it had to be
ordered by the Suprema, and was executed June 24, 1639. He freely
admitted the truth of the accusation and much more, but denied
intention, assuming that what he had said was for the sake of argument,
and asserting that he went to confession and communion and carried a
rosary. There was variation and equivocation in his successive
audiences; there was delay and doubt on the part of the Inquisition, and
the trial dragged on. On April 16th and May 23, 1641, he revoked all
that he had confessed and then suddenly, on May 29th, he announced that
he wished to be a Jew and to hold all that the Jews believed, for this
was the truth revealed to them by God, which he would defend with his
life. Hitherto he had believed what the Church taught, but now he
adhered to the Law given by God to Israel; the religion of Rome and all
other religions were false; he had never practised the Jewish
observances but would do so in the future; no one had taught him this,
but God, in his mercy, had brought him to the truth. Learned men were
called in to wean him from his errors, but they declared his pertinacity
to be terrible and that, with his knowledge of Hebrew, he would be most
dangerous. He refused to have an advocate or to make defence, persisting
that he was a Jew and would die for the Law of Moses. On August 8th the
alcaide reported that he had circumcised himself with a bone, and the
physician sent to examine him verified this and reported that he said
he hoped to be burnt alive, for he sought the honor of martyrdom and
would go to paradise.
[Sidenote: _PROSELYTISM_]
Earnest and protracted efforts were made to reclaim him but in vain.
Then he was asked to set forth the Hebrew texts on which he relied, so
that the calificadores could confute them. To enable him to do this he
was furnished, December 23d, with a Bible, paper, ink and a goose-quill,
but the latter he rejected, saying that it was forbidden by the Law of
Moses, and a bronze pen (pluma de bronce) was given to him. Further
conferences followed, and much patience was manifested, until he refused
absolutely to speak in the audiences. The baffled tribunal appealed to
the Suprema, which ordered fifty lashes; he endured them unflinchingly
on June 17, 1642, and maintained his unbroken silence. This was most
obstructive, for his ratification of his confessions was necessary but,
when they and the evidence were read to him, he closed his ears with his
fingers and refused even to listen. It was proposed to torture him, but
the Suprema humanely discarded formalities and ordered the case to be
closed and voted upon. The vote was taken, January 27, 1643, to relax
him with confiscation, but in confirming it the Suprema ordered further
efforts for his conversion. There was no haste in executing the
sentence. In January, 1644, he was still persisting in silence, except
that, when the inquisitors made their weekly visits, he would cry "Viva
la ley de Moisen," after which not another word could be extracted from
him. At length, on June 25, 1644, he was burnt alive, maintaining to the
end his unalterable constancy. The inquisitor Moscoso, in a letter to
the Countess of Monterey, declared that he had never witnessed so ardent
a desire for death, such perfect assurance of salvation, or such
unconquerable firmness. His fate made a profound impression on his
co-religionists. Some years later, Juan Pereira, a youth on trial before
the Valladolid tribunal, referred to him repeatedly and declared that he
had seen him after death, riding on a mule and glistening with the sweat
that was on him when he was taken to the quemadero.[807]
Lope de Vera was a most undesirable convert, for his case could not fail
to arouse afresh the dread of infection and to stimulate the Inquisition
to increased activity. Yet such stimulus was scarce needed, for it was
incessantly vigilant and was troubled with few scruples when on the
track of a suspect. An illustrative case offers itself when, in
September, 1642, the tribunal of Galicia wrote to Valladolid that a
prisoner on trial testified that Antonio López, in Manzaneda de Tribes,
had practised Judaism, and it asked for his arrest. An Antonio López was
readily found in Valladolid and was promptly thrown in prison, September
16th. He denied the accusation; no other testimony could be found
against him and his trial dragged on until, February 3, 1644, there was
a vote _in discordia_. The case went to the Suprema, which ordered
further inquiry to be made of the Galician tribunal, when it was
discovered that the prisoner had never been in Manzaneda. This should
have been conclusive but, when another vote was reached, August 13th, it
was again in discordia, and the Suprema again ordered investigations
which proved fruitless. A third inconclusive vote was taken in 1645, and
then the Suprema ordered the arrest of a second Antonio López, a
painter, who had been discovered in Sanabria. He was arrested in
December, 1645, and easily proved himself to be an Old Christian of
strict observance, but to no purpose, for the blundering consulta de fe
voted in discordia, April 30, 1646, and the Suprema ordered him to be
exposed to threatened torture. He was stripped and bound on the trestle,
but his nerves did not give way and he steadily asserted his orthodoxy.
The resources of the baffled tribunal were now exhausted and, on July
14th, the Suprema ordered the cases to be suspended, when the two
Antonio López were released--not acquitted--after one had been in prison
nearly four years, and the other had been subjected to the agony of
impending torture, merely because they bore a name which chanced to be
mentioned in a distant tribunal as that of a Judaizer. Not quite so hard
was the case of Gaspar Rodríguez, arrested by the tribunal of
Valladolid, October 4, 1648, on the strength of advices from Cuenca, and
discharged October 2, 1649, because it was tardily recognized that he
did not correspond with the description of the real culprit.[808]
[Sidenote: _ACTIVITY OF PERSECUTION_]
How slender was the evidence required when a Portuguese was concerned is
seen in another case at Valladolid. When the inquisitor Pedro Múñoz made
a visitation of Oviedo in 1619-20, two women testified that Lucía Núñez,
a Portuguese settled in Benavente, put on clean chemises on Saturdays.
When, March 5, 1620, the tribunal voted on the cases brought in by
Múñoz, this was suspended, but the Suprema ordered the papers to be
sent to it and, on August 17, 1621, it instructed the tribunal to arrest
Lucía and sequestrate her property. She was accordingly brought to
Valladolid, October 30, 1621, and thrown into the secret prison. On her
first audience, in reply to the ordinary question whether she knew the
cause of her arrest, she said that it was because she changed her linen
on Fridays and Saturdays, as she did every day, for the sake of
cleanliness, especially when she was suckling her children, and she did
not know that she was committing any offence. It was true that she was
born in Portugal, but both her parents were Castilians and Old
Christians. The trial went through its regular course; nothing else
could be found against her and, on March 15, 1622, the consulta de fe
voted to acquit her and lift the sequestration, which was done
accordingly the next day, after nearly five months of
incarceration.[809]
When this kind of work was on foot throughout Spain, it is easy to
realize how the unfortunate Portuguese were tracked, from one refuge to
another, by the implacable vigilance of the Inquisition, with its
net-work of tribunals, in constant correspondence, and its commissioners
and familiars everywhere on the watch. That vigilance was kept alive by
the frequent discovery of communities of Judaizers, more or less
numerous, whose trials revealed the names of abundant accomplices. The
tribunal of Llerena was busy, from 1635 to 1638, with the "complicidad
de Badajoz," a group of Portuguese, whom it had unearthed at Badajoz
and, when the Suprema called for a list of those inculpated by the
prisoners, whom it had not been able to arrest, they amounted to a
hundred and fifty.[810]
In 1647, Juan del Cerro, of Ciudad Rodrigo, was a prisoner in the royal
gaol of Valladolid. Apparently hoping for release, he denounced himself
to the Inquisition and told a story of a congregation of Jews at Ciudad
Rodrigo, which met every Friday in the house of the president, Pablo de
Herrera, paymaster of the army on the Portuguese frontier, when the
ceremony of scourging images of Christ and the Virgin was performed and
then, during Holy week, they were burnt. Numerous arrests were made and
the trials dragged on until 1651; torture was employed, parents and
children, brothers and sisters testified against each other, but there
were no pertinacious impenitents or negativos and none were relaxed.
That Juan del Cerro's story of the outrages on the sacred images was
recognized as fictitious is evident from the suspension of ten of the
cases, including those of the so-called officers of the congregation,
but the tribunal secured a satisfactory number of convictions, as well
as fines amounting to thirty-seven hundred ducats. Juan del Cerro made
nothing by his device for, though he was not prosecuted for
false-witness, when the trials were over in 1651, he was handed back to
the royal court.[811] Toledo was equally active for, in an auto held the
same year, it had thirty-two Judaizers in person and thirty effigies of
fugitives.[812] Nearly the whole of these were Portuguese for, by this
time, Castilian Judaizers were of comparatively rare occurrence. In the
great Seville auto of 1660, out of eighty-one Judaizers, nearly all
Portuguese, a group of thirty-seven were from Osuna and another of eight
from Utrera. There were forty-seven reconciled, seven relaxed in person
and twenty-seven in effigy.[813]
The numerous effigies which figure in the autos indicate those who were
compromised in the confessions of the penitents, and who succeeded for a
time in eluding arrest. As a rule it may be said that this was but a
temporary reprieve from the all-pervading vigilance of the Inquisition.
Sooner or later, it gathered them in despite change of residence and
name, and all the precautions of the hunted against the hunter. This is
well illustrated in the vicissitudes of a colony of Portuguese, some
twenty or thirty in number, in the little town of Beas (Jaen), which
throw a vivid light on the miseries of these unfortunates. They had
succeeded in living there obscurely for ten years or more, supporting
themselves by such industries as they could follow, when some
imprudence, or the watchfulness of some neighbor, drew upon them the
attention of the tribunal of Cuenca, which arrested thirteen of them.
From these the names of nine others were obtained, for whom warrants of
arrest were issued but, when these were sent for execution, in April,
1656, it was found that they had left Beas secretly in February,
abandoning their property. Five of them were traced to Málaga; the other
four were said to have gone to Pietrabuena, but there the track was
lost. All were duly prosecuted in absentia and their effigies formed
part of the Seville auto of 1660.
[Sidenote: _ACTIVITY OF PERSECUTION_]
The party that went towards Portugal was a family group of five--Diego
Rodríguez Silva, his wife Ana Enríquez, her father Antonio Enríquez
Francia, and her brother and sister-in-law, Diego Enríquez and Isabel
Rodríguez. They pushed through without stopping to Rioseco, where they
rested four days and then, hiring a guide, they traversed the mountains
of Portugal, travelling only by night. Settling in Villa Pinhel, they
tried to mend their broken fortunes, Ana Enríquez by keeping a shop and
Diego Rodríguez by turning his hand to whatever he could find to do--at
one time we hear of him as driving a thousand sheep to Lisbon for sale.
Apparently by way of precaution, they appeared spontaneously before the
tribunal of Coimbra, which treated them mercifully, imposing no fines
but ordering them not to leave Pinhel without permission. Misfortune
pursued Diego and, in 1671, he returned to Spain, stopping at Talavera
de la Reina, whence he sent for his wife and children and father-in-law,
telling the rest to remain. He took the name of del Aguila for himself
and de los Rios for his wife, and settled for two years in Seville,
where his father-in-law died. Thence they removed to Daimiel, where the
Inquisition found them at last and arrested them, February 18, 1677,
some seventeen years after they had been burnt in effigy in Seville. As
two or three of the Beas fugitives, who had gone to Málaga, were on
trial at Toledo in 1667, it is probable that none escaped save those who
remained in Portugal. Two years and a half were spent on the trials of
Diego and Ana, ending with a sentence of irremissible prison and
sanbenito. Ana had broken down under this wandering life of incessant
vicissitudes and anxiety; she had become the victim of epilepsy,
melancholia and hypochondria, when her pitiless judges sent her to
prison for life in vindication of a religion of infinite love and
charity.[814]
An even more pitiful illustration of the miseries endured by these
unfortunates, under the implacable vigilance of the Inquisition, is
afforded by the case of Isabel, wife of Francisco Palos, of Ciudad
Rodrigo. In 1608, when 22 years of age, she was tried by the Valladolid
tribunal. Subsequently she was tried twice, in 1621 and 1626, at
Llerena, twice at Cuenca, in 1653 and 1655, and finally in 1665 at
Toledo. Altogether, about eighteen years were spent in these trials;
the last one, in which she was thrice tortured, continued until 1670,
when she was in her eighty-fourth year and eluded her tormentors by
dying in prison, to be burnt in effigy with her bones as a
_difunta_.[815]
Little colonies of Portuguese, like that of Beas, were frequently
discovered. Simon Múñoz of Pastrana, on trial at Toledo, in 1679, gave
the names of twenty-nine accomplices residing there, nearly all of whom
figured in an auto particular of December 21, 1680. They had long
succeeded in eluding inquisitorial vigilance, for one of them, María
Enríquez, then sixty years old, testified that she had been brought
thither from Lisbon by her parents, when a little child and had always
lived there.[816] A similar group of Portuguese, in the little town of
Berin (Orense) were tried between 1676 and 1678, by the tribunal of
Santiago, and furnished to the Madrid auto of 1680 two victims relaxed
as pertinacious Jews--Baltasar López Cardoso and Feliz López his cousin.
There were more than twenty of them in all, and they had long been
settled there; Antonio López, one of them, said, in 1677, that he was
thirty-two years old and had been born in Berin.[817]
[Sidenote: _DECAY OF JUDAISM_]
It was only by the most stringent caution that existence could be
maintained under these conditions. Gaspar de Campos, one of the Pastrana
group, gives, in his confession, some account of the devices adopted for
concealment. On the Sabbath the mother and girls would sit with reels or
spinning wheels before them and, if any one came in, would pretend to be
at work. On fast days the servant-girl would be sent out on an errand;
during her absence food would be taken out of the olla and plates and
spoons would be greased, they would then go to the house of a neighbor
Jewess and, when the servant followed them, she would be sent back to
get her dinner, telling her that they had dined, and then the neighbor
would do the same. Even in the closest family circle the utmost reserve
was often practised. Children were not allowed to know anything of
Judaism until of an age at which their discretion could be trusted.
Parents, indeed, frequently brought up their children as Catholics, and
left it to others to convert them fortuitously. Pedro Núñez Marques,
tried in Madrid in 1679, testified that he had been inducted into
Judaism in Villaflor (Portugal) by María Pinto, wife of Alvaro de
Morales. After he returned to his father's house, in Torre de Moncorvo,
he hesitated for months to let his parents know of his conversion, At
last, in 1653, he told his mother, when she approved of it and said that
both she and his father, Francisco Núñez Ramos, were Jews. There were
eight children of them; he knew them all to be Jews but could give no
details, except as to three sisters: they all assumed each other to be
so, but each one attended to his own affairs, to earn a living, and to
live with the utmost precaution. As his sister Angela Núñez Marques
expressed it, they all knew each other to be Portuguese; that was
sufficient, and further confidences were superfluous.[818]
As a matter of course, punctilious regard was paid to all Catholic
observances--mass, confession and communion, feast-days and fasts. The
dying were duly shriven and had the viaticum, the dead had Christian
burial in the churches. Living thus scattered in small groups or
isolated families, concealing their secret faith with the utmost care,
and in perpetual dread of betrayal, it is not surprising that
distinctive Jewish observances were gradually reduced to a minimum, and
were becoming to a great degree forgotten. They had no rabbis to keep
them instructed in the countless prescriptions of the Oral Law and the
incidence of days of observance. Circumcision, of course, was out of the
question; it was too compromising and there was no one to perform it,
unless some specially zealous youth might betake himself to France or to
Italy for the purpose. We hear nothing in the trials of abstinence from
pork, or the removal of fat from meat, or the mortuary laying-out of the
dead. There was an attempt to fast on the day of Queen Esther, when that
was known, and perhaps on other days of no special note, as a spiritual
exercise; we hear of washing the hands before meals and giving thanks to
the God of Israel; lamps might be lighted on Friday night, but it
sufficed to light one and let it burn till it went out. The Sabbath was
to be kept by cessation from work, but even this was not always
observed, and the changing of body-linen is rarely alluded to. Angela
Núñez Marques said that Ana de Niebes and María de Murcia had taught
her the Law of Moses and its ceremonies, which were to rest on the
Sabbath and to observe fasts of four and twenty hours without food or
drink, yet, during the twenty years of her residence in Pastrana, she
had kept only fifteen Sabbaths, for fear of discovery by her husband and
servants. Isabel Mendes Correa, who appeared in the Madrid auto of 1680,
when sick some years before, had vowed that, if she recovered, she would
rest on Saturdays and light lamps on Fridays, for she deemed her illness
a punishment for neglecting the Law of Moses. In short, Judaism seems to
have resolved itself into Sabbath-keeping with occasional fasting, and
into hoping to be saved in the Law of Moses and denying Christ and
Christian doctrine.[819]
All this increased the difficulty of detection and vexed the souls of
the inquisitors, in both Spain and Portugal. An exhortation addressed to
the New Christians, in 1640, in Granada, by Maestro Gabriel Rodríguez de
Escabias, denounces them roundly for thus betraying their faith. So at
the Lisbon auto of September 6, 1705, where the sermon was preached by
Diogo da Annunciasam, Archbishop of Cranganor, he commenced by
addressing the sixty-six penitents before him--"Miserable relics of
Judaism! Unhappy fragments of the synagogue! Last remains of Judea!
Scandal of the Catholics and detestable objects of scorn even to the
Jews themselves!... You are the detestable objects of scorn to the Jews,
for you are so ignorant that you cannot observe the very law under which
you live"--a truly Christian welcome to repentant sinners, which was
deemed worthy of perpetuation by the printing-press.[820] Yet in this
duplicity, so reprehensible in inquisitorial eyes, there was promise of
the final success of the work so unremittingly prosecuted for two
centuries. The hammer was gradually wearing away the anvil; only the
marvellous constancy of Judaism had enabled it to maintain itself under
such conditions, and eventually the Portuguese Judaizers were to be
incorporated in the Church as, for the most part, their Spanish brethren
had been already.
[Sidenote: _CONTINUED PERSECUTION_]
Still, the activity of the Inquisition continued to be rewarded with
abundant success, and indeed we may say that but for Judaism it would
have found little to do. In the public autos of Córdova, from 1655 to
1700, out of three hundred and ninety-nine persons and effigies brought
forward, three hundred and twenty-four were for Judaizing. In Toledo,
from 1651 to 1700, there were eight hundred and fifty-five cases tried
of every kind, trivial and important, of which five hundred and
fifty-six were for the same offence. Towards the closing years of the
century, there seems to be a decided falling off in the numbers, as
though vigilance were becoming relaxed, or the efforts of the tribunals
were being crowned with success; but, in a report of pending cases in
Valladolid, made July 8, 1699, out of eighty-five, seventy-eight were
Judaizers.[821] This activity however seems to be largely confined to
Castile, as though the Portuguese had not found the kingdoms of Aragon
attractive. Reports of cases pending in Valencia in 1694-5-6, show in
all but sixteen, among which there is not a single Judaizer.[822] It is
perhaps worthy of passing remark that, in the treaty of 1668, by which
Spain recognized the independence of Portugal, Article 4 provides that
the subjects of each power, in the territories of the other, shall enjoy
the privileges and immunities granted to British subjects by the
treaties of 1630 and 1667.[823] These guaranteed them against
molestation for matters of conscience, so long as they gave no occasion
for scandal, but, from what we have seen above, it does not appear that
the Inquisition of either country paid any attention to this, nor is it
likely that either government complained of infraction.
* * * * *
During this period, the laws restricting the emigration of the New
Christians seem to have been mostly in abeyance, but when, in 1666, the
false Messiah, Zabathia Tzevi, appeared in Palestine and drew a large
following of misguided Jews, the Suprema took the alarm. The sea-port
tribunals were warned that some of the Portuguese would seek to join
him, so that if any Portuguese should come and endeavor to embark, they
were to be detained under some pretext, their property was to be seized
and examined and a report be sent to the Suprema. Some four months
later, Barcelona forwarded the testimony taken in the case of four
Portuguese thus detained, when the Suprema ordered their release and
that in future, when the evidence showed that they were not fugitives or
bound for some suspicious place, they should be allowed to proceed. In
this same year a muleteer named Francisco Núñez Redondo was punished at
Toledo as a Judaizer, and for conducting Judaizers out of the country,
the two hundred lashes added, in his sentence to reconciliation and
prison, being evidently the penalty for this special offence.[824] In
1672, there was another similar alarm. The Suprema informed the
tribunals that many families of Portuguese were arranging to pass by way
of Bayonne to France. All the roads and paths were therefore to be
guarded, and all Portuguese who seemed to be seeking to leave the
kingdom were to be seized with their property. Each individual was to be
closely examined, his genealogy taken, his past life recorded, his
destination and the motives of his journey to be stated, with all other
details necessary for a thorough knowledge of his antecedents and
purposes, and this information was to be forwarded to the Suprema with
the opinion of the tribunal. Similar precautions were ordered at the
Mediterranean sea-ports, but the object of this action was not
stated.[825]
[Sidenote: _THE MALLORQUIN TRIBUNAL_]
Valladares, who was inquisitor-general from 1669 to 1695, seems to have
taken a different view of this curiously perverse policy of preventing
the emigration of disaffected apostates. August 12, 1681, he sent, to
some one near the king, an anonymous memorial setting forth the
invincible obstinacy of the Jews; penance and punishment left them as
wicked as before, resulting in many evils, such as the engagement in
noble houses of Jewish wet-nurses, who infect the children with their
milk, the employment by Conversos of young children whom they pervert,
the sacrilege of the sacraments administered to them, and the like. The
remedy for this was the immediate exile of all who were penanced or, if
they were allowed to remain, the branding of them on the forehead with
the arms of the Inquisition. Valladares was probably the author of the
memorial, for he makes this hideous suggestion his own, urging it with
all the authority of the Inquisition, and invoking the judgement of
heaven on his correspondent if he fails to lay the paper before the
king. Carlos sent it to the Suprema for its opinion, and the matter went
no further, but the document is not without interest as a revelation of
the methods which persecutors were willing to adopt to escape from the
consequences of their own acts.[826]
* * * * *
Although it was the Portuguese immigration which supplied the apparently
inexhaustible harvest of culprits throughout the seventeenth century,
there was one corner of Spain which escaped the influx and where the old
Conversos continued to cherish their secret faith with little or no
molestation. Allusion has more than once been made above to the Majorca
catastrophe of 1691 and, as an episode of Spanish Judaism, its details
deserve consideration. In the massacre of 1391, some of the Mallorquin
Jews escaped to Barbary, but the majority remained. The governor,
Francisco Sagariga, had been wounded in endeavoring to protect them;
they were won over to conversion by the terror of death, and the promise
of the authorities to give them twenty thousand libras wherewith to pay
their debts,--a promise which seems never to have been fulfilled. They
continued to inhabit the _call_, or Jewish quarter and, although the
aljama came to an end in 1410, its members remained as a separate
community.[827] The conversion was as superficial as was to be
anticipated and though, as nominal Christians, they were not affected by
the expulsion of 1492, when the Inquisition was introduced we have seen,
from the numbers who came in under Edicts of Grace, that they must all
have been Jews at heart for, between 1488 and 1491, there were no less
than five hundred and sixty-eight reconciliations, besides those who, by
special mercy, were reconciled twice. After this, for awhile the
tribunal was fairly active. Between 1489, when it commenced operations,
and 1535 it sentenced a hundred and sixty-four to reconciliation,
ninety-nine to relaxation in person, and four hundred and sixty to
relaxation in effigy, all of whom presumably were Judaizers except, in
1535, five Moriscos who were relaxed.[828] After this, persecution grew
inert, relaxations disappear and reconciliations become few. So
insignificant had the tribunal become that when, in 1549, the offices of
fiscal and receiver fell vacant, Valdés wrote to ask what was the
necessity of filling them.[829] He might well ask the question: between
1552 and 1567 the tribunal had but two reconciliations to show and,
during the remainder of the century, only thirty, together with a single
relaxation, and of these few culprits the majority were not Judaizers.
In the seventeenth century, the record was even slenderer. Engaged, for
the most part as we have seen, in unappeaseable conflicts with the
ecclesiastical authorities, the duties of persecution were neglected,
and heretic and apostate breathed in comparative peace. The
reconciliation of María Díez, September 6, 1579, was followed by a
century in which not a single Judaizer was reconciled, although, in
1675, one from Madrid was relaxed. The inhabitants of the _call_ might
well deem themselves secure, especially as the churchmen were free in
their denunciations of the tribunal. In 1668 the inquisitor complained
to the Suprema that the priests of the episcopal party talked of the
Inquisition as a secret heresy, and that it was a den of robbers which
should be abolished, all of which led to much licence of speech among
the suspected persons who dwelt "in the separate barrio."[830]
[Sidenote: _THE MALLORQUIN TRIBUNAL_]
From this sense of security there was a rude awakening. In 1677 or 1678
a meeting, held in a garden outside of the city, attracted the
inquisitor's attention. It was designated as a synagogue, and doubtless
there was some imprudence. Secret investigation developed evidence
justifying wholesale arrests, and the prison was soon crowded. The
result appeared in four autos celebrated in 1679, in which there were no
less than two hundred and nineteen reconciliations. There was no spirit
of martyrdom; in all cases it was a first conviction, and when all
confessed and begged for mercy there was no opportunity for relaxation.
A noteworthy feature was the absence of prosecutions of the dead, which
could have been numerous had the tribunal been disposed to take the
trouble, but this is doubtless explicable by the fact that as the whole
community of New Christians was involved, all its property was
confiscated, and there would have been no profit in looking up ancestral
heresies. The confiscations were enormous; the culprits were merchants
and traders and bankers, whose houses and lands, censos and merchandise
and credits were swept away. The sum realized is stated at 1,496,276
pesos, which is probably far below the real value of the assets seized.
We have seen how the king was gradually shouldered out of his share of
the spoils; the tribunal secured a goodly portion with which it rebuilt
the palace of the Inquisition in a style so sumptuous that it passed for
one of the finest in Spain, until it was demolished, in 1822, and its
site converted into a public plaza.[831]
The tribunal ordered all New Christians to dwell in the _call_ and
required them, on all feasts of precept, to attend mass in the cathedral
in a body, preceded by a minister of the Inquisition and in charge of an
alguazil. Impoverished, dishonored and watched, the position became
intolerable. A number resolved to expatriate themselves and secretly
made arrangements with an English ship lying in the harbor to carry them
away. The passage-money was paid and they succeeded in embarking, but
rough weather detained the ship; they had not procured the necessary
licences to leave Spain, they were seized and cast into prison with the
members of their families. This occurred in 1688 and three years were
consumed in their trials. The result was seen in the four autos held in
March, May and July, 1691. For those who had been reconciled in 1679 and
were now convicted of relapse there could be no pardon. A huge brasero,
eighty feet square and eight feet high, with twenty-five stakes, was
prepared on the sea-shore, two miles from the city, in order that the
people might not be incommoded by the stench. In all thirty-seven were
relaxed in person, of whom only three were pertinacious to the last and
were burnt alive. Eight were relaxed in effigy, of whom four were
fugitives and four were dead--three of the latter having died in prison.
There were fifteen reconciliations in person and three in effigy.
Finally there were twenty-four who, although among the reconciled of
1679, escaped with abjuration _de levi_ and fines amounting to
sixty-four hundred libras.[832] This shows that the little community had
already begun to repair its shattered fortunes, and renders it probable
that the confiscations of the relaxed and reconciled rewarded the
tribunal abundantly for its labors. The lesson seems to have been
sufficiently severe to serve its purpose. We hear nothing more of
Judaism in Majorca; during the height of persecution elsewhere, the
tribunal celebrated two autos, May 31, 1722 and July 2, 1724, in which
nine penitents appeared, but none of them were Judaizers.[833] Although
the New Christians were still confined to their separate quarter, in
time, as we have seen, they became thoroughly Catholic.
* * * * *
With the opening of the eighteenth century it looked as though the
victory over Judaism had been virtually won. The War of Succession must
of course have interfered with the operations of the Inquisition, but
this does not suffice to explain the marked falling off in the number of
Judaizers in the autos, so far as manifested by the records before me.
In Catalonia, which held out long after the rest of Spain was pacified,
the Inquisition was fairly re-established in 1715, after which, for
three years, the Barcelona tribunal, out of a total of twenty-five
cases, had but three of Jews--a mother and two daughters who had fled
from Seville and had been traced to Catalonia.[834] In Córdova the
records are imperfect but, as far as they go, from 1700 to 1720, they
show but five cases.[835] In Toledo, during the same twenty-one years,
out of a total of eighty-eight trials, only twenty-three were for
Judaism.[836]
[Sidenote: _REVIVAL OF PERSECUTION_]
The fires of persecution, however, were only slumbering and broke out
again suddenly with renewed fierceness. Possibly this may be
attributable to the discovery in Madrid of an organized synagogue,
composed of twenty families who, since 1707, had been accustomed to meet
for their devotions and, in 1714, had elected a rabbi, whose name they
sent to Leghorn for confirmation. Comparative immunity had brought
recklessness and we are told that they observed the Christian fast-days
with dancing and guitar-playing. Five of them were relaxed in the auto
of April 7, 1720.[837] It was probably this discovery that aroused the
other tribunals to renewed activity, which was abundantly rewarded, for
there seems at this time to have been little concealment by Judaizers.
In the Toledo auto of March 19, 1721, Sebastian Antonio de Paz,
_administrador del tabaco_, is asserted to have married the daughter of
his wife, and Francisco de Mendoza y Rodríguez his first cousin,
"according to the Law of Moses."[838]
For some years this revival of persecution raged with a virulence
rivalling that of the earlier period. In a collection of sixty-four
autos, held between 1721 and 1727, there were in all eight hundred and
sixty-eight cases, of which eight hundred and twenty were for Judaism,
nor did the tribunals err on the side of mercy. There were seventy-five
relaxations in person and seventy-four in effigy, while scourging, the
galleys and imprisonment were lavishly imposed.[839] The geographical
distribution of the culprits is worthy of note. The kingdoms of the
crown of Aragon show few traces of Judaism. Valencia contributed but
twenty cases, Barcelona five, Saragossa one and Majorca none--or
twenty-six in all. Among the tribunals of the crown of Castile, Logroño
held no auto during these years; Santiago furnished only four cases,
while Granada had two hundred and twenty-nine, Seville a hundred and
sixty-seven and Córdova seventy-eight. The years 1722 and 1723 were
those in which persecution was most active, the number diminishing
rapidly afterwards.[840] It still, however, continued at intervals. In
Córdova there were autos in 1728, 1730 and 1731, in which there were in
all twenty-six cases of Judaism; then there was an interval until 1745,
when only two cases occurred.[841] In Toledo, after 1726, there was no
case of Judaism until 1738, when there were fourteen. This seems to
have exhausted the material for prosecution, for until the Toledan
record ends in 1794, there was but a single subsequent case, which
occurred in 1756.[842] In Madrid there were several Jews relaxed in
1732, charged with scourging and burning an image of Christ, in a house
in the calle de las Infantas.[843] In Valladolid, at an auto, June 13,
1745, there was one Judaizer relaxed and four reconciled, while in
Seville, July 4, although there were four Moslems there was not a single
Jew.[844] At Llerena, in 1752, we hear of the relaxation of six effigies
of fugitives and one of a dead woman, which must evidently have been
cases of Judaism.[845]
[Sidenote: _FOREIGNERS EXCLUDED_]
These scattering details can make no pretension to completeness, and yet
they suffice to show that Judaism at last was substantially rooted out
of Spanish soil, after a continuous struggle of three centuries. How
complete was this eradication is manifested by a summarized list of all
cases of every kind, coming before all the tribunals, from 1780 until
the suppression of the Inquisition in 1820, embracing an aggregate of
over five thousand. In these forty years, the whole number of
prosecutions connected with Judaism was but sixteen, and of these ten
were foreigners who had evaded the laws prohibiting entrance to Jews
while, of the six natives, four were prosecuted for suspicions and
propositions. The latest case was at Córdova, in 1818, of Manuel
Santiago Vivar for Judaizing acts--the final scene in the long tragedy
which had secured uniformity of faith at the cost of so much blood and
suffering.[846]
* * * * *
During this later period, the exclusion of foreign Jews was exercising
the Holy Office much more than the detection of native ones. The savage
law will be remembered by which, in 1499, Ferdinand and Isabella
prohibited the return of the expelled Jews or the entrance of foreigners
under pain of death and confiscation.[847] Although this law was
retained on the statute-book, it probably was not enforced in all its
ferocity, but the maintenance of the exclusion was inevitable when such
unremitting pains were taken to exterminate Judaism. When the _visitas
de navíos_, or examination of all ships arriving at Spanish ports, were
organized, the keeping out of Jews was held in view as much as that of
Lutheran heretics and books; if a Jew were found on board, he was to be
examined; if he admitted baptism he was to be seized and his goods were
to be confiscated; if unbaptized and he made no attempt to land, he was
to be allowed to depart with the ship.[848] Still, the indefatigable
mercantile energy of the Jews and the venality of officials, to a
limited extent, neutralized these precautions. In 1656, the trial at
Murcia of Enrique Pereira, whose domicile was in Lucca and who was
arrested while trading at Beas, shows that there was intercourse between
the Portuguese in Spain and their brethren in Italy; those of Spain
would go by sea to Nice or elsewhere to enjoy freedom of worship, while
Italian Jews came to Spain to trade, in spite of inquisitorial
vigilance.[849] These furtive attempts, with their perils, were but
tantalizing to those who looked with longing on the tempting Spanish
market; licences to come were much more desirable and we have seen that,
in 1634, under Olivares, they were sometimes issued. They were
grudgingly recognized by the tribunals, as in the case mentioned above
in 1645. More unlucky, in 1679, was Samuel de Jacob, who was thrown in
prison, although he held a licence, and we are told that, although those
who held licences could not be prosecuted as heretics, still, if they
blasphemed or derided the faith, they could be chastised with fines,
scourging or the galleys, according to the resultant scandal, while
attempts to proselyte incurred capital punishment.[850] In 1689, special
orders were issued to disregard an agreement which Don Pedro Ronquillo,
under powers from the king, had made with an English Jew, enabling him
to land at any port in Spain.[851]
[Sidenote: _FOREIGNERS EXCLUDED_]
Such care was exercised to avert any danger of polluting the Spanish
soil by a Jewish foot that when, in 1713, by the treaty of Utrecht,
Gibraltar was ceded to England, it was under the condition that no Jews
or Moors should be permitted to reside there.[852] The inobservance of
this by England was the subject of complaint, but it is not likely that
many intruders risked the dangers that attended an attempt of a foreign
Jew to enter Spain. In January, 1697, Abraham Rodríguez, travelling from
France to Portugal under the name of Antonio Mazedo, was arrested at
Ledesma and brought to the tribunal of Valladolid. Two years and a half
later his trial was still in progress, but, though we do not know the
result, the experience was not such as to invite imitation.[853]
When, in the general relaxation of the eighteenth century, the sternness
of these laws was tacitly abandoned, embarrassing precautions rendered
sojourn uninviting. In 1756, Abraham Salusox, a Jew of Jerusalem,
ventured to Valencia with a lion for sale. The shipmaster reported him
and a familiar was deputed to accompany him day and night, on board and
on shore, never to let him out of his sight or to communicate with any
one. The Count of Almenara bought the lion and Salusox was permitted to
be in the count's house for a few days, until a cage was constructed for
the beast, after which he re-embarked. The same course was followed in
1759, with a Jew who came with merchandise from Gibraltar; a familiar
never left him till his goods were sold and he departed, while his books
and papers were carefully scrutinized to see that they contained nothing
prejudicial. There were others who came in 1761 and 1762, who were
treated in the same fashion. Then, in 1795 a royal order was issued
through the Suprema, to the effect that a Jewish subject of the Bey of
Morocco would come to Valencia and remain for eight or ten days, who was
not to be troubled in any way; the tribunal consequently took no notice
of his coming and going.[854]
These were all the cases that search through the records of Valencia
could find, from 1645 to 1800, and their paucity shows how rarely Jews
braved the dangers of visiting Spain. Those who tried to do so in secret
took the chances of detection. In 1781, Jacobo Pereira landed at Cadiz
under a false name and concealing his faith, but he was found out,
arrested and the Seville tribunal at once commenced his
prosecution.[855] It is true that a royal order of April 25, 1786,
permitted the entrance of Jews who bore licence from the king, but these
were sparingly granted and only on special occasions. The question of
greater liberality came up, in 1797, when the finance minister, Don
Pedro de Varela, as a means of reviving the commerce and industry of
Spain, proposed that Jews might be allowed to establish factories in
Cadiz and other ports, but the Council of ministers rejected the project
as contrary to the laws.[856] Apparently the discussion continued and,
in 1800, the Suprema called on all the tribunals for reports as to their
treatment of Jews seeking admission, and the result appears in a royal
cédula of June 8, 1802, declaring in full force all laws and pragmáticas
theretofore issued, and ordering the rigorous execution of the penalties
therein provided, while any default in lending to the Inquisition due
assistance for this holy purpose was threatened with the royal
indignation.[857]
The confusion of the Napoleonic wars afforded opportunities for
enterprising Jews, which were not likely to be overlooked, and Fernando
VII deemed it necessary, August 16, 1816, to issue a decree renewing and
confirming the cédula of 1802.[858] It was easier to publish the decree
than to enforce it. The tribunal of Seville, June 12, 1819, represented
to the Suprema its perplexities arising from the influx of Jews at
Algeciras, Cadiz and Seville, who came to the tribunal begging for
baptism. They were indigent beggars and probably fugitive criminals but,
as occasionally there might be one whose object was really salvation, to
deprive him of this would be a heavy burden on the conscience, and
consequently the tribunal asked for instructions.[859] This resulted in
an order of the inquisitor-general, July 10th, to all the tribunals,
insisting on the strict enforcement of the decrees of 1786 and 1802;
such Jews as obtained a royal licence were to be vigilantly watched and,
if the secular officials manifested lack of zeal in coöperation, the
inquisitor-general was to be notified.[860]
[Sidenote: _MODERN TOLERATION_]
At the same time orders were sent, to the commissioners at all the
ports, to observe strictly the old instructions as to the _visitas de
navíos_ and to report as to the current practice. Barcelona replied that
the visits were made only when there were Jews on board. Alicante
reported that the disuse of the visits had led to a rapid immigration of
Jews into Murcia. Cartagena said that no visits were made but that, if
suspicious persons arrived, the custom-house officers notified the
commissioner. Cadiz and Algeciras answered that the health-officer
notified the commissioner of the arrival of Jews, renegades and other
forbidden persons, when he took the necessary steps to avert the evil.
Motril said that visits were made only when there was a Jew on board.
Santiago merely responded that it had the royal decrees of 1786 and 1802
and the recent instructions of the Suprema.[861] Evidently there was
little attention paid to the enforcement of the laws by both the royal
and inquisitorial officials, but the Government was determined to
enforce the exclusion of Jews, and an order was promptly sent to all the
royal officials that no Jew was to be allowed to set foot on Spanish
territory, unless he bore a royal licence; if he had one, he was to
present himself to the Inquisition or its commissioner, so that a record
could be made of him, and the tribunal was instructed to keep him under
strict supervision. The ministry of Gracia y Justicia communicated this,
August 31, 1819, to the Suprema, which in turn forwarded it, September
6th, to all the tribunals with orders for its strict observance.[862]
The Inquisition came to an end a few months after this, but the
prejudices which it had done so much to foster postponed the removal
from the statute-book of the laws representing the fierce intolerance of
the earlier time. In 1848 we are told that, although unrepealed, they
were not enforced and that Jews could travel and trade in Spain without
molestation,[863] but when, in 1854, Constitutional Córtes were
assembled to frame a new constitution, and the German Jews sent Dr.
Ludwig Philipson, Rabbi of Magdeburg, on a mission to procure free
admission of their race, his eloquence was unavailing. It was not until
fifteen years later, when the revolution, which drove Isabella II from
the throne, called for a new organic law, that the Constitution of 1869
proclaimed freedom of belief and guaranteed it to all residents in
Spain, and this was likewise applicable to natives professing other
religions than the Catholic. This principle was preserved in the
Constitution of 1876, which forbade all interference with religious
belief, while not allowing public ceremonies other than those of
Catholicism.[864] It was a remarkable proof of conversion from ancient
error when, in 1883, the Jewish refugees from Russia, sent by the
organizing committees of Germany, were enthusiastically received,
although the experiment ended in disastrous failure.[865] The ancestral
antipathy which they had to encounter was, however, still active, as
expressed by a pious Franciscan, who declared that bringing them was a
sin of moral and political treason, and that they would devour the whole
Spanish nation.[866]
CHAPTER II.
MORISCOS.[867]
We have seen that, in the progress of the Reconquest, as Moorish
territories were successively won, the inhabitants were largely allowed
to remain, under guarantees for the free enjoyment of their religion and
customs. These Mudéjares, as they were called, formed a most useful
portion of the population, through their industry and skill in the arts
and crafts. When, in 1368, Charles le Mauvais of Navarre granted to the
Mudéjares of Tudela a remission of half their taxes for three years, in
reward of their assistance during his wars, especially in fortification
and engineering, it shows that the conquering race depended on them not
merely for manual labor but for the higher branches of applied
knowledge.[868] As a rule they were faithful in peace and war, during
the long centuries of internal strife between the Christians, and of
struggles with their co-religionists.
It was the Jews against whom was directed the growing intolerance of the
fifteenth century and, in the massacres that occurred, there appears to
have been no hostility manifested against the Mudéjares. When Alfonso de
Borja, Archbishop of Valencia (afterwards Calixtus III), supported by
Cardinal Juan de Torquemada, urged their expulsion on Juan II of Aragon,
although he appointed a term for their exile, he reconsidered the matter
and left them undisturbed.[869] So when, in 1480, Isabella ordered the
expulsion from Andalusia of all Jews who refused baptism and when, in
1486, Ferdinand did the same in Aragon, they both respected the old
capitulations and left the Mudéjares alone.[870] The time-honored policy
was followed in the conquest of Granada, and nothing could be more
liberal than the terms conceded to the cities and districts that
surrendered. The final capitulation of the city of Granada was a solemn
agreement, signed November 25, 1491, in which Ferdinand and Isabella,
for themselves, for their son the Infante Juan and for all their
successors, received the Moors of all places that should come into the
agreement as vassals and natural subjects under the royal protection,
and as such to be honored and respected. Religion, property, freedom to
trade, laws and customs were all guaranteed, and even renegades from
Christianity among them were not to be maltreated, while Christian women
marrying Moors were free to choose their religion. For three years,
those desiring expatriation were to be transported to Barbary at the
royal expense, and refugees in Barbary were allowed to return. When,
after the execution of this agreement, the Moors, with not unnatural
distrust, wanted further guarantees, the sovereigns made a solemn
declaration in which they swore by God that all Moors should have full
liberty to work on their lands, or to go wherever they desired through
the kingdoms, and to maintain their mosques and religious observances as
heretofore, while those who desired to emigrate to Barbary could sell
their property and depart.[871] It was the wise traditional policy of
incorporating the conquered population in the state, on an equal footing
with other subjects, and trusting to time to merge them all into a
common mass, holding one faith and owing allegiance to one country.
[Sidenote: _CONVERSION OF GRANADA_]
Whether it was distrust of Christian good faith that impelled them, or a
natural desire to leave the scene of their defeat, a large portion of
the Granadan Moors, including most of the nobles, promptly availed
themselves of the right of expatriation. Before the year 1492 was out,
it was reported to the sovereigns that the Abencerrages had gone, almost
in a body, and that, in the Alpujarras, few were left save laborers and
officials. The emigration continued and, in 1498, a letter of Ferdinand
indicates that he was inclined to stimulate it.[872] While there might
be good reasons for diminishing the large population of those recently
vanquished, who presumably might cherish hopes of independence and had
not forgotten the bitterness of unsuccessful struggle, this was
accompanied with a readiness to increase the number of Mudéjares, who
had adapted themselves to the situation, and who were regarded as in
every way a desirable element in the community. When Manoel of Portugal
expelled the Moors who refused baptism, Ferdinand and Isabella welcomed
them to Spain. Royal letters were issued, April 20, 1497, permitting
their entrance with all their property, either to settle or in transit
to other lands; they were taken under the royal protection and all
molestation of them was forbidden.[873] Up to this time, at least, there
was no recognition of the political necessity of unity of faith, which
subsequently served as justification for cruel intolerance and unwise
statesmanship.
Yet the statesmanship of the day, if not yet prepared to regard unity of
faith as a political necessity, considered it politically advantageous,
while pious zeal inevitably sought the salvation of the multitudes of
souls thus brought under Christian rule. The "third king of Spain,"
González de Mendoza, Cardinal-archbishop of Toledo, and other prelates
at the court urged upon the sovereigns that gratitude to God required
them to give to their new subjects the alternative of baptism or exile.
Ferdinand and Isabella, however, turned a deaf ear to this advice,
either not caring to break the faith so recently pledged, or to provoke
another war; the work of conversion had already been commenced with fair
prospects of success and it could safely be left to time.[874]
Isabella's confessor, the saintly Hernando de Talavera, had been made
Archbishop of Granada; he was devoting his revenues and his tireless
labors to missionary work, inculcating Christianity by example more
potent than precept. He relieved suffering, he preached and he taught
all who would listen to him; he required his assistants to learn Arabic
and he acquired it himself. He won many converts and there was a
flattering prospect that his apostolic methods would bring the mass of
the population into the fold.[875]
[Sidenote: _CONVERSION OF GRANADA_]
The process however was too slow for the impatience that looked for
immediate results. Ferdinand and Isabella were in Granada from July
until November, 1499, and called in Ximenes to the aid of Talavera. His
extraordinary energy and imperious temper soon made themselves felt;
with liberal presents he gained the favor of the principal Moors; he
held conferences with the alfaquíes, whom he induced to instruct their
people and, it is said that, on December 18th, three thousand were
baptized and the mosque of the Albaycin, or Moorish quarter, was
consecrated as the church of San Salvador. The stricter Moslems became
alarmed and endeavored to check the movement by persuasion, whereupon
Ximenes had them imprisoned in chains; he summoned the alfaquíes to
surrender all their religious books, of which five thousand--many of
them priceless specimens of art--were publicly burnt. The situation was
becoming strained; the Moors were restive under the disregard of their
guarantees, and Ximenes grew more and more impetuous. Rupture, under
these conditions was inevitable and Ximenes soon brought it about.
Christian renegades, known as _elches_, were protected under the
capitulations, but he argued that this did not extend to their children
who, if not baptized, ought to have been, and who thus were subject to
the Inquisition. From Inquisitor-general Deza he procured a delegation
of power to deal with them and used it for their arrest. It chanced that
a young daughter of a renegade, thus arrested, while being dragged
through the plaza of Bib-el-Bonut, cried out that she was to be forcibly
baptized in violation of the capitulations. A crowd collected and from
words soon came to blows; the alguazil was slain with a paving-stone,
and his companion escaped only by a Moorish woman conveying him away and
hiding him under a bed. The agitation increased; the Moors flew to arms,
skirmished with the Christians and besieged Ximenes in his house. He had
a guard of two hundred men who defended the place until the morning,
when the Captain-general Tendilla came down from the Alhambra with
troops and drove away the mob. For ten days Talavera, Ximenes and
Tendilla parleyed with the Moors, who urged that they had not risen
against the sovereigns but in defence of the royal faith; that the
officials had violated the capitulations, the observance of which would
restore peace. Then Talavera, with his chaplain and a few unarmed
servants, went to the plaza Bib-el-Bonut, where the Moors kissed the hem
of his garments as of old. Tendilla followed and promised pardon if they
should lay down their arms, as it should be understood that they were
not in revolt, but had only sought to maintain the capitulations, which
should be strictly observed in future. The city became quiet; those who
had slain the alguazil were surrendered, and four of them were hanged;
the Moors cast aside their arms and returned to work.
With such a population, kindness and fair-dealing alone were required to
accomplish the desired result, but the inflexible temper of Ximenes had
been aroused, and he was resolved on the forcible accomplishment of his
purpose. The rumors of the disturbance had greatly alarmed the court at
Seville, and Ximenes was bitterly reproached, but he hurried thither,
gave his own version of the affair, and pointed out that the Moors had
forfeited life and property by rebellion, so that pardon should be
conditioned on accepting baptism or expatriation. With fatal facility
his arguments were accepted; Tendilla's promises were ignored; the
capitulations were cast aside; the Moors were to be taught how little
reliance was to be placed on Christian faith; distrust and hatred were
to be rendered ineradicable, and a religion was to be forced upon them
which could not but be odious, as the visible sign of their subjection.
From this false step sprang the incurable trouble which weakened Spain
until statesmanship could devise no remedy, save the deplorable
expulsion of the most useful and efficient portion of her population. It
was not without reason that the admiring biographer of Ximenes admits
that, so imperious was his temper that he sometimes acted through fury
rather than through prudence, as was seen in the conversion of the
Granadan Moors and in the attempt to conquer Africa.[876]
He returned to Granada, armed with full powers, and offered to the
people the alternative of baptism or punishment, while a royal judge,
sent for the purpose, sharpened their apprehension by executing or
imprisoning the more active of the rioters. The choice was readily made
and they came forward in thousands for the saving waters of baptism.
Instruction in the new faith was impossible, nor was it wanted. When
they asked for it in their own language, and Talavera had the offices
and parts of the gospels printed in Arabic, Ximenes objected; it was, he
said, casting pearls before swine; it was in the nature of the vulgar to
despise what they could understand and to reverence that which was
mysterious and beyond their comprehension. He cared little for
heart-felt conversion so long as he could secure outward conformity. The
number thus rudely inducted into the faith, in the city and the Vega,
was estimated at from fifty to seventy thousand and the process which
converted them could result only in undying hate for the religion thus
forced upon them.[877]
Although no outbreak occurred during this forcible missionary work, the
discontent which it excited was threatening, and Ferdinand returned to
Granada where he made no secret of his displeasure at the imprudent zeal
of Ximenes, especially as it interfered with his designs on Naples.
These had to be postponed to meet the imminent danger at home for,
although emigration had been large, many had taken refuge in the
Alpujarras and were exciting the mountaineers to revolt. To meet this he
wrote, January 27, 1500, to the leading Moors, assuring them that all
reports that they were to be Christianized by force were false, and
pledging the royal faith that not a single compulsory baptism would be
made. To reconcile those who had been baptized and to attract others he
issued, February 27th, a general pardon to all New Christians for crimes
committed prior to baptism and renouncing his claims to
confiscation.[878] Meanwhile he had been engaged in raising an army as
large as though the conquest was to be repeated, and with this he was
engaged, during the rest of the year, in quelling the revolts which
broke out in one place after another, supplementing military operations
with friars despatched through the mountains to instruct the converts.
Massacre and baptism went hand in hand, until the Alpujarras were
pacified and the army was disbanded, January 14, 1501.[879]
[Sidenote: _CONVERSION OF GRANADA_]
Then there came trouble in the Western districts of Ronda and the Sierra
Bermeja, where the mountaineers rose, in dread of enforced conversion.
Another army was raised, which suffered a severe defeat at Caladui. This
brought a pause, during which the insurgents asked to be allowed to
emigrate. Ferdinand drove a hard bargain with them, demanding ten doblas
for the passage-money and requiring those who could not pay this to
remain and submit to baptism. The baptized lowlanders, who had taken to
the mountains, were allowed to return home, surrendering their arms and
suffering confiscation. Large numbers escaped to Africa, but more
remained to curse the faith thus imposed on them. To these New
Christians, as we have seen, expatriation was forbidden. Baptism imposed
an indelible _character_, and incorporation with the Church subjected
them to a jurisdiction which could not be shaken off.
It was vitally important that these New Christians should be interfused
with the rest of the population, with the same rights and privileges, so
that in time they might form a contented whole, but this was not to be.
One wrong always breeds another. The disregard of compacts and the
violent methods of conversion inevitably rendered them objects of
suspicion, and an edict of September 1, 1501 prohibited the new converts
from bearing or possessing arms, publicly or secretly, under penalty,
for a first offence, of confiscation and two months' imprisonment and of
death for a second--an edict which was repeated in 1511 and again in
1515.[880] Not only was this a bitter humiliation but a serious
infliction, at a time when weapons were a necessity for self-protection.
There was however another distinction between the classes favorable to
the New Christians, for it was provided that, for forty years, they
should not be subjected to the Inquisition, in order that they might
have full time to acquire knowledge of their new faith.[881] Yet, like
all other promises, this was made only to be broken. It was thus, in
less than ten years after the capitulation, that the Moors of Granada
found themselves to be Christians in defiance of the pledges so solemnly
given. Such a commencement could have but one result and we shall see
its outcome.
Something might be urged in palliation of this forcible propaganda in
that it was unpremeditated and brought about in the turbulence of a
settlement between hostile races and religions, and that those who
rejected conversion were allowed to depart. All this was lacking in the
next step towards enforcing unity of faith. We have seen how the
Mudéjares of Castile were loyal and contented subjects, living under
compacts centuries old, which guaranteed them the full enjoyment of
their religion and laws. To disturb this and convert them, by a flagrant
breach of faith, into plotting domestic enemies, without even a
colorable pretext, would appear to be an act of madness. Yet it was this
that Isabella was led to do, under the influence of her ghostly
counsellors, among whom Ximenes can probably be reckoned as the most
influential. In bringing about the conversion of Granada, he had cared
for little beyond outward conformity and this could be secured among the
scattered and peaceful Mudéjares, without encountering the risk
attending the attempt among the mountaineers of the Alpujarras, while
subsequently the Inquisition could be depended upon for what might be
lacking in religious conviction. God should no longer be insulted by
infidel rites in Spain, and the land could not fail to be blessed when
thus united in the true faith. Such we may assume to have been the
reasoning which led Isabella to a measure so disastrous. That
Ferdinand's practical sense disapproved of it may be inferred from the
fact that, when he talked of similar action in Aragon, he readily
yielded to the remonstrances of his nobles.