THE NEW-CHRISTIANS
It must clearly be understood that so far the Inquisition, which for
some three centuries already had been very active in Italy and Southern
France, had not reached Castile.
Even as recently as 1474, when Pope Sixtus IV had ordered the
Dominicans to set up the Inquisition in Spain, and whilst in
obedience to that command inquisitors were appointed in Aragon,
Valencia, Cataluña, and Navarre, it was not held necessary to make
any appointment in Castile, where no heresy of any account could
be perceived. Trials of such offences against the Faith as might
occur were conducted by the bishops, who were fully empowered to
deal with them; and such offences being rare, the necessity for a
special tribunal did not suggest itself, nor did the Pope press the
matter, desirous though he might be to see the Inquisition universally
established.
There was, of course, a large Hebrew population, and also a
considerable number of Moslems, in the peninsula. But these did
not come within the jurisdiction of any ecclesiastical court. The
Inquisition itself could take no cognizance of them, as they did not
offend against the Faith.
Explanation is perhaps necessary. We touch here upon a point on which
the religious persecution known as the Inquisition compares favourably
with any other religious persecution in history, and in common justice
this point should not--as but too frequently has been the case--be
obscured. There is too little to be urged in favour of this tribunal so
terribly inequitable in its practices that we can afford to slur over
the one feature of its constitution that is invested with a degree of
equity.
Whatever may have been the case in the course of civil and popular
persecutions, whatever may have been done by a frenzied populace
at the instigation of odd fanatical preachers acting without the
authority of their superiors in giving rein to the fierce bigotry they
had nurtured in their souls, the Church herself, it must be clearly
understood, neither urged nor sanctioned the persecution of those
born into any religion that was not in itself a heresy of the Roman
Faith. The tribunal of the Inquisition was established solely--and
moved solely--to deal with those who apostatized or seceded from
the ranks of the Roman Church, precisely as an army deals with
deserting soldiers. Fanatical, horribly narrow, cruelly bigoted as
was the spirit of the Inquisition, yet the inquisitors confined their
prosecutions to apostates, to the adulterers of a faith whose purity
and incorruptibility they had made it their mission to maintain.
If the Church repressed liberty of conscience, if she stifled
rationalism and crushed independence of thought, she did so only where
her own children were concerned--those who had been born into the
Catholic Faith or who had embraced it in conversion. With those born
into any other independent religion she had no concern. To Jew, Moslem,
Buddhist, and Pagan, and to the savages of the New World, when it came
presently to be discovered, she accorded the fullest religious freedom.
To appreciate this, it is but necessary to consider such enactments
as those of Honorius III for the protection of the Jews, of Clement
VI, who threatened their persecutors with excommunication, and the
action of Pope and Archbishop in the case of the inflammatory sermons
of Hernando Martinez. It is sufficient to consider that when the Jews
were driven out of Spain--as shall presently be seen--they actually
found a refuge in Rome itself, and were received with kindliness by
Pope Alexander VI (Roderigo Borgia), which in itself is one of the
oddest ironies that ecclesiastical history can offer.
And if this is not sufficient, let us for a moment consider the
immunity and comparative peace enjoyed by the Jews who dwelt in Rome
itself, in their district of Trastevere.
They were a recognized section of the community in the Papal City. On
his coronation procession each Pope would pause near the Campo de’Fiori
to receive the company of Jews that came, headed by the Rabbi, to pay
homage to their sovereign--precisely as their ancestors had come to pay
homage to the emperor.
To the Vicar of Christ the Rabbi would now proffer the rolls of the
Pentateuch, swathed in a cloth. The Pope would take them into his
hands, to show that he respected the law contained in them, and would
then put them behind him, to signify that this law now belonged to the
past. From behind the Pontiff the Rabbi would receive back his sacred
scriptures, and depart with his escort, usually accompanied by the
jeers, insults, and vituperations of the Roman populace.[48]
It will be understood, then, that the Inquisition’s establishment
in Spain was not urged for the purpose of persecuting the Jews.
It had no concern with Jews, if we confine the term purely to its
religious meaning, signifying the observers of the law of Moses. Its
concern was entirely with the apostasy of those who, although of the
Jewish race, had become Christians by conversion. By the subsequent
secret re-Judaizings, or return of these New-Christians to the
religion of their fathers (which they had abandoned out of material
considerations), they came within the jurisdiction of the Inquisition,
and rendered themselves liable to prosecution as heretics, a
prosecution which could never have overtaken them had they but
continued in their original faith.
There is no denying that many of those who had been baptized against
their will, as the only means of saving their lives when the fury
of the Christian mob was unleashed against them, had remained Jews
at heart, had continued in secret to practise the Jewish rites, and
were exerting themselves to bring back to the fold of Israel their
apostate brethren. Others, however, upon receiving baptism may have
determined to keep the law to which they now pledged themselves and
to persevere honestly in Christianity. Yet many of the old Jewish
observances were become habitual with them: the trained--almost the
hereditary--repugnance to certain meats, the observance of certain
feast days, and several minor domestic laws that are part of the Jewish
code, were too deeply implanted in them to be plucked up by the roots
at the first attempt. Time was required in which they could settle
into Christian habits; two or three generations might be necessary
in some families before these habits came to be perfectly acquired
and the old ones to be entirely obliterated. Had those who urged the
Sovereigns to introduce the Inquisition into Castile, or had the
Sovereigns themselves but perceived this and exercised the necessary
and reasonable patience in the matter, Spain might have been spared
the horrors that took root in her soil and sapped the vigour and
intellectual energy of her children, so that in her case decadence
pressed swift and close upon the very heels of supreme achievement.
Execrable as is the memory of the Inquisition to all the world, to none
should be it so execrable as to Spain, since the evil that it wrought
recoiled entirely upon herself.
* * * * *
It was on the occasion of Isabella’s first visit to Seville--that
punitive visit already mentioned--that the establishment of the Holy
Office in Spain was first proposed to her. The King was at the time
in Estremadura upon the business of fortifying his frontiers against
Portugal.
The proposal came from Alonso de Ojeda, the Prior of the Dominicans of
Seville, a man who enjoyed great credit and was reputed saintly (“vir
pius ac sanctus,” Paramo calls him).
Seeing her zeal to put down lawlessness and to purify and restore
order to the country, Ojeda urged upon her notice the spread of the
detestable Judaizing movement that was toward. He laid stress upon
the hypocrisy that had underlain so many of the conversions of the
Jews. He pointed out--with some degree of justice--that these men had
made a mock of the Holy Church, had defiled her sacraments, and had
perpetrated the most abominable sacrilege by their pretended acceptance
of the Christian faith. He urged that not only must this be punished,
but that the havoc which these Judaizers were working among the more
faithful New-Christians, and the proselytizing which they went so far
as to attempt among Old-Christians, must be checked.
To carry out this urgently-required purification, he implored the Queen
to establish the Inquisition.[49]
There was a speciousness, and even a justice, in his arguments which
must have impressed that pious lady. But her piety, intense as it
was, did not carry her to the lengths required of her by her priestly
counsellor. The balance of her splendid mind was singularly true.
She perceived that here was matter that called for a remedy; but she
perceived also the fanaticism inspiring the friar who stood before her,
and realized how his fanaticism must exaggerate the evil.
She was aware also of the extreme malevolence of which the
New-Christians were the object. By their conversion they might have
deflected the religious hostility of the Castilians; but the more
deeply-rooted racial antagonism remained. It not only remained, but it
was quickened by the envy which these New-Christians were exciting.
The energy and intelligence inherent in men of their race were serving
them now, as they had served them before, to their undoing. There were
no offices of eminence in which New-Christians were not to be found;
there were none in which they did not outnumber the Old-Christians--the
pure-blooded Castilians.
This the Queen knew, for she was herself surrounded by converts and
the descendants of converts. Several of her counsellors, her three
secretaries--one of whom was that chronicler, Pulgar, whose record
of the situation has been quoted--and her very treasurer were all
New-Christians.[50]
These men Isabella knew intimately, and esteemed. Judging the
New-Christians generally by those in her immediate service, she was
naturally led to discount Ojeda’s imputations against them. She
perceived the source of these imputations, and she must have taken
into consideration the ineradicable bitterness of the popular feeling
against Jews and the intensity of a prejudice which extended--as we
have said--to the New-Christians to such an extent that they continued
to be known as “Judios,” notwithstanding their conversion, so that
often in contemporary chronicles it is difficult to determine to which
class the writer is referring.
We have said that, in spite of conversions, the racial hostility
remained. The Christian attitude towards the Hebrew had not changed
in the hundred years that were sped since, under the incitings of the
Archdeacon of Ecija, the mob had risen up and massacred them. They were
the descendants of the crucifiers always.
A vestige of this feeling lingers to this day in the peninsula.
In the vocabulary of the Portuguese lower orders, and even of the
indifferently educated, there is no such word as “cruel.” “Jew” is the
term that has entirely usurped its functions, and as an injunction
against cruelty to man or beast, “Don’t be a Jew!” (_Não seja judeu!_)
is still the only phrase.
No conception of what was the popular feeling at the time can be
conveyed more adequately than by a translation of the passage from
Bernaldez concerning the manners and customs of the Jews. Bernaldez was
a priest, and therefore, to some extent, an educated man--as in the
main his history bears witness--yet a piece of writing so ludicrously
stupid and detestably malicious as this passage can only have emanated
from a mind in which bigotry had destroyed all sense of proportion.
The only historical value of the passage lies in the deplorable fact
that undoubtedly it may be accepted as a faithful mirror of the
prejudice that existed in Isabella’s day.
It runs:
“Just as heretics and Jews have always fled from Christian doctrines,
so they have always fled from Christian customs. They are great
drinkers and gluttons, who never lose the Jewish habit of eating
garbage of onions and garlic fried in oil, and of meat stewed in oil,
which they use instead of lard; and oil with meat is a thing that
smells very badly, so that their houses and doorways stink vilely of
that garbage; and they have the peculiar smell of Jews in consequence
of their food and of the fact that they are not baptized. And although
some have been baptized, yet the virtue of the baptism having been
annulled by their credulity [_i.e._ their adherence to their own faith]
and by their Judaizing, they stink like Jews. They will not eat pork
save under compulsion. They eat meat in Lent and on the eve of feast
days.... They keep the Passover and the Sabbath as best they can. They
send oil to the synagogues for the lamps. Jews come to preach to them
in their houses secretly--especially to the women, very secretly. They
have Rabbis to slaughter their beasts and poultry. They eat unleavened
bread in the Jewish season. They perform all their Jewish rites as
much in secret as possible, and women as well as men seek whenever
possible to avoid the sacraments of Holy Church.... They never confess
truthfully, and it happened that a priest, once confessing one of
these, cut a fragment of cloth from his garment, saying: ‘As you have
never sinned, let me have this as a relic to heal the sick.’... Not
without reason did Our Lord call them _generatio prava et adultera_.
They do not believe that God rewards virginity and chastity, and all
their endeavour is to multiply. And in the days of the strength of
this heresy many monasteries were violated by their merchants and
wealthy men, and many professed nuns were ravished and derided, they
not believing in or fearing excommunication, but rather doing this
to vituperate Jesus Christ and the Church. Commonly swindling people
by many wiles and cheats, as in buying and selling, they have no
conscience where Christians are concerned. Never would they undertake
agriculture, ploughing or tilling or raising cattle, nor have they
ever taught their children any office but that of sitting down to earn
enough to eat by as little labour as possible. Many of them have raised
up great estates in a few years, not being sparing of their thieving
and usury, maintaining that they earn it from their enemies....”[51]
[Illustration:
_Photo by Donald Macbeth._
SEVILLE.
From Colmenar’s “Délices d’Espagne.”]
This atrocious tissue of misrepresentation would be utterly negligible
and contemptible were it not for the fact--as has been said--that it
was written in good faith (the good faith of a bigot) and reflects
what was currently believed, fostered by the envy which is plainly
revealed when Bernaldez alludes to the occupations of the Jews and the
New-Christians--all of whom he assumes to be false to the faith they
have embraced.
Isabella must have been conscious of this feeling, and she must have
rated it at its proper value. She had received in 1474 a very pitiful
narrative poem of the New-Christian Anton Montoro, which painted with
terrible vividness a slaughter of the _conversos_ and implored justice
upon the assassins, protesting the innocence of the New-Christians
and the sincerity of their conversions. Her gentle nature must have
been moved to compassion by that lament, and her acute mind must have
perceived the evil passions and the envy that were stirring under the
fair cloak of saintly zeal.
All these considerations being weighed, she resisted the
representations of Ojeda.
But weightier than any may have been the reflection of the power which
the tribunal of the Inquisition must place in the hands of the clergy.
Already and very bravely she had expressed her resentment of clerical
usurpation of royal rights in Spain, and to repress it she had not
hesitated to front the Pope himself. If she acceded now to Ojeda’s
request, she would be permitting the priesthood to set up a court
which, not being subject to any temporal law, must alienate from her
some portion of that sovereignty which so jealously she guarded.
Thus she came to dismiss the petition of the Dominican, and there can
be little doubt when all the circumstances are considered--as presently
they shall be--that in this she had the entire support of the Cardinal
of Spain, Don Pedro Gonzalez de Mendoza, Archbishop of Seville, who was
with her at the time.
Ojeda withdrew, baffled, but by no means resigned. He awaited a more
favourable season, what time he kept the popular feeling in a state
of ferment. And no sooner had Ferdinand come to rejoin his Queen in
Seville than the Dominican renewed his importunities.
He hoped to find an ally in the King. Moreover he was now supported by
Fr. Filippo de’ Barberi, the Sicilian Inquisitor. The latter had newly
arrived in Spain, where he came to seek at the hands of the Catholic
Sovereigns--who were rulers of Sicily--the confirmation of an ancient
decree promulgated in 1223 by the Emperor Frederic II. By virtue of
this decree one-third of the confiscated property of heretics became
the perquisite of the Inquisition; and it also ordained that the
governors of all districts should afford protection to the inquisitors
and assistance in their work of prosecuting heretics and any Jew who
might have contracted marriage with a Christian.
These privileges the Sovereigns duly confirmed, accounting it their
duty to do so since they related to the Inquisition as established by
Honorius III. But not on that account did Isabella yet lean towards the
introduction of the tribunal into Castile.
It happened, however, that to the arguments of Ojeda and Barberi were
added the persuasions of the papal legate _a latere_ at the court of
Castile--Nicolao Franco, Bishop of Trevisa--who conceived, no doubt,
that the institution of the Inquisition here would be pleasing to Pope
Sixtus IV, since it must increase the authority of the Church in Spain.
To Ferdinand it is probable that the suggestion was not without
allurement, since it must have offered him a way at once to gratify
the piety that was his, and--out of the confiscations that must ensue
from the prosecution of so very wealthy a section of the community--to
replenish the almost exhausted coffers of the treasury. When the way
of conscience is also the way of profit, there is little difficulty
in following it. But, after all, though joint sovereign of Spain
and paramount in Aragon, Ferdinand had not in Castile the power of
Isabella. It was her kingdom when all was said, and although his
position there was by no means that of a simple prince-consort, yet he
was bound by law and by policy to remain submissive to her will. In
view of her attitude, he could do little more than add his own to the
persuasions of the three priestly advocates, and amongst them they so
pressed Isabella that she gave way to the extent of a compromise.
She consented that steps should be taken not only to check the
Judaizing of the New-Christians, but also to effect conversions among
the Jews themselves; and she entrusted the difficult task of enforcing
the observance of the Christian faith and the Catholic dogmas to the
Cardinal of Spain--than whom, from a Christian and humanitarian point
of view, no man of his day could have been more desirable, which
is as much as to say that from the point of view of his Catholic
contemporaries no man could have been less so.
Isabella’s announcement of her determination in the matter must have
come as something of a shock to Ojeda, who conceived himself on the way
to prevail with her. This concession to his wishes was far from being
the concession that he sought, since it passed over the heads of the
preaching friars, who had made such work--by their own methods--their
special mission.
The Queen, however, had decided, and there was no more to be said. The
Cardinal of Spain went about his task in that sincere Christian spirit
and with that zeal for truth and justice that is associated with his
name. He compiled for the purpose of his mission an _instrucción_,
which has not survived, but which Ortiz de Zuñiga[52] and Pulgar[53]
inform us was in the form of a catechism.
In this “he indicates,” says Pulgar, “the duties of the true Christian
from the day of his birth, in the sacrament of baptism as in all other
sacraments which it is his obligation to receive, as well as what he
should be taught, what believe and what perform as a faithful Christian
at all times and on all days until the day of his death.”
* * * * *
Mariana, Zurita, and other historians, upon the word of Paramo[54] and
of Salazar de Mendoza, have ventured to ascribe the establishment of
the Inquisition in Castile to the Cardinal of Spain. Their object in
so doing has been to heap honour and glory upon his name and memory;
for in their opinion he could have had no greater claim than this to
the gratitude and reverence of humanity. But the justice of a less
bigoted age demands that truth shall prevail in this respect, and that
his memory be deprived of that very questionable honour. The Cardinal’s
contemporaries do not justify what Paramo claims for him. And, to
reduce the argument to its lowest plane, it would have been extremely
unlikely that Cardinal Mendoza should advocate the establishment of
a court that must deprive him and the other Spanish bishops of the
jurisdiction in _causas de Fé_ hitherto vested in themselves.
* * * * *
The Primate pursued, then, the task imposed upon him, causing his
“catechism” to be expounded and taught by all parish priests in all
pulpits and schools.
But however zealous his methods, they were not the methods desired by
Ojeda and the papal legate. The Dominican, vexed by the turn of events,
and determined to return to the assault as soon as ever occasion
offered, cast about him for fresh arguments that should prevail with
the Sovereigns.
And then there befell an incident in Seville to supply his fanatical
needs and place in his hands the very weapon that he sought.
A young nobleman of the famous house of Guzman had engaged in an
amorous intrigue with the daughter of a New-Christian. In the pursuit
of this amour he repaired secretly to her father’s house on the night
of Thursday in Holy Week of that year 1478, and was admitted by the
girl. But the lovers being disturbed by voices in the house, Guzman
was driven to conceal himself. From his concealment he overheard the
conversation of several Judaizers who were being entertained by the
father of his mistress. He heard them vehemently denying the divinity
of Christ and as vehemently blaspheming His name and the Holy Faith.
Having quitted the house, he went straight to the Prior of the
Dominicans to relate what he had overheard and to denounce the
blasphemers.
This young Castilian is so very interesting a type that a slight
digression to consider him more closely may be permitted. It is of
assistance to understand the mental attitude, the crass complacency
of the bigot. He knew that the highest virtue that a Christian could
practise was the virtue of chastity, and, conversely, that the worst
offence against God into which he could fall was that of unchastity.
Or at least he had been taught these things, and he accepted them in a
sub-conscious, automatic sort of way. Yet since the sin was his own,
it gave his consciousness no uneasiness that he should perpetrate it,
that he should slink like a thief into the house of this New-Christian
to debauch his daughter. But let him hear this New-Christian or his
friends express opinions of disbelief in this God whom he believed
in and--by his own lights--insulted, and behold him outraged in all
his feelings against those unspeakable fellows. Behold him running
hot-foot to Prior Ojeda to relate with horror the tale of this vileness
that he had overheard, so little concerned about the vileness through
which he himself had acquired his knowledge that he makes no effort
to conceal it. And, apparently, the Dominican, in a like horror at
the New-Christians’ offence against a God in whom they do not believe,
accounts of little moment the Castilian’s offence against the God in
whom he does believe.
It is a nice illumination of the contrast between the theory and the
practice of Christianity.
Upon the young man’s information Ojeda instituted an inquiry, and
six Judaizers were arrested. They confessed their guilt, and begged
to be reconciled to the Church. As the Inquisition had not yet been
established, with its terrible decree against “relapsos,”[55] their
prayer was granted, after the fulfilment of the penance imposed.[56]
With the tale of this “execrable wickedness” Ojeda repaired at once to
Cordova, whither the Sovereigns had by now withdrawn. The story would
lose nothing in its repetition by this pious and saintly man, and he
was in a position to add to it that the good folk of Seville were
almost in revolt from indignation at that happening in their midst.
Having shown thus how urgently it was required, he once more implored
the Sovereigns to establish the Inquisition. And it is not to be
doubted that his petition would be backed by that of the legate Franco,
who was at the Court.
Yet Isabella still showed repugnance, still hesitated to consent to the
extreme course advocated.
But at this moment, according to Llorente,[57] another advocate
appears upon the scene to plead the cause of the Faith--a figure in
the white habit and black cloak of the Dominican Brotherhood, a man
in his fifty-eighth year, tall and gaunt and stooping slightly at the
shoulders, mild-eyed, of a cast of countenance that is gentle, noble,
and benign.
This is Frey Tomás de Torquemada, Prior of the Dominican Convent of
Holy Cross of Segovia, the nephew of the late illustrious Juan de
Torquemada, Cardinal of San Sisto.
His influence with the Queen is vast; his eloquence fiery; his mental
energy compelling. Ojeda looks on, and his hopes grow confident at
last.