THE HOLY OFFICE IN SEVILLE
The stern purpose of the inquisitors and the severity with which they
intended to proceed were plainly revealed by that edict of January 2,
1481. The harsh injustice that lay in its call upon the authorities
to arrest men and women merely because they had departed from Seville
before departure was in any way forbidden is typical of the flagrantly
arbitrary methods of the Inquisition. That it should have struck terror
into the New-Christians who had remained in Seville, and that it should
have moved them to take measures to protect themselves against a court
in which justice seemed little likely to be observed, and to whose
cruel mercies the most innocent might find himself exposed at any
moment, is not surprising--particularly when it is considered how great
was the number of New-Christians who occupied positions of eminence in
Seville.
A group of these prominent citizens assembled at the invitation of
Diego de Susan, one of the wealthiest and most influential men of
Seville, whose fortune was estimated at ten million maravedis. They
came together to consider what measures should be taken for the defence
of themselves, their persons and property, from the unscrupulous
activities of this tribunal, and they determined that if necessary they
would resort to force.
Among those who entered into this conspiracy were some ecclesiastics,
and several who held office under the Crown, such as the Governor of
Triana, Juan Fernandez Abolafio, the Captain of Justice and farmer of
the royal customs, his brother Fernandez the licentiate, Bartolomé
Torralba, and the wealthy and well-connected Manuel Sauli.
Susan addressed them. He reminded them that they were the principal
citizens of Seville, that they were wealthy not only in property but
in the good-will of the people, and that it but required resolution
and solidarity on their part to enable them to prevail against the
inquisitors in the event of these friars making any attempt upon them.
All concurring, it was concerted that each of the conspirators should
engage himself to provide a proportion of the men, arms, and money and
what else might be necessary for their purpose.
But Susan to his undoing had a daughter. This girl, whose beauty was
so extraordinary that she was surnamed _la hermosa fembra_, had taken
a Castilian lover. What motives may have actuated her, what part the
lover may have played in these, does not transpire. All that is known
is that she betrayed the conspiracy to the inquisitors--“impiously
violating the natural laws engraved by God’s finger upon the human
heart.”
Susan and his unfortunate confederates were seized as a consequence of
that infamous delation; they were lodged in the cells of the Convent of
St. Paul, which meanwhile did duty as a prison, and brought to trial
before the Court of the Holy Office sitting in the convent.[65]
They were tried for heresy and apostasy, of course; since upon no other
grounds was it possible for the Holy Office to deal with them. It is
unfortunate that Llorente should have unearthed no record of this
trial--one of the first held by the Inquisition in Castile--and that
nothing should be known of what took place beyond the fact that Susan,
Sauli, Bartolomé Torralba, and the brothers Fernandez were found guilty
of the alleged offence of apostasy and were delivered up to the secular
arm for punishment.
Garcia Rodrigo has devoted a couple of pages of his “Historia
Verdadera” to an elaborate piece of fiction in which he asserts that
these men were persistent in their error in spite of the strenuous
efforts made to save them. He invests the fanatical Ojeda with the
character of an angel of mercy, and represents him hovering round
the condemned, exhorting them, almost with tears, to abjure their
error, and he assures us that although the Dominican persevered in his
charitable efforts up to the last moment, all was vain.
There is not a grain of evidence to support the statement, nor does
Garcia Rodrigo pretend to advance any. As a matter of fact, Bernaldez,
the only available authority who mentions Susan’s end, tells us
specifically that he died a Christian. And when it is considered
that Bernaldez is an ardent admirer and champion of the Inquisition,
such a pronouncement from his pen is sufficient to convict the
inquisitors Morillo and San Martin of having proceeded in a manner
that was vindictive and _ultra vires_. For at this epoch it was not
yet decreed that those who had relapsed (_relapsos_) should suffer
capital punishment unless they persisted in their apostasy--as Rodrigo,
obviously for the purpose of justifying the inquisitors, unwarrantably
asserts did Susan and his confederates.
Llorente considers the blood-lust of the inquisitors established by
these merciless convictions, urging that it is incredible that all the
prisoners should have refused to recant and to submit themselves to
penance--even assuming that they were actually guilty of apostasy as
alleged. For when all is considered it must remain extremely doubtful
whether they had Judaized at all, and it is not improbable--from what
we see of the spirit that actuated the inquisitors--that Morillo
and San Martin may have construed the action of those men into an
offence against the Faith for the purpose of bringing them within the
jurisdiction of the Holy Office.
They were condemned to be the chief actors in the first Auto de Fé that
was held in Seville. This took place on February 6.[66]
There was about this Auto comparatively little of that pomp and
ceremonial, that ghastly theatricality that was presently to
distinguish these proceedings. But the essentials were already present.
Susan and his fellows were led forth barefoot, in the ignominious,
yellow penitential sack, a candle in the hand of each. Hemmed about by
halberdiers, they were paraded through the streets of a city in which
they had won the goodwill and respect of all, to be gazed upon by a
people whose eyes must have been filled with horror and dismay. To head
the procession went a black-robed Dominican holding aloft the green
cross of the Inquisition, now swathed in a veil of crape; behind him,
walking two by two, came the familiars of the Holy Office, members of
the Confraternity of St. Peter the Martyr; next followed the doomed men
amid their guards; and last came the inquisitors with their attendants
and a considerable body of Dominicans from the Convent of St. Paul,
headed by their prior, the fanatical Ojeda.
The procession headed for the Cathedral, where the sufferers were taken
to hear Mass and forced to listen to a sermon framed for the occasion
which was preached by Ojeda, and must have increased the exquisite
torment of their protracted agony. Thence they were conducted--once
more processionally--out of the city to the meadows of Tablada. There
they were attached to the stakes that had been erected, fire was set to
the faggots, and thus they perished miserably, to the greater honour
and glory of the Catholic Apostolic Church.[67]
Ojeda may have looked with satisfaction upon that holocaust, upon those
cruel flames which more than any man in Spain he had been instrumental
in kindling, and which being kindled would continue to cast their lurid
glow over that fair land for close upon four centuries. It was the
first burning that Ojeda witnessed, and it was the last. His own hour
was at hand. His mission, whatever ends it had to serve in the eternal
scheme of things, was completed there on the meadows of Tablada, and he
might now depart. A few days later he lay dead, stricken down by the
plague that was ravaging the south of Spain, and sought him out for one
of its first victims.
And from the pulpits of Seville the Dominicans thundered forth
declarations that this pestilence was a visitation of God upon an
unfaithful city. They never paused to consider that if that were indeed
the case either God’s aim must be singularly untrue since the shafts of
His wrath overtook such faithful servants as Ojeda, or else....
But an incapacity to conduct its reasonings to a logical conclusion,
and an utter want of any sense of proportion, are the main factors in
all fanaticism.
Lest they should themselves be stricken by these bolts of pestilence
launched against the unfaithful, behold next the inquisitors scuttling
out of Seville! They go in quest of more salubrious districts,
and, presumably upon the assumption that these--since they remain
healthy--are escaping divine attention, the Dominicans zealously
proceed to light their fires that they may repair this heavenly
oversight.[68]
But that _villegiatura_ of theirs did not take place until they had
transacted a deal more of their horrible business in Seville. Great
had been the results of the edict of January 2. The nobles, not daring
to run the risk of the threatened ecclesiastical censure, proceeded
to effect the arrests demanded, and gangs of pinioned captives were
brought daily into the city from the surrounding country districts
where they had sought shelter. And in the city itself the familiars of
the Holy Office were busily effecting the capture of suspects and of
those against whom, either out of bigotry or malice, delations had been
made.
So numerous were the arrests that by the middle of the month of January
already the capacity of the Convent of St. Paul was strained to its
utmost, and the inquisitors were compelled to remove themselves, their
tribunal and their prison to the ampler quarters of the Castle of
Triana, accorded to them by the Sovereigns in response to their request
for it.[69]
The edict of January 2 was soon succeeded by a second one, known as the
“Edict of Grace.” This exhorted all who were guilty of apostasy to come
forward voluntarily within a term appointed, to confess their sins and
be reconciled to the Church. It assured them that if they did this with
real contrition and a firm purpose of amendment, they should receive
absolution and suffer no confiscation of property. And it concluded
with a warning that if they allowed the term of grace to expire without
taking advantage of it, and they should afterwards be accused by
others, they would be prosecuted with the utmost rigour of the law.
Amador de los Rios is of opinion that Cardinal Mendoza was
“instrumental” in having this edict published, in which case it would
hardly be too much to assume that he was the instrument of Isabella
in the matter. Nor is it too much to assume that the inspiration
was purely merciful, and that there was no thought in the mind of
either Queen or Cardinal of the edict’s being turned, as it was, to
treacherous account.
The response was immediate. It is estimated that not less than 20,000
_conversos_ who had been guilty of Judaizing came forward to avail
themselves of its promise of amnesty and to secure absolution for
their infidelity to the religion they had embraced. They discovered
to their horror that they had walked into a trap as cruel as any that
smooth-faced, benign-voiced priestcraft had ever devised.
The inquisitors had thought well to saddle the promised absolution and
immunity from punishment with a condition which they had not published,
a condition which they had secretly reserved to spring it now upon
these self-convicted apostates at their mercy. They pointed out with
infernal subtlety that the edict provided that the contrition of the
self-accused must be sincere, and that of this sincerity the penitents
must give the only proof possible by disclosing the names of all
Judaizers known to them.
The demand was an infamy; for not even under the seal of private
confession is a priest authorized to impose upon a penitent as a
condition of absolution that he shall divulge the name even of an
accomplice or a partner in guilt. Yet here it was demanded of these
that they should go much further, and denounce such sinners as they
knew; and the demand was framed in such specious terms--as the only
proof they could offer of the sincerity of their own contrition--that
none dared have taxed the inquisitors with malpractice or with
subverting the ends and purpose of this edict they had been forced to
publish.
The wretched apostates found themselves between the sword and the
wall. Either they must perpetrate the infamy of betraying those of
their race whom they knew to be Judaizers, or they must submit not only
to the cruel death by fire, but to the destitution of their children
as a consequence of the confiscation of their property. Most of them
gave way, and purchased their reconciliation at the price of betrayal.
And there were men like Bernaldez, the parish priest of Palacios, who
applauded this procedure of the Holy Office. “A very glorious thing”
(_muy hazañosa cosa_), he exclaims, “was the reconciliation of these
people, as thus by their confessions were discovered all that were
Judaizers, and in Seville knowledge was obtained of Judaizers in
Toledo, Cordova, and Burgos.”[70]
* * * * *
Upon the expiry of the term of grace a further edict was published by
Morillo and San Martin, in which they now commanded, under pain of
mortal sin and greater excommunication, with its attendant penalties,
the discovery of all persons known to be engaged in Judaizing practices.
And that there should be no excuse offered by any on the score of
ignorance of such practices, these were published in thirty-seven
articles appended to the edict, articles whose malign comprehensiveness
left no man secure.
They set forth the following signs by which New-Christians guilty of
Judaizing might be recognized:
I. Any who await the Messiah, or say that he has not yet come,
and that he will come to lead them out of captivity into the
promised land.
II. Any who after baptism have returned expressly to the Mosaic
faith.
III. Any who declare that the law of Moses is as good as that
of Jesus Christ and as efficient for salvation.
IV. Any who keep the Sabbath in honour of the law of Moses--of
which the proof is afforded by their assuming clean shirts and
more decent garments than on other days, and clean covers on
the table, as well as by their refraining from lighting fires
and from engaging in all work from Friday evening.
V. Any who strip the tallow or fat from meats that they are
to eat and purify it by washing in water, bleeding it, or
extracting the glandule from the leg of lambs or other animals
slaughtered for food.
VI. Any who cut the throats of animals or poultry that
are intended for food, first testing the knife on their
finger-nail, covering the blood with earth, and uttering
certain words that are customary among Jews.
VII. Any who eat meat in Lent and on other days on which it is
forbidden by Holy Church.
VIII. Any who keep the great fast of the Jews known by
different names, or the fast of _Chiphurim_ or _Quipur_ in the
tenth Hebrew month--whereof the proof shall be their having
gone barefoot during the period of the said fast, as is the
custom of the Jews, their having said Jewish prayers, or asked
pardon one of another, or fathers having laid hands upon the
heads of their children without making the sign of the Cross or
saying anything but “By God and by me be thou blessed.”
IX and X. Any who keep the fast of Queen Esther, which is
observed by the Jews in memory and imitation of what they
did in captivity in the reign of Ahasuerus, or the fast of
_Rebeaso_.
XI. Any who shall keep other fasts peculiar to the Jews, such
as those of Monday and Thursday, of which the proof shall be:
their not eating on such days until after the appearance of the
first evening star; their having abstained from meat; their
having washed on the previous day or cut their nails or the
points of their hair, keeping or burning these; their reciting
certain Jewish prayers, raising or lowering their heads with
their faces to the wall, after washing their hands in water or
in earth; their dressing themselves in sackcloth and girding
themselves with cords or strips of leather.
XII, XIII, and XIV concern any who keep the Paschal seasons;
which is to be discovered by their setting up green boughs,
inviting to table and sending presents of comestibles, and the
keeping of the feast of candles.
XV to XIX concern any who observe Hebrew table-customs: whether
they bless their viands according to the Jewish custom, whether
they drink “lawful” wine--_i.e._ wine that has been pressed by
Jews--and eat meat that has been slaughtered by Jews.
XX. Any who recite the Psalms of David without concluding with
the versicle “Gloria Patri et Filio et Spiritu Sancto.”
XXI. Any woman who abstains from going to church for forty days
after delivery of child, out of reverence for the law of Moses.
XXII to XXVI concern any who circumcise their children, give
them Hebrew names, or after baptism cause their heads to be
shaven where anointed with the sacred oil, or any who cause
their children to be washed on the seventh day after birth in a
basin in which, in addition to the water, they have placed gold
and silver, pearls, wheat, barley, and other things.
XXVII. Any who are married in the Jewish manner.
XXVIII. Any who hold the _Ruaya_--which is a valedictory supper
before setting out upon a long journey.
XXIX and XXX. Any who carry Hebrew relics or make
burnt-offerings of bread.
XXXI. Any who _in articulo mortis_ have turned or been turned
with their faces to the wall to die in this attitude.
XXXII. Any who wash a corpse in warm water or shave it
according to the Jewish custom, and otherwise dress it for the
grave as is prescribed by the Mosaic law.
XXXIII to XXXVI concern Jewish expressions of mourning, such as
the abstaining from meat, the spilling of water from the jars
in the dwelling of the deceased, etc.
XXXVII. Any who bury their dead in virgin soil or in a Jewish
cemetery.[71]
Reference has already been made to the inherent character of many
Jewish customs, which even the most sincere of New-Christians retained
despite themselves; these customs, being racial rather than religious,
were very far from signifying Judaic apostasy, since they contained
nothing that was directly opposed to the Christian teaching. In the
list published by the Seville inquisitors it will be seen that such
customs were deliberately included as evidences of apostasy.
Consider Articles IV, V, and VII, concerning the assumption of clean
linen on Saturdays and the stripping of fat from beef and mutton,
which nowise offend against the Christian faith, and might well be the
perpetuation of customs acquired before baptism was received.
Even more flagrant is Article XXXI, which lays it down as evidence
of Judaizing that a man shall turn his face to the wall when at the
point of death; but most flagrant of all is Article XXVIII, concerning
the valedictory meal partaken of before setting out upon a journey,
for it is a custom that at all times has been as much in vogue among
Christians as among men of any other religion.
Clearly not a New-Christian in Seville was safe from the delations of
the malevolent, since such ridiculously slight grounds of suspicion
were set forth by the tribunal. So extravagant and absurd are some
of these articles that one is forced to agree with Llorente, that in
formulating them the inquisitors proceeded with deliberate malice. He
contends that deliberately they cast a wide net that by their heavy
draught they should satisfy the Queen that she had heard no more than
the truth as to the extent to which Judaizing was rampant in Castile,
and the urgent need there was for the introduction of the Inquisition.
Whether in this they proceeded according to instructions received from
Torquemada or Ojeda does not transpire, but there can be little doubt
that the results obtained must have been in accordance with the wishes
of both, since they justified to the Queen the representations these
friars had so insistently made to her.
And the system of espionage which the inquisitors set up to increase
their haul of victims was as sly and cunning as anything in the history
of spying. Conceive the astuteness of the friar who climbed to the roof
of the Convent of St. Paul on Saturday mornings to observe and note the
houses of New-Christians from whose chimneys no smoke was to be seen
issuing, that he might lay the information thus obtained before the
tribunal, which would proceed to arrest the inhabitants upon a strong
suspicion that they were Judaizers who would not desecrate the Sabbath
by lighting fires.[72]
“What,” asks Llorente, “could be expected of a tribunal that began
in this way?” And he at once supplies the answer: “That which
happened--neither more nor less.”
With the methods of procedure that obtained in the trials conducted
by these inquisitors we need not just now concern ourselves. For
the moment it is enough to say that to the vices inherent in such a
judicial system must be added, in the case of the first inquisitors
of Seville, a zeal--not only to convict, but actually to be burning
heretics--so ferociously excessive as to proclaim that they were
gratifying their hatred of these Jews.
This upon the word of that sober chronicler Pulgar, who, whilst in
general terms approving the introduction of the Inquisition, as has
been seen, denounces in the following particular terms the practices of
Morillo and San Martin: “In the manner in which they conducted their
proceedings they showed that they held those people in hatred.”[73]
The Auto of February 6 was followed by another on March 26, at which
seventeen victims were burnt on the fields of Tablada. And now that
the fires were lighted, the inquisitors saw to it that they were well
supplied with human fuel. Burnings followed one another at such a rate
that by the month of November--upon the word of Llorente--298 condemned
had been sent to the flames in the town of Seville alone, whilst 79
others by reconciling themselves to the Church secured the commutation
of their sentence to one of perpetual imprisonment.
Mariana, the historian who gave thanks to God for the introduction of
the Inquisition into Castile, informs us with flagrant calm that the
number of Judaizers burnt in the Archbishopric during that year 1481
amounted to 8,000, whilst some 17,000 were submitted to penance.
In addition to those burnt alive, many who had fled the country were
burnt in effigy, having been tried and found guilty during an absence
described as contumacious. And similarly the court went through the
horrible farce of sitting in judgment upon many who were dead, and,
having convicted them, it dug up their bones and flung these to the
flames.
Such was the prodigious activity of the Holy Office, and to such an
extent did its holocausts promise to continue, that the Governor of
Seville ordered the erection on the fields of Tablada of a permanent
platform of stone of vast proportions known as the Quemadero, or
Burning-place. It was adorned by figures of the four Prophets. At each
of its four corners towered one of these colossal statues of plaster,
and Llorente tells us that they were not merely for ornament. He says
that they were hollow and so contrived that a condemned person might be
placed in each and so die by slow fire.[74]
This Quemadero remained standing, a monument to religious intolerance
and fanatical cruelty, until the soldiers of Napoleon demolished it in
the nineteenth century.[75]
So ruthless were Morillo and San Martin, and so negligent of equity or
even the observance of the ordinary rules of judicial procedure, that
in the end we find the Pope himself--in January of 1482--addressing a
letter of protest to the Sovereigns.
The first edict commanding the nobles to arrest all those who had fled
from Seville had had the effect of driving many of these fugitive
New-Christians farther afield in their quest for safety. Some had
escaped into Portugal, others had crossed the Mediterranean and sought
shelter in Morocco, whilst others still had taken their courage in
both hands and sought sanctuary in Rome itself, at the very feet of
the Pontiff. Other fugitives followed presently, when the tribunal had
already inaugurated its terrible work; and these came clamouring their
grievances and protesting that in spite of their innocence they dared
no longer remain in a State where no New-Christian was safe from the
hatred and injustice shown by the inquisitors to men of their race.
Therefore they were driven to seek from Christ’s Vicar the protection
to which all Christians and true Catholics were entitled at his hands.
[Illustration:
_Photo by Lacoste._
FERDINAND OF ARAGON AND THE INFANTE DON JUAN.
From the Painting in the Prado Gallery attributed to Miguel Zittoz.]
They informed the Pontiff of the methods that were being pursued;
they set forth how the inquisitors in their eagerness to secure
convictions proceeded entirely upon their own initiative and without
the concurrence of the assessor and diocesan ordinary, as had been
prescribed; how they were departing from all legal form, imprisoning
unjustly, torturing cruelly and unduly, and falsely stigmatizing
innocent men as formal heretics, thereafter delivering them to the
secular arm for punishment, in addition to confiscating their property
so that their children were left in want and under the brand of infamy.
The Pope gave ear to these plaints, convinced himself of their truth,
and made his protest to Ferdinand and Isabella. He announced in his
brief that he would have deprived the inquisitors of their office
but that he was restrained by consideration for the Sovereigns who
had appointed them; nevertheless, he was sending them a brief of
admonition, and should they again give cause for complaint he would
be constrained to depose them. In the meantime he revoked the faculty
given the Sovereigns of appointing inquisitors, protesting that when
conceding this he had not sufficiently considered that already there
were inquisitors in the Sovereigns’ dominions and that the General of
the Dominicans and the Spanish provincials of that order had the right
to make such appointments. The bull that he had granted was therefore
in opposition to that right, and would never have been granted had the
matter been sufficiently considered.[76]