TORQUEMADA AND THE JEWS
During that first year of the Inquisition’s establishment in Toledo,
twenty-seven persons there convicted of Judaizing were burnt and 3,300
were penanced. And what was taking place in Toledo was taking place in
every other important city in Spain.
Numerous now and vehement were the protests against the terrible and
excessive rigour of Torquemada. Already, upon the death of Pope Sixtus
IV, a vigorous attempt had been made by some Spaniards of eminence to
procure the deposition of the Prior of Holy Cross from the office of
Grand Inquisitor. It was argued that as his appointment had been made
by Sixtus, so it was automatically determined by that Pope’s decease.
But whatever hopes may have been founded upon such an argument were
very quickly overthrown. Innocent VIII, as we have already seen, not
only confirmed Torquemada in his office, but considerably increased his
powers and the scope of his jurisdiction.
Indeed, not only was he given jurisdiction over all the Spains, but
Innocent’s bull of April 3, 1487, _motu proprio_, commanded all
Catholic princes that, upon being requested by the Grand Inquisitor so
to do, they should arrest any fugitives he might indicate and send them
captive to the Inquisition under pain of excommunication.[145]
Notwithstanding the threat by which it was backed, this command
from the Vatican appears to have been generally disregarded by the
Governments of Europe.[146]
That such a bull should have been solicited gives us yet another
glimpse of the terrible rancour against the Jews which fanaticism
had kindled in the soul of Torquemada. Had his aim been merely, as
expressed, to weed the tares of heresy from the Catholic soil of Spain,
the self-imposed exile of those wretched fugitives would fully have
satisfied him, and he would not have thought it necessary to hound them
out of such shelter as they had found abroad that he might have the
satisfaction of hurling them into the bonfire he had kindled.
His position being so greatly strengthened by the wider and ampler
powers accorded to him by the new Pontiff, Torquemada gave a still
freer rein to the terrible severity of his nature, and thus occasioned
those frequent and very urgent appeals to the Vatican.
Many New-Christians who secretly practised Jewish rites, being repelled
from taking advantage of the edict of grace by the necessity it imposed
of undergoing the horrible _verguenza_ already described, applied now
to the Pontiff for secret absolution. This required special briefs.
Special briefs brought money into the papal coffers, and procured
converts to the Faith. Two better reasons for granting these requests
it would have been impossible to have urged, and so the Curia acceded.
But the result of this curial interference with the autonomous
jurisdiction of the Holy Office in Spain was to provoke the resentment
of Torquemada. Wrangles ensued between the Grand Inquisitor and the
Pontifical Court--wrangles which may be likened to those of two lawyers
over a wealthy client.
Torquemada arrogantly demanded that this Roman protection of heretics
should not only cease in future but be withdrawn where already it
had been granted in the past, and his demand had the full support of
Catholic Ferdinand, who did not at all relish the spectacle of the gold
of his subjects being poured into any treasury other than his own.
Rome, having meanwhile pocketed the fees, was disposed to be amenable
to the representations of the Catholic Sovereigns and their Grand
Inquisitor; and the Pope proceeded flagrantly to cancel the briefs of
dispensation that had been granted.
There was an outcry from the swindled victims. They protested
appealingly to the Pope that they had confessed their sins against the
Faith, and that absolution had been granted them. Very rightly they
urged that this absolution could not now be rescinded--for not even the
Pope had power to do so much--and they argued that, being in a state of
grace, they could not now be prosecuted for heresy.
But they overlooked the retrospective power which--however
unjustifiable by canon or any other law--the Inquisition had arrogated
to itself. By virtue of this, as we have seen, the inquisitors could
take proceedings even against one who had died in a state of grace,
at peace with Holy Mother Church, if it were shown that an offence of
heresy committed at some stage of his life had not been expiated in a
manner that the Holy Office accounted condign.
These protests of the unfortunate Judaizers, who by their own action
had achieved--as they now realized--no more than self-betrayal,
were met by the priestly answer that their sins had been absolved
in the tribunal of conscience only, and that it still remained
for them to seek temporal absolution in the tribunal of the Holy
Office. This temporal absolution would accord them, as we know--and
as they knew--the right to live in perpetual imprisonment after the
confiscation of their property and the destitution and infamy of their
children.
The answer, crafty and sophistical as it was, did not suffice to
silence the protests. Clamorously these continued, and the Pope, unable
to turn a deaf ear upon them, fearful lest a scandal should ensue,
effected a sort of compromise. With the royal concurrence, Innocent
VIII issued several bulls, each commanding the Catholic Sovereigns to
admit fifty persons to secret absolution with immunity from punishment.
These secret absolutions were purchased at a high price, and they
were granted upon the condition that in the event of the re-Judaizing
of a person so absolved, he would be treated as relapsed, the secret
absolution being then published.
These absolutions were particularly useful in the case of persons
deceased, several of whom, at the petition of the heirs, were included
among the secretly reconciled--the inheritance being thereby secured
from confiscation.
Altogether Pope Innocent granted four of these bulls in 1486.[147] In
the last one issued he left it at the discretion of the Sovereigns to
indicate those who should be admitted to this grace, and they were
permitted to include the names even of persons against whom proceedings
had already been initiated.
With what degree of equanimity Torquemada viewed these bulls of
absolution we do not know. But very soon we shall see him vexed by
papal interference of a fresh character.
Simoniacal practices were never more rampant in Rome than under the
rule of Innocent VIII. His greed was notorious and scandalous, and a
number of alert baptized Jews bethought them that this might be turned
to account. They slyly submitted to the Holy Father that although they
were good Catholics, such was the harshness of the Grand Inquisitor
towards men of their blood that they lived in constant dread and
anxiety lest the mere circumstance of their having originally been Jews
should be accounted a sufficient reason to bring them under suspicion
or should lay them open to the machinations of malevolent enemies.
Hence they implored his Holiness to grant them the privilege of
exclusion from inquisitorial jurisdiction.
At a price this immunity was to be obtained; and soon others, seeing
the success that had attended the efforts of the originators of this
crafty idea, were following their example and setting a drag upon the
swift wheels of Torquemada’s justice.
That it stirred him to righteous anger is not to be doubted, however
subservient and injured the tone in which he addressed his protest to
the Pontiff.
Innocent replied by a brief of November 27, 1487, that whenever the
Grand Inquisitor found occasion to proceed against one so privileged,
he should inform the Apostolic Court of all that might exist against
the accused, so that his Holiness should determine whether the
privilege was to be respected.[148]
It follows inevitably that if there was heresy, or the suspicion of it,
the Pope must allow the justice of the Holy Office to run its course.
So that the Jews who had purchased immunity must have realized that
they were dealing with one who understood the science of economics (and
the guile to be practised in it) even better than did they, famous as
they have always been for clear-sightedness in such matters.
* * * * *
Meanwhile, with the power that was vested in him, Torquemada was
amassing great wealth from the proportion of the confiscations that
fell to his share. But whatever his faults may have been, he was
perfectly consistent in them, just as he was perfectly, terribly
sincere.
Into the sin of pride he may have fallen. We see signs of it. And,
indeed, it is difficult to conceive of a man climbing from the
obscurity of the monastic cell to the fierce glare of his despotic
eminence and remaining humble at heart. Humble he did remain; but with
that aggressive humility which is one of pride’s worst forms and akin
to self-righteousness--the sin most dreaded by those who strive after
sanctity.
We know that he unswervingly followed the stern path of asceticism
prescribed by the founder of his order. He never ate meat; his bed
was a plank; his flesh never knew the contact of linen; his garments
were the white woollen habit and the black mantle of the Dominican.
Dignities he might have had, but he disdained them. Paramo says[149]
that Isabella sought to force them upon him, and that, in particular,
she would have procured his appointment to the Archbishopric of Seville
when this was vacated by the Cardinal of Spain. But he was content to
remain the Prior of Holy Cross of Segovia, as he had been when he was
haled from his convent to direct the affairs of the Holy Office in
Spain. The only outward pomp he permitted himself was that whenever
now he went abroad he was attended by an escort of fifty mounted
familiars and two hundred men on foot. This escort Llorente admits[150]
was imposed by the Sovereigns. It is possible, as is suggested, that
it was to defend him from his enemies, since the death of Arbués had
shown to what lengths the New-Christians were prepared to go. But it
is more probable that this escort was accepted as an outward sign of
the dignity of his office, and perhaps also to serve the terrorizing
purpose which Torquemada considered so very salutary.
That he practised the contempt for worldly riches which he preached
is beyond all doubt. We cannot discover that any of the wealth that
accrued to him was put to any worldly uses or went in any way to
benefit any member of his family. Indeed, we have already seen him
refusing suitably to dower his sister, allowing her no more than the
pittance necessary to enable her to enter a convent of the Tertiary
Order of St. Dominic.[151]
He employed the riches which his office brought him entirely to the
greater honour and glory of the religion which he served with such
terrible zeal. He spent it lavishly upon such works as the rebuilding
of the Dominican Convent of Segovia, together with the contiguous
church and offices. He built the principal church of his family’s
native town of Torquemada and half of the great bridge over the River
Pisuerga.[152]
Fidel Fita quotes an interesting letter of Torquemada’s, dated August
17, 1490, in which he thanks the gentry of Torquemada for having sent
him a sumpter-mule, but rather seems to rebuke the gift.
“To me,” he writes, “it was not, nor is necessary to send such things;
and it is certain that I should have sent back the gift but that it
might have offended you; for I, praised be our Lord, possess nine
sumpter-mules, which suffice me.”[153]
In sending the gift they had asked him for assistance towards the work
being carried out in the church of Santa Ollala, the contribution he
had already made not having proved sufficient. He replies regretting
that he can do nothing at the moment, as he is not with the Court, but
promises that upon his return thither he will do the necessary with
the Sovereigns so as to be able to send them the further funds they
require.[154]
As early as 1482 he began to build at Avila the church and monastery of
St. Thomas. This pleasant little country town, packed within its narrow
red walls and flanked with towers so that it presents the appearance
of a formidable castle, stands upon rising ground in the fertile plain
that is watered by the River Adaja. Torquemada built his magnificent
monastery beyond the walls, upon the site of a humbler edifice that
had been erected by the pious D. Maria de Avila. It was completed
by the year 1493, and what moneys came to him thereafter appear to
have gone to the endowment of this vast convent--a place of handsome,
spacious, cloistered courts and splendid galleries--which became at
once his chief residence, tribunal, and prison.[155]
Again his fanatical hatred of the Israelites displays itself in the
condition he laid down--and whose endorsement he obtained from Pope
Alexander VI--that no descendant of Jew or Moor should ever be admitted
to these walls, upon which he engraved the legend:
PESTEM FUGAT HÆRETICAM.[156]
In this monastery the amplest provisions were made, not only for the
tribunal of the Inquisition, but also for the incarceration of its
prisoners.
Garcia Rodrigo, anxious to refute the widespread belief that the
prisons of the Inquisition were unhealthy subterranean dungeons,
draws attention to the airy, sunny chambers here set apart for
prisoners.[157] It is true enough in this instance, as transpires from
certain records that are presently to be considered.[158] But it is not
true in general, and it almost seems a little disingenuous of Garcia
Rodrigo to put forward a striking exception as an instance of the rule
that obtained.
Whatever the simplicity of Torquemada’s life, and whatever his personal
humility, it would be idle to pretend that he was not imbued with the
pride and arrogance of his office, swollen by the increase of power
accorded him, until in matters of the Faith he did not hesitate to
dictate to the Sovereigns themselves, and to reproach them almost to
the point of menace when they were slow to act as he dictated, whilst
it was dangerous for any under Sovereign rank to come into conflict
with the Grand Inquisitor.
As an instance of this, the case of the Captain-General of Valencia
may be cited. The Inquisition of Valencia had arrested, upon a charge
of hindering the Holy Office, one Domingo de Santa Cruz, whose
particular offence, in the Captain-General’s view, came rather within
the jurisdiction of the military courts. Acting upon this opinion, he
ordered his troops to take the accused from the prison of the Holy
Office, employing force to that end if necessary.
The inquisitors of Valencia complained of this action to the Suprema,
whereupon Torquemada imperiously ordered the Captain-General to appear
before that council and render an account of what he had done. He was
supported in this by the King, who wrote commanding the offender and
all who had aided him in procuring the release of Santa Cruz to submit
themselves to arrest by the officers of the Inquisition.
Not daring to resist, that high dignitary was compelled humbly to sue
for absolution of the ecclesiastical censure incurred, and he must have
counted himself fortunate that Torquemada did not subject him to a
public humiliation akin to that undergone by the Infante of Navarre.
The brilliant and illustrious young Italian, Giovanni Pico, Count
of Mirandola, had a near escape of falling into the hands of the
dread inquisitor. When Pico fled from Italy before the blaze of
ecclesiastical wrath which his writings had kindled, Pope Innocent
issued a bull, December 16, 1487, to Ferdinand and Isabella, setting
forth that he believed the Count of Mirandola had gone to Spain with
the intention of teaching in the universities of that country the evil
doctrines which he had already published in Rome, notwithstanding that,
having been convinced of their error, he had abjured them. (Another
case of the “_e pur si muove_” of Galileo.) And since Pico was noble,
gentle, and handsome, amiable and eloquent of speech (_Pseudopropheta
est; dulcia loquitur et ad modicum placet_), there was great danger
that an ear might be lent to his teachings. Wherefore his Holiness
begged the Sovereigns that in the event of his suspicions concerning
Pico’s intentions being verified, their highnesses should arrest the
Count, to the end that the fear of corporal pains might deter him where
the fear of spiritual ones had proved insufficient.
The Sovereigns delivered this bull to Torquemada that he might act
upon it. But Pico, getting wind of the reception that awaited him, and
having sufficient knowledge of the Grand Inquisitor’s uncompromising
methods to be alarmed at the prospect, took refuge in France, where he
wrote the apologia of his Catholicism, which he dedicated to Lorenzo
de’ Medici.[159]
* * * * *
We have said, on the subject of the Inquisition’s introduction into
Spain, that to an extent and after a manner this must be considered
the most justifiable--by which we are to be taken to mean the least
unjustifiable--of religious persecutions, inasmuch as it had no
concern save with deserters from the fold of the Roman Church.
Liberty was accorded to all religions that were not looked upon as
heretical--_i.e._ that were not in themselves secessions from Roman
Catholicism--and Jew and Moslem had nothing to fear from the Holy
Office. It was only when, after having received baptism, they reverted
to their original cults, that they rendered themselves liable to
prosecution, being then looked upon as heretics, or, more properly
speaking, as apostates.
But this point of view, which satisfied the Roman See, did not at
all satisfy the Prior of Holy Cross. His bitter, fanatical hatred of
the Israelites--almost rivalling that of the Dean of Ecija in the
fourteenth century--urged him to violate this poor remnant of equity,
drove him to overstep the last boundary of apparent justice, and carry
the religious war into the region of complete and terrible intolerance.
The reason he advanced was that as long as the Jews remained
undisturbed in the Peninsula, so long would a united Christian Spain
be impossible. Despite penances, imprisonments, and burnings, the
Judaizing movement went on. New-Christians were seduced back into
the error of the Mosaic Law, whilst conversion amongst the Jews was
checked by respect for the feelings of those who remained true to their
ancient faith. Nor did the Hebrew offences against Christianity end
there. There were the indignities to which holy things were subjected
at their hands. There were criminal sacrileges in which--according to
Torquemada--they vented their hatred of the Holy Christian Faith.
Such, for instance, was the outrage upon the crucifix at Casar de
Palomero in 1488.
On Holy Thursday of that year, in this village of the diocese of Coria,
several Jews, instead of being at home with closed doors at such a
season, as the Christian law demanded, were making merry in an orchard,
to the great scandal of a man named Juan Caletrido, who there detected
them.
The spy, moved to horror at the mere thought of these descendants of
the crucifiers daring to be at play upon such a day as that, went
to inform several others of what he had witnessed. A party of young
Spaniards, but too ready to combine the performance of a meritorious
act with the time-honoured sport of Jew-baiting, invaded the privacy
of the orchard, set upon the Jews, and compelled them to withdraw into
their houses.
Smarting under this indignity--for, when all is said, they had been
more or less private in their orchard, and they had intended no offence
by their slight evasion of the strict letter of the law--they related
the event to other members of the synagogue, including the Rabbi.
From what ensued it seems plain that they must there and then have
determined to avenge the honour of their race, which they conceived had
been affronted.
Llorente, basing himself upon the chronicler Velasquez and the
scurrilous anti-Jewish writings of Torrejoncillo, supposes that their
aim was to repeat as nearly as possible the Passion of the Nazarene
upon one of His Images. That, indeed, may have been the prejudiced view
of the Grand Inquisitor.
But it is far more likely that, to spite these Christians who had added
this insult to the constant humiliations they were putting upon the
Israelites, the latter should simply have resolved to smash one of the
public symbols of Christianity. The details of what took place do not
justify the supposition that their intentions went any deeper.
On the morrow, which was Good Friday, the circumstance of the day
contributing perhaps to the more popular version of the story, whilst
the Christians were in church for the service of the Passion, a party
of Jews repaired to an open space known as Puerto del Gamo, where stood
a large wooden crucifix. This image they shattered and overthrew.
It is alleged that before finally breaking it they had indulged in
elaborate insult, “doing and saying all that their rage dictated
against the Nazarene.”
An Old-Christian, named Hernan Bravo, having watched them, ran to bear
the tale of their sacrilegious deed. The Christians poured tumultuously
out of church, and fell upon the Jews. Three of the latter were stoned
to death on the spot; two others, one of whom was a lad of thirteen,
suffered each the loss of his right hand; whilst the Rabbi Juan, being
taken as an inciter, was put to the question with a view to inducing
him to confess. But he denied so stoutly the things he was required to
admit, and the inquisitors tortured so determinedly, that he died upon
the rack--an irregularity this for which each inquisitor responsible
would have to seek absolution at the hands of the other.
All those who took part in the sacrilege suffered confiscation of
their property, whilst the pieces of the crucifix, which had become
peculiarly sanctified by the affair, were gathered up and conveyed to
the Church of Casar, where, upon being repaired, the image was given
the place of honour.[160]
It is extremely likely that the story of this outrage, exaggerated as
we have seen, would be one of the arguments employed by Torquemada
when first he began to urge upon the attention of the Sovereigns the
desirability of the expulsion of the Jews. He would cite it as a
flagrant instance of the Jewish hatred of Christianity, which gave
rise to his complaint and which he contended rendered a united Spain
impossible as long as this accursed race continued to defile the land.
Further, there can be very little doubt that it would serve to revive
and to lend colour to the old stories of ritual murder practised by the
Jews and provided for by one of the enactments in the “Partidas” code
of Alfonso XI.
The reluctance of the Sovereigns to lend an ear to any such arguments
is abundantly apparent. Not Ferdinand in all his bigotry could be blind
to the fact that the chief trades of the country were in the hands of
the Israelites, and to the inevitable loss to Spanish commerce, then
so flourishing, which must ensue on their banishment. Of their ability
in matters of finance he had practical and beneficial experience, and
the admirable equipment of his army in the present campaign against the
Moors of Granada was entirely due to the arrangements he had made with
Jewish contractors. Moreover, there was this war itself to engage the
attention of the Sovereigns, and so it was not possible to lend at the
moment more than an indifferent attention to the fierce pleadings of
the Grand Inquisitor.
Suddenly, however, in 1490 an event came to light, to throw into
extraordinary prominence the practice of ritual murder of which the
Jews were suspected, and to confirm and intensify the general belief
in the stories that were current upon that subject. This was the
crucifixion at La Guardia, in the province of La Mancha, of a boy of
four years of age, known to history as “the Holy Child of La Guardia.”
A stronger argument than this afforded him for the furtherance of
his aims Torquemada could not have desired. And it is probably this
circumstance that has led so many writers to advance the opinion that
he fabricated the whole story and engineered the substantiation of a
charge that so very opportunely placed an added weapon in his hands.
Until some thirty years ago all our knowledge of the affair was derived
from the rather vague “Testimonio” preserved in the sanctuary of the
martyred child, and a little history of the “Santo Niño,” by Martinez
Moreno, published in Madrid in 1786. This last--like Lope da Vega’s
drama upon the same subject--was based upon a “Memoria” prepared by
Damiano de Vegas of La Guardia in 1544, at a time when people were
still living who remembered the incident, including the brother of a
sacristan who was implicated in the affair.[161]
Martinez Moreno’s narrative is a queer jumble of possible fact and
obvious fiction, which in itself may be responsible for the opinion
that the whole story was an invention of Torquemada’s to forward his
own designs.
But in 1887 the distinguished and painstaking M. Fidel Fita published
in the “Boletin de la Real Academia de la Historia” the full record,
which he had unearthed, of the proceedings against Yucé (or José)
Franco, one of the incriminated Jews.
A good deal still remains unexplained, and must so remain until the
records of the trials of the other accused are brought to light. It
may perhaps be well to suspend a final judgment until then. Meanwhile,
however, a survey of the discovered record should incline us to the
opinion that, if the story is an invention, it is one for which those
who were accused of the crime are responsible--an unlikely contingency,
as we shall hope to show--and in no case can the inventor have been
Frey Tomás de Torquemada.