While the Arabs still retained their hold on the fairest provinces of Spain, the lot of the Jews, even in Christian territories, was by no means unendurable. They were sometimes advanced to important and confidential posts, and it was the murder of Alfonso VI.'s Jewish ambassador by the King of Seville which brought about the introduction of the Almoravides into Spain.

There is a strange story told of the Jews at the taking of Toledo by the Christians in 1085. They waited on Alfonso and assured him that they were part of the ten tribes whom Nebuchadnezzar transported into Spain, and not the descendants of those Jerusalem Jews who crucified Christ. Their ancestors, they said, were quite free from the guilt of this act, for when Caiaphas had written to the Toledan synagogue for their advice respecting the person who claimed to be the Messiah, the Toledan Jews returned for answer, that in their judgment the prophecies seemed to be fulfilled in Him, and therefore He ought not by any means to be put to death. This reply they produced in the original Hebrew.[1] It is needless to say that the whole thing was a fabrication.

Gradually, as the Christians recovered their supremacy in Spain, the tide of prejudice set more and more strongly against the Jews. They were accused of "contempt for the Catholic worship, desecration of its symbols, sacrifice of Christian infants,"[2] and other enormities. Severe laws were passed against them, as in the old Gothic times, and their freedom was grievously curtailed in the matters of dress, residence, and profession. As a distinctive badge they had to wear yellow caps.[3]

At the end of the fourteenth century the people rose against them, and 15,000 Jews were massacred in different parts of Spain. Many were nominally converted, and 35,000 conversions were put to the credit of a single saint. These new Christians sometimes attained high ecclesiastical dignities, and intermarried with the noble families—the taint of which "mala sangre" came afterwards to be regarded with the greatest horror and aversion.

It was against the converted Jews that the Inquisition was first established, and they chiefly suffered under it at first. In 1492, on the final extinction of the Arab dominion in Spain, a very large number of Jews were expelled from Castile,[1] the evil example being afterwards followed in other parts of Spain. The story of the treatment of Jews by Christians is indeed one of the darkest in the history of Christianity.

B.

SPAIN AND THE PAPAL POWER.

Perhaps no part of the history of Spain affords so interesting a study as the consideration of those gradual steps by which, from being one of the most independent of Churches, she has become the most subservient, and therefore the most degraded, of all. The question of how this was brought about, apart from its intrinsic interest as illustrating the development of a great nation, is well worth investigating, from the momentous influence which it has had upon the religious history of the world at large. For it is not too much to say that Rome could never have made good its ascendency, spiritual no less than temporal, over so large a part of mankind, had not the material resources and the blind devotion of Spain been ready to back the haughty pretensions and unscrupulous ability of the Italian pontiffs.

In fact, Spain is the only country, apart from Italy, that as a nation, has accepted the monstrous doctrines of Rome in all their entirety—doctrines which the whole Christian East repudiated from the first with scorn, and which the North and (with the exception of Spain) the West of Europe—the birthplace and cradle of the mighty Teutonic races—have agreed with equal disdain to reject and trample under their feet.

This result is all the more remarkable, from the fact that in early times the Church of Spain, from its rapid extension, its greatness, and its prosperity, held a position of complete equality with the Roman and other principal churches. The See of Cordova held so high a rank in the fourth century that Hosius, its venerable bishop, was chosen to preside at the important councils of Nice (325) and Sardica (347).

The Gothic invasion at the beginning of the fifth century made Spain still less likely to acknowledge any supremacy of Rome, for the Goths, besides being far more independent in character than the Romanized Kelts, were Arian heretics, and cut off, in consequence, from all communion with Rome. The orthodox party, however, gradually gained strength, and in 560 the remnants of the Suevi abjured Arianism, and the Gothic king's son Ermenegild, with their help, revolted against his father. He was finally put to death for his treason, but his brother, Recared, on ascending the throne in 589, avowed his conversion to the orthodox creed, his example being followed by most of his nobles and prelates.

The reception of Recared and his Court into the Catholic fold was the signal for an attempt to establish the papal authority, which was the more dangerous now, as the popes had gained a great increase of power since Spain was cut off from orthodox Christendom by the invasion of the Arian Goths.

One of Recared's first acts was to write to the pope and, saluting him, ask him for his advice in spiritual matters. The papal authority thus acknowledged was soon exercised in—

(a.) Deciding ecclesiastical appeals without regard to the laws of the land;

(b.) Sending to Spain pontifical judges to hear such cases;

(c.) Sending legates to watch over the discipline of the Church;

(d.) Sending the pall to metropolitans.

These metropolitans, unknown in the earlier history of the Spanish Church, came gradually to be recognised, owing to the papal practice of sending letters to the chief bishops of the country. They became invested in consequence with certain important powers, such as those of convoking provincial councils; of consecrating suffragans; of holding ecclesiastical courts, and watching over the conduct of bishops.[1]

But though a certain authority over the Spanish Church was thus conceded to the pope, yet owing to the independent spirit of the Spanish kings and clergy, he contented himself with a very sparing use of his power. In two points, in especial, the claims of the pope were strenuously resisted.

(a.) The purchase of dispensations from Rome was expressly forbidden.

(b.) Papal infallibility was a dogma by no means admitted. Thus the prelates of Spain in the fifteenth and sixteenth councils of Toledo, defended the orthodoxy of their fellow-bishop, Julian, against the strictures of the then pope, Bendict II.; and Benedict's successor, John V., confessed that they had been in the right.[2]

This spirit of opposition to the supremacy of the pope we find manifested to the last by the Spanish kings, and there is some reason for thinking that in the very year of the Saracen invasion the king, Witiza, held a synod, which emphatically forbade appeals to Rome.[3] One author even goes so far as to say that the Gothic king and his clergy being at variance with the pope, the latter encouraged and favoured the Saracen invasion.[4]

However that may have been, and it certainly looks very improbable, the invasion did not help the pope much directly, though indirectly, and as events turned out, the Arab domination was undoubtedly the main cause of the ultimate subjection of Spain to the papal yoke, which happened in this way:—The Christian Church in the North being, though free, yet in a position of great danger and weakness, would naturally have sought help from their nearest Christian neighbours, the Franks. But the selfish and ambitious policy of the latter, who preferred extending their temporal dominion to fighting as champions of Christianity in defence of others, naturally forced the Spanish Christians to look to the only Christian ruler who could afford them even moral assistance; and the popes were not slow to avail themselves of the opportunity thus offered for establishing their authority in a new province. It was by the intervention of the popes that the war against the Arabs partook of the nature of a crusade, a form of warfare which carried with it the advantage of filling the treasury of the Bishops of Rome. By means of indulgences, granting exemption from purgatory at 200 maravedis a head, the pope collected in four years the sum of four million maravedis.[1]

The first important instance of the Pope's intervention being asked and obtained was in 808, when, the body of St James being miraculously discovered, Alfonso wrote to the pope asking leave to move the see of Ira Flavia (Padron) to the new church of St lago,[2] built on the spot where the relics were found. The birth of the new Spanish Church dates from this event, which was of ominous import for the future independence of the Church in that country. What the claims of Rome had come to be within a quarter of a century of this epoch, we may see from the controversy which arose between Claudius, Bishop of Turin, and the papal party. Claudius was himself a Spaniard, and a pupil of the celebrated Felix, Bishop of Urgel, one of the authors of the Adoptionist heresy. Among other doctrines obnoxious to the so-called Catholic party, Claudius stoutly resisted the papal claim to be the head of Christendom, resting his opposition, so far as we can gather from what remains to us of his writings,[3] on the grounds, first, that Christ did not say to Peter, "What thou loosest in heaven, shall be loosed upon earth;" meaning by this that the authority vested in Peter was only to be exercised during his life; secondly, in answer to the supposed efficacy of a pilgrimage to Rome, Claudius retorts on his accuser, Theodomir, abbot of a monastery near Nîmes:—"If a doing of penance to be effectual involves a journey to Rome, why do you keep so many monks in your monastery and prevent them from going—as you say is necessary—to Rome itself?" As to the journey itself, Claudius said that he neither approved nor disapproved of it, knowing that it was not prejudicial to all, nor useful to all: but this he was assured of, that eternal life could not be gained by a mere journey to Rome; thirdly, as to the pope being the Dominicus Apostolicus, as his supporters called him, apostolic, says Claudius, is a title that does not belong to one "who fills the see of an apostle, but who fulfils the duties thereof."

Being summoned to appear before a council, the bishop proved contumacious, and refused to go, calling the proposed assemblage a congregation of asses. In spite of his independence of spirit Claudius remained Bishop of Turin till his death in 839.

The pope's authority being once recognised in Spain, the sphere of his interference rapidly enlarged, and we soon find the king unable even to call a council of bishops without a papal bull. This became the established practice.[1] In the tenth century Bermudo II. (982-999), in confirming the laws of the Goths, took the opportunity to make the canons and decrees of the pope binding in secular cases.[2]

Meanwhile, even before the free Christians in the North had established their independence, the weakness of the Christian Church under Arab domination seemed to afford a good opportunity for obtaining from them a recognition of the authority of the pope. We accordingly find that an appeal was made to the pope towards the close of the eighth century to give an authoritative decision with regard to what the appellants deemed to be certain irregularities which had found their way into the practice of those Christians who were under the Arab yoke. The Pope Adrian readily undertook to define what was, and what was not, in accordance with Christianity. In a letter addressed to the Bishops of Spain he inveighs against the following errors, countenanced by a certain Migetius, and by Egila, Bishop of Elvira, and sometimes called in consequence the Migetian errors:—

(a.) The wrong celebration of Easter. This had already been noticed and condemned by Peter, a deacon of Toledo, in a letter to the people of Seville (750).[3] The error was not the same as that of the Quarto-decimani, but consisted apparently in deferring Easter to the twenty-second day, if the full moon fell on the 14th, and the following day was Sunday. Curiously enough this very error had been held by the Latin Church itself till the sixth century.[4] The fulminations of the Pope failed in suppressing the error. As late as 891 it was sufficiently general in Andalusia to cause the date of a battle which took place at the Easter of that year to be placed in the year of the Hegira 278, which only began on April 15th, whereas had Easter been observed according to the usage of the Latin Church, the Paschal feast would have been already past.[5]

(b.) The eating of pork and things strangled.[6] With respect to these innocent articles of food, the pope goes so far as to threaten anathema against those who will not abstain from them. It is curious to find the Christian Church upholding the eating of pork, when brought into contact with the Moslems, and forbidding it elsewhere.

(c.) Intermarriage with Jews and Moslems, which had become very common, is denounced and forbidden.[7]

(d.) The Pope cautions the Spanish Church against consecrating priests without due preparation, and speaks as if there were many false priests, wolves in sheep's clothing, dealing havoc in the flock.

(e.) One doubtful authority,[8] who tells us that Adrian ordered Cixila, Bishop of Toledo, to hold a council and condemn Egila for not fasting on Sundays, according to the decrees of previous popes.

But though there was a strong party in Spain favouring the pretensions of the pope, yet many of the clergy and laity, headed by the venerable Elipandus, Bishop of Toledo (782-810), boldly resisted the encroachments of the Bishop of Rome. Elipandus himself, as Primate of all Spain, wrote to Migetius condemning him for certain heresies, and boasts of having completely refuted and silenced him;[1] but at the same time Elipandus shewed his independence of the Roman Pontiff by characterising those who abstained from pork and things strangled as foolish and ignorant men; though Migetius in this matter was in thorough accord with the pope,[2] and could justify his views by a reference to the decision of the Church of Jerusalem in the earliest days of Christianity.[3]

Another doctrine combated by Elipandus was the unscriptural one, that it was unlawful to eat with unbelievers, or even to take food touched by them. It was easy for him to quote texts such as: "Not that which entereth into the mouth defileth the man; but that which proceedeth out of the mouth, this defileth the man;" [4] or "to the pure all things are pure;"[5] and to point out that Christ ate with publicans and sinners.

But the assumption which Elipandus, like his fellow-countrymen, Claudius of Turin, later, especially attacked, was that which regarded the Roman See as alone constituting the Catholic Church and the power of God.[6] This he very properly calls a heresy; and indignantly denies that Christ's words, "Thou art Peter," &c., apply to the Church of Rome alone, affirming that they were spoken of the whole Church. "How," he adds, "can the Roman Church be, as you say it is, the very power of God without spot or blemish, when we know that at least one bishop of Rome (Liberius) has been branded as a heretic by the common voice of Christendom."

Had the Arab domination embraced the whole of Spain, and continued to be established over it, Spain could never have become the priest-ridden country which it now is; but the gradual advance of the Christian arms in the North brought in its train a more and more complete subserviency to the pope.

As the kings of Castile and Leon gradually won back towns and provinces from the Arabs, some difference was observed to exist between the religious usages of the newly freed Christians and of those who had set them free. This was specially apparent in the old Gothic liturgy, which the Muzarabic Christians had used all along, and were still using, whereas the Christians of Leon and the Asturias had imported a newer recension from Rome.

Rumours of these discrepancies in religious ritual reached Rome, and accordingly a legate,[1] named Zanclus, was sent to Spain in 925 from John X. to inquire into matters of religion, and particularly into the ceremony of the mass, the opinion being prevalent at Rome that the mass was incorrectly performed according to the Gothic liturgy, and that false doctrines were taught. However, Zanclus found that the divergence was not sufficiently wide to warrant the suppression of the ancient ritual. It may be that the power of the Roman Church was not established so securely as to admit of an interference so unpalatable to the ancient church. She was content to bide her time; for such a standing witness to the primitive usage[2] of the Church against the innovations of the Roman See could not long be allowed to continue. Accordingly, we find that very soon after the fall of Toledo in 1085, the question of the old Gothic liturgy came up for discussion again. The Gothic and the Roman books were subjected, after the absurd fashion of the times, to two ordeals—by water and by fire; but in spite of the fact that the Gothic liturgy, thanks to its greater solidity and stronger binding, resisted both those elements incomparably better than its younger rival, and so, if the ordeal went for anything, should have been hailed victorious, the old native liturgy was partially suppressed at the bidding of the pope, and by the consent of the Spanish king Alfonso VI. of Leon,[3] and Sancho IV. of Aragon. Yet the Muzarabic Christians were loath to give up their customary liturgy, and it remained in use in several churches of Toledo till late in the fifteenth century.

But the interference of the pope was not confined to matters relating to the Spanish Church at large, his heavy hand fell upon the king himself, and at the end of the twelfth century Alfonso IX. and all his kingdom were laid under an interdict by Celestine III. because he had married within forbidden limits, and refused to divorce his wife at the bidding of the pope. He did in the end divorce her, but only to repeat the same offence with a second wife, Berengaria, and incur the same penalty at the hands of Innocent III. Encroachments on the king's power went on apace, and gradually appeals came to be referred to Rome from the king's courts, and the pope took upon himself to appoint to benefices and bishoprics; a usurpation which was countenanced by Alfonso X. (1252-1284).[1] But this result was not attained without remonstrances from the Cortes, and finally, under Ferdinand and Isabella, the question came to an open rupture between the Spanish Court and the reigning pope, Sixtus IV. Isabella, though so ready to submit herself in matters of personal religion to the pope and his legates, refused, like her later namesake of England, to bate one jot of her ecclesiastical rights; and the pope had to give way, contenting himself with the barren power of appointing those nominated by the sovereigns of the land. But if the sovereign was jealous of his rights, no less so were the barons of theirs, and when in the war of the barons with Henry IV. (1454-1474), the papal legate threw his influence on to the king's side, and excommunicated the rebellious barons, they firmly answered that "those who had advised the pope that he had a right to interfere in the temporal concerns of Castile had deceived him; and that they, the barons of the kingdom, had a perfect right to depose their sovereign on sufficient grounds, and meant to exercise it."[2]

A similarly independent spirit shewed itself in Aragon. In 1213 Pedro II. died fighting against the papal persecutor of the Albigensians, and down to the time of Charles V., the princes of Aragon were at open enmity with the Roman See,[3] and the Aragonese strenuously resisted the establishment of the Inquisition.[4]

That fatal instrument of religious bigotry, the cause of more unmerited suffering and more unmixed evil than any other devised by man, whereby more innocent people passed through the fire than were perhaps ever sacrificed at the altar of Moloch, was first put into action in September 1480, during the reign of the pious and noble-minded Isabella.[1] The festival of Epiphany in the following year was selected as an appropriate date for the manifestation of the first auto da fé, when six Jews were burnt at Seville; for it was against that unfortunate people that this inhuman persecution was devised, or at least first used. That one year witnessed the martyrdom of 2000 persons, and the infliction on 17,000 others of punishments only less than death itself. During the administration of Thomas of Torquemada, which lasted eighteen years, more than 10,000 persons perished at the stake, nearly 100,000 were, as the phrase went, reconciled.[2] The confiscation of property which accompanied all this burning and imprisoning brought in enormous sums into the coffers of the Inquisitors.

The Jews being burnt, converted, or expelled the country, the Inquisition was turned upon the wretched Moriscoes, as the Moors under Christian government were called, who were oppressed and persecuted in the same way as the Jews, and finally driven from Spain.

But a more important conquest than these—more important, that is, to the supremacy of the Roman See—was the undoubted conquest achieved by the Inquisition over the reforming doctrines which in the sixteenth century began to find their way into Spain from Germany and England. Finding a congenial soil, the reformation began to spread in Spain with wonderful rapidity. The divines sent by Charles V. into England were themselves converted, and returned full of zeal for the Protestant faith—"Their success," says Geddes,[3] "was such that had not a speedy and full stop been put to their pious labours by the merciless Inquisition, the whole kingdom of Spain had in all likelihood been converted to the Protestant religion, in less time than any other country had ever been before."[4] So untrue is it to say that persecution always fails of its object! In Spain it has riveted the fetters, which the weakness and superstition of the earlier kings of Leon and Castile, together with the piety and misdirected enthusiasm of Isabella, placed upon a proud and once peculiarly independent people. Plunged in the depths of ignorance and imbecility, social, religious, and political, Spain affords a melancholy but instructive spectacle to the nations.

LIST OF AUTHORITIES CONSULTED.

I. ORIGINAL AUTHORITIES:—

A. Arab (in translations):

(1.) Ibn abd el Hakem. "History of the Conquest of Spain." with notes by J.H. Jones, Ph.D., 1858. This work only goes down to 743.

(2.) J.A. Conde. "History of the Domination of the Arabs in Spain," translated from the Spanish by Mrs Foster. 3 vols. Bohn, 1854. The author (Preface, p. 2) says that "he has compiled his work from Arabian memorials and writings in such sort that those documents may be read as they were written;" (p. 18), "The student of history may read this book as written by an Arabic author."

Older writers used to speak very highly of this work, but their modern successors cannot find a good word for it.[1] De Gayangos, the learned translator of the Arabic history of Al Makkari, though not blind to the "unmethodical arrangement of the whole work, the absence of notes and citations of authorities, and the numerous errors and contradictions,"[2] yet does not hesitate to call Conde's book the foundation of all our knowledge of the history of Mohammedan Spain. It certainly is astonishing that Conde, who points out[3] the errors of his predecessors, makes precisely the same kind of mistakes himself, not only once, but constantly. Claiming to be above all things faithful to his authorities, he is found, where those authorities can be identified, not to be faithful.

(3.) J.C. Murphy. "History of the Mahometan Empire in Spain," with additions by Professor Shakespear, 1816. This work is based on Mohammedan sources, those, namely, which are mostly to be found in Al Makkari's compilation. The concluding chapters on the influence, scientific and literary, exercised by the Arabs in Europe, are exhaustive and interesting.

(4.) Ahmed ibn Mohammed Al Makkari. "History of the Mohammedan Dynasties in Spain," being an extract from a larger work by that author, translated by Pascual de Gayangos. 2 vols. London, 1840. This work, which Dozy finds fault with for certain inaccuracies, is on the whole very trustworthy, and its notes form a perfect mine of information for the student wandering helplessly among the mazes of Arab history. Al Makkari, a native of Africa, flourished at the beginning of the seventeenth century; but he quotes from many old Arabic writers, whose evidence is most valuable. Among these are—

α. Abu Bekr Mohammed ibn Omar, Ibn al Kuttiyah, descended from the grand-daughter of Witiza; died, 877.

β. Ahmed ibn Mohammed ibn Musa Arrazi, flourished in the reign of Abdurrahman III.

γ. Ibn Ghalib Temam ibn Ghalib, of Cordova; died, 1044.

δ. Abu Mohammed Ali ibn Ahmed ibn Said ibn Hazm, born at Cordova, 994; died, 1064.

ε. Abu Merwan Hayyan ibn Khalf ibn Huseyn ibn Hayyan, born at Cordova, 1006.

ζ. Abul Kasim Khalf ibn Abdilmalik ibn Mesud ibn Musa Al Anssari, Cordova, 1101-1183.

η. Abul hasan Ali ibn Musa ibn Mohammed ibn Abdalmalik ibn Said of Granada, 1214-1286.

θ. Abu Zeyd Abdurrahman ibn Mohammed ibn Khaldun. Ishbili, born at Tunis, 1332; died, 1406.

B. Christian (in Latin). These are to be found in—

(1.) Schott's "Hispania Illustrata," 3 vols. Frankfort, 1603.

(2.) Florez, "España Sagrada," 26 vols., containing a most useful collection of Spanish writers, together with much information about them, written in Spanish.

(3.) Migne's "Patrologia," Latin and Greek, a most invaluable collection in several score volumes. The following is a list of those consulted:—