Llorente, the historian of the Spanish Inquisition, and M. Fidel Fita, the distinguished contributor to the “Boletin de la Real Academia de la Historia,” both had access to and both made use of a record left by the licentiate Sebastian de Orozco, an eyewitness of the establishment of the Inquisition in Toledo. This has been printed verbatim by M. Fidel Fita.139
The details afforded by Orozco are so circumstantial that it is worth while to follow them closely, since they may be said to afford a typical picture of what was happening not only in the city with which they are concerned, but throughout the whole of Spain.
It was in May of the year 1485 that the Inquisition was first set up in Toledo, that noble city erected upon a rock that rises sheer from the swirling waters of the Tagus, and is crowned by the royal palace which still bears the Moorish name of Alcazar. It was transferred thither, by Torquemada’s orders, from Villa Real, where it had been operating for some months.
“To the end that our Infinite Redeemer Jesus Christ be praised in all that He does, and for the greater power of His Holy Catholic Faith,” writes Orozco, “know all who shall come after us that in the year 1485, in the month of May, the Holy Inquisition against heretical pravity was sent to this very noble City of Toledo by our very enlightened Sovereigns, Don Fernando and Donna Isabella.... Of this Inquisition were administrators Vasco Ramirez de Ribera, Archdeacon of Talavera, and Pedro Dias de la Costana, Licentiate of Theology, and with them one of the Queen’s Chaplains as fiscal and prosecutor, and one Juan de Alfaro, a patrician of Seville, as chief constable (alguazil), and two notaries.”
The licentiate Pedro Dias de la Costana preached to the people on the third day of Pentecost (Tuesday, May 24), notifying them of the papal bull under which the inquisitors were acting and of the power vested in these inquisitors to deal with matters of heresy; pronouncing greater excommunication against any who by word or deed or counsel should dare to oppose the Inquisition in the execution of its duty.
At the conclusion of his announcement the Gospels and a crucifix were brought, and upon these all were required to make solemn oath of their desire to serve God and the Sovereigns, to uphold the Catholic Faith, and to defend and shelter the administrators of the Holy Inquisition.
Lastly the licentiate published the usual edict of grace for self-delators. He summons all Judaizers to return to the Faith and become reconciled to the Church within a term of forty days, as set forth by the edict itself, which by his orders was nailed to the door of the Cathedral.
A week elapsed without any response to this summons. The conversos of Toledo had been preparing to resist the introduction of the Inquisition to their city, and under the guidance of one De la Torre and some others they had already matured their plans and laid down the lines which this resistance was to take.
Photo by Donald Macbeth.
THE AUTO DE FÉ.
From Limborch’s “Historia Inquisitionis.”
The plot was—according to Orozco, who, you will have gathered, was an ardent partisan of the Holy Office—that on the feast of Corpus Christi, which fell that year on June 2, the conspirators should be armed to lie in wait for the procession, falling upon it as it was advancing through the streets, and slaying the inquisitors and their defenders. That done, they were to seize the gates of the city and hold Toledo against the King.
The fine strategic position of the city might have lent itself to so daring a scheme, and presumably the aim of the New-Christians would have been to hold it rebelliously until accorded terms of capitulation that should guarantee the immunity of the rebels from all punishment, and the immunity of Toledo itself from the jurisdiction of the Holy Office. But, on the whole, it was so very crack-brained a conspiracy that we are more than justified in doubting whether it ever had any real existence.
“It pleased our Redeemer,” says Orozco, “that this conspiracy was discovered on the eve of Corpus Christi.” He does not satisfy our curiosity as to how the discovery was made, and the omission increases our doubts.
The details, we are told, were derived from several of the plotters who were arrested on that day by the Corregidor of Toledo, Gomes Manrique. In view of the information thus obtained, Manrique proceeded to capture De la Torre and four of his friends. One of these captives, a cobbler named Lope Mauriço, the Corregidor hanged out of hand on the morning of the festival, before the procession had issued from the Cathedral. The act may have been intended as a deterrent to any who still entertained the notion of putting the plot into execution.
The procession passed off without any disturbances; and having hanged another of his prisoners Manrique subjected the remainder to heavy fines, whereby they escaped far more lightly than if they had been tried by the court of the Holy Office. Fortunately for themselves, it was deemed that their offence was one that came within the jurisdiction of the secular courts.
Soon thereafter, possibly because they now realized that they had nothing left to hope for, self-delators began to come before the inquisitors to solicit reconciliation.
But when the term of the edict had expired, it was found that the indefatigable Torquemada had prepared a second one to supplement it. He ordered the publication of an entirely fresh measure, commanding that all who knew of any heretics, apostates, or Judaizers, must, under pain of excommunication and of being deemed heretics themselves, divulge to the inquisitors the names of such offenders within a term of sixty days.
There was already in existence an enactment of the Inquisition, which instead of offering, as in all times has been done by secular tribunals, a reward for the apprehension of fugitives from justice, imposed upon those who neglected spontaneously to set about that catchpoll work when the occasion arose, a fine of 500 ducats in addition to excommunicating them. But Torquemada’s fresh measure went even beyond that. Nor did it end with the edict we have mentioned. When the sixty days expired, he ordered the prolongation of the term by another thirty days—not only in Toledo, but also in Seville, where he had commanded the publication of the same edict—and now came the cruellest measure of all. He commanded the inquisitors to summon the Rabbis of the synagogues and to compel them to swear according to the Mosaic Law that they would denounce to the inquisitors any baptized Jew whom they found returning to the Jewish cult, and he made it a capital offence for any Rabbi to keep such a matter secret.
Not even now did he consider that he had carried far enough this infamous measure of persecution. He ordained that the Rabbis should publish in their synagogues an edict of excommunication by the Mosaic Law against all Jews who should fail to give information to the inquisitors of any Judaizing whereof they might have knowledge.
In this decree we catch a glimpse of the intensity of the fanatical, contemptuous hatred in which Torquemada held the Israelites. For nothing short of blended hatred and contempt could have inspired him so to trample upon the feelings of their priests, and to compel them under pain of death to a course in which they must immolate their self-respect, violate their consciences, and render themselves odious in the esteem of every right-thinking Jew.
By this unspeakable enactment the very Jews themselves were pressed into the secret service of the Inquisition, and compelled by the fear of spiritual and physical consequences to turn informers against their brethren.
“Many,” says Orozco, who no doubt considered it a measure as laudable as it was fiendishly astute, “were the men and women who came to bear witness.”
Arrests commenced at once, and were carried on with an unprecedented activity revealed by the records of the Autos that were held, which Orozco has preserved for us.
And already fire had been set to the faggots piled at the stake of Toledo, for the first victims had soon fallen into the eager hands of the Inquisitors of the Faith.
These were three men and their three wives, natives of Villa Real, who had fled thence when first the inquisitors had set up their tribunal there. They reached Valencia safely, purchased there a yawl, equipped it, and set sail. They were on the seas for five days, when, of course, “it pleased God to send a contrary wind, which blew them back into the port from which they had set out”—and thus into the hands of the benign inquisitors, so solicitous for the salvation of their souls. They were arrested upon landing, and brought to Toledo, whither the tribunal had meanwhile been transferred. They were tried; their flight confirmed their guilt; and so—Christi nomine invocato—they were burnt by order of the inquisitors.
As a result of the self-delations the first great Auto de Fé was held in Toledo on the first Sunday in Lent (February 12), 1486. The reconciled of seven parishes, numbering some 750 men and women, were taken in procession and submitted to the penance known as verguenza—or “shame”—which, however humiliating to the Christian, was so hurtful to the pride of the Jew (and no less to that of the Moor) that he would almost have preferred death itself. It consisted in being paraded through the streets, men and women alike, bareheaded, barefooted, and naked to the waist.
At the head of the procession, preceded by the white cross, and walking two by two, went a section of the Confraternity of St. Peter the Martyr—the familiars of the Holy Office—dressed in black, with the white cross of St. Dominic displayed upon their cloaks. After them followed the horde of half-naked penitents, cruel physical discomfort being added to their mental torture, for the weather was so raw and cold that it had been considered expedient to provide them with sandals, lest they should have found it impossible to walk.
In his hand each carried a candle of green wax—unlighted, to signify that as yet the light of the Faith did not illumine his soul. Anon, when they should have been admitted to reconciliation and absolution, these candles would be lighted, to signify that the light of the Faith had once more entered their hearts—light being the symbol of the Faith, just as “light” and “faith” have become almost convertible terms.
Orozco informs us that among the penitents were many of the principal citizens of Toledo, many persons of eminence and honour, who must deeply have felt their shame at being paraded in this fashion through crowded streets, that they might afford a salutary spectacle to the multitude which had assembled in Toledo from all the surrounding country districts. To ensure this good attendance the Auto had been proclaimed far and wide a fortnight before it was held.
The chronicler of these events tells us that many and loud were the lamentations of these unfortunates. But it is very plain that their condition did not move his pity, for he expresses the opinion that their grief was rather at the dishonour they were suffering than—as it should have been—because they had offended God.
The procession wound its way through the principal streets of the city, and came at last to the Cathedral. At the main doors stood two chaplains, who with their thumbs made the sign of the cross on the brow of each penitent in turn, accompanying the action by the formula: “Receive the Sign of the Cross which you denied, and which, being deluded, you lost.”
Within the Cathedral two large scaffolds had been erected. The penitents were led to one of these, where the reverend inquisitors waited to receive them. On the other an altar had been raised, surmounted by the green cross of the Inquisition, and as soon as all the penitents were assembled, the crowd of holiday-makers being closely packed about the scaffolds, Mass was celebrated and a sermon of the Faith was preached.
This being at an end, the notary of the Holy Office rose and called over the long roll of the penitents, each answering to his name and hearing his particular offence read out to him. Thereafter the penance was announced. They were to be whipped in procession on each of the following six Fridays, being naked to the waist, bareheaded and barefooted; they were to fast on each of those six Fridays, and they were disqualified for the rest of their lives from holding office, benefice, or honourable employment, and from using gold, silver, precious stones, or fine fabrics in their apparel.
They were warned that if they relapsed into error, or failed to perform any part of the penance imposed, they would be deemed impenitent heretics and abandoned to the secular arm; and upon that grim warning they were dismissed.
On each of the following six Fridays of Lent they were taken in procession from the Church of San Pedro Martir to a different shrine on each occasion, and when at last they had completed this humiliating penance it was further ordained that they should give “alms” to the extent of one-fifth of the value of their property, to be applied to the holy war against the infidels of Granada.
Scarcely are the penitents of this Auto disposed of—the last procession took place on March 23—than the second Auto was held.
This occurred on the second Sunday in April, and 486 men and women were penanced on this occasion, the procedure and the penance imposed being the same.
At Whitsuntide of that year a sermon of the Faith was preached by the inquisitor Costana, whereafter an edict was publicly read and nailed to the Cathedral door, summoning all who had fled to surrender themselves to the Holy Office within ninety days, under pain of being sentenced as contumaciously absent. Among those cited there were, we learn, several clerics, including three Jeronymite friars.
Finally, on the second Sunday in June—the 11th of that month—we have the last Auto within the period of grace. In this the penitents of four parishes, numbering some 750 persons, were conducted to reconciliation under precisely the same conditions as had already been observed in the two previous Autos.
The Inquisition of Toledo had now to deal with heretics who must be considered impenitent, since they had not availed themselves of the benign leniency of the Church and spontaneously sought the reconciliation offered. From this moment the proceedings assume a far more sinister character.
The first Auto under these altered conditions was held on August 16, 1486. Among the accused brought up for sentence were twenty men and five women, whose offences doomed them to be abandoned to the secular arm, and one of these was no less a personage than the Regidor—or Governor—of Toledo, a Knight-Commander of the Order of Santiago.
They were brought forth from the prison of the Inquisition at a little before six o’clock on that summer morning, arrayed in the yellow sanbenito and coroza. Each sanbenito bore an inscription announcing the name of the wearer and the nature of his offences against the Faith, and they were smeared in addition with grotesque red images of dragons and devils. A rope was round the neck of each prisoner, and his hands were pinioned with the other end of it. In his hands, thus bound, he carried the unlighted candle of green wax.
Thus they were led in procession through the streets, the procession being headed as usual by a posse of familiars of the Confraternity of St. Peter the Martyr—the Soldiers of the Faith—and preceded now by the green cross of the Inquisition, which was shrouded in a mourning veil of black crape.
The green cross did not merely symbolize, by its colour, constancy and eternity, but it was fashioned as if of freshly-cut boughs, to represent living wood, the emblem of the true faith in contradistinction to the withered branches that are to be flung into the fire.140
Following the Soldiers of the Faith, under a canopy of scarlet and gold, borne by four acolytes and preceded by a bell-ringer, came the priest who was to celebrate the Mass, in the crimson chasuble prescribed by the liturgy for these dread solemnities. He bore the Host, and as he advanced the multitude sank down upon their knees, beating their breasts to the clang of the bell.
Behind the canopy walked another posse of familiars, and after these again followed the doomed prisoners, each attended by two Dominican brothers in their white cassocks and black cloaks, fervently exhorting those who had not yet confessed to do so even at this late hour.
The constables of the Holy Office and the men-at-arms of the secular authorities flanked this section of the procession, shouldering their glittering halberts.
They were closely followed by a group of men who bore aloft, swinging from long green poles, the effigies of those who were to be sentenced as contumaciously absent—horribly grotesque mannequins of straw with painted faces and bituminous eyes, tricked out in the sanbenitos and corozas that should have adorned the originals had not these remained fortunately at large.
Next, mounted upon mules in trailing funereal trappings, rode the reverend inquisitors, attended by a group of mounted gentlemen in black, the white cross upon their breasts announcing them as familiars of the Holy Office, the officers of the tribunal.
They were immediately preceded by the banner of the Inquisition, displaying in an oval medallion upon a sable ground the green cross between an olive-branch (dexter) and a naked sword (sinister). The olive-branch, emblem of peace, symbolized the readiness of the Inquisition to deal mercifully with those who by true repentance and confession were disposed to reconcile themselves with Holy Mother Church. The mercy of which so much parade was made might consist, as we know, of strangulation before burning, or, at best, of perpetual imprisonment, the confiscation of property, and infamy extending to the children and grandchildren of the condemned.
The sword, on the other hand, announced the alternative. Garcia Rodrigo says that it proclaimed the Inquisition’s tardiness to smite. If so, it is a curious symbol to have chosen for such a purpose; but in any case the tardiness is hardly perceptible to the lay vision.
The procession was closed by the secular justiciary and his alguaziles.
In this order that grim cortège advanced to the Cathedral Square. Here two great scaffolds were draped in black for the ceremony—blasphemously called an Act of Faith.
The prisoners were conducted to one of these scaffolds and accommodated upon the benches that rose from it in tiers, the highest being always reserved for those who were to be abandoned to the secular arm—to the end, we suppose, that they should be fully in the view of the multitude below. Each of the accused sat between two Dominican friars. The poles bearing the effigies were placed so that they flanked the benches.
On the other scaffold, on which an altar had been raised and chairs set for the inquisitors, these now made their appearance, accompanied by the notaries and fiscal and attended by their familiars.
The shrouded green cross was placed upon the altar, the tapers were lighted, the thurible kindled, and as a cloud of incense ascended and spread its sweetly pungent odour the Mass began.
At the conclusion a sermon of the Faith was preached, wherein the sins of the accused were denounced, and those who had incurred the penalty of being abandoned to the secular arm were exhorted fervently to repent and make their peace with Holy Mother Church that they might save their souls from the damnation into which, otherwise, it was the Inquisition’s business to hurry them.
As the preacher ceased, the notaries of the Holy Office of Toledo proceeded to the business of reading out the crime of each accused, dwelling in detail upon the particular form which his Judaizing was known to have taken. As the name of each was called, he was brought forward, and placed upon a stool,141 whilst the reading of the lengthy sentence took place.
It requires no great imaginative effort to form a mental picture of these proceedings, and of the poor livid wretch, horror-stricken and bathed in the sweat of abject terror which that long-drawn agony must have extorted from the stoutest, sitting there, perhaps half-dazed already by the merciful hand of Nature, in the glaring August sun, under the stare of a thousand eyes, some pitiful, some hateful, some greedy of the offered spectacle. Or it might be some poor half-swooning woman, steadied by the attendant Dominicans, who seek to support her fainting courage, to mitigate her unutterable anguish with comfortless words that hold out the promise of pitiless mercy.
And all this, Christi nomine invocato!
The reading of the sentence is at an end. It concludes with the formula that the Church, being unable to do more for the offender, casts him out and abandons him to the secular arm. Lastly comes the mockery of that intercession, efficaciter—to preserve the inquisitors from irregularity—that the secular justice shall so deal with him that his blood may not be shed, and that he may suffer no hurt in life or limb.
Thereupon the doomed wretch is removed from the scaffold; the alguaziles of the secular justiciary seize him; the Regidor mutters a few brief words of sentence, and he is thrust upon an ass and hurried away, out of the city to the burning-place of La Dehesa.
A white cross has been raised in this field, where twenty-five stakes are planted with the faggots piled under each, and a mob of morbid sightseers surges, impatient to have the spectacle begin.
The condemned is bound to the stake, and the Dominicans still continue their exhortations. They flaunt a crucifix before his dazed, staring eyes, and they call upon him to repent, confess, and save his soul from Eternal Hell. They do not leave him until the fire is crackling and the first cruel little tongues of bluish flame dart up through the faggots to lick the soles of his naked feet.
If he has confessed, wrought upon by spiritual or physical terror, the Dominican makes a sign, and the executioner steps behind the stake and rapidly strangles the doomed man. If his physical fears have not sufficed to conquer his religious convictions, if he remains firm in his purpose to die lingeringly, horribly, a martyr for the faith that he believes to be the only true one, the Dominican withdraws at last, baffled by this “wicked stubbornness,” and the wretch is left to endure the terrible agony of death by slow fire.
Meanwhile, under that limpid sky—Christi nomine invocato—the ferocious work of the Faith goes on; accused succeeds accused to hear his or her sentence read, until the last of the twenty-five victims has been surrendered to the tireless arm of the secular justice. In the meadows of La Dehesa there is such a blaze of the fires of the Faith, that it might almost seem that the Christians have been avenging upon their enemies those human torches which an enemy of Christianity is alleged to have lighted once in Rome.
Six mortal hours, Orozco informs us, were consumed in that ghastly business,142 for the Court of the Holy Office must in all things proceed with stately and pompous leisureliness, with that calm equanimity enjoined by the “Directorium”—simpliciter et de plano—lest by haste it should fall into the unpardonable offence of irregularity.
Not until noon did the proceedings conclude with the hurrying away to La Dehesa of the last of those twenty-five.
The inquisitors and their followers descended at length from their scaffold, and withdrew to the Casa Santa to rest them from these arduous labours of propagating Christianity.
There was more to be done upon the morrow—very important business, demanding an entirely different ceremonial, wherefore it had been set apart and allotted a day to itself.
The accused on this occasion were only two, but they were two clerics. One was the parish priest of Talavera; the other occupied the distinguished position of a royal chaplain. Both had been found guilty of Judaizing. They were conducted to the Auto in full canonicals, as if about to celebrate Mass, each carrying his veiled chalice. Led to the scaffold of the condemned, they found themselves confronted from the other scaffold not only by the inquisitors and their attendants and familiars, but further by the Bishop, who was attended by two Jeronymites—the Abbot of the Convent of St. Bernard and the Prior of the Convent of Sisla.
The notary of the Holy Office read out the crimes of the accused, and pronounced them cast out from the Church. Thereupon each was brought in turn before the Bishop, who proceeded to degrade him, since the law could not without sacrilege lay violent hands upon an ecclesiastic.
Beginning by depriving each of his chalice, the Bishop passed on to divest the priestly offender of his chasuble; stole, maniple, and alb were removed in succession, the Bishop pronouncing the prescribed formula for each stage of the degradation, and defacing the tonsure by clipping away a portion of the surrounding fringe of hair.
At last the doomed clerics stood stripped of all insignia of their office. And now the sanbenito—that chasuble of infamy—was flung upon the shoulders of each; their heads were crowned with the tragically grotesque coroza, a rope was put about each neck, and their hands were pinioned. The sentence was fulfilled at last by their being abandoned to the secular authorities, who seized them and bore them away to the stake.
On Sunday, October 16, a proclamation was read in the Cathedral, pronouncing several deceased persons to have been heretics, and setting forth that, although dead themselves, their reputations lived as those of Christians. Therefore it became necessary to publish their heresy, and their heirs were summoned to appear within twenty days and render to the inquisitors an account of their inheritances, from the enjoyment of which they were disqualified, since all property that had belonged to the deceased was, by virtue of Torquemada’s decree, confiscate to the royal treasury.
On December 10 900 persons were admitted to public reconciliation. They were self-delators from remote country districts who had responded to a recent edict of grace published in those districts.
The notary announced the forms of Judaizing of which each had been guilty and proclaimed it as their intention henceforth to live and die in the faith of Christ. He then read out the Articles of Faith, and they were required to say “I believe” after each, and lastly to make oath upon the Gospels and the crucifix never again to fall into the error of Judaism, to denounce any whom they knew to be Judaizers, and ever to favour and uphold the Holy Inquisition and the Holy Catholic faith.
The penance imposed was that they should be scourged in procession for seven Fridays, and thereafter on the first Friday of every month for a year. This in their own districts. In addition, they were required to come to Toledo and be scourged in procession on the Feast of St. Mary of August and on the Thursday of Holy Week. Two hundred of them were further ordered to wear a sanbenito over their ordinary garments for a year from that date, and never to appear in public without it under pain of being deemed impenitent and punished as relapsed.
Another 700 came to be reconciled on January 15, 1487, and yet another 1,200 on March 10. These last, Orozco says, were from the districts of Talavera, Madrid, and Guadalajara; and he adds that some amongst them were penanced to the extent of being condemned to wear the sanbenito for the remainder of their lives.
In the Auto of May 7 fourteen men and nine women were burnt. Amongst the former was a Canon of Toledo who was accused of horrible heresies, and who, writes Orozco, had confessed under torture to abominable subversions of the words of the Mass. Instead of the prescribed formula of the consecration, he had stated that he was in the habit of uttering the absurd and almost meaningless gibberish—“Sus Periquete, que mira la gente.”
On the following day there was held a supplementary Auto, especially for the purpose of dealing with deceased and fugitive heretics, conducted with a ceremony of an unusual and singularly theatrical order, which is not so much typical—as are the other Autos described—of what was taking place throughout Spain, as indicative of a morbid inventiveness on the part of the Toledan inquisitors.
On the scaffold usually occupied by the accused a sepulchral monument of wood had been erected and draped in black. As each accused was cited by the notary, the familiars opened the monument and drew out the effigy of the dead man dressed in the grave-clothes peculiar to the Jews.
To this dummy of straw the detailed account of his crimes and the sentence of the court whereby he was condemned as a heretic were solemnly read out. When all the condemnations had thus been proclaimed, the effigies were flung into a bonfire that had been kindled in the square; and together with the effigies went the bones of the deceased, which had been exhumed to that end.
After that the next Auto of importance was held on July 25, 1488, when twenty men and seventeen women were sent to the stake, with a supplementary Auto upon the morrow in which they burnt the effigies of over a hundred dead and fugitive heretics.
And so it goes on, as recorded by the licentiate Sebastian Orozco, and cited by Llorente143 and Fidel Fita.144 From now onwards the burnings increase in number. Indeed, all edicts of grace having expired, and no new ones being permissible, sentencing to the flames—through the medium of the secular arm—and to perpetual imprisonment becomes the chief business of the Inquisition in Toledo and elsewhere.
The sanbenitos of the burnt were preserved in the churches of the parishes where they had lived. They were hung in these churches as banners won in battle are hung—trophies of victory over heresy.
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 says149 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 admits150 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.
The extravagant story related by Martinez Moreno, the parish priest of La Guardia, in his little book on the Santo Niño, is derived, as we have said, partly from the “Testimonio” and partly from the “Memoria” by de Vegas; further, it embodies all those legendary, supernatural details with which the popular imagination had embellished the theme.
Either it is one of those deliberate frauds known as “pious,” or else it is the production of an intensely foolish mind. When we consider that the author was a doctor of divinity and an inquisitor himself, we prefer to incline to the former alternative.
This mixture of fact and fiction sets forth how a party of Jews from the townships of Quintana, Tenbleque, and La Guardia, having witnessed an Auto de Fé in Toledo, were so filled with rage and fury, not only against the Holy Tribunal, but against all Christians in general, that they conspired together to encompass a complete annihilation of the Faithful.
Amongst them was one Benito Garcia, a wool-comber of Las Mesuras, who was something of a traveller, and who had learnt upon his travels of a piece of sorcery attempted in France for the destruction of the Christians, which had miscarried owing to a deception practised upon the sorcerers.
The story is worth repeating for the sake of the light it throws upon the credulity of the simple folk of Spain in such matters, a credulity which in remote districts of the peninsula is almost as vigorous to-day as it was in Moreno’s century.
The warlocks, in that earlier instance of which Benito had knowledge, were alleged to be a party of Jews who had fled from Spain on the first institution of the Inquisition in Seville in 1482. They had repaired to France bent upon the destruction of all Christians, to the end that the Children of Israel might become lords of the land, and that the Law of Moses might prevail. For the sorcery to which they proposed to resort they required a consecrated wafer and the heart of a Christian child. These were to be reduced to ashes to the accompaniment of certain incantations, and scattered in the rivers of the country, with the result that all Christians who drank the waters must go mad and die.
Having obtained the wafer, they now approached an impoverished Christian with a large family, and tempted him with money to sell them the heart of one of his numerous children. The Christian, of course, repudiated the monstrous proposal. But his wife, who combined cunning with cupidity, drove with the Jews the bargain to which her husband refused to be a party, and having killed a pig she sold them the heart of the animal under obviously false pretences.
As a consequence, the enchantment which the deluded Jews proceeded to carry out had no such effect as was desired and expected.
Armed with his full knowledge of what had happened, Benito now proposed to his friends that they should have recourse to the same enchantment in Spain, making sure, however, that the heart employed was that of a Christian boy. He promised them that by this means, not only the inquisitors, but all the Christians would be destroyed, and the Israelites would remain undisputed lords of Spain.