Amongst those who joined him in the plot was a man named Juan Franco, of a family of carriers of La Guardia. This man went with Benito to Toledo on the Feast of the Assumption, intent upon finding a child for their purpose. They drove there in a cart, which they left outside the city while they went separately about their quest.

Franco found what he sought in one of the doorways of the Cathedral, known as the Puerta del Perdon—the door, adds Moreno, through which the Virgin entered the church when she came from heaven to honour with the chasuble her votary St. Ildefonso. The Jew beheld in this doorway a very beautiful child of three or four years of age, the son of Alonso de Pasamontes. His mother was near at hand, but she was conveniently blind—i.e. conveniently for the development of Moreno’s story, this blindness serving not only the purpose of rendering the child’s undetected abduction easily possible, but also that of affording the martyred infant scope for the first miraculous manifestation of his sanctity.

Juan Franco lured the boy away with the offer of sweetmeats. He regained his cart with his victim, concealed the latter therein, and so returned to La Guardia. There he kept the child closely and safely until Passion Week of the following year, or, rather, until the season of the Passover, when the eleven Jews—six of whom had received Christian baptism—assembled in La Guardia. They took the child by night to a cave in the hills above the river, and there they compelled him to play the protagonist part in a detailed parody of the Passion, scourging him, crowning him with thorns, and finally nailing him to a cross.

On the subject of the scourging, Moreno tells us that the Jews carefully counted the number of lashes, aiming in this, as in all other details, at the greatest historical fidelity. But when the child had borne without murmuring upwards of five thousand strokes, he suddenly began to cry. One of the Jews—finding, we are to suppose, that this weeping required explanation—asked him: “Boy, why are you crying?”

To this the boy replied that he was crying because he had received five lashes more than his Divine Master.

“So that,” says this doctor of divinity quite soberly, “if the lashes received by Christ numbered 5,495, as computed by Lodulfo Cartujano in his ‘In Vita Christi,’ those received by the Holy Child Christoval were 5,500.”162

He mentions here the child’s name as “Christoval,” to which he informs us that it was changed from “Juan,” to the end that the former might more aptly express the manner of his death. There is no doubt that some such consideration weighed when the child was given that suggestive name; but the real reason for it was that no name was known (for the identity of the boy did not transpire), and it was necessary to supply him with one by which he might be worshipped.

When he was crucified, his side was opened by one of the Jews, who began to rummage163 for the child’s heart. He failed to find it, and he was suddenly checked by the child’s question—“What do you seek, Jew? If you seek my heart, you are in error to seek it on that side; seek on the other, and you will find it.”

In the very moment of his death, Moreno tells us, the Santo Niño performed his first miracle. His mother, who had been blind from birth, received the gift of sight in the instant that her child expired.164

This interpolation appears to be entirely Moreno’s own, and it is one of the justifications of our assumption that the work is to be placed in the category of pious frauds. But he is, of course, mistaken, by his own narrative, in announcing this as the first of the child’s miracles. He overlooks the miracle entailed in the capacity to count displayed by a boy of four years of age, and the further miracle of the speech addressed by the crucified infant to the Jew who had opened his side.

Benito Garcia was given the heart, together with a consecrated wafer which had been stolen by the sacristan of the Church of Sta. Maria de La Guardia, and with these he departed to seek out the mage who was to perform the enchantment. It happened, however, that in passing through Astorga, Benito—who was himself a converso—pretending that he was a faithful Catholic, repaired to church, and, kneeling there, the more thoroughly to perform this comedy of devoutness, he pulled out a Prayer Book, between the leaves of which the consecrated wafer had been secreted.

A good Christian kneeling some little way behind him was startled to see a resplendent effluence of light from the book. Naturally he concluded that he was in the presence of a miracle, and that this stranger was some very holy man. Filled with reverent interest, he followed the Jew to the inn where he was lodged, and then went straight to the father inquisitors to inform them of the portent he had witnessed, that they might investigate it.

The inquisitors sent their familiars to find the man, and at sight of them Benito fell into terror, “so that his very face manifested how great was his crime.” He was at once arrested, and taken before the inquisitors for examination. There he immediately confessed the whole affair.

Upon being desired to surrender the heart, he produced the box in which it had been placed, but upon opening the cloth that had been wrapped round it, the heart was discovered to have miraculously vanished.

Yet another miracle mentioned by Moreno is that when the inquisitors opened the grave where it was said that the infant had been buried, they found the place empty, and the Doctor considers that since the child had suffered all the bitterness of the Saviour’s Passion, it was God’s will that he should also know the glories of the Resurrection, and that his body had been assoomed into heaven.

The “Testimonio” from the archives of the parochial church of La Guardia, printed on tablets preserved in the Sanctuary of the Santo Niño, is quoted by Moreno,165 and runs as follows:

“We, Pedro de Tapia, Alonso Doriga and Matheo Vazquez, secretaries of the Council of the Holy and General Inquisition, witness to all who may see this that by certain proceedings taken by the Holy Office in the year 1491, the Most Reverend Frey Tomás de Torquemada being Inquisitor-General in the Kingdoms of Spain, and the inquisitors and judges by him deputed in the City of Avila being the Very Reverend Dr. D. Pedro de Villada, Abbot of San Marcial and San Millan in the Churches of Leon and Burgos, the Licentiate Juan Lopez de Cigales, Canon of the Church of Cuenca, and Frey Fernando de Santo Domingo of the Order of Preachers, inquisitors as is said against heretical pravity, and with power and special commission from the Very Reverend D. Pedro Gonzalez de Mendoza, Cardinal of Santa Cruz, Archbishop of Toledo, Primate of Spain, Grand Chancellor of Castile, and Bishop of Siguenza.

“It transpires that the said inquisitors proceeding against certain Jews and some New-Christians converted from Jews, of the neighbourhood of La Guardia, Quintanar, and Tenbleque, ascertained that amongst other crimes by these committed was that: one of the said Jews and one of the newly-converted being in Toledo and witnessing a burning that was being done by the Holy Office in that city, they were cast down by this execution of justice. The Jew said to the convert that he feared the great harm that might come and did come to them from the Holy Inquisition, and having treated of various matters germane to this subject, the Jew said that if they could obtain the heart of a Christian boy all could be remedied. And so, after his wide practice in this matter, the Jew from the neighbourhood of Quintanar undertook to procure a Christian boy for the said purpose.

“And it was agreed that the said New-Christian should go to Quintanar as soon as bidden by the Jew; and upon this understanding each of the aforesaid left the City of Toledo and returned to his own district.

“A few days later the said Jew summoned the New-Christian to come to him in the village of Tenbleque, where he awaited him in his father’s house. There they foregathered, and agreed upon a day when they should meet at Quintanar, whither the New-Christian now returned, and informed, as he had agreed, a brother of his own, who like himself was also a New-Christian, and he related fully all that had been arranged, his brother being of the same mind.

“The better to execute their accursed project, they arranged a place to which the child should be brought, and what was to be done—that this should be in a cave near La Guardia, on the road to Ocaña, on the right-hand side. And thus to execute the matter, the said New-Christian went to Quintanar on the day arranged together with the said Jew.

“The better to dissemble, he went to a tavern, where presently he was able to communicate with the Jew, and as a result of what passed between them, the New-Christian went out to await him on the road to Villa Palomas in a ravine, where presently he was joined by the said Jew on an ass with the child before him—of the age of three or four years.

“They went on together, and arrived after nightfall at the said cave, whither came, as was arranged, the brother of the New-Christian, and with him other newly-converted Jews, with whom it appears that the aforesaid matter had been treated.

“Being all assembled in the cave, they lighted a candle of yellow wax, and so that the light should not be seen they hung a cloak over the mouth of the cave. They seized the boy, whom the said Jew had taken from the Puerta del Perdon in Toledo—which boy was named Juan, son of Alonso Pasamontes and of Juana La Guindera. The said New-Christians now made a cross out of the timbers of a ladder which had been brought from a mill. They threw a rope round the boy’s neck and they set him on the cross, and with another rope they tied his legs and arms, and they nailed his feet and hands to the cross with nails.

“Being thus placed (puesto), one of the New-Christians from the neighbourhood of La Guardia bled the child, opening the veins of his arms with a knife, and he caught the blood that flowed in a cauldron; and with a rope in which they had tied knots some whipped him, whilst others set a crown of thorns upon his head. They struck him, spat upon him, and used opprobrious words to him, pretending that what they were saying to the said child was addressed to the Person of Christ. And whilst they whipped him, they said: ‘Betrayer, trickster, who, when you preached, preached falsehood against the Law of God and Moses; now you shall pay here for what you said then. You thought to destroy us and to exalt yourself. But we shall destroy you.’ And further: ‘Crucify this betrayer who once announced himself King, who was to destroy our temple....’ etc. etc.166

“After the ill-treatment and vituperation, one of the New-Christians from La Guardia opened the left side of the child with a knife and drew out his heart, upon which he threw some salt; and so the child expired upon the cross. All of which was done in mockery of the Passion of Christ; and some of the New-Christians took the body of the child and buried it in a vineyard near Sta. Maria de Pera.

“A few days later the said Jew and New-Christians met again in the cave and attempted certain enchantments and conjurations with the heart of the child and a consecrated Host obtained through a sacristan who was a New-Christian. This conjuration and experiment they performed with the intention that the inquisitors of heretical pravity and all other Christians should enrage and die raging (rabiendo), and the Law of Jesus Christ our Redeemer should be entirely destroyed and superseded by the Law of Moses.

“When they saw that the said experiment did not operate nor had the result they hoped, they assembled again elsewhere, and having treated of all that they desired to effect, by common consent one of them was sent with the heart of the said child and the consecrated Host to the Aljama of Zamora, which they accounted the principal Aljama in Castile, to the end that certain Jews there, known to be wise men, should with the said heart and Host perform the said experiment and sorcery that the Christians might enrage and die, and thus accomplish what they so ardently desired.

“And for the greater ascertaining of the crime and demonstration of the truth, the said inquisitors having arrested some of the said offenders, New-Christians and Jews, they set the accused face to face, so that in the confession of their crimes there was conformity, and these confessions consisted of what has been here set down. In addition other further steps were taken to verify the places where the crimes were committed and the place where the child was buried; and they took one of the principal accused to the place where the child was buried, and there they found signs and demonstration of the truth of all.167 Some of the said accused, and some already deceased, being prosecuted, they were sentenced and abandoned to the secular arm, all that we have set down being in accordance with the records of the proceedings to which we refer.

“The said ‘Testimonio’ written upon three sheets bearing our rubrics, we the said secretaries deliver by request of the Procurator-General of the village of La Guardia, by order of the Very Illustrious Señores of His Majesty’s Council of the Holy Inquisition in the City of Madrid in the Diocese of Toledo, on the 19th day of September of the year of the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ, 1569.

This “Testimonio” does not afford us the name of any one of the offenders—presumably that the holy place in which the tablets were exposed should not be desecrated. When it is compared with the account left by Moreno and the discrepancies between the two become apparent, when, further, the extravagances of Moreno’s story are considered, it is not surprising that the conclusion should have been reached that the whole affair was trumped up to forward that campaign against the Jews to which Torquemada was employing his enormous energies.

But the records of the trial of Yucé Franco discovered by Fidel Fita throw a very different light upon the matter. And whilst we know that Torquemada did avail himself to the utmost of this affair of the Santo Niño to encompass the banishment of the Jews from Spain, we must consider all notion that he himself simply invented the story to that end as completely dispelled by the evidence that is now to be examined.

From the records of the trial of Yucé Franco we are to-day not only able very largely to reconstruct the event, but also to present a complete instance of the application of the jurisprudence of the Inquisition. Indeed, had the archives of the Holy Office been ransacked for an entirely typical prosecution, embodying all the features peculiar to that terrible court, no better instance than this could have been forthcoming.

CHAPTER XX
THE ARREST OF YUCÉ FRANCO

In May or June of 1490—the time of year being approximately determined by the events that follow—a baptized Jew of Las Mesuras named Benito Garcia put up at an inn in the northern village of Astorga. He was an elderly man of some sixty years of age, a wool-comber by trade and a considerable traveller in the course of his trading.

In the common-room of the tavern where he sat at table were several men of Astorga, who, either in a drunken frolic or because they were thieves, went through the contents of his knapsack, and discovered in it some herbs and a communion wafer, which they at once assumed to be consecrated (and which it was grossest sacrilege for a layman so much as to touch).

Uproar followed the announcement of the discovery. With cries of “Sacrilege!” these thieving drunkards fell upon the Jew. They beat him. They flung a rope about his neck, dragged him from the inn and haled him into the presence of the Provisor of Astorga, Dr. Pedro de Villada. The reverend doctor discharged there the functions of an agent of the Holy Office. He was fully experienced in inquisitorial affairs, and he was upon the eve of being promoted to the dignity of inquisitor in the court of Avila.

Villada received the wafer, heard the accusation, and took a short way with Benito when the latter refused to explain himself. He ordered him two hundred lashes, and finding the man still obdurate after this punishment, he submitted him to the water-torture. Under this the wretched fellow at last betrayed himself. Of precisely what he said we have no record taken at the time; but we have his own word for it—as reported afterwards by Yucé Franco to whom he uttered it—that “he had said more than he knew, and enough to burn him.”168

Having, as is clear, obtained from him an admission of his own guilt, Villada now proceeded, as prescribed by the “Directorium,” to induce him to incriminate others. We know the methods usually employed; from these and from what follows it is quite reasonable to assume that recourse was had to them now.

Following Eymeric’s instructions, Villada would, no doubt, admonish him with extreme kindness, professing to cast no blame upon Benito himself but rather upon those evil ones who had seduced him into error, and he would exhort the prisoner to save himself by showing a true penitence, pointing out that the only proof of his penitence he could advance would be a frank and free delation of those who had led him so grievously astray.

From the occasional glimpses of this Benito Garcia vouchsafed us in the records of the trial of Yucé Franco, we perceive a rather reckless personality, of a certain grim, sardonic humour, gleams of which actually pierce through the dehumanization of the legal documents to ensnare our sympathy.

He is imbued with contempt for these Christians whose religion he embraced forty years ago, in what he accounts a weak moment of his youth, and from which he secretly seceded again some five years before his arrest. He is weighed down by remorse for having been false to the Jewish faith in which he was born; he believes himself overtaken by the curse which his father launched upon him when he took that apostatizing step; he is out of all conceit with Christianity; since seeing the bonfires of the Faith he has come to the conclusion that as a religion it is an utter failure; it has been his habit to sneer at Jews who were inclining to Christianity.

“Get yourselves baptized,” was the gibe he flung at them, “and go and see how they burn the New-Christians.”169

In the prison of Avila—when he gets there—his one professed aim is to die in the faith of his fathers.

But it would seem that when first taken in the toils of the Inquisition, and having experienced in his own person the horrors of its methods, he realizes the sweetness of life, and eagerly avails himself of the false loophole so alluringly exposed by the reverend doctor.

In his examination of June 6 he betrays to Villada the course of his re-Judaizing. He relates that five years ago, whilst in talk with one Juan de Ocaña, a converso whom he believes to be a Jew at heart under an exterior of Christianity, the latter had urged him to return to the Jewish faith, saying that Christ and the Virgin were myths, and that there is no true law but that of Moses. Lending an ear to these persuasions, Benito had done many Jewish things, such as not going to church (although he whipped his children when they stayed away, lest their absence should betray his own apostasy) nor observing holy-days, eating meat on Fridays and fast-days at the house of Mosé Franco and Yucé Franco—Jews of the neighbourhood of Tenbleque—and wherever else he could eat it without being detected. Indeed, for the past five years, he admits, he has been a Jew at heart, and if during that time he did not more completely observe Jewish rites and practices, it was because he dared not for fear of being discovered; whilst all the Christian acts he had performed had been merely a simulation, that he might appear to be a Christian still. The confessions he had made to the priest of La Guardia had been false ones, and he had never gone to Communion—“believing that the Corpus Christi was all a farce (creyendo que todo era burla el Corpus Christi).” He even added that whenever he saw the Viaticum carried through the streets, it was his habit to spit and to make higas (a gesture of contempt).170

In these last particulars his confession is of an extreme frankness, and we can only suppose that he is merely repeating what the torture had already extracted from him. Completely to elucidate the matter as it concerns Benito Garcia, we should require to be in possession of the full records of his own trial (which have not yet been discovered), whereas at present we have to depend upon odd documents from that dossier which are introduced in Yucé Franco’s as relating to the latter.

Questioned more closely concerning these Jews he has mentioned—Mosé and Yucé Franco—Benito states that they lived with their father, Ça Franco, at Tenbleque, that he was in the habit of visiting them upon matters of business, and that he had frequently eaten meat at their house on Fridays and Saturdays and other forbidden days, and had often given them money to purchase oil for the synagogue lamps.

We know that, as a consequence of these confessions, Ça Franco, an old man of eighty years of age, and his son Yucé, a lad of twenty who was a cobbler by trade, were arrested on July 1, 1489, for proselytizing practices—i.e. for having induced Benito Garcia to abandon the Christian faith to which he had been converted.

Ça’s other son, Mosé, was either dead at the time or else he died very shortly after arrest and before being brought to trial.

Juan de Ocaña, too, was arrested upon the same grounds.

They were taken to Segovia, and thrown into the prison of the Holy Office in that city. In this prison Yucé Franco fell so seriously ill that he believed himself at the point of death.

A physician named Antonio de Avila, who spoke either Hebrew or the jargon of Hebrew and Romance that was current among the Jews of the Peninsula, went to attend to the sick youth. Yucé implored this doctor to beseech the inquisitors to send a Jew to pray with him and to prepare him for death—“que le dixiese las cosas que disen los Judios quando se quieren morir.”

The physician, who, like all the family of the Inquisition, was himself a spy, duly conveyed the request to the inquisitors. They seized the chance to put into practice one of the instructions advanced by Eymeric. They sent a Dominican, one Frey Alonso Enriquez, disguised as a Jew, to minister to the supposed moribund. The friar had a fluent command of the language spoken by the Jews of Spain. He introduced himself to the lad as a Rabbi named Abraham, and completely imposed upon him and won his confidence.

He pressed Yucé to confide in him, and in his manner of doing so he proceeded along the crafty lines advocated by the “Directorium.”

Eymeric, as will be remembered, enjoins that when a prisoner is examined, the precise accusation against him should not be disclosed; rather he should be questioned as to why he conceives that he has been arrested and by whom he supposes himself to have been accused, with the object of perhaps discovering further and hitherto unsuspected matters against him.

Against Yucé Franco and the other prisoners there was at this stage no charge beyond that—serious enough in itself—of having induced Benito Garcia to re-Judaize. But the disguised friar now pressed him with probing questions, asking him what he had done to get himself arrested.

Yucé—who did not yet know what was the charge—entirely duped, and believing that his visitor was a Rabbi of his own faith, replied that “he had been arrested on account of the mita of a nahar, which had been after the manner of Otohays.”171

We have left the Hebrew words untranslated to illustrate the unintelligibility of the phrase to the general.

Mita means “killing,” nahar means “a boy,” whilst Otohays—literally “that man”—is startling because it is identical with the term used in St. Luke (xxiii. 4) and in the Acts of the Apostles (v. 28) to designate Christ.

Yucé begged the false Rabbi Abraham to go to the Chief Rabbi of the Synagogue of Segovia,172 a man of very considerable importance and influence, and to inform him of this fact, but otherwise to keep the matter very secret.

The Dominican repaired to the inquisitors who had sent him with this very startling piece of information, which was corroborated by the physician, who had remained well within earshot during the entire interview.

By order of the inquisitors Frey Alfonso Enriquez returned to Yucé’s prison a few days later to attempt to elicit from the young Jew further particulars of the matter to which he had alluded. But the lad—probably considerably recovered by now, and therefore more alert—evinced the greatest mistrust of the physician Avila, who was hovering near them, and would not utter another word on the subject.173

The matter was of such gravity that we are quite safe in assuming—and we have evidence to warrant the assumption—that it was instantly communicated to Torquemada, who at the time was at his convent of Segovia, practically upon the spot.

We know—as will presently transpire—that it was by order of Torquemada that Yucé Franco and the others came to be in the prison of the Holy Office at Segovia, instead of in that of the extremely active Inquisition of Toledo, within whose jurisdiction the accused dwelt and the crime had been committed. We are unable to give an absolutely authentic reason for this. But we gather that the examination of Ça Franco, or of Ocaña, or perhaps of Benito himself—who had said “more than he knew”—must have yielded disclosures of such a nature that upon learning them the Grand Inquisitor had desired that the trial should be conducted immediately under his own direction.

The Sovereigns, who had been in Andalusia since May of the previous year, about the war upon Granada, now wrote to Torquemada—in July 1490—bidding him join them there.

From Segovia the Grand Inquisitor replied, urging very pressing business to which he proposed to give his personal attention, wherefore he begged them to permit him to postpone his response to their summons.174

He quitted Segovia at about this time to repair to Avila, where the work upon the church and monastery of St. Thomas was well advanced; so well advanced, indeed, that already he was able to take up his residence in the monastery.

We may assume that the pressing business he had urged to the Sovereigns as an excuse for postponing his journey into Andalusia was the business of inquiring into the alleged crimes of these Hebrew prisoners. For we know that he had intended having them brought before himself at Avila, but that being unable to dispose of the matter before the end of August or to postpone beyond that time his departure to rejoin the Court, he was compelled to entrust the matter to his delegates—the Dominican Frey Fernando de Santo Domingo, and the sometime Provisor of Astorga, Dr. Pedro de Villada, with whom, no doubt, he would leave—as he says himself—the fullest instructions.

So much we are justified in assuming from the tenor of the following letter, which he delivered to them under date of August 27, to serve them as their warrant to remove the prisoners from Segovia and bring them to Avila for trial.

He wrote as follows:

“We, Frey Tomás de Torquemada, Prior of the Monastery of Holy Cross of Segovia, of the Order of Preachers, Confessor and Councillor to the King and Queen, our Sovereign lords, Inquisitor-General of heretical pravity and apostasy in the Kingdoms of Castile and Aragon and all other Dominions of their Highnesses, so deputed by the Holy Apostolic See,

Make known to you,

Reverend and Devout Fathers, D. Pedro de Villada, Doctor of Canon Law ... Juan Lopes de Cigales, Licentiate of Holy Theology ... and to you, Frey Fernando de Santo Domingo ... Inquisitors of heretical pravity in the said City and Bishopric of Avila,

That we, by certain and legitimate information received, ordered the arrest of the persons and bodies of Alonso Franco, Lope Franco, Garcia Franco, and Juan Franco of the neighbourhood of La Guardia in the Archbishopric of Toledo, and of Yucé Franco, a Jew of the neighbourhood of Tenbleque, and of Mosé Abenamias, a Jew of the City of Zamora, and of Juan de Ocaña and Benito Garcia, of the neighbourhood of the said place of La Guardia, and the sequestration of all their property for having practised heresy and apostasy and for having perpetrated certain deeds, crimes, and offences against our Holy Catholic Faith, and we ordered them to be taken to and held in the prison of the Holy Inquisition of the City of Segovia until their cases should be fully known to and decided by us or by such person or persons to whom we consign them upon being so acquainted.

“But inasmuch as we are now occupied with other and arduous matters, and therefore may not personally acquaint ourselves with the said cases or with any one of them, trusting in the legality, learning, experience, and sound conscience of you, the said Reverend Father Inquisitors and of each of you, and that you are such persons as will well and faithfully discharge what we entrust to you by these presents we commit to you, the said Reverend Father Inquisitors, and to each of you, in solidum, the said proceedings against and trials of the aforementioned and of any of them, whether they may have been participators or accessories before or after the fact of the said crimes and offences in any way committed against our Holy Catholic Faith, and likewise of the abettors, counsellors, defenders, concealers, those who had knowledge of the facts and offenders of whatsoever degree, to the end that concerning them you may receive and obtain any information from any part of the said Kingdoms, and seize and examine any witness, and inquire, learn, proceed, imprison, sentence, and abandon to the secular arm such as you may find guilty, absolve and liberate those without guilt, and do concerning them all things and any thing that we ourselves should do being present....

“And by these presents we order the Father Inquisitors of the City of Segovia and each and any of them in whose power are the said prisoners to deliver them immediately in safe custody to you.

“Given in the Monastery of St. Thomas of the said Order of Preachers, which is beyond and near the walls of the said City of Avila.”175

At what stage of the affair the four brothers Franco of La Guardia—Alonso, Lope, Garcia, and Juan—had been arrested, and upon whose information, we do not know. But we do know—for the dossier of Yucé’s trial is complete—that they were not betrayed by Yucé.

That their names had been divulged is a confirmation of the surmise that the examinations of Ocaña, or Ça Franco, or even Benito Garcia, had already yielded further information on the subject of the affair of La Guardia.

It must be understood that the record of any examination of these prisoners in which the name of Yucé Franco was not mentioned would find no place in the dossier of the latter’s trial.

The four Francos of La Guardia were brothers, as we have said; but they were nowise related to the Francos of Tenbleque—Ça and Yucé. They were dealers in cereals—possibly millers—as we shall see, and they owned a number of carts which they appear to have further employed in a carrier’s business. They were baptized Jews, as is already made clear in Torquemada’s letter by the fact that he does not describe them—as he does the others—as Jews.

All concerned in the affair, with the exception of one Ribera, who does not at present enter into consideration, were men drawn from a humble class of life—a class which through ignorance has always been credulous and prone to belief in sorcery and enchantments.

A curious circumstance is the omission in Torquemada’s letter of all mention of the octogenarian Ça Franco, whom we know to have been already under arrest.

Having thus entrusted the conduct of the affair to his subordinates, the Grand Inquisitor set out to join the Sovereigns in Andalusia.

The prisoners were soon afterwards brought to Avila, secrecy being so well observed that each remained in ignorance of the arrest of the others. But before being transferred from Segovia Yucé was taken before the Holy Office there for examination on October 27 and 28. And from the nature of the questions—as revealed by the depositions made—we are left to assume that the inquisitors aimed at further incriminating the Francos of La Guardia, proceeding upon information extracted from them, or else obtained from one of the other prisoners.

In answer to the questions set him, Yucé Franco deponed that some three years earlier he had gone to La Guardia to buy wheat for the unleavened bread of the Passover from Alonso Franco, having been told that the latter had wheat of good quality for sale. He sought Alonso in the market, and thence accompanied him to his house. Talking as they went, Alonso asked him why they made this unleavened bread, to which Yucé replied that it was to commemorate God’s deliverance of the Children of Israel out of Egypt.

The question may certainly seem an odd one from a man who had been born a Jew. But it should be remembered that ignorance and lack of education might easily account for it.

Yucé further deponed that in the pursuit of this conversation Alonso not only betrayed nostalgic leanings towards his original faith, but actually admitted that together with some of his brothers he had crucified a boy one Good Friday in the manner that the Jews had crucified Christ.

Continuing, he said that Alonso had asked him whether the Paschal lamb eaten by the Jews at the time of leaving Egypt had been terefa (slaughtered and bled in the Jewish manner), to which Yucé had replied that it had not, as at that time the Law had not yet been made.

These replies were construed by the inquisitors into admissions of proselytizing on the part of Yucé, and when subsequently at Avila (January 10, 1491) he was reminded of what he had said at Segovia concerning what had passed between Alonso Franco and himself, and asked whether he could remember anything further, he confirmed all that he had already deponed, but could only add a question on the subject of circumcision which had been addressed to him by Alonso.176

The fiscal advocate, or prosecutor of the tribunal, prepared his case against Yucé Franco, and on December 17, 1490, he came before the court at the audience of vespers to open the prosecution.

CHAPTER XXI
THE TRIAL OF YUCÉ FRANCO

The Fiscal, D. Alonso de Guevára, announces to their Reverend Paternities that his denunciation of Yucé Franco is prepared, and he solicits them to order the prisoner to be brought into the audience-chamber that he may hear it read.

The apparitor of the court introduces the accused into the presence of the inquisitors and their notary, to whom Guevára now hands his formal accusation. This the notary proceeds to read. Thus:

“Most Reverend and Virtuous Sirs,—I, Alonso de Guevára, Bachelor of Law, Fiscal Prosecutor of the Holy Inquisition in this City and Diocese of Avila, appear before your Reverend Paternities in the manner by law prescribed, to denounce Yucé Franco, Jew, of the neighbourhood of Tenbleque, who is present.

“Not content that, in common with all other Jews, he is humanely permitted to abide and converse with the faithful and Catholic Christians, he did induce and attract some Christians to his accursed Law with false and deceptive doctrines and suggestions, telling them that the Law of Moses is the true one, in which there is salvation, and that the Law of Jesus Christ is a false and fictitious Law never imposed or decreed by God.

“And with infidel and depraved soul he went with some others to crucify a Christian boy, one Good Friday, almost in the manner and with that hatred and cruelty with which the Jews, his ancestors, crucified our Redeemer Jesus Christ, mocking and spitting upon him, striking and wounding him with the aim of vituperating and deriding our Holy Catholic Faith and the Passion of our Saviour Jesus Christ.

“Item, he contrived, as principal, together with others, to obtain a consecrated Host to be outraged and mocked in vituperation and contempt of our Holy Catholic Faith, and because amongst the other Jews—accomplices in the said crime—there were certain sorcerers who on the day of their Passover of unleavened bread were to commit enchantments with the said Host and the heart of a Christian boy. And if this were done, as said, all Christians were to enrage and die. The intention moving them was that the Law of Moses should be more widely kept and honoured, its rites and precepts and ceremonies more freely solemnized, that the Christian Religion should perish and be subverted, and that they, themselves, should become possessed of all the property of the Catholic and Faithful Christians, and there should be none to interfere with their perverse errors, and their generation should grow and multiply upon the earth, that of the Faithful Christians being entirely extirpated.

“Item, he committed other crimes concerning the Holy Office of the Holy Inquisition, as I shall state and allege in the course of these proceedings as far as I may consider necessary.

“Wherefore I beg you, Reverend Sirs, that you pronounce the said Yucé Franco, for the said crimes, to be a malefactor, abettor of heretics, and a subverter and destroyer of the Catholic and Christian Law; and that he shall be deemed to have fallen into and incurred all the penalties and censures prescribed by canon and civil law for those who commit these crimes, and the confiscation and loss of all his property, which shall be applied to the royal treasury, and that he may be abandoned to the secular arm and justice that it may do with him as by law befits with a malefactor, an abettor of heretics, and an extirpator of the Catholic Faith....

“Wherefore I petition your Reverences to proceed against the said Yucé Franco simpliciter et de plano et sine estrepitu judicii, as runs the formula prescribed by law in such cases,177 to the end that justice may be fulfilled.

“And I swear to God on this Cross on which I set my hand, that this petition and denunciation which I bring against Yucé Franco I do not bring maliciously, but because I believe him to have committed all that I have stated, and to the end that justice may be done and the wicked and the abettors of heretics be punished, that the good men may be known and that our Holy Catholic Faith may be exalted.”178

It will be seen presently that at this stage of the proceedings Yucé had not the slightest suspicion that the pretended Rabbi Abraham who had visited him in his prison of Segovia when he lay sick was other than he had announced himself. Nor did the accusation afford him the least hint that any of his associates had been taken, or that Benito Garcia had been examined under torture. So carefully had they managed things that he was not even aware of the arrest of his old father.

Therefore it must have come as something of a shock to him to hear this matter of the crucifixion of the child at La Guardia included in the indictment. Nevertheless he unhesitatingly pronounced the denunciation to be the “greatest falsehood in the world.”

Guevára answered this denial by petitioning the court to receive the proofs which he was prepared to present.

Being asked whether in the preparation of his defence he would require the services of counsel, Yucé replied in the affirmative, and the tribunal appointed as his attorney the Bachelor Sanç,179 and as his advocate Juan de Pantigoso. The usual form of oath was imposed upon these lawyers, and Yucé empowered them to act for him within the narrow limitations imposed by the Holy Office, which afforded them no opportunity to cross-examine the witnesses for the prosecution or even to be present at their examination.

The notary of the court was ordered to supply the defendant with a copy of the indictment, and Yucé was allowed a term of nine days within which to prepare his answer.

Five days later the accused successfully petitions the court that to the advocate appointed him be added one Martin Vazquez, to whom he gives the necessary powers. And it is this same Martin Vazquez who on that very day—December 22, 1490—presents to the court the written repudiation of the indictment, prepared by the Bachelor Sanç, in his client’s name.

The advocate begins by respectfully submitting that this court has no jurisdiction over his client on the score of the crimes alleged against him, since their Paternities are inquisitors appointed—Auctoritate Apostolica—for the Diocese of Avila only, and only over persons of that diocese. Yucé is of the Diocese of Toledo, where there are inquisitors of heretical pravity, before whom he is ready to appear to answer any charges. Therefore his case should have been referred to that court of Toledo, and their Paternities should never have received Guevára’s denunciation.

He proceeds to reprove their Paternities for having done so upon sounder grounds, when he protests that the accusation is too vague and general and obscure. It does not state place or year or month or day or hour in which, or persons with whom, it is alleged that his client committed the crimes set forth.

Further, he objects that since his client is a Jew, he cannot with justice be accused of having fallen into the crime of heresy or apostasy; and therefore it is not right that—as may be done in the case of a heretic—the full expression and elucidation of what is charged against him should be withheld, since thus it is impossible for his client to defend himself, not knowing what precisely are the charges made.

The advocate very rightly denounces it as against all equity that the Fiscal should thus prejudice Yucé without particularizing his accusation, and he warns their Paternities that it may prove hurtful to their consciences if, as a result of Guevára’s generalizations, Yucé should come to suffer and die undefended.

It is very unsatisfactory equity which says to a man, “You are accused of such-and-such crimes. Prove your innocence of them, or we punish you.” But it is not equity at all that can say, “You are accused of something; no matter what. Prove to us that you are innocent of all the offences for which this tribunal may proceed against you, or we find you guilty and send you to death.”

This, however, was precisely the method of the Holy Office, and being aware of it, the advocate is forced to confess that in a case of heresy secretly committed the Inquisition may admit an accusation that does not specify time or place of the alleged offence.

But this, he insists, does not apply to his client, who, being a Jew and not having a baptized soul, may not truly be denounced as a heretic. He appeals to the consciences of the inquisitors not to admit the accusation, and finally he threatens that if they do so, he will lodge a complaint where by right he may.

From all this it appears that so completely—as completely as his client—is the advocate in ignorance of the mainsprings of the prosecution that he does not even know that the trial has been ordered by Torquemada, himself, to take place in Avila. That warrant-letter of the Grand Inquisitor’s has not been divulged to the defendant, lest in learning the names of his fellow-accused he should learn too much, be put upon his guard, and equipped to set up a tenable defence.

But in any case, and to be on the safe side, the advocate offers a categorical and eloquent denial of every count in the Fiscal’s indictment.

He scoffs at the absurdity of accusing Yucé Franco of seeking to seduce Christians into embracing the Law of Moses. He urges the lad’s youth, his station in life, his general ignorance (even of that same Law of Moses by which he lives), and the fact that he has to work hard to make a living by his cobbler’s trade; and he adduces that his client has neither the time nor the knowledge necessary to attempt any such proselytizing as that with which he is charged.

He declares that if at any time Yucé did expound any part of the Mosaic Law in answer to questions addressed to him (this being obviously inspired by Yucé’s recollection of the statements he has made under examination concerning Alonso Franco) he did so simply and frankly, with no thought of proselytizing, nor could it so be construed. In fact, save for the answers returned by him to questions asked by Alonso Franco, the lad does not remember ever to have done even so much, which would have been no real offence in any case.

Full and formal, too, is the denial of Yucé’s participation in the crucifixion of any boy, and of having procured or attempted to procure a Host. The advocate ridicules the notion of this cobbler-lad being a sorcerer, or having knowledge of, or interest in, sorcery.

Finally—burrowing ever in the dark, and seeking to undermine possibilities, since he is given no facts that he may demolish—he suggests that the depositions received against Yucé are perhaps susceptible of being interpreted in different ways, and may refer equally to good or evil, and that since he is accused and arrested the things he has, himself, deponed (i.e. concerning Alonso Franco’s Judaizing tendencies) should be interpreted in his favour, and not against him.

Therefore he petitions their Reverend Paternities to order the witnesses to declare with whom, where, when, and how Yucé committed these things which are deponed against him. Failing that, he begs them to declare his client acquitted, to release him, restoring him his good fame and all property that may have been confiscated by order of their Paternities or any other judges of the Inquisition.180

The court commanded the notary to prepare a copy of this plea, and to deliver it to the Fiscal, who was instructed to reply to it within three days. And they further commanded that at the time of the delivery of the said reply, Yucé Franco should again be brought before them that he might learn what was determined concerning him.

The only matter of interest in the next sitting181—and this from the point of view of the illustration which these proceedings afford us of inquisitorial methods—is the Fiscal’s repudiation of any obligation on his part to precise the time or place of the crimes with which Yucé Franco is accused, and his insistence that, in spite of all that has been advanced by the defendant, the case must be considered one of heresy.

The court evidently takes the same view, for it commands both parties to the action to proceed to advance proof of their respective contentions within thirty days. Meanwhile, to clear up the matter of the venue, the court communicates with the Cardinal of Spain. The Primate very promptly grants the requisite permission to transfer the action to Avila from his own Archbishopric of Toledo within whose jurisdiction it had lain. This was the merest formality; for considering the explicit commands in the matter left by the supreme arbiter, Torquemada, the Cardinal could hardly have proceeded otherwise.

The methods now adopted by the Fiscal to obtain the proofs which he requires, or at least to build a more complete and overwhelming case—for we cannot but suppose that already he had sufficient material upon which to have obtained a conviction—are eminently typical.

We know that Ça Franco, Benito Garcia, Juan de Ocaña, and the four Francos of La Guardia were all at this time in the hands of the inquisitors; and it is not to be doubted that these men would be undergoing constant examination. But it is obvious, from the absence in the dossier with which we are concerned of any document relating to this particular period, that no avowals were made by his fellow-prisoners to increase the incrimination of Yucé.

Without wishing to set up too many hypotheses to bridge the lacunæ that result from the absence of the records of the proceedings against the other accused, we would tentatively suggest that in preparing that portion of his denunciation relating to the crucifixion of the child, Guevára had simply adapted details extracted from Benito to Yucé’s vague admission in the prison of Segovia. This conclusion is eminently justifiable. It is based upon the fact that Guevára altogether overstepped the limits of any evidence brought to light in the whole course of the proceedings when he said that Yucé “contrived as principal ... to obtain a consecrated Host.” Further it is based upon the circumstance already mentioned that if in any deposition of Benito or of any other of the accused, Yucé’s slightest participation in the affair of La Guardia had been mentioned, such a deposition—or at least the respective extract from it—must have found a place in the dossier of his trial. And we know that no such document is present.

Still further, we have the fact that the month prescribed by the court for the submission of proof was allowed to expire and another month after that, and still Guevára had no proofs to lay before their Reverend Paternities, beyond the depositions we have already seen. Meanwhile, Yucé continued to languish in prison.

And here the following question suggests itself: In view of the admission made by Yucé to the false Rabbi in Segovia, why was he not closely and directly questioned upon that matter? and in the event of his withholding details, why was he not put to torture as by law prescribed?

Instead of that direct method of procedure, he was left in complete ignorance of his self-betrayal and of the source whence the inquisitors had derived their knowledge of his association with the affair of La Guardia.

The only answer that suggests itself is that Torquemada desired the matter to be very fully elucidated, that the net should be very fully and carefully spread—as we shall see—so that nothing and no one should escape. And yet this answer is hardly entirely satisfactory.

If Guevára allowed months to pass without being able to lay the required proofs of Yucé’s guilt before the court, on the other hand Yucé himself had been similarly unable to supply his counsel with any proof of his innocence—as indeed was impossible in the absence of all particulars of the charges against him.

Thus for a season the case remains in suspense.

Attempts to extract incriminating evidence from the other prisoners having meanwhile failed by ordinary judicial methods, the tribunal now has recourse to other means. Having failed to compel or induce the prisoners into betraying one another, the inquisitors now seek to lure them into self-betrayal.

A well-known scheme is employed.

Benito is moved into a chamber immediately under Yucé’s. To while away the tedium of his imprisonment, and with a light-heartedness that is a little startling in a man in his desperate position, Yucé sits by his window thrumming a viol or guitar one day towards the end of March or in early April. The instrument may have been left with him by the gaoler who was in the plot.

What was no doubt expected comes to pass. Yucé’s music is abruptly interrupted by a voice from below, which asks:

“Can you give me a needle, Jew?”

Yucé replies that he has no needle other than a cobbler’s.182

The speaker is Benito Garcia, and it is certain that spies have been set to overhear what passes. We know that their conversation took place through a hole in the floor contrived by the gaoler, who was acting upon the instructions of the inquisitors.183

Yucé is very circumspect in all that he says; but Benito is entirely reckless during those first days of their intercourse. And yet, whilst he admits that he considers himself lost already through what “that dog of a doctor” (by which he means the Reverend Inquisitor, Dr. Villada) extracted from him under torture in Astorga, he shows himself at other times not without hope of regaining his freedom.

He mentions a man named Peña, who is the Alcalde of La Guardia. This man, he says, is interested in him, and has—or so Benito fancies—influence at Court which he would exert on Benito’s behalf did he but know of the latter’s position.

At another time he vows that, if ever he gets out of prison, he will quit Spain and take himself off to Judea. He is convinced that all this trouble has come upon him as a punishment for having abandoned the Law of Moses and denied the true God to embrace the religion of the Begotten God (Dios Parido).

But apart from these, there are no lamentations from him; more usually he is sardonic in his grievances, as when he complains that all he got in return for the money he gave for the souls in purgatory were the fleas and lice that all but devoured him alive in the prison of Astorga; or that all the recompense he enjoyed for having presented the Church with a holy-water font was to be subjected to the water-torture by “that dog of a doctor in Astorga.”

He vows that he will die a Jew, though he should be burnt alive. He inveighs bitterly against the inquisitors, dubbing them Antichrists, and Torquemada the greatest Antichrist of all; and he alludes derisively to what he terms the frauds and buffooneries of the Church.

It was from Benito that Yucé, to his surprise, received news of his father’s arrest and of the fact that Ça Franco lies in that same prison of Avila. He was informed of this during their first talk, when Benito reproved his music.

“Don’t thrum that guitar,” Benito had said, “but take pity on your father who is here and whom the inquisitors have promised to burn.”184

In the course of another later conversation between the prisoners Yucé asks Benito what has brought about the latter’s arrest. And when Benito has related the happening in the inn at Astorga, Yucé questions him on the subject of the consecrated wafer—and his questions certainly betray the fact that the young Jew had previous knowledge of it and generally of the affair that was afoot. He becomes so importunate in his questions that Benito—perhaps finding them awkward to answer without betraying the extent to which he has incriminated his associates—sharply bids Yucé to leave the matter alone, assuring him at the same time that he has never mentioned Yucé’s name to the inquisitors.