As we have seen in a previous chapter, the lot of the Spanish Jews under Mohammedan rule was supremely enviable. Their condition in the Christian parts of the Iberian Peninsula was less uniformly prosperous. We there find two forces at work, one favourable to the children of Israel and the other the exact opposite. The people and the Church were ill-disposed towards them; the princes and the nobles protected them. Their history is therefore marked by the vicissitudes of the conflict between those two forces, and their ultimate fate was to be determined by the result of that conflict. That they should be mulcted by the Christian princes was only what might have been expected. In Spain they were subjected, among other burdens, to a hearth tax, a coronation tax, a tax on various kinds of their own food, and a tax for the King’s dinner. In Portugal, under Sancho II., they had to pay, besides other things, a fleet tax, and were obliged to supply a new anchor and cable to every vessel built for the royal marine. On the other hand, they enjoyed a large measure of communal autonomy, settled their disputes in their own Beth-Din, or religious tribunal, and even passed capital sentence on culprits of their own persuasion. Despite manifold restrictions in the exercise of certain trades and handicrafts, they often succeeded in eluding the law, which in the earlier days was not rigorously enforced, and in pursuing a variety of occupations. They dealt in corn, cattle, silk, spices, timber, and slaves. They were goldsmiths, mechanics, peddlers, and pawnbrokers. The trade in cloth and wool, both domestic and foreign, was largely in their hands; but they abstained from the manufacture of cloth, partly owing to prohibitive legislation by the State, as was the case in Majorca during the fourteenth century, and partly in obedience to the Talmud, which denounced weaving as an immoral occupation, inasmuch as it tended to facilitate undesirable propinquity between the sexes. Many of the upper classes found equally, or more, lucrative employment as physicians, clerks of the Treasury, and public officials.

Then was formed in Spain that higher type of Jew which compelled even the Christians to forget their contempt for the race. Visigothic legislation was ignored in practice, and the Jews ceased to be systematically trampled upon. ♦1061–1073♦ Pope Alexander II., the coadjutor and immediate predecessor of Gregory Hildebrand, in a decree issued to all the bishops of Spain, draws a distinction between the Saracens and the Jews, the latter being described as worthy of toleration on account of “their readiness to serve.” Some of the municipalities treated them on equal terms with the Christians, and in both Aragon and Castile the Jews were allowed to act as judges. The Christian princes found in them some of the qualities which commanded their respect towards the Arabs, and they would fain avail themselves of their lights. They employed Jewish physicians, Jewish financiers, and Jewish tutors. ♦1085♦ Alfonso VI. of Castile began by diplomacy the liberation of Spain, which was to be accomplished by the military prowess of his successors. In this initial stage of the movement, despite the persecution proclaimed against the “enemies of Christ” by Pope Gregory VII., the Castilian King employed the astute and polyglot Jews, notably his private physician, Isaac Ibn Shalbib, and after the conquest of Toledo he confirmed to the Jews of that town all the liberties which they had enjoyed under the Mohammedan rulers. Then Alfonso, resolved to attack the Saracen King of Seville, whom he had used as a tool in taking Toledo, thought it necessary to apprise his former ally of his change of policy and bid him defiance. The delicate task was entrusted to Ibn Shalbib, attended by five hundred Christian knights. The Jewish diplomatist carried out his master’s instructions so thoroughly and so boldly that the Mohammedan prince, in his fury, forgot the inviolability of the ambassadorial character, and nailed the unfortunate envoy to a gibbet.

The comparative liberty enjoyed by the Spanish Jews, under the aegis of the Kings, brought with it opulence and luxury. The Spanish synagogues were renowned throughout Europe for their beauty, and the private dwellings of the Spanish Jews were not less noted for their magnificence. The Spanish Jews, as their brethren elsewhere, set much store by social distinction, and knew how to combine extravagance with economy. The stately names and expensive equipages of the Christian nobility were copied by them, not wisely but too well. Their profuse ostentation of wealth in domestic decoration and personal apparel excited the envy, and royal patronage the jealousy of their neighbours. These feelings, intensified by religious antipathy, laid up a fund of prejudice which only awaited a suitable opportunity for converting itself into active hostility. The same causes which brought about the eruption of anti-Judaism in other countries operated in Spain also. First, the Crusading spirit which, though it produced no immediate massacres in Spain, as it did in Central Europe, remained longer alive by the Spaniard’s undying enmity to the Jew’s cousin, the Saracen invader, whose invasion, it must be remembered, the Jews had facilitated, or, at all events, welcomed. Secondly, the hatred of heresy which, fostered by the monastic orders, found in Spain a more fertile soil than in any other Christian country. So strong and so pertinacious were these influences in the Iberian Peninsula that the Kings who favoured the Jews were often obliged to assuage public irritation, and to save their protégés from the ebullitions of popular fanaticism by separating them from the Christians. Already in the eleventh century we hear of a “Jewish barrier” erected in Tudela. This separation was also countenanced by the Church, though from widely different motives. ♦1079♦ In Coyaca, in the Asturias, a Council decreed that no Christian should reside in the same house with Jews, or partake of their food. Persons caught transgressing this canon were sentenced, if noblemen, to one year’s excommunication, if of lower degree to one hundred lashes. Thus the normal isolation of Israel was encouraged by two powers which, acting with opposite intent, converged to the same dangerous result. But it was not until late in the thirteenth century that the gathering animosity came to a head, and declared itself in more methodical efforts at segregation and humiliation, conversion or extirpation.

Meanwhile the undercurrent of prejudice was checked by the action of the Kings. When, for instance, the Crusaders from across the Pyrenees, red-handed from the massacre of the Albigenses, came to Spain as allies in the war against the Mohammedans, and began the work of exterminating the infidels by attacking the Jews of Toledo, King Alfonso IX. warded off the blows, and the misdirected zeal of the foreign fanatics was condemned even by the populace of Castile. ♦1215♦ When, again, Innocent III. at the Fourth Lateran Council ordered the Jews to be marked off by a special badge, the Jews of Spain, through their influence at Court, succeeded in avoiding the effects of the decree. King Alfonso connived at their disobedience, and vain were the unwearied efforts of Innocent’s successor, Honorius III., to enforce the Jewish disabilities. ♦1220♦ Similar immunity from the ignominious ordinances of St. Peter’s See was secured by the Jews of Aragon through the exertions of the physician of King Jayme I. ♦1248♦ Several years after King Ferdinand allotted three parishes to the Jewish community of Seville, and surrounded them with a wall for their defence. Within this enclosure were the exchanges, markets, slaughter-houses, synagogues and tribunals of the Jews, while their cemetery spread over an adjacent field.

But how long could the Court maintain its Judaeophile attitude in the teeth of the growing animosity against the race? Alfonso X., surnamed the Wise, employed Jews as Chamberlains and Chancellors of the Exchequer, as well as in the construction of his famous Astronomical Tables. ♦1261♦ But the same King was forced to throw a sop to Cerberus by enacting that “the Jews may not enlarge, elevate, or beautify their synagogues.” Another law of Alfonso’s contained the following ominous statement: “Although the Jews deny Christ, they are still suffered in all Christian countries, so that they should remind everybody that they belong to that race which crucified Jesus.” During this reign conversion of a Christian to Judaism was punished with death. No Jew was to be elevated to any public office. The wearing of the badge was made compulsory, and anyone seen without it was, if rich, fined; if poor, scourged. Social intercourse between Jews and Christians was made a punishable offence. The Jews should not appear abroad on Good Friday. Though himself in the hands of a Jewish physician, Alfonso decreed that no Christian should take medicine prepared by a Jew. These restrictions, however, were tempered by measures protective of the religion, the persons and the property of the Jews; and they did not really become active until a much later period.

Two years later there occurred in Barcelona, under the auspices of Jayme I., the famous disputation between the Dominican Pablo Christiani and the Rabbi Nachmanides, which led to the latter’s exile, and to the expurgation of the Talmud.69

In the meantime the silly and sinister fables which caused the persecution of the Jews in England and elsewhere met with credence in Spain also. But, if the pious were exasperated by these stories, less foolish persons found a sufficient food for their spleen in the better founded charges of rapacity constantly brought against the Jewish money-lenders; while the holy indignation of others was aroused by the occasional sight of Christian proselytes seeking in the arms of the Synagogue a spiritual rest which they could not find in the Church; or by the spectacle, even less edifying, of Christian noblemen seeking in the arms of a Jewish bride the wherewithal to regild their tarnished escutcheons. All these grievances, assiduously nursed by fanatical clerics and loudly voiced by insolvent debtors, culminated in violent attacks upon the “accursed people” during the fourteenth century. The Jewish colonies were repeatedly looted and burnt and the inmates slaughtered without mercy and without regard to sex or age. ♦About 1330♦ In one attack of this kind in the kingdom of Navarre no fewer than ten thousand Israelites perished.

But the time had not yet come for a general persecution of Israel in Spain. The demon of Jew-hatred, if irritated, was also curbed by kingly favour. ♦1325–1350♦ Alfonso XI. drew down upon himself the wrath of pious Christians by employing Jewish ministers in his treasury. Under this prince the Spanish Jews, indeed, enjoyed what some writers have described as their Golden Age. They were powerful at Court, and equally influential with the great nobility, many Castilian magnates employing them as bailiffs and advisers. Their wealth and their power cowed clerical and popular fanaticism, and overawed the avaricious proclivities of impecunious hidalgos. ♦1350–1369♦ This prosperity lasted under Alfonso’s successor, Don Pedro, or Peter the Cruel. Samuel Levi, treasurer to the King and his victim, is reported to have left behind him the princely fortune of 400,000 ducats; an affluence which proved his undoing.

Nor was royal favour limited to one class of Jews, any more than Jewish usefulness was limited to one province of activity. Henry II. of Castile, the half-brother of Don Pedro, and other Iberian sovereigns employed the talents of the Jews in various capacities. Through their correspondence with their brethren all over Europe and the East, the Jews were the best agents for commercial and political negotiations. Their astronomical science, and their skill in map-drawing and in the construction of nautical instruments, recommended them to princes anxious to profit by the exploration of new lands. Jewish pilots and navigators must have been in great demand, for they subsequently helped Vasco da Gama in his voyages; while Jewish capitalists and adventurers participated in many of the great transatlantic expeditions of later times. ♦1334♦ Jayme III., the last king of Mallorca, describes Juceff Faguin, a Jew of Barcelona, as a man who “had navigated the whole of the then known world”; while Benjamin of Tudela’s older Itinerary is a work of world-wide renown. ♦1404–1454♦ John II. of Castile, in the ensuing century, even sought the assistance of Jews in the compilation of a national Cancionero, for the Jews in Christian, as in Mohammedan, Spain attained high distinction as troubadours. One of them, Santob de Carrion, who flourished in Castile in the fourteenth century, produced a Spanish Book of Maxims, which, thanks to its charming quaintness, preserved its popularity far into the fifteenth. Not less important are the contributions of Iberian Jews to the vernacular drama.

The Jew’s old aversion to the language of Titus, the destroyer of the Temple, had also partially vanished from Spain, and many Jewish politicians employed Latin in the diplomatic correspondence which they conducted for their Christian masters, while the Spanish language in the fourteenth century even bade fair to oust Hebrew, the Book of Esther being, in some parts of the peninsula, read in the vernacular on the Feast of Purim, for the benefit of the women, to whom the sacred tongue was no longer intelligible. Naturally such liberalism scandalised strait-laced pietists, who did their utmost to prevent the profanation of Holy Writ. But the real check to the gradual reconciliation between Jew and Gentile in Spain did not proceed from the Jewish side, as we shall see.

All this sunshine was already overshadowed by the clouds which herald the storm. In the year of the Black Death the charge of well-poisoning stirred up the mob of Barcelona against the Jews, twenty of whom were slain and their houses sacked, a wholesale massacre being averted only by the intervention of the higher classes. A few days later a similar outbreak at Cervera resulted in the murder of eighteen Jews and the flight of the rest. Destruction threatened all the Jewish communities of Northern Spain, and their members, panic-stricken, betook themselves to prayer, fasting, and other precautions of a more practical character against the impending attack, which, however, was prevented by the nobility and by a Papal Bull, in which Clement VI.—who, though no saint, was an accomplished gentleman and a broad-minded prince—exposed the absurdity of the poison charge, and prohibited the Christians from assaulting the Jews on pain of excommunication.

During the long civil war in Castile between Don Pedro and his brother Don Henry, the heirs of Alfonso XI., the Jews had the misfortune to back the losing side. They sustained heavy losses in many a battle and siege, and suffered terribly at the hands of friend and foe alike. The great community of Toledo was decimated out of all recognition. Throughout Castile congregations once flourishing were reduced to penury, and many of their members in sheer despair embraced Christianity. The Jews of Burgos, even after Don Pedro’s death, remained stubbornly loyal to his memory, and when all Spain had recognised Don Henry’s rule they alone had the courage to defy him—a constancy which moved the usurper’s admiration, and secured to the besieged terms of submission honourable to both sides alike. Peace was restored, but it brought small comfort to Israel. Don Henry had always pretended that one of the causes of his enmity to his brother was the latter’s partiality for the Jews. The vanquished enemy’s favourites would now have been made to suffer the extreme rigour of Henry’s vengeance but for the financial straits in which the victor found himself. Instead of annihilating, Don Henry preferred to exploit the Jews. But the King’s forbearance roused the indignation of his followers, who felt despoiled of the fruits of their victory. In 1371 the Cortes assembled at Toro rebuked the King for employing the enemies of the faith at Court, and for allowing them to farm the revenues of the Crown. The representatives of the nation insisted that the Jews should be excluded from State offices, confined within special quarters, compelled to wear the badge, and forbidden to display their riches in their apparel or equipages, or to bear Christian names. The King, while dismissing most of these demands, thought it wise to concede the last three, and he also decreed some measures intended to restrain the rapacity of Jewish money-lenders. The clergy also, who had sanctioned Don Henry’s usurpation of the throne, claimed a reward in the shape of anti-Jewish legislation. ♦1375♦ Religious disputations were, therefore, revived, and Jewish renegades were once more the protagonists in the sorry farce.

At the same time the Church renewed its efforts to prevent the Christians from mingling with the impure race. The necessity for this persistent confirmation of anti-Jewish regulations shows that, though the antipathy between Jew and Gentile was spontaneous, and though both Church and Synagogue vied with each other in their endeavours to keep the two elements in sempiternal alienation, yet the social instinct which forms the strongest trait of human nature often triumphed over the barriers set up by religious bigotry. But human nature was allowed little opportunity for asserting itself. ♦1388♦ The Council of Palencia passed a decision forbidding Catholics to dwell within the quarters assigned to the Jews and Moors, under penalty of excommunication. ♦1390♦ Two years later the Jews of Majorca were forbidden to carry arms. ♦1391♦ Next year, thanks to the eloquence of the fanatical priest Martinez, a series of wholesale massacres took place in Castile and Aragon, in which thousands of Jews were sacrificed to priestly and popular rage, and the cities of Seville, Toledo, Cordova, Catalonia, Barcelona, Valencia, as well as the island of Majorca, were coloured red with Jewish blood; while great numbers of the unfortunate people sought safety in half-hearted apostasy. Efforts were made to confirm the hold upon these captured infidels, popularly known as Marranos, or “the Damned,” by ecclesiastical preferment and by the bestowal of municipal dignities; while many impecunious aristocrats, anxious to restore their declining fortunes, brought riches to themselves and a lasting reproach to their posterity by courting the fair daughters of converted Israel; so much so that many a noble Castilian pedigree to this day can be traced to such an alliance. But neither ecclesiastical or civic honours nor social advancement were sufficiently potent to keep the “new Christians” in the faith. There were, of course, exceptions to the rule—a truism which we are apt to overlook in dealing with the history of the Jews. Some, no doubt, who had honestly outgrown the racial and religious swathings of Judaism, were glad enough to adopt Christianity. Unfettered by spiritual convictions, they preferred the creed which entailed no social stigma. They deserve as little blame as admiration. Others, however, there were who, setting worldly advantages, or the gratification of private grudges, above principle, found both profit and pleasure in the persecution or vilification of their former brethren. But neither of these classes represented the majority. Most of the neophytes, as soon as they safely could, slipped the suffocating cloak, and came forth in their true character, while others vacillated between Church and Synagogue, trying to serve two masters, and by so doing increased the animosity of the priests against the race; for the theologian does not agree with the psychologist in holding that a feigned or fictitious faith is better than none at all. As in the time of the Visigoth tyrants, so now thousands of Jews and forced converts fled to Africa. Many towns on the coast, from Algiers westward, were filled with the unfortunate refugees from Spain and Majorca, who found the African Berbers more humane than the European Christians.

The recent tribulations and the anticipation of worse sufferings in the near future gave rise to a new Messianic frenzy. According to the Scriptures, the advent of the Redeemer was to be preceded by terrible persecution. ♦1391♦ Three Messiahs appeared to voice the convictions and to try the faith of the hunted people: Abraham of Granada, Shem-Tob, and Moses Botarel. All three were mystics, the last one also an impostor.

The fifteenth century adds fresh scenes to the tale of sorrow, new “black-letter days” to the Jewish Calendar, and more dark pages to the history of Europe. In 1408 the anti-Jewish statutes of Alfonso the Wise were revived. Ruinous fines were imposed upon any Christian who should confer, or Jew who should accept, municipal or other office. ♦1412♦ Four years later the intercourse of the Jews with the Christians was restricted, and their commercial and industrial activity hampered by numerous prohibitions. They were forbidden to act as physicians, apothecaries, and stewards to the nobility; as bakers, millers, or vintners. They were debarred from selling oil or butter; from exercising the handicrafts of smith, carpenter, tailor, or shoemaker, and, of course, from farming or collecting the public revenues. It was further decreed that no Jew should carry any kind of arms, or be addressed as Don; that the unclean people should live in special quarters (Juderias) provided with not more than one gate each, and that they should not employ Christian servants. Thus the seclusion which was at first granted to the Jews as a privilege and a protection was now enforced as a means of oppression. Furthermore, they were stripped of their gay apparel, and compelled to wear a peculiar garment of coarse stuff and to display the hated badge, except such as could pay for permission to discard it, especially on their journeys. Lastly, they were forbidden to have their hair cut or their beards shaved. Confiscation of goods and corporal chastisement were the penalties inflicted for any breach of these and other regulations, the aim of which was, by humiliating and impoverishing the race, to induce it to embrace Christianity. A contemporary Jewish writer thus describes the sad effects of this edict: “Inmates of palaces were driven into wretched nooks, and dark and lowly huts. Instead of rustling apparel, we were obliged to wear miserable clothes which drew contempt upon us. Prohibited from shaving the beard, we had to appear like mourners. The rich tax-farmers sank into want, for they knew no trade by which they could gain a livelihood, and the handicraftsmen found no custom. Starvation stared everyone in the face. Children died on their mothers’ knees from hunger and exposure.”70

In the midst of all this suffering the Church was not idle. The chief of the apostles was Vincent Ferrer, a Dominican friar and indefatigable winner of souls, afterwards canonised for his exertions. This sincere, though forbidding saint, who called his bigotry religion and his hatred of heretics love of God, rushed from synagogue to synagogue, crucifix in hand, preaching the gospel of peace in a voice of thunder, and endeavouring to persuade the infidels to repentance by promises of comfort in this world and by threats of everlasting damnation in the next. Ferrer was more than an orator. His sermons were accompanied with exhibitions of the priest’s dramatic genius and of the saint’s thaumaturgic powers. Impressive processions and sacred hymns, banners, crucifices, and assaults upon the Jews heightened the effect of his impassioned appeals. Thousands of wretches succumbed to Ferrer’s eloquence, and many synagogues were turned into churches. This result was by contemporary piety attributed to the fiery exhortations addressed to the Jews, and to the miracles performed for their benefit, by St. Vincent; but a twentieth century heretic, while admitting the efficacy of exhortation and miracle, may be pardoned for suspecting that the systematic persecution on the part of the State and the spontaneous fury of the mob had at least some influence in turning the hearts of the infidels.

From Castile the preacher and persecution travelled to Aragon. The newly-elected King Ferdinand, who owed his elevation to Ferrer’s influence, showed his gratitude by placing his conscience in the saint’s keeping and the royal power at his disposal. St. Vincent, thus armed with both necessaries of success—enthusiasm and means—journeyed to and fro in the country, denouncing, exhorting, threatening, and baptizing; and the victims of his fervour in the two kingdoms are said to have exceeded twenty thousand souls. Such is the persuasive power of theological reasoning, when assisted by brute force. In the same year a compulsory controversy between Hebrew renegades and Rabbis, on the traditional lines, was begun in Tortosa.

No more splendid assembly ever met for the purpose of enforcing the gospel of divine mercy by the gratification of human vanity. The anti-pope Benedict XIII., clad in his pontifical robes, sat on a lofty throne, surrounded by cardinals and prelates refulgent with brocade of gold and gems. A thousand Spanish grandees thronged behind this glorious group, while before it stood a small band of Jews anxious to defend their faith, without imperilling their lives. The truth of Christianity was beyond cavil. The falsity of Judaism, after the advent of Christ, was equally clear. Does the Talmud recognise Jesus as the Messiah or not? That was the question which was debated in sixty-eight sittings extending over a period of twenty-one months.

And so the ruin of the Jews was progressing satisfactorily. The originators of the persecution passed away one after the other. Benedict XIII. was deposed by the Council of Constance and denounced by Vincent Ferrer as an “unfrocked and spurious Pope.” The renegade Jew Geronimo vanished into his native obscurity. King Ferdinand died in 1416, and St. Vincent was translated to heaven three years later. But the tribulations of Israel did not cease. ♦1419♦ Pope Martin V., indeed, surprised the world with a Bull of toleration, dictated, as one would gladly have believed, by Christian charity; as documents prove, procured by bribery. But the plant of anti-Judaism had taken too deep roots to be permanently stunted by this tardy edict. ♦1442♦ Pope Eugenius IV. addressed another Bull to the Bishops of Castile and Leon, withdrawing the indulgences granted to the Jews by his predecessor, and he renewed all the old restrictions, adding that the unclean people should be confined to their houses during Holy Week. Autograph letters to the Castilian ecclesiastics exhorted them to enforce the Pontiff’s orders without mercy. ♦1447♦ Pope Nicholas V. aggravated all these measures of oppression.

The Spanish Jews were now regarded simply as outlaws. The pious eschewed all dealings with them. Husbandmen deserted the fields, and shepherds the flocks belonging to the proscribed people; while the towns framed new regulations for their utter suppression. King Henry IV. of Castile and Juan II. of Aragon, horror-struck at the terrible cruelty of this treatment, or rather alarmed at its consequences on the royal exchequer, endeavoured to mitigate the sufferings of the Jews. But their efforts met with no success. The campaign on the part of the Dominicans was carried on vigorously, backsliders were scented out and punished, charges of child-murder were preferred against the Jews, and the populace was stirred up to acts of violence, which grew in ferocity and frequency as the years rolled on. In 1468 a charge of this description led to a massacre at Sepulveda. ♦1469♦ In the following year the Cortes of Ocaña insisted that the anti-Jewish edicts should be stringently enforced. Despite Henry’s feeble protests, the Jews for many years continued to be exposed to the utmost cruelty of the priests and of the populace in an age when the priests and the populace were most cruel. They were not members of the Church, of the feudal aristocracy, or of the commercial and industrial corporations. Though living among the Christians, they were not of them. They were unpopular. They could not defend themselves; and neither bishops, barons, nor burgesses would lift a finger in their defence. They were, therefore, abandoned without reserve and without remorse to the tender mercies of clerical and civic fanaticism. The Marranos especially continued to be the pet aversion and occupation of the Church.

A monastic writer of Andalusia, where the “new Christians” were most numerous and now most miserable, quoted by Prescott, summarises contemporary feeling regarding them in the following eloquent lines: “This accursed race were either unwilling to bring their children to be baptized, or, if they did, they washed away the stain on returning home. They dressed their stews and other dishes with oil, instead of lard; abstained from pork; kept the Passover; ate meat in Lent; and sent oil to replenish the lamps of their synagogues; with many other abominable ceremonies of their religion. They entertained no respect for monastic life, and frequently profaned the sanctity of religious houses by the violation or seduction of their inmates. They were an exceedingly politic and ambitious people, engrossing the most lucrative municipal offices, and preferred to gain their livelihood by traffic, in which they made exorbitant gains, rather than by manual labour or mechanical arts. They considered themselves in the hands of the Egyptians, whom it was a merit to deceive and plunder. By their wicked contrivances they amassed great wealth, and they were often able to ally themselves by marriage with noble Christian families.” Here we find all the old sources of the Gentile’s hatred towards the Jew: antipathy due to diversity of character—as manifested in occupation, daily diet, and conduct; steeled by economic jealousy, and edged by religious bigotry.

Such was the frame of the public mind, when short-sighted statecraft, in the person of Ferdinand, King of Aragon, was wedded to narrow piety in that of Isabella, heiress to the Crown of Castile. The legitimate offspring of such a union could be no other than persecution. But, even if the sovereigns were enlightened and tolerant, it is doubtful whether they could have stemmed the current. In 1473 the mob massacred the Constable of Castile at Jaen, because he attempted to repress its fury, and, after Isabella the Catholic’s accession to the throne, petitions poured in from all sides clamouring for the extirpation of the “Jewish heresy.” The bigots of Seville, headed by the Dominican prior of the monastery of St. Paul, agitated for the introduction of the Inquisition—a tribunal originally established during Innocent III.’s pontificate at the beginning of the thirteenth century for the suppression of heresy—and their demand was seconded by the Papal Nuncio. In 1477 Friar Philip de Barberi, Inquisitor for Sicily, arrived in Seville to persuade the Spanish monarchs of the manifold virtues of his remedy for infidelity. The prospect of plunder lured Ferdinand, while Isabella’s feminine tenderness was assailed by the importunities and the casuistry of her spiritual advisers. Torquemada, the narrow-hearted Dominican of universal notoriety, had already poisoned the Queen’s mind with his pernicious maxims of intolerance, when he acted as the guardian of her conscience in early youth. In that susceptible age he had extorted from his pupil the promise that she would devote her life “to the extirpation of heresy, for the glory of God and the exaltation of the Catholic faith.” He now reappears on the scene to claim the fulfilment of the fatal vow. The young queen, noble and generous though she was by nature, could not long withstand the unanimous exhortations of persons whose sanctity her religion taught her to revere, and the superiority of whose wisdom her own modesty prompted her to accept without question. Much less could she resist her own beloved husband’s solicitations. All that was good or engaging in her conspired with all that was ignoble in her counsellors to warp her judgment, to silence the voice of her heart, and to force her to give her consent to one of the greatest crimes of any time.

It required but little effort to induce Pope Sixtus IV. to allow the establishment of the Holy Office in Castile for the detection and punishment of backsliders to Judaism, and the necessary Bull was issued on November 1st, 1478. But the Queen still hesitated to make use of the dread weapon, while her husband was not without misgivings regarding the absolute power claimed by the tribunal. As a last resource, before proceeding to extremes, the monarchs commanded Cardinal Mendoza, the Archbishop of Seville, to set forth the doctrines of the Catholic faith in a short catechism, and to cause his clergy to diffuse the light among the benighted Marranos throughout his diocese. This worthy and humane ecclesiastic gladly obeyed the royal command, and betook himself to the work of friendly persuasion. But with little success. The Christians were incited to acts of hostility by rumours of Jewish plots against the Church and the State, and of Jewish crimes of the traditional type, such as sacrifices of children and insults offered to the Host. The Government, yielding to public clamour, expelled the Jews from Seville and Cordova in 1478, and renewed the severe measures of repression in 1480. Furthermore, an ill-advised Jew, by the publication of a caustic criticism of Christianity at that inopportune moment, threw oil into the fire, and precipitated a catastrophe which perhaps no power on earth could have averted in any case. A people whose inflexibility had triumphed over the temptations and the persecutions of fifteen centuries was hardly likely to be bent by the good Archbishop’s catechism; and, after two years’ fruitless endeavour, a Commission appointed for the purpose returned a highly disappointing report. The term of grace having expired, the only remaining alternative was the Inquisition.71

On September 17th, 1480, the tribunal was constituted of two Dominicans and two other ecclesiastics appointed by the Crown, and was ordered to commence operations at Seville without delay. The civil authorities were instructed to lend the assistance of the secular arm to the Judges; but, owing to the opposition which the latter at first encountered on the part of the high-spirited Castilians, they were obliged to confine their activity for a while within those districts of Andalusia which depended directly from the Crown. However, limited as the field at first was, it proved more than sufficient for the purpose. The new year, 1481, was inaugurated with an edict, published on January 2nd, bidding all true Catholics to aid the tribunal in the fulfilment of its mission, by indicating any person that might be known as, or suspected of, entertaining heretical opinions. The result was a monster hunt with men for quarry and hounds, and Satan for their master. Soon the number of victims grew to such an extent that the court was obliged to exchange its seat in the monastery of St. Paul, within the city of Seville, for the larger castle of Triana, in the environs. There it established its headquarters and blasphemed the Deity whom it professed to serve by the following inscription, engraven over the portal: Exsurge, Domine; judica causam tuam; capite nobis vulpes, “Arise, O Lord; judge thine own cause; capture for us the foxes.”

Day after day the Satanic sport went on, and the number of “foxes” increased apace. The Jews were not even allowed the privilege accorded to the animal. Flight was forbidden under penalty of death, and was prevented by guards posted at the gates of the city. None the less, some of the victims succeeded in escaping to Granada, France, Germany, and Italy, where they made an appeal to the Holy See from the barbarity of the Holy Office. Sixtus IV. contented himself with a gentle rebuke of his subalterns for their excessive zeal, soon followed by a request for more strenuous “purification,” addressed to Ferdinand and Isabella.

Never, perhaps, since the fall of the Roman Empire did the detestable trade of the informer flourish so lustily as it did during the ensuing years in Castile. Bigotry, malice, cupidity were all invited to contribute to the havoc, and, as the accuser’s identity was sedulously concealed from the accused, the last motive for self-restraint was removed. A new coat or a clean shirt on Saturday morning, a cold hearth on Friday evening, avoidance of food popular among the Christians, or a taste for a kind of drink affected by the Jews, a visit to a Jewish house,—these were some of the proofs of Judaism accepted as conclusive evidence by this model court of justice. The grave itself afforded no refuge from its clutches. A person who was observed to turn his face to the wall when dying was at once pounced upon, and his body shared the fate of living heretics.

The Inquisition had been in existence for three days when six wretches suffered at the stake. Seventeen more followed in March, and at the end of ten months the “bag” had reached the number of two hundred and ninety-eight, in Seville alone, in addition to many effigies of those who had been fortunate enough to escape. The plague which devastated Seville in that year of evil omen did not interrupt the other plague. The Inquisition once more moved its racks, and continued its infernal work in Aracena. Meanwhile, its branch establishments carried on a brisk business in human lives in other parts of Andalusia, and their diligence is proved by the fact, which we owe to the Jesuit historian Mariana, that the net total of victims for the year amounted to two thousand burnt alive, and seventeen thousand sentenced to loss of property, loss of civil rights, or incarceration—mercies which figured in the balance sheet under the comprehensive euphemism “reconciliation.” ♦1483♦ In the third year Thomas de Torquemada was appointed by Sixtus IV. Inquisitor-General of Castile and Aragon, invested with full powers to draw up a new constitution for the Holy Office. His labours resulted in the modern Inquisition, which for centuries after blasted the Iberian Peninsula and supplied historians, novelists, and dramatists with an inexhaustible mine of horrors. The Spaniards were not pleased to see the extension of the grim tribunal’s operations, and Pedro Arbués, the first Inquisitor who, in spite of popular protests, ventured to make his appearance in Aragon, was murdered in the Cathedral of Saragossa. ♦1485♦ But all opposition was soon silenced.

Year after year edicts were issued and read in every church on the first two Sundays of Lent, spurring the faithful, on pain of eternal damnation, to denounce their fellow-citizens, and often their nearest and dearest; for loyalty to the cause cancelled all other bonds. Neither friendship nor family affection was permitted to interfere with the course of fanaticism, and the vilest crimes against nature and morality were hallowed by the blessings of the Church. The Marranos and their Jewish sympathisers and abettors, against whom the terrible engine continued to be almost exclusively directed under Torquemada’s management, were decimated, mulcted, and mutilated at the average annual rate of six thousand roasted or “reconciled,” not including an unknown number of orphaned children doomed to starvation or vice by the confiscation of their patrimony.

None were spared, but the most exalted were the first to be laid low; judges and municipal officers, noblemen, and even clergymen suspected of Judaism were mysteriously snatched from their homes, conveyed to the subterranean dungeons of the Inquisition, and there, amid the terrors of darkness and solitude, were kept for a while in strict ignorance of the specific crime with which they were charged. When sufficiently bewildered in his lonely, cold, and lightless cell, the prisoner was dragged before the court and asked to give straight and lucid answers to crooked and vague questions. It was accepted as a principle of judicial procedure that every prisoner was guilty until he proved himself to be innocent, and that it was better that ten innocents should suffer than one infidel escape. Denial of guilt was visited with torture, persistence in denial with more torture, and confession of sin—to obtain which was an essential element in the Inquisitorial process—with sentence of death or confiscation of goods, the greater part of which went to defray the expenses of the prisoner’s trial and to fill the pockets of his judges, while the remainder was swallowed up by the Royal Treasury.

Thus the martyrs, mangled by the rack, emaciated by privation, and almost maddened by mental suffering, were led to the place of execution. The spectacle partook of the pomp of a Roman pageant and of the horror of a cannibal feast. Noble Castilians, arrayed in the dark livery of the Holy Office, disdained not to act as banner-bearers and body-guards to the monastic executioners. A brilliant throng of gorgeously apparelled ecclesiastics added to the magnificence of the procession and enhanced by contrast the humiliation of the convicts, who, clad in coarse yellow frocks made hideous with a scarlet cross and designs of demons and hell-flames, haggard and already half-dead with torture and terror, tottered to the funeral pyre. This was piled on the Quemadero—a spacious stone platform, with the statues of the four major prophets erected at the four corners, to which the victims were bound. The semi-decomposed bodies of those convicted after death, torn out of their tombs, were placed upon the pile, the fuel was ignited, and the same flames gradually and slowly reduced the quick and the dead to ashes.

The havoc of war and the massacres due to sudden eruptions of popular fury have frequently surpassed these hecatombs in number of victims. But in sustained and cold-blooded ferocity authentic history contains nothing, and feverish fiction little, that can compare with one of them. And yet the Inquisitors were men—no doubt honest, pious, and honourable men, most of them; some perhaps amiable, nay even charitable men. Unfortunately they imagined themselves to be something more—ministers of Heaven’s will on earth. It was this fatal certainty of the righteousness of their cause that turned the Inquisitors into monsters. Man would less often become a fiend if he never mistook himself for an angel.

Torquemada himself, who has been execrated through the ages as the red-handed protagonist of the appalling tragedy, hardly deserves his great reputation. There is little originality in his crime. He was not more cruel, but only more conscientious, courageous, and consistent than millions of the men of his generation and creed. When in the nineteenth century we find Cardinal Newman—an English gentleman and scholar—preaching that “To spare a heresiarch is a false and dangerous pity. It is to endanger the souls of thousands, and it is uncharitable towards himself,”72 can we wonder that a Spanish priest should have acted on that principle in the fifteenth century? Strong convictions do not, of course, excuse unscrupulous and unrelenting brutality, but they explain it. Given such a conviction, persecution becomes a duty and toleration a sin. If the persecutor cannot command our respect, he is at least entitled to our compassion. Torquemada deserves our pity almost as much as his victims. The drama in which he distinguished himself was an example of that highest kind of tragedy which needs no villain. Faith had spun the plot; chance supplied the actor.

Year after year the hunt went on. But, in spite of Torquemada’s unremitting endeavours, few Israelites hesitated in the option between the font and the stake offered to them. Few chose the first, and, even with these, conversion was merely a device for escape from death. Inquisitors come and Inquisitors go, but Israel endures for ever; and the hope of a better future supplied an indomitable patience with the present. Disappointment infuriated the persecutors, but failed to increase the ranks of the proselytes. It was in vain that ancient calumnies were revived, and fresh ones invented. It was in vain that the spies redoubled their activity, and the judges strained their murderous ingenuity. It was in vain that a tempest of execration and derision raged round the children of Israel. Torquemada and his accomplices were at last forced to recognise the fact that Judaism could not be extirpated, save by the extirpation of the Jews. And forthwith all his influence was brought to bear on persuading the sovereigns to drive the unclean and accursed race out of the country.

This was an unexpected blow for the wretched Jews, who feared exile even more than execution. They had borne imprisonment, ignominy, penury, and mutilation unflinchingly, in the hope that time would soften the heart, or at least wear out the arm, of persecution. But final banishment, with all the terrible perils of shipwreck, of famine, of attack by pirates and of disease which a large and unprotected crowd voyaging the high seas was certain to encounter in those days, would mean irretrievable ruin for the whole race. Moreover the Jews loved Spain with passionate devotion,73 as is shown by the mediaeval Hebrew poetry which assumes some of its most glowing eloquence in praise of Andalusia. So, in order to avoid expatriation, the leading Jews offered thirty—some say three hundred—thousand ducats to the sovereigns as a ransom for their people.

Ferdinand and Isabella, intent on bringing their costly Moorish campaign to a successful issue, were not disinclined to listen to a proposal which promised a reinforcement of their military resources. They received the Jewish deputy in audience, and there was every prospect of the negotiations coming to a happy conclusion, when, at the psychological moment, Torquemada, the sleepless and ruthless, burst into the apartment of the palace where the interview was held, and, lifting up a crucifix, which he drew forth from beneath his cassock, thundered at the King and Queen: “Judas Iscariot sold his master for thirty pieces of silver. Your Highnesses would sell Him anew for thirty thousand; here He is, take Him and barter Him away.” With these words the terrible actor cast the crucifix upon the table and left the room.

The effect of the scene on the sovereigns’ minds was such as the crafty priest had anticipated. His sudden and opportune appearance, and his equally sudden disappearance, savoured of the miraculous; his solemn warning seemed to issue from Heaven. The same superstitious subservience to ghostly influence which had induced Isabella more than a dozen years before to sanction the persecution of the Jews, now induced her to order their expulsion. Nor was there a voice to protest. The Castilians who would have bitterly resented the arbitrary banishment of one of themselves, heard with complacency a similar decision taken against a whole nation. For Israel was a people apart. They had no share in its interests; and it had no share in their rights.