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.