CHAPTER VIII THE HOLY OFFICE IN SEVILLE

The stern purpose of the inquisitors and the severity with which they intended to proceed were plainly revealed by that edict of January 2, 1481. The harsh injustice that lay in its call upon the authorities to arrest men and women merely because they had departed from Seville before departure was in any way forbidden is typical of the flagrantly arbitrary methods of the Inquisition. That it should have struck terror into the New-Christians who had remained in Seville, and that it should have moved them to take measures to protect themselves against a court in which justice seemed little likely to be observed, and to whose cruel mercies the most innocent might find himself exposed at any moment, is not surprising—particularly when it is considered how great was the number of New-Christians who occupied positions of eminence in Seville.

A group of these prominent citizens assembled at the invitation of Diego de Susan, one of the wealthiest and most influential men of Seville, whose fortune was estimated at ten million maravedis. They came together to consider what measures should be taken for the defence of themselves, their persons and property, from the unscrupulous activities of this tribunal, and they determined that if necessary they would resort to force.

Among those who entered into this conspiracy were some ecclesiastics, and several who held office under the Crown, such as the Governor of Triana, Juan Fernandez Abolafio, the Captain of Justice and farmer of the royal customs, his brother Fernandez the licentiate, Bartolomé Torralba, and the wealthy and well-connected Manuel Sauli.

Susan addressed them. He reminded them that they were the principal citizens of Seville, that they were wealthy not only in property but in the good-will of the people, and that it but required resolution and solidarity on their part to enable them to prevail against the inquisitors in the event of these friars making any attempt upon them.

All concurring, it was concerted that each of the conspirators should engage himself to provide a proportion of the men, arms, and money and what else might be necessary for their purpose.

But Susan to his undoing had a daughter. This girl, whose beauty was so extraordinary that she was surnamed la hermosa fembra, had taken a Castilian lover. What motives may have actuated her, what part the lover may have played in these, does not transpire. All that is known is that she betrayed the conspiracy to the inquisitors—“impiously violating the natural laws engraved by God’s finger upon the human heart.”

Susan and his unfortunate confederates were seized as a consequence of that infamous delation; they were lodged in the cells of the Convent of St. Paul, which meanwhile did duty as a prison, and brought to trial before the Court of the Holy Office sitting in the convent.65

They were tried for heresy and apostasy, of course; since upon no other grounds was it possible for the Holy Office to deal with them. It is unfortunate that Llorente should have unearthed no record of this trial—one of the first held by the Inquisition in Castile—and that nothing should be known of what took place beyond the fact that Susan, Sauli, Bartolomé Torralba, and the brothers Fernandez were found guilty of the alleged offence of apostasy and were delivered up to the secular arm for punishment.

Garcia Rodrigo has devoted a couple of pages of his “Historia Verdadera” to an elaborate piece of fiction in which he asserts that these men were persistent in their error in spite of the strenuous efforts made to save them. He invests the fanatical Ojeda with the character of an angel of mercy, and represents him hovering round the condemned, exhorting them, almost with tears, to abjure their error, and he assures us that although the Dominican persevered in his charitable efforts up to the last moment, all was vain.

There is not a grain of evidence to support the statement, nor does Garcia Rodrigo pretend to advance any. As a matter of fact, Bernaldez, the only available authority who mentions Susan’s end, tells us specifically that he died a Christian. And when it is considered that Bernaldez is an ardent admirer and champion of the Inquisition, such a pronouncement from his pen is sufficient to convict the inquisitors Morillo and San Martin of having proceeded in a manner that was vindictive and ultra vires. For at this epoch it was not yet decreed that those who had relapsed (relapsos) should suffer capital punishment unless they persisted in their apostasy—as Rodrigo, obviously for the purpose of justifying the inquisitors, unwarrantably asserts did Susan and his confederates.

Llorente considers the blood-lust of the inquisitors established by these merciless convictions, urging that it is incredible that all the prisoners should have refused to recant and to submit themselves to penance—even assuming that they were actually guilty of apostasy as alleged. For when all is considered it must remain extremely doubtful whether they had Judaized at all, and it is not improbable—from what we see of the spirit that actuated the inquisitors—that Morillo and San Martin may have construed the action of those men into an offence against the Faith for the purpose of bringing them within the jurisdiction of the Holy Office.

They were condemned to be the chief actors in the first Auto de Fé that was held in Seville. This took place on February 6.66

There was about this Auto comparatively little of that pomp and ceremonial, that ghastly theatricality that was presently to distinguish these proceedings. But the essentials were already present.

Susan and his fellows were led forth barefoot, in the ignominious, yellow penitential sack, a candle in the hand of each. Hemmed about by halberdiers, they were paraded through the streets of a city in which they had won the goodwill and respect of all, to be gazed upon by a people whose eyes must have been filled with horror and dismay. To head the procession went a black-robed Dominican holding aloft the green cross of the Inquisition, now swathed in a veil of crape; behind him, walking two by two, came the familiars of the Holy Office, members of the Confraternity of St. Peter the Martyr; next followed the doomed men amid their guards; and last came the inquisitors with their attendants and a considerable body of Dominicans from the Convent of St. Paul, headed by their prior, the fanatical Ojeda.

The procession headed for the Cathedral, where the sufferers were taken to hear Mass and forced to listen to a sermon framed for the occasion which was preached by Ojeda, and must have increased the exquisite torment of their protracted agony. Thence they were conducted—once more processionally—out of the city to the meadows of Tablada. There they were attached to the stakes that had been erected, fire was set to the faggots, and thus they perished miserably, to the greater honour and glory of the Catholic Apostolic Church.67

Ojeda may have looked with satisfaction upon that holocaust, upon those cruel flames which more than any man in Spain he had been instrumental in kindling, and which being kindled would continue to cast their lurid glow over that fair land for close upon four centuries. It was the first burning that Ojeda witnessed, and it was the last. His own hour was at hand. His mission, whatever ends it had to serve in the eternal scheme of things, was completed there on the meadows of Tablada, and he might now depart. A few days later he lay dead, stricken down by the plague that was ravaging the south of Spain, and sought him out for one of its first victims.

And from the pulpits of Seville the Dominicans thundered forth declarations that this pestilence was a visitation of God upon an unfaithful city. They never paused to consider that if that were indeed the case either God’s aim must be singularly untrue since the shafts of His wrath overtook such faithful servants as Ojeda, or else....

But an incapacity to conduct its reasonings to a logical conclusion, and an utter want of any sense of proportion, are the main factors in all fanaticism.

Lest they should themselves be stricken by these bolts of pestilence launched against the unfaithful, behold next the inquisitors scuttling out of Seville! They go in quest of more salubrious districts, and, presumably upon the assumption that these—since they remain healthy—are escaping divine attention, the Dominicans zealously proceed to light their fires that they may repair this heavenly oversight.68

But that villegiatura of theirs did not take place until they had transacted a deal more of their horrible business in Seville. Great had been the results of the edict of January 2. The nobles, not daring to run the risk of the threatened ecclesiastical censure, proceeded to effect the arrests demanded, and gangs of pinioned captives were brought daily into the city from the surrounding country districts where they had sought shelter. And in the city itself the familiars of the Holy Office were busily effecting the capture of suspects and of those against whom, either out of bigotry or malice, delations had been made.

So numerous were the arrests that by the middle of the month of January already the capacity of the Convent of St. Paul was strained to its utmost, and the inquisitors were compelled to remove themselves, their tribunal and their prison to the ampler quarters of the Castle of Triana, accorded to them by the Sovereigns in response to their request for it.69

The edict of January 2 was soon succeeded by a second one, known as the “Edict of Grace.” This exhorted all who were guilty of apostasy to come forward voluntarily within a term appointed, to confess their sins and be reconciled to the Church. It assured them that if they did this with real contrition and a firm purpose of amendment, they should receive absolution and suffer no confiscation of property. And it concluded with a warning that if they allowed the term of grace to expire without taking advantage of it, and they should afterwards be accused by others, they would be prosecuted with the utmost rigour of the law.

Amador de los Rios is of opinion that Cardinal Mendoza was “instrumental” in having this edict published, in which case it would hardly be too much to assume that he was the instrument of Isabella in the matter. Nor is it too much to assume that the inspiration was purely merciful, and that there was no thought in the mind of either Queen or Cardinal of the edict’s being turned, as it was, to treacherous account.

The response was immediate. It is estimated that not less than 20,000 conversos who had been guilty of Judaizing came forward to avail themselves of its promise of amnesty and to secure absolution for their infidelity to the religion they had embraced. They discovered to their horror that they had walked into a trap as cruel as any that smooth-faced, benign-voiced priestcraft had ever devised.

The inquisitors had thought well to saddle the promised absolution and immunity from punishment with a condition which they had not published, a condition which they had secretly reserved to spring it now upon these self-convicted apostates at their mercy. They pointed out with infernal subtlety that the edict provided that the contrition of the self-accused must be sincere, and that of this sincerity the penitents must give the only proof possible by disclosing the names of all Judaizers known to them.

The demand was an infamy; for not even under the seal of private confession is a priest authorized to impose upon a penitent as a condition of absolution that he shall divulge the name even of an accomplice or a partner in guilt. Yet here it was demanded of these that they should go much further, and denounce such sinners as they knew; and the demand was framed in such specious terms—as the only proof they could offer of the sincerity of their own contrition—that none dared have taxed the inquisitors with malpractice or with subverting the ends and purpose of this edict they had been forced to publish.

The wretched apostates found themselves between the sword and the wall. Either they must perpetrate the infamy of betraying those of their race whom they knew to be Judaizers, or they must submit not only to the cruel death by fire, but to the destitution of their children as a consequence of the confiscation of their property. Most of them gave way, and purchased their reconciliation at the price of betrayal. And there were men like Bernaldez, the parish priest of Palacios, who applauded this procedure of the Holy Office. “A very glorious thing” (muy hazañosa cosa), he exclaims, “was the reconciliation of these people, as thus by their confessions were discovered all that were Judaizers, and in Seville knowledge was obtained of Judaizers in Toledo, Cordova, and Burgos.”70

Upon the expiry of the term of grace a further edict was published by Morillo and San Martin, in which they now commanded, under pain of mortal sin and greater excommunication, with its attendant penalties, the discovery of all persons known to be engaged in Judaizing practices.

And that there should be no excuse offered by any on the score of ignorance of such practices, these were published in thirty-seven articles appended to the edict, articles whose malign comprehensiveness left no man secure.

They set forth the following signs by which New-Christians guilty of Judaizing might be recognized:

I. Any who await the Messiah, or say that he has not yet come, and that he will come to lead them out of captivity into the promised land.

II. Any who after baptism have returned expressly to the Mosaic faith.

III. Any who declare that the law of Moses is as good as that of Jesus Christ and as efficient for salvation.

IV. Any who keep the Sabbath in honour of the law of Moses—of which the proof is afforded by their assuming clean shirts and more decent garments than on other days, and clean covers on the table, as well as by their refraining from lighting fires and from engaging in all work from Friday evening.

V. Any who strip the tallow or fat from meats that they are to eat and purify it by washing in water, bleeding it, or extracting the glandule from the leg of lambs or other animals slaughtered for food.

VI. Any who cut the throats of animals or poultry that are intended for food, first testing the knife on their finger-nail, covering the blood with earth, and uttering certain words that are customary among Jews.

VII. Any who eat meat in Lent and on other days on which it is forbidden by Holy Church.

VIII. Any who keep the great fast of the Jews known by different names, or the fast of Chiphurim or Quipur in the tenth Hebrew month—whereof the proof shall be their having gone barefoot during the period of the said fast, as is the custom of the Jews, their having said Jewish prayers, or asked pardon one of another, or fathers having laid hands upon the heads of their children without making the sign of the Cross or saying anything but “By God and by me be thou blessed.”

IX and X. Any who keep the fast of Queen Esther, which is observed by the Jews in memory and imitation of what they did in captivity in the reign of Ahasuerus, or the fast of Rebeaso.

XI. Any who shall keep other fasts peculiar to the Jews, such as those of Monday and Thursday, of which the proof shall be: their not eating on such days until after the appearance of the first evening star; their having abstained from meat; their having washed on the previous day or cut their nails or the points of their hair, keeping or burning these; their reciting certain Jewish prayers, raising or lowering their heads with their faces to the wall, after washing their hands in water or in earth; their dressing themselves in sackcloth and girding themselves with cords or strips of leather.

XII, XIII, and XIV concern any who keep the Paschal seasons; which is to be discovered by their setting up green boughs, inviting to table and sending presents of comestibles, and the keeping of the feast of candles.

XV to XIX concern any who observe Hebrew table-customs: whether they bless their viands according to the Jewish custom, whether they drink “lawful” wine—i.e. wine that has been pressed by Jews—and eat meat that has been slaughtered by Jews.

XX. Any who recite the Psalms of David without concluding with the versicle “Gloria Patri et Filio et Spiritu Sancto.”

XXI. Any woman who abstains from going to church for forty days after delivery of child, out of reverence for the law of Moses.

XXII to XXVI concern any who circumcise their children, give them Hebrew names, or after baptism cause their heads to be shaven where anointed with the sacred oil, or any who cause their children to be washed on the seventh day after birth in a basin in which, in addition to the water, they have placed gold and silver, pearls, wheat, barley, and other things.

XXVII. Any who are married in the Jewish manner.

XXVIII. Any who hold the Ruaya—which is a valedictory supper before setting out upon a long journey.

XXIX and XXX. Any who carry Hebrew relics or make burnt-offerings of bread.

XXXI. Any who in articulo mortis have turned or been turned with their faces to the wall to die in this attitude.

XXXII. Any who wash a corpse in warm water or shave it according to the Jewish custom, and otherwise dress it for the grave as is prescribed by the Mosaic law.

XXXIII to XXXVI concern Jewish expressions of mourning, such as the abstaining from meat, the spilling of water from the jars in the dwelling of the deceased, etc.

XXXVII. Any who bury their dead in virgin soil or in a Jewish cemetery.71

Reference has already been made to the inherent character of many Jewish customs, which even the most sincere of New-Christians retained despite themselves; these customs, being racial rather than religious, were very far from signifying Judaic apostasy, since they contained nothing that was directly opposed to the Christian teaching. In the list published by the Seville inquisitors it will be seen that such customs were deliberately included as evidences of apostasy.

Consider Articles IV, V, and VII, concerning the assumption of clean linen on Saturdays and the stripping of fat from beef and mutton, which nowise offend against the Christian faith, and might well be the perpetuation of customs acquired before baptism was received.

Even more flagrant is Article XXXI, which lays it down as evidence of Judaizing that a man shall turn his face to the wall when at the point of death; but most flagrant of all is Article XXVIII, concerning the valedictory meal partaken of before setting out upon a journey, for it is a custom that at all times has been as much in vogue among Christians as among men of any other religion.

Clearly not a New-Christian in Seville was safe from the delations of the malevolent, since such ridiculously slight grounds of suspicion were set forth by the tribunal. So extravagant and absurd are some of these articles that one is forced to agree with Llorente, that in formulating them the inquisitors proceeded with deliberate malice. He contends that deliberately they cast a wide net that by their heavy draught they should satisfy the Queen that she had heard no more than the truth as to the extent to which Judaizing was rampant in Castile, and the urgent need there was for the introduction of the Inquisition.

Whether in this they proceeded according to instructions received from Torquemada or Ojeda does not transpire, but there can be little doubt that the results obtained must have been in accordance with the wishes of both, since they justified to the Queen the representations these friars had so insistently made to her.

And the system of espionage which the inquisitors set up to increase their haul of victims was as sly and cunning as anything in the history of spying. Conceive the astuteness of the friar who climbed to the roof of the Convent of St. Paul on Saturday mornings to observe and note the houses of New-Christians from whose chimneys no smoke was to be seen issuing, that he might lay the information thus obtained before the tribunal, which would proceed to arrest the inhabitants upon a strong suspicion that they were Judaizers who would not desecrate the Sabbath by lighting fires.72

“What,” asks Llorente, “could be expected of a tribunal that began in this way?” And he at once supplies the answer: “That which happened—neither more nor less.”

With the methods of procedure that obtained in the trials conducted by these inquisitors we need not just now concern ourselves. For the moment it is enough to say that to the vices inherent in such a judicial system must be added, in the case of the first inquisitors of Seville, a zeal—not only to convict, but actually to be burning heretics—so ferociously excessive as to proclaim that they were gratifying their hatred of these Jews.

This upon the word of that sober chronicler Pulgar, who, whilst in general terms approving the introduction of the Inquisition, as has been seen, denounces in the following particular terms the practices of Morillo and San Martin: “In the manner in which they conducted their proceedings they showed that they held those people in hatred.”73

The Auto of February 6 was followed by another on March 26, at which seventeen victims were burnt on the fields of Tablada. And now that the fires were lighted, the inquisitors saw to it that they were well supplied with human fuel. Burnings followed one another at such a rate that by the month of November—upon the word of Llorente—298 condemned had been sent to the flames in the town of Seville alone, whilst 79 others by reconciling themselves to the Church secured the commutation of their sentence to one of perpetual imprisonment.

Mariana, the historian who gave thanks to God for the introduction of the Inquisition into Castile, informs us with flagrant calm that the number of Judaizers burnt in the Archbishopric during that year 1481 amounted to 8,000, whilst some 17,000 were submitted to penance.

In addition to those burnt alive, many who had fled the country were burnt in effigy, having been tried and found guilty during an absence described as contumacious. And similarly the court went through the horrible farce of sitting in judgment upon many who were dead, and, having convicted them, it dug up their bones and flung these to the flames.

Such was the prodigious activity of the Holy Office, and to such an extent did its holocausts promise to continue, that the Governor of Seville ordered the erection on the fields of Tablada of a permanent platform of stone of vast proportions known as the Quemadero, or Burning-place. It was adorned by figures of the four Prophets. At each of its four corners towered one of these colossal statues of plaster, and Llorente tells us that they were not merely for ornament. He says that they were hollow and so contrived that a condemned person might be placed in each and so die by slow fire.74

This Quemadero remained standing, a monument to religious intolerance and fanatical cruelty, until the soldiers of Napoleon demolished it in the nineteenth century.75

So ruthless were Morillo and San Martin, and so negligent of equity or even the observance of the ordinary rules of judicial procedure, that in the end we find the Pope himself—in January of 1482—addressing a letter of protest to the Sovereigns.

The first edict commanding the nobles to arrest all those who had fled from Seville had had the effect of driving many of these fugitive New-Christians farther afield in their quest for safety. Some had escaped into Portugal, others had crossed the Mediterranean and sought shelter in Morocco, whilst others still had taken their courage in both hands and sought sanctuary in Rome itself, at the very feet of the Pontiff. Other fugitives followed presently, when the tribunal had already inaugurated its terrible work; and these came clamouring their grievances and protesting that in spite of their innocence they dared no longer remain in a State where no New-Christian was safe from the hatred and injustice shown by the inquisitors to men of their race. Therefore they were driven to seek from Christ’s Vicar the protection to which all Christians and true Catholics were entitled at his hands.

Photo by Lacoste.

FERDINAND OF ARAGON AND THE INFANTE DON JUAN.
From the Painting in the Prado Gallery attributed to Miguel Zittoz.

They informed the Pontiff of the methods that were being pursued; they set forth how the inquisitors in their eagerness to secure convictions proceeded entirely upon their own initiative and without the concurrence of the assessor and diocesan ordinary, as had been prescribed; how they were departing from all legal form, imprisoning unjustly, torturing cruelly and unduly, and falsely stigmatizing innocent men as formal heretics, thereafter delivering them to the secular arm for punishment, in addition to confiscating their property so that their children were left in want and under the brand of infamy.

The Pope gave ear to these plaints, convinced himself of their truth, and made his protest to Ferdinand and Isabella. He announced in his brief that he would have deprived the inquisitors of their office but that he was restrained by consideration for the Sovereigns who had appointed them; nevertheless, he was sending them a brief of admonition, and should they again give cause for complaint he would be constrained to depose them. In the meantime he revoked the faculty given the Sovereigns of appointing inquisitors, protesting that when conceding this he had not sufficiently considered that already there were inquisitors in the Sovereigns’ dominions and that the General of the Dominicans and the Spanish provincials of that order had the right to make such appointments. The bull that he had granted was therefore in opposition to that right, and would never have been granted had the matter been sufficiently considered.76