CHAPTER XVIII TORQUEMADA AND THE JEWS

During that first year of the Inquisition’s establishment in Toledo, twenty-seven persons there convicted of Judaizing were burnt and 3,300 were penanced. And what was taking place in Toledo was taking place in every other important city in Spain.

Numerous now and vehement were the protests against the terrible and excessive rigour of Torquemada. Already, upon the death of Pope Sixtus IV, a vigorous attempt had been made by some Spaniards of eminence to procure the deposition of the Prior of Holy Cross from the office of Grand Inquisitor. It was argued that as his appointment had been made by Sixtus, so it was automatically determined by that Pope’s decease. But whatever hopes may have been founded upon such an argument were very quickly overthrown. Innocent VIII, as we have already seen, not only confirmed Torquemada in his office, but considerably increased his powers and the scope of his jurisdiction.

Indeed, not only was he given jurisdiction over all the Spains, but Innocent’s bull of April 3, 1487, motu proprio, commanded all Catholic princes that, upon being requested by the Grand Inquisitor so to do, they should arrest any fugitives he might indicate and send them captive to the Inquisition under pain of excommunication.145

Notwithstanding the threat by which it was backed, this command from the Vatican appears to have been generally disregarded by the Governments of Europe.146

That such a bull should have been solicited gives us yet another glimpse of the terrible rancour against the Jews which fanaticism had kindled in the soul of Torquemada. Had his aim been merely, as expressed, to weed the tares of heresy from the Catholic soil of Spain, the self-imposed exile of those wretched fugitives would fully have satisfied him, and he would not have thought it necessary to hound them out of such shelter as they had found abroad that he might have the satisfaction of hurling them into the bonfire he had kindled.

His position being so greatly strengthened by the wider and ampler powers accorded to him by the new Pontiff, Torquemada gave a still freer rein to the terrible severity of his nature, and thus occasioned those frequent and very urgent appeals to the Vatican.

Many New-Christians who secretly practised Jewish rites, being repelled from taking advantage of the edict of grace by the necessity it imposed of undergoing the horrible verguenza already described, applied now to the Pontiff for secret absolution. This required special briefs. Special briefs brought money into the papal coffers, and procured converts to the Faith. Two better reasons for granting these requests it would have been impossible to have urged, and so the Curia acceded.

But the result of this curial interference with the autonomous jurisdiction of the Holy Office in Spain was to provoke the resentment of Torquemada. Wrangles ensued between the Grand Inquisitor and the Pontifical Court—wrangles which may be likened to those of two lawyers over a wealthy client.

Torquemada arrogantly demanded that this Roman protection of heretics should not only cease in future but be withdrawn where already it had been granted in the past, and his demand had the full support of Catholic Ferdinand, who did not at all relish the spectacle of the gold of his subjects being poured into any treasury other than his own. Rome, having meanwhile pocketed the fees, was disposed to be amenable to the representations of the Catholic Sovereigns and their Grand Inquisitor; and the Pope proceeded flagrantly to cancel the briefs of dispensation that had been granted.

There was an outcry from the swindled victims. They protested appealingly to the Pope that they had confessed their sins against the Faith, and that absolution had been granted them. Very rightly they urged that this absolution could not now be rescinded—for not even the Pope had power to do so much—and they argued that, being in a state of grace, they could not now be prosecuted for heresy.

But they overlooked the retrospective power which—however unjustifiable by canon or any other law—the Inquisition had arrogated to itself. By virtue of this, as we have seen, the inquisitors could take proceedings even against one who had died in a state of grace, at peace with Holy Mother Church, if it were shown that an offence of heresy committed at some stage of his life had not been expiated in a manner that the Holy Office accounted condign.

These protests of the unfortunate Judaizers, who by their own action had achieved—as they now realized—no more than self-betrayal, were met by the priestly answer that their sins had been absolved in the tribunal of conscience only, and that it still remained for them to seek temporal absolution in the tribunal of the Holy Office. This temporal absolution would accord them, as we know—and as they knew—the right to live in perpetual imprisonment after the confiscation of their property and the destitution and infamy of their children.

The answer, crafty and sophistical as it was, did not suffice to silence the protests. Clamorously these continued, and the Pope, unable to turn a deaf ear upon them, fearful lest a scandal should ensue, effected a sort of compromise. With the royal concurrence, Innocent VIII issued several bulls, each commanding the Catholic Sovereigns to admit fifty persons to secret absolution with immunity from punishment. These secret absolutions were purchased at a high price, and they were granted upon the condition that in the event of the re-Judaizing of a person so absolved, he would be treated as relapsed, the secret absolution being then published.

These absolutions were particularly useful in the case of persons deceased, several of whom, at the petition of the heirs, were included among the secretly reconciled—the inheritance being thereby secured from confiscation.

Altogether Pope Innocent granted four of these bulls in 1486.147 In the last one issued he left it at the discretion of the Sovereigns to indicate those who should be admitted to this grace, and they were permitted to include the names even of persons against whom proceedings had already been initiated.

With what degree of equanimity Torquemada viewed these bulls of absolution we do not know. But very soon we shall see him vexed by papal interference of a fresh character.

Simoniacal practices were never more rampant in Rome than under the rule of Innocent VIII. His greed was notorious and scandalous, and a number of alert baptized Jews bethought them that this might be turned to account. They slyly submitted to the Holy Father that although they were good Catholics, such was the harshness of the Grand Inquisitor towards men of their blood that they lived in constant dread and anxiety lest the mere circumstance of their having originally been Jews should be accounted a sufficient reason to bring them under suspicion or should lay them open to the machinations of malevolent enemies. Hence they implored his Holiness to grant them the privilege of exclusion from inquisitorial jurisdiction.

At a price this immunity was to be obtained; and soon others, seeing the success that had attended the efforts of the originators of this crafty idea, were following their example and setting a drag upon the swift wheels of Torquemada’s justice.

That it stirred him to righteous anger is not to be doubted, however subservient and injured the tone in which he addressed his protest to the Pontiff.

Innocent replied by a brief of November 27, 1487, that whenever the Grand Inquisitor found occasion to proceed against one so privileged, he should inform the Apostolic Court of all that might exist against the accused, so that his Holiness should determine whether the privilege was to be respected.148

It follows inevitably that if there was heresy, or the suspicion of it, the Pope must allow the justice of the Holy Office to run its course. So that the Jews who had purchased immunity must have realized that they were dealing with one who understood the science of economics (and the guile to be practised in it) even better than did they, famous as they have always been for clear-sightedness in such matters.

Meanwhile, with the power that was vested in him, Torquemada was amassing great wealth from the proportion of the confiscations that fell to his share. But whatever his faults may have been, he was perfectly consistent in them, just as he was perfectly, terribly sincere.

Into the sin of pride he may have fallen. We see signs of it. And, indeed, it is difficult to conceive of a man climbing from the obscurity of the monastic cell to the fierce glare of his despotic eminence and remaining humble at heart. Humble he did remain; but with that aggressive humility which is one of pride’s worst forms and akin to self-righteousness—the sin most dreaded by those who strive after sanctity.

We know that he unswervingly followed the stern path of asceticism prescribed by the founder of his order. He never ate meat; his bed was a plank; his flesh never knew the contact of linen; his garments were the white woollen habit and the black mantle of the Dominican. Dignities he might have had, but he disdained them. Paramo says149 that Isabella sought to force them upon him, and that, in particular, she would have procured his appointment to the Archbishopric of Seville when this was vacated by the Cardinal of Spain. But he was content to remain the Prior of Holy Cross of Segovia, as he had been when he was haled from his convent to direct the affairs of the Holy Office in Spain. The only outward pomp he permitted himself was that whenever now he went abroad he was attended by an escort of fifty mounted familiars and two hundred men on foot. This escort Llorente admits150 was imposed by the Sovereigns. It is possible, as is suggested, that it was to defend him from his enemies, since the death of Arbués had shown to what lengths the New-Christians were prepared to go. But it is more probable that this escort was accepted as an outward sign of the dignity of his office, and perhaps also to serve the terrorizing purpose which Torquemada considered so very salutary.

That he practised the contempt for worldly riches which he preached is beyond all doubt. We cannot discover that any of the wealth that accrued to him was put to any worldly uses or went in any way to benefit any member of his family. Indeed, we have already seen him refusing suitably to dower his sister, allowing her no more than the pittance necessary to enable her to enter a convent of the Tertiary Order of St. Dominic.151

He employed the riches which his office brought him entirely to the greater honour and glory of the religion which he served with such terrible zeal. He spent it lavishly upon such works as the rebuilding of the Dominican Convent of Segovia, together with the contiguous church and offices. He built the principal church of his family’s native town of Torquemada and half of the great bridge over the River Pisuerga.152

Fidel Fita quotes an interesting letter of Torquemada’s, dated August 17, 1490, in which he thanks the gentry of Torquemada for having sent him a sumpter-mule, but rather seems to rebuke the gift.

“To me,” he writes, “it was not, nor is necessary to send such things; and it is certain that I should have sent back the gift but that it might have offended you; for I, praised be our Lord, possess nine sumpter-mules, which suffice me.”153

In sending the gift they had asked him for assistance towards the work being carried out in the church of Santa Ollala, the contribution he had already made not having proved sufficient. He replies regretting that he can do nothing at the moment, as he is not with the Court, but promises that upon his return thither he will do the necessary with the Sovereigns so as to be able to send them the further funds they require.154

As early as 1482 he began to build at Avila the church and monastery of St. Thomas. This pleasant little country town, packed within its narrow red walls and flanked with towers so that it presents the appearance of a formidable castle, stands upon rising ground in the fertile plain that is watered by the River Adaja. Torquemada built his magnificent monastery beyond the walls, upon the site of a humbler edifice that had been erected by the pious D. Maria de Avila. It was completed by the year 1493, and what moneys came to him thereafter appear to have gone to the endowment of this vast convent—a place of handsome, spacious, cloistered courts and splendid galleries—which became at once his chief residence, tribunal, and prison.155

Again his fanatical hatred of the Israelites displays itself in the condition he laid down—and whose endorsement he obtained from Pope Alexander VI—that no descendant of Jew or Moor should ever be admitted to these walls, upon which he engraved the legend:

PESTEM FUGAT HÆRETICAM.156

In this monastery the amplest provisions were made, not only for the tribunal of the Inquisition, but also for the incarceration of its prisoners.

Garcia Rodrigo, anxious to refute the widespread belief that the prisons of the Inquisition were unhealthy subterranean dungeons, draws attention to the airy, sunny chambers here set apart for prisoners.157 It is true enough in this instance, as transpires from certain records that are presently to be considered.158 But it is not true in general, and it almost seems a little disingenuous of Garcia Rodrigo to put forward a striking exception as an instance of the rule that obtained.

Whatever the simplicity of Torquemada’s life, and whatever his personal humility, it would be idle to pretend that he was not imbued with the pride and arrogance of his office, swollen by the increase of power accorded him, until in matters of the Faith he did not hesitate to dictate to the Sovereigns themselves, and to reproach them almost to the point of menace when they were slow to act as he dictated, whilst it was dangerous for any under Sovereign rank to come into conflict with the Grand Inquisitor.

As an instance of this, the case of the Captain-General of Valencia may be cited. The Inquisition of Valencia had arrested, upon a charge of hindering the Holy Office, one Domingo de Santa Cruz, whose particular offence, in the Captain-General’s view, came rather within the jurisdiction of the military courts. Acting upon this opinion, he ordered his troops to take the accused from the prison of the Holy Office, employing force to that end if necessary.

The inquisitors of Valencia complained of this action to the Suprema, whereupon Torquemada imperiously ordered the Captain-General to appear before that council and render an account of what he had done. He was supported in this by the King, who wrote commanding the offender and all who had aided him in procuring the release of Santa Cruz to submit themselves to arrest by the officers of the Inquisition.

Not daring to resist, that high dignitary was compelled humbly to sue for absolution of the ecclesiastical censure incurred, and he must have counted himself fortunate that Torquemada did not subject him to a public humiliation akin to that undergone by the Infante of Navarre.

The brilliant and illustrious young Italian, Giovanni Pico, Count of Mirandola, had a near escape of falling into the hands of the dread inquisitor. When Pico fled from Italy before the blaze of ecclesiastical wrath which his writings had kindled, Pope Innocent issued a bull, December 16, 1487, to Ferdinand and Isabella, setting forth that he believed the Count of Mirandola had gone to Spain with the intention of teaching in the universities of that country the evil doctrines which he had already published in Rome, notwithstanding that, having been convinced of their error, he had abjured them. (Another case of the “e pur si muove” of Galileo.) And since Pico was noble, gentle, and handsome, amiable and eloquent of speech (Pseudopropheta est; dulcia loquitur et ad modicum placet), there was great danger that an ear might be lent to his teachings. Wherefore his Holiness begged the Sovereigns that in the event of his suspicions concerning Pico’s intentions being verified, their highnesses should arrest the Count, to the end that the fear of corporal pains might deter him where the fear of spiritual ones had proved insufficient.

The Sovereigns delivered this bull to Torquemada that he might act upon it. But Pico, getting wind of the reception that awaited him, and having sufficient knowledge of the Grand Inquisitor’s uncompromising methods to be alarmed at the prospect, took refuge in France, where he wrote the apologia of his Catholicism, which he dedicated to Lorenzo de’ Medici.159

We have said, on the subject of the Inquisition’s introduction into Spain, that to an extent and after a manner this must be considered the most justifiable—by which we are to be taken to mean the least unjustifiable—of religious persecutions, inasmuch as it had no concern save with deserters from the fold of the Roman Church. Liberty was accorded to all religions that were not looked upon as heretical—i.e. that were not in themselves secessions from Roman Catholicism—and Jew and Moslem had nothing to fear from the Holy Office. It was only when, after having received baptism, they reverted to their original cults, that they rendered themselves liable to prosecution, being then looked upon as heretics, or, more properly speaking, as apostates.

But this point of view, which satisfied the Roman See, did not at all satisfy the Prior of Holy Cross. His bitter, fanatical hatred of the Israelites—almost rivalling that of the Dean of Ecija in the fourteenth century—urged him to violate this poor remnant of equity, drove him to overstep the last boundary of apparent justice, and carry the religious war into the region of complete and terrible intolerance.

The reason he advanced was that as long as the Jews remained undisturbed in the Peninsula, so long would a united Christian Spain be impossible. Despite penances, imprisonments, and burnings, the Judaizing movement went on. New-Christians were seduced back into the error of the Mosaic Law, whilst conversion amongst the Jews was checked by respect for the feelings of those who remained true to their ancient faith. Nor did the Hebrew offences against Christianity end there. There were the indignities to which holy things were subjected at their hands. There were criminal sacrileges in which—according to Torquemada—they vented their hatred of the Holy Christian Faith.

Such, for instance, was the outrage upon the crucifix at Casar de Palomero in 1488.

On Holy Thursday of that year, in this village of the diocese of Coria, several Jews, instead of being at home with closed doors at such a season, as the Christian law demanded, were making merry in an orchard, to the great scandal of a man named Juan Caletrido, who there detected them.

The spy, moved to horror at the mere thought of these descendants of the crucifiers daring to be at play upon such a day as that, went to inform several others of what he had witnessed. A party of young Spaniards, but too ready to combine the performance of a meritorious act with the time-honoured sport of Jew-baiting, invaded the privacy of the orchard, set upon the Jews, and compelled them to withdraw into their houses.

Smarting under this indignity—for, when all is said, they had been more or less private in their orchard, and they had intended no offence by their slight evasion of the strict letter of the law—they related the event to other members of the synagogue, including the Rabbi.

From what ensued it seems plain that they must there and then have determined to avenge the honour of their race, which they conceived had been affronted.

Llorente, basing himself upon the chronicler Velasquez and the scurrilous anti-Jewish writings of Torrejoncillo, supposes that their aim was to repeat as nearly as possible the Passion of the Nazarene upon one of His Images. That, indeed, may have been the prejudiced view of the Grand Inquisitor.

But it is far more likely that, to spite these Christians who had added this insult to the constant humiliations they were putting upon the Israelites, the latter should simply have resolved to smash one of the public symbols of Christianity. The details of what took place do not justify the supposition that their intentions went any deeper.

On the morrow, which was Good Friday, the circumstance of the day contributing perhaps to the more popular version of the story, whilst the Christians were in church for the service of the Passion, a party of Jews repaired to an open space known as Puerto del Gamo, where stood a large wooden crucifix. This image they shattered and overthrew.

It is alleged that before finally breaking it they had indulged in elaborate insult, “doing and saying all that their rage dictated against the Nazarene.”

An Old-Christian, named Hernan Bravo, having watched them, ran to bear the tale of their sacrilegious deed. The Christians poured tumultuously out of church, and fell upon the Jews. Three of the latter were stoned to death on the spot; two others, one of whom was a lad of thirteen, suffered each the loss of his right hand; whilst the Rabbi Juan, being taken as an inciter, was put to the question with a view to inducing him to confess. But he denied so stoutly the things he was required to admit, and the inquisitors tortured so determinedly, that he died upon the rack—an irregularity this for which each inquisitor responsible would have to seek absolution at the hands of the other.

All those who took part in the sacrilege suffered confiscation of their property, whilst the pieces of the crucifix, which had become peculiarly sanctified by the affair, were gathered up and conveyed to the Church of Casar, where, upon being repaired, the image was given the place of honour.160

It is extremely likely that the story of this outrage, exaggerated as we have seen, would be one of the arguments employed by Torquemada when first he began to urge upon the attention of the Sovereigns the desirability of the expulsion of the Jews. He would cite it as a flagrant instance of the Jewish hatred of Christianity, which gave rise to his complaint and which he contended rendered a united Spain impossible as long as this accursed race continued to defile the land. Further, there can be very little doubt that it would serve to revive and to lend colour to the old stories of ritual murder practised by the Jews and provided for by one of the enactments in the “Partidas” code of Alfonso XI.

The reluctance of the Sovereigns to lend an ear to any such arguments is abundantly apparent. Not Ferdinand in all his bigotry could be blind to the fact that the chief trades of the country were in the hands of the Israelites, and to the inevitable loss to Spanish commerce, then so flourishing, which must ensue on their banishment. Of their ability in matters of finance he had practical and beneficial experience, and the admirable equipment of his army in the present campaign against the Moors of Granada was entirely due to the arrangements he had made with Jewish contractors. Moreover, there was this war itself to engage the attention of the Sovereigns, and so it was not possible to lend at the moment more than an indifferent attention to the fierce pleadings of the Grand Inquisitor.

Suddenly, however, in 1490 an event came to light, to throw into extraordinary prominence the practice of ritual murder of which the Jews were suspected, and to confirm and intensify the general belief in the stories that were current upon that subject. This was the crucifixion at La Guardia, in the province of La Mancha, of a boy of four years of age, known to history as “the Holy Child of La Guardia.”

A stronger argument than this afforded him for the furtherance of his aims Torquemada could not have desired. And it is probably this circumstance that has led so many writers to advance the opinion that he fabricated the whole story and engineered the substantiation of a charge that so very opportunely placed an added weapon in his hands.

Until some thirty years ago all our knowledge of the affair was derived from the rather vague “Testimonio” preserved in the sanctuary of the martyred child, and a little history of the “Santo Niño,” by Martinez Moreno, published in Madrid in 1786. This last—like Lope da Vega’s drama upon the same subject—was based upon a “Memoria” prepared by Damiano de Vegas of La Guardia in 1544, at a time when people were still living who remembered the incident, including the brother of a sacristan who was implicated in the affair.161

Martinez Moreno’s narrative is a queer jumble of possible fact and obvious fiction, which in itself may be responsible for the opinion that the whole story was an invention of Torquemada’s to forward his own designs.

But in 1887 the distinguished and painstaking M. Fidel Fita published in the “Boletin de la Real Academia de la Historia” the full record, which he had unearthed, of the proceedings against Yucé (or José) Franco, one of the incriminated Jews.

A good deal still remains unexplained, and must so remain until the records of the trials of the other accused are brought to light. It may perhaps be well to suspend a final judgment until then. Meanwhile, however, a survey of the discovered record should incline us to the opinion that, if the story is an invention, it is one for which those who were accused of the crime are responsible—an unlikely contingency, as we shall hope to show—and in no case can the inventor have been Frey Tomás de Torquemada.