History of the Inquisition of Spain - Henry Charles Lea

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that ultimately the Jews would all be gathered into the fold of Christ. This had been the justification of the inhuman laws designed to render existence outside of the Church so intolerable that baptism would be sought as a relief from endless injustice, but the awful spectacle of the autos de fe and the miseries attendant on wholesale confiscations led the Jew to cherish more resolutely than ever the ancestral faith which served him as shield from the terrors of the Holy Office and the dreadful fate ever impending over the Conversos. His conversion could no longer be hoped for and, so long as he remained in Spain, the faithful would be scandalized by his presence and the converts would be exposed to the contamination of his society. The only alternative was his removal.

      Isabella tried a partial experiment of this kind in 1480, apparently to supplement the Inquisition, founded about the same time. Andalusia was the province where the Jews were most numerous and she commenced by ordering the expulsion from there of all who would not accept Christianity and threatening with death any new settlers.[379] We have no details as to this measure and only know that it was several times postponed and that it was apparently abandoned.[380] A bull of Sixtus IV, in 1484, shows us that Jews were still dwelling there undisturbed and, when the final expulsion took place in 1492, Bernaldez informs us that from Andalusia eight thousand households embarked at Cadiz, besides many at Cartagena and the ports of Aragon.[381]

      STIMULATION OF PREJUDICE

      There was no lack of effort to inflame public opinion and to excite still further the hostility so long and so carefully cultivated. A story had wide circulation that Maestre Ribas Altas, the royal physician, wore a golden ball attached to a cord around his neck; that Prince Juan, only son of the sovereigns, begged it of him and managed to open it, when he found inside a parchment on which was painted a crucifix with the physician in an indecent attitude; that he was so affected that he fell sick and, after much persuasion, revealed the cause, adding that he would not recover until the Jew was burnt, which was accordingly done and Ferdinand consented to the expulsion of the accursed sect.[384] Then we are told that, on Good Friday, 1488, some Jews, to avenge an insult, stoned a rude cross which stood on the hill of Gano near Casar de Palomero; they were observed and denounced, when the Duke of Alba burnt the rabbi and several of the culprits; the cross was repaired and carried in solemn procession to the parish church, where it still remains an object of popular veneration.[385] It is to this period also that we may presumably refer the fabrication of a correspondence, discovered fifty years later among the archives of Toledo by Archbishop Siliceo, between Chamorro, Prince of the Jews of Spain and Uliff, Prince of those of Constantinople, in which the latter, replying to a request for counsel, tells the former “as the king takes your property, make your sons merchants that they may take the property of the Christians; as he takes your lives, make your sons physicians and apothecaries, that they may take Christian lives; as he destroys your synagogues, make your sons ecclesiastics, that they may destroy the churches; as he vexes you in other ways, make your sons officials, that they may reduce the Christians to subjection and take revenge.”[386]

      The most effective device, however, was a cruel one, carried out by Torquemada unshrinkingly to the end. In June, 1490, a Converso named Benito García, on his return from a pilgrimage to Compostella, was arrested at Astorga on the charge of having a consecrated wafer in his knapsack. The episcopal vicar, Dr. Pedro de Villada, tortured him repeatedly till he obtained a confession implicating five other Conversos and six Jews in a plot to effect a conjuration with a human heart and a consecrated host, whereby to cause the madness and death of all Christians, the destruction of Christianity and the triumph of Judaism. Three of the implicated Jews were dead, but the rest of those named were promptly arrested and the trial was carried on by the Inquisition. After another year spent in torturing the accused, there emerged the story of the crucifixion at La Guardia of a Christian child, whose heart was cut out for the purpose of the conjuration. The whole tissue was so evidently the creation of the torture-chamber that it was impossible to reconcile the discrepancies in the confessions of the accused, although the very unusual recourse of confronting them was tried several times; no child had anywhere been missed and no remains were found on the spot where it was said to have been buried. The inquisitors finally abandoned the attempt to frame a consistent narrative and, on November 16, 1491, the accused were executed at Avila; the three deceased Jews were burned in effigy, the two living ones were torn with red-hot pincers and the Conversos were “reconciled” and strangled before burning. The underlying purpose was revealed in the sentence read at the auto de fe, which was framed so as to bring into especial prominence the proselyting efforts of the Jews and the Judaizing propensities of the Conversos and no effort was spared to produce the widest impression on the people. We happen to know that the sentence was sent to La Guardia, to be read from the pulpit, and that it was translated into Catalan and similarly published in Barcelona, showing that it was thus brought before the whole population—a thing without parallel in the history of the Inquisition. The cult of the Saint-Child of La Guardia—El santo niño de la Guardia—was promptly started with miracles and has been kept up to the present day, although the sanctity of the supposed martyr has never been confirmed by the Holy See. Torquemada’s object was gained for, though it would be too much to say that this alone won Ferdinand’s consent to the expulsion, it undoubtedly contributed largely to that result. The edict of expulsion, it is true, makes no direct reference to the case but, in its labored efforts to magnify the dangers of Jewish proselytism it reflects distinctly the admissions extorted from the accused by the Inquisition.[387]

      EXPULSION OF THE JEWS

      With the surrender of Granada in January, 1492, the work of the Reconquest was accomplished. The Jews had zealously contributed to it and had done their work too well. With the accession of a rich territory and an industrious Moorish population and the cessation of the drain of the war, even Ferdinand might persuade himself that the Jews were no longer financially indispensable. The popular fanaticism required constant repression to keep the peace; the operations of the Inquisition destroyed the hope that gradual conversion would bring about the desired unity of faith and the only alternative was the removal of those who could not, without a miraculous change of heart, be expected to encounter the terrible risks attendant upon baptism. It is easy thus to understand the motives leading to the measure, without attributing it, as has been done, to greed for the victims’ wealth, for though, as we shall see, there are abundant evidences of a desire to profit by it, as a whole it was palpably undesirable financially.

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