History of the Inquisition of Spain - Henry Charles Lea

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1467, where, on September 17th, two Conversos, Garcí Fernández Valency and Pedro Franco de Villareal, were discovered in the act of performing Jewish ceremonies. The alcalde mayor, Alvaro de Céspedes, at once seized them and carried them before the episcopal vicar, Joan Millan. They confessed their Judaism and the vicar at once sentenced them to be burnt alive, which was executed the same day; two women compromised in the matter were condemned to other penalties and the house in which the heresy had been perpetrated was torn down.[439] In such cases the bishops were merely exercising their imprescriptible jurisdiction over heresy, but the prelacy of Castile was too much occupied with worldly affairs to devote any general or sustained energy to the suppression of Judaizers, and the land was too anarchical for the royal power to exert any influence in carrying the Concordia into effect; the Deposition of Avila, which followed in the next year, plunged everything again into confusion and the only real importance of the attempt lies in its significance of what was impending when peace and a strong government should render such a measure feasible. Yet it is a noteworthy fact that, in all the long series of the Córtes of Castile, from the earliest times, the proceedings of which have been published in full, there was no petition for anything approaching an Inquisition. In the fourteenth century there were many complaints about the Jews and petitions for restrictive laws, but these diminish in the fifteenth century and the later Córtes, from 1450 on, are almost free from them. The fearful disorders of the land gave the procurators or deputies enough to complain about and they seem to have had no time to waste on problematical dangers to religion.[440]

      PRELIMINARY MOVEMENTS

      This was the situation at the accession of Ferdinand and Isabella in 1474. Some years were necessary to settle the question of the succession, disputed by the unfortunate Beltraneja, and to quell the unruly nobles. During this period Sixtus IV renewed the attempt to introduce the papal Inquisition, for, in sending Nicoló Franco to Castile as legate, he commissioned him with full inquisitorial faculties to prosecute and punish the false Christians who after baptism persisted in the observance of Jewish rites.[441] The effort, however, was fruitless and is interesting chiefly from the evidence which it gives of the desire of Sixtus to give to Castile the blessing of the Inquisition. Ferdinand and Isabella, as we have seen, were habitually jealous of papal encroachments and were anxious to limit rather than to extend the legatine functions; they did not respond to the papal zeal for the purity of the faith and even when quiet was to a great extent restored they took no initiative with regard to a matter which had seemed to Fray Alonso de Espina so immeasurably important. In his capacity of agitator he had been succeeded by Fray Alonso de Hojeda, prior of the Dominican house of San Pablo of Seville, who devoted himself to the destruction of Judaism, both open as professed by the Jews and concealed as attributed to the Conversos. The battle of Toro, March 1, 1476, virtually broke up the party of the Beltraneja, of which the leaders made their peace as best they could, and the sovereigns could at last undertake the task of pacifying the land. At the end of July, 1477, Isabella, after capturing the castle of Trugillo, came, as we have seen, to Seville where she remained until October, 1478.[442] The presence of the court, with Conversos filling many of its most important posts, excited Fray Alonso to greater ardor than ever. It was in vain, however, that he called the queen’s attention to the danger threatening the faith and the State from the multitude of pretended Christians in high places. She was receiving faithful service from members of the class accused and she probably was too much occupied with the business in hand to undertake a task that could be postponed. It is said that her confessor, Torquemada, at an earlier period, had induced her to take a vow that, when she should reach the throne, she would devote her life to the extirpation of heresy and the supremacy of the Catholic faith, but this may safely be dismissed as a legend of later date.[443] Be this as it may, all that was done at the moment was that Pero González de Mendoza, then Archbishop of Seville, held a synod in which was promulgated a catechism setting forth the belief and duties of the Christian, which was published in the churches and hung up for public information in every parish, while the priests were exhorted to increased vigilance and the frailes to fresh zeal in making converts.[444] The adoption of such a device betrays the previous neglect of all instruction of the Marranos in the new religion imposed on them.

      The court left Seville and Hojeda’s opportunity seemed to have passed away. Whatever alacrity the priests may have shown in obeying their archbishop, nothing was accomplished nor was the increased zeal of the frailes rewarded with success. There is a story accredited by all historians of the Inquisition that Hojeda chanced to hear of a meeting of Jews and Conversos on the night of Good Friday, March 28, 1478, to celebrate their impious rites and that he hastened with the evidence to Córdova and laid it before the sovereigns, resulting in the punishment of the culprits and turning the scale in favor of introducing the Inquisition, but there is no contemporary evidence of its truth and the dates are irreconcilable, nor was such an incentive necessary.[445] The insincerity of the conversion of a large portion of the Marranos was incontestable; according to the principles universally accepted at the period it was the duty of the sovereigns to reduce them to conformity; with the pacification of the land the time had come to attempt this resolutely and comprehensively and the only question was as to the method.

      THE INQUISITION APPLIED FOR

      It was inevitable that there should have been a prolonged struggle in the court before the drastic remedy of the Inquisition was adopted. The efforts of its advocates were directed, not against the despised and friendless Jews, but against the powerful Conversos, embracing many of the most trusted counsellors of the sovereigns and men high in station in the Church, who could not but recognize the danger impending on all who traced their descent from Israel. There seems at first to have been a kind of compromise adopted, under which Pedro Fernández de Solis, Bishop of Cadiz, who was Provisor of Seville, with the Assistente Diego de Merlo, Fray Alfonso de Hojeda and some other frailes were commissioned to take charge of the matter, with power to inflict punishment. This resulted in a report by the commissioners to the sovereigns that a great portion of the citizens of Seville were infected with heresy, that it involved men high in station and power, and that it spread throughout not only Andalusia but Castile, so that it was incurable save by the organization of the Inquisition.[446] The Archbishop Mendoza, doubtless disgusted with the failure of his methods of instruction, joined in these representations and they had a powerful supporter in Fray Thomas de Torquemada, prior of the Dominican convent of Santa Cruz in Segovia, who, as confessor of the sovereigns, had much influence over them and who had long been urging the vigorous chastisement of heresy.[447] At last the victory was won. Ferdinand and Isabella resolved to introduce the Inquisition in the Castilian kingdoms and their ambassadors to the Holy See, the Bishop of Osma and his brother Diego de Santillan, were ordered to procure the necessary bull from Sixtus IV.[448] This must have been shrouded in profound secrecy, for, in July, 1478, while negotiations must have been on foot in Rome, Ferdinand and Isabella convoked a national synod at Seville which sat until August 1st. In the propositions laid by the sovereigns before this body there is no hint that such a measure was desired or proposed and, in the deliberations of the assembled prelates, there is no indication that the Church thought any action against the Conversos necessary.[449] Even as late as 1480, after the procurement of the bull and before its enforcement, the Córtes of Toledo presented to the sovereigns a detailed memorial embodying all the measures of reform desired by the people. In this the separation of Christians from Jews and Moors is asked for, but there is no request for the prosecution of apostate Conversos.[450] Evidently there was no knowledge of and no popular demand for the impending Inquisition.

      Sixtus can have been nothing loath to accomplish the introduction of the Inquisition in Castile, which his predecessors had so frequently and so vainly attempted and which he had essayed to do a few years previous by granting the necessary faculties to his legate. If the request of the Castilian sovereigns, therefore, was not immediately granted it cannot have been from humanitarian motives as alleged by some modern apologists, but because Ferdinand and Isabella desired, not the ordinary papal Inquisition, but one which should be under the royal control and should pour into the royal treasury the resultant confiscations. Hitherto the appointment of inquisitors had always been made by the Provincials of the Dominican or Franciscan Orders according as the territory belonged to one or to the other, with occasional interference on the part of the Holy See, from which the commissions emanated. It was a delegation of

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