A History of the Inquisition of Spain; vol. 1
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Title: A History of the Inquisition of Spain; vol. 1
Author: Henry Charles Lea
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THE INQUISITION OF SPAIN
WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR
_A HISTORY OF THE INQUISITION OF THE MIDDLE AGES._ In three
volumes, octavo.
_A HISTORY OF AURICULAR CONFESSION AND INDULGENCES IN THE
LATIN CHURCH._ In three volumes, octavo.
_AN HISTORICAL SKETCH OF SACERDOTAL CELIBACY IN THE CHRISTIAN
CHURCH._ Third edition. (_In preparation._)
_A FORMULARY OF THE PAPAL PENITENTIARY IN THE THIRTEENTH
CENTURY._ One volume, octavo. (_Out of print._)
_SUPERSTITION AND FORCE._ Essays on The Wager of Law, The
Wager of Battle, The Ordeal, Torture. Fourth edition, revised. In
one volume, 12mo.
_STUDIES IN CHURCH HISTORY._ The Rise of the Temporal Power,
Benefit of Clergy, Excommunication, The Early Church and Slavery.
Second edition. In one volume, 12mo.
_CHAPTERS FROM THE RELIGIOUS HISTORY OF SPAIN, CONNECTED WITH
THE INQUISITION._ Censorship of the Press, Mystics and Illuminati,
Endemoniadas, El Santo Niño de la Guardia, Brianda de Bardaxí. In
one volume, 12mo.
_THE MORISCOS OF SPAIN. THEIR CONVERSION AND EXPULSION._ In
one volume, 12mo.
A HISTORY
OF THE
INQUISITION OF SPAIN
BY
HENRY CHARLES LEA. LL.D.
IN FOUR VOLUMES
VOLUME I.
New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., LTD.
1922
_All rights reserved_
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
COPYRIGHT, 1906,
BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Set up and electrotyped. Published January, 1906.
PREFACE.
In the following pages I have sought to trace, from the original sources
as far as possible, the character and career of an institution which
exercised no small influence on the fate of Spain and even, one may say,
indirectly on the civilized world. The material for this is preserved so
superabundantly in the immense Spanish archives that no one writer can
pretend to exhaust the subject. There can be no finality in a history
resting on so vast a mass of inedited documents and I do not flatter
myself that I have accomplished such a result, but I am not without hope
that what I have drawn from them and from the labors of previous
scholars has enabled me to present a fairly accurate survey of one of
the most remarkable organizations recorded in human annals.
In this a somewhat minute analysis has seemed to be indispensable of its
structure and methods of procedure, of its relations with the other
bodies of the State and of its dealings with the various classes subject
to its extensive jurisdiction. This has involved the accumulation of
much detail in order to present the daily operation of a tribunal of
which the real importance is to be sought, not so much in the awful
solemnities of the auto de fe, or in the cases of a few celebrated
victims, as in the silent influence exercised by its incessant and
secret labors among the mass of the people and in the limitations which
it placed on the Spanish intellect--in the resolute conservatism with
which it held the nation in the medieval groove and unfitted it for the
exercise of rational liberty when the nineteenth century brought in the
inevitable Revolution.
The intimate relations between Spain and Portugal, especially during the
union of the kingdoms from 1580 to 1640, has rendered necessary the
inclusion, in the chapter devoted to the Jews, of a brief sketch of the
Portuguese Inquisition, which earned a reputation even more sinister
than its Spanish prototype.
I cannot conclude without expressing my thanks to the gentlemen whose
aid has enabled me to collect the documents on which the work is largely
based--Don Claudio Pérez Gredilla of the Archives of Simancas, Don Ramon
Santa María of those of Alcalá de Henares prior to their removal to
Madrid, Don Francisco de Bofarull y Sans of those of the Crown of
Aragon, Don J. Figueroa Hernández, formerly American Vice-consul at
Madrid, and to many others to whom I am indebted in a minor degree. I
have also to tender my acknowledgements to the authorities of the
Bodleian Library and of the Royal Libraries of Copenhagen, Munich,
Berlin and the University of Halle, for favors warmly appreciated.
HENRY CHARLES LEA.
PHILADELPHIA, OCTOBER, 1905.
CONTENTS OF VOL. I.
BOOK I--ORIGIN AND ESTABLISHMENT.
CHAPTER I--THE CASTILIAN MONARCHY.
PAGE
Disorder at the Accession of Ferdinand and Isabella 1
Condition of the Church 8
Limitation of Clerical Privilege and Papal Claims 11
Disputed Succession 18
Character of Ferdinand and Isabella 20
Enforcement of Royal Jurisdiction 24
The Santa Hermandad 28
Absorption of the Military Orders 34
CHAPTER II--THE JEWS AND THE MOORS.
Oppression of Jews taught as a duty 35
Growth of the Spirit of Persecution 37
Persecution under the Spanish Catholic Wisigoths 40
Toleration under the Saracen Conquest--the Mozárabes 44
The Muladícs 49
The Jews under the Saracens 50
Absence of Race or Religious Hatred 52
The Mudéjares--Moors under Christian Domination 57
The Church stimulates Intolerance 68
Influence of the Council of Vienne in 1312 71
Commencement of repressive Legislation 77
CHAPTER III--THE JEWS AND THE CONVERSOS.
Medieval Persecution of Jews 81
Their Wealth and Influence in Spain 84
Clerical Hostility aroused 90
Popular Antagonism excited 95
Causes of Dislike--Usury, Official Functions, Ostentation 96
Massacres in Navarre 100
Influence of the Accession of Henry of Trastamara 101
The Massacres of 1391--Ferran Martínez 103
Creation of the Class of Conversos or New Christians 111
Deplorable Condition of the Jews 115
The _Ordenamiento de Doña Catalina_ 116
Utterances of the Popes and the Council of Basle 118
Success of the Conversos--The Jews rehabilitate themselves 120
Renewed Repression under Ferdinand and Isabella 123
The Conversos become the object of popular hatred 125
Expulsion of the Jews considered 131
Expulsion resolved on in 1492--its Conditions 135
Sufferings of the Exiles 139
Number of Exiles 142
Contemporary Opinion 143
CHAPTER IV--ESTABLISHMENT OF THE INQUISITION.
Doubtful Christianity of the Conversos 145
Inquisition attempted in 1451 147
Alonso de Espina and his _Fortalicium Fidei_ 148
Episcopal Inquisition attempted in 1465 153
Sixtus IV grants Inquisitorial Powers to his Legate 154
Attempt to convert and instruct 155
Ferdinand and Isabella apply to Sixtus IV for Inquisition in 1478 157
They Require the Power of Appointment and the Confiscations 158
The first Inquisitors appointed, September 17, 1480 160
Tribunal opened in Seville--first Auto de Fe, February 6, 1481 161
Plot to resist betrayed 162
Edict of Grace 165
Other tribunals established 166
Failure of plot in Toledo--number of Penitents 168
Tribunal at Guadalupe 171
Necessity of Organization--The Supreme Council--The
Inquisitor-general 172
Character of Torquemada--His quarrels with Inquisitors 174
Four Assistant Inquisitors-general 178
Separation of Aragon from Castile 180
Autonomy of Inquisition--It frames its own Rules 181
It commands the Forces of the State.--Flight of Suspects 182
Emigration of New Christians forbidden 184
Absence of Resistance to the Inquisition 185
Ferdinand seeks to prevent Abuses 187
The Career of Lucero at Córdova 189
Complicity of Juan Roiz de Calcena 193
Persecution of Archbishop Hernando de Talavera 197
Córdova appeals to Philip and Juana 201
Revolt in Córdova 202
Inquisitor-general Deza forced to resign 205
Lucero placed on trial 206
Inquisitorial Abuses at Jaen, Arjona and Llerena 211
Ximenes attempts Reform 215
Appeals to Charles V--His futile Project of Reform 216
Conquest of Navarre--Introduction of Inquisition 223
CHAPTER V--THE KINGDOMS OF ARAGON.
Independent Institutions of Aragon 229
Ferdinand seeks to remodel the Old Inquisition 230
Sixtus IV interferes 233
Torquemada's Authority is extended over Aragon 236
Assented to by the Córtes of Tarazona in 1484 238
VALENCIA
Popular Resistance 239
Resistance overcome 242
ARAGON
Tribunal organized in Saragossa 244
Opposition 245
Resistance in Teruel 247
Murder of Inquisitor Arbués 249
Papal Brief commanding Extradition 253
Punishment of the Assassins 256
Ravages of the Inquisition 259
CATALONIA
Its Jealousy of its Liberties 260
Resistance prolonged until 1487 261
Scanty Results 263
Oppression and Complaints 264
THE BALEARIC ISLES
Inertia of the Old Inquisition 266
Introduction of the New in 1488--Its Activity 267
Tumult in 1518 268
Complaints of Córtes of Monzon, in 1510 269
Concordia of 1512 270
Leo X releases Ferdinand from his Oath 272
Inquisitor-general Mercader's Instructions 273
Leo X confirms the Concordia of 1512 274
Charles V swears to observe the Concordia 275
Dispute over fresh Demands of Aragon 276
Decided in favor of Aragon 282
Catalonia secures Concessions 283
Futility of all Agreements--Fruitless Complaints of Grievances 284
BOOK II--RELATIONS WITH THE STATE.
CHAPTER I--RELATIONS WITH THE CROWN.
Combination of Spiritual and Temporal Jurisdiction 289
Ferdinand's Control of the Inquisition 289
Except in Spiritual Affairs 294
Gradual Development of Independence 298
Philip IV reasserts Control over Appointments 300
It returns to the Inquisitor-general under Carlos II 301
The Crown retains Power of appointing the Inquisitor-general 302
It cannot dismiss him but can enforce his Resignation--Cases 304
Struggle of Philip V with Giudice--Case of Melchor de Macanaz 314
Cases under Carlos III and Carlos IV 320
Relations of the Crown with the Suprema 322
The Suprema interposes between the Crown and the Tribunals 325
It acquires control over the Finances 328
Its Policy of Concealment 331
Philip IV calls on it for Assistance 333
Philip V reasserts Control 336
Pecuniary Penances 337
Assertion of Independence 340
Temporal Jurisdiction over Officials 343
Growth of Bureaucracy limits Royal Autocracy 346
Reassertion of Royal Power under the House of Bourbon 348
CHAPTER II--SUPEREMINENCE.
Universal Subordination to the Inquisition 351
Its weapons of Excommunication and Inhibition 355
Power of Arrest and Imprisonment 357
Assumption of Superiority 357
Struggle of the Bishops 358
Questions of Precedence 362
Superiority to local Law 365
Capricious Tyranny 366
Inviolability of Officials and Servants 367
Enforcement of Respect 371
CHAPTER III--PRIVILEGES AND EXEMPTIONS.
Exemption from taxation 375
Exemption from Custom-house Dues 384
Attempts of Valencia Tribunal to import Wheat from Aragon 385
Privilege of Valencia Tribunal in the Public Granary 388
Speculative Exploitation of Privileges by Saragossa Tribunal 389
Coercive Methods of obtaining Supplies 392
Valencia asserts Privilege of obtaining Salt 394
Exemption from Billets of Troops 395
The Right to bear Arms 401
Exemption from Military Service 412
The Right to hold Secular Office 415
The Right to refuse Office 420
The Right of Asylum 421
CHAPTER IV--CONFLICTING JURISDICTIONS.
Benefit of Clergy 427
Ferdinand grants to the Inquisition exclusive Jurisdiction over
its Officials 429
He confines it to Salaried Officials in criminal Actions and as
Defendants in civil Suits 430
Abusive Extension of Jurisdiction by Inquisitors 431
Limitations in the Concordia of 1512 432
Servants of Officials included in the _fuero_ 432
Struggle in Castile over the Question of Familiars 434
Settled by the Concordia of 1553 436
The Concordia extended to Navarre 438
Struggle in Valencia--Concordia of 1554 439
Concordia disregarded--Córtes of 1564 441
Valencia Concordia of 1568 442
Disregard of its Provisions 445
Complaints of criminal Familiars unpunished 446
Aragon--its Court of the Justicia 450
Grievances arising from the Temporal Jurisdiction 452
The Concordia of 1568 454
Complaints of its Infraction--Córtes of 1626 454
Case of the City of Huesca 456
Córtes of 1646--Aragon assimilated to Castile 458
Diminished Power of the Inquisition in Aragon 461
Catalonia--Non-observance of Concordias of 1512 and 1520 465
Disorders of the Barcelona Tribunal--Fruitless Complaints 467
Catalonia--Hatred of the Tribunal--Catalonia rejects the Concordia
of 1568 469
Córtes of 1599--Duplicity of Philip III 471
Increasing Discord--Fruitless Efforts of Córtes of 1626
and 1632--Concordia of Zapata 472
Rebellion of 1640--Expulsion of Inquisitors--A National
Inquisition established 476
Inquisition restored in 1652--Renewal of Discord 479
War of Succession--Catalan Liberties abolished 483
Majorca--Conflicts with the Civil Authorities 484
Contests in Castile--Subservience of the Royal Power 485
Exemption of Familiars from summons as Witnesses 491
Conflicts with the Spiritual Courts 493
Cases in Majorca--Intervention of the Holy See 498
Conflicts with the Military Courts 504
Conflicts with the Military Orders--Project of the Order of
_Santa María de la Espada Blanca_ 505
Profits of the Temporal Jurisdiction of the Inquisition 508
Abuses and evils of the System 509
Fruitless Efforts to reform it in 1677 and 1696 511
Repression under the House of Bourbon 514
_Competencias_ for Settlement of Disputes 517
The Temporal Jurisdiction under the Restoration 520
Refusal of _Competencias_ by the Inquisition 521
Projects of Relief 524
CHAPTER V--POPULAR HOSTILITY.
Causes of Popular Hatred 527
Visitations of the Barcelona Tribunal 528
Troubles in Logroño 530
Preferences claimed in Markets 533
Trading by Officials 534
Character of Officials 536
Grievances of Feudal Nobles 537
General Detestation a recognized Fact 538
APPENDIX. List of Tribunals 541
List of Inquisitors-general 556
Spanish Coinage 560
Documents 567
THE INQUISITION OF SPAIN.
BOOK I.
ORIGIN AND ESTABLISHMENT.
CHAPTER I.
THE CASTILIAN MONARCHY.
It were difficult to exaggerate the disorder pervading the Castilian
kingdoms, when the Spanish monarchy found its origin in the union of
Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon. Many causes had contributed
to prolong and intensify the evils of the feudal system and to
neutralize such advantages as it possessed. The struggles of the
reconquest from the Saracen, continued at intervals through seven
hundred years and varied by constant civil broils, had bred a race of
fierce and turbulent nobles as eager to attack a neighbor or their
sovereign as the Moor. The contemptuous manner in which the Cid is
represented, in the earliest ballads, as treating his king, shows what
was, in the twelfth century, the feeling of the chivalry of Castile
toward its overlord, and a chronicler of the period seems rather to
glory in the fact that it was always in rebellion against the royal
power.[1] So fragile was the feudal bond that a _ricohome_ or noble
could at any moment renounce allegiance by a simple message sent to the
king through a hidalgo.[2] The necessity of attracting population and
organizing conquered frontiers, which subsequently became inland, led to
granting improvidently liberal franchises to settlers, which weakened
the powers of the crown,[3] without building up, as in France, a
powerful Third Estate to serve as a counterpoise to the nobles and
eventually to undermine feudalism. In Spain the business of the
Castilian was war. The arts of peace were left with disdain to the Jews
and the conquered Moslems, known as Mudéjares, who were allowed to
remain on Christian soil and to form a distinct element in the
population. No flourishing centres of industrious and independent
burghers arose out of whom the kings could mould a body that should lend
them efficient support in their struggles with their powerful vassals.
The attempt, indeed, was made; the Córtes, whose co-operation was
required in the enactment of laws, consisted of representatives from
seventeen cities,[4] who while serving enjoyed personal inviolability,
but so little did the cities prize this privilege that, under Henry IV,
they complained of the expense of sending deputies. The crown, eager to
find some new sources of influence, agreed to pay them and thus obtained
an excuse for controlling their election, and although this came too
late for Henry to benefit by it, it paved the way for the assumption of
absolute domination by Ferdinand and Isabella, after which the revolt of
the Comunidades proved fruitless. Meanwhile their influence diminished,
their meetings were scantily attended and they became little more than
an instrument which, in the interminable strife that cursed the land,
was used alternately by any faction as opportunity offered.[5]
[Sidenote: _ABASEMENT OF THE CROWN_]
The crown itself had contributed greatly to its own abasement. When, in
the thirteenth century, a ruler such as San Fernando III. made the laws
respected and vigorously extended the boundaries of Christianity,
Castile gave promise of development in power and culture which miserably
failed in the performance. In 1282 the rebellion of Sancho el Bravo
against his father Alfonso was the commencement of decadence. To
purchase the allegiance of the nobles he granted them all that they
asked, and to avert the discontent consequent on taxation he supplied
his treasury by alienating the crown lands.[6] Notwithstanding the
abilities of the regent, María de Molina, the successive minorities of
her son and grandson, Fernando IV and Alfonso XI, stimulated the
downward progress, although the vigor of the latter in his maturity
restored in some degree the lustre of the crown and his stern justice
re-established order, so that, as we are told, property could be left
unguarded in the streets at night.[7] His son, Don Pedro, earned the
epithet of the Cruel by his ruthless endeavor to reduce to obedience his
turbulent nobles, whose disaffection invited the usurpation of his
bastard brother, Henry of Trastamara. The throne which the latter won by
fratricide and the aid of the foreigner, he could only hold by fresh
concessions to his magnates which fatally reduced the royal power.[8]
This heritage he left to his son, Juan I, who forcibly described, in the
Córtes of Valladolid in 1385, how he wore mourning in his heart because
of his powerlessness to administer justice and to govern as he ought, in
consequence of the evil customs which he was unable to correct.[9] This
depicts the condition of the monarchy during the century intervening
between the murder of Pedro and the accession of Isabella--a dreary
period of endless revolt and civil strife, during which the central
authority was steadily growing less able to curb the lawless elements
tending to eventual anarchy. The king was little more than a puppet of
which rival factions sought to gain possession in order to cover their
ambitions with a cloak of legality, and those which failed to secure his
person treated his authority with contempt, or set up some rival in a
son or brother as an excuse for rebellion. The work of the Reconquest
which, for six hundred years, had been the leading object of national
pride was virtually abandoned, save in some spasmodic enterprise, such
as the capture of Antequera, and the little kingdom of Granada,
apparently on the point of extinction under Alfonso XI, seemed destined
to perpetuate for ever on Spanish soil the hateful presence of the
crescent.
The long reign of the feeble Juan II, from 1406 to 1454, was followed by
that of the feebler Henry IV, popularly known as El Impotente. In the
Seguro de Tordesillas, in 1439, the disaffected nobles virtually
dictated terms to Juan II.[10] In the Deposition of Ávila, in 1465, they
treated Henry IV with the bitterest contempt. His effigy, clad in
mourning and adorned with the royal insignia, was placed upon a throne
and four articles of accusation were read. For the first he was
pronounced unworthy of the kingly station, when Alonso Carrillo,
Archbishop of Toledo, removed the crown; for the second he was deprived
of the administration of justice, when Álvaro de Zuñiga, Count of
Plasencia, took away the sword; for the third he was deprived of the
government, when Rodrigo Pimentel, Count of Benavente, struck the
sceptre away; for the fourth he was sentenced to lose the throne, when
Diego López de Zuñiga tumbled the image from its seat with an indecent
gibe. It was scarce more than a continuation of the mockery when they
elected as his successor his brother Alfonso, a child eleven years of
age.[11]
[Sidenote: _VIOLENCE AND TREACHERY_]
The lawless independence of the nobles and the effacement of the royal
authority may be estimated from a single example. At Plasencia two
powerful lords, Garcí Alvárez de Toledo, Señor of Oropesa, and Hernan
Rodríguez de Monroy, kept the country in an uproar with their armed
dissension. Juan II sent Ayala, Señor of Cebolla, with a royal
commission to suppress the disorder. Monroy, in place of submitting,
insulted Ayala, who as a "buen caballero" disdained to complain to the
king and preferred to avenge himself. Juan on hearing of this summoned
to his presence Monroy, who collected all his friends and retainers and
set out with a formidable army. Ayala made a similar levy and set upon
him as he passed near Cebolla. There was a desperate battle in which
Ayala was worsted and forced to take refuge in Cebolla, while Monroy
passed on to Toledo and, when he kissed the king's hands, Juan told him
that he had sent for him to cut off his head, but as Ayala had preferred
to right himself he gave Monroy a God-speed on his journey home and
washed his hands of the whole affair.[12]
The _ricosomes_ who thus were released from all the restraint of law had
as little respect for those of honor and morality. The virtues which we
are wont to ascribe to chivalry were represented by such follies as the
celebrated _Passo Honroso_ of Suero de Quiñones, when that knight and
his nine comrades, in 1434, kept, in honor of their ladies, for thirty
days against all comers, the pass of the Bridge of Orbigo, at the season
of the feast of Santiago and sixty-nine challengers presented themselves
in the lists.[13] With exceptions such as this, and a rare manifestation
of magnanimity, as when the Duke of Medina Sidonia raised an army and
hastened to the relief of his enemy, Rodrigo Ponce de Leon besieged in
Alhama,[14] the record of the time is one of the foulest treachery, from
which truth and honor are absent and human nature displays itself in its
basest aspect. According to contemporary belief, Ferdinand was indebted
for the crown of Aragon to the poisoning of his brother, the deeply
mourned Carlos, Prince of Viana, while the crown of Castile fell to
Isabella through the similar taking off of her brother Alfonso.[15]
A characteristic incident is one involving Doña Maria de Monroy, who
married into the great house of Henríquez of Seville, and was left a
widow with two boys. When the youths were respectively eighteen and
nineteen years old they were close friends of two gentlemen of Seville
named Mançano. The younger brother, dicing with them in their house, was
involved in a quarrel with them, when they set upon him with their
servants and slew him. Then, fearing the vengeance of the elder brother,
they sent him a friendly message to come and play with them; when he
came they led him along a dark corridor in which they suddenly turned
upon him and stabbed him to death. When the disfigured corpses of her
boys were brought to Doña María she shed no tears, but the fierceness of
her eyes frightened all who looked upon her. The Mançanos promptly took
horse and fled to Portugal, whither Doña María followed them in male
attire with a band of twenty cavaliers. Her spies were speedily on the
track of the fugitives; within a month of the murders she came at night
to the house where they lay concealed; the doors were broken in and she
entered with ten of her men while the rest kept guard outside. The
Mançanos put themselves in defence and shouted for help, but before the
neighbors could assemble she had both their heads in her left hand and
was galloping off with her troop, never stopping till she reached
Salamanca, where she went to the church and laid the bloody heads on the
tomb of her boys. Thenceforth she was known as Doña María la Brava, and
her exploit led to long and murderous feuds between the Monroyes and the
Mançanos.[16]
Doña María was but a type of the unsexed women, _mugeres varoniles_,
common at the time, who would take the field or maintain their place in
factious intrigue with as much ferocity and pertinacity as men.
Ferdinand could well look without surprise on the activity in court and
camp of his queen Isabella, when he remembered the prowess of his
mother, Juana Henríquez, who had secured for him the crown of Aragon.
Doña Leonora Pimentel, Duchess of Arévalo, was one of these; of the
Countess of Medellin it was said that no Roman captain could get the
better of her in feats of arms, and the Countess of Haro was equally
noted. The Countess of Medellin, indeed, kept her own son in prison for
years while she enjoyed the revenues of his town of Medellin and, when
Queen Isabella refused to confirm her possession of the place, she
transferred her allegiance to the King of Portugal to whom she delivered
the castle of Merida. At the same time the Moorish influence, which was
so strong in Castile, occasionally led to the opposite extreme. The Duke
of Najera kept his daughters in such absolute seclusion that no man, not
even his sons, was permitted to enter the apartments reserved for the
women, and the reason he alleged--that the heart does not covet what the
eye does not see--was little flattering to either sex.[17]
[Sidenote: _VIRTUAL ANARCHY_]
The condition of the common people can readily be imagined in this
perpetual strife between warlike, ambitious and unprincipled nobles, now
uniting in factions which involved the whole realm in war, and now
contenting themselves with assaults upon their neighbors. The land was
desolated; the husbandman scarce could take heart to plant his seed, for
the harvest was apt to be garnered with the sword and thrust into
castles to provision them against siege. As a writer of the period tells
us, there was neither law nor justice save that of arms.[18] In a letter
describing the universal anarchy, written by Hernando del Pulgar from
Madrid, in 1473, he says that for more than five years there has been no
communication from Murcia, where the family of Fajardo reigned
supreme--it is, he says, as foreign a land as Navarre.[19] That the
roads were unsafe for trade or travel was a matter of course; every
petty hidalgo converted his stronghold into a den of robbers, and what
these left was swept away by bands of Free Companions.[20] Disorder
reigned supreme and all-pervading. The crown was powerless and the royal
treasury exhausted. Improvident grants of lands and revenues and
jurisdictions, to bribe the treacherous fidelity of faithless nobles, or
to gratify worthless favorites, were made, till there was nothing left
to give, and then Henry IV bestowed licenses for private mints, until
there were a hundred and fifty of them at work, flooding the land with
base money, to the unutterable confusion of the coinage and the
impoverishment of the people.[21] The Córtes of Madrid, in 1467, and of
Ocaña in 1469, called on Henry to resume his improvident grants, and
those of Madrigal, in 1476, repeated the urgency to Ferdinand and
Isabella, who had been forced to follow his example. To this the
sovereigns replied thanking the Córtes and postponing the matter. They
did not feel themselves strong enough until 1480, when at the Córtes of
Toledo, they resumed thirty million maravedís of revenue which had been
alienated during the troubles, and this after an investigation which
left untouched the gifts to loyal subjects and only withdrew such as had
been extorted.[22] Respect for the crown had fallen as low as its
revenues. A story told of the Count of Benavente shows how difficult it
was, even after the accession of Isabella, for the nobles to recognize
that they owed any obedience to the sovereign. He was walking with the
queen when a woman came weeping and begging justice, saying that he had
had her husband slain in spite of a royal safe-conduct. She showed the
letter which her husband had carried in his breast, pierced by the blow
which had ended his life, when the count jeeringly remarked "A cuirass
would have been of more service." Piqued by this Isabella said "Count do
you then not wish there was no king in Castile?" "Rather," said he, "I
wish there were many." "And why?" "Because then I should be one of
them."[23]
[Sidenote: _CHARACTER OF PRELATES_]
In such a chaos of lawless passion it is not to be supposed that the
Church was better than the nobles who filled its high places with
worthless scions of their stocks, or than the lower classes of the laity
who sought in it provision for a life of idleness and licence. The
primate of Castile was the Archbishop of Toledo, who was likewise _ex
officio_ chancellor of the realm and whose revenues were variously
estimated at from eighty to a hundred thousand ducats, with patronage at
his disposal amounting to a hundred thousand more.[24] The occupant of
this exalted position, at the accession of Isabella, was Alonso
Carrillo, a turbulent prelate, delighting in war, foremost in all the
civil broils of the period, who, not content with the immense income of
his see, lavished extravagant sums in alchemy. Hernando del Pulgar, in a
letter of remonstrance, said to him, "The people look to you as their
bishop and find in you their enemy; they groan and complain that you use
your authority not for their benefit and reformation but for their
destruction; not as an exemplar of kindness and peace but for
corruption, scandal, and disturbance." When, in 1495, the puritan
Ximenes was appointed to the archbishopric, one of his first acts is
said to have been the removal, from near the altar of the Franciscan
church of Toledo, of a magnificent tomb which Carrillo had erected to
his bastard, Troilo Carrillo.[25]
His successor in the see of Toledo has a special interest for us in view
of his labors to purify the faith which culminated in establishing the
Inquisition. Pero González de Mendoza was one of the notable men of the
day, whose influence with Ferdinand and Isabella won for him the name of
"the third king." While yet a child he held the curacy of Hita; at
twelve he had the archdeaconry of Guadalajara, one of the richest
benefices in Spain, which he retained during the successive bishoprics
of Calahorra and Sigüenza and the archbishopric of Seville; the see of
Sigüenza he kept during the whole tenure successively of the
archiepiscopates of Seville and Toledo, in addition to which he was a
cardinal and titular Patriarch of Alexandria. With his kindred of the
powerful house of Mendoza he adhered to Henry IV, until they effected
the sale of the hapless Beltraneja, who was in their hands, to her
father, Henry, for certain estates and the title of Duke del Infantado
for Diego Hurtado, the head of the family, after which Pero González and
his kinsmen promptly transferred their allegiance to Isabella. His
admiring biographer assures us that he was more ready with his hands
than with his tongue, that he was a gallant knight and that there was
never a war in Spain during his time in which he did not personally take
part or at least have his troops engaged. Though he had no leisure to
attend to his spiritual duties, he found time to yield to the
temptations of the flesh. When, in 1484, he led the army of invasion
into Granada he took with him his bastard, Rodrigo de Mendoza, a youth
of twenty, who was already Señor del Castillo del Cid, and who, in 1492,
was created Marquis of Cenete on the occasion of his marriage, amid
great rejoicings, in the presence of Ferdinand and Isabella, to Leonor
de la Cerda, daughter and heiress of the Duke of Medina Celi and niece
of Ferdinand himself. This was not the only evidence of his frailty of
which he took no shame, for he had another son named Juan, by a lady of
Valladolid, who was married to Doña Ana de Aragon, another niece of
Ferdinand.[26]
[Sidenote: _CONDITION OF THE CHURCH_]
With such men at the head of the Church it is not to be expected that
the lower orders of the clergy should be models of decency and morality,
rendering Christianity attractive to Jew and Moslem. Alonso Carrillo,
the archbishop of Toledo, can scarce be regarded as a strict
disciplinarian, but even he felt obliged, when holding the council of
Aranda in 1473, to endeavor to repress the more flagrant scandals of the
clergy. As a corrective of their prevailing ignorance it was ordered
that in future none should be ordained who could not speak Latin--the
language of the ritual and the foundation of all instruction,
theological and otherwise. They were forbidden to wear silk or gaily
colored garments. As their licentiousness rendered them contemptible to
the people, they were commanded to part with their concubines within two
months. As their fondness for dicing led to perjuries, scandals and
homicides, they were required thereafter to abstain from it, privately
as well as publicly. As many priests disdained to celebrate mass, they
were ordered to do so at least four times a year; bishops, moreover,
were urged to celebrate at least thrice a year, under pain of severe
penalties to be determined at the next council. The absurdities poured
forth in their sermons by wandering priests and friars were to be
repressed by requiring examinations prior to issuing licenses to preach,
and the scandals of the pardon-sellers were to be diminished by
subjecting them to the bishops. The bishops were also urged to make
severe examples of offenders in the lower orders of the clergy, when
delivered to them by the secular courts, and not to allow their
enormities to enjoy continued immunity. The bishops, moreover, were
commanded to make no charge for conferring ordinations; they were
exhorted, and all other clerics were required, not to lead a dissolute
military life or to enter the service of secular lords excepting of the
king and princes of the blood. As duels were forbidden, both laity and
clergy were warned that if slain in such encounters they would be
refused Christian burial.[27] That this effort at reform was, as might
be expected, wholly abortive is evidenced from the description of the
vices of the ecclesiastical body when Ferdinand and Isabella
subsequently endeavored to correct its more flagrant scandals.[28] It
was wholly secularized and only to be distinguished from the laity by
the sacred functions which rendered its vices more abhorrent, by the
immunities which fostered and stimulated those vices and by the
intolerance which, blind to all aberrations of morals, proclaimed the
stake to be the only fitting punishment for aberration in the faith.
While powerless to reform itself it yet had influence enough to educate
the people up to its standard of orthodoxy in the ruthless persecution
of all whom it pleased to designate as enemies of Christ.
Yet in Spain the immunities and privileges of the Church were less than
elsewhere throughout Christendom. The independence which the secular
power in Castile had always manifested toward the Holy See and its
disregard of the canon law are points which will occasionally manifest
themselves hereafter and are worthy of a moment's consideration here. I
have elsewhere shown that, alone among the Latin nations, Castile
steadily refused to admit the medieval Inquisition and disregarded
completely the prescriptions of the Church regarding heresy.[29] In the
twelfth century the popular feeling toward the papacy is voiced in the
ballads of the Cid. When a demand for tribute to the Emperor Henry IV is
said to be made through the pope, Ruy Diaz advises King Fernando to send
a defiance from both of them to the pope and all his party, which the
monarch accordingly does. So when the Cid accompanies his master to a
great council in Rome and kicks over the chair prepared for the King of
France, the pope excommunicates him, whereupon he kneels before the holy
father and asks for absolution, telling him it will be the worse for him
if he does not grant it, which the pope promptly does on condition of
his being more self-restrained during the remainder of his stay.[30]
There is no trace of the veneration for the vice-gerent of God which
elsewhere was inculcated as an indispensable religious duty.
[Sidenote: _DISREGARD OF THE PAPACY_]
When such was the popular temper it is easy to understand that the
prohibition to carry money out of the kingdom to the pope was even more
emphatic than in England.[31] The claim to control the patronage of the
Church, which was so prolific a source of revenue to the curia, met
throughout Spain a resistance as sturdy as in England, though the
troubled condition of the land interfered with its success. In
Catalonia, the Córtes, in 1419, adopted a law in which, after alluding
to the scandals and irreparable injuries arising from the intrusion of
strangers, it was declared that none but natives should hold preferment
of any kind and that all papal letters and bulls contravening this
should be resisted in whatever way was necessary.[32] In Castile the
Córtes of 1390 forcibly represented to Juan I the evils resulting from
this foisting of strangers on the Spanish Church, but his speedy death
prevented action. The remonstrance was renewed to the tutors of the
young Henry III, who promptly placed an embargo on the revenues of
foreign benefice-holders and forbade the admission of subsequent
appointees. This led to a compromise, in 1393, by which the Avignonese
curia secured the recognition of existing incumbents by promising that
no more such nominations should be made.[33] The promise made by the
Avignonese antipope was not binding on the Roman curia and the quarrel
continued. Even if the recipient was a native there was little ceremony
in dealing with papal grants of benefices when occasion prompted, as was
shown in the affair which first revealed the unbending character of the
future Cardinal Ximenes. During his youthful sojourn in Rome Ximenes
procured papal "expectative letters" granting him the first preferment
that should fall vacant in the diocese of Toledo. On his return he made
use of these letters to take possession of the _arciprestazgo_ of Uceda,
but it happened that Archbishop Carrillo simultaneously gave it to one
of his creatures and, as Ximenes refused to surrender his rights, he was
thrown into a tower in Uceda--a tower he subsequently, when himself
Archbishop of Toledo, used as a treasury. As he continued obstinate,
Carrillo transferred him to the Pozo de Santorcas, a harsh dungeon used
for clerical malefactors, where he lay for six years, resolutely
refusing to abandon his claim, until released at the intercession of the
wife of a nephew of Carrillo.[34] Evidently the Castilian prelates had
slender respect for papal diplomas. About the same time, during the
civil war between Henry IV and his brother Alfonso, when Hernando de
Luxan, Bishop of Sigüenza, died, the dean, Diego López, obtained
possession of the castles and the treasure of the see, joined the party
of Alfonso, and, with the aid of Archbishop Carrillo, caused himself to
be elected bishop. Meanwhile Paul II gave the see to Juan de Maella,
Cardinal-bishop of Zamora, but Diego López refused to obey the bulls and
appealed to the future council against the pope and all his censures. He
disregarded an interdict launched against him and was supported by all
his clergy. Maella died and Paul II gave the bishopric to the Bishop of
Calahorra, requesting Henry IV to place him in possession. So secure did
Diego López feel that he rejected a compromise offering him the see of
Zamora in exchange, but the possession of Sigüenza happened to be of
importance in the war; by bribery a troop of royalist soldiers obtained
admittance to the castle and carried off López as a prisoner.[35]
It was the same even with so pious a monarch as Ferdinand the Catholic.
When, in 1476, the archiepiscopal see of Saragossa became vacant by the
death of Juan of Aragon, Ferdinand, with his father, Juan II, asked
Sixtus IV to appoint his natural son, Alfonso, a child six years of age.
The claim of the papacy to archiepiscopal appointments, based on the
necessity of the pallium, was of ancient date and had become
incontestable. In the thirteenth century Alfonso X had admitted it in
the case of the archbishops, but when Isabella appointed Ximenes to the
see of Toledo in 1495 the proceedings showed that the post was
considered to be in the gift of the crown and the papal confirmation to
be a matter of course.[36] So in the present case the request was a mere
form, as was seen when Sixtus refused. The defect of birth could be
dispensed for, but the youth of Alfonso was an insuperable objection,
and Sixtus appointed Ansias Dezpuch, then Archbishop of Monreal,
thinking that the services rendered by him and by his uncle, the Master
of the Order of Montesa, would induce the king to assent. Dezpuch
accepted, but Ferdinand at once sequestrated all the revenues of Monreal
and the priory of Santa Cristina and ordered him to resign. On his
hesitating, Ferdinand threatened to seize all the castles and revenues
of the mastership of Montesa, which was effectual, and Sixtus
compromised by making the boy perpetual administrator of Saragossa.[37]
[Sidenote: _ECCLESIASTICAL JURISDICTION LIMITED_]
Isabella, despite her piety, was as firm as her husband in defending the
claim of the crown in these matters against the papacy. When, in 1482,
the see of Cuenca became vacant and Sixtus IV appointed a Genoese cousin
to the position, Ferdinand and his queen energetically represented that
only Spaniards should have Spanish bishoprics and that the selection
should be made by them. Sixtus retorted that all benefices were in the
gift of the pope and that his power, derived from God, was unlimited,
whereupon they ordered home all their subjects resident in the papal
court and threatened to take steps for the convocation of a general
council. These energetic proceedings brought Sixtus to terms and he sent
to Spain a special nuncio, but Ferdinand and Isabella stood on their
dignity and refused even to receive him. Then the Cardinal of Spain,
Pero González de Mendoza, intervened and, on Sixtus withdrawing his
pretensions, they allowed themselves to be reconciled.[38] They alleged
that whatever might be the papal rights in other countries, in Spain
the patronage of all benefices belonged to the crown because they and
their predecessors had wrested the land from the infidel.[39] So
jealous, indeed, were they of the papal encroachments that among the
subjects which they submitted to the national synod assembled by them in
Seville, June, 1478, was how to prevent the residence of papal legates
and nuncios, who not only carried off much money from the kingdom, but
threatened the royal pre-eminence, to which the synod replied that this
rested with the sovereigns to do as their predecessors had done.[40] It
is easy thus to understand why, in the organization of the Inquisition,
they insisted that all appointments should be made by the throne.
In other ways the much-prized superiority of the canon over secular law
was disregarded in Spain. The Córtes and the monarch had never hesitated
to legislate on ecclesiastical affairs, and the jurisdiction of the
ecclesiastical courts was limited with a jealousy which paid scant
respect to canon and decretal. Nothing, for instance, was better settled
than the spiritual cognizance of all matters respecting testaments, yet
when, in 1270, the authorities of Badajoz complained of the interference
of the bishop's court with secular judges in such affairs, proceeding to
the excommunication of those who exercised jurisdiction over them,
Alfonso X expressed surprise and gave explicit commands that such cases
should be decided by the lay courts exclusively.[41] So little respect
was felt for the immunity of ecclesiastics from secular law, in defence
of which Thomas à Becket had laid down his life, that, as late as 1351,
an _ordenamiento_ of Pedro the Cruel concedes to them that they shall
not be cited before secular judges except in accordance with law.[42] On
the other hand, laymen were jealously protected from the ecclesiastical
courts. The crown was declared to be the sole judge of its own
jurisdiction, and no appeal from it was allowed. In the exercise of this
supreme power laws were repeatedly enacted providing that a layman, who
should cite another layman before a spiritual judge, not only lost his
cause but incurred a heavy fine and disability for public office. The
spiritual judge could not imprison a layman or levy execution on his
property, and he who attempted it or any other invasion of the royal
jurisdiction forfeited his benefices and became a stranger in the
kingdom, thus rendering him incapable of preferment. The ecclesiastic
who cited a layman before a spiritual judge lost any privileges or
graces which he might hold of the crown. The layman who attempted to
remove a cause from a lay court to a spiritual one was punished with
confiscation of all his property, while any vassal who claimed benefit
of clergy and declined the jurisdiction of a royal court forfeited his
fief. In re-enacting these laws in the Córtes of Toledo, in 1480,
Ferdinand and Isabella complained of their inobservance and ordered
their strict enforcement.[43] No other nation in Christendom dared thus
to infringe on the sacred limits of spiritual jurisdiction.
[Sidenote: _ECCLESIASTICAL IMMUNITY_]
Yet even this was not all, for the secular power asserted its right to
intervene in matters within the Church itself. Elsewhere the
ineradicable vice of priestly concubinage was left to be dealt with by
bishops and archdeacons. The guilty priests themselves, even in Castile,
were exempt from civil authority, but Ferdinand and Isabella had no
hesitation in invading their domiciles and, by repeated edicts in 1480,
1491, 1502, and 1503, endeavored to cure the evil by fining, scourging,
and banishing their partners in sin.[44] It is true, as we have seen
above, that these laws were eluded, but there was at least a vigorous
attempt to enforce them for, in 1490, the clergy of Guipuzcoa complained
that the officers of justice visited their houses to see whether they
kept concubines (which of course they denied) and carried off their
women to prison, where they were forced to confess themselves
concubines, to the great dishonor of the Church, whereupon the
sovereigns repressed the excessive zeal of their officials and ordered
them in future to interfere only when the concubinage was notorious.[45]
A yet more significant extension of royal authority was exercised when,
in 1490, the people of Lequeitio (Biscay) complained that, though there
were twelve mass-priests in the parish church, they all celebrated
together and at uncertain times, so that the pious were unable to be
present. This was a matter belonging exclusively to the diocesan
authority, yet the appeal was made to the crown, and the Royal Council
felt no scruple in ordering the priests to celebrate in succession and
at reasonable hours, under pain of banishment and forfeiture of
temporalities, thus disregarding even the imprescriptible immunities of
the priesthood.[46] So slender, indeed, was the respect paid to these
immunities that the Council of Aranda, in 1473, complained that
magistrates of cities and other temporal lords presumed to banish
ecclesiastics holding benefices in cathedral churches, and it may well
be doubted whether the interdict with which the council threatened to
punish this infraction of the canons was effective in its
suppression.[47]
One of the most deplorable abuses with which the Church afflicted
society was the admission into the minor orders of crowds of laymen who,
without abandoning worldly pursuits, adopted the tonsure in order to
enjoy the irresponsibility afforded by the claim acquired to spiritual
jurisdiction, whether as criminals or as traders. The Córtes of
Tordesillas, in 1401, declared that the greater portion of the
_rufianes_ and malefactors of the kingdom wore the tonsure; when
arrested by the secular officials the spiritual courts demanded them and
enforced their claims with excommunication, after which they freely
discharged the evil doers. This complaint was re-echoed by almost every
subsequent Córtes, with an occasional allusion to the stimulus thus
afforded to the evil propensities of those who were really clerics. The
kings in responding to these representations could only say that they
would apply to the Holy Father for relief, but the relief never
came.[48] The spirit in which these claims of clerical immunity were
advanced as a shield for criminals and the resolute firmness with which
they were met by Ferdinand and Isabella are illustrated by an occurrence
in 1486, in Truxillo, where a man committed a crime and was arrested by
the corregidor. He claimed to wear the tonsure and, as the officials
delayed in handing him over to the ecclesiastical court, some clerics
who were his kinsmen paraded the streets with a cross and proclaimed
that religion was being destroyed. They succeeded thus in arousing a
tumult in which the culprit was liberated. The sovereigns were in
Galicia, but they forthwith despatched troops to the scene of
disturbance; severe punishment was inflicted on the participants in the
riot, and the clerics who had provoked it were deprived of citizenship
and were banished from Spain.[49] Less serious but still abundantly
obnoxious were the advantages which these tonsured laymen possessed in
civil suits by claiming the privilege of ecclesiastical jurisdiction. To
meet this was largely the object of the laws in the _Ordenanzas Reales_
described above, and these were supplemented, in 1519, by an edict of
Charles V forbidding episcopal officials from cognizance of cases where
such so-called clerics engaged in trade sought the spiritual courts as a
defence against civil suits. A similar abuse, by which such clerics in
public office evaded responsibility for wrong-doing by pleading their
clergy, he remedied by reviving an old law of Juan I declaring them
ineligible to office.[50] Thus the royal power in Spain asserted its
authority over the Church after a fashion unknown elsewhere. We shall
see that, so long as it declined to persecute Moors and Jews, Rome could
not compel it to do so. When its policy changed under Isabella it was
inevitable that the machinery of persecution should be under the
control, not of the Church, but of the sovereign. We shall also see
that, when the Inquisition inflicted similar wrongs by the immunities
claimed for its own officials and familiars, the sovereigns customarily
turned a deaf ear to the complaints of the people.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: _DISPUTED SUCCESSION_]
Such was the condition of Castile when the death of the miserable Henry
IV, December 12, 1474, cast the responsibility of royalty on his sister
Isabella and her husband, Ferdinand of Aragon. The power of the crown
was eclipsed; the land was ravaged with interminable war between nobles
who were practically independent; the sentiment of loyalty and
patriotism seemed extinct: deceit and treachery, false oaths--whatever
would serve cupidity and ambition--were universal; justice was bought
and sold; private vengeance was exercised without restraint; there was
no security for life and property. The fabric of society seemed about to
fall in ruins.[51] To evolve order out of this chaos of passion and
lawlessness was a task to test to the uttermost the nerve and capacity
of the most resolute and sagacious. To add to the confusion there was a
disputed succession, although, in 1468, the oath of fidelity had been
taken to Isabella, with the assent of Henry IV, in the Contract of
Perales, by which he, for the second time, acknowledged his reputed
daughter Juana not to be his. He was popularly believed to be impotent,
and when his wife Juana, sister of Affonso V of Portugal, bore him a
daughter, whom he acknowledged and declared to be his heir, her
paternity was maliciously ascribed to Beltran de la Cueva, and she was
known by the opposite party as La Beltraneja. Though Henry had been
forced by his nobles to set aside her claims in favor of his brother
Alfonso in the Declaration of Cabezon, in 1464, and, after Alfonso's
death, in favor of Isabella, in 1468, the latter's marriage, in 1469,
with Ferdinand of Aragon so angered him that he betrothed Juana to
Charles Duke of Guienne, brother of Louis XI of France, and made the
nobles of his faction swear to acknowledge her. At his death he
testified again to her legitimacy and declared her to be his successor
in a will which long remained hidden and finally in 1504 fell under the
control of Ferdinand, who ordered it burnt.[52] There was a powerful
party pledged to support her rights, and they were aided on the one hand
by Affonso of Portugal and on the other by Louis of France, each eager
to profit by dismembering the unhappy land. Some years of war, more
cruel and bloody than even the preceding aimless strife, were required
to dispose of this formidable opposition--years which tried to the
utmost the ability of the young sovereigns and proved to their subjects
that at length they had rulers endowed with kingly qualities. The
decisive victory of Toro, won by Ferdinand over the Portuguese, March 1,
1476, virtually settled the result, although the final treaty was not
signed until 1479. The Beltraneja was given the alternative of marrying
within six months Prince Juan, son of Ferdinand and Isabella, then but
two years old, or of entering the Order of Santa Clara in a Portuguese
house. She chose the latter, but she never ceased to sign herself _Yo la
Reina_, and her pretensions were a frequent source of anxiety. She led a
varied life, sometimes treated as queen, with a court around her, and
sometimes as a nun in her convent, dying at last in 1531, at the age of
seventy.[53]
Isabella was queen in fact as well as in name. Under the feudal system,
the husband of an heiress was so completely lord of the fief that, in
the Capitulations of Cervera, January 7, 1469, which preceded the
marriage, the Castilians carefully guarded the autonomy of their kingdom
and Ferdinand swore to observe the conditions.[54] Yet, on the death of
Henry IV, he imagined that he could disregard the compact, alleging that
the crown of Castile passed to the nearest male descendant, and that
through his grandfather, Ferdinand of Antequera, brother of Henry III,
he was the lawful heir. The position was, however, too doubtful and
complicated for him to insist on this; a short struggle convinced his
consummate prudence that it was wisdom to yield, and Isabella's wifely
tact facilitated submission. It was agreed that their two names should
appear on all papers, both their heads on all coins, and that there
should be a single seal with the arms of Castile and Aragon. Thereafter
they acted in concert which was rarely disturbed. The strong
individuality which characterized both conduced to harmony, for neither
of them allowed courtiers to gain undue influence. As Pulgar says "The
favorite of the king is the queen, the favorite of the queen is the
king."[55]
[Sidenote: _FERDINAND'S CHARACTER_]
Ferdinand, without being a truly great man, was unquestionably the
greatest monarch of an age not prolific in greatness, the only
contemporary whom he did not wholly eclipse being Henry VII of England.
Constant in adversity, not unduly elated in prosperity, there was a
stedfast equipoise in his character which more than compensated for any
lack of brilliancy. Far-seeing and cautious, he took no decisive step
that was not well prepared in advance but, when the time came, he could
strike, promptly and hard. Not naturally cruel, he took no pleasure in
human suffering, but he was pitiless when his policy demanded.
Dissimulation and deceit are too invariable an ingredient of statecraft
for us to censure him severely for the craftiness in which he surpassed
his rivals or for the mendacity in which he was an adept. Cold and
reserved, he preferred to inspire fear rather than to excite affection,
but he was well served and his insight into character gave him the most
useful faculty of a ruler, the ability to choose his instruments and to
get from them the best work which they were capable of performing, while
gratitude for past services never imposed on him any inconvenient
obligations. He was popularly accused of avarice, but the empty treasury
left at his death showed that acquisitiveness with him had been merely a
means to an end.[56] His religious convictions were sincere and moreover
he recognized wisely the invaluable aid which religion could lend to
statesmanship at a time when Latin Christianity was dominant without a
rival. This was especially the case in the ten years' war with Granada,
his conduct of which would alone stamp him as a leader of men. The
fool-hardy defiance of Abu-l-Hacan when, in 1478, he haughtily refused
to resume payment of the tribute which for centuries had been imposed on
Granada, and when, in 1481, he broke the existing truce by surprising
Zahara, was a fortunate occurrence which Ferdinand improved to the
utmost. The unruly Castilian nobles had been reduced to order, but they
chafed under the unaccustomed restraint. By giving their warlike
instincts legitimate employment in a holy cause, he was securing
internal peace; by leading his armies personally, he was winning the
respect of his Castilian subjects who hated him as an Aragonese, and he
was training them to habits of obedience. By making conquests for the
crown of Castile he became naturalized and was no longer a foreigner. It
was more than a hundred years since a King of Castile had led his
chivalry to victory over the infidel, and national pride and religious
enthusiasm were enlisted in winning for him the personal authority
necessary for a sovereign, which had been forfeited since the murder of
Pedro the Cruel had established the bastard line upon the throne. It was
by such means as this, and not by the Inquisition that he started the
movement which converted feudal Spain into an absolute monarchy. His
life's work was seen in the success with which, against heavy odds, he
lifted Spain from her obscurity in Europe to the foremost rank of
Christian powers.
Yet amid the numerous acts of cruelty and duplicity which tarnish the
memory of Ferdinand as a statesman, examination of his correspondence
with his officials of the Inquisition, especially with those employed in
the odious business of confiscating the property of the unhappy victims,
has revealed to me an unexpectedly favorable aspect of his character.
While urging them to diligence and thoroughness, his instructions are
invariably to decide all cases with rectitude and justice and to give no
one cause of complaint. While insisting on the subordination of the
people and the secular officials to the Holy Office, more than once we
find him intervening to check arbitrary action and to correct abuses
and, when cases of peculiar hardship arising from confiscations are
brought to his notice, he frequently grants to widows and orphans a
portion of the forfeited property. All this will come before us more
fully hereafter and a single instance will suffice here to illustrate
his kindly disposition to his subjects. In a letter of October 20, 1502,
he recites that Domingo Muñoz of Calatayna has appealed to him for
relief, representing that his little property was burdened with an
annual _censal_ or ground-rent of two sols eight dineros--part of a
larger one confiscated in the estate of Juan de Buendia, condemned for
heresy--and he orders Juan Royz, his receiver of confiscations at
Saragossa, to release the ground-rent and let Muñoz have his property
unincumbered, giving as a reason that the latter is old and poor.[57] It
shows Ferdinand's reputation among his subjects that such an appeal
should be ventured, and the very triviality of the matter renders it the
more impressive that a monarch, whose ceaseless personal activity was
devoted to the largest affairs of that tumultuous world, should turn
from the complicated treachery of European politics to consider and
grant so humble a prayer.
[Sidenote: _ISABELLA_]
In his successful career as a monarch he was well seconded by his queen.
Without deserving the exaggerated encomiums which have idealized her,
Isabella was a woman exactly adapted to her environment. As we have
seen, the _muger varonil_ was a not uncommon development of the period
in Spain, and Isabella's youth, passed in the midst of civil broils,
with her fate more than once suspended in the balance, had strengthened
and hardened the masculine element in her character. Self-reliant and
possessed of both moral and physical courage, she was prompt and
decided, bearing with ease responsibilities that would have crushed a
weaker nature and admirably fitted to cope with the fierce and turbulent
nobles, who respected neither her station nor her sex and could be
reduced to obedience only by a will superior to their own. She had the
defects of her qualities. She could not have been the queen she was
without sacrifice of womanly softness, and she earned the reputation of
being hard and unforgiving.[58] She could not be merciful when her task
was to reduce to order the wild turmoil and lawlessness which had so
long reigned unchecked in Castile, but in this she shed no blood
wantonly and she knew how to pardon when policy dictated mercy. How she
won the affection of those in whom she confided can be readily
understood from the feminine grace of her letters to her confessor,
Hernando of Talavera.[59] A less praiseworthy attribute of her sex was
her fondness for personal adornment, in which she indulged in spite of a
chronically empty treasury and a people overwhelmed with taxation. We
hear of her magnifying her self-abnegation in receiving the French
ambassador twice in the same gown, while an attaché of the English envoy
says that he never saw her twice in the same attire, and that a single
toilet, with its jewels and appendages must have cost at least 200,000
crowns.[60] She was moreover rigidly tenacious of the royal dignity.
Once when Ferdinand was playing cards with some grandees, the Admiral of
Castile, whose sister was Ferdinand's mother, addressed him repeatedly
as "nephew"; Isabella was undressed in an inner room and heard it; she
hastily gathered a garment around her, put her head through the door and
rebuked him--"Hold! my lord the king has no kindred or friends, he has
servants and vassals."[61] She was deeply and sincerely religious,
placing almost unbounded confidence in her spiritual directors, whom she
selected, not among courtly casuists to soothe her conscience, but from
among the most rigid and unbending churchmen within her reach, and to
this may in part be attributed the fanaticism which led her to make such
havoc among her people. She was scrupulously regular in all church
observances; in addition to frequent prayers she daily recited the hours
like a priest, and her biographer tells us that, in spite of the
pressing cares of state, she seemed to lead a contemplative rather than
an active life.[62] She was naturally just and upright, though, in the
tortuous policy of the time, she had no hesitation in becoming the
accomplice of Ferdinand's frequent duplicity and treachery. With all the
crowded activity of her eventful life, she found time to stimulate the
culture despised by the warlike chivalry around her, and she took a deep
interest in an academy which, at her instance, was opened for the young
nobles of her court by the learned Italian, Peter Martyr of
Anghiera.[63]
[Sidenote: _ROYAL JURISDICTION_]
Isabella recognized that the surest way to curb the disorders which
pervaded her kingdom was the vigorous enforcement of the law and, as
soon as the favorable aspect of the war of the succession gave leisure
for less pressing matters, she set earnestly to work to accomplish it.
The victory of Toro was followed immediately by the Córtes of Madrigal,
April 27, 1476, where far-reaching reforms were enacted, among which the
administration of justice and the vindication of the royal prerogatives
occupied a conspicuous place.[64] It was not long before she gave her
people a practical illustration of her inflexible determination to
enforce these reforms. In 1477 she visited Seville with her court and
presided in public herself over the trial of malefactors. Complaints
came in thick and fast of murders and robberies committed in the bad old
times; the criminals were summarily dispatched, and a great fear fell
upon the whole population, for there was scarce a family or even an
individual who was not compromised. Multitudes fled and Seville bade
fair to be depopulated when, at the supplication of a great crowd,
headed by Enrique de Guzman, Duke of Medina Sidonia, she proclaimed an
amnesty conditioned on the restitution of property, making, however, the
significant exception of heresy.[65]
[Sidenote: _ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE_]
From Seville she went, accompanied by Ferdinand, to Córdova. There they
executed malefactors, compelled restitution of property, took possession
of the castles of robber hidalgos, and left the land pacified. As
opportunity allowed, in the busy years which followed, Isabella visited
other portions of her dominions, from Valencia to Biscay and Galicia, on
the same errand and, when she could not appear in person, she sent
judges around with full power to represent the crown, the influence of
which was further extended when, in 1480, the royal officers known as
corregidores were appointed in all towns and cities.[66] One notable
case is recorded which impressed the whole nobility with salutary
terror. In 1480 the widow of a scrivener appealed to her against Alvar
Yáñez, a rich caballero of Lugo in Galicia, who, to obtain possession of
a coveted property, caused the scrivener to forge a deed and then
murdered him to insure secrecy. It was probably this which led Ferdinand
and Isabella to send to Galicia Fernando de Acuña as governor with an
armed force, and Garcí López de Chinchilla as corregidor. Yáñez was
arrested and finally confessed and offered to purchase pardon with
40,000 ducats to be applied to the Moorish wars. Isabella's counsellors
advised acceptance of the tempting sum for so holy a cause, but her
inflexible sense of justice rejected it; she had the offender put to
death, but to prove her disinterestedness she waived her claim to his
forfeited estates and gave them to his children. Alvar Yáñez was but a
type of the lawless nobles of Galicia who, for a century, had been
accustomed to slay and spoil without accountability to any one. So
desperate appeared the condition of the land that when, in 1480, the
deputies of the towns assembled to receive Acuña and Chinchilla they
told them that they would have to have powers from the King of Heaven as
well as from the earthly king to punish the evil doers of the land.[67]
The example made of Yáñez brought encouragement, but the work of
restoring order was slow. Even in 1482 the representatives of the towns
of Galicia appealed to the sovereigns, stating that there had long been
neither law nor justice there and begging that a _justizia mayor_ be
appointed, armed with full powers to reduce the land to order. They
especially asked for the destruction of the numerous castles of those
who, having little land and few vassals to support them, lived by
robbery and pillage, and with them they classed the fortified churches
held by prelates. At the same time they represented that homicide had
been so universal that, if all murderers were punished, the greater part
of the land would be ruined, and they suggested that culprits be merely
made to serve at their own expense in the war with Granada.[68] With the
support of the well-disposed, however, the royal power gradually made
itself felt; they lent efficient support to the royal representatives;
forty-six robber castles were razed and fifteen hundred robbers and
murderers fled from the province, which became comparatively peaceful
and orderly--a change confirmed when, in 1486, Ferdinand and Isabella
went thither personally to complete the work. Yet it was not simply by
spasmodic effort that the protection of the laws was secured for the
population. Constant vigilance was exercised to see that the judges were
strict and impartial. In 1485, 1488 and 1490 we hear of searching
investigations made into the action of all the corregidores of the
kingdom to see that they administered justice without fear or favor.
_Juezes de Residencia_, as they were called, armed with almost full
royal authority, were dispatched to all parts of the kingdom, as a
regular system, to investigate and report on the conduct of all royal
officials, from governors down, with power to punish for injustice,
oppression, or corruption, subject always to appeal in larger cases to
the royal council, and the detailed instructions given to them show the
minute care exercised over all details of administration. Bribery, also,
which was almost universal in the courts, was summarily suppressed and
all judges were forbidden to receive presents from suitors.[69] To
maintain constant watchfulness over them a secret service was organized
of trustworthy inspectors who circulated throughout the land in disguise
and furnished reports as to their proceedings and reputation.[70]
Attention, moreover, was paid to the confused jurisprudence of the
period. Since the confirmation of the _Siete Partidas_ of Alfonso X, in
1348, and the issue at the same time of the _Ordenamiento de Alcalá_,
there had been countless laws and edicts published, some of them
conflicting and many that had grown obsolete though still legally in
force. The greatest jurist of the day, Alfonso Diaz de Montalvo, was
employed to gather from these into a code all that were applicable to
existing conditions and further to supplement their deficiencies, and
this code, known as the _Ordenanzas Reales_, was accepted and confirmed
by the Córtes of Toledo in 1480.[71] This reconstruction of Castilian
jurisprudence was completed for the time when, in 1491, Montalvo brought
out an edition of the _Siete Partidas_, noting what provisions had
become obsolete and adding what was necessary of the more modern laws.
The result of all these strenuous labors is seen in the admiring
exclamation of Peter Martyr, in 1492, "Thus we have peace and concord,
hitherto unknown in Spain. Justice, which seems to have abandoned other
lands, pervades these kingdoms."[72] The inestimable benefits resulting
from this are probably due more especially to Isabella.
Yet I have been led to the conviction that her share in the
administration of her kingdom has been exaggerated. The chroniclers of
the period were for the most part Castilians who would naturally seek to
subordinate the action of the Aragonese intruder, and subsequent
writers, in their eagerness to magnify the reputation of Isabella, have
followed the example. In the copious royal correspondence with the
officials of the Inquisition the name of Isabella rarely appears. To
those in Castile as in Aragon Ferdinand mostly writes in the first
person singular, without even using the _pluralis majestatis_; the
receiver of confiscations is _mi receptor_, the royal treasury is _mi
camera e fisco_; the Council of the Inquisition is _mi consejo_. In
spite of the agreement of 1474, the signature _Yo la Reina_ rarely
appears alongside of _Yo el Rey_, and still rarer are Ferdinand's
allusions to _la Serenissima Reina, mi muy cara e muy amada muger_,
while in the occasional letters issued by Isabella during her husband's
absence, she is careful to adduce his authority as that of _el Rey mi
señor_.[73] It is scarce likely that this preponderance of Ferdinand was
confined to directing the affairs of the Holy Office.
There has been a tendency of late to regard the Inquisition as a
political engine for the conversion of Spain from a medieval feudal
monarchy to one of the modern absolute type, but this is an error. The
change effected by Ferdinand and Isabella and confirmed by their
grandson Charles V was almost wholly wrought, as it had been two
centuries earlier in France, by the extension and enforcement of the
royal jurisdiction, superseding that of the feudatories.[74] In Castile
the latter had virtually ceased to be an instrument of good during the
long period of turbulence which preceded the accession of Isabella;
something evidently was needed to fill the gap; the zealous and
efficient administration of justice, which I have described, not only
restored order to the community but went far to exalt the royal power,
and, while it abased the nobles, it reconciled the people to possible
usurpations which were so beneficent. In the consolidation and
maintenance of this no agency was so effective as the institution known
as the _Santa Hermandad_.
[Sidenote: _LA SANTA HERMANDAD_]
Hermandades--brotherhoods or associations for the maintenance of public
peace and private rights--were no new thing. In the troubles of 1282,
caused by the rebellion of Sancho IV against his father, the first idea
of his supporters seems to have been the formation of such
organizations.[75] In these associations, however, the police functions
were subordinated to the political object of supporting the pretensions
of Sancho IV and, recognizing their danger, he dissolved them as soon as
he felt the throne assured to him. After his death, his widow the regent
Doña María de Molina, organized them anew for the protection of her
child, Fernando IV, and again in 1315, when she was a second time regent
in the minority of her grandson, Alfonso XI.[76]
The idea was a fruitful one and speedily came to be recognized as a
potent instrumentality in the struggle with local disorder and violence.
Perhaps the earliest Hermandad of a purely police character, similar to
the later ones, was that entered into in 1302 between Toledo, Talavera
and Villareal to repress the robberies and murders committed by the
_Golfines_ in the district of Xara. Fernando IV not only confirmed the
association but ordered the inhabitants to render it due assistance, and
subsequent royal letters of the same purport were issued in 1303, 1309,
1312 and 1315.[77] In 1386 Juan I framed a general law providing for the
organization and functions of Hermandades, but if any were formed under
it at the time they have left no traces of their activity. In 1418 this
law was adopted as the constitution of one which organized itself in
Santiago, but this accomplished little and, in 1421, the guilds and
confraternities of the city united in another for mutual support and
succor.[78] There was, in fact, at this time, at least nominally, a
general Hermandad, probably organized under the statute of Juan I and
possessing written charters and privileges and customs and revenues,
with full jurisdiction to try and condemn offenders. It commanded little
respect, however, for it complained, in 1418, to Juan II of interference
with its revenues and work, in response to which Juan vigorously
prohibited all royal and local judges and officials from impeding the
Hermandades in any manner. The continuity, nominal at least, of this
with subsequent organizations is shown by the confirmation of this
utterance by Juan II in 1423, by Ferdinand and Isabella in 1485, by
Juana la Loca in 1512 and 1518, by Philip II in 1561, by Philip III in
1601 and by Philip IV in 1621.[79] In the increasing disorder of the
times, however, it was impossible, at that period, to maintain the
efficiency of the body. In 1443 an attempt was made to reconstruct it,
but as soon as it endeavored to repress the lawless nobles and laid
siege to Pedro López de Ayala in Salvatierra its forces were cut to
pieces and dispersed by Pedro Fernández de Velasco.[80] Some twenty
years later, in 1465, when the disorders under Henry IV were
culminating, another effort was made. The suffering people organized and
taxed themselves to raise a force of 1800 horsemen to render the roads
safe, and they endeavored to bring the number up to 3000. It was a
popular movement against the nobles and the king hailed it as the work
of God who was lifting up the humble against the great. He empowered
them to administer justice without appeal except to himself, he told
them that they had well earned the name of _Santa Hermandad_ and he
urged them earnestly to go forward in the good work. The attempt had
considerable success for a time, but it soon languished and was
dissolved for lack of the means required to carry it on.[81] Again, in
1473, there was another endeavor to form a Hermandad, but the anarchical
forces were too dominant for its successful organization.[82]
[Sidenote: _LA SANTA HERMANDAD_]
As soon as the victory of Toro, in March, 1476, gave promise of settled
government, the idea of reviving the Hermandades occurred to Alfonso de
Quintanilla, Contador Mayor, or Chief Auditor, of Ferdinand and
Isabella. With their approval he broached the subject to leading
citizens of the principal towns in Leon and Old Castile; deputies were
sent to meet at Dueñas and the project was debated. So many obstacles
presented themselves that it would have been abandoned but for an
eloquent argument by Quintanilla. His plan was adopted, but so fearful
were the deputies that the taxes necessary for its maintenance might
become permanent that they limited its duration to three years. Under
the impulse of the sovereigns it rapidly took shape and was organized
with the Duke of Villahermosa, natural brother of Ferdinand, at its
head.[83] No time was lost in extending it throughout the kingdoms, in
spite of resistance on the part of those who regarded with well-founded
apprehension not only its efficiency as a means of coercing malefactors
but as a dangerous development of the royal power. Seville, for
instance, recalcitrated and only yielded to a peremptory command from
Isabella in June, 1477.[84] One of the reasons assigned, in 1507, by
Ferdinand for assenting to the demoralizing arrangement under which the
Archbishop of Compostella resigned his see in favor of his natural son,
was that he had received the royal judges and the Hermandad throughout
his province, in opposition to the will of the nobles and gentry.[85]
When, in 1479, Alonso Carrillo and the Marquis of Villena made a final
attempt to urge the King of Portugal to another invasion of Castile, one
of the arguments advanced was the hatred entertained for Ferdinand and
Isabella in consequence of the taxes levied to support the three
thousand horsemen of the Hermandad.[86] In some provinces the resistance
was obstinate. In 1479 we find Isabella writing to the authorities of
Biscay, expressing surprise at the neglect of the royal orders and
threatening condign punishment for further delay, notwithstanding which
repeated commands were requisite, and it was not till 1488 that the
stubborn Biscayans submitted, while soon afterward complaints came from
Guipuzcoa that the local courts neutralized it by admitting appeals from
its sentences.[87] It was in the same year that Ferdinand obtained from
the Córtes of Saragossa assent to the introduction of the Hermandad in
his kingdom of Aragon, but the Aragonese, always jealous of the royal
power, chafed under it for, in December, 1493, Isabella, writing from
Saragossa, expresses a fear that the Córtes may suppress it, though it
is the only means of enforcing justice there, and in the Córtes of
Monçon, in 1510, Ferdinand was obliged to approve a _fuero_ abolishing
it and forbidding for the future anything of the kind to be
established.[88] In 1490 the independent kingdom of Navarre adopted the
system and co-operated with its neighbors by allowing malefactors to be
followed across the border and extraditing them when caught--even
absconding debtors being thus tracked and surrendered.[89] The
institution thus founded was watched with Isabella's customary care. In
1483 complaints arose of bribery and extortion, when she summoned a
convention at Pinto of representatives from all the provinces, where the
guilty were punished and abuses were reformed.[90]
The Santa Hermandad thus formed a mounted military police which covered
the whole kingdom, under the Duke of Villahermosa, who appointed the
captains and summoned the force to any point where trouble was
threatened. Each centre of population elected two alcaldes, one a
gentleman and the other a tax-payer or commoner, and levied a tax to
defray the expense of the organization. The alcaldes selected the
_quadrilleros_, or privates, and held courts which dispensed summary
justice to delinquents, bound by no formalities and required to listen
to no legal pleadings. Their decision was final, save an appeal to the
throne; their jurisdiction extended over all crimes of violence and
theft and they could inflict stripes, mutilation, or death by shooting
with arrows. The quadrillero in pursuit of an offender was required to
follow him for five leagues, raising the hue and cry as he went, and
joined by those of the country through which he passed, who kept up the
hunt until the fugitive was either caught or driven beyond the
frontier.[91]
[Sidenote: _LA SANTA HERMANDAD_]
Great as were the services of the Hermandad in repressing the turbulence
of the nobles and rendering the roads safe, its cost was a source of
complaint to the communities which defrayed it. This was by no means
small; in 1485 it was computed at 32,000,000 maravedís and subsequently
it increased greatly; it was met by a tax of 18,000 maravedís on every
hundred hearths and the money was not handled by the communities but was
paid to the crown.[92] Nominally the organization was in their hands,
but virtually it was controlled by the sovereigns, and when, in 1498,
Ferdinand and Isabella, with an appearance of generosity, relieved the
taxpayers and assumed to meet the expenses from the royal revenues,
although they left the election of the alcaldes and quadrilleros in the
hands of the local populations, yet the result was inevitable in
subjecting it still more closely to the crown.[93] The institution
became permanent, and its modern development is seen in the _guarda
civil_. None of the reforms of Ferdinand and Isabella was so efficient
in restoring order and none did more to centralize power. It was not
only a rudimentary standing army which could be concentrated speedily to
suppress disorder, but it carried the royal jurisdiction into every
corner of the land and made the royal authority supreme everywhere. It
was practically an alliance between the crown and the people against the
centrifugal forces of feudalism, without which even the policy of
Ferdinand and the iron firmness of Ximenes might have failed to win in
the final struggle. When municipal independence likewise perished in the
defeat of the Comunidades, the only power left standing in Spain was
that of the throne, which thus became absolute and all-pervading. The
new absolutism was embodied in the self-effacing declaration of the
Córtes of Valladolid, in 1523, to Charles V, that the laws and customs
were subject to the king, who could make and revoke them at his
pleasure, for he was the living law.[94] How immense was the revolution
and how speedily accomplished is seen in the contrast between the time
when the Count of Benavente jeered at a royal safe-conduct and the
people of Galicia scarce dared to receive a royal commissioner, and some
sixty years later when, in the unruly Basque provinces, the people of
San Sebastian, in 1536, appealed to the Emperor Charles V to relieve
them from local nuisances, and royal letters were gravely issued
forbidding the butchers of that town from erecting new stalls or
skinning cattle in the streets and restricting the latter operation to
places duly assigned for the purpose.[95] Thus the crown had become
absolute and its interposition could be invoked for the minutest details
of local government. He reads history to little purpose who imagines
that this was the work of the Inquisition.
Another measure of no little importance in establishing the royal
supremacy was the virtual incorporation in the crown of the masterships
of the three great military Orders of Santiago, of Calatrava and of
Alcántara. Under Henry IV a Master of Santiago had been able to keep the
whole kingdom in confusion, and the wealth and power of the others,
although not so great, were sufficient to render their chiefs the equals
of the highest nobles. From Innocent VIII, in 1489, Ferdinand procured a
brief granting him for life the administration of all three; and in her
will Isabella bequeathed to him an annual income of ten millions of
maravedís from their revenues.[96] As Ferdinand's death drew near, the
Orders endeavored to be released from subjection, claiming that they
could be governed only by their own members, but prudent care secured in
time from Leo X the succession in the masterships to Charles V, who,
after Leo's death, made haste to obtain from Adrian VI a bull which
annexed them in perpetuity to the crown.[97]
* * * * *
It was impossible that a king so far-seeing and politic as Ferdinand and
a queen so pious as Isabella, when reducing to order the chaos which
they found in Castile, should neglect the interest of the faith on
which, according to medieval belief, all social order was based. There
were in fact burning religious questions which, to sensitive piety,
might seem even more urgent than protection to life and property. To
comprehend the intricacy of the situation will require a somewhat
extended retrospect into the relations between the several races
occupying the Peninsula.
CHAPTER II.
THE JEWS AND THE MOORS.
The influences under which human character can be modified, for good or
for evil, are abundantly illustrated in the conversion of the Spaniards
from the most tolerant to the most intolerant nation in Europe.
Apologists may seek to attribute the hatred felt for Jews and Moors and
heretics, in the Spain of the fifteenth and succeeding centuries, to an
inborn peculiarity of the race--a _cosa de España_ which must be
accepted as a fact and requires no explanation,[98] but such facts have
their explanation, and it is the business of the expositor of history to
trace them to their causes.
* * * * *
The vicissitudes endured by the Jewish race, from the period when
Christianity became dominant, may well be a subject of pride to the
Hebrew and of shame to the Christian. The annals of mankind afford no
more brilliant instance of steadfastness under adversity, of
unconquerable strength through centuries of hopeless oppression, of
inexhaustible elasticity in recuperating from apparent destruction, and
of conscientious adherence to a faith whose only portion in this life
was contempt and suffering. Nor does the long record of human perversity
present a more damning illustration of the facility with which the evil
passions of man can justify themselves with the pretext of duty, than
the manner in which the Church, assuming to represent Him who died to
redeem mankind, deliberately planted the seeds of intolerance and
persecution and assiduously cultivated the harvest for nearly fifteen
hundred years. It was in vain that Jesus on the cross had said "Father,
forgive them, for they know not what they do"; it was in vain that St.
Peter was recorded as urging, in excuse for the Crucifixion, "And now,
brethren, I wot that through ignorance ye did it, as did also your
rulers"; the Church taught that, short of murder, no punishment, no
suffering, no obloquy was too severe for the descendants of those who
had refused to recognize the Messiah, and had treated him as a rebel
against human and divine authority. Under the canon law the Jew was a
being who had scarce the right to existence and could only enjoy it
under conditions of virtual slavery. As recently as 1581, Gregory XIII
declared that the guilt of the race in rejecting and crucifying Christ
only grows deeper with successive generations, entailing on its members
perpetual servitude, and this authoritative assertion was embodied in an
appendix to the Corpus Juris.[99] When Paramo, about the same period,
sought to justify the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492, he had
no difficulty in citing canons to prove that Ferdinand and Isabella
could righteously have seized all their property and have sold their
bodies into slavery.[100] Man is ready enough to oppress and despoil his
fellows and, when taught by his religious guides that justice and
humanity are a sin against God, spoliation and oppression become the
easiest of duties. It is not too much to say that for the infinite
wrongs committed on the Jews during the Middle Ages, and for the
prejudices that are even yet rife in many quarters, the Church is mainly
if not wholly responsible. It is true that occasionally she lifted her
voice in mild remonstrance when some massacre occurred more atrocious
than usual, but these massacres were the direct outcome of the hatred
and contempt which she so zealously inculcated, and she never took steps
by punishment to prevent their repetition. Alonso de Espina merely
repeats the currently received orthodox ethics of the subject when he
tells us that to oppress the Jew is true kindness and piety, for when he
finds that his impiety brings suffering he will be led to the fear of
God and that he who makes another do right is greater in the sight of
God than he who does right himself.[101]
[Sidenote: _DEVELOPMENT OF INTOLERANCE_]
In view of Spanish abhorrence of Jews and Saracens during the last five
or six centuries it is a fact worthy of note that the Spanish nations of
the medieval period were the latest to yield to this impulsion of the
Church. The explanation of this lies partly in the relations between the
several races in the Peninsula and partly in the independent attitude
which Spain maintained towards the Holy See and its indisposition to
submit to the dictation of the Church. To appreciate fully the
transformation which culminated in the establishment of the Inquisition,
and to understand the causes leading to it, will require a brief review
of the position occupied by the Jew and the Saracen towards the Church
and the State.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: _PROGRESSIVE INTOLERANCE_]
In the primitive Church there would seem to have been a feeling of
equality, if not of cordiality, between Christian and Jew. When it was
deemed necessary, in the Apostolic canons, to forbid bishops and priests
and deacons, as well as laymen, from fasting or celebrating feasts with
Jews, or partaking of their unleavened bread, or giving oil to their
synagogues, or lighting their lamps, this argues that kindly intercourse
between them was only to be restricted in so far as it might lead to
religious fellowship.[102] This kindly intercourse continued but, as the
Church became mostly Gentile in its membership, the prejudices existing
against the Jew in the Gentile world gathered strength until there
becomes manifest a tendency to treat him as an outcast. Early in the
fourth century the council of Elvira, held under the lead of the
uncompromising Hosius of Córdova, forbade marriage between Christians
and Jews, because there could be no society common to the faithful and
the infidel; no farmer was to have his harvest blest by a Jew, nor was
any one even to eat with him.[103] St. Augustin was not quite so rigid,
for while he held it lawful to dissolve marriage between the Christian
and the infidel, he argued that it was inexpedient.[104][105] St.
Ambrose was one of the earliest to teach proscription when he reproved
Theodosius the Great for the favor shown by him to Jews, who slew Christ
and who deny God in denying his Son, and St. John Chrysostom improved on
this by publicly preaching that Christians should hold no intercourse
with Jews, whose souls were the habitations of demons and whose
synagogues were their playgrounds.[106] The antagonism thus stimulated
found its natural expression, in 415, in the turbulent city of
Alexandria, where quarrels arose resulting in the shedding of Christian
blood, when St. Cyril took advantage of the excitement by leading a mob
to the synagogues, of which he took possession, and then abandoned the
property of the Jews to pillage and expelled them from the city, which
they had inhabited since its foundation by Alexander.[107] That under
such impulsion these excesses were common is shown by the frequent
repetition of imperial edicts forbidding the maltreatment of Jews and
the spoiling and burning of their synagogues; they were not allowed to
erect new ones but were to be maintained in possession of those
existing. At the same time the commencement of legal disabilities is
manifested in the reiterated prohibitions of the holding of Christian
slaves by Jews, while confiscation and perpetual exile or death were
threatened against Jews who should convert or circumcise Christians or
marry Christian wives.[108] The Church held it to be a burning disgrace
that a Jew should occupy a position of authority over Christians; in 438
it procured from Theodosius II the enactment of this as a fixed
principle, and we shall see how earnestly it labored to render this a
part of the public law of Christendom.[109] This spirit received a check
from the Arianism of the Gothic conquerors of the Western Empire.
Theodoric ordered the privileges of the Jews to be strictly preserved,
among which was the important one that all quarrels between themselves
should be settled by their own judges, and he sternly repressed all
persecution. When a mob in Rome burned a synagogue he commanded the
punishment of the perpetrators in terms of severe displeasure; when
attempts were made to invade the right of the Jews of Genoa he
intervened effectually, and when in Milan the clergy endeavored to
obtain possession of the synagogue he peremptorily forbade it.[110] So
long as the Wisigoths remained Arian this spirit prevailed throughout
their extensive dominions, although the orthodox were allowed to indulge
their growing uncharitableness. When the council of Agde, in 506,
forbade the faithful to banquet or even to eat with Jews it shows that
social intercourse still existed but that it was condemned by those who
ruled the Church.[111] In the East the same tendency had freer
opportunity of expressing itself in legislation, as when, in 706, the
council of Constantinople forbade Christians to live with Jews or to
bathe with them, to eat their unleavened bread, to consult them as
physicians or to take their medicines.[112]
Gregory the Great was too large-minded to approve of this growing spirit
of intolerance and, when some zealots in Naples attempted to prevent the
Jews from celebrating their feasts, he intervened with a peremptory
prohibition of such interference, arguing that it would not conduce to
their conversion and that they should be led by kindness and not by
force to embrace the faith, all of which was embodied in the canon law
to become conspicuous through its non-observance.[113] In fact, his
repeated enunciation of the precept shows how little it was regarded
even in his own time.[114] When, moreover, large numbers of Jews were
compelled to submit to baptism in southern Gaul he wrote reprovingly to
the Bishops Virgil of Arles and Theodore of Marseilles, but this did not
prevent St. Avitus of Clermont, about the same time, from baptizing
about five hundred, who thus saved their lives from the fanatic fury of
the populace.[115]
These forced conversions in Gothia were the first fruits of the change
of religion of the Wisigoths from Arianism to Catholicism. The
Ostrogoths, Theodoric and Theodatus, had expressly declared that they
could not interfere with the religion of their subjects, for no one can
be forced unwillingly to believe.[116] The Wisigoths, who dominated
southern Gaul and Spain, when adapting the Roman law to suit their
needs, had contented themselves with punishing by confiscation the
Christian who turned Jew, with liberating Christian slaves held by Jews,
and with inflicting the death penalty on Jewish masters who should force
Christian slaves to conversion, besides preserving the law of Theodosius
II prohibiting Jews from holding office or building new synagogues.[117]
This was by no means full toleration, but it was merciful in comparison
with what followed the conversion of the Goths to Catholicism. The
change commenced promptly, though it did not at once reach its full
severity. The third council of Toledo, held in May, 589, to condemn the
Arian heresy and to settle the details of the conversion, adopted canons
which show how free had hitherto been the intercourse between the races.
Jews were forbidden to have Christian wives or concubines or servants,
and all children sprung from such unions were to be baptized; any
Christian slave circumcised or polluted with Jewish rites was to be set
free; no Jew was to hold an office in which he could inflict punishment
on a Christian, and this action was followed by some further
disabilities decreed by the council of Narbonne in December of the same
year.[118] That freedom of discussion continued for some time is
manifested by the audacity of a Jew named Froganis, not long afterwards,
who, as we are told, in the presence of all the nobles of the court,
exalted the synagogue and depreciated the Church; it was easier perhaps
to close his mouth than to confute him, for Aurasius, Bishop of Toledo,
excommunicated him and declared him anathematized by the Father, Son and
Holy Ghost and by all the celestial hierarchy and cohorts.[119]
[Sidenote: _THE JEWS UNDER THE WISIGOTHS_]
The greatest churchman of the day, St. Isidor of Seville, whose career
of forty years commenced with the Catholic revolution, did what in him
lay to stimulate and justify persecution. His treatise against the Jews
is not vituperative, as are so many later controversial writings, but he
proves that they are condemned for their fathers' sins to dispersion and
oppression until, at the end of the world, their eyes are to be opened
and they are to believe.[120] That he should have felt called upon to
compose such a work was an evil sign, and still more evil were the
conclusions which he taught. They could not fail of deplorable results,
as was seen when Sisebut ascended the throne in 612 and signalized the
commencement of his reign by a forcible conversion of all the Jews of
the kingdom. What means he adopted we are not told, but of course they
were violent, which St. Isidor mildly reproves, seeing that conversion
ought to be sincere, but which yet he holds to be strictly within the
competence of the Church.[121] The Church in fact was thus brought face
to face with the question whether the forcible propagation of the faith
is lawful. This is so repugnant to the teachings of Christ that it could
scarce be accepted, but, on the other hand, the sacrament of baptism is
indelible, so the convenient doctrine was adopted and became the settled
policy that, while Christianity was not to be spread by force, unwilling
converts were nevertheless Christians; they were not to be permitted to
apostatize and were subject to all the pains and penalties of heresy for
any secret inclination to their own religion.[122] This fruitful
conception led to infinite misery, as we shall see hereafter, and was
the impelling motive which created the Spanish Inquisition.
Whatever may have been the extent and the success of Sisebut's measures,
the Jews soon afterwards reappear, and they and the _conversos_ became
the subject of an unintermittent series of ecclesiastical and secular
legislation which shows that the policy so unfortunately adopted could
only have attained its end by virtual extermination. The anvil bade fair
to wear out the hammer--the constancy of the persecuted exhausted the
ingenuity of the persecutor. With the conversion to Catholicism
ecclesiastics became dominant throughout the Wisigothic territories and
to their influence is attributable the varied series of measures which
occupied the attention of the successive councils of Toledo from 633
until the Saracenic invasion in 711. Every expedient was tried--the
seizure of all Jewish children, to be shut up in monasteries or to be
given to God-fearing Christians; the alternative of expulsion or
conversion, to the enforcement of which all kings at their accession
were to take a solemn oath; the gentle persuasives of shaving,
scourging, confiscation and exile. That the people at large did not
share in the intolerance of their rulers is seen in the prohibitions of
social intercourse, mixed marriages, and the holding of office. The
spectre of proselytism was evoked in justification of these measures as
though the persecuted Jew would seek to incur its dangers even had not
the Talmud declared that "a proselyte is as damaging to Israel as an
ulcer to a healthy body." The enforced conversions thus obtained were
regarded naturally with suspicion and the converts were the subjects of
perpetual animadversion.[123]
[Sidenote: _THE JEWS UNDER THE WISIGOTHS_]
Thus the Church had triumphed and the toleration of the Arian Goths had
been converted into persecuting orthodoxy. History repeats itself and,
eight hundred years later, we shall see the same process with the same
results. Toleration was changed into persecution; conversions obtained
by force, or by its equivalent, irresistible pressure, were recognized
as fictitious, and the unfortunate converts were held guilty of the
unpardonable crime of apostasy. Although the Goths did not invent the
Inquisition, they came as near to it as the rudeness of the age and the
looseness of their tottering political organization would permit, by
endeavoring to create through the priesthood a network of supervision
which should attain the same results. The Inquisition was prefigured and
anticipated.
As apparently the Jews could not be exterminated or the Conversos be
trained into willing Christians, the two classes naturally added an
element of discontent to the already unquiet and motley population
consisting of superimposed layers of Goths, Romans and Celtiberians. The
Jews doubtless aided the Gallo-Roman rebellion of Flavius Paulus about
675, for St. Julian of Toledo, in describing its suppression by King
Wamba, denounces Gaul in the bitterest terms, ending with the crowning
reproach that it is a refuge for the blasphemy of the Jews, whom Wamba
banished after his triumph.[124] In spite of the unremitting efforts for
their destruction, they still remained a source of danger to the State.
At the council of Toledo in 694, King Egiza appealed to his prelates to
devise some means by which Judaism should be wiped out, or all Jews be
subjected to the sword of justice and their property be appropriated,
for all efforts to convert them had proved futile and there was danger
that, in conjunction with their brethren in other lands, they would
overthrow Christianity. In its response the council alludes to a
conspiracy by which the Jews had endeavored to occupy the throne and
bring about the ruin of the land, and it decrees that all Jews, with
their wives, children and posterity, shall be reduced to perpetual
servitude, while their property is declared confiscated to the king.
They are to be transferred from their present abodes and be given to
such persons as the king may designate, who shall hold them as slaves so
long as they persevere in their faith, taking from them their children
as they reach the age of seven and marrying them only to Christians.
Such of their Christian slaves as the king may select shall receive a
portion of the confiscated property and continue to pay the taxes
hitherto levied on the Jews.[125]
Doubtless this inhuman measure led to indiscriminate plunder and
infinite misery, but its object was not accomplished. The Jews remained,
and when came the catastrophe of the Saracen conquest they were ready
enough to welcome the Berber invaders. That they were still in Spain is
attributed to Witiza, who reigned from 700 to 710 and who is said to
have recalled them and favored them with privileges greater than those
of the Church, but Witiza, though a favorite target for the abuse of
later annalists, was an excellent prince and the best contemporary
authority says nothing of his favoring the Jews.[126]
[Sidenote: _THE MOZÁRABES_]
If the Jews helped the Moslem, as we may readily believe, both from the
probabilities of the case and the testimony of Spanish and Arab
writers,[127] they did no more than a large portion of the Christians.
To the mass of the population the Goths were merely barbarous masters,
whose yoke they were ready to exchange for that of the Moors, nor were
the Goths themselves united. At the decisive battle of Xeres de la
Frontera, Don Roderic's right and left wings were commanded by Sisebert
and Oppas, the dethroned sons of Witiza, who fled without striking a
blow, for the purpose of causing his defeat. The land was occupied by
the Moors with little resistance, and on terms easy to the conquered. It
is true that, where resistance was made, the higher classes were reduced
to slavery, the lands were divided among the soldiery and one-fifth was
reserved to the State, on which peasants were settled subject to an
impost of one-third of the product, but submission was general under
capitulations which secured to the inhabitants the possession of their
property, subject to the impost of a third, and allowed them the
enjoyment of their laws and religion under native counts and bishops. In
spite of this liberality, vast numbers embraced Mohammedanism, partly
to avoid taxation and partly through conviction that the marvellous
success of the Moslem cause was a proof of its righteousness.[128]
The hardy resolution of the few who preferred exile and independence,
and who found refuge in the mountains of Galicia and Asturias preserved
the Peninsula from total subjection to Islam. During the long struggle
of the Reconquest, the social and religious condition of Spain was
strangely anomalous, presenting a mixture of races and faiths whose
relations, however antagonistic they might be in principle, were, for
the most part, dominated by temporal interests exclusively. Mutual
attrition, so far from inflaming prejudices, led to mutual toleration,
so that fanaticism became reduced to a minimum precisely in that corner
of Christendom where _a priori_ reasoners have been tempted to regard it
as especially violent.
The Saracens long maintained the policy adopted in the conquest and made
no attempt to convert their Christian subjects, just as in the Levantine
provinces the Christians, although oppressed, were allowed to retain
their religion, and in Persia, after the fall of the Sassanids, Parsism
continued to exist for centuries and only died out gradually.[129] In
fact, the condition of the Mozárabes, or subject Christians, under the
caliphs of Córdova was, for the most part, preferable to what it had
been under the Gothic kings. Mozárabes were frequently in command of the
Moslem armies; they formed the royal body-guard and were employed as
secretaries in the highest offices of state. In time they so completely
lost the Latin tongue that it became necessary to translate the
scripture and the canons into Arabic.[130] The Church organization was
maintained, with its hierarchy of prelates, who at times assembled in
councils; there was sufficient intellectual activity for occasional
heresies to spring up and be condemned, like those of Hostegesis and
Migetio in the ninth century, while, half a century earlier, the bull of
Adrian I, addressed to the orthodox bishops of Spain and denouncing the
Adoptianism of Felix of Urgel, which was upheld by Elipandus, Archbishop
of Toledo, shows the freedom of intercourse existing between the
Mozárabes and the rest of Christendom.[131] We hear of S. Eulogio of
Córdova, whose two brothers, Alvar and Isidor, had left Spain and taken
service with the Emperor Louis le Germanique; he set out in 850 to join
them, but was stopped at Pampeluna by war and returned by way of
Saragossa, bringing with him a number of books, including Virgil,
Horace, Juvenal, Porphyry, the epigrams of Aldhelm and the fables of
Avienus.[132] Mixed marriages seem not to have been uncommon and there
were frequent instances of conversion from either faith, but Mozárabic
zealots abused the Moslem tolerance by publicly decrying Islam and
making proselytes, which was forbidden, and a sharp persecution arose
under Abderrhaman II and Mahomet I, in which there were a number of
victims, including San Eulogio, who was martyred in 859.[133]
[Sidenote: _THE MOZÁRABES_]
This persecution gave rise to an incident which illustrates the friendly
intercourse between Christian and Saracen. In 858, Hilduin, Abbot of S.
Germain-des-Prés, under the auspices of Charles le Chauve, sent two
monks to Spain to procure the relics of St. Vincent. On reaching
Languedoc they learned that his body had been carried to Benevento, but
they also heard of the persecution at Córdova and were delighted,
knowing that there must be plenty of relics to be obtained. They
therefore kept on to Barcelona, where Sunifred, the next in command to
the count, commended them to Abdulivar, Prince of Saragossa, with whom
he had intimate relations. From Saragossa they reached Córdova, where
the Mozárabic Bishop Saul received them kindly and assisted them in
obtaining the bodies of St. George and St. Aurelius, except that, as the
head of the latter was lacking, that of St. Natalia was substituted.
With these precious spoils they returned in safety to Paris, by way of
Toledo, Alcalá, Saragossa and Barcelona, to the immense gratification,
we are told, of King Charles.[134] The persecution was but temporary
and, a century later, in 956, we hear of Abderrhaman III sending
Recemund, Bishop of Elvira (Granada), as his ambassador to Otho the
Great at Frankfort, where he persuaded Liutprand of Cremona to write one
of his historical works.[135] When the Cid conquered Valencia, in 1096,
one of the conditions of surrender was that the garrison should be
composed of Mozárabes, and the capitulation was signed by the principal
Christian as well as Moslem citizens.[136]
The number of the Mozárabes of course diminished rapidly in the progress
of reconquest as the Christian territories expanded from Galicia to Leon
and Castile. Early in the twelfth century Alfonso VI, in reducing to
order his extensive acquisitions, experienced much trouble with them;
they are described as being worse than Moors, and he settled the matter
by the decisive expedient of deporting multitudes of them to
Africa.[137] The rapid progress of his arms, however, had so alarmed the
petty kings among whom Andalusia was divided that they had, about 1090,
invited to their assistance the Berbers known as Almoravides, who drove
back Alfonso on the bloody field of Zalaca. Their leader, Jusuf ibn
Techufin, was not content to fight for the benefit of his allies; he
speedily overthrew their feeble dynasties and established himself as
supreme in Moslem Spain. The Almoravides were savage and fanatical; they
could not endure the sight of Christians enjoying freedom of worship,
and bitter persecution speedily followed, until, in 1125, the Mozárabes
invited the aid of Alfonso el Batallador. They sent a roll of their best
warriors, comprising twelve thousand names, and promised that these and
many more would join him. He came and spent fifteen months on Moorish
territory, but made no permanent conquests, and on his departure the
wretched Christians begged him to let them accompany him to escape the
wrath of the Almoravides. Ten thousand of them did so, while of those
who remained large numbers were deported to Africa, where they mostly
perished.[138] The miserable remnant had a breathing spell, for the
atmosphere of Spain seemed unpropitious to fanaticism and the ferocity
of the Berbers speedily softened. We soon find them fraternizing with
Christians. King Ali of Córdova treated the latter well and even
entrusted to a captive noble of Barcelona named Reverter the command of
his armies. His son Techufin followed his example and was regarded as
the especial friend of the Christians, who aided him in his African
wars.[139] Yet this interval of rest was short. In 1146, another Berber
horde, known as Almohades, overthrew the Almoravides and brought a fresh
accession of savage ferocity from the African deserts. Their caliph,
Abd-al-mumin, proclaimed that he would suffer none but true believers in
his dominions; the alternatives offered were death, conversion or
expatriation. Many underwent pretended conversion, others went into
voluntary exile, and others were deported to Africa, after which the
Mozárabes disappear from view.[140]
[Sidenote: _THE MULADÍES_]
Yet it was as impossible for the Almohades to retain their fanaticism as
it had proved for their predecessors. When, in 1228, on the deposition
of the Almohad Miramamolin Al-Abdel, his nephew Yahia was raised to the
throne, his brother Al-Memon-Abo-l-Ola, who was in Spain, claimed the
succession. To obtain the assistance of San Fernando III, who lent him
twelve thousand Christian troops, he agreed to surrender ten frontier
strongholds, to permit the erection of a Christian church in Morocco,
where the Christians should celebrate publicly with ringing of bells,
and to allow freedom of conversion from Islam to Christianity, with
prohibition of the converse. This led to the foundation of an episcopate
of Morocco, of which the first bishop was Fray Aguelo, succeeded by Fray
Lope, both Franciscans.[141] Co-operation of this kind with the
Christians meets us at every step in the annals of the Spanish Saracens.
Aben-al-Ahmar, who founded the last dynasty of Granada, agreed to become
a vassal of San Fernando III, to pay him a tribute of 150,000 doblas per
annum, to furnish a certain number of troops whenever called upon, and
to appear in the Córtes when summoned, like any other ricohome. He aided
Fernando greatly in the capture of Seville, and, in the solemnities
which followed the entry into the city, Fernando bestowed knighthood on
him and granted him the bearing of the Castilian guidon--gules, a band
or, with two serpents, and two crowned lions as supporters--a cognizance
still to be seen in the Alhambra.[142]
* * * * *
The _Muladíes_, or Christian converts to Islam, formed another important
portion of the Moorish community. At the conquest, as we have seen,
large numbers of Christians apostatized, slaves to obtain freedom and
freemen to escape taxation. They were looked upon, however, with
suspicion by Arabs and Berbers and were subjected to disabilities which
led to frequent rebellions and murderous reprisals. On the suppression
of a rising in Córdova, in 814, fifteen thousand of them emigrated to
Egypt, where they captured Alexandria and held it until 826, when they
were forced to capitulate and transferred their arms to Candia, founding
a dynasty which lasted for a century and a half. Eight thousand of them
established themselves in Fez, where they held their own and even in the
fourteenth century were distinguishable from the other Moslems. In
Toledo, after several unsuccessful rebellions, the Muladíes became
dominant in 853 and remained independent for eighty years. Together with
the Mozárabes they almost succeeded in founding a kingdom of their own
in the mountains of Ronda, under Omar ben Hafsun, who embraced
Christianity. Indeed, the facility of conversion from one faith to
another was a marked feature of the period and shows how little firmness
of religious conviction existed. The renegade, Ibn Meruan, who founded
an independent state in Merida, taught a mixed faith compounded of both
the great religions. Everywhere the Muladíes were striving for freedom
and establishing petty principalities--in Algarbe, in Priego, in Murcia,
and especially in Aragon, where the Gothic family of the Beni-Cassi
became supreme. After the reduction of Toledo by starvation, in 930,
they become less prominent and gradually merge into the Moslem
population.[143] This was assisted by the fact that they made common
cause with their conquerors against the fanatic Almoravides and
Almohades. The leader of the Andalusians against the latter was a man of
Christian descent, Ibn-Mardanich, King of Valencia and Murcia. He wore
Christian dress and arms, his language was Castilian and his troops were
mostly Castilians, Navarrese and Catalans. To the Christians he was
commonly known as the king Don Lope. Religious differences, in fact,
were of much less importance than political aims, and everywhere, as we
shall see, Christian and Moslem were intermingled in the interminable
civil broils of that tumultuous time. In an attempt on Granada, in 1162,
the principal captains of Ibn-Mardanich were two sons of the Count of
Urgel and a grandson of Alvar Fañez, the favorite lieutenant of the
Cid.[144]
* * * * *
[Sidenote: _THE JEWS UNDER THE SARACENS_]
In these alternations of religious indifference and fanaticism, the
position of the Jews under Moslem domination was necessarily exposed to
severe vicissitudes. Their skill as physicians and their unrivalled
talent in administration rendered them a necessity to the conquerors,
whose favor they had gained by the assistance rendered in the invasion,
but ever and anon there would come a burst of intolerance which swept
them into obscurity if not into massacre. When Mahomet I ascended the
throne of Córdova, about 850, we are told that one of his first acts was
the dismissal of all Jewish officials, including presumably R. Hasdai
ben Ishak, who had been physician and vizier to his father, Abderrhaman
II.[145] A century later their wealth was so great that when the Jew
Peliag went to the country palace of Alhakem, the Caliph of Córdova, it
is related that he was accompanied by a retinue of seven hundred
retainers of his race, all richly clad and riding in carriages.[146] How
insecure was their prosperity was proved, in 1066, when Samuel ha Levi
and his son Joseph had been viziers and virtual rulers of Granada for
fifty years. The latter chanced to exile Abu Ishac of Elvira, a noted
theologian and poet, who took revenge in a bitter satire which had
immense popular success. "The Jews reign in Granada; they have divided
between them the city and the provinces, and everywhere one of this
accursed race is in supreme power. They collect the taxes, they dress
magnificently and fare sumptuously, while the true believers are in rags
and wretchedness. The chief of these asses is a fatted ram. Slay him and
his kindred and allies and seize their immense treasures. They have
broken the compact between us and are subject to punishment as
perjurers." We shall see hereafter how ready was the Christian mob to
respond to such appeals; the Moslem was no better; a rising took place
in which Joseph was assassinated in the royal palace, while four
thousand Jews were massacred and their property pillaged.[147] Again
they recuperated themselves, but they suffered with the Christians under
the fierce fanaticism of the Almohades. Indeed, they were exposed to a
fiercer outburst of wrath, for the robbery of the jewels of the Kaaba,
which occurred about 1160, was attributed to Spanish Jews, and
Abd-el-mumin was unsparing in enforcing his orders of conversion.
Numbers were put to death and forty-eight synagogues were burnt. The
Sephardim, or Spanish Jews, lost their most conspicuous doctor when, in
this persecution, Maimonides fled to Egypt.[148] Still they continued to
exist and to prosper, though exposed to destruction at any moment
through the whims of the monarch or the passions of the people. Thus, in
1375, in Granada, two men obstructed a street in a violent altercation
and were vainly adjured to cease in the name of Mahomet, when Isaac
Amoni, the royal physician, who chanced to pass in his carriage,
repeated the order and was obeyed. That a Jew should possess more
influence than the name of the Prophet was unendurable; the people rose
and a massacre ensued.[149]
* * * * *
[Sidenote: _SPANIARDS AND MOORS_]
While Saracen Spain was thus a confused medley of races and faiths,
subject to no guiding principle and swayed by the policy or the
prejudices of the moment, the Christian kingdoms were much the same,
except that, during the early Middle Ages, outbursts of fanaticism were
lacking. Brave warriors learned to respect each other, and, as usual, it
was the non-combatants, Christian priests and Moslem faquis, who
retained their virulence. In the fierce struggles of the Reconquest
there is little trace of race or religious hatred. The early ballads
show the Moors regarded as gallant antagonists, against whom there was
no greater animosity than was aroused in the civil strife which filled
the intervals of Moorish warfare.[150] When, in 1149, Ramon Berenger IV
of Barcelona, after a laborious siege, captured the long-coveted town of
Lérida, the terms of surrender assumed the form of a peaceful agreement
by which the Moorish Alcaide Avifelet became the vassal of Ramon
Berenger and they mutually pledged each other fidelity. Avifelet gave up
all his castles, retained certain rights in the territory and Ramon
Berenger promised him fiefs in Barcelona and Gerona.[151] More than
this, the ceaseless civil wars on both sides of the boundary caused each
to have constant recourse to those of hostile faith for aid or shelter,
and the relations which grew up, although transitory and shifting,
became so intricate that little difference between Christian and Moor
could often be recognized by statesmen. Thus mutual toleration could not
fail to establish itself, to the scandal of crusaders, who came to help
the one side, and of the hordes of fresh fanatics who poured over from
Africa to assist the other.
This constant intermingling of Spaniard and Moor meets us at every step
in Spanish history. Perhaps it would be too much to say, with Dozy, that
"a Spanish knight of the Middle Ages fought neither for his country nor
for his religion; he fought, like the Cid, to get something to eat,
whether under a Christian or a Mussulman prince" and "the Cid himself
was rather a Mussulman than a Catholic,"[152] though Philip II
endeavored to have him canonized--but there can be no question that
religious zeal had little to do with the Reconquest. In the adventurous
career of the Cid, Christians and Moslems are seen mingled in both
contending armies, and it is for the most part impossible to detect in
the struggle any interest either of race or religion.[153] This had long
been customary. Towards the end of the ninth century, Bermudo, brother
of Alfonso III, for seven years held Astorga with the aid of the Moors,
to whom he fled for refuge when finally dislodged. About 940 we find a
King Aboiahia, a vassal of Abderrhaman of Córdova, transferring
allegiance to Ramiro II and then returning to his former lord, and some
fifteen years later, when Sancho I was ejected by a conspiracy, he took
refuge with Abderrhaman, by whose aid he regained his kingdom, the
usurper Ordoño, in turn flying to Córdova, where he was hospitably
received.[154] About 990 Bermudo II gave his sister to wife to the
Moorish King of Toledo, resulting in an unexpected miracle. In the
terrible invasion of Almanzor, in 997, which threatened destruction to
the Christians, we are told that he was accompanied by numerous exiled
Christian nobles. Alfonso VI of Castile, when overcome by his brother,
Sancho II, sought asylum, until the death of the latter, in Toledo--a
hospitality which he subsequently repaid by conquering the city and
kingdom.[155] His court was semi-oriental; during his exile he had
become familiar with Arabic; in his prosperity he gathered around him
Saracen poets and sages, and among his numerous successive wives was
Zaida, daughter of Al-Mutamid, King of Seville. His contemporary, Sancho
I of Aragon, was equally given to Moslem culture and habitually signed
his name with Arabic characters.[156]
[Sidenote: _ALLIANCES WITH MOORS_]
The co-operation of Christian and Moor continued to the last. In 1270,
when Alfonso X had rendered himself unpopular by releasing Portugal from
vassalage to Leon, his brother, the Infante Felipe and a number of the
more powerful ricosomes conspired against him. Their first thought was
to obtain an alliance with Abu Jusuf, King of Morocco, who gladly
promised them assistance. The prelates of Castile fanned the flame,
hoping in the confusion to gain enlarged privileges. Felipe and his
confederates renounced allegiance to Alfonso, in accordance with the
fuero, and betook themselves to Granada, committing frightful
devastations by the way. Everything promised a disastrous war with the
Moors of both sides of the straits, when, through the intervention of
Queen Violante, concessions were made to the rebellious nobles and peace
was restored.[157] So when, in 1282, Sancho IV revolted against his
father and was supported by all the cities except Seville and by all the
ricosomes save the Master of Calatrava, and was recognized by the Kings
of Granada, Portugal, Aragon and Navarre, Alfonso X in his destitution
sent his crown to Abu Jusuf and asked for a loan on it as a pledge. The
chivalrous Moslem at once sent him 60,000 doblas and followed this by
coming with a large force of horse and foot, whereupon Sancho entered
into alliance with Granada and a war ensued with Christians and Moors on
both sides, till the death of Alfonso settled the question of the
succession.[158] In 1324, Don Juan Manuel was Adelantado de la Frontera;
conceiving some cause of quarrel with his cousin, Alfonso XI, he at once
entered into an alliance with Granada, then at war with Castile, and in
1333 his turbulence rendered Alfonso unable to prevent the capture of
Gibraltar or to recover it when he made the attempt.[159] Pedro the
Cruel, in 1366 and again in 1368, had Moorish troops to aid him in his
struggles with Henry of Trastamara. In the latter year the King of
Granada came to his aid with a force of 87,000 men, and, in the final
battle at Montiel, Pedro had 1500 Moorish horsemen in his army.[160] One
of the complaints formulated against Henry IV, in 1464, was that he was
accompanied by a force of Moors who committed outrages upon
Christians.[161]
It was the same in Aragon. No knight of the cross earned a more
brilliant reputation for exploits against the infidel than Jaime I, who
acquired by them his title of el _Conquistador_, yet when, in 1260, he
gave his nobles permission to serve in a crusade under Alfonso X, he
excepted the King of Tunis, and on Alfonso's remonstrating with him he
explained that this was because of the love which the King of Tunis bore
him and of the truce existing between them and of the number of his
subjects who were in Tunis with much property, all of whom would be
imperilled.[162] On the accession of Jaime II, in 1291, envoys came to
him from the Kings of Granada and Tremecen to renew the treaties had
with Alfonso III. To the latter Jaime replied, promising freedom of
trade, demanding the annual tribute of 2000 doblas which had been
customary and asking for the next summer a hundred light horse paid for
three months, to aid him against his Christian enemies.[163] As late as
1405, the treaty between Martin of Aragon and his son Martin of Sicily
on the one hand and Mahomet, King of Granada, on the other, not only
guarantees free intercourse and safety to the subjects of each and open
trade in all ports and towns of their respective dominions, but each
party agrees, when called upon, to assist the other, except against
allies--Aragon and Sicily with four or five galleys well armed and
manned and Granada with four or five hundred cavalry.[164]
All these alliances and treaties for freedom of trade and intercourse
were in direct antagonism to the decrees of the Church, which in its
councils ordered priests every Sunday to denounce as excommunicate, or
even liable to be reduced to slavery, all who should sell to Moors iron,
weapons, timber, fittings for ships, bread, wine, animals to eat, ride
or till the ground, or who should serve in their ships as pilots or in
their armies in war upon Christians.[165] It was in vain that Gregory
XI, in 1372, ordered all fautors and receivers of Saracens to be
prosecuted as heretics by the Inquisition, and equally vain was the
deduction drawn by Eymerich from this, that any one who lent aid or
counsel or favor to the Moors was a fautor of heresy, to be punished as
such by the Holy Office.[166] In spite of the thunders of the Church the
traders continued trading and the princes made offensive and defensive
alliances with the infidel.
[Sidenote: _THE MUDÉJARES_]
Nor, with the illustrious example of the Cid before them, had Christian
nobles the slightest hesitation to aid the Moors by taking service with
them. When, in 1279, Alonso Pérez de Guzman, the founder of the great
house of Medina Sidonia, was insulted in the court of Alfonso, he
promptly renounced his allegiance, converted all his property into
money, and raised a troop with which he entered the service of Abu Jusuf
of Morocco. There he remained for eleven years, except a visit to
Seville to marry Doña María Coronel, whom he carried back to Morocco. He
was made captain of all the Christian troops in Abu Jusuf's employ and
aided largely in the war which transferred the sovereignty of that
portion of Africa from the Almohades to the Beni Marin. He accumulated
immense wealth, which by a stratagem he transferred to Spain, where it
purchased the estates on which the greatness of the house was based. The
family historiographer, writing in 1541, feels obliged to explain this
readiness to serve the infidel, so abhorrent to the convictions of the
sixteenth century. He tells us that at that period the Moors, both of
Granada and Africa, were unwarlike and were accustomed to rely upon
Christian troops, and that princes, nobles and knights were constantly
in their service. Henry, brother of Alfonso X, served the King of Tunis
four years and amassed large wealth; Garcí Martínez de Gallegos was
already in the service of Abu Jusuf when Guzman went there; Gonzalo de
Aguilar became a vassal of the King of Granada and fought for him. In
1352, when Pedro the Cruel began to reduce his turbulent nobles to
order, Don Juan de la Cerda, a prince of the blood, went to Morocco for
assistance and, failing to obtain it, remained there and won great
renown by his knightly deeds till he was reconciled to Pedro and
returned to Castile. Examples might be multiplied, but these will
suffice to indicate how few scruples of religion existed among the
Spaniards of the Middle Ages. As Barrantes says, adventurous spirits in
those days took service with the Moors as in his time they sought their
fortunes in the Indies.[167]
* * * * *
It is thus easy to understand how, in the progress of the Reconquest,
the Moors of the territory acquired were treated with even greater
forbearance than the Christians had been when Spain was first overrun.
When raids were made or cities were captured by force, there was no
hesitation in putting the inhabitants to the sword or in carrying them
off into slavery,[168] but when capitulations were made or provinces
submitted, the people were allowed to remain, retaining their religion
and property, and becoming known under name of _Mudéjares_.
The enslaved Moor was his master's property, like his cattle, but
entitled to some safeguards of life and limb. Even baptism did not
manumit him unless the owner were a Moor or a Jew.[169] That he was
frequently a man of trained skill and education is seen in the provision
that, if his master confided to him a shop or a ship, the former was
bound to fulfill all contracts entered into by his slave.[170] Thus the
free Castilian, whose business was war, had his trade and commerce to a
considerable extent, as well as his agriculture, carried on by slaves,
and the rest was mostly in the hands of the Jews and the free Moors or
Mudéjares. Labor thus became the badge of races regarded as inferior; it
was beneath the dignity of the freeman, and when, as we shall see
hereafter, the industrious population was expelled by bigotry, the
prosperity of Spain collapsed.
[Sidenote: _THE MUDÉJARES_]
As for the Mudéjares, the practice of allowing them to remain in the
reconquered territories began early. Even in Galicia they were to be
found, and in Leon documents of the tenth century contain many Moorish
names among those who confirm or witness them.[171] The Fuero of Leon,
granted by Alfonso V in 1020, alludes to Moors holding slaves, and the
Berber population there is still represented by the Maragatos, to the
south-west of Astorga--a race perfectly distinct from the Spaniards,
retaining much of their African costume and speaking Castilian
imperfectly, although it is their only language.[172] Fernando I
(1033-65), who rendered the Kings of Toledo and Seville tributary, and
who was besieging Valencia when he died, alternated in his policy
towards the inhabitants of his extensive conquests. In the early part of
his reign he allowed them to remain; then he adopted depopulation, and
finally he returned to his earlier methods.[173] Alfonso VI followed the
more liberal system; when he occupied Toledo, in 1085, he granted a
capitulation to the inhabitants which secured to them their property and
religion, with self-government and the possession of their great
mosque.[174] When, during his absence, the Frenchman, Bernard Abbot of
Sahagun, newly elected to the archbishopric, in concert with his queen,
Constance of Burgundy, suddenly entered the mosque, consecrated it and
placed a bell on its highest minaret, Alfonso was greatly angered. He
hastened to Toledo, threatening to burn both the queen and the
archbishop, and only pardoned them at the intercession of the Moors, who
dreaded possible reprisals after his death. His policy, in fact, was to
render his rule more attractive to the Moslem population than that of
his tributaries, the petty _reyes de taifas_, who were obliged to
oppress their subjects in order to satisfy his exigencies. He even
styled himself _Emperador de los dos cultos_. His tolerant wisdom
justified itself, for, after the coming of the Almoravides, in spite of
the disastrous defeats of Zalaca and Uclés, he was able to hold his own
and even to extend his boundaries, for the native Moors preferred his
domination to that of the savage Berbers.[175]
His successors followed his example, but it was not regarded with favor
by the Church. During the centuries of mental torpor which preceded the
dawn of modern civilization there was little fanaticism. With the
opening of the twelfth century various causes awoke the dormant spirit.
Crusading enthusiasm brought increased religious ardor and the labors of
the schoolmen commenced the reconstruction of theology which was to
render the Church dominant over both worlds. The intellectual and
spiritual movement brought forth heresies which, by the commencement of
the thirteenth century, aroused the Church to the necessity of summoning
all its resources to preserve its supremacy. All this made itself felt,
not only in Albigensian crusades and the establishment of the
Inquisition, but in increased intolerance to Jew and Saracen, in a more
fiery antagonism to all who were not included in the pale of
Christianity. How this worked was seen, in 1212, when, after the
brilliant victory of Las Navas de Tolosa, Alfonso IX advanced to Ubeda,
where 70,000 men had collected, and they offered to become Mudéjares and
to pay him a million of doblas. The terms were acceptable and he agreed
to them, but the clerical chiefs of the crusade, the two archbishops,
Rodrigo of Toledo and Arnaud of Narbonne, objected and forced him to
withdraw his assent. He offered the besieged to let them depart on the
payment of the sum, but they were unable to collect so large an amount
on the spot, and they were put to the sword, except those reserved as
slaves.[176] In the same spirit Innocent IV, in 1248, ordered Jaime I of
Aragon to allow no Saracens to reside in his recently conquered Balearic
Isles except as slaves.[177]
[Sidenote: _THE MUDÉJARES_]
In spite of the opposition of the Church the policy of the _mudéjalato_
was continued until the work of the Reconquest seemed on the point of
completion under San Fernando III. The King of Granada was his vassal,
like any other Castilian noble. He subdued the rest of the land, giving
the local chiefs advantageous terms and allowing them to assume the
title of kings. The Spanish Moors were thus reduced to submission and he
was preparing to carry his arms into Africa at the time of his death, in
1252.[178] That Moorish rule, more or less independent, continued in the
Peninsula for yet two centuries and a half, is attributable solely to
the inveterate turbulence of the Castilian magnates aided by the
disorderly ambition of members of the royal family. During this interval
successive fragments were added to Christian territory, when internal
convulsions allowed opportunities of conquest, and in these the system
which had proved so advantageous was followed. Moor and Jew were
citizens of the realm, regarded as a desirable class of the population,
and entitled to the public peace and security for their property under
the same sanctions as the Catholic.[179] They are enumerated with
Christians in charters granting special exemptions and privileges to
cities, safeguards for fairs and for general trade.[180] Numerous Fueros
which have reached us place all races on the same level, and a charter
of Alfonso X, in 1272, to the city of Murcia, in its regulations as to
the cleansing of irrigating canals, shows that even in petty details
such as these there was no distinction recognized between Christian and
Moor.[181] The safeguards thrown around them are seen in the charter of
1101, granted to the Mozárabes of Toledo by Alfonso VI, permitting them
the use of their ancestral Fuero Juzgo, but penalties under it are only
to be one-fifth, as in the Fuero of Castile "except in cases of theft
and of the murder of Jews and Moors," and in the Fuero of Calatayud,
granted by Alfonso el Batallador, in 1131, the _wergild_ for a Jew or a
Moor is 300 sueldos, the same as for a Christian.[182] Yet the practice
as to this was not strictly uniform, and the conquering race naturally
sought to establish distinctions which should recognize its superiority.
The Fuero of Madrid, in 1202, imposes various disabilities on the
Moors.[183] A law of Alfonso X, who throughout his reign showed himself
favorable to the subject races, emphatically says that, if a Jew strikes
a Christian, he is not to be punished according to the privileges of the
Jews, but as much more severely as a Christian is better than a Jew; so
if a Christian slays a Jew or a Moor he is to be punished according to
the Fuero of the place, and if there is no provision for the case, then
he is to suffer death or banishment or other penalty as the king may see
fit, but the Moor who slays a Christian is to suffer more severely than
a Christian who slays a Moor or a Jew.[184]
In an age of class distinctions this was an inevitable tendency and it
is creditable to Spanish tolerance and humanity that its progress was so
slow. In the violence of the time there was doubtless much arbitrary
oppression, but the Mudéjares knew their rights and had no hesitation in
asserting them, nor does there seem to have been a disposition to deny
them. Thus, in 1387, those of Bustiella complained to Juan I that the
royal tax-collectors were endeavoring to collect from them the Moorish
capitation tax, to which they were not subject, having in lieu thereof
from ancient times paid to the Lords of Biscay twelve hundred maravedís
per annum and being entitled to enjoy all the franchises and liberties
of Biscay, whereupon the king issued an order to the assessors to demand
from them only the agreed sum and no other taxes, and to guarantee to
them all the franchises and liberties, uses and customs of the Lordship
of Biscay.[185] Even more suggestive is a celebrated case occurring as
late as the reign of Henry IV. In 1455 the chaplains of the Capella de
la Cruz of Toledo complained to the king that the tax on all meat
slaughtered in the town had been assigned to the chapel for its
maintenance, but that the Moors had established their own
slaughter-house and refused to pay the tax. Elsewhere than in Spain the
matter would have been referred to an ecclesiastical court with a
consequent decision in favor of the faith, but here it went to the civil
court with the result that, after elaborate argument on both sides, in
1462 the great jurist Alfonso Díaz de Montalvan rendered a decision
recognizing that the Moors could not eat meat slaughtered in the
Christian fashion, that they were entitled to a slaughter-house of their
own, free of tax, but that they must not sell meat to Christians and
must pay the tax on all that they might thus have sold.[186] Trivial as
is this case, it gives us a clear insight into the independence and
self-assertion of the Moorish communities and the readiness of the
courts to protect them in their rights.
[Sidenote: _EFFORTS AT CONVERSION_]
The Mudéjares were guaranteed the enjoyment of their own religion and
laws. They had their mosques and schools and, in the earlier times,
magistrates of their own race who decided all questions between
themselves according to their own _zunna_ or law, but suits between
Christian and Moor were sometimes heard by a Christian judge and
sometimes by a mixed bench of both faiths.[187] In the capitulations it
was generally provided that they should be subject only to the taxes
exacted by their previous sovereigns, though in time this was apt to be
disregarded.[188] A privilege granted, in 1254, by Alfonso X to the
inhabitants of Seville, authorizing them to purchase land of Moors
throughout their district, shows that the paternal possessions of the
latter had been undisturbed; they were free to buy and sell real estate,
and although, when the reactionary period commenced, toward the close of
the thirteenth century, Sancho IV granted the petition of the Córtes of
Valladolid in 1293, forbidding Jews and Moors to purchase land of
Christians, the restriction soon became obsolete.[189] Not only was
there no prohibition of their bearing arms, but they were liable to
military service. Exemption from this was a special privilege accorded,
in 1115, at the capitulation of Tudela; in 1263 Jaime I of Aragon
released the Moors of Masones from tribute and military service in
consideration of an annual payment of 1500 _sueldos jaquenses_; in 1283
his son Pedro III, when preparing to resist the invasion of Philippe le
Hardi, summoned his faithful Moors of Valencia to join his armies and,
in the levies made in Murcia in 1385 for the war with Portugal, each
aljama had its assigned quota.[190]
[Sidenote: _DENATIONALIZATION OF THE MUDÉJARES_]
A wise policy would have dictated the mingling of the races as much as
possible, so as to encourage unification and facilitate the efforts at
conversion which were never lost to sight. The _converso_ or baptized
Moor or Jew was the special favorite of the legislator. The Moorish law
which disinherited an apostate was set aside and he was assured of his
share in the paternal estate; the popular tendency to stigmatize him as
a _tornadizo_ or _renegat_ was severely repressed. The Church insisted
that a Moorish captive who sincerely sought baptism should be set free.
Dominicans and Franciscans were empowered to enter all places where Jews
and Moors dwelt, to assemble them to listen to sermons, while the royal
officials were directed to compel the attendance of those who would not
come voluntarily.[191] It is easy now to see that this policy, which
resulted in winning over multitudes to the faith, would have been vastly
more fruitful if the races had been compelled to associate together, and
infinite subsequent misery and misfortune would have been averted, but
this was a stretch of tolerant humanity virtually impossible at the
time. The Church, as will be seen, exerted every effort to keep them
apart, on the humiliating pretext that she would lose more souls than
she would gain, and there was, moreover, sufficient mutual distrust to
render separation desired on both sides. At a very early period of the
Reconquest the policy was adopted of assigning a special quarter of a
captured town to the Moors, and thus the habit was established of
providing a Morería in the larger cities, to which the Mudéjares were
confined. The process is well illustrated by what occurred at Murcia,
when, in 1266, it was definitely reconquered for Alfonso X by Jaime I of
Aragon. He gave half the houses to Aragonese and Catalans and restricted
the Moors to the quarter of the Arrijaca. Alfonso confirmed the
arrangement, dislodging the Christians from among the Moors and building
a wall between them. His decree on the subject recites that this was
done at the prayer of the Moors, who were despoiled and ill-treated by
the Christians, and who desired the protection of a wall, to the
construction of which he devoted one-half of the revenues levied for the
repair of the city walls. It was the same with the Jews, who were not to
dwell among the Christians, but to have their Judería set apart for them
near the Orihuela gate.[192] Besides this segregation from the
Christians in the cities there were smaller towns in which the
population was purely Moorish, where Christians were not allowed to
dwell. That this was regarded as a privilege we can readily imagine, and
it is shown by the confirmation, in 1255, by Alfonso X of an agreement
with the Mudéjares of Moron under which they are to sell their
properties to Christians and remove to Silebar, where they are to build
a castle and houses, to be free of all taxes for three years, their law
is to be administered by their own alcadí and no Christian is to reside
there except the _almojarife_, or tax-gatherer, and his men.[193] All
this tended to perpetuate the separation between the Christian and the
Moor, and a further potent cause is to be found in the horror with which
miscegenation was regarded--at least when the male offender was a Moor.
Intermarriage, of course, was impossible between those of different
faiths and illicit connections were punished in the most savage
manner.[194]
In spite of this natural but impolitic segregation, the Mudéjares
gradually became denationalized and assimilated themselves in many ways
to the population by which they were surrounded. In time they forgot
their native language and it became necessary for their learned men to
compile law-books in Castilian for the guidance of their alcadís. Quite
a literature of this kind arose and, even after the final expulsion, as
late as the middle of the seventeenth century, among the refugees in
Tunis, a manual of religious observances was composed in Spanish, the
author of which lamented that even the sacred characters in which the
Korán was written were almost unknown and that the rites of worship were
forgotten or mingled with usages and customs borrowed from the
Christians.[195] The Mudéjares even sympathized with the patriotic
aspirations of their Castilian neighbors, as against their independent
brethren. When, in 1340, Alfonso XI returned in triumph to Seville,
after the overwhelming victory of the Rio Salado, we are told how the
Moors and their women united with the Jews in the rejoicings which
greeted the conqueror.[196] Even more practical was the response to the
appeal of the Infante Fernando, in 1410, when he was besieging
Antequera, one of the bulwarks of Granada, and was in great straits for
money. He wrote "muy afectuosamente" to Seville and Córdova, not only to
the Christians but to the Moorish and Jewish aljamas and, as he was
popular with them, they advanced him what sums they could.[197] The
process of denationalization and fusion with the Christian community was
necessarily slow, but its progress gave gratifying promise of a result,
requiring only wise patience and sympathy, which would have averted
incalculable misfortunes.
[Sidenote: THE MUDÉJARES]
In a financial and industrial point of view the Mudéjares formed a most
valuable portion of the population. The revenues derived from them were
among the most reliable resources of the State; assignments on them were
frequently used as the safest and most convenient form of securing
appanages and dowries and incomes for prelates and religious
establishments.[198] To the nobles on whose lands they were settled they
were almost indispensable, for they were skilful agriculturists and the
results of their indefatigable labors brought returns which could be
realized in no other way. That they should be relentlessly exploited was
a matter of course. A fuero granted, in 1371, by the Almirante Ambrosio
de Bocanegra to his Mudéjares of Palma del Rio, not only specifies their
dues and taxes, but prescribes that they shall bake in the seignorial
oven and bathe in the seignorial bath and purchase their necessaries in
the seignorial shops.[199] They were not only admirable husbandmen and
artificers, but distinguished themselves in the higher regions of
science and art. As physicians they ranked with the Jews, and when, in
1345, Ferrant Rodríguez, Prior of the Order of Santiago, built the
Church of Our Lady of Uclés, he assembled "Moorish masters" and good
Christian stone-masons, who constructed it of stone and mortar.[200] The
industry of Spain was to a great extent in their hands. To them the land
owed the introduction of the sugar-cane, cotton, silk, the fig, the
orange and the almond. Their system of irrigation, still maintained to
the present time, was elaborately perfect, and they had built highways
and canals to facilitate intercourse and transportation. Valencia, which
was densely populated by Mudéjares, was regarded as one of the richest
provinces in Europe, producing largely of sugar, oil and wine. In
manufacturing skill they were no less distinguished. Their fabrics of
silk and cotton and linen and wool were exquisite; their potteries and
porcelains were models for the workmen of the rest of Europe; their
leather-work was unsurpassed; their manufactures of metals were eagerly
sought in distant lands, while their architecture manifests their
delicate skill and artistic taste. Marriages were arranged for girls at
11 and boys at 12; dowries were of little account, for a bed and a few
coins were deemed sufficient where all were industrious and
self-supporting, and their rapid increase, like evil weeds, was a
subject of complaint to their Castilian detractors. Ingenious and
laborious, sober and thrifty, a dense population found livelihood in
innumerable trades, in which men, women and children all labored,
producing wealth for themselves and prosperity for the land. In commerce
they were equally successful; they were slaves to their word, their
reputation for probity and honor was universal, and their standing as
merchants was proverbial. There was no beggary among them and quarrels
were rare, differences being for the most part amicably settled without
recourse to their judges.[201]
It is not easy to set limits to the prosperity attainable by the
Peninsula with its natural resources developed by a population combining
the vigor of the Castilian with the industrial capacity of the Moor. All
that was needed was Christian patience and good will to kindle and
encourage kindly feeling between the conquering and the subject race;
time would have done the rest. The infidel, won over to Christianity,
would have become fused with the faithful, and a united people, blessed
with the characteristics of both races, would have been ready to take
the foremost place in the wonderful era of industrial civilization which
was about to open. Unhappily for Spain this was not to be. To the
conscientious churchman of the Middle Ages any compact with the infidel
was a league with Satan; he could not be forcibly brought into the fold,
but it was the plainest of duties to render his position outside so
insupportable that he would take refuge in conversion.
[Sidenote: DISTINCTIVE BADGES]
The Church accordingly viewed with repugnance the policy of conciliation
and toleration which had so greatly facilitated the work of the
Reconquest, and it lost no opportunity of exciting popular distrust and
contempt for the Mudéjares. We shall see how great was its success with
respect to the Jews, whose position offered better opportunity for
attack, but it was not without results as respects the Moors. It
discouraged all intercourse between the races and endeavored to keep
them separate. Even the indispensable freedom of ordinary commercial
dealings, which was provided for by the secular rulers, was frowned
upon, and in 1250 the Order of Santiago was obliged to represent to
Innocent IV that it had Moorish vassals, and to supplicate him for
license to buy and sell with them, which he graciously permitted.[202]
The most efficacious means, however, of establishing and perpetuating
the distinction between the races was that Jews and Moors should wear
some peculiar garment or badge by which they should be recognized at
sight. This was not only a mark of inferiority and a stigma, but it
exposed the wearer to insults and outrages, rendering it both
humiliating and dangerous, especially to those, such as muleteers or
merchants, whose avocations rendered travel on the unsafe highways
indispensable. When the Church was aroused from its torpor to combat
infidelity in all its forms, this was one of the measures adopted by the
great council of Lateran in 1216, in a regulation carried into the canon
law, the reason alleged being that it was necessary to prevent
miscegenation.[203] In 1217 Honorius III peremptorily ordered the
enforcement of this decree in Castile, but, two years later, consented
to suspend it, on the remonstrance of San Fernando III, backed by
Rodrigo, Archbishop of Toledo. The king represented that many Jews would
abandon his kingdom rather than wear badges, while the rest would be
driven to plots and conspiracies, and, as the greater part of his
revenues was derived from them, he would be unable to carry out his
enterprises against the Saracens.[204] It was difficult to arouse
intolerance and race hatred in Spain, and, when Gregory IX, about 1233,
and Innocent IV, in 1250, ordered the Castilian prelates to enforce the
Lateran canons, San Fernando quietly disregarded the injunction.[205]
His son, Alfonso X, so far yielded obedience that, in the Partidas, he
ordered, under a penalty of ten gold maravedís or ten lashes, all Jews,
male and female, to wear a badge on the cap, alleging the same reason as
the Lateran council, but he did not extend this to the Moors and, as his
code was not confirmed by the Córtes for nearly a century, the
regulation may be regarded as inoperative.[206] The council of Zamora,
which did so much to stimulate intolerance, in January, 1313, ordered
the badge to be worn, as it was in other lands, and later in the year
the Córtes of Plasencia proposed to obey, but were told by the Infante
Juan, who presided as guardian of Alfonso XI, that he would, after
consultation, do what was for the advantage of the land.[207] In Aragon,
the councils of Tarragona, in 1238 and 1282, vainly ordered the canon to
be obeyed, and it was not until 1300 that the attempt was made with an
ordinance requiring the Mudéjares to wear the hair cut in a peculiar
fashion that should be distinctive.[208] In Castile, at length, Henry
II, in pursuance of the request of the Córtes of Toro in 1371, ordered
all Jews and Moors to wear the badge (a red circle on the left
shoulder), but the injunction had to be frequently repeated and was
slenderly obeyed. Even so, to it may be attributed the frequent murders
which followed of Jews on the highways, the perpetrators of which were
rarely identified.[209]
What was the spirit which the Church thus persistently endeavored to
arouse in Spain may be gathered from a brief of Clement IV, in 1266, to
Jaime I of Aragon, urging him to expel all Mudéjares from his dominions.
He assures the king that his reputation will suffer greatly if, for
temporal advantage, he longer permits such opprobrium of God, such an
infection of Christendom, as proceeds indubitably from the horrible
cohabitation of the Moors, with its detestable horrors and horrid
foulness. By expelling them he will fulfil his vow to God, stop the
mouths of his detractors and prove himself zealous for the faith.[210]
The same temper was shown, in 1278, by Nicholas III, when he scolded
Alfonso X for entering into truces with the Moors, and, by threatening
to deprive him of the share granted to him of the church revenues,
incited him to the disastrous siege of Algeciras, the failure of which
led him to form an alliance with the King of Morocco.[211] Fortunately
this papal zeal for the faith found no Ximenes in Spain to spread it
among the people and to kindle the fires of intolerance. The Spanish
Church of the period appears to have been wholly quiescent. The only
action on record is the trivial one of Arnaldo de Peralta, Bishop of
Valencia, from 1261 to 1273, who forbade, under pain of excommunication,
his clergy from drinking wine in the house of a Jew, provided they
should have heard of or should remember the prohibition; and he further
vaguely threatened with his displeasure any cleric who should knowingly
buy the wine of a Jew, except in case of necessity.[212]
[Sidenote: _INFLUENCE OF THE CHURCH_]
That, in the Confusion which followed the rebellion of Sancho IV against
his father, there may have arisen a desire to limit somewhat the
privileges of Jew and Moor is rendered probable by the legislation of
the Córtes of Valladolid, in 1293, to which allusion has already been
made (p. 63), but the decisive impulse which aroused the Spanish Church
from its indolent indifference and set it earnestly to work in exciting
popular hatred and intolerance, would seem traceable to the council of
Vienne in 1311-12. Among the published canons of the council, the only
one relating to Moors is a complaint that those dwelling in Christian
lands have their priests, called Zabazala, who, from the minarets of
their mosques, at certain hours invoke Mahomet and sound his praises in
a loud voice, and also that they are accustomed to gather around the
grave of one whom they worship as a saint. These practices are denounced
as unendurable, and the princes are ordered to suppress them, with the
alternative of gaining salvation or of enduring punishment which shall
make them serve as a terrifying example.[213] This threat fell upon deaf
ears. In 1329 the council of Tarragona complains of its inobservance and
orders all temporal lords to enforce it within two months, under pain of
interdict and excommunication,[214] and a hundred years later the
council of Tortosa, in 1429, supplicated the King of Aragon and all
prelates and nobles, by the bowels of divine mercy, to enforce the canon
and all other conciliar decrees for the exaltation of the faith and the
humiliation of Jews and Moors, and to cause their observance by their
subjects if they wish to escape the vengeance of God and of the Holy
See. This was equally ineffectual, and it was reserved for Ferdinand and
Isabella, about 1482, to enforce the canon of Vienne with a vigor which
brought a remonstrance from the Grand Turk.[215]
[Sidenote: _INFLUENCE OF THE CHURCH_]
More serious was the effect upon the Jews of the spirit awakened at
Vienne. That council, besides enacting very severe laws against usury,
denounced the privilege accorded in Spain to Jews, whereby Jewish
witnesses were requisite for the conviction of Jewish defendants. It did
not presume to annul this privilege, but forbade all intercourse
between the races wherever it was in force.[216] The Spanish prelates,
in returning from the council in 1312, brought with them these canons
and the spirit of intolerance that dictated them and made haste to give
expression to it at the council of Zamora, in January, 1313, in a number
of canons, the temper of which is so different from the previous
utterances of the Spanish Church that it shows the revolution wrought in
their mode of thinking by intercourse with their brethren from other
lands. Henceforth, in this respect, the Spanish Church emerges from its
isolation and distinguishes itself by even greater ferocity than that
which disgraced the rest of Christendom. The fathers of Zamora invoked
the curse of God and of St. Peter on all who should endeavor to enforce
the existing laws requiring the evidence of Jews to convict Jews. They
denounced the Jews as serpents, who were only to be endured by
Christians because they were human beings, but were to be kept in strict
subjection and servitude, and they sought to reduce this principle to
practice by a series of canons restricting the Jews in every way and
putting an end to all social intercourse between them and
Christians.[217] The friendly mingling of the races, which shows how
little the prejudices of the churchmen were shared by the people at this
period, became a favorite subject of objurgation and required a long
series of efforts to eradicate, but the Church triumphed at last, and
the seeds of envy, hatred and all uncharitableness, which it so
assiduously planted and cultivated, yielded in the end an abundant
harvest of evil. What prepossessions of Christian kindness the prelates
of Zamora felt that they had to overcome are indicated in the final
command that these constitutions should be read publicly in all
churches annually, and that the bishops should compel by excommunication
all secular magistrates to enforce them.[218]
The Spanish Church, thus fairly started in this deplorable direction,
pursued its course with characteristic energy. In 1322 the utterances of
the council of Valladolid reveal how intimate were the customary
relations between Christian and infidel, and how the Church, in place of
taking advantage of this, labored to keep the races asunder. The council
recites that scandals arise and churches are profaned by the prevailing
custom of Moors and Jews attending divine service, wherefore they are to
be expelled before the ceremonies of the mass begin, and all who
endeavor to prevent it are to be excommunicated. The habit of nocturnal
devotional vigils in churches is also said, probably with truth, to be
the source of much evil, and all who bring Moors and Jews to take part
with their voices and instruments are to be expelled. To preserve the
faithful from pollution by Moorish and Jewish superstitions, they are
commanded no more to frequent the weddings and funerals of the infidels.
The absurd and irrational abuse whereby Jews and Moors are placed in
office over Christians is to be extirpated, and all prelates shall
punish it with excommunication. As the malice of Moors and Jews leads
them craftily to put Christians to death, under pretext of curing them
by medicine and surgery and, as the canons forbid Christians from
employing them as physicians, and as these canons are not observed in
consequence of the negligence of the prelates, the latter are ordered to
enforce them strictly with the free use of excommunication.[219]
[Sidenote: _INFLUENCE OF THE CHURCH_]
These last two clauses point to matters which had long been special
grievances of the faithful and which demand a moment's attention. The
superior administrative abilities of the Jews caused them to be
constantly sought for executive positions, to the scandal of all good
Christians. We have seen that under the Goths it was an abuse calling
for constant animadversion. It was one of the leading complaints of
Innocent III against Raymond VI of Toulouse, which he expiated so
cruelly in the Albigensian crusades, and one of the decrees of the
Lateran council was directed against its continuance.[220] In Spain the
sovereigns could not do without them, and we shall have occasion to see
that it became one of the main causes of popular dislike of the
unfortunate race, for the Christian found it hard to bear with
equanimity the domination of the Jew, especially in his ordinary
character of _almojarife_, or tax-collector. As early as 1118, Alfonso
VIII, in the fuero granted to Toledo, promised that no Jew or recent
convert should be placed over the Christians; Alfonso X made the same
concession in the fuero of Alicante, in 1252, except that he reserved
the office of almojarife, and in the Partidas he endeavored to make the
rule general.[221] The same necessity made itself felt with regard to
the function of the physician, for which, during the dark ages, the
learning of Jew and Saracen rendered them almost exclusively fitted.
Zedechias, the Jewish physician of the Emperor Charles the Bald, was
renowned, and tradition handed down his name as that of a skilful
magician.[222] Prince and prelate alike sought comfort in their curative
ministrations, and, as the Church looked askance on the practice of
medicine and surgery by ecclesiastics, unless it were through prayer and
exorcism, they had the field almost to themselves. This had always been
regarded with disfavor by the Church. As early as 706 the council of
Constantinople had ordered the faithful not to take medicine from a Jew,
and this command had been incorporated in the canon law.[223] Another
rule, adopted from the Lateran council of 1216, was that the first duty
of a physician was to care for the soul of the patient rather than for
his body, and to see that he was provided with a confessor--a duty which
the infidel could scarce be expected to recognize.[224] It is therefore
easy to understand why the general abhorrence of the Church for Moor and
Jew should be sharpened with peculiar acerbity in regard to their
functions as physicians; why the council of Valladolid should endeavor
to alarm the people with the assertion that they utilized the position
to slay the faithful, and the council of Salamanca, in 1335, should
renew the sentence of excommunication on all who should employ them in
sickness.[225] Nominally the Church carried its point, and in the
prescriptive laws of 1412 there was embodied a provision imposing a fine
of three hundred maravedís on any Moor or Jew who should visit a
Christian in sickness or administer medicine to him,[226] but the
prohibition was impossible of enforcement. About 1462, the Franciscan,
Alonso de Espina, bitterly complains that there is not a noble or a
prelate but keeps a Jewish devil as a physician, although the zeal of
the Jews in studying medicine is simply to obtain an opportunity of
exercising their malignity upon Christians; for one whom they cure they
slay fifty, and when they are gathered together they boast as to which
has caused the most deaths, for their law commands them to spoil and
slay the faithful.[227] It was but a few years after this that Abiatar
Aben Crescas, chief physician of Juan II of Aragon, the father of
Ferdinand, vindicated Jewish science by successfully relieving his royal
patient of a double cataract and restoring his sight. On September 11,
1469, pronouncing the aspect of the stars to be favorable, he operated
on the right eye; the king, delighted with his recovered vision, ordered
him to proceed with the left, but Abiatar refused, alleging that the
stars had become unfavorable, and it was not until October 12 that he
consented to complete the cure.[228] The friars themselves believed as
little as royalty in the stories which they invented to frighten the
people and create abhorrence of Jewish physicians. In spite of the fact
that Ferdinand and Isabella, in the _Ordenanzas_ of 1480, repeated the
prohibition of their attending Christians, the Dominicans, in 1489,
obtained from Innocent IV permission to employ them, notwithstanding all
ecclesiastical censures, the reason alleged being that in Spain there
were few others.[229]
[Sidenote: _REPRESSIVE LEGISLATION_]
The prescriptive spirit which dominated the councils of Zamora and
Valladolid was not allowed to die out. That of Tarragona, in 1329,
expressed its horror at the friendly companionship with which Christians
were in the habit of attending the marriages, funerals and circumcisions
of Jews and Moors and even of entering into the bonds of compaternity
with the parents at the latter ceremony, all of which it strictly
forbade for the future.[230] A few years later, in 1337, Arnaldo,
Archbishop of Tarragona, addressed to Benedict XII a letter which is a
significant expression of the objects and methods of the Church. In
spite, he says, of the vow taken by Jaime I when about to conquer
Valencia, that he would not permit any Moors to remain there, the
Christians, led by blind cupidity, allow them to occupy the land,
believing that thus they derive larger revenues--which is an error, as
the Abbot of Poblet has recently demonstrated by expelling the Mudéjares
from the possessions of the abbey. There are said to be forty or fifty
thousand Moorish fighting men in Valencia, which is a source of the
greatest danger, especially now when the Emperor of Morocco is preparing
to aid the King of Granada. Besides, many enormous crimes are committed
by Christians, in consequence of their damnable familiarity and
intercourse with the Moors, who blaspheme the name of Christ and exalt
that of Mahomet. "I have heard," he pursues, "the late Bishop of
Valencia declare, in a public sermon, that in that province the mosques
are more numerous than the churches and that half, or more than half,
the people are ignorant of the Lord's prayer and speak only Moorish. I
therefore pray your clemency to provide an appropriate remedy, which
would seem impossible unless the Moors are wholly expelled and unless
the King of Aragon lends his aid and favor. The nobles would be more
readily brought to assent to this if they were allowed to seize and sell
the persons and property of the Mudéjares as public enemies and
infidels, and the money thus obtained would be of no small service in
defending the kingdom." The Christian prelate, not content with directly
asking the pope to adopt this inhuman proposition, sent a copy of his
letter to Jean de Comminges, Cardinal of Porto, and begged him to urge
the matter with Benedict, and in a second letter to the cardinal he
explained that it would be necessary for the pope to order the king to
expel the Moors; that he would willingly obey as to the crown lands, but
that a papal command was indispensable as to the lands of others. It was
only, he added, the avarice of the Christians which kept the Moors
there.[231] We shall see how, two hundred and seventy years later, an
Archbishop of Valencia aided in bringing about the final catastrophe, by
a still greater display of saintly zeal, backed by precisely the same
arguments.
This constant pressure on the part of their spiritual guides began to
make an impression on the ruling classes, and repressive legislation
becomes frequent in the Córtes. In those of Soria, in 1380, the
obnoxious prayer against Christians was ordered to be removed from
Jewish prayer-books and its recitation was forbidden under heavy
penalties, while the rabbis were deprived of jurisdiction in criminal
cases between their people. In those of Valladolid, in 1385, Christians
were forbidden to live among Jews, Jews were prohibited to serve as
tax-collectors, their judges were inhibited to act in civil cases
between them and Christians and numerous regulations were adopted to
restrain their oppression of debtors.[232] In 1387, at the Córtes of
Briviesca, Juan I enacted that no Christian should keep in his house a
Jew or Moor, except as a slave, nor converse with one beyond what the
law allowed, under the heavy penalty of 6000 maravedís, and no Jew or
Moor should keep Christians in his house under pain of confiscation of
all property and corporal punishment at the king's pleasure.[233] It
seemed impossible to enforce these laws, and the Church intervened by
assuming jurisdiction over the matter. In 1388 the council of Valencia
required the suspension of labor on Sundays and feast-days, and it
deplored the injury to the bodies and souls of the faithful and the
scandals arising from the habitual intercourse between them and the
infidels. The dwellings of the latter were ordered to be strictly
separated from those of the former; where special quarters had not been
assigned to them, it was ordered to be done forthwith and, within two
months, no Christian should be found dwelling with them nor they with
Christians. If they had trades to work at or merchandise to sell they
could come out during the day, or occupy booths or shops along the
streets, but at night they must return to the place where they kept
their wives and children.[234]
This segregation of the Jews and Moors and their strict confinement to
the Morerías and Juderías were a practical method of separating the
races which was difficult of enforcement. The massacres of 1391 showed
that there were such quarters generally in the larger cities, but
residence therein seems not to have been obligatory, and Jews and Moors
who desired it lived among the Christians. In the restrictive laws of
1412, the first place is given to this matter. Morerías and Juderías are
ordered to be established everywhere, surrounded with a wall having only
one gate. Any one who shall not, in eight days after notice, have
settled therein forfeits all his property and is liable to punishment at
the king's pleasure, and severe penalties are provided for Christian
women who enter them.[235] An effort was made to enforce these
regulations, but it seemed impossible to keep the races apart. In 1480
Ferdinand and Isabella state that the law had not been observed and
order its enforcement, allowing two years for the establishment of the
ghettos, after which no Jew or Moor shall dwell outside of them, under
the established penalties, and no Christian woman be found within
them.[236] The time had passed for laws to be disregarded and this was
carried into effect with the customary vigor of the sovereigns. In
Segovia, for instance, on October 29, 1481, Rodrigo Alvárez Maldonado,
commissioner for the purpose, summoned the representatives of the Jewish
aljama, read to them the Ordenanza, and designated to them the limits of
their Judería. All Christians resident therein were warned to vacate
within the period designated by the law; all Jews of the district were
required to make their abode there within the same time, and all doors
and windows of houses contiguous to the boundaries, on either side,
whether of Jews or Christians, were ordered to be walled up or rendered
impassable. The segregation of the Jews was to be absolute.[237]
* * * * *
[Sidenote: _REPRESSIVE LEGISLATION_]
We shall see in the next chapter how successful were the efforts of the
Church in arousing the greed and fanaticism of the people and in
repressing the kindly fellowship which had so long existed. From this
the Jews were the earliest and greatest sufferers, and it is necessary
here to say only that in the cruel laws which marked the commencement of
the fifteenth century both Moor and Jew were included in the
restrictions designed to humiliate them to the utmost, to render their
lives a burden, to deprive them of the means of livelihood and to
diminish their usefulness to the State. These laws were too severe for
strict and continuous enforcement, but they answered the purpose of
inflicting an ineffaceable stigma upon their victims and of keeping up a
wholesome feeling of antagonism on the part of the population at large.
This was directed principally against the Jews, who were the chief
objects of clerical malignity, and it will be our business to examine
how this was skilfully developed, until it became the proximate cause of
the introduction of the Inquisition and created for it, during its
earliest and busiest years, almost the sole field of its activity.
Meanwhile it may be observed that, in the closing triumph over Granada,
the capitulations accorded by Ferdinand and Isabella were even more
liberal to Jews and Moors than those granted from the eleventh to the
thirteenth century, by such monarchs as Alfonso VI, Ferdinand III,
Alfonso X, and Jaime I. Unless they were deliberately designed as
perfidious traps, they show how little real conscientious conviction lay
behind the elaborately stimulated fanaticism which destroyed the Jews
and Mudéjares.[238]
CHAPTER III.
THE JEWS AND THE CONVERSOS.
To appreciate properly the position of the Jews in Spain, it is
requisite first to understand the light in which they were regarded
elsewhere throughout Christendom during the medieval period. It has
already been seen that the Church held the Jew to be a being deprived,
by the guilt of his ancestors, of all natural rights save that of
existence. The privileges accorded to the Jews and the social equality
to which they were admitted under the Carlovingians provoked the
severest animadversions of the churchmen.[239] About 890, Stephen VI
writes to the Archbishop of Narbonne that he has heard with mortal
anxiety that these enemies of God are allowed to hold land and that
Christians dealt with these dogs and even rendered service to them.[240]
It is true that Alexander III maintained the ancient rule that they
could repair their existing synagogues but not build new ones, and
Clement III honored himself by one of the rare human utterances in their
favor, prohibiting their forced conversion, their murder or wounding or
spoliation, their deprivation of religious observances, the exaction of
forced service unless such was customary, or the violation of their
cemeteries in search of treasure, and, moreover, both of these decrees
were embodied by Gregory IX in the canon law.[241] Yet these
prohibitions only point out to us the manner in which popular zeal
applied the principles enunciated by the Church and, when the council of
Paris, in 1212, forbade, under pain of excommunication, Christian
midwives to attend a Jewess in labor, it shows that they were
authoritatively regarded as less entitled than beasts to human
sympathy.[242]
How popular hostility was aroused and strengthened is illustrated in a
letter addressed, in 1208, by Innocent III to the Count of Nevers.
Although, he says, the Jews, against whom the blood of Jesus Christ
cries aloud, are not to be slain, lest Christians should forget the
divine law, yet are they to be scattered as wanderers over the earth,
that their faces may be filled with ignominy and they may seek the name
of Jesus Christ. Blasphemers of the Christian name are not to be
cherished by princes, in oppression of the servants of the Lord, but are
rather to be repressed with servitude, of which they rendered themselves
worthy when they laid sacrilegious hands on Him, who had come to give
them true freedom, and they cried that His blood should be upon them and
their children. Yet when prelates and priests intervene to crush their
malice, they laugh at excommunication and nobles are found who protect
them. The Count of Nevers is said to be a defender of the Jews; if he
does not dread the divine wrath, Innocent threatens to lay hands on him
and punish his disobedience.[243] The Cistercian Cæsarius of
Heisterbach, in his dialogues for the moral instruction of his fellow
monks, tells several stories which illustrate the utter contempt felt
for the feelings and rights of Jews, and in one of them there is an
allusion to the curious popular belief that the Jews had a vile odor,
which they lost in baptism--a belief prolonged, at least in Spain, until
the seventeenth century was well advanced.[244] Even so enlightened a
prelate as Cardinal Pierre d'Ailly, in 1416, reproves the sovereigns of
Christendom for their liberality towards the Jews, which he can
attribute only to the vile love of gain; if Jews are allowed to remain,
it should be only as servants to Christians.[245] General prohibitions
of maltreatment availed little when prelate and priest were busy in
inflaming popular aversion and popes were found to threaten any prince
hardy enough to interpose and protect the unfortunate race.
[Sidenote: _MEDIEVAL PERSECUTION_]
Of course under such impulsion there was scant ceremony in dealing with
these outcasts in any way that religious ardor might suggest. When, in
1009, the Saracens captured Jerusalem and destroyed the church of the
Holy Sepulchre, the rage and indignation of Europe assumed so
threatening a form that multitudes of Jews took refuge in baptism.[246]
When religious exaltation culminated in the Crusades, it seemed to those
who assumed the cross a folly to redeem Palestine while leaving behind
the impious race that had crucified the Lord, and everywhere, in 1096,
the assembling of crusaders was the signal for Jewish massacre. It would
be superfluous to recount in detail the dreary catalogue of wholesale
slaughters which for centuries disgraced Europe, whenever fanaticism or
the disappearance of a child gave rise to stories of the murder rite, or
a blood-stained host suggested sacrilege committed on the sacrament, or
some passing evil, such as an epidemic, aroused the populace to
bloodshed and rapine. The medieval chronicles are full of such terrible
scenes, in which cruelty and greed assumed the cloak of zeal to avenge
God; and when, in rare instances, the authorities protected the
defenceless, it was ascribed to unworthy motives, as in the case of
Johann von Kraichbau, Bishop of Speyer, who, in 1096, not only saved
some Jews but beheaded their assailants and was accused of being heavily
bribed; nor did Frederic Barbarossa and Ludwig of Bavaria escape similar
imputations.[247] It was safer and more profitable to combine piety and
plunder as when, in April, 1182, Philip Augustus ordered all Jews to
leave France by St. John's day, confiscating their landed property and
allowing them to take their personal effects. His grandson, the saintly
Louis, resorted without scruple to replenishing his treasury by
ransoming the Jews and the latter's grandson, Philippe le Bel, was still
more unscrupulous in 1306, when, by a concerted movement, he seized all
the Jews in his dominions, stripped them of property, and banished them
under pain of death. In England King John, in 1210, cast Jews into
prison and tortured them for ransom, and his grandson, Edward I,
followed the example of Philip Augustus so effectually that Jews were
not allowed to return until the time of Cromwell.[248]
Spain remained so long isolated from the movements which agitated the
rest of Christendom that the abhorrence for the Jew, taught by the
Church and reduced to practice in so many ways by the people, was late
in development. In the deluge of the Saracen conquest and in the fierce
struggles of the early Reconquest, the antipathy so savagely expressed
in the Gothic legislation seemed to pass away, possibly because there
could have been but few Jews among the rude mountaineers of Galicia and
Asturias. It is true that the Wisigothic laws, in the Romance version
known as the Fuero Juzgo, remained nominally in force; it is also true
that a law was interpolated in the Fuero, which seems to indicate a
sudden recrudescence of fanaticism after a long interval of comparative
toleration. It provides that if a Jew loyally embraces the faith of
Christ, he shall have license to trade in all things with Christians,
but if he subsequently relapses into Judaism his person and property are
forfeit to the king; Jews persisting in their faith shall not consort
with Christians, but may trade with each other and pay taxes to the
king. Their houses and slaves and lands and orchards and vineyards,
which they may have bought from Christians, even though the purchase be
of old date, are declared confiscated to the king, who may bestow them
on whom he pleases. If any Jew trades in violation of this law he shall
become a slave of the king, with all his property. Christians shall not
trade with Jews; if a noble does so, he shall forfeit three pounds of
gold to the king; on transactions of more than two pounds, the excess is
forfeit to the king, together with three doblas; if the offender is a
commoner, he shall receive three hundred lashes.[249]
[Sidenote: _CONDITION OF SPANISH JEWS_]
The date of this law is uncertain, but it presupposes a considerable
anterior period of toleration, during which Jews had multiplied and had
become possessed of landed wealth. To what extent it may have been
enforced we have no means of knowing, but its observance must only have
been temporary, for such glimpses as we get of the condition of the Jews
up to the fourteenth century are wholly incompatible with the fierce
proscription of the Gothic laws. As the Spanish kingdoms organized
themselves, the Fuero Juzgo for the most part was superseded by a crowd
of local fueros, _cartas-pueblas_ and customs defining the franchises of
each community, and we have seen in the preceding chapter how in these
both Moor and Jew were recognized as sharing in the common rights of
citizenship and how fully the freedom of trade between all classes was
permitted. In 1251 the Fuero Juzgo was formally abrogated in Aragon by
Jaime I, who forbade it to be cited in the courts--a measure which
infers that it had practically become obsolete.[250] In Castile it
lingered somewhat longer and traces of its existence are to be found in
some places until the end of the thirteenth century.[251] These,
however, are not to be construed as referring to the provisions
respecting Jews, which had long been superseded.
In fact, the Jews formed too large and important a portion of the
population to be treated without consideration. The sovereigns, involved
permanently in struggles with the Saracen and with mutinous nobles,
found it necessary to utilize all the resources at their command,
whether in money, intelligence, or military service. In the first two of
these the Jews stood pre-eminent, nor were they remiss in the latter. On
the disastrous field of Zalaca, in 1086, forty thousand Jews are said to
have followed the banner of Alfonso VI, and the slaughter they endured
proved their devotion, while, at the defeat of Ucles in 1108, they
composed nearly the whole left wing of the Castilian host.[252] In 1285
we hear of Jews and Moors aiding the Aragonese in their assaults on the
retreating forces of Philippe le Hardi.[253] As regards money, the
traffic and finance of Spain were largely in their hands, and they
furnished, with the Moors, the readiest source from which to derive
revenue. Every male who had married, or who had reached the age of 20,
paid an annual poll tax of three gold maravedís; there were also a
number of imposts peculiar to them, and, in addition, they shared with
the rest of the population in the complicated and ruinous system of
taxation--the ordinary and extraordinary _servicios_, the _pedidas_ and
_ayudas_, the _sacos_ and _pastos_ and the _alcavalas_. Besides this
they assisted in supporting the municipalities or the lordships and
prelacies under which they lived, with the _tallas_, the _pastos_, the
ninths or elevenths of merchandise and the _peajes_ and _barcajes_, the
_pontazgos_ and _portazgos_, or tolls of various kinds which were
heavier on them than on Christians, and, moreover, the Church received
from them the customary tithes, oblations, and first-fruits.[254] The
revenues from the Jewish aljamas, or communities, were always regarded
as among the surest resources of the crown.
The shrewd intelligence and practical ability of the Jews, moreover,
rendered their services in public affairs almost indispensable. It was
in vain that the council of Rome, in 1078, renewed the old prohibitions
to confide to them functions which would place them in command over
Christians and equally in vain that, in 1081, Gregory VII addressed to
Alfonso VI a vehement remonstrance on the subject, assuring him that to
do so was to oppress the Church of God and exalt the synagogue of Satan,
and that in seeking to please the enemies of Christ he was contemning
Christ himself.[255] In fact, the most glorious centuries of the
Reconquest were those in which the Jews enjoyed the greatest power in
the courts of kings, prelates and nobles, in Castile and Aragon. The
treasuries of the kingdoms were virtually in their hands, and it was
their skill in organizing the supplies that rendered practicable the
enterprises of such monarchs as Alfonso VI and VII, Fernando III and
Jaime I.[256] To treat them as the Goths had done, or as the Church
prescribed, had become a manifest impossibility.
[Sidenote: _CONDITION OF SPANISH JEWS_]
Under such circumstances it was natural that their numbers should
increase until they formed a notable portion of the population. Of this
an estimate can be made from a _repartimiento_, or assessment of taxes,
in 1284, which shows that in Castile they paid a poll tax of 2,561,855
gold maravedís, which at three maravedís per head infers a total of
853,951 married or adult males.[257] This large aggregate was thoroughly
organized. Each aljama or community had its rabbis with a Rabb Mayor at
its head. Then each district, comprising one or more Christian
bishoprics, was presided over by a Rabb Mayor, and, above all, was the
_Gaon_ or _Nassi_, the prince, whose duty it was to see that the laws of
the race, both civil and religious, were observed in their purity.[258]
As we have already seen, all questions between themselves were settled
before their own judges under their own code, and even when a Jew was
prosecuted criminally by the king, he was punishable in accordance with
his own law.[259] So complete was the respect paid to this that their
Sabbaths and other feasts were held inviolate; on these days they could
not be summoned to court or be interfered with except by arrest for
crime. Even polygamy was allowed to them.[260]
While their religion and laws were thus respected, they were required to
respect Christianity. They were not allowed to read or keep books
contrary to their own law or to the Christian law. Proselytism from
Christianity was punishable by death and confiscation, and any insults
offered to God, the Virgin, or the saints, were visited with a fine of
ten maravedís or a hundred lashes.[261] Yet, if we are to believe the
indignant Lucas of Tuy, writing about 1230, these simple restraints were
scarce enforced. The heretic Cathari of Leon, he tells us, were wont to
circumcise themselves in order, under the guise of Jews, to propound
heretical dogmas and dispute with Christians; what they dared not utter
as heretics they could freely disseminate as Jews. The governors and
judges of the cities listened approvingly to heresies put forth by Jews,
who were their friends and familiars, and if any one, inflamed by pious
zeal, angered these Jews, he was treated as if he had touched the apple
of the eye of the ruler; they also taught other Jews to blaspheme Christ
and thus the Catholic faith was
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