Henry Charles Lea

“ Aragon was a source of greater trouble than Valencia. The popular spirit was more independent, it had resisted the introduction of the Inquisition until the murder of San Pedro Arbués had rendered further opposition impossible, it had been cheated of the fruits of the tenacity of Juan Prat and it possessed an institution peculiar to itself, designed to limit the encroachments of the sovereign power and well adapted to restrain the arrogance of anything less formidable than the mingled spiritual and temporal jurisdiction of the Holy Office. ”

“ THE CONCORDIA OF MONZON
The reform demanded by Catalonia embraced thirty-four articles, a few of which may serve to suggest the abuses that had grown so rankly. An especial grievance was the multiplication of officials—not only those engaged in the work of the tribunal but the unsalaried familiars scattered everywhere and the servants and slaves of all concerned, who all claimed the fuero, or jurisdiction of the Inquisition, with numerous privileges and exemptions that rendered them a most undesirable element in society. ”

“ When money could be procured in no other way, when the burgher had to raise it to pay his taxes or the extortions of his lord and the husbandman had to procure seed-corn or starve, it is easy to see how all had to submit to the exactions of the money-lender; how, in spite of occasional plunder and scaling of debts, the Jews absorbed the floating capital of the community and how recklessly they aided the frailes in concentrating popular detestation on themselves. It was in vain that the Ordenamiento de Alcalá, in 1348, prohibited usury to Moors and Jews as well as to Christians ”

“ The Suprema takes every official in turn, from inquisitors down to messengers, specifies their misdeeds and scores them mercilessly, showing that the whole organization was solely intent on making dishonest gains, on magnifying its privileges and on tyrannizing over the community, while the defence of the faith was the baldest pretext for the gratification of greed and evil passions. Yet all this was practically regarded as quite compatible with the duties of the Inquisition. ”

“ It seems extraordinary that any community would endure for centuries the indefinite stoppage of the administration of justice, constantly occurring through the reckless abuse of the power of excommunication, as when, in 1672, we find the queen-regent applying to the inquisitor-general to know how she is to answer the complaints of the town of Logroño at the prolonged suspension of the powers of the corregidor who lay under excommunication, seeing that there is no conclusion of the competencia which has been so long pending. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It was in vain that the sturdy subjects of the crown of Aragon struggled and gained concessions, paid for them and fenced them around with all the precautions held sacred by public law. The inquisitors felt themselves to be above the law and all the old abuses continued to flourish as rankly as ever. About this time the Córtes of the three kingdoms, by command of Charles, addressed to Inquisitor-general Manrique a series of sixteen grievances, repeating the old complaints—the extension of jurisdiction over usury, blasphemy, bigamy and sodomy ”

“ This arrogance continued until Carlos III, in his decree of 1775, informed the Inquisition that the royal jurisdiction which it exercised was on precisely the same level as that of his judges and magistrates; there must be entire equality between them; all threats of excommunication and fines must be abandoned; there must be free interchange of papers, mutual courtesy and no assumption of superiority. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Many chiefs of the synagogue, learned rabbis and leaders of their people, had cowered before the storm and had embraced Christianity. Whether their conversion was sincere or not, they had broken with the past and, with the keen intelligence of their race, they could see that a new career was open to them in which energy and capacity could gratify ambition, unfettered by the limitations surrounding them in Judaism. That they should hate, with an exceeding hatred, those who had proved true to the faith amid tribulation was inevitable. ”

“ With all the power of Spain, backed by the treasures of the New World and wielded by an autocratic monarchy, it was impossible to maintain so vicious and artificial a currency at par, and there followed, during the seventeenth century, a series of the most desperate attempts to remedy the evils which were crippling the commerce and industry of the nation. ”

“ If we cannot wholly attribute to him the spirit of ruthless fanaticism which animated the Inquisition, he at least deserves the credit of stimulating and rendering it efficient in its work by organizing it and by directing it with dauntless courage against the suspect however high-placed, until the shadow of the Holy Office covered the land and no one was so hardy as not to tremble at its name. ”

“ It is not to be imagined that vassals so Catholic as those of Aragon would have demanded, or that kings so Catholic would have granted, fueros and liberties adverse to the faith and favorable to heresy. If the old inquisitors had acted conscientiously in accordance with the canons there would have been no cause for bringing in the new ones, but they were without conscience and corrupted with bribes. If there are so few heretics as is now asserted, there should not be such dread of the Inquisition. ”

“ In all save spiritual matters, Ferdinand considered the Inquisition to be merely an instrument to carry out his will, though it must be added that this arose from his anxiety that it should be perfected in every way for the work in hand, and there is absolutely no evidence, in his enormous and confidential correspondence, that he ever used it for political purposes, even in the stormiest times when struggling with unruly nobles. ”

“ THE Crown of Aragon comprised the so-called kingdoms of Aragon and Valencia, the principality of Catalonia, the counties of Rosellon and Cerdana, and the Balearic Isles, with the outlying dependencies of Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica. Although marriage had united the sovereigns of Castile and Aragon, the particularism born of centuries of rivalry and frequent war kept the lands jealously apart as separate nations and Ferdinand ruled individually his ancestral dominions. ”

“ On the one hand the ambitious and able men among the New Christians, being thus cast out, would foment disaffection and disturbance; on the other, if the old Military Orders had been a source of danger to the monarchy, what would be the effect of creating a new one, united and vastly more numerous and subject as vassals to an inquisitor-general, whose power was already so great, and who would control the property and have jurisdiction over all members, while in case of rebellion the frontiers and strongholds would be in his hands? ”

“ 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. ”

“ Fanaticism and intolerance were fairly aroused, to grow stronger with each generation as fresh wrongs and oppression widened the abyss between believer and unbeliever and as new preachers of discord arose to teach the masses that kindness to the Jew was sin against God. Thus gradually the Spanish character changed until it was prepared to accept the Inquisition, which, by a necessary reaction, stimulated the development of bigotry until Spain became what we shall see it in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. ”

“ There was danger, in the exaltation of feeling, not only that the Conversos would be massacred but that the Judería and Morería would be sacked. By daylight the archbishop, Alfonso de Aragon, mounted his horse and traversed the streets, calming the mob with promises of speedy justice. A meeting was at once called of all the principal persons in the city, which resolved itself into a national assembly and empowered all ecclesiastical and secular officials to proceed against every one concerned with the utmost vigor and without observing the customs and fueros of the kingdom. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Again, in 1528 at the Córtes of Monzon, we find a repetition of grievances—the abuse of confiscations, the cognizance of usury and other matters disconnected with heresy and general inobservance of the articles agreed upon. To the petition that he remedy these and procure from the inquisitor-general an order to his subordinates to conform themselves to the Concordias, Charles returned the equivocating answer “His majesty will see that the inquisitor-general orders the observance of that which should be observed, removing abuses if there are any.” ”

“ Wise forbearance, combined with vigorous maintenance of order, would in time have brought about reconciliation, to the infinite benefit of Spain, but at a time when heresy was regarded as the greatest of crimes and unity of faith as the supreme object of statesmanship, wise forbearance and toleration were impossible. ”

“ 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. ”

“ His preaching continued as violent as ever and the Seville mob grew more and more restless in the prospect of gratifying at once its zeal for the faith and its thirst for pillage. In March the aspect of affairs was more alarming than ever; the rabble were feeling their way, with outrages and insults, and the Judería was in hourly danger of being sacked. Juan Alonso Guzman, Count of Niebla, the most powerful noble of Andalusia, was adelantado of the province and alcalde mayor of Seville and his kinsman, Alvar Pérez de Guzman, was alguazil mayor. ”

“ To enquire of the royal officials as to the character of aspirants for appointment was inadmissible, as it would admit them to participation in a matter with which they had nothing to do. The true cure for the troubles would be to secure the Inquisition in its rights by forbidding the secular courts from assuming any jurisdiction over familiars. In short it was a passionate outburst, precluding all hope of amendment, to which the king replied by telling the Suprema to see that the tribunal did not employ violent measures against the royal officials, but report to him any excess for his action. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Jews slowly recovered themselves from the terrible shock; they emerged from their concealment and endeavored, with characteristic dauntless energy, to rebuild their shattered fortunes. Now, however, with diminished numbers and exhausted wealth, they had to face new enemies. Not only was Christian fanaticism inflamed and growing even stronger, but the wholesale baptisms had created the new class of Conversos, who were thenceforward to become the deadliest opponents of their former brethren. ”

“ This was the inevitable result of entrusting irresponsible power to men, for the most part overbearing and arrogant, who owed obedience only to the Suprema and who early learned that, while it might disapprove of their acts, it always supported them against complaints and, while it might administer rebuke in secret, it hesitated long before it would compromise the asserted infallibility of the Holy Office by dismissal or any other public demonstration. ”

“ For potentates who desired to commit a deliberate breach of faith there was always the resource of the authority of the Holy See which, among its miscellaneous attributes, had long assumed that of releasing from inconvenient engagements those who could command its favor, and Ferdinand’s power in Italy was too great to permit of the refusal of so trifling a request. ”

“ When we consider the character of the slaves and servants thus clothed with authority to insult and browbeat whomsoever they chose, in the exercise of such functions, we can conceive the wrath and indignation stored up against their masters in the thousands of cases where fear prevented an explosion. It is true that the Suprema issued instructions that all purveyors should behave themselves modestly and give no ground of offence and that no one should be summoned or imprisoned for matters arising out of provisions, but as usual these orders were disregarded. ”

“ In these conditions there was nothing affecting the faith or restricting the persecution of heresy; nothing save a prudent regard for the peace and protection of society from the intolerable burden of gangs of virtual bandits clothed in inviolability. Yet Philip resisted to the last extremity these reasonable concessions, which merely placed Aragon on the same footing as Castile. We are told that he declared that he cherished the Inquisition as the apple of his eye and that he exhausted every means to preserve its privileges. ”