History of the Jews, Vol. 4 (of 6)

In the meantime the anxious community appealed, not only to the emperor, but also to the Bohemian king, Ladislaus, more feared than the emperor; and ere long stringent directions came from both to release the rabbi instantly without ransom. The council, however, excused itself on the plea of fear of the bishop and the mob. Thereupon followed a mandate from the emperor to defer the execution of Israel Bruna until he came to the diet at Augsburg. The council was still less satisfied with this order, for it feared to lose its jurisdiction over the Jews. It accordingly prepared to take decisive action in the matter. The accuser, Hans Vayol, was led on the stone bridge, where the executioner stood in readiness. He was informed that he must die, and admonished not to go into eternity with a lie on his lips. The hardened sinner maintained his accusations against the Jews in general, but confessed that the rabbi, Israel Bruna, was innocent of the charge of child-murder, and on receipt of another rescript from the emperor, Vayol was banished, and the rabbi released from prison. He was, however, compelled to take an oath that he would not revenge himself for his long sufferings. This poor, feeble graybeard – how could he have avenged himself?

At this juncture the news of the martyrdom of Simon of Trent reached Ratisbon, and added fuel to the fire. Bishop Henry was delighted to have an opportunity of persecuting the Jews with impunity in the interest of the faith. He had heard something of this child-murder on his journey to Rome. On his return, he urged the council to institute a rigid inquiry respecting the Jews accused by Wolfkan. The result of the extorted confessions was the imprisonment of the whole community. Sentinels stood on guard day and night at the four gates of the Jewry of Ratisbon, and permitted no one to enter or go out. The possessions of the whole community were confiscated by the commissioners and judges who took an inventory of everything. A horrible fate threatened the unhappy children of Israel.

This trial, which caused considerable attention in its day, proved quite as prejudicial to the citizens as to the Jews themselves. Immediately after the inquiry began, several Jews of Ratisbon had betaken themselves to Bohemia and to the emperor, and tried by every means to save their unhappy brethren. They knew that to explain their righteous cause gold, and plenty of it, would be above all things necessary. For this reason several Bavarian rabbis assembled in a synod at Nuremberg, and decided that the Bavarian communities and every individual not absolutely impoverished should contribute a quota to make up the amount necessary to free the accused Jews of Ratisbon. When the safety of their brethren was in question, the Jews, however fond they might be of money, were by no means parsimonious. The intercession of the Bohemian nobles under whose protection several of the Ratisbon community had placed themselves led to no result. Far more efficacious were the golden arguments which the ambassadors of the community laid before Emperor Frederick and his advisers. It is only just to say that this usually feeble sovereign displayed considerable ability and firmness in this inquiry. He was so strongly convinced of the falsehood of the blood accusation against the Jews that he would not allow himself to be deceived by any trickery. He dispatched rescript after rescript to the council of Ratisbon, ordering the immediate release of the imprisoned Jews, the cessation of the durance of the community, and the restoration of their property. The council, through fear of the bishop and the duke, delayed the execution of the order, and the emperor became furious at the obstinacy of the citizens when news was brought to him that, in spite of the imperial command, they had already executed some of the Jews. He thereupon declared the city to have fallen under the ban of the empire on account of its obstinate disobedience, and summoned it to answer for its contumacy. At the same time he sent the imperial chancellor to deprive the city of penal jurisdiction and to threaten it with other severe penalties.

Frederick, as a rule weak, showed surprising firmness on this occasion. New and shameless charges were nevertheless brought by the clergy against the Jews. In Passau they were accused of having bought consecrated wafers from a Christian, and profaned them; whereupon certain marvels were said to have occurred. For this the bishop of Passau had a great number of Jews put to death, some "mercifully" by the sword, others at the stake, and others by means of red-hot pincers. In memory of this inhumanity and "to the glory of God," a new church was built near the scene of the atrocities. A Jew and a Jewess of Ratisbon were accused of complicity in this crime, and thrown into prison with the others. All the details were brought to the notice of the emperor in order to rouse his anger. He, however, maintained his conviction that the Jews of Ratisbon were innocent, and issued a new order to the effect that those in prison on the charge of profaning the host were neither to be tortured nor put to death, but to be treated like other prisoners. In vain the council sent deputy after deputy to the imperial court. Frederick roundly declared, "In justice and honor I neither can nor will permit these Jews to be slain, and the men of Ratisbon who have so long hardened themselves in their disobedience shall certainly not sit in judgment upon them."

Thus, after long resistance, the council was compelled to kiss the rod, and give a written promise to release the imprisoned Jews, and not to drive any out of the city on account of this trial. Further, the city was sentenced to pay a fine of 8,000 gulden into the imperial exchequer and to find bail in 10,000 gulden – which latter burden, strangely enough, the Jews had to bear. An appeal to the pope was out of the question, since experience had taught that "the papal court was even more greedy of gold than the imperial."

When the community of Ratisbon was informed of this conclusion of the affair, and of the conditions under which it could gain its freedom – by paying not only the sum imposed upon itself, but also the fine of the city and the costs of the proceedings – it refused. The delegates said that the total exceeded the possessions of the Jews, as they had been deprived, for three long years, of freedom and all opportunity of earning money. They preferred their present miserable state to becoming beggars. So they remained two years longer in durance, partly on account of lack of money, and partly by reason of the excessive bail demanded. They were finally set at liberty on taking an oath that they would not take revenge, nor convey their persons or their goods out of the city of Ratisbon.

All the Jews living in Suabia were expelled, doubtless in consequence of false accusations in connection with the child-murder of Trent. As late as in the eighteenth century, the shameless falsehood was repeated, and in many parts entailed upon the Jews the sacrifice of life and property.

CHAPTER X.

THE INQUISITION IN SPAIN

Jewish Blood in the Veins of the Spanish Nobility – The Marranos cling to Judaism and manifest Unconquerable Antipathy to Christianity – Ferdinand and Isabella – The Dominicans, Alfonso de Ojeda, Diego de Merlo, and Pedro de Solis – The Catechism of the Marranos – A Polemical Work against the Catholic Church and Despotism gives a Powerful Impulse to the Inquisition – The Tribunal is established in 1480 – Miguel Morillo and Juan de San Martin are the first Inquisitors – The Inquisition in Seville – The "Edict of Grace" – The Procession and the Auto-da-fé – The Numbers of the Accused and Condemned – Pope Sixtus IV and his Vacillating Policy with Regard to the Inquisition – The Inquisition under the first Inquisitor General, Thomas de Torquemada; its Constitutions – The Marranos of Aragon – They are charged with the Death of the Inquisitor Arbues – Persecutions and Victims – Proceedings against two Bishops Favorable to the Jews, De Avila and De Aranda.

1474–1483 C.E

A Jewish poet called Spain the "hell of the Jews;" and, in very deed, those foul fiends in monks' cowls, the inventors of the Holy Inquisition, made that lovely land an Inferno. Every misery, every mortal pang, conceived only by the most extravagant imagination of poet; every horror that can thrill the heart of man to its lowest depths, these monsters in the garb of humility brought upon the Jews of the Hesperian Peninsula.

These Calibans also said, "'Burn but their books;' for therein lies their power." The Dominicans wished to destroy not only the bodies, but the very soul and spirit of the Jews. Yet they were not able to quench the life of Judaism. They only succeeded in transforming the Spanish paradise into one vast dungeon, in which the king himself was not free. The Inquisition, created by the begging friars, wounded the Jew deeply, yet not mortally. His wounds are now almost healed; but Spain suffers still, perhaps beyond hope of cure, from the wounds dealt by the Inquisition. Ferdinand the Catholic and Isabella the Bigot, who, through the union of Aragon and Castile, laid the foundation for the greatness of Spain, prepared the way, at the same time, by the establishment of the Inquisition, for her decay and final ruin.

The new-Christians, who dwelt by hundreds and thousands throughout the kingdoms of Aragon and Castile, were so many thorns in monkish flesh. Many of them held high offices of state, and by means of their wealth wielded great and far-reaching influence. They were also related to many of the old nobility; indeed, there were few families of consequence who had not Jewish blood in their veins. They formed a third part of the townspeople, and were intelligent, industrious, and peaceful citizens. These Marranos, for the most part, had preserved their love for Judaism and their race in the depths of their hearts. As far as they could, they observed Jewish rites and customs, either from piety or from habit. Even those who, upon philosophical grounds, were indifferent to Judaism, were not less irreconcilably hostile to Christianity, which they were compelled to confess with their lips. Although they did not have their children circumcised, they washed the heads of the infants immediately after baptism. They were, therefore, rightly looked upon by the orthodox clergy either as Judaizing Christians, or as apostate heretics. They took no count of the origin of their conversion, which had been accomplished with fire and sword. They had received the sacrament of baptism, and this condemned them and their descendants to remain in the Christian faith, however hateful it might be to them. Rational legislation would have given them liberty to return to Judaism, and, in any case, to emigrate, in order to avoid scandal. But the spiritual powers were full of perversity. That which demands the freest exercise of the powers of the soul was to be brought about by brute force, to the greater glory of God!

During the lifetime of Don Henry IV the clerical members of the cortes of Medina del Campo had persistently advanced the proposal that a court of Inquisition be instituted to bring recusant or suspected Christians to trial, and inflict severe punishment with confiscation of goods. Unfortunately for the clericals, the king was by no means zealous for the faith or fond of persecution; and so this decision of the cortes, like many others, remained a dead letter. The Dominicans, however, promised themselves greater results under the new sovereigns – Queen Isabella, whose confessors had reduced her to spiritual slavery, and Don Ferdinand, who, by no means so superstitiously inclined, was quite ready to use religion as the cloak of his avarice. It is said that the confessor, Thomas de Torquemada, the incarnation of the hell-begotten Holy Inquisition, had extorted from the Infanta Isabella a vow that, when she came to the throne, she would devote herself to the extirpation of heresy, to the glory of God and the exaltation of the Catholic faith. She was now queen; "her throne was established; and her soul was sufficiently beclouded to believe that God had raised her solely to cleanse Spanish Christianity from the taint of Judaism."

The prior of a Dominican monastery, Alfonso de Ojeda, who had the ear of the royal consorts, made fearful representations to them as to the offenses of the new-Christians against the faith. Aided by two others of like mind, he strained every nerve to set the Inquisition in motion against the Marranos; and the papal nuncio in Spain, Nicolo Franco, supported the proposition of the monk for a tribunal to call them to account for their transgressions.

Without further consideration Don Ferdinand, seeing that his coffers would be filled with the plunder of the accused, gave his assent to the scheme. The more scrupulous queen hesitated, and the royal pair decided to appeal to the pope for advice. The two Spanish ambassadors at the court of Rome, the brothers Francisco and Diego de Santillana, earnestly pressed the pope and the college of cardinals to grant the request of their sovereigns. Sixtus IV, from whom anything, good or bad, could be obtained for gold, immediately grasped the money-making aspect of the Holy Inquisition. In November, 1478, he issued a bull empowering the sovereigns to appoint inquisitors from among the clergy, with full authority to sit in judgment on all heretics, apostates, and their patrons, according to the laws and customs of the ancient Inquisition, sentence them, and – most important point of all – confiscate their goods.

Isabella, who had been somewhat favorably influenced in behalf of the new-Christians, was not inclined to adopt rigorous measures to begin with. At her direction, the archbishop of Seville, Cardinal Mendoza, prepared a catechism in 1478 for the use of new-Christians, and issued it to the clergy of his diocese, in order that they might instruct the Marranos in the articles, the sacraments, and the usages of the Christian religion. The authors of this measure displayed strange simplicity in believing that the baptized Jews would allow an antipathy, which every day found new incitement, to be appeased by the dry statements of a catechism. The Marranos naturally remained in what the church considered their blindness; that is to say, in the purity of their monotheism and their adherence to their ancestral religion.

It happened that a Jew or a new-Christian grievously offended the sovereigns by the publication of a small work in which he exposed at once the idolatrous cult of the church and the despotic character of the government. Hereupon the queen became more and more inclined to assent to the proposals for the establishment of the bloody tribunal. The work made so strong an impression that the queen's father-confessor, in 1480, published a refutation by royal command. The attitude of the court became more and more hostile to new-Christians, and when the commission appointed by the sovereigns to inquire into the improvement or obstinacy of the Marranos reported that they were irreclaimable, it was authorized to frame the statute for the new tribunal. The commission was composed of the fanatical Dominican, Alfonso de Ojeda, and the two monks – one in mind and order – Pedro de Solis and Diego de Merlo.

Had demons of nethermost hell conspired to torment innocent men to the last verge of endurance and to make their lives one ceaseless martyrdom, they could not have devised more perfect means than those which the three monks employed against their victims.

The statute was ratified by the sovereigns, and the tribunal of the Holy Inquisition was appointed on September 17th, 1480. It was composed of men well fitted to carry out the bloody decree: the Dominican Miguel Morillo, inquisitor in the province of Roussillon, and renowned as a converter of heretics by means of torture; Juan de San Martin; an assessor, the abbot Juan Ruez, and a procurator fiscal, Juan Lopez del Barco. These men were formally confirmed by Sixtus IV as judges in matters of faith, and of heretics and apostates. The tribunal was first organized for the city of Seville and its neighborhood, as this district stood immediately under royal jurisdiction, and, therefore, possessed no cortes, and because it contained a great many Marranos. Three weeks later the sovereigns issued a decree calling upon all officials to render the inquisitors every assistance in their power.

It is noteworthy that as soon as the creation of the tribunal became known, the populace everywhere looked upon it with displeasure, as though suspicious that it might be caught in the net spread for the Marranos. While the cortes of Medina del Campo proposed the establishment of a court for new-Christians, the great popular assembly at Toledo in the same year – the first after the accession of Ferdinand and Isabella – maintained absolute silence on the question, as though it desired to have no share in the unholy work. The mayor and other officials of Seville proved so disinclined to assist the inquisitors that it was necessary to issue a second royal decree on December 27th, 1480, directing them to do so. The nobles, allied with the converted Jews either through blood or friendship, stood stoutly by them, and sought by every means to protect them against the new tribunal.

As soon as the new-Christians of Seville and the neighborhood received news of the establishment of the Inquisition, they held a meeting to consider means of turning aside the blow aimed at them. Several wealthy and respected men of Seville, Carmona and Utrera, among them Abulafia, the financial agent of the royal couple, prepared to do battle with their persecutors. They distributed money and weapons among the people, to enable them to defend themselves. An old man urged the conspirators to armed resistance; but the conspiracy was betrayed by the daughter of one of its members, and all fell into the hands of the tribunal. Others, who had collected their possessions, and fled to the province of Medina-Sidonia and Cadiz, under whose governors they hoped to receive protection against the threatened persecution, were deceived, for the Inquisition went to work with remorseless severity. As soon as it had taken up its quarters in the convent of St. Paul at Seville, on January 2d, 1481, it issued an edict to the governor of Cadiz and other officials to deliver up the Marranos and distrain their goods. Those who disobeyed were threatened not only with excommunication, but also with the punishment assigned, as sharers of their guilt, to all who showed sympathy to heretics – confiscation of goods and deprivation of office.

The Inquisition inspired so much terror that the nobility lost no time in imprisoning those to whom they had lately promised protection, and in sending them in custody to Seville. The number of these prisoners was so great that the tribunal was soon obliged to seek another building for its functions. It selected a castle in Triana, a suburb of Seville. On the gate of this house of blood were inscribed, in mockery of the Jews, certain verses selected from their Scriptures: – "Arise, God, judge Thy cause;" "Catch ye foxes for us," which plainly showed the utter heartlessness of their judges. Fugitives when caught were treated as convicted heretics. So early as the fourth day after the installation of the tribunal, it held its first sitting. Six Marranos who had either avowed their old religion before their judges, or made horrible confessions on the rack, were condemned and burnt alive. The tale of victims grew to such proportions that the city authorities set apart a special place as a permanent execution ground, which subsequently became infamous as the Quemadero, or place of burning. Four huge caricatures of prophets distinguished this spot, existing to the present day to the shame of Spain and Christianity. For three hundred years the smoke of the burnt-offering of innocence ascended to heaven from this infernal spot.

With that mildness of mien which skillfully covers the wisdom and the venom of the serpent, Miguel Morillo and his coadjutors gave to the new-Christians guilty of relapse into Judaism a certain time in which to declare their remorse. Upon doing this they would receive absolution, and be permitted to retain their property. This was the Edict of Grace; but it was not wanting in threats for those who should permit the time of respite to elapse, and be denounced by others as backsliders. The full vigor of the canonical laws against heresy and apostasy would then be exercised against them. The credulous in crowds obeyed the summons. Contritely they appeared before the tribunal, lamented the awful guilt of their lapse into Judaism, and awaited absolution and permission to live in peace. But now the inquisitors imposed the condition that they declare by name, position, residence and other particulars all persons of their acquaintance whom they knew to be apostates. This declaration they were to substantiate on oath. In the name of God they were asked to become accusers and betrayers – the friend of his friend, the brother of his brother, and the son of his father. Terror, and the assurance that the betrayed should never know the names of their betrayers, loosed the tongues of the weak-hearted, and the tribunal soon had a long list of heretics upon whom to carry out its bloody work.

Not only the hunted Marranos, every Spaniard was called upon by an edict of the inquisitors to become an informer. Under threat of excommunication every one was bound to give, within three days, a list of acquaintances guilty of Jewish heresy. It was a summons to the most hateful vices of mankind to become allies of the court: to malice, hatred and revenge, to sate themselves by treachery; to greed, to enrich itself; and to superstition, to gain salvation by betrayal.

And what were the signs of this heresy and apostasy? The Inquisition had published a very complete, practical guide on the subject, so that each informer might find good grounds for his denunciation. The following signs of heresy were set forth: if baptized Jews cherished hopes of a Messiah; if they held Moses to be as efficacious for salvation as Jesus; if they kept the Sabbath or a Jewish feast; if they had their children circumcised; if they observed the Jewish dietary laws; if they wore clean linen or better garments on the Sabbath, laid tablecloths, or lit no fire on this day, or if they went barefoot on the Day of Atonement, or asked pardon of each other. If a father laid his hands in blessing on his children without making the sign of the cross; if one said his prayers with face turned to the wall, or with motions of the head; or if he uttered a benediction (Baraha, Beracha) over the wine-cup, and passed it to those seated at the table with him, he was to be deemed recalcitrant. As a matter of course, neglect of the usages of the church was the strongest ground for suspicion and accusation. Again, if a new-Christian repeated a psalm without adding the Gloria; or if he ate meat on fast-days; or if a Jewish woman did not go to church forty days after her lying-in; or if parents gave their children Jewish names, the charge of heresy was held proved.

Even the most innocent actions, if they happened to coincide with Jewish usages, were regarded as signs of aggravated heresy. If anyone, for instance, on the Jewish Feast of Tabernacles accepted gifts from the table of Jews, or sent them; or if a new-born child was bathed in water in which gold coins and grains of corn had been placed; or if a dying man in his last moments turned his face to the wall – all such actions were held to be signs of heresy.

By such means unscrupulous people were given ample opportunity for denunciation, and the tribunal was enabled to accuse of heresy the most orthodox proselytes when it desired to destroy their influence or confiscate their property. Naturally the dungeons of the Inquisition were soon filled with Jewish heretics. Fully 15,000 were thrown into prison at the outset. The Christian priests of Moloch inaugurated the first auto-da-fé, on January 6th, 1481, with a solemn procession, repeated innumerable times during the following three hundred years. The clergy in their gorgeous vestments and with crucifixes; the grandees in black robes with their banners and pennons; the unhappy victims in the hideous San Benito, short and clinging, painted with a red cross, and flames and figures of devils; the accompanying choir of a vast concourse – so the executioners with proud bearing and the victims in most miserable guise marched to the place of torment. Arrived there the inquisitors recited their sentence on the victims. To the horror of the scene was added the ghastly mockery that the tribunal did not execute the sentence of death, but left it to the secular judge; for the church, though steeped to the lips in blood, was supposed not to desire the death of the sinner. The Jewish heretics were given to the flames forthwith, or, if penitent, they were first strangled. In the first auto-da-fé, at which the bishop, Alfonso de Ojeda, preached the inauguration sermon, only six Judaizing Christians were burnt. A few days later the conspirators of Carmona, Seville, and other towns, and three of the most wealthy and respected of the Marranos, among whom was Diego de Suson, the possessor of ten millions, and Abulafia, formerly a Talmudic scholar and a rabbi, were burnt to death. On the 26th of March seventeen victims suffered death by fire on the Quemadero. In the following month a yet greater number were burnt; and up to November of the same year 298 burnt-offerings to Christ gasped out their lives in flame and smoke in the single district of Seville. In the archbishopric of Cadiz no less than 2,000 Jewish heretics were burnt alive in the course of that year, most of them being wealthy or well-to-do, their possessions, of course, going to the royal exchequer. Not even death afforded a safeguard against the fury of the Holy Office. These ghouls of religion tore from their graves the corpses of proselytes who had died in heresy, burnt them, confiscated their possessions in the hands of their heirs, and condemned the latter to obscurity and poverty that they might never aspire to any honorable office. Here was a splendid field for the avarice of the king. When it was impossible to convict a wealthy heir, it was only necessary to establish proofs of a relapse to Judaism against his dead father, and then the property fell partly to the king, partly to the Holy Inquisition!