Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini

by Rafael Sabatini

  Rodrigo* assumes that this heretical pamphlet put an end to the Queen’s patience. It may very well have been the case, or at least it may have afibrded Ferdinand and the others who desired the Inquisition a final argument whereby to overcome what reluctance still lingered with her.

  [* “Historia Verdadera,” ii. ]

  Be that as it may, it was very soon after this — September 27, 1480 — that the Sovereigns, who at the time were at Medina del Campo, acted at last upon the papal bull which had now been in their hands for nearly two years, and delegated their faculty of giving inquisitors to Castile to the Cardinal of Spain and Fr. Tomás de Torquemada.

  Mendoza and Torquemada proceeded at once to carry out the task entrusted to them, and appointed as inquisitors of the faith for Seville — where Judaizing was represented to be most flagrant — the Dominican friars Juan de San Martino and Miguel Morillo. The latter was the Provincial of the Dominicans of Aragon, and was already a person of experience in such matters, having acted as inquisitor in Rousillon. To assist them in the discharge of their office, the secular priest Juan Ruiz de Medina, a doctor of canon law, and Juan Lopez de Barco, one of the Queen’s chaplains, were appointed, the former to the position of assessor, the latter to that of fiscal.

  It is necessary, in view of the much that has been written, and although the danger be incurred of labouring the point, to examine more closely the attitude of the Sovereigns towards the tribunal which they now sanctioned.

  Isabella’s zeal, both pious and political, urged her, as has been said, to proceed in such a way as should set a term to the unrest arising out of the public feeling against Judaizers and apostatizing Moriscoes (baptized Moors). Ferdinand not only shared her feelings, but pious zeal in him went to the lengths of bigotry, and he aimed essentially at a political unity that should be inseparably allied and interwoven with religious unity.

  Isabella would have laboured slowly, preferring, even at the sacrifice of time, to achieve her ends by gentle means and the exercise of that patience which was so very necessary if good results were to be obtained. Ferdinand, perhaps less pitiful, perhaps — to do him full justice — less hopeful of the power of argument and indoctrination, lending an ear to the priestly assertion “contra negantes veritatis nulla est disputatio,” would have proceeded at once to the introduction into Castile of the stern repressive measures already being exerted in his native Aragon.

  On the score of their different attitudes the Sovereigns might have found themselves in conflict, but that in this matter they had a ground of common interest. Both were agreed that in no case should Spain be brought under the ecclesiastical sway which the establishment of the usual form of Inquisition must set up. If this were to be — as usual hitherto — under pontifical control, its officers would be appointed by the Pope, or, vicariously, by the Dominican provincials, and a proportion of the confiscations consequent upon conviction would be gathered into the pontifical coffers.

  For all his bigotry and his desire to see the Holy Office instituted in Castile, Ferdinand was as averse as Isabella to its introduction in a form that must restore the clerical usurpations they had been at such pains to repress.

  If Isabella admitted the Inquisition as a last means of quelling the disturbing elements in her kingdom, it must be an Inquisition on lines entirely different from those which hitherto had obtained elsewhere. The appointment of its officers must no more rest with the Pope than the bestowal of Spanish benefices. It must be the prerogative of the Sovereigns themselves, and it must carry with it the power to depose and replace, where necessary, such inquisitors as they might appoint. Further, Rome must have no share in the property confiscated from Spanish subjects, the disposal of this being entirely controlled by the Sovereigns.

  It has been argued that here was the cause of all Isabella’s hesitancy: that greed and statecraft were the mainsprings of her conduct in the matter, and that humanitarian considerations had no part in it; that the bull had been applied for earlier than has been generally supposed, and that the delay had resulted from the Pope’s disinclination to grant any such terms as were demanded.

  The latter statement may not be without foundation. But to say deliberately that no humanitarian considerations governed the Queen’s conduct is to say a great deal more than the circumstances warrant. To estabhsh this hypothesis it would be necessary to advance some adequate reason for her reluctance to act upon the bull when once it was in her hands. For the bull of November 1478 conceded all that the Sovereigns demanded, all that they desired. Yet Isabella allowed nearly two years to pass before proceeding to exercise the faculties conferred by it, and during that time Cardinal Mendoza and his cooperators diligently pursued the work of effecting conversions by means of his “catechism.”

  The conclusion that this was dictated by humane considerations on the part of the Queen is the only one that appears reasonable, nor is any alternative put forward to account for the delay of nearly two years.

  When the Cardinal of Spain and the Prior of Holy Cross, acting jointly on behalf of the Sovereigns, appointed the first inquisitors for Castile, they instructed these to set up a tribunal in Seville, which of all the cities of Spain was the one where Judaizing was alleged to be most flagrantly conducted.*

  [* Mendoza, “Monarquia de España,” iii. . Bleda says that there were 100,000 apostates in that diocese (“Coronica de los Moros,” ).]

  The Sovereigns issued on October 9 a command to all loyal subjects to afford the two inquisitors every assistance they might require on their journey to Seville and all facilities there for carrying out their mission.

  The subjects, however, were so little loyal on this occasion that upon the arrival of the inquisitors at Seville, these found a reception of all solemnity awaiting them and every respect accorded to them, but no assistance. To such an extent was this withheld that they found it quite impossible to set about the business upon which they came. They complained of this state of things to the King, and as a result he sent special orders on December 27 to the Coadjutor of Seville and the civil authorities of the district, commanding them to lend the inquisitors every support.

  In consequence of this they were at last enabled to establish their court and proceed to the business upon which they came.*

  [* Zuñiga, “Anales,” lib. xii, año 1480.]

  The very rumour of their approach had filled the New-Christians with anxiety, and a glimpse of the gloomy funereal pageant — the white-robed, blackhooded inquisitors, with their attendant familiars and barefoot friars, the procession headed by a Dominican carrying the white cross — on its way to the Convent of St. Paul, where they took up their quarters, was enough to put to flight some thousands of those who had cause to fear that they might become the objects of the attention of that fearful court.

  These fugitives sought refuge in the feudal lordships of the Duke of Medina Sidonia, of the formidable Rodrigo Ponce de Leon, Marquis of Cadiz, and of the Count of Arcos.

  But in all ages it had been the way of the Inquisition not only to suspect readily, but to allow suspicion to usurp the place that elsewhere is reserved for proof. And so they proceeded to construe into evidence of guilt this flight of the timorous, as is shown by the edict they published on January 2 of 1481.

  In this — having set forth their appointment by the Sovereigns, and the terms of the bull under which such appointment had been made — they announced that, inasmuch as it had come to their knowledge that many persons had departed out of Seville in fear of prosecution upon grounds of heretical pravity, they commanded the Marquess of Cadiz, the Count of Arcos, and the other nobles of the Kingdom of Castile, that within fifteen days of the publication of this edict they should make an exact account of the persons of both sexes that had sought refuge in their lordships or jurisdictions; that they should arrest all these and bring them safely to the prison of the Inquisition in Seville, confiscating their property and placing this together with an inventory in the hands of some person of trust, to be held
by them at the disposal of the inquisitors; that none should dare to shelter any fugitive, but comply exactly with the terms of this edict under pain of greater excommunication and the other penalties by law established against abettors of heretics, amongst which penalties was that of the annulment of their dignities and offices, their subjects and vassals being absolved of all vassalage and subjection; and the inquisitors reserved to themselves and their superiors the power of absolution from the ecclesiastical censure incurred by all who might fail to obey the terms of this edict.

  CHAPTER VIII. THE HOLY OFFICE IN SEVILLE

  The stern purpose of the inquisitors and the severity with which they intended to proceed were plainly revealed by that edict of January 2, 1481. The harsh injustice that lay in its call upon the authorities to arrest men and women merely because they had departed from Seville before departure was in any way forbidden is typical of the flagrantly arbitrary methods of the Inquisition. That it should have struck terror into the New-Christians who had remained in Seville, and that it should have moved them to take measures to protect themselves against a court in which justice seemed little likely to be observed, and to whose cruel mercies the most innocent might find himself exposed at any moment, is not surprising — particularly when it is considered how great was the number of NewChristians who occupied positions of eminence in Seville.

  A group of these prominent citizens assembled at the invitation of Diego de Susan, one of the wealthiest and most influential men of Seville, whose fortune was estimated at ten million maravedis. They came together to consider what measures should be taken for the defence of themselves, their persons and property, from the unscrupulous activities of this tribunal, and they determined that if necessary they would resort to force.

  Among those who entered into this conspiracy were some ecclesiastics, and several who held office under the Crown, such as the Governor of Triana, Juan Fernandez Abolafio, the Captain of Justice and farmer of the royal customs, his brother Fernandez the licentiate, Bartolomé Torralba, and the wealthy and well-connected Manuel Sauli.

  Susan addressed them. He reminded them that they were the principal citizens of Seville, that they were wealthy not only in property but in the good-will of the people, and that it but required resolution and solidarity on their part to enable them to prevail against the inquisitors in the event of these friars making any attempt upon them.

  All concurring, it was concerted that each of the conspirators should engage himself to provide a proportion of the men, arms, and money and what else might be necessary for their purpose.

  But Susan to his undoing had a daughter. This girl, whose beauty was so extraordinary that she was surnamed la hermosa fembra, had taken a Castilian lover. What motives may have actuated her, what part the lover may have played in these, does not transpire. All that is known is that she betrayed the conspiracy to the inquisitors— “impiously violating the natural laws engraved by God’s finger upon the human heart.”

  Susan and his unfortunate confederates were seized as a consequence of that infamous delation; they were lodged in the cells of the Convent of St. Paul, which meanwhile did duty as a prison, and brought to trial before the Court of the Holy Office sitting in the convent.*

  [* Bernaldez, cap. xliv.; Garcia Rodrigo, i. cap. xx.; Amador de los Rios, “Historia de los Judios,” lib. iii. cap. v.

  Amador de los Rios adds in a foot-note, on the score of this girl: “Don Reginaldo Rubino, Bishop of Tiberiades, informed of the delation and of the state of la Fermosa Fembra, contrived that she should enter one of the convents of the city to take the veil. But dominated by her sensual passions, she quitted the convent without professing, and bore several children. Her beauty having been dissipated by age, want overtook the unnatural daughter of the miUionaire Diego de Susan, and in the end she died under the protection of a grocer. In her will she disposed that her skull should be placed over the doorway of the house in which she had pursued her evil life as an example and in punishment of her sins. This house is situated in the Calle de Atatld, opposite to its entrance from the direction of the Alcazar, and there the skull of la Fermosa Fembra has continued until our own times.”

  They were tried for heresy and apostasy, of course; since upon no other grounds was it possible for the Holy Office to deal with them. It is unfortunate that Llorente should have unearthed no record of this trial — one of the first held by the Inquisition in Castile — and that nothing should be known of what took place beyond the fact that Susan, Sauli, Bartolomé Torralba, and the brothers Fernandez were found guilty of the alleged offence of apostasy and were delivered up to the secular arm for punishment.

  Garcia Rodrigo has devoted a couple of pages of his “Historia Verdadera” to an elaborate piece of fiction in which he asserts that these men were persistent in their error in spite of the strenuous efforts made to save them. He invests the fanatical Ojeda with the character of an angel of mercy, and represents him hovering round the condemned, exhorting them, almost with tears, to abjure their error, and he assures us that although the Dominican persevered in his charitable efforts up to the last moment, all was vain.

  There is not a grain of evidence to support the statement, nor does Garcia Rodrigo pretend to advance any. As a matter of fact, Bernaldez, the only available authority who mentions Susan’s end, tells us specifically that he died a Christian. And when it is considered that Bernaldez is an ardent admirer and champion of the Inquisition, such a pronouncement from his pen is sufficient to convict the inquisitors Morillo and San Martin of having proceeded in a manner that was vindictive and ultra vires. For at this epoch it was not yet decreed that those who had relapsed (relapsos) should suffer capital punishment unless they persisted in their apostasy — as Rodrigo, obviously for the purpose of justifying the inquisitors, unwarrantably asserts did Susan and his confederates.

  Llorente considers the blood-lust of the inquisitors established by these merciless convictions, urging that it is incredible that all the prisoners should have refused to recant and to submit themselves to penance — even assuming that they were actually guilty of apostasy as alleged. For when all is considered it must remain extremely doubtful whether they had Judaized at all, and it is not improbable — from what we see of the spirit that actuated the inquisitors — that Morillo and San Martin may have construed the action of those men into an offence against the Faith for the purpose of bringing them within the jurisdiction of the Holy Office.

  They were condemned to be the chief actors in the first Auto de Fé that was held in Seville. This took place on February 6.*

  [* Llorente says “January 6,” an obvious mistake considering that the inquisitors published their first edict on the 2nd of that month, and that Susan’s offence was subsequent to that publication.]

  There was about this Auto comparatively little of that pomp and ceremonial, that ghastly theatricality that was presently to distinguish these proceedings. But the essentials were already present.

  Susan and his fellows were led forth barefoot, in the ignominious, yellow penitential sack, a candle in the hand of each. Hemmed about by halberdiers, they were paraded through the streets of a city in which they had won the goodwill and respect of all, to be gazed upon by a people whose eyes must have been filled with horror and dismay. To head the procession went a black-robed Dominican holding aloft the green cross of the Inquisition, now swathed in a veil of crape; behind him, walking two by two, came the familiars of the Holy Office, members of the Confraternity of St. Peter the Martyr; next followed the doomed men amid their guards; and last came the inquisitors with their attendants and a considerable body of Dominicans from the Convent of St. Paul, headed by their prior, the fanatical Ojeda.

  The procession headed for the Cathedral, where the sufiferers were taken to hear Mass and forced to listen to a sermon framed for the occasion which was preached by Ojeda, and must have increased the exquisite torment of their protracted agony. Thence they were conducted — once more processionally — o
ut of the city to the meadows of Tablada. There they were attached to the stakes that had been erected, fire was set to the faggots, and thus they perished miserably, to the greater honour and glory of the Catholic Apostolic Church.*

  [* See Garcia Rodrigo, vol. i, cap. xx.]

  Ojeda may have looked with satisfaction upon that holocaust, upon those cruel flames which more than any man in Spain he had been instrumental in kindling, and which being kindled would continue to cast their lurid glow over that fair land for close upon four centuries. It was the first burning that Ojeda witnessed, and it was the last. His own hour was at hand. His mission, whatever ends it had to serve in the eternal scheme of things, was completed there on the meadows of Tablada, and he might now depart. A few days later he lay dead, stricken down by the plague that was ravaging the south of Spain, and sought him out for one of its first victims.

  And from the pulpits of Seville the Dominicans thundered forth declarations that this pestilence was a visitation of God upon an unfaithful city. They never paused to consider that if that were indeed the case either God’s aim must be singularly untrue since the shafts of His wrath overtook such faithful servants as Ojeda, or else...

  But an incapacity to conduct its reasonings to a logical conclusion, and an utter want of any sense of proportion, are the main factors in all fanaticism.

  Lest they should themselves be stricken by these bolts of pestilence launched against the unfaithful, behold next the inquisitors scuttling out of Seville! They go in quest of more salubrious districts, and, presumably upon the assumption that these — since they remain heahhy — are escaping divine attention, the Dominicans zealously proceed to light their fires that they may repair this heavenly oversight.*