Rivers of Gold

by Hugh Thomas

  Also in La Magdalena were the Mercedarians, formally dedicated to the recovery of Christian captives in Muslim prisons, of which order Cortés’s friend Fray Bartolomé de Olmedo was a shining example; while the Carmelite brothers were at Remedios, to the south on the edge of the river, toward Jerez. Two important monasteries of the fourteenth century were those of San Isidoro del Campo and San Agustín, established in an old nunnery near the Carmona Gate. San Isidoro was founded as a Cistercian stronghold in 1301 by Alonso Pérez de Guzmán, ancestor of the dukes of Medina Sidonia, and his wife, María Alonso Coronel, at Santiponce, a village that the order owned. After 1431, the Cistercians were substituted by Jeronymites. The second great foundation of that era, San Agustín, was created by the family of Ponce de León, whose town palace was nearby. The Ponces de León were the chief benefactors of these Augustinians, and many of the family were buried there. Probably there were 1,500 friars.

  Half the religious houses of Seville were for women, of which the most important were those of the Carmelites, in two houses, San Clemente and Santa María, as well as the Poor Clares in Santa Inés, another house founded by María Fernández Coronel. In Santa Inés, the body of the founder was said to remain ever perfect even though it had been said that she had poured boiling oil over her face to protect herself from the lecherous King Pedro the Cruel. We should remember, too, Madre de Díos, founded in 1486 in the modern Calle San José, a building seized from its old owners by the Inquisition. It would eventually have among its sepulchres descendants of both Columbus and of Cortés.

  These foundations dominated the skyline of Seville and took up half the space of the city. They were large employers of labor, and like noblemen, the monks lived on produce from farms established in the nearby countryside. A little wine from Cazalla, a ham from Aracena? Certainly.

  The Inquisition in 1522 was a powerful religious institution. Its staff in the castle of Triana was ample, its local officers being the Inquisitor-General, three or four assistant inquisitors, a prosecutor, a judge who dealt with goods confiscated from those punished, like the owners of the site of the Madre de Dios, several lawyers, a magistrate concerned with “the secret prison,” and another concerned with those who would never leave prison. There was a notary responsible for recording secret interrogations, an accountant, a porter, two chaplains, six theologians, and about fifty familiares (informants). Between 1481 and 1522 more than one thousand people had probably been burned to death in Seville, while another two thousand had been condemned and abjured (reconciliados). This was about half the total of those who died in this way in all Spain. The fear caused in consequence naturally was already poisoning the intellectual life of the city.

  Some religious brotherhoods (cofradías) still in being in 2001 had been founded before 1500,24 but most of those important today were creatures of the mid-sixteenth century, as was the regularization of the processions: a Virgin and Christ inspired by a professional group, such as bakers or stevedores, carried on floats (pasos), attended by scenes re-creating the Last Supper or the Crucifixion. They would be followed by penitents, usually whipping themselves in expiation of sins. The celebration of Corpus Christi in August was then more significant than Holy Week. Another festival of importance was the so-called feast of the little bishop (obispillo), celebrated on St. Nicholas’s Day.25 There were also frequent irregular processions, such as that of 1,500 half-naked evangelical Christians who made their way from Carmona to the Chapel of the Antigua in the cathedral.26 Nor should we forget the procession of giants and wildly dressed children known as the mojarillas. Such manifestations passed to the New World. Thus Cortés and his men celebrated Palm Sunday in 1519, after a victory over the Maya at Potonchan, on the Gulf of Mexico, by holding a solemn Mass, and there was a procession and a cross put up in the square.27

  The cabildo wanted a university, and in 1502 they gained a royal provision that authorized them to mount just such an institution for the study of theology, canon law, law, medicine, and some other liberal arts. Given the times, there had to be a religious justification for this: a papal bull of 1505 recognized that Seville lacked and needed a university, and a rich converso, Maese Rodrigo Fernández de Santaella, bought some houses, where he began to build the proposed structure. He had earlier shown his learning by translating Marco Polo’s travels into Spanish. In 1515, Archbishop Deza, whose Jewish ancestry was often hinted at, founded his College of St. Thomas of Aquinas.

  Similarly, hospitals had to have a religious sanction. There were many of these, some tiny; for example, the Hospital del Rey had only twelve beds. Perhaps there were in Seville seventy-six hospitals in all. Some specialized, and there was one that concentrated on the new disease of syphilis, the New World’s chief contribution to European discomfort, still only partially relieved by pomade of mercury.

  Seville had increased in size in recent years. In 1475, its population had probably numbered forty thousand.28 But in 1520, there were perhaps sixty thousand inhabitants or even more. So many people came and went that it is hard to establish a reliable figure. Plague, hurricanes, droughts, famines, floods, all brought illness and death.29 Plague in particular hit Seville hard between 1505 and 1510. The historian Bernáldez estimated that it killed twenty-eight thousand people.30 A flood was equally damaging in 1507, while the famine of 1503 was a catastrophe, to be followed by another severe one in 1522. Syphilis was prevalent among the upper class and the prostitutes of the district near the river, the Mancebía. The cabildo’s brothels seem to have been healthier.31

  Then there was emigration: one out of three emigrants to the New World between 1492 and 1519 was Andalusian, and about two-thirds of those were from Seville. But these could not have totaled more than two thousand at most.

  On the other hand, the population had been increased and enhanced by Genoese and Florentine merchants and their families, as well as by other foreigners, many of whom were by now fully hispanized. In municipal documents, between 1472 and 1480, sixteen Genoese merchants figure as having been active in Seville, but between 1489 and 1515, there were over four hundred.32 Many took Castilian names: Marini became Marín; Castiglione, Castellón. The Genoese had had rights in Seville since the thirteenth century. For their help against the siege of Algeciras, so well remembered by Chaucer, Alfonso XI granted them freedom from paying the usual taxes. Many Castilians also came down to Seville in the hope of finding fame and fortune in the New World but sometimes remained in the capital of Andalusia. There were many Basques and Gallegos, too, most becoming sailors, while immigrants from Burgos were often traders, attracted similarly by new prospects beckoning in the Caribbean.

  There were still many slaves in Seville, more than there had been in the 1490s. A city of southern Europe at this time might reckon its riches in terms of the size of its slave population. Several thousand black or Berber slaves, many bought in Lisbon or from merchants established there, such as Bartolomeo Marchionni, or their representatives, such as Piero Rondinelli, worked in Seville alongside some Muslim slaves, survivors of the old kingdom of Granada. There were, too, a few hundred captives from the Canary Islands, some native Americans, and still a few eastern Europeans, who, as we have seen, had formed the main source of slaves in the Middle Ages in both Italy and Spain.33 Most were sold in the Patio de las Naranjas or on the steps, las gradas, of the cathedral, usually tattooed on their cheeks with a nail: a fleur-de-lis, a star, the cross of St. Andrew, or just the name of their master. They continued to act in all kinds of capacities: domestic servants, cooks, porters, wet nurses, founders of precious metals, tanners, potters, builders, messengers, and prostitutes. Slaves were not just the possessions of the rich; artisans, artists, and sea captains owned them, too. If the slaves from the Americas had proved better workers—rivals, say, to the blacks from Guinea—they would have been imported in large numbers to Spain. But they were too weak to seem competitive.

  A small number of free ex-Muslims (moriscos) lived in their district, which had been theirs from the
fourteenth century—the Adarvejo, near the Church of San Pedro. They were usually endogamous. In the early sixteenth century, their most common profession was that of builder. But others were greengrocers, grocers, spice merchants, tavern keepers, bakers, or just shopkeepers.

  The situation was very different with the Jewish conversos. They were in danger, but they remained influential. They were often rich, usually well connected. An arrangement had been made for them in 1511 to go to the New World. If they could afford to pay the large sum of 3 million maravedís, they could join the great adventure of emigration. Others maintained excellent positions in public life—for example, Francisco de Alcázar, who had the confidence of the ducal house of Medina Sidonia and became Treasurer of Seville, even if he had been reconciliado in 1493. Alcázar, like the Duchess of Medinaceli and Francisca Ponce de León, owned a ship that traded with the Indies, the San Salvador, and had also bought the lordship of La Palma, higher up the Guadalquivir, from Diego Colón. Both he and the banker Alonso Gutiérrez de Madrid, also a converso, were councillors in Seville.34

  Numerous such conversos were by now to be found in the New World. Most prominent were the Santa Clara family, one of whom, Cristóbal, had been treasurer in Santo Domingo, while his brother Bernardino had helped Cortés, as had Pedro de Maluenda, a well-connected merchant from Burgos who was commissary during the second part of Cortés’s campaign and died in Tenochtitlan of an unidentified fever soon after the conquest. Another converso from Sanlúcar de Barrameda, Alonso Caballero, whose portrait with that of his brother Diego, painted by Pedro de Campaña, would soon be seen in the chapel of “El Mariscal” in Seville Cathedral, was Cortés’s admiral after 1520. Conversos such as Juan Fernández de Varas and Rodrigo de Bastidas were among the richest entrepreneurs in Santo Domingo, and Las Casas, the indefatigable friend of the Indians, was also converso.

  In his last years, King Fernando had hardened his policies on the conversos. For example, Lucero, the hated prosecutor of Córdoba, returned in triumph in June 1511 with all the charges about the practices of the Inquisition that tolerant men had mounted against him wiped away. In February 1515, the clerical council of Seville, under the chairmanship of Archbishop Deza, had demanded a statute that would prevent the children of those condemned by the Holy Office from entering the Church as priests. That unchristian statement was signed by many who seem themselves to have been conversos, perhaps hoping thereby to escape attention to their own persons.35 Then a dispute between the town council of Seville and the Inquisition’s receiver of goods, Pedro de Villacís, was decided by the King in the latter’s favor.36

  A crisis also occurred with the arrest for “Jewish practices” of Gutierre de Prado, a merchant who had been collector of ecclesiastical rents. This was a shock, since not only was Prado related to many prominent families, but also, worse, it turned out that he owed money to many more.37 The alarm outshadowed the greatest previous Jewish scandal in the city, that of the arrest in 1494 of Álvaro del Río, a notary who had been secretary to Archbishop Hurtado de Mendoza and who had been burned in Segovia.38

  Many of the majordomos of great noblemen in Seville were conversos, and men such as Francisco de las Casas, who served the Medina Sidonia, or Gómez de Córdoba, who had that post with the Marquis of Montemayor, must have felt far from secure, even if some of them who acted for the Duke of Cadiz, such as Diego García, became out of self-defense denouncers of Jews.

  Seville had been known since Roman days for olive oil, wine, and wheat. The first was still not much used for cooking in the sixteenth century, yet it constituted the most important export, as it had in Muslim days, being carried then to Flanders, London, Genoa, Chios, and Messina. But now it was to be sold, and on a large scale, to the New World as well. “Seville owes everything to olives,” wrote a modern historian, and the simple statement cannot be contradicted.39 In the mid-fifteenth century, some 6.5 million kilos of olive oil were produced a year; in the sixteenth, that figure had risen by a quarter.40 The best region for olives was the Aljarafe, the fertile country to the west, between Seville and Huelva, where small proprietors mixed as farmers with noblemen and religious orders. The harvest was mostly carried out by women from all over Andalusia, beginning on All Saints’ Day, and lasted two months; the harvesters would live in special barracks (cortijos). They would be paid 5 or 6 maravedís a basketful, resulting in perhaps 300 maravedís per laborer.

  The Genoese were as usual the leading merchants. Thus, in respect of anticipated purchases, more than half the quantity was bought by them, the biggest dealer being Jacopo Sopranís.41 There were large warehouses for oil (almacenes) in most districts of Seville, especially in that of El Mar, the then neglected zone between the cathedral and the Arenal. The oil was held in oak vats, made elsewhere, and especially in Coria del Río, on the way to Sanlúcar de Barrameda, on the Guadalquivir. The list of those involved in olive oil is a social register of Old Seville, all the famous names from Genoa being included, but also local Spanish aristocrats—among them the Duke of Medina Sidonia, the Marquis of Arcos, the Count of Feria, and the Marquis of Priego.42

  What was oil used for if not for cooking? For eating with bread, certainly, but above all for soap; and thanks to this, Seville had become the most important place in Castile for this product. Traditional soap was dark, made from oil mixed with potash, the main factory standing near the mosque in the Plaza of San Salvador. The monarchs had made of it a monopoly that they had let to the Marquis of Tarifa, who had the largest share of it. Another share was in the hands of Luis Ponce de León, Marquis of Cadiz. They sublet, as was the custom, usually to Genoese.

  But by 1520 another type of soap was also enjoying successes. Francesco Sopranís Ripparolo, who hired a warehouse from the owners of the monopoly, had by then introduced a hard white version, made with oil and soda. His factories were in Triana, rented from the Almonte family, and at Santiponce, just outside Seville near the Jeronymite monastery of San Isidoro del Campo, from which he rented a warehouse. With his fellow Genoese Marco Castiglione, who had a third share, he controlled the market for soap until 1514 when he died. After 1517, Jacopo Sopranís, a cousin of Francesco, played the decisive part. The sales to the New World of this important product were considerable, these same Genoese traders soon having a foothold there. Clean hands, clean clothes, even clean feet were soon to be found everywhere in Spanish America. It may be recalled that Columbus allowed a monopoly to sell soap in La Española to a friend of his, Pedro de Salcedo.

  After oil came cereals. Seville obtained its wheat from the fields of Carmona and from Écija. The harvests, of course, fluctuated. The richest wheat magnate was the Marquis of Priego, whose bankers were the inevitable Gaspare Centurione and Giuliano Calvo, himself a partner of Stefano Centurione. By 1516, wheat was available on a larger scale than it had been in the fifteenth century, and the Centuriones were the beneficiaries. The demand for flour in the Indies was greater every year, and the merchants knew that whatever else the settlers could not afford, this was essential. Until the conquest of Mexico and the consequent colonization of a temperate zone, Castilian wheat could not be replaced by local production (the first to grow wheat in the New World was the free black Portuguese Juan Garrido, who had fought in so many campaigns and who had his farm at Coyoacan).43

  Seville and its surroundings were also then the main wine-producing region of Spain, though in the previous generation or so there had been new developments to meet local needs in the north, on the Rioja, the Duero, and the banks of the beautiful Miño, in Galicia. Demand for wine was greatly stimulated by commerce with the Indies. The travelers needed a product that lasted. Hence the attraction of the fortified wines of the Sierra de Morena, of Constantina, Cazalla, and Guadalcanal; that of Cazalla was the most sought after, for it made a great impression on the indigenous peoples.44 The great sherries of Jerez and the manzanillas of Sanlúcar de Barrameda, the Duke of Medina Sidonia’s port at the mouth of the Guadalquivir, were easy to ship on the fleets leavin
g from there.

  Much of the wine was traded by Genoese (Bernardo Grimaldi, Benedetto Doria, and Antonio Piñelo) or Florentines (Piero Rondinelli), but Juan de Burgos, a merchant who brought supplies to, and then fought alongside, Cortés and remained in New Spain, perhaps because of his anxieties about being a converso, was also important. The biggest buyers were García de Jaén and Fernando de Sevilla, both conversos, the latter having been reconciliado in 1494.45

  Spices, sugar, and rice were also easy to buy in Seville. The capital of the European spice trade was Lisbon, but the traders in Andalusia were very interested. Piero Rondinelli was prominent in buying pepper from merchants of Cremona who had established themselves in Lisbon.46 This sale of spices was another near-monopoly of the Genoese.47 Sugar obtained from cane in the Portuguese Atlantic islands was also a significant item in the markets in Seville. The same product from the Canaries began to appear after 1485. Again, the Genoese had a quasi-monopoly of the sales. Of course, this industry, which had employed Columbus in his youth, was also one for the future in the Caribbean.48