Dogs of God

by James Reston Jr

TOLEDO

  Toledo, navel of Spain, founded by Hercules, Roman city, imperial capital of the Visigoths, was the most important city of the Iberian peninsula. Citadel of the Moors, refuge and hellhole for Jews, triumph and stain for Christians, City of Three Cultures, in Toledo all of past Spanish religious history was compressed. The Visigoths had lost it to the invading Moors in A.D. 712 after its rough king, Rodrigo, had seen an Arab beauty named Florinda bathing naked in the Tagus and raped her. This outrage brought the African hordes north across the Strait of Gibraltar in a fury of vengeance. The Jews of the city, who had long suffered persecution under the Goths, had opened the city’s gates for the invaders and were rewarded for their heroics by the Moors. After his defeat, a woebegone Rodrigo had lamented, in self-pity and self-absolution, that “I’ve given away my kingdom for a cava.” Cava in Arabic means “whore.”

  In the nearly four hundred years that the Moors ruled the city, Toledo became a haven and a lure for persecuted Jews across the wide expanse of Mediterranean lands. The Jewish population of the city was among the largest in the peninsula, along with Seville, Málaga, Córdoba, and Granada. Toledo’s reputation for openness, as a haven of tolerance, and as a center of learning, especially of translation, spread far and wide. Since the eastern Jews from as far away as Baghdad were fluent in Arabic as well as the tongue of the street called Romance (a hodgepodge of garbled Latin and the precursor of modern Spanish and French), they graced the ateliers of translation and worked beside Arabized Christians, called Mozarabs, to transfer the Romance of the Jewish translators into formal Latin.

  Thus dawned the golden age of Spanish Jewry, often dated to the years 900–1300. In this period, brilliant figures emerged. They included Avicebron (1022–1070), also known as Solomon ben Gabirol, who was born in Málaga and who became an important figure in the Hebrew School of philosophy and poetry. His work was to have a profound influence on the Christian Scholastics later, and he was to serve the Jewish vizier in the Berber kingdom of Granada as a physician and chronicler. A hundred years later came the great Maimonides (1135–1204), also known as Moses ben Maimon, who was born in Córdoba, whose book of Jewish law was a monumental achievement, and whose works in religion, philosophy, and medicine earned him an everlasting reputation for range and brilliance.

  Alongside these great Jewish scholars were other notable figures who flocked to Toledo for its vibrant intellectual atmosphere and for this cross-fertilization of civilizations. These included Averroës, who was born in Córdoba and later became the chief judge there, as he served as the personal physician to two Moorish caliphs. He became famous for his integration of Islamic thought with Greek classics, especially Aristotle and Plato. There was Adelard of Bath, who came to Spain to learn Arabic, became an interpreter of Arabic scientific knowledge, and translated Euclid’s Elements from the Arabic into Latin. And there was perhaps the greatest translator of all, Gerard of Cremona, an Italian who lived most of his life in the twelfth century in Toledo and to whom over eighty translations of medicine, science, and philosophy are attributed, including Ptolemy’s Almagest.

  When, in 1085, Alfonso VI defeated the Moors and recaptured Toledo for the Christians, it was said that his horse went down on its knees before the Bab-al-Mardum mosque, and that later, a cross of Jesus Christ was found squirreled away and bricked up in a remote corner of the mosque, where it was bathed in the light of a lamp that had miraculously stayed lit since the time of the Visigoths. The mosque was promptly renamed Cristo de la Luz. Alfonso proclaimed himself to be the “Emperor of Toledo,” and he appointed the heroic El Cid as its first mayor. In the distant hills, the defeated general of the Moors, Abdul Walid, swore not to leave until he reconquered his beloved city. He too fell to his knees, praying to Allah to allow him to continue to gaze at his city until he had accomplished his goal. And in granting the Moor’s wish, legend has it, Allah turned the sad warrior to stone. The figure of his noble, turbaned head can be seen high above the city to this day.

  Like Rome, the city rested upon seven hills. The Tagus River curled around the city’s Alcazar, affording an approach by land on only one side. Within its warren of narrow streets and lanes, Jews and Christians and Arabs had lived side by side alternately in rancor and in harmony, over the centuries. The flowering of cultural splendor and religious tolerance had come in the thirteenth century, during the reign of Alfonso X the Learned. During his splendid reign, from 1252–1284, the three religions coexisted peacefully in harmony. Toledo’s principal synagogue, whose ceiling was supported by cedars of Lebanon, whose distinctive arches were Moorish, and whose capitals were Gothic, had been built in the ninth century. But early in the fifteenth century it had been stormed by a mob, led by a Christian rabble-rouser named Vincent Ferrer, and converted into a church, renamed Santa Maria la Blanca.

  In the horror of 1391, when the orgy of killing and plunder was visited on Jews across Spain, Toledo’s war against the Jews was fierce. The mass conversions under duress took place here as elsewhere, under the watchful eye of demagogues and murderers. Friar Vincent Ferrer was the most effective of these. A Dominican of Valencia, he was later sainted upon the argument that he had miraculously converted no less than 35,000 Jews. The most ferocious recruiters, it seemed, were conversos themselves, who displayed the most passionate anti-Semitism and tried to justify themselves with the harshest acts. The converso issue refused to die, as a new wave of anti-converso violence broke out in 1467 in Toledo and again during the War of Succession (1475–79).

  Thus, as Ferdinand and Isabella took up residence in Toledo and looked toward convening a historic Cortes in early 1480, the air was rife with hate and racist passion, directed against Jews and converted Jews alike. In the streets, children chanted songs about Jews as “brutal animals,” “bloodthirsty devils,” and in the unkindest cut of all, “leathery turtles.” Priests invoked Matthew 7:15, “Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.” The official chronicler of the new sovereigns, Andrés Bernáldez, the Curate of the Palace, set the tone for convening of the Cortes when he wrote of the Jews:

  “This accursed race is either unwilling to bring their children to be baptized, or if they do, they wash away the stain on returning home. They dress their stews and other dishes with oil, instead of lard. They abstain from pork, keep the Passover, eat meat in Lent and send oil to replenish the lamps of their synagogues. With many other abominable ceremonies of their religion, they entertain no respect for monastic life, and frequently profane the sanctity of religious houses in violation or seduction of their names. They are an exceedingly politic and ambitious people, capturing the most lucrative municipal offices and preferring to gain their livelihood by traffic in which they make exorbitant gains, rather than by manual labor or mechanical arts. By their wicked contrivances they have amassed great wealth, and thus are often able to ally themselves by marriage with noble Christian families.”

  The ravings of anti-Semites and provocateurs was one thing, but the society of nobles was now moving toward a broad consensus that an Inquisition was needed and would be highly useful.

  On January 2, 1480, the delegates to the Cortes gathered in Toledo for their important session. They came from the fourteen major towns of Castile: Burgos, León, Ávila, Segovia, Zamora, Toro, Salamanca, Soria, Murcia, Cuenca, Toledo, Seville, Córdoba, and Jaén. Three lesser towns—Valladolid, Madrid, and Guadalajara—were also represented. Various prelates and caballeros represented King Ferdinand, and of course, in attendance also were Isabella’s two principal ecclesiastical advisers, Friar Hernando de Talavera and Cardinal Pedro González de Mendoza.

  Talavera was a scholarly and humble Hieronymite monk; significantly, he was Torquemada’s successor as the queen’s confessor. His connection to Toledo was deep, for he had been born in that city fifty years before of a mother who was a converted Christian. His Order of St. Jerome, founded in Toledo a hundred years earlier, emphasized the study of Scripture and acti
ve work in the Church, as well as an intensely personal bond with the Almighty. He was currently the prior of the Monastery of Santa María del Prado near Valladolid. At her first confession, the queen had knelt for the session, and waited for her confessor to join her. But Talavera remained bolted to his chair.

  “Is it not customary for both parties to kneel?” the queen asked quizzically.

  “No, Your Majesty,” the monk replied, “this is God’s tribunal. I act here as His minister. It is fitting that I should keep my seat, while Your Highness kneels before me.”

  In relating this story to the king, she gushed enthusiastically, “This is the confessor I wanted!” Promptly, the king had retained his services as well, and the prelate rose rapidly in influence and responsibility. For the queen he would set a high standard of moral example. “Regard the level to which you were born, Your Majesty, and why you were placed at the peak of honors,” he said. “You must aspire to perfection in your position. If you are Queen, you ought to be a model and an inspiration to your subjects in the service of God.”

  The second of the queen’s chief prelates was Cardinal Pedro González de Mendoza. This powerhouse hailed from the famous Mendoza clan of Guadalajara, a family that, since the eleventh century, had ruled a string of strategic castles in their vast domain from Guadalajara to Almarzon. So intimidating was the Mendoza tribe at this point in history that they were known grandly as “the Mendoza.” González de Mendoza had been an important figure in the royal court since Isabella’s childhood. In his early career as bishop of Calahorra, when rebels had challenged the competence of Enrique IV, he had given a powerful and influential speech on the virtues of obedience, even when the king was hopelessly ineffective.

  “The Holy Scriptures expressly forbid rebellion and order obedience to kings,” he declared, “even if the king is unlearned in kingship. Because the destructions suffered by divided kingdoms are incomparably greater than those suffered because of an incompetent king…” From the see of Calahorra, González de Mendoza had been promoted through the ranks of the Church to the bishoprics of Osma and Siguenza, to the archbishopric of Seville, as he took part in the intrigues of the court.

  He was a very different sort than the pious, ascetic Talavera. He was prolific both as a writer and a lover, having sired three sons, two of whom issued from the queen’s lady-in-waiting. He also had a taste for grand ceremony. When Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia came to Spain in the summer of 1472, González de Mendoza had ridden a humble mule in the welcoming procession, but he was preceded by drummers and trumpeters, flanked by thirty knights, and followed by two hundred light infantrymen. During that visit, González de Mendoza negotiated a cardinal’s hat for himself.

  Over time, due to his power and influence as a statesman more than a priest, he became known first as the “Great Cardinal” and later as “the third king of Spain.” Along with the rest of the Mendoza clan, the cardinal had been active in the War of Succession, seemingly on both sides, for the Mendoza initially opposed the marriage of Ferdinand to Isabella and had put their castles on alert to block the groom from reaching his marriage site in Valladolid. But when it counted, González de Mendoza swung over to the winning side. He stood firmly now on the side of the young sovereigns… indeed, he stood with Ferdinand at the Battle of Toro in 1476 in full battle gear and in command of the cavalry.

  For the past two years, González de Mendoza and Talavera had worked as a team. To Talavera, the cardinal had delegated the task of evangelizing the insincere and recalcitrant conversos. His sermons addressed doctrinal questions deftly. The first convert was Jesus Christ himself, and the city of Israel had become the city of Christ, he argued. All the prophecies of the Old Testament had been realized in the life of Jesus, and there was no longer any place in the land for the Old Law. “Think not that I come to destroy the law, or the prophets,” the friar quoted Matthew 5:17. “I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill./For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.”

  But if Talavera’s sermons did not sway the insincere Christian of Jewish blood, stiffer measures dictating proper religious practice were given biblical sanction. “And into whatsoever city or town ye shall enter, enquire who in it is worthy,” the friar quoted Matthew 10:11. “… and if the house be worthy, let your peace come upon it; but if it be not worthy, let your peace return to you.” The Church announced practical measures for the city by which a Christian might demonstrate his worthiness and any Christian engaged in secret Judaic practices might be flushed out. Henceforth, every Christian household was required to display an image of the Cross or a picture of the Virgin Mary. Henceforth, washing the dead in hot water, and swaddling the corpse in a new shroud, and most especially, putting a piece of money in its mouth in the Hebrew custom was prohibited. Henceforth, cooking in the kosher style was forbidden. Upon the pain of arrest, a mother was not to plunge her newborn child into a basin of water, gold, silver, seedpearl, wheat, and barley in the Hebrew fashion. And the Church would be vigilant in monitoring how New Christians buried their dead, for the Jewish custom of burying their dead outside the city was well known.

  Cardinal González de Mendoza gave his blessing to these ordinances. An announcement of them was nailed to the doors of churches. Their purpose, the Great Cardinal said, was “to nurture the Christian life so that Christianity might thrive in this noble city and this monarchy.” Any who disobeyed them would suffer the most severe penalties. Talavera added darkly that “in some cases offenders would have to die.”

  There was another member of this team. He was Alfonso de Ojeda, the most rabid promoter of a fierce Inquisition. His sermons were so incendiary that people were reminded of the notorious Friar Vincent Ferrer, the guiding force behind the forced conversion of Jews in the early part of the fifteenth century. A Dominican at the Monastery of San Pablo, Ojeda was dubbed “Friar Vicente the Second.” Privately, to the monarchs he had been whispering shocking stories of Jewish and converso perfidy and blasphemy for several years. When the monarchs were in Córdoba in 1478, for example, Ojeda arrived at the court with news of six conversos in Seville who had blasphemed the Catholic faith on Holy Thursday, and had the town in an uproar.

  More publicly, Ojeda’s sermons were riveting. Apocalyptic foreboding spiced them throughout, engendering widespread panic. The Spanish land was moving into the Last Days, Ojeda preached, a time when all good Christians should expect the Day of Judgment on earth. In preparation, the Holy Mother Church and all of Spain needed to be purified. All Jews would be swept from the land. For good measure, the conversos too, who were neither Christian nor Jew, would also disappear in the Final Battle.

  This triumvirate—the Great Cardinal, the cerebral theologian, and the firebrand—formed the core of the Commission of Inquiry that Queen Isabella had set up two years before to look into the practicalities of a possible Inquisition. The firebrand, Friar Ojeda, was the commission’s leader. Now, they came to the Cortes armed with their findings.

  This trinity would soon enough be joined by a fourth prelate, the prior of the Monastery of the Holy Cross in Segovia: Tomás de Torquemada.

  The first order of business for the Cortes was financial. Due to the ineptitude and corruption of their predecessor, Enrique El Impotente, Ferdinand and Isabella had inherited a royal treasury that was virtually empty. Desperate measures had been quickly adopted to sustain the royal forces during the expensive, four-year War of Succession. Now it was essential for Ferdinand and Isabella to take control of the towns of Castile, but also the nobles, especially the fifteen most powerful families such as the Mendoza, Ponce de León, Medina-Sidonia, Pacheco, and Albuquerque clans. From the beginning of their reign the young monarchs had pursued a determined policy to undermine the power of the great families, which had grown to an intolerable and disruptive level under the weak monarchs of the past and whose extraordinary power made the land unruly and chaotic.

  The great fam
ilies sustained themselves through taxes on commerce and agriculture within their domains. Predictably, the royal treasury often did not receive its fair share. The process of emasculating the nobility needed to begin by reviewing (and eventually eliminating) the extravagant grants that had traditionally been accorded these families by the crown, and also to remove the historic exemptions from taxation that they had enjoyed in the past. Toward this purpose, the tax collection system needed a complete overhaul, for it was characterized by inadequate accounting and reporting and downright corruption.

  Since conversos were the most skilled tax collectors, they were both pressured by the crown to make their sporadic collection more regular and efficient and resented by the objects of their efforts. At the Cortes, the monarchs initiated a sweeping reform. Its effect was to centralize the entire process of tax collection under the control of the monarchy. Of particular notice was the medieval system called the merced, which dealt with liens on royal revenue purchased by the noble families and held for life or in perpetuity. After much wrangling in the Cortes of Toledo, the royal confessor, Hernando de Talavera, was put in charge of investigating the validity of past mercedes and tightening the controls on the issuance of new privileges.

  Reforms in other important areas of administration were also set in motion at the Toledo Cortes. These too would speed the centralization of power in the hands of the monarchs. The ragged, uneven, and unequal system of justice was reviewed, as the most prominent lawyer of the land, Díaz de Montalvo, was ordered to standardize Castile’s jurisprudence. This massive job eventually became known as “the Edicts of Montalvo.”