Through the drizzle the one unmistakable figure was El Chico himself, conspicuous on his great white stallion and embroidered apron. As the foot soldiers attempted to scramble across a swollen stream called Mingozales, the king’s defenses seemed to melt away. Nearly deserted by the streambed, Boabdil realized immediately that he made a tempting target. And so he dismounted and hid among the bushes and willows. But a Christian cavalier came upon him moments later, and soon two more arrived. Seeing that his situation was hopeless, and puffing himself up with his full dignity, he demanded to surrender honorably to the senior knight, as befitted his station. He was taken way to Lucena to be imprisoned for a day in the Torre del Moral.
The disaster of Lucena did not end with the capture of the Moorish king. Ali Atar too was cornered later in the day. His surrender was demanded as well, but his reaction was different. “Never to a Christian dog!” he hissed defiantly and moments later his skull was split. The battle had turned into a rout.
Twenty-two Muslim battle flags fell into Christian hands on that day. They were taken to a church in the village of Baena. In the years that followed, they would be brought into the streets on the feast day of St. George, the dragon slayer, to mark the turning point in the last war against the Moors.
9
The Inquisitor’s Martyrdom
SEVILLE
In the year that followed the first, smoldering auto-da-fe of the new Spanish Inquisition in Seville, the Holy Office worked steadily and diligently at the enormous, nationwide dragnet it had conceived for itself. The inquisitors were about the business of God’s vengeance, and His judgments could be cruel. In the words of an apologist, they were cutting away “a rotten limb” from the body politic. “Once the evil men are liquidated, God will bring His mercy.”
The challenge was not so much to deal with the prominent conversos and heretics like Diego de Susan—their cases were easily dispatched—but to manage the thousands upon thousands of cases involving ordinary people that awaited disposition. In this budding reign of terror, the Church encouraged accusations of heresy; because a mere accusation presumed guilt, and because it was so easy to accuse a neighbor or friend, even in an effort to save oneself, the caseload mounted exponentially. The task was organizational as much as legal or ecclesiastical or purgative: to discriminate between the recalcitrant and the compliant, to distinguish between those who were beyond the help of the Church and must therefore be turned over to the “secular arm” for punishment, and those who might be “reconciled” with the Christian faith. There was as well the financial side, the aspect of the business that most interested Ferdinand: how to manage and dispose of the vast amount of confiscated land and property that devolved to the hands of the Inquisition, and how to translate this property into a fund to finance the War Against the Moors.
In Seville, the first three inquisitors were overwhelmed. Inevitably, they sought to lighten their workload by summary judgment, or a quick resort to torture to secure a confession. In the first year of its life, the local Holy Office cut many corners. Abuses were common. In due course, the reports of this abuse reached the Vatican, carried to Rome by influential conversos who were themselves in danger.
On January 29, 1482, Pope Sixtus IV issued a stern warning both to the Spanish monarchs and to the inquisitors about the excesses of the Spanish Inquisition. The inquisitors were disregarding judicial procedures, the pope charged in his Brief. Individuals were being accused in violation of justice and “punished by severe tortures.” The crime of heresy was being alleged indiscriminately without foundation. The pope demanded that the procedures of the Inquisition be brought into concert with common law. If the abuses continued, he would fire the current inquisitors and replace them with more responsible prelates.
Stern as his rebuke sounded, Sixtus IV undercut its impact almost immediately by sending a fawning communication to the Spanish monarchs. Only days after the Brief of January 29, Sixtus wrote deferentially to Isabella, applauding her pious work with the Inquisition. “We rejoice in our heart, beloved daughter, at the determination and diligence you put into things so desired by us,” he wrote. “We should always be diligent in applying the necessary remedies to such pestilential harm. You take upon yourself this cause of God, because in nothing else can you serve him better than this.”
Nevertheless, the pope’s attention to Spanish affairs was sporadic and deflective. His mind was elsewhere, on problems closer to home, for war had broken out on the Italian peninsula. The Vatican itself was imperiled by soldiers from Turkey, from Naples, and from the Florence of Lorenzo the Magnificent.
“In the Pope’s antechambers,” wrote an Italian scribe named Sigismondo di Conti, “instead of cassocked priests, armed guards keep watch. Soldiers equipped for battle, and drawn up before the gates of the Papal palace. All court officials are filled with terror and anguish. The fury of the populace is only restrained by the fear of soldiers.” The purity of the Church in faraway Spain concerned the pope less than the very survival of the Vatican. In this desperate situation, he would need all the support he could get from the Spanish throne.
On February 11, Sixtus commissioned seven more inquisitors, including Tomás de Torquemada. All were Dominicans, from the order known as the Dogs of God. Significantly, these new inquisitors were to be under the control of the Spanish crown, and not answerable to the Vatican. It was a point that Ferdinand and Isabella had insisted upon.
Sixtus IV made one last effort to impart order and judicious propriety to the Spanish Inquisition. On April 18, 1482, he issued an extraordinary bull concerning the process of the tribunal. Heresy must be tried like any other crime, and the accused must have the right to a fair trial and to simple justice. The names of accusers and witnesses must be revealed to the accused. He or she must be given counsel, must be imprisoned in episcopal jails, must have the right to confess in secret. And finally, most galling of all to Ferdinand, the person convicted of heresy had the sacred right to appeal to the Holy See. He who would block such appeal risked excommunication.
Before this bull could be nailed to the door of a single church in Spain, Ferdinand responded with fury and contempt. The pope had overstepped the bounds of his office. The pontiff was clearly infatuated by the representations of New Christians, Ferdinand wrote. The King of Spain had no intention of allowing the provisions of the bull ever to take effect. He and he alone must exert total control over the Inquisition.
Throughout the summer of 1482, the planning for the war in the south proceeded in concert with the organization of the Inquisition across the Spanish peninsula. Fleeting contacts with the rulers in the Alhambra were maintained, even as the Christian monarchs schemed about how best to conquer the Moorish state.
In the midst of these epic developments, the royals were in Toledo, and Isabella was pregnant again. If her child was a male, the throne of a conquered Granada would be his. But on June 28, she gave birth to twins, both girls; one was stillborn. Ferdinand left Toledo after the births. Far more than his fatherly duties, his preoccupation was simultaneously the war and the organization of the Inquisition in his ancestral kingdom of Aragon.
Aragon presented the Inquisition with a different challenge than Castile. In this far-flung kingdom, which included not only Aragon, but Catalonia and Valencia, Majorca and the other Balearic Islands, and dependencies in Sicily, Corsica, and Sardinia, the institution had existed since the thirteenth century. Although it had been essentially dormant for many decades, the remnants of its apparatus had to be scrapped if a new, vigorous administration were to be put in its place. Moreover, the spirit of independence ruled there. The nobles of Aragon and Valencia did not easily suffer the interference either of their king or of a foreign inquisition. Resistance to the Inquisition was immediate in the cities of Barcelona, Saragossa, Teruel, and Valencia. At first, Ferdinand proceeded cautiously, respectfully, recommending lenient and nonconfrontational methods to the Aragonese inquisitors.
But in October 1482, a dramatic
change took place when Ferdinand got papal approval to appoint Tomás de Torquemada as the inquisitor for Aragon and Valencia. Torquemada’s stock was rising. Months later, he was promoted again to Inquisitor-General of both Castile and Aragon, as his jurisdiction over both kingdoms was consolidated.
On January 1, 1483, Torquemada received a letter from the king informing his leading inquisitor of his decision to expel all Jews from Christian Andalusia. The order heralded a new aggressiveness toward the Jews. It was a harbinger of broader measures to come.
With the advancement of Torquemada, the interference of the Vatican ceased. Sixtus IV became irrelevant to the Spanish scene. Before he died six months later, he portrayed the Inquisition as a “great work of purification,” and donated its control formally and entirely to the Spanish monarchs. The pontiff compared the effort to the zeal of Jesus Christ who, he proclaimed in stretching a point, had consolidated his holy kingdom on earth by the destruction of idolatry.
With patent efficiency, Torquemada proceeded to break the country down into regional tribunals, dominated by his Dominican brothers. Late in 1483, this sallow Dominican was given a new and unprecedented title to go along with his extraordinary power: Grand Inquisitor-General or simply the Grand Inquisitor.
Among Torquemada’s first acts as Grand Inquisitor was the demand that conversos present themselves for confession. He ordered the rabbis of Toledo to swear an oath that they would report any converso who observed Jewish rites and ceremonies, and that these rabbis would expel from their temples any Jew who refused to become a witness against their own people.
In Torquemada, the zeal of a fanatic was joined with superior administrative skills. Every holocaust needs a cold-hearted organization man. To Torquemada, the Inquisition was not about human beings but about organizational charts and clerical appointments and regional commissions, and later about standardizing instructions to his lesser tribunals across the country. In the minds of both the king and the pope, as well as the Cardinal of Spain, González de Mendoza, here was the man to mold this holy enterprise into an engine of purification—purification by fire.
After the capture of Boabdil and the crushing defeat of the Moors at Lucena in April 1483, a few bloodied survivors limped back to Muslim territory. Their bleak news spread rapidly through the land of the Moors. In the seesaw battle for the public’s allegiance, Muley Aben Hassan was once again in the ascendant, as the word of Boabdil’s humiliating surrender was received contemptuously. From Málaga, Muley returned to Granada and took charge of the Alhambra again. But his high-spirited, determined wife, Ayxa the Chaste, Boabdil’s mother, merely moved across the narrow gorge of the Rio Darro to the opposing hill of the Albaicín and took up residence in the fortress there, known as the alcazaba.
All support for Boabdil had by no means evaporated, especially among the common people, who well remembered Muley’s cruelty. And so on opposite hills in Granada, no more than a few hundred meters apart as the crow and the catapulted artillery fly, the supporters of father and son faced one another. The knights of the realm were for Muley, while the common people supported Boabdil.
Meanwhile, Boabdil languished in splendid captivity in Lucena. There, the count of Cabra lavished royal treatment on him, handling his distinguished prisoner with the honor and respect due a king, while he waited for Ferdinand and Isabella to decide what to do with their prize.
In Córdoba, the court gathered to debate the options. Rodrigo Ponce de León, the marquis of Cádiz, argued for Boabdil’s early release, and in this, he was seconded by the Grand Cardinal of Spain, Pedro González de Mendoza. Both these powerful men felt that Boabdil was more useful in Granada than in Castilian exile. The more the internal strife, the more the chance that the Moorish state would implode, rather than have to be conquered. In the chronicle of the Grand Cardinal, the phrase, later made even more famous by others in history was first uttered, “a kingdom divided against itself cannot stand.”
From Granada came competing ransom proposals from the competing sides. Muley sent his embassy to Córdoba, proposing a huge ransom if his son could be returned to the Alhambra. It seemed not to matter to the father whether his son came home on horseback or in a box. But the sultana put forward a more attractive alternative, which seemed to appeal especially to Queen Isabella. The queen mother, as well, offered a huge ransom for her son’s return, but suggested that he be allowed to retain his crown as a vassal to the Castilian monarchs. The practice of annual tribute would be renewed. A number of Christian prisoners would be returned, and as surety for the deal, Boabdil’s only son was offered as a hostage.
To this proposal Ferdinand added a few clever stipulations. Most important, Boabdil must promise to allow safe passage for Christian soldiers marching through territory that El Chico controlled. There must be a two-year truce between the sides. When the provisions were transcribed, Boabdil accepted them gratefully and prepared to return to his homeland. But Ferdinand had one last demand: the king of the Moors must come to him for a ceremony of groveling homage. All must witness his disgrace and subservience. In late August, Boabdil rode magnificently and publicly from his prison to the royal palace in Córdoba. There he fell to his knees before Ferdinand and kissed his hand. Once upon his feet, the Moor delivered a flowery speech of praise for his captor, which went on so long that Ferdinand finally raised his hand for
silence.
“Enough!” he reportedly said. “There is no need for these compliments. I trust in your integrity. And I trust that you will do all that becomes a good man and a good king.”
With that, a colorful parade gathered for Boabdil’s exit. King Ferdinand and his vassal rode side by side through the streets of Córdoba before a cheering throng. A few Moorish knights followed behind, and behind them, a complement of Christian knights, including the marquis of Cádiz. Outside the city walls, the kings parted amid more speeches. Ferdinand turned north toward Guadalupe. Important matters, including the organization of the Inquisition in Aragon, demanded his attention.
At the border, an escort from his mother awaited Boabdil. A dangerous passage lay ahead, and so the king moved warily through his own kingdom under the cover of darkness. At the gate to Albaicín, the king slipped through unnoticed and was soon welcomed in the alcazaba. The following morning, the news of Boabdil’s arrival spread rapidly. When his father heard about it, his fury was considerable. Through the streets and squares running battles between the supporters of each side raged. But civil strife carried no glory, and after a few days an uneasy armistice was arranged. Boabdil agreed to leave Granada for the port city of Almería, where his base of support was unequivocal, and where the 500-year-old alcazaba rivaled the bastions of Granada.
The House of the Moors stood divided against itself.
Early in 1484, the attention of the Spanish king and queen had shifted to the scrubland of Ferdinand’s kingdom of Aragon. In mid-January they convened a Cortes at Tarazona, a town northwest of Saragossa, where the main focus was the final organization of the Aragonese Inquisition. In the previous two years, as the monarchs gained total control over the Castilian Inquisition, they had moved cautiously in Aragon, where the power of local lords was far stronger and deeply rooted in the ancient tradition known as the fueros, or powers, of the local establishment. With the extension of Torquemada’s jurisdiction over Aragon as well as Castile, the Grand Inquisitor had gradually appointed local inquisitors to his liking. At first, Sixtus IV had attempted to place roadblocks in the way of Ferdinand and Torquemada, lest the Vatican lose complete control over the Aragon Inquisition, as had happened in Castile. But these impediments had been removed one by one, with the quiet help of Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia, the powerful Spanish cardinal, who like Ferdinand salivated at the prospect of seizing the property of wealthy Aragonese conversos.
As his provincial inquisitors, Torquemada had appointed two Dominicans, Gaspar Juglar, and the young canon of Saragossa’s cathedral, Pedro Arbués, who had distinguished himself both for his th
eology and for his zeal. The Grand Inquisitor, in turn, had organized lesser tribunals throughout Aragon. High on the agenda of the Tarazona Cortes was the imperative to accord these tribunals the royal stamp of approval. Catalonia had refused to send delegates to the Cortes, for its leaders opposed the appointment of Torquemada’s men. But Torquemada nominated two new inquisitors for Barcelona anyway.
The reaction was immediate. Worthies in Barcelona wrote to Ferdinand that Torquemada’s appointments were “against the liberties, constitutions and agreements solemnly sworn by Your Majesty!” and that, moreover, there were very few heretics in Catalonia. “We do not believe,” the city councilors of Barcelona were to declare later, “that to be a converso makes one a heretic.” The king waved these protests aside. On May 7, Ferdinand issued a directive for his whole kingdom that the inquisitors and their designees were to be honored and assisted everywhere. Any interference would be severely punished.
“There is no intention of infringing the fueros but rather of enforcing their observance,” the king wrote to the disgruntled Catalans. “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 as few heretics as you state, there should not be such a dread of the Inquisition. It is not to be impeded… for be assured: no cause or interest, however great, shall be tolerated to interfere with its proceeding.”
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