THE MASSACRES OF 1391
The dean and chapter became alarmed and appealed to the king, but Juan, in place of enforcing his neglected commands, replied that he would look into the matter; the zeal of the archdeaconwas holy, but it must not be allowed to breed disturbance for, although the Jews were wicked, they were under the royal protection. This vacillation encouraged Martínez who labored still more strenuously to inflame the people, newly prejudiced against the Jews by the murder of Yuçaf Pichon, who had been greatly beloved by all Seville.[312]No one dared to interfere in their defence, but Martínez furnished an opportunity of silencing him by calling in question in his sermons the powers of the pope in certain matters. He was summoned before an assembly of theologians and doctors, when he was as defiant of the episcopal authority as of the royal, rendering himself contumacious and suspect of heresy, wherefore on August 2, 1389, Archbishop Barroso suspended him both as to jurisdiction and preaching until his trial should be concluded.[313]This gave the Jews a breathing-space, but Barroso died, July 7, 1390, followed, October 9, by Juan I. The chapter must have secretly sympathized with Martínez, for it elected him one of the provisors of the diocesesede vacante, thus clothing him with increased power, and we hear nothing more of the trial for heresy.[314]
Juan had left as his successor Henry III, known asEl Doliente, or the Invalid, a child of eleven, and quarrels threatening civil war at once arose over the question of the regency. Martínez now had nothing to fear and he lost no time in sending, December 8th, to the clergy of the towns in the diocese, commands under pain of excommunication to tear down within three hours the synagogues of the enemies of God calling themselves Jews; the building materials were to be used for the repair of the churches; if resistance was offered it was to be suppressed by force and an interdict be laid on the town until the good work was accomplished.[315]These orders were not universally obeyed but enough ruin was wrought to lead the frightened aljama of Seville to appeal to the regency, threatening to leave the land if they could not be protected from Martínez. The answer to this was prompt and decided. On December 22d a missive was addressed to the dean and chapter and was officially read to them, January 10, 1391. It held them responsible for his acts as theyhad elected him provisor and had not checked him; he must be at once removed from office, be forced to abstain from preaching and to rebuild the ruined synagogues, in default of which they must make good all damages and incur a fine of a thousand gold doblas each with other arbitrary punishments. Letters of similar import were addressed at the same time to Martínez himself. On January 15th the chapter again assembled and presented its official reply, which deprived Martínez of the provisorship, forbade him to preach against the Jews and required him within a year to rebuild all synagogues destroyed by his orders. Then Martínez arose and protested that neither king nor chapter had jurisdiction over him and their sentences were null and void. The synagogues had been destroyed by order of Archbishop Barroso—two of them in his lifetime—and they had been built illegally without licence. His defiant answer concluded with a declaration that he repented of nothing that he had done.[316]
THE MASSACRES OF 1391
The result justified the dauntless reliance of Martínez on the popular passion which he had been stimulating for so many years. What answer the regency made to this denial of its jurisdiction the documents fail to inform us, but no effective steps were taken to restrain him. His preaching continued as violent as ever and the Seville mob grew more and more restless in the prospect of gratifying at once its zeal for the faith and its thirst for pillage. In March the aspect of affairs was more alarming than ever; the rabble were feeling their way, with outrages and insults, and the Judería was in hourly danger of being sacked. Juan Alonso Guzman, Count of Niebla, the most powerful noble of Andalusia, was adelantado of the province and alcalde mayor of Seville and his kinsman, Alvar Pérez de Guzman, was alguazil mayor. On March 15th they seized some of the most turbulent of the crowd and proceeded to scourge two of them but, in place of awing the populace, this led to open sedition. The Guzmans were glad to escape with their lives and popular fury was directed against the Jews, resulting in considerable bloodshed and plunder, but at length the authorities, aided by the nobles, prevailed and order was apparently restored. By this time the agitation was spreading to Córdova, Toledo, Burgos and other places. Everywhere fanaticism and greed were aroused and the Council of Regency vainly sent pressing commands to all the large cities, in the hope of averting the catastrophe. Martínez continued his inflammatoryharangues and sought to turn to the advantage of religion the storm which he had aroused, by procuring a general forcible conversion of the Jews. The excitement increased and, on June 9th the tempest broke in a general rising of the populace against the Judería. Few of its inhabitants escaped; the number of slain was estimated at four thousand and those of the survivors who did not succeed in flying only saved their lives by accepting baptism. Of the three synagogues two were converted into churches for the Christians who settled in the Jewish quarter and the third sufficed for the miserable remnant of Israel which slowly gathered together after the storm had passed.[317]
From Seville the flame spread through the kingdoms of Castile from shore to shore. In the paralysis of public authority, during the summer and early autumn of 1391, one city after another followed the example; the Juderías were sacked, the Jews who would not submit to baptism were slain and fanaticism and cupidity held their orgies unchecked. The Moors escaped, for though many wished to include them in the slaughter, they were restrained by a wholesome fear of reprisals on the Christian captives in Granada and Africa. The total number of victims was estimated at fifty thousand, but this is probably an exaggeration. For this wholesale butchery and its accompanying rapine there was complete immunity. In Castile there was no attempt made to punish the guilty. It is true that when Henry attained his majority, in 1395, and came to Seville, he caused Martínez to be arrested, but the penalty inflicted must have been trivial, for we are told that it did not affect the high estimation in which he was held and, on his death in 1404, he bequeathed valuable possessions to the Hospital of Santa María. The misfortunes of the aljama of Seville were rendered complete when, in January, 1396, Henry bestowed on two of his favorites all the houses and lands of the Jews there and in May he followed this by forbidding that any of those concerned in the murder and pillage should be harassed with punishment or fines.[318]
In Aragon there was a king more ready to meet the crisis and the warning given at Seville was not neglected. Popular excitement was manifesting itself by assaults, robberies and murders in many places. In the city of Valencia, which had a large Jewish population, the authorities exerted themselves to repress these excesses and King Juan I ordered gallows to be erected in the streets, while a guard made nightly rounds along the walls of the Judería. These precautions and the presence of the Infante Martin, who was recruiting for an expedition to Sicily, postponed the explosion, but it came at last. On Sunday, July 9, 1391, a crowd of boys, with crosses made of cane and a banner, marched to one of the gates of the Judería, crying death or baptism for the Jews. By the time the gate was closed a portion of the boys were inside and those excluded shouted that the Jews were killing their comrades. Hard by there was a recruiting station with its group of idle vagabonds, who rushed to the Judería and the report spread through the city that the Jews were slaying Christians. The magistrates and the Infante hastened to the gate, but the frightened Jews kept it closed and thus they were excluded, while the mob effected entrance from adjoining houses and by the old rampart below the bridge. The Judería was sacked and several hundred Jews were slain before the tumult could be suppressed. Demonstrations were also made on the Morería, but troops were brought up and the mob was driven back. Some seventy or eighty arrests were made and the next day a searching investigation as to the vast amount of plunder led to the recovery of much of it.[319]
THE MASSACRES OF 1391
This added to the agitation which went on increasing. With August 4th came the feast of St. Dominic, when the Dominicans were everywhere conspicuous and active. The next day, as though in concert, the tempest burst in Toledo and Barcelona—in the former city with fearful massacre and conflagration. In the latter, despite the warning at Valencia, the authorities were unprepared when the mob arose and rushed into thecallor Jewry, slaying without mercy. A general demand for baptism went up and, when the civic forces arrived the slaughter was stopped, but the plunder continued. Some of the pillagers were arrested, and among them a few Castilians who, as safe victims, were condemned to death the next day. Under pretext that this was unjust the mob broke into the gaol and liberated the prisoners.Then the cry arose to finish with the Jews, who had taken refuge in the Castillo Nuevo, which was subjected to a regular siege. Ringing the bells brought in crowds of peasants eager for disorder and spoil. The Baylía was attacked and the registers of crown property destroyed, in the hope of evading taxes. On August 8th the Castillo Nuevo was entered and all Jews who would not accept baptism were put to the sword; the castle was sacked and the peasants departed laden with booty. The Judería of Barcelona must have been small, for the number of slain was estimated at only three hundred.[320]
At Palma, the capital of Majorca, some three hundred Jews were put to death and the rest escaped only by submitting to baptism. The riots continued for some time and spread to attacks on the public buildings, until the gentlemen of the city armed themselves and, after a stubborn conflict, suppressed the disturbance. The chief aljamas of the kingdom were the appanage of the queen consort and Queen Violante made good her losses by levying on the island a fine of 150,000 gold florins. The gentlemen of Palma remonstrated at the hardship of being punished after putting down the rioters; she reduced the fine to 120,000, swearing by the life of her unborn child that she would have justice. The fine was paid and soon afterwards she gave birth to a still-born infant.[321]Thus in one place after another—Gerona, Lérida, Saragossa—the subterranean flame burst forth, fed by the infernal passions of fanaticism, greed and hatred. It seems incredible that, with the royal power resolved to protect its unhappy subjects, these outrages should have continued throughout the summer into autumn for, when the local authorities were determined to suppress these uprisings, as at Murviedro and Castellon de la Plana, they were able to do so.[322]
If Juan I was unable to prevent the massacres he at least was determined not to let them pass unpunished; many executions followed and some commutations for money payments were granted.[323]The aljama of Barcelona had been a source of much profit to the crown and he strove to re-establish it in new quarters,offering various privileges and exemptions to attract newcomers. It was crushed however beyond resuscitation; but few of its members had escaped by hiding; nearly all had been slain or baptized and, great as were the franchises offered, the memory of the catastrophe seems to have outweighed them. In 1395 the new synagogue was converted into a church or monastery of Trinitarian monks and the wealthy aljama of Barcelona, with its memories of so many centuries, ceased to exist.[324]About the year 1400, the city obtained a privilege which prohibited the formation of a Judería or the residence of a Jew within its limits. Antipathy to Judaism, as we shall see, was rapidly increasing and when, in 1425, Alfonso VI confirmed this privilege he decreed that all Jews then in the city should depart within sixty days, under penalty of scourging, and thereafter a stay of fifteen days was the utmost limit allowed for temporary residence.[325]
EFFECTS OF THE MASSACRES
If I have dwelt in what may seem disproportionate length on thisguerra sacra contra los Judios, as Villanueva terms these massacres,[326]it is because they form a turning-point in Spanish history. In the relations between the races of the Peninsula the old order of things was closed and the new order, which was to prove so benumbing to material and intellectual development, was about to open. The immediate results were not long in becoming apparent. Not only was the prosperity of Castile and Aragon diminished by the shock to the commerce and industry so largely in Jewish hands, but the revenues of the crown, the churches and the nobles, based upon the taxation of the Jews, suffered enormously. Pious foundations were ruined and bishops had to appeal to the king for assistance to maintain the services of their cathedrals. Of the Jews who had escaped, the major portion had only done so by submitting to baptism and these were no longer subject to the capitation tax and special imposts which had furnished the surest part of the income of cities, prelates, nobles and sovereigns.[327]Still the converted Jews, with their energy and intelligence remained, unfettered and unhampered in the pursuit of wealth and advancement, which was to benefit the community as well as themselves. It was reserved for a furtherprogress in the path now entered to deprive Spain of the services of her most industrious children.
The most deplorable result of the massacres was that they rendered inevitable this further progress in the same direction. The Church had at last succeeded in opening the long-desired chasm between the races. It had looked on in silence while the Archdeacon of Ecija was bringing about the catastrophe and pope and prelate uttered no word to stay the long tragedy of murder and spoliation, which they regarded as an act of God to bring the stubborn Hebrew into the fold of Christ. Henceforth the old friendliness between Jew and Christian was, for the most part, a thing of the past. Fanaticism and intolerance were fairly aroused, to grow stronger with each generation as fresh wrongs and oppression widened the abyss between believer and unbeliever and as new preachers of discord arose to teach the masses that kindness to the Jew was sin against God. Thus gradually the Spanish character changed until it was prepared to accept the Inquisition, which, by a necessary reaction, stimulated the development of bigotry until Spain became what we shall see it in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
That the Archdeacon of Ecija was in reality the remote founder of the Inquisition will become evident when we consider the fortunes of the new class created by the massacres of 1391—that of the converted Jews, known as New Christians, Marranos or Conversos. Conversion, as we have seen, was always favored by the laws and the convert was received with a heartiness of social equality which shows that as yet there was no antagonism of race but only of religion. The Jew who became a Christian was eligible to any position in Church or State or to any matrimonial alliance for which his abilities or character fitted him, but conversions had hitherto been too rare and the converts, for the most part, too humble, for them to play any distinctive part in the social organization. While the massacres, doubtless, were largely owing to the attractions of disorder and pillage, the religious element in them was indicated by the fact that everywhere the Jews were offered the alternative of baptism and that where willingness was shown to embrace Christianity, slaughter was at once suspended. The pressure was so fierce and overwhelming that whole communities were baptized, as we have seen at Barcelona and Palma. At Valencia, an official report, made on July 14th, five days after the massacre, states that all the Jews, excepta few who were in hiding, had already been baptized; they came forward demanding baptism in such droves that, in all the churches, the holy chrism was exhausted and the priests knew not where to get more, but each morning thecrismerawould be found miraculously filled, so that the supply held out, nor was this by any means the only sign that the whole terrible affair was the mysterious work of Providence to effect so holy an end. The chiefs of the synagogues were included among the converts and we can believe the statement, current at the time, that in Valencia alone the conversions amounted to eleven thousand. Moreover it was not only in the scenes of massacre that this good work went on. So startling and relentless was the slaughter that panic destroyed the unyielding fortitude so often manifested by the Jews under trial. In many places they did not wait for a rising of the Christians but, at the first menace, or even in mere anticipation of danger, they came eagerly forward and clamored to be admitted into the Church. In Aragon the total number of conversions was reckoned at a hundred thousand and in Castile as certainly not less and this is probably no great exaggeration.[328]Neophytes such as these could scarce be expected to prove steadfast in their new faith.
RISE OF THE CONVERSOS
In this tempest of proselytism the central figure was San Vicente Ferrer, to the fervor of whose preaching posterity attributed the popular excitement leading to the massacres.[329]This doubtless does him an injustice, but the fact that he was on hand in Valencia on the fatal 9th of July, may perhaps be an indication that the affair was prearranged. His eloquence was unrivalled; immense crowds assembled to drink in his words; no matter what was the native language of the listener, we are told that his Catalan was intelligible to Moor, Greek, German, Frenchman, Italian and Hungarian, while the virtue which flowed from him on these occasions healed the infirm and repeatedly restored the dead to life.[330]Such was the man who, during the prolongedmassacres and subsequently, while the terror which they excited continued to dominate the unfortunate race, traversed Spain from end to end, with restless and indefatigable zeal, preaching, baptizing and numbering his converts by the thousand—on a single day in Toledo he is said to have converted no less than four thousand. It is to be hoped that, in some cases at least, he may have restrained the murderous mob, if only by hiding its victims in the baptismal font.
The Jews slowly recovered themselves from the terrible shock; they emerged from their concealment and endeavored, with characteristic dauntless energy, to rebuild their shattered fortunes. Now, however, with diminished numbers and exhausted wealth, they had to face new enemies. Not only was Christian fanaticism inflamed and growing even stronger, but the wholesale baptisms had created the new class of Conversos, who were thenceforward to become the deadliest opponents of their former brethren. Many chiefs of the synagogue, learned rabbis and leaders of their people, had cowered before the storm and had embraced Christianity. Whether their conversion was sincere or not, they had broken with the past and, with the keen intelligence of their race, they could see that a new career was open to them in which energy and capacity could gratify ambition, unfettered by the limitations surrounding them in Judaism. That they should hate, with an exceeding hatred, those who had proved true to the faith amid tribulation was inevitable. The renegade is apt to be bitterer against those whom he has abandoned than is the opponent by birthright and, in such a case as this, consciousness of the contempt felt by the steadfast children of Israel for the weaklings and worldlings who had apostatized from the faith of their fathers gave a keener edge to enmity. From early times the hardest blows endured by Judaism had always been dealt by its apostate children, whose training had taught them the weakest points to assail and whose necessity of self-justification led them to attack these mercilessly. In 1085, Rabbi Samuel of Morocco came from Fez and was baptized at Toledo, when he wrote a tract[331]to justifyhimself which had great currency throughout the middle ages. Rabbi Moses, one of the most learned Jews of his time, who was converted in 1106, wrote a dissertation to prove that the Jews had abandoned the laws of Moses while the Christians were fulfilling them.[332]It was Nicholas de Rupella, a converted Jew, who started the long crusade against the Talmud by pointing out, in 1236, to Gregory IX the blasphemies which it contains against the Savior.[333]We have seen the troubles excited in Aragon by the disputatious Converso, Fray Pablo Christía, and he was followed by another Dominican convert, Ramon Martin, in his celebratedPugio Fidei. In this work, which remained an authority for centuries, he piled up endless quotations from Jewish writers to prove that the race was properly reduced to servitude and he stimulated the bitterness of hatred by arguing that Jews esteemed it meritorious to slay and cheat and despoil Christians.[334]
OPPRESSION OF THE JEWS
The most prominent among the new Conversos was Selemoh Ha-Levi, a rabbi who had been the most intrepid defender of the faith and rights of his race. On the eve of the massacres, which perhaps he foresaw, and influenced by an opportune vision of the Virgin, in 1390, he professed conversion, taking the name of Pablo de Santa María, and was followed by his two brothers and five sons, founding a family of commanding influence. After a course in the University of Paris he entered the Church, rising to the see of Cartagena and then to that of Burgos, which he transmitted to his son Alfonso. At the Córtes of Toledo, in 1406, he so impressed Henry III that he was appointed tutor and governor of the Infante Juan II, Mayor of Castile and a member of the Royal Council. When, in the course of the same year, the king died he named Pablo among those who were to have the conduct and education of Juan during his minority; when the regent, Fernando of Antequera, left Castile to assume the crown of Aragon, he appointed Pablo to replace him, and the pope honored him with the position of legatea latere. In 1432, in his eighty-first year, he wrote hisScrutinium Scripturarumagainst his former co-religionists. It is more moderate than is customary in thesecontroversial writings and seems to have been composed rather as a justification of his own course.[335]
Another prominent Converso was the Rabbi Jehoshua Ha-Lorqui, who took the name of Gerónimo de Santafé and founded a family almost as powerful as the Santa Marías. He too showed his zeal in the book namedHebræomastix, in which he exaggerated the errors of the Jews in the manner best adapted to excite the execration of Christians. Another leading Converso family was that of the Caballerías, of which eight brothers were baptized and one of them, Bonafos, who called himself Micer Pedro de la Caballería, wrote, in 1464, theCelo de Cristo contra los Judíosin which he treated them with customary obloquy as the synagogue of Satan and argues that the hope of Christianity lies in their ruin.[336]In thus stimulating the spirit of persecuting fanaticism we shall see how these men sowed the wind and reaped the whirlwind.
Meanwhile the position of the Jews grew constantly more deplorable. Decimated and impoverished, they were met by a steadily increasing temper of hatred and oppression. The massacres of 1391 had been followed by a constant stream of emigration to Granada and Portugal, which threatened to complete the depopulation of the aljamas and, with the view of arresting this, Henry III, in 1395, promised them the royal protection for the future. The worth of that promise was seen in 1406, when in Córdova the remnant of the Judería was again assailed by the mob, hundreds of Jews were slain and their houses were sacked and burnt. It is true that the king ordered the magistrates to punish the guilty and expressed his displeasure by a fine of twenty-four thousand doblas on the city, but he had, the year before, in the Córtes of 1405, assented to a series of laws depriving the Jews at once of property and of defence, by declaring void all bonds of Christians held by them, reducing to one-half all debts due to them and requiring a Christian witness and the debtor’s acknowledgement for the other half, annulling their privileges in the trial of mixed cases and requiring the hateful red circle to be worn except in travelling, when it could be laid aside in view of the murders which it invited.[337]
This was cruel enough, yet it was but a foretaste of what was in store. In 1410, when the Queen-regent Doña Catalina was in Segovia, there was revealed a sacrilegious attempt by some Jews to maltreat a consecrated host. The story was that the sacristan of San Fagun had pledged it as security for a loan—the street in which the bargain was made acquiring in consequence the name ofCalle del Mal Consejo. The Jews cast it repeatedly into a boiling caldron, when it persistently arose and remained suspended in the air, a miracle which so impressed some of them that they were converted and carried the form to the Dominican convent and related the facts. The wafer was piously administered in communion to a child who died in three days. Doña Catalina instituted a vigorous investigation which implicated Don Mayr, one of the most prominent Jews in the kingdom, whose services as physician had prolonged the life of the late king. He was subjected to torture sufficient to elicit not only his participation in the sacrilege but also that he had poisoned his royal master. The convicts were drawn through the streets and quartered, as were also some others who in revenge had attempted to poison Juan de Tordesillas, the Bishop of Segovia. The Jewish synagogue was converted into the church of Corpus Christi and an annual procession still commemorates the event. San Vicente Ferrer turned it to good account, for we are told that in 1411 he almost destroyed the remnants of Judaism in the bishopric.[338]
OPPRESSION OF THE JEWS
The affair made an immense impression especially, it would seem, on San Vicente, convincing him of the advisability of forcing the Jews into the bosom of the Church by reducing them to despair. At Ayllon, in 1411, he represented to the regents the necessity of further repressive legislation and his eloquence was convincing.[339]TheOrdenamiento de Doña Catalina, promulgated in 1412 and drawn up by Pablo de Santa María as Chancellor of Castile, was the result. By this rigorous measure, Jews and Moors, under savage and ruinous penalties, were not only required to wear the distinguishing badges, but to dress in coarse stuffs and not to shave or to cut the hair round. They could not change their abodes and any nobleman or gentleman receiving them on hislands was heavily fined and obliged to return them whence they came, while expatriation was forbidden under pain of slavery. Not only were the higher employments of farming the revenues, tax-collecting, and practising as physicians and surgeons forbidden, but any position in the households of the great and numerous trades, such as those of apothecaries, grocers, farriers, blacksmiths, peddlers, carpenters, tailors, barbers, and butchers. They could not carry arms or hire Christians to work in their houses or on their lands. That they should be forbidden to eat, drink or bathe with Christians, or be with them in feasts and weddings, or serve as god-parents was a matter of course under the canon law, but now even private conversation between the races was prohibited, nor could they sell provisions to Christians or keep a shop or ordinary for them. It is perhaps significant that nothing was said about usury. Money-lending was almost the only occupation remaining open, while the events of the last twenty years had left little capital wherewith to carry it on and the laws of 1405 had destroyed all sense of security in making loans. They were moreover deprived of the guarantees so long enjoyed and were subjected to the exclusive jurisdiction, civil and criminal, of the Christians.[340]They were thus debarred from the use of their skill and experience in the higher pursuits, professional and industrial, and were condemned to the lowest and rudest forms of labor; in fine, a wall was built around them from which their only escape was through the baptismal font. Fernando of Antequera carried the law in all its essentials to Aragon and King Duarte adopted it in Portugal, so that it ruled the whole Peninsula except the little kingdom of Navarre where Judaism was already almost extinct. It is significant that Fernando, in promulgating it in Majorca, alleged in justification the complaints of the inquisitors as to the social intercourse between Jews and Christians.[341]
While San Vicente and Pablo de Santa María were thus engaged in reducing to despair the Jews of Castile, the other great Converso, Gerónimo de Santafé, was laboring in a more legitimate way for their conversion in Aragon. He had been appointed physician to the Avignonese pope, Benedict XIII, who had been obliged to cross the Pyrenees, and who, on November 25, 1412,summoned the aljamas of Aragon to send, in the following January, their most learned rabbis to San Mateo, near Tortosa, for a disputation with Gerónimo on the proposition that the Messiah had come. Fourteen rabbis, selected from the synagogues of all Spain, with Vidal ben Veniste at their head, accepted the challenge. The debate opened, February 7, 1414, under the presidency of Benedict himself, who warned them that the truth of Christianity was not to be discussed but only sixteen propositions put forward by Gerónimo, thus placing them wholly on the defensive. Despite this disadvantage they held their ground tenaciously during seventy-nine sessions, prolonged through a term of twenty-one months. Gerónimo covered himself with glory by his unrivalled dialectical subtilty and exhaustless stores of learning and his triumph was shown by his producing a division between his opponents.[342]
OPPRESSION OF THE JEWS
During this colloquy, in the summer of 1413, some two hundred Jews of the synagogues of Saragossa, Calatayud and Alcañiz professed conversion. In 1414 there was a still more abundant harvest. A hundred and twenty families of Calatayud, Daroca, Fraga and Barbastro presented themselves for baptism and these were followed by the whole aljamas of Alcañiz, Caspe, Maella, Lérida, Tamarit and Alcolea, amounting to about thirty-five hundred souls. The repressive legislation was accomplishing its object and hopes were entertained that, with the aid of the inspired teaching of San Vicente, Judaism would become extinct throughout Spain.[343]To stimulate the movement by an increase of severity towards the recalcitrant, Benedict issued his constitutionEtsi doctoribus gentium, in which he virtually embodied the Ordenamiento de Doña Catalina, thus giving to its system of terrible repression the sanction of Church as well as of State. He further forbade the possession of the Talmud or of any books contrary to the Christian faith, ordering the bishops and inquisitors to make semi-annual inquests of the aljamas and to proceed against all found in possession of such books. No Jew should evenbind a book in which the name of Christ or the Virgin appeared. Princes were exhorted to grant them no favors or privileges and the faithful at large were commanded not to rent or sell houses to them or to hold companionship or conversation with them. Moreover they were prohibited to exercise usury and thrice a year they were to be preached to and warned to abandon their errors. The bishops in general were ordered to see to the strict enforcement of all these provisions and the execution of the bull was specially confided to Gonzalo, Bishop of Sigüenza, son of the great Converso, Pablo de Santa María. As the utterance of the Anti-pope Benedict, this searching and cruel legislation, designed to reduce the Jews to the lowest depths of poverty and despair, was current only in the lands of his obedience, but when his triumphant rival, Martin V, confirmed the charge confided to the Bishop of Sigüenza he accepted and ratified the act of Benedict.[344]Nay more; in 1434, Alfonso de Santa María, Bishop of Burgos, another son of the Converso Pablo, when a delegate to the council of Basle, procured the passage of a decree in the same sense.[345]The quarrel of the council with the papacy, it is true, deprived its utterance of œcumenic authority, but this deficiency was supplied when, in 1442, Eugenius IV issued a bull which was virtually a repetition of the law of Doña Catalina and of the constitution of Benedict XIII, while this was followed, in 1447, by an even more rigorous one of Nicholas V.[346]Thus all factions of the Church, however much they might wrangle on other points, cheerfully united in rendering the life of the Jew as miserable as possible and in forbidding princes to show him favor. This was symbolized when, in 1418, the legate of Martin V was solemnly received in Gerona and the populace, with inerring instinct, celebrated the closing of the great Schism and the reunion of the Church by playfully sacking the Judería, though the royal officials, blind to the piety of the demonstration, severely punished the perpetrators.[347]
The immediate effect of this policy corresponded to the intentions of its authors, though its ultimate results can scarce have been foreseen. The Jews were humiliated and impoverished.Despite their losses by massacre and conversion, they still formed an important portion of the population, with training and aptitudes to render service to the State but, debarred from the pursuits for which they had been fitted, they were crippled both for their own recuperation and for the benefit of the public. The economic effect was intensified by the inclusion of the Mudéjares in the repressive legislation; commerce and manufactures decayed and many products which Spain had hitherto exported she was now obliged to import at advanced prices.[348]
VICISSITUDES
On the other hand the Conversos saw opened to them a career fitted to stimulate and satisfy ambition. Confident in their powers, with intellectual training superior to that of the Christians, they aspired to the highest places in the courts, in the universities, in the Church and in the State. Wealth and power rendered them eligible suitors and they entered into matrimonial alliances with the noblest houses in the land, many of which had been impoverished by the shrinkage of the revenues derived from their Jewish subjects. Alfonso de Santa María, in procuring the decree of Basle, was careful to insert in it a recommendation of marriage between converts and Christians as the surest means of preserving the purity of the faith, and the advice was extensively followed. Thus the time soon came when there were few of the ancient nobility of Spain who were not connected, closely or remotely, with the Jew. We hear of marriages with Lunas, Mendozas, Villahermosas and others of the proudest houses.[349]As early as 1449 a petition to Lope de Barrientos, Bishop of Cuenca, by the Conversos of Toledo, enumerates all the noblest families of Spain as being of Jewish blood and among others the Henríquez, from whom the future Ferdinand the Catholic descended, through his mother Juana Henríquez.[350]It was the same in the Church, where we have seen the rank attained by the Santa Marías. Juan de Torquemada, Cardinal of San Sisto, was of Jewish descent and so, of course, was his nephew, the first inquisitor-general,[351]as was likewise Diego Deza, the second inquisitor-general, as well as Hernando de Talavera, Archbishop of Granada. It would be easy to multiply examples, for in every career the vigor and keenness of the Jews made them conspicuous and, inembracing Christianity, they seemed to be opening a new avenue for the development of the race in which it would become dominant over the Old Christians; in fact, an Italian nearly contemporary describes them as virtually ruling Spain, while secretly perverting the faith by their covert adherance to Judaism.[352]This triumph however was short-lived. Their success showed that thus far there had been no antagonism of race but only of religion. This speedily changed; the hatred and contempt which, as apostates, they lavished on the faithful sons of Israel reacted on themselves. It was impossible to stimulate popular abhorrence of the Jew without at the same time stimulating the envy and jealousy excited by the ostentation and arrogance of the New Christians. What was the use of humiliating and exterminating the Jew if these upstarts were not only to take his place in grinding the people as tax-gatherers but were to bear rule in court and camp and church?
Meanwhile the remnant of the Jews were slowly but indomitably recovering their position. It was much easier to enact theOrdenamiento de Doña Catalinathan to enforce it and, like much previous legislation, it was growing obsolete in many respects. In the early days of Juan II, Abrahem Benaviste was virtually finance minister and, when the Infante Henry of Aragon seized the king at Tordesillas and carried him off, he justified the act by saying that it was because the government was in the hands of Abrahem.[353]In fact there are indications of a reaction in which the Jews were used as a counterpoise to the menacing growth of Converso influence. When, in 1442, the cruel bull of Eugenius IV was received, although it scarce contained more than the laws of 1412 and the bull of Benedict XIII, Alvaro de Luna, the all-powerful favorite, not only refused to obey it but proceeded to give legal sanction to the neglect into which those statutes had fallen. He induced his master to issue the Pragmática of Arévalo, April 6, 1443, condemning the refusal of many persons to buy or sell with Jews and Moors or to labor for them in the fields, under color of a bull of Eugenius IV, published at Toledo during his absence. Punishment is threatened for these audacities, for the bull and the laws provide that Jews and Moors and Christians shall dwell together in harmony and no one is to injure or slay them. It was not intended to prevent Jews and Moors andChristians from dealing together, nor that the former should not follow industries base and servile, such as all manner of mechanical trades, and Christians can serve them for proper wages and guard their flocks and labor for them in the fields, and they can prescribe for Christians if the medicines are compounded by Christians.[354]
Thus a revulsion had taken place in favor of the proscribed race which threatened to undo the work of Vicente Ferrer and the Conversos. It was in vain that, in 1451, Nicholas V issued another bull repeating and confirming that of Eugenius IV.[355]It received no attention and, under the protection of Alvaro de Luna, the Jews made good use of the breathing-space to reconstruct their shattered industries and to demonstrate their utility to the State. The conspiracy which sent Alvaro to the block, in 1453, was a severe blow but, on the accession of Henry IV, in 1454, they secured the good-will of his favorites and even procured the restoration of some old privileges, the most important of which was the permission to have their own judges. One element in this was the influence enjoyed by the royal physician Jacob Aben-Nuñez on whom was conferred the office of Rabb Mayor.[356]In the virtual anarchy of the period, however, when every noble was a law unto himself, it is impossible to say how far royal decrees were effective, or to postulate any general conditions. In 1458, the Constable Velasco orders his vassals of the town of Haro to observe the law forbidding Christians to labor for Jews and Moors, but he makes the wise exception that they may do so when they can find no other work wherewith to support themselves. Even under these conditions the superior energy of the non-Christian races was rapidly acquiring for them the most productive lands, if we may trust a decree of the town of Haro, in 1453, forbidding Christians to sell their estates to Moors and Jews, for if this were not stopped the Christians would have no ground to cultivate, as the Moors already held all the best of the irrigated lands.[357]
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The nobles had seen the disadvantage of the sternly oppressive laws and disregarded them to their own great benefit, thus raising the envy of the districts obliged to observe them, for the Córtes of 1462 petitioned Henry to restore liberty of trade between Christian and Jew, alleging the inconvenience caused by the restrictionand the depopulation of the crown lands for, as trade was permitted in the lands of the nobles, the Jews were concentrating there. When further the Córtes asked that Jews should be permitted to return with their property and trades to the cities in the royal domains from which they had been expelled, it indicates that popular aversion was becoming directed to the Conversos rather than to the Jews.[358]It may be questioned whether it was to preserve the advantage here indicated or to gain popular favor, that the revolted nobles, in 1460, demanded of Henry that he should banish from his kingdoms all Moors and Jews who contaminated religion and corrupted morals and that, when they deposed him, in 1465, at Avila and elevated to the throne the child Alfonso, theConcordia Compromisoriawhich they dictated, annulled the Pragmática of Arévalo and restored to vigor the laws of 1412 and the bull of Benedict XIII. This frightened the Jews, who offered to Henry an immense sum for Gibraltar, where they proposed to establish a city of refuge, but he refused.[359]
The fright was superfluous for, in the turbulence of the time, the repressive legislation was speedily becoming obsolete. When the reforming Council of Aranda, in 1473, made but a single reference to Jews and Moors and this was merely to forbid them to pursue their industries publicly on Sundays and feast days, with a threat against the judges who, through bribery, permitted this desecration, it is fair to conclude that the law of 1412, if observed at all, was enforced only in scattered localities.[360]That the restrictions on commercial activity were obsolete is manifest from a complaint, in 1475, to the sovereigns, from the Jews of Medina del Pomar, setting forth that they had been accustomed to purchase in Bilbao, from foreign traders, cloths and other merchandise which they carried through the kingdom for sale, until recently the port had restricted all dealings with foreigners to the resident Jews, whereupon Ferdinand and Isabella ordered these regulations rescinded unless the authorities could show good reasons within fifteen days.[361]
With the settlement of affairs under Ferdinand and Isabella the position of the Jews grew distinctly worse. Although DonAbraham Senior, one of Isabella’s most trusted counsellors, was a Jew, her piety led her to revive and carry out the repressive policy of San Vicente Ferrer and, in codifying the royal edicts in theOrdenanzas Reales, confirmed by the Córtes of Toledo in 1480, all the savage legislation of 1412 was re-enacted, except that relating to mechanical trades, and the vigor of the government gave assurance that the laws would be enforced, as we have seen in the matter of the separation of the Juderías.[362]Ferdinand’s assent to this shows that he adopted the policy and, in his own dominions, by an edict of March 6, 1482, he withdrew all licenses to Jews to lay aside the dangerous badge when travelling, and he further prohibited the issuing of such licenses under penalty of a thousand florins. Another edict of December 15, 1484, recites that at Cella, a village near Teruel, some Jews had recently taken temporary residence; as there is no Judería, in order to avoid danger to souls, he orders them driven out and that none be allowed to remain more than twenty-four hours under pain of a hundred florins and a hundred lashes.[363]