THE JEWS OF SPAIN AND PORTUGAL THE INQUISITION TiOXDOX : PRINTED BY SPOTTISWOODK ASD CO., XEW-STRKET SQUARE AXn PAKLIAMKXT STREET THE JEWS OF SPAIN AND PORTUGAL A XI) THE INQUISITION BY FREDERIC DAVID MOCATTA LONDON LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 1877 All rights reserved PBEFACE. THE following little sketch was originally composed as a lecture to some Jewish working-men at the East end of London. The subject is, to ine, natu- rally an interesting one no less from a national than from a family point of view ; I hope the Essay may also prove of some general interest. The position of the Jews in Spain and Portugal during a great part of the middle ages forms an exceptionally bright spot in their dark and chequered history, and deve- loped some striking intellectual and moral features in an age when a great part of what now constitutes Civilisation was wrapped in mental darkness. The favoured position of the Jews in the Peninsula in- duced a vast Hebrew population to settle there ; and although it became evident, after a time, that their prosperity, attracting, as it did, the jealousy of the bulk of people, would lead to their ultimate ruin, 2092517 vi Preface, this could only be effected in a long and gradual manner, and could only be consummated by a cruel and violent measure their forced expulsion. The struggles of the Mohammedans and the Christians for supremacy had for centuries excited the minds of the Spaniards, and imbued them with a crusading spirit which would tolerate no dissidence in matters of religion ; and this feeling was easily worked upon by the clergy, in regard to a numerous and thriving community, which remained utterly without the pale of the Christian Church. Measures of restriction were followed by efforts at conversion on a scale of unprecedented magni- tude, till such efforts grew into a persecution, and, still failing to attain the desired end, culminated in the edict of banishment. Had the Jews possessed more tact during the earlier stages of their troubles, and adhered more closely to their scientific and literary pursuits than to the acquisition of wealth, they might probably have retarded, and possibly have averted, the final doom. It is, however, hardly likely that a popula- tion of little less than a million Jews would ever have been allowed to dwell in peace in a land ruled by inonarchs as bigoted as Philip II. and his suc- cessors, and which almost till our own times permit- Preface. vii ted a court as arbitrary and as cruel as the Inquisi- tion to hold an undisputed sway. The installation of this Tribunal under Ferdinand and Isabella forms an epoch in the history of Spain, and weighing as an incubus on all freedom of thought and action, was one of the main causes of the decadence of that great country, the effects of which are now so sadly visible. In expelling the Jews, Spain gave the greatest blow to her commerce, as in driving out the Mohammedans she did to her agriculture. Thus, the effects of bigotry and intolerance have recoiled with more lasting evils on the persecutors than on the persecuted; and Spain and Portugal languish, while more tolerant lands have flourished and are continually acquiring strength. The following are the principal sources from which I have derived my facts : GRAETZ. ' Geschichte der Juden.' KAYSERLING. ' Geschichte der Juden in Portugal.' KAYSERLING. ' Ein Feiertag in Madrid.' LINDO. ' History qf the Jews in Spain and Portugal.' LLORENTE. ' Historia de la Inquisicion de Espafia.' HERCOLANO. ' Da origem e establecimento da Inquisi9.o em Portugal.' AMADOR DE LOS Rios. 'Estudios sobre los Judios en Espana. ' AMADOR DE LOS Rios. ' Historia de los Judios en Espana,' vols. I. and II. viii Preface. BEDARRIDE. ' Les Juifs en France, en Italic, et en Espagne.' ANONYMOUS (NiEro). '* Procedimiento de las Inquisiciones en Espana y Portugal,' etc., etc. The subject is one which is capable of very con- siderable elaboration, both as concerns the position and history of the Jews in the Peninsula, and the workings of the Inquisition itself; and I feel that I have rendered but very scant and imperfect justice to a theme at once so interesting and so instructive. I must therefore crave the indulgence of the reader for putting before him a sketch so incomplete, my only excuse being the very limited knowledge of the subject which is generally possessed. F. D. MOCATTA. LONDON : March 1877. THE JEWS OF SPAIN AND PORTUGAL AND THE INQUISITION. THE period when Jewish settlers were first attracted to the Iberian Peninsula, where they afterwards at- tained so high a position in learning and in wealth, and where for some centuries they so thoroughly acclimatised themselves as almost to forget their captivity and to regard themselves as in a new Judsea, is so remote, that no reliable historical data exist on the subject. No doubt the Phoenicians, at a very early period, traded with the various ports on the Mediterranean, and, as is well known, the Carthaginians a people closely allied to them in race, and both to them and to the Hebrews in language founded several cities, and established colonies on the coast. This may probably have given rise to the tradition that Jews were already settled in the Peninsula in the days of Solomon, and that the Tarshish of the Bible was identical with the Tartessus of the ancients, a dis- B 2 The Jews of Spain and Portiigal, trict of Southern Spain, the principal city of which was Gades, the modern Cadiz. It was also stated that Nebuchadnezzar made conquests in Spain, and sent captives from the vanquished kingdom of Judah to colonise them. These legends, fanciful as they are, and entirely unworthy of credence, were studiously kept alive by the Spanish Jews of later times. Certain it is, however, that Jews very early found their way to the Peninsula, and that when, 011 the fall of the Roman Empire, the Goths and Yandals conquered the country, large numbers of them were already established in various districts throughout the land. Even under Roman rule the first restrictions against the Jews were promulgated at the Council held at Elvira (Iliberis), near Cordova, soon after the year 300, but the general confusion which followed the irruption of the barbarians, and the toleration of the earlier Gothic kings, who were Arians, afforded a period of comparative repose for more than two centuries. When, however, at the end of the sixth century, the Roman Catholic form of Christianity became the recognised religion of Gothic Spain, fresh edicts of intolerance followed fast from the various Councils, held principally in Toledo, and soon after, we begin to hear of those forced, and and the Inquisition. consequently feigned, conversions which, in later times led to such sad and disgraceful results. The persecutions became so frequent and so violent that large numbers of Jews from Southern Spain sought refuge on the African coast, and a good understand- ing arose between them and the Moors, which the latter used to their advantage when a little later they crossed the Straits and invaded the Peninsula. The first successful irruption of the Moslems took place in 711, and such was the impetuosity of their onslaught, and the disorganisation of the Gothic states, that in less than five years the whole of Spain and Portugal was subjected to their rule. No doubt the sympathies of the Jews, oppressed and hunted down under the Goths, were strongly in favour of the invaders, to whom they were moreover allied by a kindred monotheistic principle, and a common Semitic race. At first but tacit spectators of the struggle, they were soon sufficiently admitted into- the confidence of the Moslems to be entrusted with the garrisoning of Seville, Granada, and other large towns ; they were also allowed a perfect toleration in the exercise of their religion. It is asserted, but without sufficient proof, that the Jews opened the gates of Toledo to the invaders while its defenders were occupied in celebrating a procession, on Palin B 2 4 The yews of Spain and Portugal, Sunday, in 712. At any rate, it is certain that the forced converts to Christianity at once returned to their old faith, and that large numbers of other Jews followed in the wake of the Moslem hosts, and vastly swelled the Hebrew population of the Penin- sula. Once established on Spanish soil, they firmly retained their footing, even when, after the lapse of a few generations, a considerable territory had been reconquered from the Mohammedans by Christian valour. Communities of Jews not only flourished in all the more important towns of Spain and Portugal, but also established themselves north of the Pyrenees throughout the South of France. The new conquests of the Moslems were at first subjected to the Arab Caliphs of Damascus, but about the year 750, profit- ing by a revolution in the eastern capital, 'Abd-er- Ra/jman I. succeeded in establishing his indepen- dence, and governed the country with great wisdom and moderation. This monarch founded the Uni- versity of Cordova, which in the course of a few generations became, with the schools of Seville, Granada, and Lucena, established by his successors 'Abd-er-Ra/tman II. and III., the great seats of the learning of the day. In order to shed additional lustre round his new foundation, 'Abd-er-Ra/iinan encouraged and invited the presence of numerous and t/ic Inquisition. Jewish scholars, who were not slow to avail them- selves of the advantages offered. The Jews, not- withstanding the downfall of their nationality, had preserved their intellectual vigour through the con- stant and assiduous study of the law of Moses. In the course of this, they had elaborated the vast codex of the Talmud, on which they piled commen- tary after commentary, holding philosophical dispu- tations on almost every subject relating to physical science, civil polity, and social economy. These studies, which saved the Hebrew people from lapsing into that state of mental atrophy which characterised what are usually called ' the dark ages,' were carried on in the colleges, which they had, in the first centuries of the Christian era, founded in Palestine, Persia, and Egypt. The persecutions which raged in Alexandria, and the fanatical outbursts which followed the sudden rise of Islamism, had forced the Jews to close these cherished abodes of learning, and they were therefore naturally only too pleased to nock to the new establishments where they had so valuable an opportunity both of acquiring and of disseminating knowledge. The Moorish rulers who succeeded 'Abd-er-RaAman I. were equally favourable to Jewish scholars, and so much interest was excited by Hebrew literature, that by command of Caliph 6 The Jews of Spain and Portugal, Hakim, about the end of the tenth century, Eabbi Joseph Ibn-Abitur Santos translated the whole of the Mishnah into Arabic. It would appear, by the names which are left on record, that by far the greater number of those who distinguished them- selves in these centres of learning belonged to the Hebrew race. Numerous Jews attained high honour and lasting fame as poets, philosophers, astronomers, physicians, mathematicians, and grammarians, and many through their linguistic skill rendered an invaluable service to science and literature, by translating the classical authors of antiquity into Arabic, while they handed over to the Western world the treasures of Eastern lore, thus uniting the whole into one common heritage of human knowledge. It is a very remarkable fact that, whatever branch of science or literature was cultivated by the learned Jews of these ages, the study of their scriptures, and of their ancient traditional writings which explained and illustrated them, always formed the basis of their mental operations. Deeply versed in Hebrew, the Jewish authors and poets of the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries resuscitated the language of their ancestors, and numerous treatises on religious subjects, on philosophy, medicine, and general science and the Inquisition. were produced in classical prose; whilst touching and beautiful hymns and odes in verse rivalled, in loftiness of conception and in elegance of diction, the best periods of biblical composition. Thus for fully four centuries nourished in Spain, Portugal, and Southern France, a long list of distinguished Jewish authors, writing on a great variety of subjects, generally in Hebrew, but frequently also in Arabic. The abstruse philosophy of that age has long since given place to more practical studies, and the languages employed are too little known in Europe for the mass of these works to be in any way familiar even to scholars of our own days. Moreover, in after ages of bigotry and persecution, a large number of the writings of these learned Hebrews were wantonly given over to destruction, both in the East and West, as being the productions of a hated and heretical race, so that many of them have been totally lost. Several of the poetical compositions, however, still survive in the Jewish liturgy, and are charming no less from the soul-stirring depth of feeling which pervades them, than from the ele- gance of their versification and their purity of diction. It may not be out of place here to name a very few of the more prominent of those distinguished 8 TJu yews of Spain and Portugal, men, who illustrated not less the race to which they belonged, than the age and countries which gave them birth. Among such may be mentioned the poet and philosopher Solomon Ibn-Gebirol, in the eleventh century, the poet Jehudah ha-Levi in the twelfth, at which period also nourished the dis- tinguished family of Ibn-'Ezra, many of whom held responsible positions in the State, and whose most remarkable member was the grammarian, commen- tator, and mathematician, Abraham Ibn-'Ezra, who died in 1194. The same century produced the well-known traveller Benjamin of Tudela, and the great Moses-ben-Maimon, or Maimonides. This extraordinary man (born at Cordova, 1135; died at Fostat, near Cairo, 1204), remarkable alike as phi- losopher, physician, astronomer, or commentator, is perhaps the greatest illustration produced through- out the middle ages, in any nation, or of any creed. His writings, which are voluminous, and are some in Arabic, and some in Hebrew, exercised a marked determination in forming the mind of his contemporaries, and established a lasting influence on his co-religionists, who have expressed the estimation in which they hold him, in the proverb, 'from Moses till Moses, there never was one like Moses.' and the Inquisition. In the twelfth, and thirteenth centuries flourished in Southern France the illustrious family of gram- marians, the Kirnchis, of whom the best known is David, who died in 1235. Eabbi Moses ben Nach- inan, or Nachmanides, also in the thirteenth century, was distinguished as a commentator and physician, and Alfonso X. of Castile, surnamed ' the Wise/ who laid the basis of a new system of astronomy, chiefly availed himself in his researches of the services of Jewish savants, whom he took pleasure in rallying round him. In the course of a few centuries the Moors were gradually forced to give up. the greater part of their conquests in the Peninsula, first the Northern portions, then Toledo, the whole of Portugal, Valencia, Majorca, Seville, and Cordova, so that they retained, from the middle of the thirteenth to the close of the fifteenth centuries, nothing more than the Kingdom of Granada. At this period a Hebrew population, probably exceeding a million, and forming nearly an eighth of the whole inhabitants, was scattered over the land. This vast aggregate of the Jewish race not only included men foremost in literature and science, and especially valuable from their skill in medicine, but also all those who were best fitted for trade and commerce, and who io The Jews of Spain and Portugal, understood almost by intuition the then little-known rules of finance, and the practical elements of political economy. The great nobles, who, being given up to plans of ambition and to martial pursuits, disdained the details of business, employed the Jews in the management of their vast estates, and thus frequently the thrifty vassals became the creditors to a large extent of their spendthrift lords. The clergy, too, very generally availed themselves of the services of Jews, as the administrators of the enormous landed endowments of which they were possessed, and the kings frequently conferred on them the office of Treasurer ; while almost all fiscal charges were confided to their care, and the collection of the taxes, which they usually farmed, was almost exclusively left in their hands. It is true that the Jews laboured under certain disadvantages ; that they had to pay a capitation-tax of thirty-four maravedis, or about eighteen pence, a year ; that they were forbidden the use of arms ; that they were compelled by law to inhabit a particular quarter of the town, and to wear a distinctive badge on their garments, provisions which, however, they often contrived to elude ; and also that, as time went on, restrictive enactments were multiplied and pressed more heavily upon them ; but for all this, the Jews and the Inquisition. 1 1 became vastly enriched, and acquired so large an amount of power in the State, that it would have been well-nigh impossible to have dispensed with their services. It may easily be imagined that an alien race, devoted to another creed, and possessing to a certain extent an autonomy of its own, a race too which, by its thrift and intelligence, knew how to attract to itself so large a portion of this world's material gifts, would in course of time become the object no less of the dislike than of the jealousy of the great bulk of the population. The office of tax-collector, however properly administered, has never rendered those who held it very popular, more especially where it has been the practice to farm the taxes. The functions of the capitalist, too, may be indispensable in enabling various trades and enterprises to be carried out, but in circumstances where the lender had so slight a security that the legal rate of interest varied between 20 and 30 per cent., it is easy to understand how those who loaned out their capital could be stigma- tised as usurers, and held up to the opprobrium of the very parties who availed themselves of their resources. Moreover, those who allow the accumula- tion of wealth to form the chief study of their lives, and who nourish on the needs of their neighbours, 1 2 The Jews of Spain and Portugal, are sure to fall into a state of mental and moral degradation ; and it is likely that the Jews of the Peninsula afforded much colour of truth to the allegation that they were grasping and avaricious. Their natural love of display also caused them, in defiance of sumptuary laws and popular prejudices, to indulge in splendour of domestic arrangements and costume, which still more excited against them the envy and jealousy of those by whom they were surrounded. It is easy to imagine that the clergy were not slow to avail themselves of the growing unpopularity of the Hebrew race. The pulpits resounded with denunciations and menaces, laws of repression succeeded each other, and every inducement to conversion was offered. Sons of converted Jews were sure of promotion in the Church, then the great highway to all distinction and honour, and inherit- ance was by special enactments diverted from those who remained steadfast to their ancestral faith, for the benefit of such relatives as adopted the Christian tenets. Occasional outbursts, resulting in pillage and bloodshed, occurred from time to time, from the beginning of the fourteenth century. These hostile demonstrations, which it required all the force of the law to repress, became more violent and the Inquisition. in intensity, and of more constant recurrence, until they terminated in the final catastrophe of the expulsion. In 1321 was organised a savage persecution in the South of France, under the name of the War of the Shepherds, which, spreading into Northern Spain, was only put down after much bloodshed by James II., of Aragon, chiefly by the arms of the Jews themselves. Soon after this that fearful pesti- lence called the Black Death, spreading from Asia, desolated every country throughout Europe, and the origin of the plague, being inscrutable, was assigned to the Jews, who, although as great sufferers as the rest of the community, were accused of having poisoned the wells. Nevertheless, the wealth and intelligence of the Hebrews in the Peninsula were so indispensable that they continued to enjoy the highest places in the State, which still protected their worship and legalised the profession of their faith. Under Alphonso XI. (1312-1350) and his son Pedro, surnamed the Cruel (1350-1369), the Jews njoyed great favour, and by the latter, Don Samuel Levi Abulafia was placed at the head of the finances and, surrounded by a number of subordinates of his own religion, faithfully performed the duties of his 1 4 The yews of Spain and Portiigal, trust. This officer was permitted to build, at liis own expense, the sumptuous synagogue at Toledo, now the church of Nuestra Senora del Transito, which still gives evidence no less of his munificence than of his consummate taste. After having lived in a state of unexampled magnificence, he at length fell a victim to the envy which his ostentation and pride had excited, and died in prison and under torture in 1360. Even Don Henry of Trastamare, who violently wrested the sceptre from his half-brother Don Pedro, found himself obliged to confide many of the highest places of the crown to Jewish hands, and in the neighbouring country, Portugal, the Jews were at the very zenith of their power. The greater, however, were the worldly fortunes of the Hebrews, the more determined were the clergy upon their fall, and finding that they could make but little impression on the governing classes, they allied themselves with the populace, on whose pre- judices and superstitions it was by no means a diffi- cult task to work. The denunciations from the pulpit grew more frequent and more heated, the populace became inflamed, and the Jewish quarters forthwith presented scenes of havoc and bloodshed. No accusation could be too absurd or too improbable and the Inquisition. 1 5 to obtain credence : at one time it was that the Jews had blasphemed by cutting in pieces the Host, or consecrated Wafer, when the blood was seen to issue from it, and pour down the streets ; at another, it was asserted that they had betrayed mocking gestures while a religious procession was passing ; whilst the most frequent and horrible accusation was, that they had stolen and murdered a Christian child for the purpose of celebrating their paschal rites. In con- sequence of all these allegations the sumptuary laws were again insisted on, obsolete edicts of restriction, dating from the period of the Gothic kings, were brought to light, and the Jews were kept in a con- stant state of terror, which made their lives a burden and a continual dread. It must be owned that among the Jews themselves a state of demoralisation had set in, and though the tales invented against them were no less improbable than impossible, it has been shown that their intense devotion to the pursuit of worldly gain had induced habits of osten- tation, and much lowered their moral and intellectual status since the days of Maimonides, and of the scholars of Cordova and Seville. With the exception of medicine, of which the Jews held almost a mo- nopoly for many centuries, and in which they were so distinguished that, amid the most violent perse- 1 6 The Jews of Spain and Portugal, cutioiis, there was hardly a great personage of Church or State who did not employ the services of a Jewish physician, pure science was no longer cultivated. Philosophy and legitimate Hebrew literature had given place to the abstruse and often absurd mysti- cism of the Cabbala, and to the mazy subtleties of the Sohar ; and poetry, no longer aspiring to the loftiest conceptions, and the greatest elegance, aimed chiefly at clever conceits, in which alliterations and acrostics seemed the highest end. Moreover, nume- rous men of worldly mind, seeing the horizon of their ambition limited by their religious profession, passed over to the dominant creed, generally entering the clerical career as the readiest road to preferment, and frequently becoming among the most hostile adversaries of their brethren in race. These men, armed with their previous knowledge of Judaism and of Hebrew lore, were employed to refute their former associates by means of their own weapons, and wove specious subtleties to prove that the dogmas of the Catholic Church were established no less by the Hebrew scriptures than by the Talmud itself. Towards the end of the fourteenth century it became the custom to hold religious disputations between the clergy (generally converted Jews) and the Rabbis, and, as is usual in such cases, neither and the Inquisition. 1 7 side being 1 convinced, the doubtful palm was always accorded to the stronger party, and the Jews were further stigmatised as obstinate adherents to a proven fallacy. 1 The storm which was to culminate in the final expulsion of the Jews from the Peninsula was silently but surely gathering. Early in 1391 a fanatical archdeacon, named Martinez, fulminated a most tremendous diatribe against the Israelites in the public square in Seville ; the populace, goaded to phrensy, rushed on the Jews' quarter, destroying, pillaging, and massacring in every direction, and when at last, by means of the strong arm of the law, the fury of the marauders was stayed, it was found that no less than 4,000 Jews had fallen victims in this barbarous onslaught. Hardly three months later the same horrid scenes were repeated, and this time with far more fearful results. The slaughter was about equally enormous; many succeeded in effecting their escape, whilst numbers were sold into slavery to the Moors, and multitudes sought safety by submitting to be baptised, so that of the 1 It is said that these disputations were the cause which led the Jews to adopt the Christian mode of dividing the text of the Hebrew Scriptures into chapters and verses, for the purpose of reference, there being no such division in the original text. 1 8 The Jews of Spain and Portugal, 30,000 Jewish inhabitants of Seville hardly any remained. These terrible atrocities were repeated in numerous other towns throughout Spain in Cordova, Burgos, Logrono, Barcelona, Gerona, the Island of Majorca, &c. In Gerona the B-abbis assumed a firm attitude, and counselled their brethren rather to abandon life than their ancestral faith ; in many places the congre- gations were fearfully reduced, and in others utterly rooted out. Numbers of Jews migrated into Por- tugal, where still for two or three generations they enjoyed rest and full toleration, while others sought refuge in the Moorish kingdom of Granada, where liberty of conscience existed to a great degree ; but many more ostensibly embraced Christianity, seeking under the shadow of the cross that protection for life, family, and possessions which as Jews could no longer be theirs. The precedent of persons who under violent persecution had outwardly simulated a change of religion, whilst privately following out their own faith, their belief in which remained un- changed, was by no means wanting in the Peninsula. At various periods numbers of Mohammedans had outwardly professed themselves Christians, returning to their own faith when the storm of persecution had passed, and in like manner Christians had often and the Inquisition. 19 in appearance temporarily embraced Islam to tide over a period of fanaticism, whilst from time to time Jews had been forced on an emergency to put on the garb of either of the dominant creeds, without in any way giving up their inward convictions. Even the great Maimonides himself is said to have been com- pelled, while wandering in Morocco, to assume, with the rest of his family, the externals of Mohamme- danism. His father had removed with his children to Fez, it is thought for the purpose of strengthening his afflicted brethren in their wavering constancy, the Moorish Jews being, at that time, subjected to a most galling persecution. At a later period, when the great philosopher was assailed for his conduct on this occasion, he thought fit to publish a state- ment, less as a vindication of his own action, than as a guide to other Jews, who might find themselves overwhelmed by a sudden persecution without having the means of escape. The whole story of Maimo- nides's simulation of Islamism is, however, entirely denied by many eminent Jewish writers, and by such the 'Iggereth-ha-Shemad,' or Letter on Apostasy, is considered as a spurious document. Thus at this crisis arose groups of pseudo-con- verts, whose number, at first limited, became larger by every new outburst of persecution, till, in the c 2 2O The yews of Spain and Portugal, early part of the fifteenth century, they were esti- mated at no less than 200,000. These ostensibly converted Jews were called by their brethren in race ' Anusim,' or ' Forced,' and by the Christians ' Cristianos Nuevos,' or ' New Christians,' whilst the populace branded them with the name of ' Ma- rannos,' a word of uncertain derivation, probably a corruption of ' Maranatha,' and signifying ' accursed.' While things were in this state, towards the close of the fourteenth and rise of the fifteenth century appeared the Dominican monk Vincent Ferrer, after- wards canonised for the result of his missionary labours. This wild fanatic, with a crucifix in one hand, and a scroll of the Law of Moses in the other, thundered out his arguments against the Jewish re- ligion, holding forth sometimes in the open market- places, sometimes in the churches, and not unfre- quently in the very synagogues themselves. His phrensied ravings terrified the Jews to the verge of madness, and wrought the populace into so excited a state that his discourses were rarely over before the Jews' quarter became a scene of havoc, and multitudes of terror-stricken Hebrews begged for the waters of baptism to save them from imminent destruction. The conversions effected in this manner were really very considerable, but such was the and the Inquisition. 2 1 miraculous power with, which, the Fray Vicente was popularly endowed, that the wildest statements ob- tained easy credence. He is by some reported to have brought over no less than 35,000 Jews in Salamanca alone, in one year (1411) ; and it is seriously asserted that he effected 50,000 conversions during the quarter of a century of his preaching. But St. Vincent Ferrer was not the only adver- sary to the Jews at this period. Another Domini- can monk, Cardinal de Luna, assumed the Papal Tiara, under the name of Benedict XIII., and al- though he was never recognised as other than anti- pope by the mass of Christendom, he was supported in his pretensions by the kings of Aragon, and held his court in grand state at Tortosa in Catalonia from 1412 to 1417. In order to signalise his zeal, and to insure the support of the clergy, Benedict was violent in his hostility to the Jews. He and his confidential physician, a converted Jew, Joshua Lorqui, who had assumed at the font the name of Geronimo de Santa Fe, and who was a profound Talmudist, devised a grand disputation to be held in Tortosa in 1413. Sixteen learned rabbis were invited to argue on the tenets of Judaism, especially as regards the coming of the Messiah, with Geron- imo, and some others, among whom was Andreas 2 2 The Jews of Spain and Portugal, Beltra9O, another converted Jew, and almoner to the Pope, Benedict himself presiding over the conference. The proceedings were opened in grand state, with Pope and cardinals, and a vast assemblage of noble and learned auditors, and no less than sixty-nine sittings were held, extending over a period of eighteen months, Latin being the language employed. The first meetings maintained a show of calmness and dignity, but as time wore on, and it became evident that the arguments on the one side made no impression on the other, declamation and menace assumed the place of reasoning, and the conference broke up in the wildest disorder, it being finally ruled that the Talmud was a mass of blasphemy and heresy, which the Jews could no longer be permitted to use. A string of papal Bulls, offensive and op- pressive to the last degree to the Hebrew race, im- mediately followed, and as a natural consequence a further large number of pretended conversions took place. At length in 1417 the great question of the papacy was set at rest, Benedict XIII. was deposed, deserted, and left to die in obscurity, and Martin V., a pontiff who appears to have been favourably in- clined towards the Jews, was universally recognised as the successor of St. Peter. But the harmful influences thus powerfully set in motion could not and the Inquisition. 23 be lulled to rest ; tlie Church teemed with converts from Judaism, who sought to show their zeal by the oppression of their former brethren. Among these Paul de Sta. Maria, Bishop of Burgos, and his sons, one of whom was Bishop of Cartagena, and Alfonso de Espina, who became Rector of the University of Salamanca, notably distinguished themselves, and fanned the flame of persecution which the populace were only too ready to keep alive. While matters were in this threatening position in Spain, alarming indications showed themselves in the western kingdom of the Peninsula. In Portugal the position of the Jews had hitherto been highly favoured; as in Spain, they were liable to certain disabilities which were not very rigorously enforced. They dwelt generally in separate quarters, and were nominally subject to sumptuary laws as to apparel, &c., but they were internally governed by their own regulations, their counsels being presided over by their Chief Eabbi, while frequently many of the highest offices in the State were confided to members of their body. The Chief Eabbi (Arrabi-M6r) was always appointed directly by the Crown, and so important was deemed the post that the filling-up of a vacancy in the office, which occurred in 1384, gave rise to a court intrigue, the effects of which exercised 24 The Jews of Spain and a lasting influence over the destinies of the country, and became the main cause of placing Don John of Aviz on the throne of Portugal, and averting the threatened fusion of that kingdom with Castile. The wealth and position of the Jews, added to their inordinate love of display and supercilious manners, had long rendered them unpopular, and the recent persecutions in Spain had tended to vastly increase their number in the sister country, whilst the clergy studiously favoured the growing aversion, which first terribly exploded in Lisbon in December, 1449. The outburst appears to have originated in a street riot, in which several Jews were insulted and maltreated, and on their offering resistance the mass of the populace precipitated itself on the Jews' quarter, crying out : ' Murder them, pillage them ! ' Acting in the spirit of their words, the rabble ransacked the whole district ; many Jews were killed, and more were wounded, and it was only through the efforts of the military, and by the personal intervention of the king (Alfonso V.), who hurried to the capital, that order was at length restored. The condition of the Jews in Portugal was visibly growing worse, yet for more than forty years no open outburst of perse- cution is recorded, and many high offices still con- tinued to be confided to them. The brothers Ibn and the Inquisition. 25 Jachia, who belonged to a long line of counsellors and physicians, still maintained those charges at the court of Alfonso V. Abraham de Beja and Joseph Zapateiro were commissioned to accompany the voyage of discovery to the East Indies; and the names of other Hebrews are also found in prominent places. Moreover, though the Jews of Portugal hardly attained as high a position in learning as their brethren in Spain, Hebrew literature was largely cultivated, and in the reign of John II., Hebrew printing was introduced into Portugal, and continued up to the year of the expulsion, exhibiting a very great perfection. But the man who shed the greatest lustre over the declining period of the Jews in the Peninsula was Don Isaac Abravanel (b. 1437, d. 1509), of a family which, descended from the royal house of David and lately immigrated from Spain, had already through several generations dis- tinguished itself by its attainments, and was destined to enjoy in other lands an honourable succession for nearly a couple of centuries. This great man was for many years Minister of Finance, and confidential counsellor of the king. Endowed with wonderful mental abilities, and with a determination to achieve greatness, gifted by nature with a remarkable power of acquiring influence over other men, and with a 26 The Jews of Spain and Portugal, rare desire to benefit others through his own advan- tages, Abravanel became no less the friend and adviser of his sovereign than of those royal and noble personages who formed the Court, avoiding with the rarest tact those difficulties and jealousies to which his exalted position rendered him eminently liable. Possessed of large wealth, he was munificent in acts of charity, a notable instance of which occurred on the taking of Arzila, a port on the African coast, by the Portuguese, on which occasion 250 Jewish captives were sold into slavery. Abravanel sub- scribed largely to purchase the freedom of these unfortunate persons, and collected from his wealthier brethren, both in Portugal and in other lands, suffi- cient funds not only to place them in liberty, but also to provide for their future necessities. Deeply imbued with the love of Hebrew literature, he gave up his hard-earned leisure to serious studies, and commenced amid the cares of business and the toils of State a learned commentary on the law of Moses, and other portions of the Bible, and several philo- sophical works, tasks which, carried on through all the vicissitudes of his career, were only brought to a close at a later period of his life, when exile gave him comparative repose. At the death of his great friend and protector, Alfonso Y., in 1481, and the and the Inquisition. 2 7 accession of his son John II., the whole of the courtiers of the late king were disgraced, and Abra- vanel with difficulty succeeded in eluding the pursuit of the new sovereign, who confiscated the whole of his vast estates. Reduced to poverty he managed to escape into Spain, where he joined Don Abraham Senior, the great farmer of taxes in Toledo, who admitted him into his partnership, and thus enabled him to re-construct his ruined fortune. He now pursued his studies with unremitting zeal, termin- ating some of his earlier works, and publishing some very original and valuable commentaries on the prophetical and historical books of the Bible. We shall presently see how he nobly came forward to endeavour to avert the doom of expulsion from his brethren in Spain, foiled in which he fled to Naples, where he was hospitably received by the King, Ferdinand I. On the death of this sovereign Abra- vanel accepted office under his son and successor Alfonso II., and when that prince was shortly after- wards forced, through the irruption of the French, to abdicate in favour of his son, and to flee to Sicily, he accompanied him thither. His family, however, were dispersed in flight, and the infant child of his eldest son Judah, himself a very distinguished man, Avas kidnapped by the King of Portugal, and forcibly 28 The Jews of Spain and Portugal, brought up in the Christian faith. Alfonso died in 1495, when Isaac Abravanel fled to Corfu, whence he afterwards returned to Monopoli, near Bari, and finally betook himself with the remnant of his family to Venice, where he died in 1509. Meanwhile things were tending to a crisis in Spain, where edict fol- lowed edict, to embitter the lot of the Jews, and in 1474 Ferdinand and Isabella succeeded to the united crowns of Aragon and Castile. The creation of so important a monarchy inspired no less rulers than subjects with the dominant desire to bring under the same sceptre those provinces of southern Spain, which, though tributary since 1244, were still governed by the Mohammedan kings of Granada, and thus subjecting the whole country to Christian rule. The King was ambitious, unscrupulous and avaricious to the last degree; the Queen, though possessed of many womanly virtues, was superstitious, and entirely in the hands of the priests, and both entered warmly into the new crusade. At such a juncture, when religious feeling was so excited, it was not likely that the Hebrew race, as much an object of aversion from the obstinacy with which it rejected Christianity as of jealousy 011 account of the vast wealth which it had accumulated, would meet with much toleration. The sect of New Christians had and the Inquisition. 29 been rapidly growing, and as it increased, the line of demarcation between them and the ' Old ' Christians had become more marked, so that it was now hard and fixed, and as it became evident that the Christi- anity of the neophytes was little more than a pre- tence, their condition was but slightly improved by their apparent conversion. It is true that the con- verts ostensibly conformed to the tenets of the Catholic faith, assuming fresh names, filling their houses with crucifixes, images of saints, and other symbols of Christianity, and regularly attending the services of the Church ; but these new habits sat uneasily on them. It is by no means difficult to imagine that persons, brought up in a faith which they were forced to abandon through fear or worldly interest, would not in their hearts be very zealous in their attachment to the religion which they were constrained to adopt. In secret they observed as many of the practices of Judaism as they were able to do without fear of discovery, studiously inculcating Jewish notions into the minds of their children, and endeavouring by every means in their power to keep alive in their descendants the memory of the old religion. Thus they led, as it were, lives of perpetual deceit, and ill at ease within themselves, were ever silently praying that their conformity to practices, 30 The Jeivs of Spain and Portugal, which appeared to their mind but little less than idolatry, might not be accounted to them as mortal sin. It was therefore, in a great number of cases, easy to obtain proofs that the New Christians were by no means purified from their old errors and superstitions, and thus their assumption of the dominant faith did not long shield them from the violence of the populace. Hence we hear of perse- cutions specially directed against the New Christians, in Yalladolid, in 1470, in Cordova, in 1472, and so on, during the next twenty years, in various other towns. The relations between the converts and their former co-religionists appear to have been of the most intimate nature : ties of blood, and feeling, and a strong bond of commercial interest, created a powerful link between those Hebrews who had placed themselves without the pale of Judaism, and those who still remained within. The latter appeared to recognise in the defection of the former the inevi- table force of circumstances, and sought to aid the c Anusim ' by all means in their power, to keep up the clandestine exercise of such rites of Judaism as they still contrived to practise. Thus the Jews still more drew upon themselves the animadversion of the clergy, and gave rise to a future source of accu- and the Inquisition. 3 1 sation, that of being guilty of l Judaising/ for which they were about to suffer in a terrible manner. Matters were evidently growing to a climax ; and the materials for the great act of state-policy, which was to purge Spain from the stigma of Judaism, were only awaiting some bold master-hand to combine them and give them full force. Such soon arose in the person of Fray Tomas de Torquemada, a Do- minican monk, who had been confessor to the Queen in her younger days, and who was possessed of an iron will, joined to great mental power, and an un- flinching pertinacity of purpose. For the carrying out of his ideas, the creation of a great religious and political engine, which would become their legal embodiment, was absolutely necessary, and accord- ingly he laboured with all the energy of his nature to procure the establishment in Spain of the Court of the Inquisition. This tribunal had originally been devised to crush the heresy of the Albigenses early in the thirteenth century, by Fray Domingo de Guzman, better known, as St. Domenic, who ob- tained from Pope Innocent III. (in 1212) the title of Inquisitor-General. It first began its career in Sicily, whence it shortly extended to other states of Italy, to Southern France, Catalonia, and afterwards to Aragon, in which kingdom from time to time 32 The Jews of Spain and Portugal, heretics were given over to the flames. Castile and Portugal were also to some degree under its in- fluence, but as the heresies which called it forth no longer could be said to exist, and the Church of Rome held undisputed sway over Western Christen- dom, the Inquisition, by the middle of the fifteenth century, had become generally a languid institution, and in most countries had already ceased to be. It might easily have been thought that at the period when the revival of letters, the invention of printing, and the discovery of America gave a new tone to human thought, and opened fresh avenues to public and individual enterprise, this organisation for diving into the minds of men and watching the habits of their privacy, in order to guard against any original speculation on matters of belief, would have died out, scared away by the day-light of advancing civilisation. Unfortunately, the very reverse oc- curred, and the institution became re-organised and intensified at the precise juncture when it might naturally have been expected to become extinct. It so happened that in 1477 Philip de Berberis, In- quisitor of Sicily, which formed part of the dominions of Ferdinand, came over to seek the confirmation of a privilege accorded by the Emperor Frederic II., in right of which one third of the possessions of con- and the Inquisition* 33 demned heretics became the property of the Inqui- sition; and this iniquitous system having received the royal sanction, it became evident how magnifi- cent a prey would be ready to fall to a similar in- stitution in Spain, could such but obtain a legal establishment. Fray Alonso de Hojeda, prior of the Dominican convent in Seville, and Nicholas Franco, the papal nuncio, exerted all their energies to this end, and succeeded in obtaining from Sixtus IV., in 1478, a Bull authorising Ferdinand and Isabella to choose sundry archbishops, bishops, and other persons, clerical and lay, for the purpose of conducting in- vestigations in matters of faith, and proceeding against heretics and those who protected them. Ferdinand entered readily into a scheme which pro- mised such brilliant results to his cupidity ; but the Queen hesitated to sanction in Castile the establish- ment of a tribunal which not only threatened pro- ceedings of a most vexatious and cruel character, but which was odious to the greater part of her subjects, and disliked even by a large portion of the clergy. It was at first sought to temporise ; Cardinal Mendoza, Archbishop of Seville, published a special catechism for the use of the New Christians, and various other methods were adopted in order to avert the threatened crisis, but the Dominicans were not D 34 The yews of Spain and Portugal, to be thwarted. Alonso de Hojeda, Fernando de Talavera, confessor of the Queen, and afterwards Archbishop of Granada, Diego de Merlo, Pedro de Solis, and other priestly personages in favour at Court, headed by Torquemada himself, whose in- fluence was unbounded, never for a moment relaxed their energies. They constantly represented to her the wickedness of the ' evil seed of Israel,' the blas- phemies they were ever uttering, the intrigues they were ever weaving, and the impiety they were ever practising under the veil and cover of their assumed Christianity. Such arguments could not fail to triumph in the end, when addressed to a weak and superstitious woman like Isabella, and in September 1480 she reluctantly and tremblingly affixed her signature to the document which established the Inquisition in her dominions. Soon afterwards Fray Tomas de Torquemada was created Inquisitor- General, the convent of St. Paul, to which was shortly added the castle of Triana, in Seville, was given up as the first seat of the Tribunal, and a field adjoining was appointed as a Quemadero, or burning- place for heretics, a spot marked by a square stone pavement, with a colossal statue of a prophet at each corner, and which retained its name down to the commencement of the present century. and the Inquisition. The opening of the year 1481 saw the installa- tion, in its more extended and terrible form, of that horrible court, which stands unequalled for acts of atrocity perpetrated in the name of religion, and which, under the pretext of purging Spain from heresy and Judaism, gradually involved the whole country in ruin, from which it has never been able to recover. Since the Church claimed no jurisdic- tion over acknowledged Mohammedans or Jews, and since accusations of heresy and witchcraft were at this period by no means frequent, the whole force of this new and tremendous engine was directed against the Marannos or New Christians. Frightened out of their senses by this terrible apparition, vast num- bers of these unfortunate people fled from Seville, seeking refuge with the Duke of Medina Sidonia, the Marquis of Cadiz, and other great nobles, whose almost sovereign position in their various domains was thought to be able to afford protection from the impending storm. Hospitably received as they were, their flight proved of no avail, for the first edict of the new court was to summon all nobles, barons, and feudatories to send back all the fugitives to Seville within a fortnight, under pain of deprivation of their titles and honours, and sequestration of their estates. Within four days of the installation of the D2 36 The Jews of Spain and Portugal, Inquisition took place the first auto-da-fe, or Act of faith, when six persons perished in the flames. In March, April, and November followed fresh human sacrifices, to such an extent that, in the first year, 298 individuals were burned, and in the second, no less than 2,000; besides which 17,000 persons were subjected to do penance, involving either total or partial loss of their property, and the disgrace of themselves and their families. The large scale of the proceedings of this second year (1482) was no doubt induced by an artful snare, devised by the Inquisitors to entrap the largest pos- sible number of the converts. This was the issuing of an ' Act of Grace,' by which within thirty days all those New Christians, who had been guilty of prac- tices denoting a relapse into Judaism, were sum- moned to come forward and declare themselves, and holding out the assurance of full absolution, and the preservation of their lives and property, to all such as were contrite and promised amendment. Numbers of the unfortunate Marannos were lured by this ' Edict of Grace,' and consequently the Tribu- nal became possessed of a register of the suspected, which was indefinitely enlarged, as none who made confession were allowed to depart until they had given a list of all those'of their relations or acquaint- and the Inquisition, 37 ances who might possibly be guilty of a similar relapse, a plan which afforded in many instances a fruitful means of gratifying private malice and per- sonal vindictiveness. The individuals thus named were, on the expiration of the term of the * Edict of Grace,' ordered to present themselves within sir days, and if they refused to comply, they were taken by force from their houses and lodged in the dun- geons of the Inquisition. It is interesting to know what were considered as proofs .of a relapse into Judaism. Thirty-seven articles were drawn out, and the mention of a few of them is sufficient to prove how frivolous and absurd were the grounds, which sufficed to deprive multitudes of unfortunate fellow-creatures of happi- ness, property, and life. It was to be investigated whether an individual had made a difference between Saturday and other days, by laying a white cloth on the table, or putting on a clean shirt, or better clothes than on other days ; whether he had cut the throat of a fowl in killing it for food, or had with- drawn the sinew from an animal destroyed for the same purpose ; whether he had eaten meat during Lent, or on the Fasts prescribed by the Church, or had abstained from food on the Jewish day of Atone- ment, or other Hebrew Fasts, or had used baths, cut 38 The Jews of Spain and Portugal, his hair, or pared his nails on days preceding such Fasts, or had eaten unleavened bread, or used certain herbs in Passover, or procured green branches, or made presents of fruit to friends at the time of the Feast of Tabernacles, or drunk l Casher ' wine, (that prepared for Jewish ceremonials,) or eaten meat killed by Jews, or repeated certain Jewish blessings on particular occasions, or recited the Psalms of David without concluding with the words * Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost ; ' whether any parent had given Hebrew names to his children, or washed or shaved the head of a child on the part on which the chrism of baptism had been poured, or invited his friends and relations to dine before leaving on a long journey, or whether a dying man had turned his face to the wall, or had it so turned by others, or a dead body had been washed in warm water, or the water had been emptied out from all vessels in the house of a deceased person, together with a long catalogue of similar enquiries. Such were among the proofs of relapse from the newly adopted faith into the errors of the old super- stition. Sad indeed was the fate of those, of whom it could be pretended that they cooked their stews in oil instead of lard, and many Old Christians in and the Inquisition. 39 after times had to repent that their casual dislike to pork or shell- fish had brought them under the suspicion of being secret votaries of what it pleased the Inquisitors to designate as ' the impious law of Moses.' By such means and by the agency of the machinery which is about to be described, it is certainly not surprising that the victims of the Inquisition were no longer counted by hundreds, but by thousands, and tens of thousands, especially as the tribunal established in Seville was only the prototype of numerous other similar courts instituted in all the larger cities of Spain : Toledo, Cordova, Ciudad Real, Saragossa, Valencia, Barcelona, Madrid, Salamanca, Valladolid, Segovia, and various other places, all could boast of their courts of Inquisition, their dungeons, and their Quemaderos, which, established generally despite the most lively opposi- tion of the inhabitants, grew to be regarded in after times as fixed institutions. In Aragon the creation of the New Tribunal was so unpopular, that a plot was laid against the first inquisitor in Saragossa, Don Pedro de Arbues, who, though he was made aware of the conspiracy, and consequently wore armour beneath his clerical habit, was smitten down and killed in the cathedral of that 4O The Jews of Spain and Portugal, city in September, 1485. As is the usual result of crimes of this description, a revulsion of feeling- followed, with a persecution of the New Christians, who were accused of having instigated the deed. The Aragonese Inquisition became an accomplished fact, and the slain Inquisitor at a later period received the beatification of the Church. It may easily be imagined how the new proceed- ings inspired fear far and wide, when it is considered that not only some hundreds of thousands of the population were known to belong to the New Chris- tians, but also that by intermarriage with the converts vast numbers of the people, largely including the highest nobility and clergy, were the descendants of Jews, and were consequently amenable to the proceedings of the dreaded tribunal. Many of the more sober-minded Spaniards saw with horror the extent to which this abuse of power was carried, and, joining in a common protest, petitioned the Pope for a curtailment of the functions of the new magi- strates ; the New Christians supported the petitioners by the more forcible arguments of their gold, and vast were the sums sacrificed to obtain Bulls for the mitigation of the severity of the courts. In the first instance the result was successful, and Sixtus IV. in 1482 issued a Bull blaming the indiscriminate zeal and the Inquisition. 41 of the Inquisition; but Ferdinand was inexorable, and by means of lavish gifts he extorted from this Pope, and his successors Innocent VIII. and Alex- ander VI., fresh powers confirming the Tribunal in the full exercise of its office. Anxious to give a precise legal embodiment to the institution, Torquemada and his associates drew up an elaborate code of twenty-eight articles, or constitutions, defining the duties and aims of the Holy Court in the following manner. After an- nouncing the establishment of the Inquisition in Seville, and decreeing the institution of similar courts in various towns throughout the country, the Edict of Grace was set forth, inviting heretics and Judaisers within thirty days to come to declare themselves, and to denounce all others whom they knew to follow similar practices. Those who volun- tarily came forward and confessed within this term were subjected to fines in money, and to the cere- mony of a public absolution, which involved the deprivation of titles and honours, and rendered the absolved ineligible for all offices of public trust ; a e re-habilitation ' was, however, in some instances procurable at the expense of a large portion of their fortunes. No absolution was granted unless the persons who claimed it not only penitently confessed 42 The Jews of Spain and Portugal, their transgressions, but also furnished a list of all those whom they believed to be guilty of similar relapses. Against all those who did not offer their confession within the thirty days assigned, the entire confiscation of their property was decreed. For this purpose their possessions were assessed, not at the date of their accusation, but at that of their assumed committal of the crime of heresy, so that if they had made them over to other hands, they were to be restored to the Inquisition. Persons under twenty years of age, who pleaded that they had been led into error by their parents or guardians, were to do penance by being condemned to wear during one or two years the disgraceful garb of the Sarabenito, in which they were to appear in all church ceremonials. The Sambenito (or saco bendito), which we shall often have occasion to mention, as figuring in acts of penance and in ' acts of faith,' was a cloak of coarse serge, which varied in form and in design at different periods. The garment covered the whole body, and was yellow in colour, with flames, demons, serpents, and crosses painted on it in red, and arranged according to the delinquency of the wearer. With the sambenito was worn the ' coroza,' or high-pointed cap, made of a like material, and covered with similar devices, and generally bearing on its front a placard, and the Inquisition. 43 on which were written the name and offences of the wearer. Those who were committed to the dungeons of the court with a view to their being handed over to the secular arm, for capital punishment, as impeni- tent, and who afterwards declared their repentance, obtained the commutation of their sentence to im- prisonment for life in the cells of the Inquisition. Those who remained impenitent, or who relapsed from their penitence or were supposed to have made a feigned confession, were handed over to the secular arm to be committed to the flames. Such as refused to confess, or were suspected of having made only a partial confession, were to be subjected to torture, which was to be administered under the eyes of two Inquisitors, or, where such could not attend, of their appointed delegates, who were to conduct the inter- rogations, and to take down the depositions of the accused. In cases where such confessions were afterwards retracted, as naturally often happened, a fresh application of torture might be made, and though this second infliction was at a later period pronounced illegal, the effect was the same, since the procedure was merely declared to be ' suspended,' and the prisoner was subjected to its continuation at a subsequent period. Those who, being accused, 44 The Jews of Spain and Portugal, were able to elude the officers of the tribunal, were considered condemned bj default, and were deprived of their property, and often burned in effigy. A deceased person, against whom an act of heresy could be proved at any period subsequent to 1479, was condemned to have his body exhumed and burned, and all the property he had left was to be taken from those who had inherited it, provision only being made in these, as in other cases of con- fiscation, that children under age, who were thus disinherited, should be brought up on some small provision allowed by the State, and duly educated in the Catholic faith. All inheritances derived from persons who had incurred condemnation were de- clared invalid and forfeited to the Crown. The Inqui- sition claimed full jurisdiction over all seignorial domains, as well as over the Crown lands, and was free to form such establishments as it deemed neces- sary throughout the whole country. Lastly followed certain clauses concerning the discipline of the Inqui- sitors themselves, adjuring them to live in peace with each other, prohibiting them from receiving presents or bribes, and enjoining that all disputes which might occur between them were to be settled in secret by the Inquisitor-General, without reference to the bishop of the diocese or to the ecclesiastical courts. and the Inquisition. 45 Besides the foregoing, eleven additional acts were promulgated relating to tlie internal government of the tribunal, defining the duties of the Inquisitor- General, of the various Inquisitors throughout the provinces, of the registrars, secretaries, legal officers, alguazils, and of the vast assemblage of subordinate officers, who were afterwards known as the ' familiars of the Holy Office.' Moreover, a resident at the Court of Rome was appointed to represent the In- quisition at the Papal See. Such form the bases of the constitution of that celebrated tribunal which was, for more than three centuries, to place its iron hoof on the liberties of the nation, crushing out all freedom of human thought, and reducing the minds of men to one dead level of stagnant uniformity. With so terrible an engine invented specially for their destruction, it is not wonderful that the New Christians should become panic-stricken, and, leaving their homes in despair, should seek refuge in other lands. Their former Hebrew brethren in faith, trembling for their own fate, liberally assisted them for this purpose, and tens of thousands poured out of Spain, the greater part flocking into Portugal, many into the still Mohammedan kingdom of Granada, while others sought a refuge in Italy, and even in Eome itself. 46 The Jews of Spain and Portugal, But since the year 1481 , Ferdinand and Isabella had been strenuously prosecuting their campaign against the Moors in the south, and at length, after more than ten years of arduous struggle, the war ended in the triumph of the Christian arms ; the Moorish King, Abdallah or Boabdil, submitted, his capital, Granada, surrendered, and by the opening of 1492 the Moslem rule in the Peninsula had disappeared for ever, and Ferdinand and Isabella became undis- puted monarchs of the whole of Spain. While the sovereigns, elated with their recent success, were still at Granada, surveying from the Alhambra the crests of the snowy Sierra, with the fertile Yega at its base, and the rich and vast terri- tory which they had won, no less for themselves than for Christendom, the Inquisitors brought to bear on them all the sophistry of their arguments to carry out at this favourable juncture the long con- ceived and desired project of the expulsion of the Jews from Spain. The plan was by no means with- out a precedent; in 1290 Edward I. had, without consulting parliament, banished the Jews from England ; in 1306 Philippe le Bel pronounced their first expulsion from France, their final exile, after having been recalled, being effected by Charles VI. in 1394 ; they had been also expelled at various and the Inquisition. 47 periods from most of the states of Northern Italy, and from Sicily, as also from various states of Ger- many. The Hebrew race, as has been seen, had very long been an object of intense jealousy and superstitious aversion in Spain, and probably the popular anti- pathy, coupled with the anticipation of the speedy reversion to themselves of the huge wealth of the Jews, which it would be quite impossible that they could carry away with them, acted as powerful in- centives towards the consummation of the measure. Torquemada, as may readily be supposed, was an earnest supporter of the project ; his wrath had always been rabid against the insincerity of the New Christians, and the secret communications which they maintained with the Jews had further incensed him against the hated race. Moreover, he had re- cently insisted on the deposition of two bishops, sons of converted Jews, because they had refused to authorise the bodies of their fathers to be taken from their graves, upon a demand which had been made under the pretext that they had died in heresy. He had also attempted to compel the Rabbis of Toledo to give up upon oath the names of all those converts to Christianity who still practised Hebrew rites, a demand which was boldly refused. 48 The Jews of Spain and Portugal, In order to prevent all connivance between the Jews and the Converts, Torquemado made a firm resolution never to cease from his efforts till he had succeeded in the design of driving all the former from the realm, a project in which he found but little resistance from Ferdinand. That prince, though mainly relying upon Jewish capital for the prosecution of his wars against the Moors, had never disguised his antipathy to the Hebrew race. On the taking of Malaga in 1487 he had caused twelve New Christians who had fled thither and resumed their old faith to be transfixed with lances, and had sold 450 Jewish captives, mostly women, into slavery, from which they were nobly ransomed by Don Abraham Senior for the sum of 20,000 doblas of gold. The assent of Isabella was less easy to obtain, for she always evinced an under-current of feeling which made her at first recoil from sanctioning acts of cruel and oppressive persecution. The force of bigotry and fear, and the distorted reasoning of the Inquisitors, proved however too strong for any sentiment of compassion, and on March 31, 1492, went forth the fatal edict enjoining that all non-baptised Jews must quit the whole of the Spanish dominions, including the islands of Sicily and Sardinia, within the space of four months. and the Inquisition. 49 The proclamation was based entirely on the grounds that the Jews were proved guilty by the Inquisitors and others of perverting Christians to their own belief, and spreading among them the knowledge and practice of Jewish rites and ceremonies. It stated that originally it had been contemplated to limit the measure to the expulsion of the Jews from all the cities and places in Andalusia, but that it had been found necessary to extend it to the whole country. Despite the ordinances which had been passed for preventing communication between Jews and Chris- tians throughout the land, the former had continued to use every means in their power to subvert the holy Catholic faith by endeavouring to bring over faithful Christians to the observances of the law of Moses. It was thus deemed absolutely imperative, after mature deliberation, to banish the Jews from the whole kingdom, and accordingly they were all ordered to depart, never to return, before the end of the month of July in the current year, 1492. All such as remained after that date incurred the penalty of death, and of confiscation of their entire property to the royal treasury. All persons, of whatever rank, who harboured any Jew or Jewess after that date, were to forfeit their estates or property. The edict concluded by a promise of royal protection to the E 5