stifle his intense misgivings about the Portuguese traveler. When the group arrived at the Castilian town of Malagón, he confronted Silva by asking him if he knew the tenets of Christian dogma. Silva allegedly said that he did not know religious doctrine, and asked Mártir if he would teach it to him. Naturally, Mártir thought it exceedingly suspicious that a man such as the suspect, who had not denied being a Christian and appeared to be more than forty years of age, should be totally ignorant of Christian beliefs. He therefore tested Silva by asking a simple but highly provocative question: Who is God? Silva allegedly answered that God was “the Eternal Father.” Mártir considered this an equivocal rejoinder—he probably interpreted it as a “Judaic” slight of trinitarian doctrine—so he challenged his Portuguese counterpart to say “how many persons were in the Holy Trinity [sic]” (fol. 3v). To this provocation Silva allegedly responded, “Don’t people say that they are three?” and duly named the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The friar then asked Silva which of the three holy persons had died. Silva allegedly stood up to think about the question for a moment, and answered with a tentative query of his own: “Don’t they say that it was the Son?” Exasperated and furious at such vacillation, Mártir lashed out at Silva, calling the Portuguese traveler a “Jewish dog,” and threatening to denounce him to the Inquisition (ibid.).
This was not all. Mártir also claimed that Silva had uttered the Christian credo on demand, but that he had stopped short of the end after saying the phrase “creator of heaven and earth.” The friar stated that when he pressed Silva to continue reciting the creed, Silva refused. To Mártir this refusal was conclusive proof that Silva was a Judaizer, since the remaining portion of the credo concerned, in Mártir’s words, “the sin of the Jews” (namely, their unbelief in Jesus’ divinity) and hence contained ideas that a real Jew would be loath to proclaim. Mártir further testified that when he told Silva as much, the latter allegedly repeated his obscure claim that he was a prophet, adding that as such he could live “in whatever law he wanted,” meaning that he could follow any religion he pleased (fol. 4r).
In later testimony, the friar stated that he had asked the suspect whether he was traveling northward to escape the Sevillian Inquisition, which had recently taken many people into its custody (presumably under suspicion of heresy). Mártir maintained that Silva did not answer this challenge, but instead asked a young Frenchman who was traveling with them “if there was an Inquisition in France.” When the youth told him that there was not, Silva allegedly replied, “Well, then [France] is where I am going” (fol. 4v).
Mártir’s deposition continued with a claim that earlier, at a meson in Ciudad Real, Silva had requested a meal and had become agitated when the innkeeper did not give him the food for which he had asked. Cursing angrily, Silva allegedly declared (among other things), “I renounce the Jewish whore who gave birth to me!” Later, on the road to Toledo, Silva’s baggage fell from his mule and became soiled, upon which he allegedly began cursing again, saying such things as “I renounce the law of God!” and blaming Mártir for his trouble (fol. 4r).
Following Mártir’s deposition, the Toledan Inquisition summoned the friar’s comrades to testify about Silva. All of them confirmed the substance of Mártir’s testimony, with a few important variations. According to Mathias Pan y Agua, the above-mentioned Fleming, Silva’s interaction with his traveling mates had been more volatile and physically dangerous than Pedro Mártir let on. Pan y Agua testified,
When Fray P[edr]o asked [Silva] who was God … [Silva] responded that [God was] the Father without saying anything else; seeing this … Fray P[edr]o took out the sword of a youth [who was traveling with the group], and putting it naked against the chest of the Portuguese [man], told him that he would kill him unless he declared and confessed by the three persons of the … Holy Trinity[;] and then the Portuguese [man], as if under duress, said that God was Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, (fol. 9v)
The record of Pan y Agua’s deposition (written, as was customary, in the third person) also contains information about another heated confrontation between the voyagers and their victim:
Having arrived this morning to [the] city [of Toledo] to [a] meson … and presuming this witness and the others from [Silva’s] actions [of the preceding days] that the … Portuguese [man] was a Jew, this witness [Pan y Agua] and … Fray P[edr]o took a cross that is attached to the wall of said inn and brought it to the face of [the suspect] so that he would kiss it[;] [the] Portuguese [man] not only refused to kiss it, but he stood up from the stool on which he was sitting, and fled … to the [inn’s] hall.” (fols. 9v–10r)
Friar Mártir later admitted that the altercation at the Toledan inn had indeed occurred; he also revealed that he had asked Torre to give him a dagger to threaten Silva when Silva had (allegedly) averted his face from the cross (fol. 12V).
Fernando de la Torre, the young French traveler, corroborated the main outlines of Pan y Agua’s account. Among other things, he confirmed that Silva had inquired if any Jews lived in France. Torre also claimed that Silva had asked him if Jews were at liberty to pursue their religion in that country. When Torre answered that they were, Silva allegedly said that he wanted to go to France with him. To this Torre responded that if he found out that Silva was Jewish, he would kill him, “as would any other [Frenchman] who found out that that was what he was” (fol. 11r).
Another traveler, Don Diego Manuel de Castilla, a Knight of the Order of Santiago (the most prestigious military order in Spain), concurred with the other witnesses’ suspicions that Silva was “Jewish” (a echo concepto de q el dho portugues es judio, fol. 5v). Notably, Castilla seconded his comrades’ allegations that the suspect had at first given his name as “Diego de Silva,” but had later surprised them by identifying himself as “Diego Pereira de Castro y Moscoso” (fol. 5r).
The last witness to testify about the conflict-ridden voyage was Magdalena Martinez. She was the innkeeper in whose mesón Silva/Pereira and the informers were staying at the time of the depositions. Martinez was the only one among the witnesses who claimed to have had no contact whatsoever with the suspect; by all appearances at least, she had no reason to be prejudiced against him.95 In her testimony, Martinez merely acknowledged that three people had altercated in the patio of her inn, among them a friar who was holding a small wooden cross that had been nailed to a wall. However, Martinez said she had not investigated who the persons were and what they were arguing about (fol. 13v).
On the basis of this and the other depositions, Inquisitor Cebada and his colleagues issued an order to arrest Diego de Silva (alias Pereira). Lay assistants of the Holy Office detained the suspect in Toledo and brought him to testify before Inquisitor Joseph Paniagua (no relation to the Flemish witness) in October 17, 1661.
In his first audiencia with the Holy Tribunal the defendant identified himself not as “Diego de Silva” but as “Diego Pereira de Castro y Moscoso.” He testified that he was an hidalgo (nobleman), a soldier by profession, and a war veteran. Specifically, he claimed to have fought in the war of Portuguese independence on the Spanish side (1640), and to have attained the rank of captain in the Royal Spanish Armada in 1654. The defendant noted without shame that he was of Portuguese parentage, and provided a long and detailed personal genealogy. Among his claims were that his paternal grandfather had been an hidalgo; that three of his uncles were captains in the Spanish and Portuguese armies, two of whom were knights of the military Order of Christ; and that another uncle was a Jesuit preacher in Lisbon. To the best of his knowledge, all his forbears had been Old Christians, or as he put it, “limpios” (“clean ones,” namely persons of “clean” blood). He further claimed that none had been the subject of any inquisitorial investigation. Pereira said nothing about his supposed use of the name Silva because, surprisingly, his interrogators did not raise the matter of his alias.
When asked to give an account of his life, Pereira testified that he had spent much of his childhood in Estremoz and Borba, Portugal, but more recently had resided in various
