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, in embracing 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 the Ordenamiento de Doña Catalina than 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 and Christians 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]
VICISSITUDES
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 restriction and 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, the Concordia Compromisoria which 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 Don Abraham 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 the Ordenanzas 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]
DECLINE OF JUDAISM
This recrudescence of oppression probably had an influence on the people, for there came a revulsion of feeling adverse to the proscribed race, inflamed by the ceaseless labors of the frailes whose denunciatory eloquence knew no cessation. Under these circumstances the Jews and Moors seem to have had recourse to the Roman curia, always ready to speculate by selling privileges, whether it had power to grant them or not, and then to withdraw them for a consideration. We shall have ample occasion to
