Old Christians and the New was manifesting itself in this deplorable fashion. In Córdova we are told that the Conversos were very rich and had bought not only the offices but the protection of Alonso de Aguilar, whose power and high reputation commanded universal respect, while the Old Christians ranged themselves under the Counts of Cabra and the Bishop, Pedro de Córdova y Solier. Only a spark was needed to produce an explosion and an accident during a, procession, March 14, 1473, furnished the occasion. With shouts of viva la fe de Dios the mob arose and pillage, murder and fire were let loose upon the city. Alonso and his brother Gonsalvo—the future Great Captain—quelled the riot at the cost of no little bloodshed, but it burst forth again a few days later and, after a combat lasting forty-eight hours the Aguilars were forced to take refuge in the alcázar carrying with them such Conversos and Jews as they could. Then followed a general sack in which every kind of outrage and cruelty was perpetrated, until the fury of the mob was exhausted by the lack of victims. Finally Alonso came to terms with the city authorities, who banished the Conversos for ever and such poor wretches as had escaped torch and dagger were thrust forth to be robbed and murdered with impunity on the highways.[376]
Laborers from the country, who chanced to be in Córdova, carried the welcome news to neighboring places and the flame passed swiftly through Andalusia from town to town. Baena was kept quiet by the Count of Cabra, Palma by Luis Portocarrero, Ecija by Fadrique Manrique and Seville and Jerez by Juan de Guzman and Rodrigo Ponce de Leon, but elsewhere the havoc was terrible. At Jaen, the Constable of Castile, Miguel Luis de Iranzo, was treacherously murdered while kneeling before the altar; his wife, Teresa de Torres, was barely able to escape, with her children, to the alcázar, and the Conversos were plundered and dispatched. Only at Almodovar del Campo do we hear of any justice executed on the assassins, for there Rodrigo Giron, Master of Calatrava, hanged some of the most culpable. The king, we are told, when the news was brought to him, grieved much, but inflicted no punishment.[377]
On the accession of Ferdinand and Isabella, in 1474, a Converso of Córdova, Anton de Montoro, addressed to them a poem in which he gives a terrible picture of the murders committed with impunity on his brethren, whose purity of faith he asserts. Fire and sword had just ravaged the aljama of Carmona and fresh disasters were threatening at Seville and Córdova.[378] Dominicans and Franciscans were thundering from the pulpits and were calling on the faithful to purify the land from the pollution of Judaism, secret and open. It was commonly asserted and believed that the Christianity of the Conversos was fictitious, and fanaticism joined with envy and greed in stimulating the massacres that had become so frequent. The means adopted to win over the Jewish converts had not been so gentle as to encourage confidence in the sincerity of their professions and, rightly or wrongly, they were almost universally suspected. The energy with which the new sovereigns enforced respect for the laws speedily put an end to the hideous excesses of the mob, for we hear of no further massacres, but the abhorrence entertained for the successful renegades, whose wealth and power were regarded as obtained by false profession of belief in Christ, was still wide-spread, though its more violent manifestations were restrained. Wise forbearance, combined with vigorous maintenance of order, would in time have brought about reconciliation, to the infinite benefit of Spain, but at a time when heresy was regarded as the greatest of crimes and unity of faith as the supreme object of statesmanship, wise forbearance and toleration were impossible. After suppressing turbulence the sovereigns therefore felt that there was still a duty before them to vindicate the faith. Thus, after long hesitation, their policy with regard to the Conversos was embodied in the Inquisition, introduced towards the end of 1480. The Jewish question required different treatment and it was solved, once for all, in most decisive fashion.
EXPULSION OF JEWS CONSIDERED
The Inquisition had no jurisdiction over the Jew, unless he rendered himself amenable to it by some offence against the faith. He was not baptized; he was not a member of the Church and therefore was incapable of heresy, which was the object of inquisitional functions. He might, however, render himself subject to it by proselytism, by seducing Christians to embrace his errors, and this was constantly alleged against Jews, although their history shows that, unlike the other great religions, Judaism has ever been a national faith with no desire to spread beyond the boundaries of the race. As the chosen people, Israel has never sought to share its God with the Gentiles. There was more foundation, probably, in the accusation that the secret perversity of the Conversos was encouraged by those who had remained steadfast in the faith, that circumcisions were secretly performed and that contributions to the synagogues were welcomed.
While the object of the Inquisition was to secure the unity of faith, its founding destroyed the hope that ultimately the Jews would all be gathered into the fold of Christ. This had been the justification of the inhuman laws designed to render existence outside of the Church so intolerable that baptism would be sought as a relief from endless injustice, but the awful spectacle of the autos de fe and the miseries attendant on wholesale confiscations led the Jew to cherish more resolutely than ever the ancestral faith which served him as shield from the terrors of the Holy Office and the dreadful fate ever impending over the Conversos. His conversion could no longer be hoped for and, so long as he remained in Spain, the faithful would be scandalized by his presence and the converts would be exposed to the contamination of his society. The only alternative was his removal.
Isabella tried a partial experiment of this kind in 1480, apparently to supplement the Inquisition, founded about the same time. Andalusia was the province where the Jews were most numerous and she commenced by ordering the expulsion from there of all who would not accept Christianity and threatening with death any new settlers.[379] We have no details as to this measure and only know that it was several times postponed and that it was apparently abandoned.[380] A bull of Sixtus IV, in 1484, shows us that Jews were still dwelling there undisturbed and, when the final expulsion took place in 1492, Bernaldez informs us that from Andalusia eight thousand households embarked at Cadiz, besides many at Cartagena and the ports of Aragon.[381]
That there was vacillation is highly probable, for policy and fanaticism were irreconcilable. The war with Granada was calling for large expenditures, to which the Jews were most useful contributors and the finances were in the hands of two leading Jews, Abraham Senior and Isaac Abravanel, to whose skilful management its ultimate success was largely due. It may be that the threatened expulsion was rather a financial than a religious measure, adopted with a view of selling suspensions and exemptions, and this may also perhaps explain a similar course adopted by Ferdinand when, in May, 1486, he ordered the inquisitors of Aragon to banish all Jews of Saragossa from the archbishopric of Saragossa and the bishopric of Albarracin, in the same way as they had been banished from the sees of Seville, Córdova and Jaen.[382] The sovereigns knew when to be tolerant and when to give full rein to fanaticism, as was evinced in their treatment of renegades and Conversos at the capture of Málaga as contrasted with the liberal terms offered in the capitulations of Almería and Granada. They were prepared to listen to the counsel of those who opposed all interference with the Jewish population, in whose favor there were powerful influences at work. Isabella apparently hesitated long between statesmanship and her conceptions of duty, while Torquemada never ceased to urge upon her the service to be rendered to Christ by clearing her dominions of the descendants of his crucifiers.[383]
STIMULATION OF PREJUDICE
There was no lack of effort to inflame public opinion and to excite still further the hostility so long and so carefully cultivated. A story had wide circulation that Maestre Ribas Altas, the royal physician, wore a golden ball attached to a cord around his neck; that Prince Juan, only son of the sovereigns, begged it of him and managed to open it, when he found inside a parchment on which was painted a crucifix with the physician in an indecent attitude; that he was so affected that he fell sick and, after much persuasion, revealed the cause, adding that he would not recover until the Jew was burnt, which was accordingly done and Ferdinand consented to the expulsion of the accursed sect.[384] Then we are told that, on Good Friday, 1488, some Jews, to avenge an insult, stoned a rude cross which stood on the hill of Gano near Casar de Palomero; they were observed and denounced, when the Duke of Alba burnt the rabbi and several of the culprits; the cross was repaired and carried in solemn procession
