and prelates that they were never punished and that, when one person accused them, three would come forward in their favor. He relates an instance of such an attempt, in 1458 at Formesta, where a barber named Fernando Sánchez publicly maintained monotheism. Fortunately Bishop Pedro of Palencia had zeal enough to prosecute him, when his offence was proved and, under fear of the death penalty, he recanted, but when he was condemned to imprisonment for life so much sympathy was excited by the unaccustomed severity that, in accordance with numerous petitions, the sentence was commuted to ten years’ exile. In 1459, at Segovia, a number of Conversos were by an accident discovered in the synagogue, praying at the feast of Tabernacles, but nothing seems to have been done with them. At Medina del Campo, in the same year, Fray Alonso was informed that there were more than a hundred who denied the truth of the New Testament, but he could do nothing save preach against them, and subsequently he learned that in one house there were more than thirty men, at that very time, laid up in consequence of undergoing circumcision. It is no wonder that he earnestly advocated the introduction of the Inquisition as the only cure for this scandalous condition of affairs, that he argued in its favor with the warmest zeal and answered all objections in a manner which showed that he was familiar with its workings from a careful study of the Clementines and of Eymeric’s Directorium.[433]
The good Cura de los Palacios is equally emphatic in his testimony as to the prevalence of Judaism among the Conversos. For the most part, he says, they continued to be Jews, or rather they were neither Christians nor Jews but heretics, and this heresy increased and flourished through the riches and pride of many wise and learned men, bishops and canons and friars and abbots and financial agents and secretaries of the king and of the magnates. At the commencement of the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella this heresy grew so powerful that the clerks were on the point of preaching the law of Moses. These heretics avoided baptizing their children and, when they could not prevent it, they washed off the baptism on returning from the church; they ate meat on fast days and unleavened bread at Passover, which they observed as well as the Sabbaths; they had Jews who secretly preached in their houses and rabbis who slaughtered meat and birds for them; they performed all the Jewish ceremonies in secret as well as they could and avoided, as far as possible, receiving the sacrament; they never confessed truly—a confessor, after hearing one of them, cut off a corner of his garment saying “Since you have never sinned I want a piece of your clothes as a relic to cure the sick.” Many of them attained to great wealth, for they had no conscience in usury, saying that they were spoiling the Egyptians. They assumed airs of superiority, asserting that there was no better race on earth, nor wiser, nor shrewder, nor more honorable through their descent from the tribes of Israel.[434]
COMMENCEMENT OF PERSECUTION
In fact, when we consider the popular detestation of the Conversos and the invitation to attack afforded by their Judaizing tendencies, the postponement in establishing the Inquisition is attributable to the all-pervading lawlessness of the period and the absence of a strong central power. The people gratified their hatred by an occasional massacre, with its accompanying pillage, but among the various factions of the distracted state no one was strong enough to attempt a systematic movement provoking the bitterest opposition of a powerful class whose members occupied confidential positions in the court not alone of the king but of every noble and prelate. Earnest and untiring as was Fray Alonso’s zeal it therefore was fruitless. In August, 1461, he induced the heads of the Observantine Franciscans to address the chapter of the Geronimites urging a union of both bodies in the effort to obtain the introduction of the Inquisition. The suggestion was favorably received but the answer was delayed, and the impatient Fray Alonso, with Fray Fernando de la Plaza and other Observantines, appealed directly to King Henry, representing the prevalence of the Judaizing heresy throughout the land and the habitual circumcision of the children of Conversos.[435] The zeal of Fray Fernando outran his discretion and in his sermons he declared that he possessed the foreskins of children thus treated. King Henry sent for him and said that this practice was a gross insult to the Church, which it was his duty to punish, ordering him to produce the objects and reveal the names of the culprits. The fraile could only reply that he had heard it from persons of repute and authority, but, on being commanded to state their names, refused to do so, thus tacitly acknowledging that he had no proof. The Conversos were not slow in taking advantage of his blunder and, to crown the defeat of the Observantines, the Geronimites changed their views. Their general, Fray Alonso de Oropesa, who himself had Jewish blood in his veins, was a man deservedly esteemed; under his impulsion they mounted the pulpit in defence of the Conversos and the Observantines for the time were silenced.[436] While the labors of the fiery Fray Alonso were unquestionably successful in intensifying the bitterness of race hatred, their only direct result was seen in the Concordia of Medina del Campo between Henry IV and his revolted nobles in 1464–5. In this an elaborate clause deplored the spread of the Judaizing heresy; it ordered the bishops to establish a searching inquisition throughout all lands and lordships, regardless of franchises and privileges, for the detection and punishment of the heretics; it pledged the king to support the measure in every way and to employ the confiscations in the war with the Moors and it pointed out that the enforcement of this plan would put an end to the tumults and massacres directed against the suspects.[437] Under this impulsion some desultory persecution occurred. In the trial of Beatriz Nuñez, by the Inquisition of Toledo in 1485, witnesses allude to her husband, Fernando González who, some twenty years before, had been convicted and reconciled.[438] More detailed is a case occurring at Llerena in 1467, where, on September 17th, two Conversos, Garcí Fernández Valency and Pedro Franco de Villareal, were discovered in the act of performing Jewish ceremonies. The alcalde mayor, Alvaro de Céspedes, at once seized them and carried them before the episcopal vicar, Joan Millan. They confessed their Judaism and the vicar at once sentenced them to be burnt alive, which was executed the same day; two women compromised in the matter were condemned to other penalties and the house in which the heresy had been perpetrated was torn down.[439] In such cases the bishops were merely exercising their imprescriptible jurisdiction over heresy, but the prelacy of Castile was too much occupied with worldly affairs to devote any general or sustained energy to the suppression of Judaizers, and the land was too anarchical for the royal power to exert any influence in carrying the Concordia into effect; the Deposition of Avila, which followed in the next year, plunged everything again into confusion and the only real importance of the attempt lies in its significance of what was impending when peace and a strong government should render such a measure feasible. Yet it is a noteworthy fact that, in all the long series of the Córtes of Castile, from the earliest times, the proceedings of which have been published in full, there was no petition for anything approaching an Inquisition. In the fourteenth century there were many complaints about the Jews and petitions for restrictive laws, but these diminish in the fifteenth century and the later Córtes, from 1450 on, are almost free from them. The fearful disorders of the land gave the procurators or deputies enough to complain about and they seem to have had no time to waste on problematical dangers to religion.[440]
PRELIMINARY MOVEMENTS
This was the situation at the accession of Ferdinand and Isabella in 1474. Some years were necessary to settle the question of the succession, disputed by the unfortunate Beltraneja, and to quell the unruly nobles. During this period Sixtus IV renewed the attempt to introduce the papal Inquisition, for, in sending Nicoló Franco to Castile as legate, he commissioned him with full inquisitorial faculties to prosecute and punish the false Christians who after baptism persisted in the observance of Jewish rites.[441] The effort, however, was fruitless and is interesting chiefly from the evidence which it gives of the desire of Sixtus to give to Castile the blessing of the Inquisition. Ferdinand and Isabella, as we have seen, were habitually jealous of papal encroachments and were anxious to limit rather than to extend the legatine functions; they did not respond to the papal zeal for the purity of the faith and even when quiet was to a great extent restored they took no initiative with regard to a matter which had seemed to Fray Alonso de Espina so immeasurably important. In his capacity of agitator he had been succeeded by Fray Alonso de Hojeda, prior of the Dominican house of San Pablo of Seville, who devoted himself to the destruction of Judaism, both open as professed by the Jews and concealed as attributed to the Conversos. The battle of Toro, March 1, 1476, virtually broke up the party of the Beltraneja, of which the leaders made their
