In fact, one of the crucial differences between Jews and conversos was that in the 15th century the Jews were agriculturalists and lived in small towns,65 whereas the conversos tended to congregate in large urban centres where power was increasingly concentrated. Resentment of conversos can therefore at least partly be ascribed to animosity towards the new urban concentrations of power.66
The 1449 rebels of Toledo put forward several justifications for the attack on the converso quarter and the suppression of converso rights. Yet these justifications were mutually incompatible, and merely served to show that the assault was driven by a different and more shadowy agenda. In the dusty, frightened and remote towns of medieval Spain, the chain of events which led to the establishment of the Inquisition had begun with the invention of a fictitious threat. Thus emerged the first great lie of so many.
THE VIOLENCE AGAINTS conversos spread rapidly. Just two weeks after the publication of Sarmiento’s statute in Toledo, on 18 June 1449, the conversos of the nearby city of Ciudad Real led by Juan Gonçalez, ‘knowing that at this time they were sure to be robbed’, formed a militia of 300 men and marched through the city, shouting that before they were despoiled they would burn the city to the ground. This desperate action – a foretaste of the events in Zaragoza of 1485 – merely provoked their enemies. Riots broke out on Tuesday 8 July. The converso quarter was sacked and looted.67
Violence against conversos became a feature of Castilian life for the next thirty years.*3 In 1474 Ciudad Real was again the focus. The riot began on 6 October, when a mob ‘poured out of houses and monasteries . . . killing fifteen people, and robbing and sacking all the property of the victims, taking jewels and merchandise . . . neither possession nor store was left which was not robbed, and they stole the cattle from the fields around the city . . . burning many of their stores and homes . . . and when [the conversos] retreated to claim asylum in the alcazar (fortress) of the city with the chief magistrate the mob fought and entered the alcazar and knocked down its towers and killed many people . . . and after having killed them they threw their bodies in the caves and the fields for the dogs to eat’.68 Those conversos found were killed, but the hatred was not universal; eight conversos sheltered in the house of an Old Christian, Pedro de Torres, who hid them and so saved their lives.69
The violence directed at the conversos would have been difficult to justify without good arguments. Fortunately for the rioting Old Christian population, the failings of the conversos were said to be many. Their enemies painted elaborate pictures of how their customs in the years ‘before the Inquisition were no more nor less than those of the stinking Jews themselves’.70
Yet if the conversos were hated by the Christians, the Jews liked them no better. The rabbis of North Africa repeatedly stated that they were assimilating into Christian life and by the middle of the 15th century saw them as voluntary converts,71 while in Spain the Jews testified falsely against them when the Inquisition was finally founded.72 The conversos were therefore in the unenviable position of being seen as Jews by the Christians and as Christians by the Jews; each saw them as an ambiguous group and wanted to exclude them.
Everyone hated them, yet it was impossible to generalize about the faith of conversos. Families were split down the middle. One widow in 1470 requested in her will that her Christian daughter Margarita and Jewish son Vidal should ‘deal with one another in seemly fashion and shall live in peace and unity and love’.73 In some families the husband would be Jewish and the wife Christian. Some conversos would circumcize themselves and keep some of the Jewish fasts but not all, and some of the Christian ones but not all.74 One satire depicted the converso as having the cross at his feet, the Koran at his chest and the Torah at his head, testament to the confusion and ambiguities which their position as outsiders had forced on conversos.75
The caricature of converso life put about by their enemies was therefore far from the truth; there was no evidence of a hidden and subversive Judaizing movement among them in this period,76 and those conversos who did keep Jewish customs often did so more in a cultural than religious fashion.77 Many of them, we should recall, were the children of people who had converted to Christianity in good faith.*4 Indeed, where there was evidence of active Judaizing among conversos, this appears to have been awoken by their persecution as ‘Jews’.78 Where a softer approach might well have led to genuine assimilation, the very exaggeration of the minority’s supposedly seditious behaviour actually created the threatening ideology which the Inquisition was supposedly formed to eradicate.79
Seville 1477-1481
CONSIDER THE PIOUS archbishop of Santiago de Compostela, Rodrigo de Luna, who raped a young girl he was supposed to be caring for at a wedding party,80 or the great flame seen in the sky and the stones that rained upon the plains of Old Castile just before the death of Henry IV in 1474, or the curious behaviour of Henry IV’s pet lions – the younger ones ganged up on the dominant beast and ate him.81 Portents of evil were everywhere. The faithful set out on processions. They made vows as they sought to stave off the dangers that surrounded them. Yet the signs of doom worsened. On 29 July 1478 came the most terrifying sign of all: a total eclipse of the sun made everything go black, so that the stars appeared in the sky as if it were night. People fled to the churches, and it appeared that Spain was on the brink of a great terror.82
There was one source of hope: the reign of the Reyes Católicos, who had taken control of Castile in 1476. Ferdinand was of medium build, with a demeanour that swung between gravity and laughter, and was renowned for his lofty thoughts and his love of hunting. Isabella had become queen of Spain following the death of her half-brother Henry IV. She was tall and well-built, and had chosen Ferdinand over all other suitors, apparently out of love. For much of their marriage Isabella would sleep with her maidservants and attendants whenever Ferdinand was away to preserve her reputation for fidelity.83 She loved wearing verdugos, skirts fashioned on a rigid frame and made very wide which scandalized the churchmen of the day for being, as Isabella’s own confessor Fernando de Talavera put it in 1477, vain and without benefit . . . indecent and shameless because it very easily allows for the feet and legs to be revealed’.84
With Ferdinand heir to the Aragonese crown*5and Isabella now in control of Castile the hope was that the two would unite Spain and end all divisions. Among some people, however, there were whispers that Isabella trusted her converso courtiers more than Old Christians.85 During the anti-converso 1470s this was something that the Reyes Católicos would have to address if they were to achieve the universal support of Castilians. It was in Seville that the chance first came their way.
Seville was then on the cusp between Moorish and Christian identities. Challenging the lingering atmosphere of the old medina were the tiny plazas springing up everywhere – over eighty of them -so that ‘there [was] not a gentleman in Seville who [did] not have a small square outside his house, nor a church that did not have one or two’.86 The city was enclosed by a great wall over four miles long, built by its Muslim Almohad rulers in the 12th century.87 The wall protected against a sudden rise in the Guadalquivir, but it also separated the urban society inside from the orchards that stretched to fill the river plain. It characterized an embattled mentality.
In 1477, the year after taking power in Castile, Ferdinand and Isabella went to Andalusia to try to resolve the civil wars which had been raging there since 1471. Reaching Seville, they stayed at the old Moorish alcazar, just next to the vast cathedral. Each day the queen would sit on a high platform covered with a gold cloth, while beneath her the bishops and nobility sat on one side of her and the members of her council and court on the other. For two months her secretary would bring her the petitions of plaintiffs, and Isabella would try to resolve them within three days at most. Here, the queen saw at first hand the enmities which had torn the region apart during the wars between the followers of the marquis of Cádiz and the duke of Medina Sidonia.88
A visitor arrived from S
icily, subject to the Aragonese crown. Felipe de Barberis was attached to the old medieval Inquisition in Sicily, and he suggested that the Reyes Católicos found one in Spain. He was supported by the prior of the Dominicans in Seville, Alonso de Ojeda, who urged action against the conversos.89 The idea of an Inquisition had been circulating at court for some years, following the writings of the Franciscan friar Alonso de Espina in the 1450s.90 Espina’s ideas now found a receptive audience. It is said that the Reyes Católicos were shown a panorama of the city one Friday night; none of the chimneys in the converso quarter was sending up smoke. Significantly, their religion prohibited Jews from lighting fires on their sabbath running from the eve of Friday to the eve of Saturday.
Ferdinand and Isabella were convinced. They sent embassies to the Vatican to plead their case. On 1 November 1478 Pope Sixtus IV issued the bull Exigit Sincerae Devotionis Affectus, the foundational papal bull of the Spanish Inquisition. In keeping with the confusion in Andalusia, the religious and political motivations for the new Inquisition were confused in the bull: ‘We are aware that in different cities of your kingdoms of Spain many of those who were regenerated by the sacred baptismal waters of their own free will have returned secretly to the observance of the laws and customs of the Jewish [faith] . . . because of the crimes of these men and the tolerance of the Holy See towards them civil war, murder and innumerable ills afflict your kingdoms’.91
As with Toledo in 1449, the distinct political and religious reasons suggested here for the Inquisition are revealing. It was not simply a matter of Ferdinand’s desire to plunder converso goods or the papacy’s desire to extend its influence to Castile.92 The modernizing forces driving urbanization, and later the expansion towards America, created social discord and strife which needed to be displaced. The monarchs saw this at first hand in Seville in 1477, and then were presented with a solution: the violence would be displaced and directed at the conversos through an Inquisition. This, combined with a renewed assault on the Muslims of Granada, funded in part through the confiscations of goods of the ‘Judaizing’ conversos,93 would serve to unite Christians and lance the boil of the arguments then dividing them.94
Ah, glorious, brave, adventurous Spain! One wanders the white-washed carcasses of imperial towns from Mexico to Peru, Ecuador to Uruguay, wondering how this arid appendage of the European continent achieved so much in such a short time. Yet it turned out to be a very simple matter: the great power which Spain was to become forged its sense of purpose in part through the invention of an enemy: the persecution of the conversos and the recapture of Grenada allowed for a renewed sense of national togetherness and strength in Spain.95
THE FIRST CASTILIAN inquisitors were appointed on 27 September 1480. When the two men, Miguel de Murillo and Juan de San Martín, neared Seville, local preachers and members of the nobility came out of the city to meet them. Some went as far as the town of Carmona, a day’s ride from the city, to offer them gifts and hospitality.96 The welcome must have confirmed in the inquisitors’ minds that theirs was a popular undertaking. Their power, and the deference which some were prepared to give them on account of it, was something that neither of them can have experienced before. The edict of grace was read in the cathedral of Seville, and the legalized war against the conversos began.
As the inquisitors arrived, others fled. Many conversos crossed the border into Portugal; others went to Italy and Morocco, and some travelled as far as India.97 One refugee was Yahuda Ben Verga, who fled to Portugal as soon as the Inquisition was established. Before departing he left three doves in the window of his house in Seville, each with broken wings. On the first, which was plucked and had had its throat slit, was a note saying, These are those who left it too late to leave’. On the second, which was plucked but alive, the note said, These are those who cut it fine’. On the third, an otherwise healthy bird with all its feathers, the note said, These are those who got out first’.98
Many shared Ben Verga’s feelings. Business slumped as people fled, taking their money with them. The capital flight caused tax receipts to collapse, while creditors of the conversos – including many Church institutions and foreign traders – were left with bad debts.99 The fact that there were also Jews in Andalusia was said to make the heresies of the conversos worse, and so the Jews were expelled from Cordoba and Seville in 1483.100 However, the Inquisition had no powers over Jews or indeed over any non-Christians; it could only prosecute baptized Christians who had committed heresy against the Church.
Some conversos wanted to fight. A group gathered at the house of Diego de Susan, one of the most important merchants in Seville, who came from a family that had previously been prominent in Toledo.101 Among the others involved were Abolafia, ‘the scented one’, who ran the customs house for the Reyes Católicos, Pero Fernandez Benadova, among the most senior figures in the cathedral chapter, and the Adalfe family of Triana, who lived in the castle on the far side of the Guadalquivir.102
These said to one another: Are we going to let them come against us like this! Aren’t we the richest people in this city, well-loved by the people? Let’s raise a militia! You can get so many people ready; and you can get some more, etc . . . And if they come to get us, with our guards we’ll make a disturbance out of the whole thing, and kill them all, and revenge ourselves against our enemies’ . . . then an old Jew who was there raised his voice: ‘Children, noble people, on my life I think that everything is ready. But where are your souls? I want to see souls!’103
The plot was revealed by Susan’s daughter, known as the fermosa fembra – the beautiful maid – who was a devoted Christian. She appears to have believed that she was doing the soul of her father a good turn.104 Susán and the others were thrown into the castle at Triana, which was used as the inquisitorial jail, and the sentences of burning began to be pronounced. At the first auto, on 6 February 1481, six people were burnt.105 The condemned were led forward barefoot, wearing the yellow penitential robe, the sanbenito, and holding a candle. Guarded by halberdiers, they were preceded by a Dominican in his black robes holding the green cross of the Inquisition and by officers of the Inquisition marching in twos. The condemned were followed by the inquisitors and the Dominican prior Alonso de Ojeda, who had mooted an Inquisition to the Reyes Católicos back in 1477.
Outside the cathedral Ojeda preached the sermon. When he had finished, the condemned were handed over to the secular authorities, for the moral scruples of the inquisitors meant that they were not permitted to burn people themselves. Then the six victims were led out by the crown bailiffs to the quemadero – the burning place. This was a scaffold in the fields outside Seville’s city walls built for the express purpose of staging autos. The scaffold remained for over 300 years, into the 19th century, with four large statues at the corners known as the ‘four prophets’. The statues were hollow, and the condemned would be put inside to die slowly in the flames.106 In this way, even if the number of burnings was not high, fear could be implanted deep in the heart of society.107
Sunday, May 2nd 1484: On this day, Sunday, a procession of reconciled conversos set out in the morning to go from the church of San Salvador to the monastery of San Pablo, bearing the cross of San Salvador: there were 120 reconciled men and 217 reconciled women, and they all wore their sanbenitos; and this day the officiating priest Rebelledo was sacked, and condemned to perpetual imprisonment.
May 9th: On this day, Sunday, at the hour of Mass a procession of 94 men and women was taken to be put in the castle in Triana, since they had been condemned to perpetual imprisonment as heretics . . . they were taken to the sound of litanies . .
.110
The castle could not cope with the numbers of those condemned to perpetual imprisonment’ and the streets filled with people clad in sanbenitos, embossed with crosses on the front and the back, which the reconciled were obliged to wear as testament to their shame even after their appearance in an auto.111 Seville was thick with litanies and the condemned, a threnody for what Spain had been and for what it was to become. A city in which conflict had until recently been a matter of politics now bore the scars of religious struggles.
The result was increasing polarization and fundamentalism, justified by religion but feeding off something else. When Susán was burnt, he appeared to die a Christian,112 which suggests that evidence for the Judaizing of his group was extremely thin. What was more, his repentance should have meant that he was spared death in the flames according to previous inquisitorial practice; what the excesses revealed was that religion was an excuse rather than the guiding motivation.
In many ways, when looking at the decision of the Reyes Católicos to establish an Inquisition in Seville in 1477, it is difficult to see what choice they had in the matter. Human nature appears prone to creating scapegoats in times of crisis. Had Ferdinand and Isabella not sought to stabilize their kingdoms, they doubtless would have been among the first to suffer from the continuing rebellions.
What was new in their Spanish Inquisition was not persecution, but the institutionalization of persecution. The crisis had been provoked by the modernization of Spanish society in the 15th century, and the Inquisition was the first modern persecuting institution in history.113 It was the fear and distrust which people felt towards the economic requirements of the new social system which ensured that the conversos would be among the first victims of the modern world. And yet it was not the conversos alone who suffered; just weeks after the first auto the plague swept across Seville, and among the very first victims was Alonso de Ojeda, the prior who had lobbied so hard for the Inquisition in the first place.