Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini

by Rafael Sabatini

  The uproar penetrated to the Palace of Alfonso of Aragon, the seventeen-year-old Archbishop of Zaragoza. It roused that bastard of Catholic Ferdinand from his slumbers. A high-spirited lad, he summoned the grandees of the city and the officers of justice, and rode out at their head to meet and quell the rioters. But only by a promise that the fullest justice should be done upon the murderers did he succeed in dispersing them and restoring order to that distracted city.

  “Divine Justice,” says Trasmiera, “permitted the deed, but not its impunity.”

  Rash indeed had been the action of the New-Christians, and terrible was the penalty exacted, terrible the price they were made to pay for the life they had taken. In conceiving that they could intimidate by such an act a man of Torquemada’s mettle, they displayed a lamentable want of judgment, as was speedily proved. To fill the place of the dead inquisitor, and to set about the stern business of avenging him, Torquemada instantly dispatched to Zaragoza Fr. Juan Colvera, Fr. Pedro de Monterubio, and Dr. Alonso de Alarcon. For the greater security of themselves and their prisoners, these delegates set up their tribunal in the royal alcazar of the Castle of Aljaferia, and proceeded to institute an active search for the culprits. Several were seized, amongst whom was Abadia’s servant, Vidal de Uranso. He was put to the question, and an admission of his own guilt extracted from him. He was tortured further in the endeavour to wring from him the names of his associates in the deed, and finally he was promised “grace” if he would divulge them.

  At this price the unfortunate Gascon consented to speak, betraying all whom he had known to be in the plot and all whom he had known to sympathize with it. And Llorente, who saw the records of the proceedings, tells us that when Uranso claimed the promised grace, he was benignly answered that he should receive the grace of not having his hands hacked off — as must the others — before being hanged, drawn, and quartered.

  Amongst those taken were Juan de Abadia, Juan de Esperandeu, and Luis de Santangel.

  Esperandeu and Uranso suffered together at the Auto’ of June 30, 1486 — the seventh held in Zaragoza that year. Esperandeu was dragged through the city on a hurdle, his hands were hacked off on the steps of the Cathedral, whereafter he was hanged, drawn, and quartered. Five other conspirators suffered in the same Auto, being abandoned to the secular arm and burnt alive. Two others, who had escaped, were burnt in effigy, and one of these was that Juan Pedro Sanchez who had been the leading spirit in the affair. And together with these living men and the grotesque effigies of straw arrayed in sanbenito and coroza they burnt the corpse of Juan de Abadia. He had cheated in part the Justice of the Holy Office. He had committed suicide in prison by eating a glass lamp.*

  [* Llorente, “Anales,” vol. i. .]

  Autos succeeded one another at such a rate now in Zaragoza that no less than fourteen were held in that year 1486; 42 persons were burnt alive, 14 in effigy, and 134 were penanced in varying degrees from perpetual imprisonment to public whippings. And to the end that the publicity of these Autos might be increased and the salutary lesson inculcated by them might be as far-reaching as possible, Torquemada ordered that a fortnight before the holding of each it should be announced by public proclamation, with great solemnity and parade of mounted familiars of the Holy Office — a matter which upon this precedent became customary throughout Spain.

  In his allusion to these Autos Trasmiera* advances one of the usual sophistries employed by the Inquisition to justify its constant claim that its proceedings were dictated by mercy.

  [* “Vida de Arbués,” .]

  He assures us that it was a happiness (dicha) for the culprits to die so soon, and he explains that to have allowed them to live would have shown a greater rigour of justice—” as witnesseth Cain, upon whom God placed a sign ordering that none should kill him since by the prolongation of his life, his nature being what it was, he must commit more sins, and thus more surely deserve greater degrees of punishment in his eternal damnation.”

  It is a priest who puts forward this blasphemous assertion that God desires the damnation of a sinner, and suggests that by burning that sinner betimes, God is to be cheated — at least in part — of His unspeakable purpose. It serves excellently to show to what desperate shifts of argument men could be urged in the attempt to justify the practices of the Holy Office.

  With precisely the same degree of authority does he assure us that all the murderers died penitent — in consequence of the affectionate prayers offered up for them by Arbués in the hour of his death.

  Vidal de Uranso’s confession had yielded up to the inquisitors the names not only of participators in the murder of Arbués, but of those who were believed by the Gascon to be in sympathy with the deed. By pursuing the methods peculiarly their own to cause a prosecution to spread like an oil-stain, slowly and surely covering an ever-widening area, the inquisitors were able to cause the indictment of many whose connection with the crime was of the remotest, and of others who, moved by a very Christian pity, had afforded shelter to New-Christians fleeing in terror before the blind vengeance of the Holy Office. Among the latter many were prosecuted where there was no proof that the fugitives they had sheltered were Judaizers or unfaithful. It is believed that sheer panic had driven many perfectly innocent New-Christians to depart from a city where no New-Christian might account himself secure. But in consequence of the clause introduced by the merciless Torquemada into his “Instructions,” a man’s flight was in itself a sufficient reason for the presumption of his guilt.

  A reign of terror was established in Zaragoza. The tribunal of that city became one of the busiest in Spain, and it is computed that altogether some two hundred victims paid in one way and another for the death of Pedro Arbués, so that there was hardly a family, noble or simple, that was not plunged into mourning by the Justice of the Faith.

  Amongst those against whom proceedings were instituted were men of the very first importance in the kingdom. One of these was that Alonso de Caballeria, Vice-Chancellor of Aragon, who had been prominent in the council summoned by Torquemada to determine the details of the introduction of the Inquisition into Aragon. Nor did they confine their attention to New-Christians. Amongst those they summoned to render to the Holy Office an account of their deeds we find no less a person than Don Jaime de Navarre, known as the Infante of Navarre or the Infante of Tudela, the son of the Queen of Navarre, and King Ferdinand’s own nephew.

  A fugitive New-Christian coming to Tudela cast himself upon the mercy of the prince, and found shelter in Navarre for a few days until he could escape into France. The inquisitors, whom nothing escaped, had knowledge of this, and such was their might and arrogance that they did not hesitate to arrest the Infante in the capital of his mother’s independent kingdom. They haled this prince of the blood-royal to Zaragoza to stand his trial upon the charge of hindering the Holy Office. They cast him into prison, and subjected him to the humiliating penance of being whipped round the Metropolitan Church by two priests in the presence of his bastard cousin, the seventeen-year old Archbishop, Alfonso of Aragon. Thereafter he was made to stand penitentially, candle in hand, in view of all during High Mass, before he could earn absolution of the ecclesiastical censure he had incurred.

  Alonso de Caballeria is one of the few men in history who was able successfully to defy and withstand the terrible power of that sacerdotal court.

  This Vice-Chancellor was a man of great ability, the son of a wealthy baptized Hebrew nobleman. whose name had been Bonafos, but who had changed this to Caballeria upon receiving baptism, in accordance with the prevailing custom. He was arrested not only upon the charge of having given shelter to fugitives, but also upon suspicion of being, himself, a Judaizer.

  Presuming upon his high position, and also upon the great esteem in which he was held by his king, Caballeria showed the Inquisition an intrepid countenance. He refused to recognize the authority of the court and of Torquemada himself, appealing to the Pope, and including in his appeal a strong complaint of t
he conduct of the inquisitors.

  .This appeal was of such a character and the man’s own position was so strong that on August 28, 1488, Innocent VIII dispatched a brief inhibiting the inquisitors from proceeding further against the Vice-Chancellor, and avocating to himself the case. But such was Torquemada’s arrogance by now that he was no longer to be intimidated by papal briefs. Under his directions the inquisitors of Zaragoza replied that the allegations contained in Caballeria’s appeal were false. The Pope, however, was insistent, and he compelled the Holy Office to bow to his will and supreme authority. On October 20 of that year the minutes of the case were forwarded to the Vatican. As a result of their perusal His Holiness must have absolved Caballeria, for not only was he delivered of the peril in which he had stood, but he continued to rise steadily in honour and consequence until he became Chief Judge and head of the Hermandad of Aragon.*

  [* Llorente, “Memoria Historica,” , and “Historia Critica,” vol. i, .]

  Llorente informs us* that he perused the records of some thirty trials in connection with the Arbués affair, and that the publication of any one of them would suffice to render the Inquisition detested, were it not sufficiently detested already in all civilized countries, including Spain.

  [* “Historia Critica,” vol. ii. cap. vi.]

  He mentions, however, two cases of interest and Importance,* to show how arbitrary was the spirit of the Inquisition, and how far-reaching its arm.

  [* “Historia Critica,” vol. ii. cap. vi.]

  Juan Pedro Sanchez, the leader of the affair, having fled to Toulouse, was, as we have seen, sentenced as contumacious and burnt in effigy pending the seizure of his person.

  In Toulouse at this time there was a student named Antonio Agustin, a member of an illustrious family of Aragon and a man destined to rise to great dignity and honour. Under the impulse of fanaticism, and acting in conjunction with several other Spaniards in Toulouse, he petitioned for the arrest of Sanchez. When this had been effected, he indited a letter to the inquisitors of Aragon, and forwarded it to his brother Pedro in Zaragoza for delivery.

  Pedro, however, first discussed the matter with Guillerme Sanchez, brother of the fugitive, and three friends, and all were opposed to Agustin’s purpose. They decided not to deliver the letter, and they wrote to Agustin begging him to withdraw his plea against Sanchez and consent to the fugitive’s being restored to liberty.

  Agustin was persuaded, and replied informing his brother that he had done as they had requested. Once Pedro Agustin in Zaragoza was assured of this, he delivered the letters to the inquisitors — though why he should have done so is not by any means clear. Possibly he conceived that this was the wisest course to pursue, lest it should afterwards transpire that he had suppressed such a communication. But from what follows it will be seen how ill-advised he was.

  The Holy Office having received the letters, and supposing Juan Pedro Sanchez still under arrest in Toulouse, ordered him to be brought to Zaragoza. The courts of Toulouse replied that he had alreadybeen released and that his whereabouts were now unknown.

  , The inquisitors inquired into the matter with that terrible thoroughness of which they commanded the means. They controlled the most wonderful police system that the world has ever seen. A vast civilian army was enrolled in the service of the Holy Office, as members of the tertiary order of St. Dominic. These were the lay brothers of the family, and as the position conferred upon those who held it certain signal benefits, of which immunity from taxation was one,* it will be understood that their number had to be limited, so very considerable were the applications for enrolment.

  [* Another advantage was that any member of this confraternity was entitled to plead benefit of clergy, so that no civil court could take proceedings against him.]

  Originally this had been a penitential order, but very quickly it came to be known as the Militia Christi, and its members as familiars of the Holy Office — i.e. part of the family of St. Dominic. They dressed in black, and wore the white cross of St. Dominic upon their doublets and cloaks, and they were made to join the Confraternity of St. Peter Martyr. The inquisitors seldom went abroad without an escort of these armed lay-brothers.

  In the ranks of the Militia .Christi were to be found men of all professions, dignities, and callings. They formed the secret police of the Inquisition, they were the eyes and ears of the Holy Office, ubiquitous in every stratum of social life.

  Through these agents the inquisitors were not long in ascertaining what had taken place in the matter of Juan Pedro Sanchez, and soon the five friends were under arrest and forced to answer the serious charge of hindering the Holy Office.

  They were paraded in public in the Auto of May 6, 1487, as suspects — leviter — of Judaizing; they were penanced to stand in full view of the people, candle in hand and wearing the sanbenito, during Mass, and they were thereafter disqualified from holding any office or benefice or pursuing any honourable profession during the good pleasure of the inquisitors.

  As it was, they escaped lightly. That they were suspected leviter of Judaising ng, shows us how easily that suspicion might be incurred. It was purely constructive in this instance — an inference to be drawn from the fact that they had befriended a Judaizer who was under sentence.

  The other case is far more horrible. It shows in operation Torquemada’s decree regarding the children of heretics, and reveals in the fullest measure its appalling inhumanity.

  Another who had fled to Toulouse, fearing implication in the affair of the murder of Arbués, was one Caspar de Santa Cruz. It happened that he died there, after having been sentenced as contumacious and burnt in effigy at Zaragoza. It came to the ears of the inquisitors that he had been assisted in his flight by his son; and not content with the heavy punishment of infamy that must fall automatically upon that son for sins that were not his own, not content with having reduced him to destitution by confiscating his inheritance and by disqualifying him from office, benefice, or honourable employment, they now seized his person and indicted him for hindering.

  Arrayed in a yellow sanbenito, this son, who had discharged by his father the sacrosanct duty which nature and humanity impose, was exhibited to scorn in an Auto, and further penanced by being compelled tc come before the court of the Holy Office and testify to his father’s contumacious flight. Nor did that ghoulish tribunal count itself satisfied even then. It was further imposed upon him that he must repair to Toulouse, exhume his father’s remains, and publicly burn them, returning to Zaragoza with a properly attested report of the performance, when he should receive absolution of the censures incurred.

  Santa Cruz carried out that barbarous command, as the only means of saving his liberty and perhaps his life. For it is certain that had he refused, it would have been argued that he had rejected the offered means of reconciliation with the Church he had so grievously offended, and he would have been prosecuted as impenitent; whilst had he availed himself of the only alternative and fled, he must have been sentenced as contumacious and would have gone to the stake if he were ever taken.

  From the hour of his death Pedro Arbués de Epila was looked upon as a saint and martyr, the notion being carefully fostered by the members of his order in the minds of the faithful.

  And, as is usual in such cases, miraculous manifestations of his sanctity are alleged to have begun in the very hour of his death. Trasmiera tells us that the bells rang of themselves when he died, and he opines that this serves to approve their use in a time when Luther and others were condemning them as vain.

  The blood of the inquisitor, we learn from the same source, boiled upon the stones of the church where it had fallen, and continued to do so for a fortnight afterwards; whilst on any of the twelve days immediately following the night of his murder, a handkerchief pressed to the stones upon which his blood had been shed, when removed, was found to be blood-stained.

  These, says Trasmiera, were miracles of which all were witnesses. There is much more of the same kind — i
ncluding an account of the inquisitor’s apparitions after death, as testified by Mosen Blanco, to whom the ghost appeared, and with whom it conversed at length — to be found in Trasmiera’s “Vida y Muerte del Venerable Inquisidor, Pedro Arbués.”

  The sword with which he was slain was preserved in the Metropolitan Church of Zaragoza, a relic sanctified by the blood that had embrued it.

  He was buried in the same church, and on the spot where he fell Isabella raised a beautiful monument to his memory in 1487. Part of its inscription ran: “Happy Zaragoza! Rejoice that here is buried he who is the glory of the martyrs.”

  He was beatified two hundred years later by Alexander VII, largely in consequence of the efforts of the Spanish inquisitors, who perceived what an added prestige it would give their order if one of its members were worshipped as a martyr. His canonization followed in the nineteenth century. It was effected by Pope Pius IX, and was the subject of much derisory comment in the Rome of that day, which had just broken the shackles of clerical government that had trammelled it for some fifteen hundred years.

  CHAPTER XV. TORQUEMADA’S FURTHER “INSTRUCTIONS”

  The intrepid but ineffectual resistance offered by Zaragoza to the Inquisition was emulated by the principal cities of Aragon; one and all protested against the institution of this tribunal under the new form which Torquemada had given it.

  But nowhere was resistance of the least avail against the iron purpose of the Grand Inquisitor, armed with the entire force of civil justice to constrain the people into submission to the ecclesiastical will.