Imperial Spain 1469-1716

by John H. Elliott

  During the first years of the Catholic Kings the Court maintained its traditionally tolerant attitude to the Jews. Ferdinand himself had Jewish blood in his veins, and the Court circle included not only conversos but also a number of practising Jews, like Abraham Senior, the treasurer of the Hermandad. A growing number of conversos, however, were now reverting to the faith of their fathers, and their defections were a source of deep concern to the genuine converts, who were afraid that their own position would be jeopardized by the back-sliding of their brethren. It may therefore have been influential conversos at Court and in the ecclesiastical hierarchy who first pressed for the establishment of a tribunal of the Inquisition in Castile – a tribunal for which Ferdinand and Isabella made formal application to Rome in 1478. Permission was duly granted, and a tribunal of the Holy Office was established in Castile. Placed under the direct control of the Crown, it was run from 1483 by a special royal Council – the Consejo de la Suprema y General Inquisición – and its task was to deal not with the Jews, nor with the Moriscos, but with New Christians who were suspected of having covertly returned to their old beliefs.8

  This formidable body was in fact created to solve a specifically Castilian problem. While there were many conversos also in the Crown of Aragon, they were not a source of concern to the authorities like their brothers in Castile. But in spite of this, Ferdinand insisted on extending the Castilian-style Inquisition to the Levantine states, which, ever since the Albigensian crusade, had possessed a rather somnolent Inquisition of their own. His efforts provoked bitter opposition. In Aragon the inquisitor Pedro de Arbués was murdered in Zaragoza Cathedral, and in Catalonia both lay and ecclesiastical authorities resisted the proposal on the grounds that it would be economically disastrous, and that it would prejudice the Principality's laws and liberties. In 1487, however, Ferdinand won his way. An inquisitor was installed in Barcelona, with all the consequences that had been prophesied. Frightened conversos – anything from six hundred to three thousand – fled the country, taking their capital with them. Many of these men were big merchants or administrators, whose presence could ill be spared if Barcelona were ever to recover its former commercial pre-eminence.

  The imposition of the new-style Inquisition in the Crown of Aragon as well as in Castile is often regarded as a move by Ferdinand to increase his political control over his Aragonese possessions. It is true that the Inquisition was the one institution, apart from the monarchy itself, common to the possessions of Spain, and that in this sense it did to some extent serve as a unifying organ. But it has yet to be proved that Ferdinand saw in it a weapon for destroying local autonomy and furthering the process of centralization. The conventional emphasis on Isabella's piety makes it easy to overlook the strong religious strain of her husband, a fervent devotee of the Virgin, an ardent supporter of ecclesiastical reform in Catalonia, and a man whose messianic brand of religion gave him many of the attributes of the converso.

  Yet while the establishment of the Inquisition was primarily a religious measure designed to maintain the purity of the faith in the dominions of the kings of Spain, its importance was by no means restricted to an exclusively religious sphere. In a country so totally devoid of political unity as the new Spain, a common faith served as a substitute, binding together Castilians, Aragonese, and Catalans, in the single purpose of ensuring the ultimate triumph of the Holy Church. Compensating in some respects for the absence of a Spanish nationhood, a common religious devotion had obvious political overtones, and consequently a practical value which Ferdinand and Isabella were quick to exploit. There was no sharp dividing-line between religious and political achievements, but, rather, a constant interaction between the two, and every political or military triumph of the new dynasty was raised to a new level of significance by a natural process of transmutation into a further victory for the Faith.

  In the constant interplay between politics and religion, the establishment of an Inquisition throughout Spain had obvious political advantages, in that it helped to further the cause of Spanish unity by deepening the sense of common national purpose. The same was true of the conquest of Granada and its aftermath. The holy war ended in 1492 with the achievement of Spain's territorial integrity; this in turn forged a new emotional bond between the peoples of Spain, who shared a common sense of triumph at the downfall of the infidel. But, as a great religious achievement, the triumph naturally demanded a further act of religious dedication. The Moors had now been defeated and stripped of their power. But there still remained the Jews and the crypto-Jews, ensconced at the very heart of the body politic, and purveying their pernicious doctrines throughout its length and breadth. Since the Inquisition had failed to obliterate the sources of contagion, more drastic measures were clearly required. The conquest of Granada, while glorious and triumphant, had also depleted the resources of the treasury. What more natural than to celebrate the triumph and remedy the deficiency by expelling the Jews? Local edicts, like that of 1483 in Seville, had already banished them from certain areas. Finally, at Granada on 30 March 1492, less than three months after the surrender of the Moors and less than three weeks before the signing of the capitulations with Columbus, the Catholic Kings put their signatures to an edict ordering the expulsion of all professed Jews from their kingdoms within the space of four months.

  The edict of expulsion was the logical culmination of the policy that had begun with the introduction of the Inquisition; and it represented the last, and greatest, triumph of the zealous conversos. The departure of the Jews from Spain would remove temptation from all those New Christians who still looked back uneasily to their abandoned faith. They must now decide which master they would serve. Many conversos did, in fact, choose to leave the country in the company of the practising Jews. Figures are unfortunately highly unreliable, but the Hebrew community at the beginning of the reign is thought to have been some 200,000 strong, of whom 150,000 lived in Castile. Some, particularly from the Crown of Aragon, had left before the edict of expulsion. Others had been converted. On the publication of the edict, perhaps 120,000 to 150,000 people fled the country. These included some influential but half-hearted conversos – men of standing in the Church, the administration, and the world of finance. There were several last-minute conversions, including that of Abraham Senior, and a great effort was made to keep indispensable Jewish physicians in Spain. This meant that a new group of dubious converts was now added to the converso ranks, although, on the other hand, all the inhabitants of Spain except, for a few years more, the Moriscos were now nominally Christian. As such, they were subject to the jurisdiction of the Holy Office, which found its task considerably eased by the disappearance of a practising Jewish community that served as a standing temptation to the converts, and was outside inquisitorial control.

  The conquest of Granada and the expulsion of the Jews had laid the foundations for a unitary state in the only sense in which that was possible in the circumstances of the late fifteenth century. At least in the minds of Ferdinand and Isabella, they helped impose a unity which transcended administrative, linguistic, and cultural barriers, bringing together Spaniards of all races in common furtherance of a holy mission. The gains seemed great – but so also was the cost. Even a divine mission is liable to require some human agency, and to this the Spanish mission was no exception. The resources for accomplishing the great enterprises that lay ahead were none too plentiful in fifteenth-century Spain, and they were inevitably diminished by the expulsion of the Jews. The year 1492 saw the disappearance from Spain of a dynamic community, whose capital and skill had helped enrich Castile. The gap left by the Jews was not easily filled, and many of them were replaced not by native Castilians, but by colonies of foreign immigrants – Flemings, Germans, Genoese – who would use their new opportunity to exploit rather than to enrich the resources of Spain. The effect of the expulsion was thus to weaken the economic foundations of the Spanish Monarchy at the very outset of its imperial career; and this was all the more unfortunate
in that the economic and social policies of Ferdinand and Isabella proved in the long run to be the least successful part of their programme for the restoration of Spain.

  4. THE ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL FOUNDATIONS OF THE NEW SPAIN

  The Catholic Kings had revived the power of the monarchy, and, at least in Castile, had laid the foundations of an authoritarian State, galvanized into activity by a high sense of national purpose and by the glittering opportunities suddenly revealed by the overseas discoveries. Conscious of the need to organize the resources of the new State as well as to restore its administration, they were to be as active in legislating for the national economy as they were in religious and administrative reform. During Isabella's twenty-nine-year reign in Castile, no less than 128 ordinances were made, embracing every aspect of Castile's economic life. The export of gold and silver was forbidden; navigation laws were introduced to foster Spanish ship-building; the guild system was tightened up and reorganized; sporadic attempts were made to protect Castile's textile industries by temporary import prohibitions on certain types of cloths; and Flemish and Italian artisans were encouraged to settle in Spain by a promise of ten years' exemption from taxes. It would be misleading to describe these ordinances as constituent pieces of an economic programme, since this implies a coherent and logically developing design which did not, in fact, exist. The economic legislation of the Catholic Kings is best seen as their response to certain immediate and pressing fiscal or economic problems – a response which was consistently intended to increase the national wealth of Castile and the power of its kings.

  In their economic as in their administrative ordering of Spain, Ferdinand and Isabella were content to accept and build upon already existing foundations. Their reign, so far from producing a significant change in the social organization of Castile, firmly perpetuated the existing order. Their attacks on the political influence of the magnates, and their employment of clerics and royal officials drawn from among the gentry and the bourgeoisie, have helped foster the impression that Ferdinand and Isabella were vigorous opponents of aristocracy. But, in fact, the assault on the political power of the magnates was not extended into a general assault on their economic and territorial power. It is true that the Act of Resumption of 1480 took a large slice out of their revenues; but the act dealt only with usurpations since the year 1464, and the bulk of the magnates' usurpations of Crown land and revenues had occurred before that date. All these earlier gains were left untouched, and the upper Castilian aristocracy remained an immensely wealthy class. The contemporary author Marineo Sículo provides the following list of Castilian noble houses and their revenues, probably deriving from the early years of the reign of Charles V: 9

  DUKES (Total: 13)

  Title Family Annual income ducats

  Frías (Condestable de Castilla) Velasco 60,000

  Medina de Ríoseco (Almirante de Castilla) Enríquez 50,000

  Alba Toledo 50,000

  Infantado Mendoza 50,000

  Medina-Sidonia Guzmán 55,000

  Béjar Zúñiga 40,000

  Nájera Manrique y de Lara 30,000

  Medinaceli La Cerda 30,000

  Alburquerque La Cueva 25,000

  Arcos León 25,000

  Maqueda Cárdenas 30,000

  Escalona Pacheco 60,000

  Sessa Córdoba 60,000

  565,000

  MARQUISES (Total: 13)

  Astorga Osorio 25,000

  Aguilar Manrique 12,000

  Cenete Mendoza 30,000

  Villafranca Toledo 10,000

  Priego Aguilar y Figueroa 40,000

  Ayamonte Zúñiga y Sotomayor 30,000

  Tarifa Enriquez 30,000

  Mondéjar Mendoza 15,000

  Comares Córdoba 12,000

  Los Vélez Fajardo 30,000

  Berlanga Tovar 16,000

  Villanueva Portocarrero 20,000

  del Valle Cortés 60,000

  330,000

  In addition, there were thirty-four counts and two viscounts in Castile, with a combined income of 414,000 ducats. Besides these sixty-two titled nobles in Castile, whose total rent-roll came to 1,309,000 ducats, there were a further twenty titles in the Crown of Aragon (five dukes, three marquises, nine counts and three viscounts) with a rent-roll of 170,000 ducats.

  If anything, the reign of the Catholic Kings was characterized by an increase in the social and economic power of these great nobles. Some were able to benefit from the land distribution in the conquered kingdom of Granada. ‘All the grandees and caballeros and hijosdalgo who served in the conquest of this kingdom,’ wrote a contemporary chronicler, ‘received mercedes – favours – each according to his status, in the form of houses, lands and vassals.’10 All benefited from the legislation passed in the Cortes of Toro of 1505, which confirmed and extended the right to establish mayorazgos or entails, by which a great house could ensure that its possessions remained vested in it in perpetuity, passing undivided and intact from one heir to the next. The matrimonial alliances of the great Castilian families, which the Crown did nothing to check, still further helped to consolidate great blocs of land into the hands of a powerful few. As a result, the late fifteenth century sealed and confirmed the pattern of land distribution that existed in late medieval Castile. This meant in practice that 2 per cent or 3 per cent of the population owned 97 per cent of the soil of Castile, and that over half of this 97 per cent belonged to a handful of great families. Even if they had for the moment lost their former political predominance, houses like Enríquez, Mendoza and Guzmán therefore retained the vast economic resources and territorial influence acquired in earlier times.

  The heads of these great houses were not transformed into Court nobles during the reign of the Catholic Kings. On the contrary, with the exception of a small group of magnates with posts in the royal household, the great aristocrats saw much less of Court life than they had in previous reigns, and preferred to live in their sumptuous palaces on their own estates than to dance attendance on a Court where they were excluded from political office. It was only in the years following the death of Isabella in 1504 that they made a bid to recover their earlier position at Court and in the State, and their success was short-lived. After that, there was no opportunity until the reign of Philip III for them to obtain an influence at Court of the kind to which they felt themselves automatically entitled. But, if their political power was gone, their social predominance remained unchallenged, and indeed was confirmed by the decision of Charles V in 1520 to grade the Spanish aristocracy into a fixed hierarchy of rank. At the top of the scale came the Grandes de España – twenty-five grandees, drawn from the oldest families of Castile and Aragon. These enjoyed the special distinction of being allowed to remain covered in the presence of the King, and of being addressed by him as primos, or cousins. Immediately below them were the other titled aristocrats, known as Títulos, who in other respects were indistinguishable from the grandees.

  Just under these two groups of magnates, who formed the élite of the Spanish aristocracy, came a group which differed from them in having no corporate entity of its own, but which none the less enjoyed an acknowledged position in the social hierarchy. This group consisted of the segundones – the younger sons of the great houses. These possessed no title of their own, and were generally victims of the mayorazgo system which reserved the bulk of the family wealth for their elder brothers. Since their resources tended to be limited, they were likely to devote themselves in particular to careers in the Army or the Church, or to serve the Crown as diplomats and administrators.

  The remaining aristocracy in Castile was the lesser aristocracy, whose members, distinguished by the coveted prefix of Don, were known indifferently as caballeros or hidalgos. These varied enormously among themselves. Some were rich, and some extremely poor; some came from ancient families, while others were recently ennobled bourgeois; many possessed rural estates and properties, with or without jurisdiction over vassals, but many also had town houses, and liv
ed similar lives to those of the upper class of citizens, with whom they were usually closely interrelated. In Ávila, for instance, there were numerous families of noble origin: families who transformed the appearance of the city in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries by building themselves impressive town houses in the new Renaissance style, and who played an essential part in the city's ceremonial life and in the control of urban government. Members of a society in which rank and family were of supreme importance, hidalgos were distinguished from the run of citizens by their possession of family coats of arms, which they emblazoned on houses and churches and convents and tombs with a profusion proper to a world in which heraldry was the indispensable key to all the subtleties of status.

  The relationship of hidalgos to the world of business and commerce seems to have been somewhat ambiguous. Many of them were heavily engaged in financial administration, since only proven hidalgos could farm royal taxes. Many too, were involved in trade of one kind or another – a practice that does not seem, at least in the early sixteenth century, to have been regarded as incompatible with hidalguía, although an excessive concern with commercial affairs might cast a shadow over a family's reputation. Few, however, would be anxious to compromise too heavily a status which conferred on them not only great social prestige, but also important financial and legal advantages; for hidalgos shared many privileges with the magnates, of which the most important was exemption from payment of taxes to the Crown. They also enjoyed a privileged status before the law. In criminal cases they could be judged only by the audiencias or by special alcaldes de Corte, and all sentences upon them had to be confirmed by the Council of Castile. They could not be tortured or condemned to the galleys; they could not be imprisoned for debt; and in civil suits their houses, arms, and horses could not be sequestrated.