Imperial Spain 1469-1716

by John H. Elliott

  The features of the Inquisition most notorious in popular accounts of its activities were often less exceptionable in the contemporary context than is sometimes assumed. Torture and burning for the sake of one's beliefs were not, after all, practices exclusive to Spain; and – even if this was scarcely a source of much consolation to the victims – the methods of torture employed by the Holy Office were on the whole, traditional, and did not run to the novel refinements popularly imagined. Great care was taken to ensure a ‘just’ verdict, and the death sentence appears to have constituted only a small proportion of the many sentences given. Unfortunately it is impossible to discover the total number of victims burnt for heresy. The figures were probably high for the first years of the tribunal's life – the chronicler of the Catholic Kings, Hernando de Pulgar, speaks of nearly 2,000 men and women – but seem to have dropped sharply in the sixteenth century.

  While burning and torture were in no sense the exclusive prerogative of the Spanish Inquisition, the tribunal did, on the other hand, possess certain distinctive features which made it particularly objectionable. There was, first, the secrecy and the interminable delay of its proceedings: Fray Luis de León (1527–91) was kept for five years in the cells of the Inquisition awaiting his verdict. There was also the indelible stain which imprisonment inflicted not simply on the reputation of the accused himself, but on the reputation of his descendants also. Nor did he lose only his honour. One of the principal reasons for the fear of the Inquisition was to be found in its right to confiscate the property of those who were penanced. ‘Reconciliation’ therefore meant economic as well as social ruin -and consequently innumerable opportunities of blackmail for unscrupulous officials of the Holy Office.

  Of all the obnoxious features of the Inquisition, however, perhaps the most obnoxious was its natural tendency to generate a climate of mistrust and mutual suspicion peculiarly propitious for the informer and the spy. There were some 20,000 familiars scattered through Spain, ever on the alert for manifestations of unorthodoxy; and their activities were supplemented by the unpleasant device known as the Edict of the Faith, by which inquisitors would visit a district at regular intervals and would have a list of heretical and obnoxious practices read to the assembled population. The reading would be followed by an exhortation to the hearers to denounce any such practices as had come to their knowledge, with severe penalties being threatened to those who kept silent. Since victims of the Inquisition were never informed of the identity of their accusers, the Edict of Faith presented an ideal opportunity for the settlement of private scores, and encouraged informing and delation as a matter of course. ‘The gravest thing of all,’ wrote Mariana, ostensibly reporting the opinion of others, but perhaps expressing his own, ‘was that through these secret inquiries people were deprived of the liberty of listening and talking to one another, for there were in the cities, towns, and villages special persons to give warning of what was happening….’1

  In this climate of fear and suspicion, vigorous debate was checked and a new constraint made itself felt. Even if the Holy Office did not interfere directly with most secular works, the effects of its activities could not be confined exclusively to the theological sphere, which was technically its sole concern. Authors, even of non-theological works, would naturally tend to exercise a kind of self-censorship, if only to keep their writings free of anything that might mislead the ignorant and the uneducated, and furnish an additional weapon to enemies of the Faith. Consequently there was a new spirit of caution abroad, which inevitably inhibited the wide-ranging debate and inquiry that had characterized the reign of the Catholic Kings.

  It would be wrong, however, to assume that the Inquisition was the sole source of constraint in sixteenth-century Spain, or that it introduced entirely new features into Spanish life. Indeed, it may have taken such firm hold of Spanish society precisely because it gave official sanction to already existing attitudes and practices. Suspicion of those who deviated from the common norm was deeply rooted in a country where deviation was itself more normal than elsewhere – and a man could be suspect for his race as well as for his faith. It is no coincidence that the rise of a tribunal intended to impose religious orthodoxy was accompanied by the growth of certain practices designed to secure racial purity, for religious and racial deviation were easily equated in the popular mind. Indeed, alongside the obsessive concern with purity of the faith there flourished a no less obsessive concern with purity of blood; both obsessions were at their most violent in the middle decades of the sixteenth century; both employed the same techniques of informing and delation; and both had the effect of narrowing the extraordinarily wide range of Spanish life, and of forcing a rich and vital society into a strait-jacket of conformity.

  Even more than the development of the Inquisition, the development of the doctrine of limpieza de sangre – purity of blood – illustrates the tensions within Spanish society, and suggests how easily that society could fall victim to the uglier tendencies in its midst. During the fifteenth century the Jewish problem had become the converso problem, and it was probably inevitable that sooner or later attempts would be made to exclude conversos from public office. The first attempt of an official nature occurred at Toledo in 1449. In the later fifteenth and the earlier sixteenth century pure ancestry gradually became an indispensable condition for membership of certain Religious Orders, as also of the Colegios Mayores at the universities. The graduates of the Colegios naturally tended to carry with them the idea of discrimination as they attained high office in Church and State; and they no doubt derived encouragement from the fact that at the Court of Charles V, unlike that of Ferdinand and Isabella, there were few conversos, partly perhaps because the Emperor believed them to have been implicated in the revolt of the Comuneros.

  While the Emperor was quite willing to give the force of law to local institutional statutes discriminating against those of Jewish origin (Moorish ancestry does not seem to have been of any moment), the movement in favour of racial purity only gathered real momentum as a result of certain events in the later 1540s. The scene of the new developments was the cathedral of Toledo, and the prime mover was Juan Martinez Siliceo, appointed Archbishop in 1546.

  Both the place and the personality reveal a good deal about the origins and character of the movement for limpieza de sangre. Toledo, the home of the Comuneros, remained in the years after the revolt a bitterly divided city, in which the rival factions of the Ayalas and the Riberas continued to compete for civil and ecclesiastical office. Over the course of the years the question of ancestry had come to play a prominent part in these rivalries. The Ayalas, who had fought for the cause of Castilian nationalism against the Flemish Court, prided themselves on their purity of ancestry, and saw in limpieza de sangre a possible weapon for driving their rivals from office, since the Riberas, the Silvas, and the Mendozas were held to be tainted with Jewish blood. The Ayalas, however, seem to have made little progress, for at the time of the appointment of Siliceo to the see of Toledo the chapter and the cathedral benefices were alleged to be swarming with conversos.

  Siliceo's appointment introduced a new and disturbing element into a troubled situation. It was the practice of Charles V, as of the Catholic Kings, to prefer the low-born to high office in Church and State, and Siliceo was a man of exceptionally humble origins. This was something which he was unable to forget, and which anyhow would have been very difficult to forget when he found himself among his canons of Toledo. The aristocratic families of Toledo had successfully acquired for themselves the best canonries and benefices, and, under the leadership of their dean, Pedro de Castilla – a man of royal, and Jewish blood – these aristocratic canons resented the appointment of an Archbishop of such inferior rank. Siliceo's birth may have been lowly, but he had one undoubted asset which many of his enemies lacked: his ancestry was pure. Naturally, he proceeded to make the most of this asset in his feud with Pedro de Castilla; and the dean in turn saw in the Archbishop's espousal of the cause of
limpieza a conspiracy to introduce into the archdiocese more men of plebeian origin. The predictable clash came over the nomination to a canonry of a certain Fernando Jiménez. On inquiry, Jiménez proved to be the son of a converso who had recently fled the country after the Inquisition had begun inquiries into his alleged Judaic practices. Surely, argued the Archbishop, no one would accept a horse for his stable, even as a free gift, without being sure of the animal's pedigree. He therefore declined to accept this particular horse for his stable, and in 1547 forced through the chapter a statute of limpieza making purity of ancestry an essential condition for all future appointments to dignities and prebends.

  The Toledo statute of 1547, although greeted with vehement protests, set a fashion which was imitated by one after another of the ecclesiastical and secular corporations in Spain. In 1556 Siliceo asked for, and obtained, royal ratification of the statute. It was particularly ominous that Philip II justified his approval with the remark that ‘all the heresies in Germany, France, and Spain have been sown by descendants of Jews’.2 In fact, orthodoxy in the Faith and purity of ancestry were now officially associated, and the stamp of royal approval was firmly set on a movement which was already beginning to get out of hand.

  Although the Crown had at last placed itself squarely on the side of the statutes, the real pressure for statutes of limpieza came not from the top of Spanish society but from the bottom. The enthusiastic support of the doctrine of limpieza by such a man as Siliceo is itself symptomatic. Siliceo himself, while the villain of the piece, was also a victim – the victim of a social system which placed an exceptionally high value on birth and rank even for the Europe of the sixteenth century. The watchword of this society was honour, which implied to a Spaniard something external to his person – his worth as evaluated by other people. Honour was essentially an attribute of nobility, the exclusive preserve of the high-born. It was natural enough that this code of aristocratic behaviour should be at once aped and resented by the more humble members of society, and especially by those who had risen to positions of eminence and yet saw themselves regarded as intruders in the world of privilege. The doctrine of limpieza provided men like Siliceo with a compensating code of their own, and one, indeed, which might effectively challenge the code of the aristocracy. Was it not preferable to be born of humble, but pure Christian parentage, than to be a caballero of suspicious racial antecedents? Pure ancestry thus became for the lower ranks of Spanish society the equivalent of noble ancestry for the upper ranks, since it determined a man's status among his fellow men. His honour depended on his ability to prove the purity of his ancestry – at first as far back as the fourth generation, and then, in Philip II's reign, from time immemorial. Once this was established he was the equal of any comer, irrespective of his rank, and this no doubt helped to give him that sense of equality which is, at first sight, one of the most paradoxical characteristics of the intensely hierarchical society of sixteenth-century Spain.

  The growing insistence on purity of blood as a qualification for office placed the aristocracy in an embarrassing position. It was much easier to trace the ancestry of a noble than of a commoner, and there were few nobles without a dubious ancestor lurking somewhere in the background, as the famous family registers known as the libros verdes gloatingly proclaimed to the world at large. But popular sentiment was so strong and the religious implications of doubtful ancestry had been so widely insisted upon, that it proved impossible to check the mania for limpieza. As soon as purity of blood was made essential for office in the Inquisition and for entry into a religious community or a secular corporation, there was no escape from long and expensive investigations which might at any moment uncover some skeleton in the family cupboard. Since the testimony of even one malevolent witness could ruin a family's reputation, the effect of the statutes of limpieza was in many ways comparable to that of the activities of the Inquisition. They fostered the general sense of insecurity, encouraged the blackmailer and the informer, and prompted desperate attempts at deception. Names were changed, ancestries falsified, in the hope of misleading the linajudo, the professional who travelled around collecting oral evidence and scrutinizing pedigrees; and extreme care was taken to avoid matrimonial alliances which could contaminate a family with the taint either of converso blood or of penance by the Inquisition.

  By the middle of the sixteenth century, therefore, orthodoxy in Spain was coming to mean not only the profession of a strictly orthodox faith, but also the possession of a strictly orthodox ancestry. Admittedly there were limits to the power of the linajudo – more, perhaps, than to those of the inquisitor. The test of limpieza was difficult to enforce in the upper reaches of society, and any family which had obtained a hábito of one of the Military Orders was automatically placed beyond the power of the investigator. But the obsession with a pure ancestry had the general effect of confirming in the popular mind the view expressed by Philip II that there was a correlation between heresy and a non-Christian background; and it helped to place power still more firmly in the hands of a narrow and exclusive class of traditionally-minded Old Christians, who were determined to bind the country close within the confines of a conformity which they themselves had defined. It was these men, highly influential in the Church, the Religious Orders, and the Inquisition, who had taken charge of the destinies of Spain by the fateful decade of the 1550s.

  3. THE SPAIN OF THE COUNTER-REFORMATION

  While the persecution of Illuminists and Erasmians, and the growing acceptance of the concept of limpieza, had set Spain on a particular course during the later years of the Emperor's reign, it was the events of the period between 1556 and the closing of the Council of Trent in 1563 which finally ensured that there would be no turning back. These were the years in which Renaissance Spain, wide open to European humanist influences, was effectively transformed into the semi-closed Spain of the Counter-Reformation. This was partly the outcome of the gradual transfer of power and authority to such stern characters as Hernando de Valdés (Inquisitor General from 1547) and Melchor Cano, the formidable Dominican theologian. But it reflected also a new bleakness in the spiritual climate of Europe. As Geneva became the centre of a new and more dogmatic Protestantism, so the last lingering hopes of a reconciliation between Rome and the Protestants vanished. Everywhere there was a new spirit of militancy abroad. Geneva prepared for battle with its printing-presses and its pastors; Rome, in process of reformulating its dogmas at the Council of Trent, prepared for battle with its Jesuits, its Inquisition, and its Index.

  It was in this atmosphere of impending conflict that the spectacular discovery was made in 1557 and 1558 of ‘Protestant’ communities at Seville and Valladolid. Although these communities had certain contacts with Geneva, and might eventually have evolved into Protestant groups, they seem at the time of their discovery to have resembled the earlier Alumbrado communities. Their character is suggested by the fact that they included two well-known figures from among the cosmopolitan humanist circle around the Emperor: Dr Constantino Ponce de La Fuente (a former confessor of Charles V) and Dr Agustín Cazalla (one of the Emperor's favourite preachers). Twenty years earlier a man like Cazalla would probably have received little more than a brief penance. It was a measure of the change in the religious climate that he was now garrotted and burnt.

  The violence of the Inquisition's reaction may partly be ascribed to its anxiety to improve its own standing with the Crown, but it also suggests a real alarm at the apparent advance of heresy in spite of all its efforts at repression. This time there could be no half measures. Not only must the heretical communities be liquidated, but greater efforts must be made to protect Spain from foreign contagion. On 7 September 1558, therefore, Philip's sister, the Infanta Juana, acting as regent for her brother, issued a pragmatic forbidding the import of foreign books and ordering that all books printed in Spain should in future be licensed by the Council of Castile; and another pragmatic in the following year forbade Spanish students to go abroad for study.


  The law of 1558 was not in fact the first attempt at censorship in Spain. A pragmatic of 1502 had ordered that all books, whether printed at home or imported, should bear a royal licence, which could be conferred by presidents of the audiencias, and by the archbishops and certain of the bishops. In addition, there had also been periodic prohibitions of particular works. Ferdinand and Isabella had, for instance, forbidden the reading of the Scriptures in the vernacular, but their decree seems to have been directed principally against the conversos, and it was not until 1551 that the prohibition became both universal and definitive.3

  In 1545 the Inquisition had drawn up what seems to have been the first Spanish Index, and this was followed by another in 1551. The Roman Index of 1559, however, enjoyed no authority in Spain; instead, the Inquisitor General Valdés followed up the censorship law of 1558 by publishing in 1559 a new Spanish Index, which considerably augmented that of 1551. The Index of 1559 was in many respects extremely severe: it banned the Enchiridion of Erasmus and many other religious works which enjoyed a wide popular appeal. Moreover, the Inquisition enforced its provisions with unprecedented severity. A methodical search was made for prohibited books, and the episcopate was entrusted with the task of organizing a systematic inspection of public and private libraries.