Daughters of the Inquisition

by Christina Crawford

  Aragon already had a local Inquisition established by the pope. Valencia was prosecuting conversos, two-thirds of them conversa women. The kingdoms of Catalonia and Narvarre had also conducted Inquisitions during the years 1460–67. For all these reasons, Isabella and Ferdinand believed that if they established a national Inquisition totally under their own control, it would extend their power because inquisitors could travel outside the boundaries of the kingdoms they reigned. With their own agenda at the forefront, in 1478 they petitioned the pope in Rome for permission to establish an Inquisition in the reconquered lands of Spain. But as soon as the Royal National Inquisition was formed, there was legal resistance by the people through their own local laws, called fueros, and opposition to the royal intrusion in territories outside the jurisdiction of the Crown. The distress over confiscations was immediate, as was the alarm over the secrecy of the process which had been perfected already by the European Inquisition. Uniformity of religious belief was the stated goal and rigorously pursued. The position of Isabella and Ferdinand was “Ensuring the loyalty and the purity of the baptized was necessary and could be executed only with the aid of an inquisition directed from Spain. The Jewishness that remained in the New Christian minority had to be dealt with and extirpated as heretical.”295

  The first tribunal was organized in Seville in 1481.

  But on April 18, 1482, Pope Sixtus IV wrote what historian Henry Charles Lea calls the most extraordinary bull in the history of the Inquisition. It reads

  … in Aragon, Valencia, Mallorca and Catalonia the Inquisition has for some time been moved not by zeal for the faith and the salvation of souls, but by lust for wealth, and that many true and faithful Christians, on the testimony of enemies, rivals, slaves and other lower and even less proper persons, have without any legitimate proof been thrust into secular prisons, tortured and condemned as relapsed heretics, deprived of their goods and property and handed over to the secular arm to be executed, to the peril of souls, setting a pernicious example and causing disgust to many.296

  While the pope was attempting to curb the excesses of the new royal Inquisition, these words could just as well have been said about the older tribunals in Europe. However, Ferdinand pretended not to believe that this letter of reprimand had been issued by the pope and accused conversos of misleading and negatively influencing the pope. Six months later, in October 1482, the pope capitulated, suspending his reprimand. Ferdinand had won and never turned back.

  In 1483, Ferdinand ordered Jews in Saragossa to wear a red patch on their clothing. Jews were expelled from Seville, Cordoba and Cadiz. “Judaizers were prosecuted well into the middle of the 16th century and were sent to the stake (to be burned) more than any other group categorized as heretical.”297 But because Jews themselves were not subject to the Inquisition, they were instead pressured to testify against the conversos and assist in bringing conviction against them. The Crown now tread a fine line: They supported Jews serving in their own court as physicians, financiers while still signing orders to persecute them as conversos, because in Spain for centuries Jews had been “a significant, prosperous and integral part of society.”298 While it was feared by some that the Jews were collaborating with the Muslim kingdom of Grenada when Ferdinand was waging war against the Moors, the other very real consideration of the Crown was purely financial: Jews paid taxes directly to the king and queen, taxes the royals used to finance that war.299 Prophetically, so the couple thought, Granada fell to Spanish forces in January 1492. The path was now clear to them.

  On March 31, 1492, Ferdinand and Isabella “issued the edict of expulsion, giving the Jews of Castille and Aragon until July 31, 1492, to accept baptism or leave the country.”300 The actual words stating the rationale of the Crown for the expulsion are:

  We are informed that in these our kingdoms there were some bad Christians who Judaized and apostatized from our holy Christian faith, this being chiefly caused by the communication of the Jews with the Christians … it is evident and apparent that the great damage to the Christians has resulted from and does result from the participation, conversation, and communication that they have had with the Jews, who try to always achieve by whatever ways and means possible to subvert and draw away faithful Christians from our holy Catholic faith and to separate them from it, and to attract and pervert them to their injurious belief and opinion, instructing them in their ceremonies and observances of the Law, holding gatherings where they read unto them and teach them what they ought to believe and observe according to their Law, trying to circumcise them and their children, given them books from which to read their prayers, and declaring the fasts that they ought to fast, and joining with them to read and teach them the histories of their Law, notifying them of Passover before it comes, advising them what they should observe and do for it, giving them and taking unto them the unleavened bread and the (ritually) slaughtered meats with their ceremonies, instructing them on the things that they should stay away from, thus in the foods as in other matters, for observance of their Law and persuading them as much as they can there is no other law or truth besides it.301

  Immediately, various envoys entreated both the king and queen to change their edict. Neither listened; in fact the envoys may have precipitated the letter from Ferdinand to the nobles of his kingdoms which read

  The Holy Office of the Inquisition, seeing how some Christians are endangered by contact and communication with the Jews, has provided that the Jews be expelled from all our realms and territories, and has persuaded us to give our support and agreement to this, which we now do, because of our debts and obligations to the said Holy Office: we do so despite the great harm to ourselves, seeking and preferring the salvation of souls above our own profit and that of individuals.302

  Here the Crown blames the expulsion on Rome. Professor Kamen argues that the letter was actually written by the Holy Office and their inquisitors, reeking of anti-semitism, but that may not be true either, given the previous edict of expulsion which was written under the guidance of Ferdinand and Isabella.

  One can barely imagine the shock of the people. After eight centuries of coexistence, they were now faced with untenable choices. Either lose every material possession by fleeing, or be deprived first of their religion and then of their lives because “should they deviate in the future (from being an exemplary Catholic), no mercy would be shown; the reconciliation would be offered only once. If there were to be a second encounter, the now relapsed heretic would be turned over to the secular arm to be burned at the stake.”303 This edict sought either to expel the people or eliminate the religion in Spain. It ended up doing both. And now comes the very ugly part that Pope Sixtus IV attempted unsuccessfully to address ten years previously: confiscation. The property of the departing Jews was granted to the seigneurs of the Crown. The export of metal (i.e. coinage or jewelry) was forbidden, so those who left, exited with almost nothing.

  How many people were affected? The estimates vary as do all statistics from the Inquisition. Jesuit Juan de Mariana who wrote a century later says that “the number of Jews who left Castile and Aragon is unknown: most authors say there were 170,000 families, but some they were as many as 800,000 souls: certainly a great number.” Issac Abravanel, who helped negotiate terms of the expulsion for the Jews, wrote that “there left on foot 300,000 people from all the provinces of the king.”304

  What happened next is of equal horror. Boats to transport the people to North Africa, about the only place that would accept them, were overcrowded and lacked seaworthiness. Many were forced back to Spain by harsh sea conditions. Those who survived the misfortune were now forced to convert. But those who actually reached Africa faced even worse calamity: They were robbed or murdered. Jewish communal property such as synagogues and cemeteries were seized by the Crown. Some were kept and others turned over to local authorities. Those people who returned faced total impoverishment, and relendess persecution. A few were permitted to restore their old trades because that would bene
fit the majority population. But the property – vineyards, farms, shops, machinery – had already been dispersed throughout the Christian communities who had paid almost nothing to acquire it. Kamen says that “The Crown turned its back on the plural society of the past, cut off an entire community that had been an historic part of the nation, and intensified the converso problem without solving it.”305

  As part of the irony that never fails to amaze, 1492 was the first voyage of Columbus in the Age of Exploration, under Spanish flag. It was financed by converso Luis de Santangel, treasurer of King Ferdinand the Catholic. “The Argonese conversos Santangel and Gabriel Sanchez protected and financed the expedition: Jews and conversos, including a Jewish interpreter, formed part of the crew; and it has been argued that Columbus himself was descended from a family of Catalan conversos.”305 Tragically for all the inhabitants of the New World, in the next year, 1493, Pope Alexander VI, issued the Inter Caetera bull which declared that

  … barbarous nations be overthrown and brought to the faith itself. “He said that he would” … give, grant, and assign forever to you and your heirs and successors, kings of Castile and Leon, all and singular the aforesaid countries and islands … hereto discovered … and to be discovered … together with all their dominion, cities, camps, places and villages, and all rights, jurisdictions and appurtenances of the same.306

  This set the stage for the disgrace which followed. But the European explorers visited destruction on the native populations they encountered in many other ways such as infecting them with smallpox and syphilis, diseases unknown in the New World which were lethal to the native peoples.

  The expulsion of conversos was a positive influence for the Dutch who witnessed an increase of wealth and expansion of exploration, in competition with Spain, for new and lucrative territories. But for Spain the loss of skilled practitioners in the fields of medicine, science, finance and literature was enormous. At one point the shortage of doctors was so severe that the Inquisition could not find even one Old Christian to minister to their needs and had to employ a converso, imprisoned by them for the past three years, much to their embarrassment.307 In fact, converso doctors appear in the records of the Inquisition as those being accused during both the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

  The paranoia surrounding “purity of blood” continued to rise. Two books were written on the subject. As early as 1449 a report circulated which stated that all the noble lineages of Castile descended from conversos, including the family of King Ferdinand. In 1560 Cardinal Mendoza gave Phillip II a book which claimed the same, but for all Spanish nobility. Finally, there appeared the Green Book of Aragon which claimed to be the genealogical tables linking nobility to conversos. In 1623 all known copies of this book were order to be burned by the government.308

  But, what happened to the lives of converso men and conversa women? How did they cope? Renee Melammed provides details, reminding us that

  Judaism is a male-oriented religion. The men are required to fulfill all the commandments, including those that are time-bound; women are exempt from the latter. (i.e. prayer three times a day) The Jewish male trains his son by means of example, accompanies him to synagogue or house of study. There additional activities also take place.… the center of the Jewish male world is outside the home; he is tied to the various communal institutions and bound to be present in some of them at very specific times. As a result, the demise of Jewish institutional life in 1492 left the male Jew without a framework within which he had functioned.309

  In addition, the prayer books, bibles, copies of the Talmud were destroyed. Some populations of the men resurface in Belgium, Holland, Italy, Africa, England, and then journey into the New World.

  The situation for conversa women was entirely different in ways that could initially be seen as preferable, but ultimately placed them directly in the grasp of the Spanish Inquisition. Melammed writes,

  Women had never been dependent upon a center outside the home, nor were they overly dependent on books … the women were never more than peripheral in the functioning of the community. The center of their lives was always the home, and when other institutions disappeared, they did not have to undergo a major transition … (but) the activities that were the domain of women were now the focus of attention of the Inquisition and it’s prosecutors.310

  When women lighted candles on Friday night, baked matsah, refused to eat pork, or cleaned meat in traditional ways to remain kosher, these behaviors were seen by informers (disgruntled servants or Old Christian neighbors) and by the inquisitors as proof of crypto-Judaism. Because the women conversas had been converted to Christianity and baptized, these behaviors were also proof of heresy. There was never any thought that these practices were integral to the way these women had been taught to keep house, prepare and cook their foods, and they knew no other ways. As has been previously stated, two-thirds of those accused, punished and burnt in the early years of the Spanish Inquisition were female conversas.

  The Visionaries

  Just a few years after the expulsion edict, a procession of visionaries of Jewish ancestry arrived in Castile. They claimed to be prophets, carrying a message of much needed salvation, according to the laws of Moses. While visionaries and charismatics were not new to Christianity, the Jewish prophets of 1500 alarmed the inquisitors greatly, confirming in them the belief that all conversos were really Jews masquerading as Catholics. The inquisitors acted quickly to bring thirty-two women, said to be leaders of this charismatic movement, to trial and condemnation between 1500 and 1502. About half were burned. The swiftness of the tribunal in wiping out this concentration of influential women must have frightened their followers into silence because there are no records of arrests of these women after 1502.311

  The Midwife

  Of particular interest in rediscovering the story of women in the Inquisition is the hauntingly unresolved, if tremendously well documented, case of the conversa midwife from Castile, named Beatriz Rodriquez. Melammed shows how the inquisitors of Toledo persistently collected information concerning this particular woman for over fifty years!312

  In 1511 an Old Christian weaver made a trip with his servant to purchase a shirt. The two of them lodge for one night in the house of a New Christian whose wife was ill with menstrual cramps and was being attended to by a midwife, whom they met in the kitchen grinding herbs before applying them to the abdomen of the patient. During a very brief conversation with the weaver, the midwife who mistook him for a New Christian, made certain remarks regarding “the law” and God’s love for it, appearing as a judaizor to the Old Christian weaver, who reported her to the Inquisition. While this was insufficient evidence to arrest the midwife, the weaver’s remarks were recorded in the Book of Testimonies and kept for future reference. Twenty-two years later, in 1536, the inquisitors visited her town again, but she had traveled to neighboring Portugal to visit her brother, accompanied by a son-in-law. When she returned, the Inquisition awaited her. Now they questioned her on an apparent baptism that same year in which she was present at the birth of a converso child and in attendance also at the church baptism, where all rites except the pouring on of water (presumably done at home) took place, according to the midwife’s account of it. No charges against her were pressed. It is here Melammed goes beyond the documents of the Inquisition to give insight into the role of a midwife at this time and in this context. She says, in relation to the tribunals clergymen and their reaction,

  It must have been acceptable for a midwife to pour water on a newborn prior to the church baptism; if not, why would the priest have asked if water was administered? And obviously, it was acceptable for a midwife to do so in lieu of a priest … the most likely explanation of the midwifes involvement with baptismal waters would be the fear that the child would not survive until the time of official baptism (about ten days to two weeks). Midwives were sanctioned to baptize a baby unlikely to survive; this pre-christening period was full of uncertainties.313

 
; Midwives were always under greater suspicion than ordinary women by churchmen because they officiated at the intersection between life and death, between the seen and the unseen where the witnesses were women only, no men allowed.

  Melammed further specifies that

  The character and religious beliefs of the midwife were of utmost concern to the ecclesiastical authorities. The midwife was valued and trusted by the community; this situation presented a challenge to the church, for the acquisition of power by peasant women posed a threat to the church. How great was the resentment and how threatened were the men of the clergy? Only after assessing the activities of the midwifes can one evaluate the fears of the midwives activities on the part of the clergy and other males in power.314

  She then provides us with a list of those powers and activities as giving prenatal advice to the pregnant women, providing psychological support to the woman in labor, easing the pain of delivery by oiling the stomach of the mother, preparing drinks, herbs or food to ease pain and cutting the umbilical cord, performing emergency baptism for high risk infants, preparing deceased infants bodies for burial, caring for post-partum mothers, and the examination of women in rape cases. Adding, “the midwife’s close association with birth and death as well as her knowledge of abortifacients and other medicants made her vulnerable to witchcraft accusations.”315

  A period now arrives in Spain when attempts are made to subject midwives to a series of licensing, because issues of control outside the realm of men, particularly churchmen are still bothersome to them. In Spain generally, this issue was complicated by the fact that New Christian midwives were more suspect because of the clergyman’s sense of horror at the thought that judaizers could be performing emergency baptism. In 1565, Old Christians were admonished not to use the services of New Christian midwives, and the Spanish Inquisition denounced and tried to “discredit women healers who had to take care not to disturb the clerical religious monopoly.”316