Returning to Beatriz Rodrigez in 1550, she was accused by the Toledo Inquisition, and required – if she were still alive – to appear, to be taken prisoner, and all her goods confiscated. By now, Beatriz was over 65 years old, but her age was not enough to keep her from being imprisoned for three weeks. There is no record of torture, but she did not confess anything ultimately usable either. Consequently, she was sentenced to life imprisonment and not to being burned at the stake. But, with no adequate explanation in the records, the tribunal recapitulated ten days later, sentencing her to penances and requiring that she not leave town. On April 13, 1552, the midwife who was now nearly 70 years old was at last permitted to go and live with her aunt, and in August of that same year, she was permitted to return to her ancestral homeland. Eleven years later, in August 1563, the Inquisition entered its final note on this case: The confiscation of the midwives goods and property were specified. The court determined she had been a crypto-Jew for 50 years. Melammed states clearly,
Beatriz’s profession as a midwife played a central role in these proceedings; a judaizing midwife would have been especially threatening to the men of the church … Despite its display of mercy by not “relaxing” her to the secular arm (to be burned), it asserted its power by declaring that all possessions amassed during fifty years prior to her arrest would be confiscated.317
The midwife had been under surveillance by the Inquisition from 1511 to 1563, a period of 52 years. With no confession of guilt or wrongdoing, and without enough evidence to convict, the Inquisition, nevertheless, ruined this woman’s life, curtailed her free movement, rendered her penniless and never once gave up the pursuit. This is not an extreme case.
The Spanish Inquisition Gathers Momentum
This Inquisition, unlike its European counterpart, initially targeted Jews and then Arabs or Moslems practicing the religion of Islam. By 1470, long before the edict of 1492, Jews who had been advised to convert to Christianity, called conversos, had not been involved in proven efforts to reverse their conversion, but many did continue to practice some of their traditions and customs inside their own homes out of habit. Nevertheless, the Catholic advisors to the Spanish crown cited, “Vestigal Jewish practices in matters of family habits and cuisine, residual Jewish culture in vocabulary, kinship links between Jews and conversos.”318 Of course there were kinship links; these people were all related! Of course there were language similarities; they had all previously spoken some dialect of Hebrew. Of course there were culinary habits, which were passed from mother to daughter for thousands of years. After all, the process of conversion was in the very recent past. So, why the persecution? Kamen says it without evidencing doubt.
The converso danger, if can be argued on this evidence was invented to justify the spoliation of conversos. The harvest of heretics reaped by the early Inquisition owed its success to deliberate falsification or to the completely indiscriminate way in which residual Jewish customs were interpreted as being heretical … there was no systematic “converso religion” in the 1480’s to justify the creation of the Inquisition (in Spain).319
The conversos themselves always claimed innocence and protested the flagrant false witnesses who came forward as accusers. The conversos cited the greed of the Inquisition, and not the behavior of conversos, was driving this fanaticism. According to Kamen’s own research, a converso witness testifies in 1501, “Most of those burnt by the Inquisition were burnt because of false witness.” Another said, “Very many of those arrested and burnt by the reverend fathers were arrested and burnt only because of their property.”320 Kamen admits that these claims show every sign of having been true.
In 1478, Pope Sixtus IV, on the insistence of Spain’s Crown, issued an edict providing for the appointment of two or three priests over 40 years old, to serve as inquisitors. On Sept. 27, 1480, commissions were issued to Dominicans, and the Spanish Inquisition began in earnest. “If the Inquisition claimed to have religious motives, those motives were difficult to justify by the evidence.”321 The king wanted more power, and Queen Isabella wanted it to aggrandize her devotion to the Catholic Church and view herself as a righteous monarch. The Church wanted another Inquisition to increase their territory of control over the population and to increase wealth through confiscated property. All three succeeded.
In 1481, the first public auto de fe was held with six people burnt at the stake. The cleric who preached the sermon was dead a few days later, victim of a plague that swept the city of Seville. In the next few months, thousands of families left the Andalusia region, depopulating the countryside. When Queen Isabella was informed that lack of commerce might mean a serious decline in her own revenues, she is reported to have replied that “limpieza” (purity of blood) in her lands was more important than revenue and that cleansing her country of the sin of heresy was her service to God. The next year, 1482, seven more Dominican friars were appointed, among them the man who was to gain for himself a reputation for being the most feared and the most hated of all the inquisitors: Tomas de Torquemada, who served Spain as its first Inquisitor General.322 In November, 1484, Torquemada issued a far reaching instruction, really designed to punish into the seventh generation all those who were being condemned. It read
The children and grandchildren of those condemned may not hold or possess public offices or posts, or honors, or be promoted to holy orders, or be judges, mayors, constables, magistrates, jurors, stewards, officials of weights and measures, merchant, notaries, public scriveners, lawyers, attorneys, secretaries, accountants, treasurers, physicians, surgeons, shopkeepers, brokers, changers, weight inspectors, collectors, tax-farmers, or holders of any similar office.323
The Crown reissued the decrees in 1501 against conversos. And, in 1552 the prohibitions and exclusions were extended to include all people of Muslim origin, now called moriscos. This is the basis of the policy of limpieza, which was now the law throughout Catholic Spain. In the first fifty years of the early 1500’s, “over 50,000 conversos had been burnt and penanced by the Inquisition.”324 However, as not only an irony but also a great embarrassment to royal families, it was revealed that the majority of these elite had either Jewish or Muslim relatives in their genealogy.
Limpieza was always controversial; nevertheless, the policy was put into effect in military orders, religious orders, cathedrals, some town councils, and from the sixteenth century it was necessary proof for entry into a Colegio Mayor for professional career training and advancement.
Limpieza as a concept survived the abolition of the Inquisition … the last official act was a law of May 16, 1865, abolishing proofs of purity (of blood) for marriages and for certain government posts. But as late as 1858 the people of the island of Mallorca under Spanish control who where conversos, were segregated and refused all public offices. There were no licenses for mixed marriages.325
In contrast to the European Inquisition under the direct control of the Roman Pope, King Ferdinand asserted royal control over the appointment and payment of inquisitors in Aragon. While attempting to resurrect the older papal Inquisition design, he was also trying to control it himself, making the inquisitors of Spain dependent on him. But wealthy conversos appealed to Rome and planned mass exodus from Spanish lands. People in the regions of Catalonia, Barcelona, Aragon and Castile mounted resistance to this treachery against them. In 1485 an inquisitor was murdered by conversos in Saragossa. The Inquisitors responded by ordering an auto de fe lasting from December 1485 to June 1486. One of the accused “had his hands cut off and nailed to the door of the Diputacion, after which he was dragged to the marketplace, beheaded and quartered, and the pieces of his body suspended in the streets of the city.”326 Another accused committed suicide in his prison cell, and the other individuals were being burnt as late as 1492. Judging from the lists of the inquisitors, these new conspirators numbered among the greatest families of several regions. Whether they committed suicide or were imprisoned, beheaded, and burnt, the end result was their death. For this
single murder of a hated inquisitor who unjustly convicted many innocents and cost 600 gold florins, the punishment “turned out to be an act of mass suicide that annihilated all opposition to the Inquisition for the next hundred years.”327 Fear across the lands was now the predominant factor. In Cuidad Real, 52 were burnt, 220 condemned to death in absentia. In Barcelona, 1491 – 3 were burnt, 139 condemned to death in absentia. In Mallorca, 1493 – 3 burnt, 47 fugitives burnt in effigy. And on and on it went: Barcelona, between 1488 and 1505, 99% of those condemned were conversos. In Valencia, 91% were conversos between 1484 and 1530. All these were conversos of Jewish origin, who were the primary target of extermination by the Spanish Inquisition.328
How were these people identified? They were picked out in much the same way as the Medieval Inquisition had required people to self-incriminate. The Church called it (rather ominously) a “period of grace.” During this time, the local populations were told through Sunday sermons what acts or beliefs constituted heresy. Then they were invited to come forward and denounce themselves! More importantly for the inquisitors, these poor souls were encouraged to implicate friends, neighbors and members of their own families. In order to achieve these betrayals, the Church promised lighter penalties if these accusations were compiled within the 30 days of the grace period. The people were told that the Church would “absolve and reconcile” them once. If they were ever again found to be at odds with the Church, there would be no trial. As “relapsed heretics” they were handed over to the civil authorities to be burned alive at the stake.
This promise of leniency had the effect of filling up the prisons: in Mallorca – 300, and in the larger city of Toledo – 2,400. Many conversos made cash bribes in order to attempt circumventing prison. The inquisitors took converso money. As a result in Toledo, there were 4,300 “reconciled” to the Church in 1486–7. From 1480 to 1530 the Toledo Inquisition dealt with 8,000 cases. Seville, in roughly the same years, handled 20,000 people, minus those sent to prison for life. Kamen writes, “It is likely that over three-quarters of all those who perished under the Inquisition in the three centuries of its existence (in Spain) did so in the first half-century. Lack of documentation, however, makes it impossible to arrive at totally reliable figures.”329
This “reign of terror” had the impact of convincing the conversos not to come forward, and instead flee if they still could, or go underground if that were possible. Administrators, artisans, educators, merchants, doctors, money lenders, textile workers, all left and took their capital with them. The Inquisition had successfully eliminated this entire population from the public life of the Iberian Peninsula, even before 1492 and the royal edict of expulsion.
Conversas and Beatas
Mystical movements searching for an interior religion of greater purity were already well established in Europe with numerous followers. In Spain, the noble families offered the power of their patronage to mystics of more local origin. The Spiritual Franciscans were male mystics called Illuminists or Alumbrados. Their movement was eventually condemned, and the men burnt. Female mystics, called visionary beata, were holy women who prophesied and had loyal followings, from nobility to peasant, both male and female.
Carmelite Teresa of Avila, was undergoing investigation by the Inquisition in Seville during the years of 1575–6. Writing about her, Professor Giles says, “Recent studies of Teresa of Avila have observed and analyzed how her visionary experiences were a significant challenge to the acceptance of her authority as a Christian mystic; women who lacked Teresa’s theological background clearly could not justify the validity of their experiences.”330 When her trial had concluded, “Teresa was confined to her convent in Toledo 1576–77 and temporarily forbidden to found any more discalced Carmelite convents. A less well known visionary beata who was tried during the same years as Teresa, was Francisca de los Apostoles. Francisca tried to found houses for poor women and maidservants to counteract the corruption of the Church, but instead found herself on trial, condemned to be burned, imprisoned, beaten, tortured and finally killed.”331
Other famous Spanish beatas were Isabel del la Cruz and Francisca Hernandes. Isabel was sentenced to appear in an auto de fe at Toledo in July 1529 and imprisoned. When her devoted followers protested publicly, they too were arrested. Professor Giles writes, “The bias against the visionary epistemology incarnate in women like Francisca, reflected the extent to which visions embodied prayer and the charismatic authority of women who experienced such phenomena challenged the theological orientation of Tridentine Spain.”332
Ines of Herrera del Duque, called by her devoted “prophetess of Ertremadura” was born about 1488, had visions and prophesies as she claimed her mother (who died when Ines was very young) “accompanied her in her ascent to heaven and travels through celestial realms.”333 These visions began when Ines was only nine years old, in 1499. In March of 1500, “she proclaimed, the Messiah would come and redeem the conversos, carrying them as in Exodus, to the Promised Land.… her prophecy was to spread to the west in the central plains of La Mancha and as far south as the city of Cordoba.”334 Ines was arrested around April 1500 and brought to trial by the Inquisition in Toledo. That trial lasted three months, from May until July of that same year. Ines was now eleven years old. The child prophetess greatly affected converso women and men, touching their hearts and giving them hope for a better life. Her accounts of the Promised Land “is unique testimony to how deeply rooted was the knowledge of Jewish tenents among those conversos as a result of their Jewish education.”335
Many conversos believed in the immediacy of the coming of the Messiah and waited expectantly each Sabbath, bathed and wearing clean clothes. Girl children joined with this young prophetess, hoping for marriages in the Promised Land with converso boys. Both male and female children were arrested as a result. One nine year old girl was condemned to do penance and attend an auto de fe. She was then sent to live with a Christian family, not her own. A ten year old boy was arrested, sentenced and condemned to life imprisonment. As to the fate of Ines, final records of her trial seem to have been lost. However, “A marginal note made by the courts notary on the trial documents of Juan Gonzales, dated August 3, 1500, states that by that time Juan Esteban’s daughter, the child prophetess of Herrera, had been burned.” Ines was no more than twelve years old when she died, murdered, burned at the stake.336
These women were working in a very difficult environment. Spain was experiencing inflation, food shortages, bad weather, a corrupt Church. All these factors were in addition to the stress caused by nearly one hundred years of trials by the Inquisition, the continuous auto de fe, the public burnings, the suppression of free speech, the financial drain on ordinary people when the inquisitors refused to pay creditors from confiscated property. The convents and houses for the poor that the mystics attempted to found were the only safe havens for women who wished to live a decent life but had nowhere to go, no jobs, and no men to care for them. Hospitals were full. Sick people were left dying on the streets. Town granaries were nearly empty, reducing the amount of wheat given to the poor for bread, often their primary food source. Times were very bad for everyone except those employed by the Spanish Inquisition. Those activities drained not only the financial strength of the region but also the human spirit of the people who struggled to endure them, particularly women and children.
And according to Kamen, “The mingling of mystical, Erasmian and heretical influences made the late 1520’s a unique period of both freedom and tension. The inquisitors sought Lutheran ideas everywhere, and located them in the view of some of the alumbrados.”337 However, nearly every person swept up by the net of the inquisitors during this period was a conversa, even those also called beata. Kamen speculates, “It was as though conversos were seeking to reject formal Catholicism by interiorizing their religion.”338 And why not? What other choices did they have?
The one event that turned the wrath of the Spanish Inquisition away from conversas was the emerging Protes
tant movement of the Lutherans during the 1550’s. A chillingly vivid insight into the actual thought process of rulers on this very issue is preserved as a letter written in May, 1558, by Charles V (Holy Roman Emperor) to his daughter Juana who was regent in Spain during the time when her husband Phillip II was ruling the Netherlands. The letter reads as follows:
I am very satisfied with what you say you have written to the king, informing him of what is happening about the people imprisoned as Lutherans, more of whom are being daily discovered. But believe me, my daughter, this business has caused and still causes me more anxiety and pain than I can express, for while the king and I were abroad these realms remained in perfect peace, free from this calamity. But not that I have returned here to rest and recuperate and serve Our Lord, this great outrage and treachery, implicating such notable persons, occurs in my presence and in yours. You know that because of this I suffered and went through great trials and expenses in Germany, and lost so much of my good health. Were it not for the conviction I have that you and the members of your councils will find a radical cure to this unfortunate situation, punishing the guilty thoroughly to prevent the spreading, I do not know whether I could restrain myself leaving here to settle the matter. Since this affair is more important for the service of Our Lord and the good and preservation of these realms than any other, and since it is only in its beginnings, with such small forces that they can be easily put down, it is necessary to place the greatest stress and weight on a quick remedy and exemplary punishment. I do not know whether it will be enough in these cases to follow the usual practice, by which according to common law all those who beg for mercy and have their confession accepted are pardoned with a light penance if it is the first offence. Such people, if set free, are at liberty to commit the same offence, particularly if they are educated persons. One can imagine the evil consequences, for it is clear that they cannot act without armed organization and leaders, and so it must be seen whether they can be proceeded against as creators of sedition, upheaval, riots and disturbance in the state. They would then be guilty of rebellion and could not expect mercy. In this connection I cannot omit to mention what was and is the custom in Flanders. I wanted to introduce an Inquisition to punish the heresies that some people had caught from neighboring Germany and England and even France. Everyone opposed this on the grounds that there were no Jews among them. (the Lutherans) Finally an order was issued declaring that all people of whatever state and condition who came under certain specified categories were to be ipso facto burnt and their goods confiscated. Necessity obliged me to act in this way. I do not know what the king my son had done since then, because I advised and begged him to be very severe in dealing with these people. Believe my, my daughter, if so great an evil is not suppressed and remedied without distinction of persons from the very beginning, I cannot promise that the king or anyone else will be in a position to do it afterwards.339
Daughters of the Inquisition Page 44