Inquisition

  70 Lithgow (1640) 479–80.

  71 García Mercadal (ed.) (1999) Vol. 1, 582.

  72 García-Arenal (1978) 42–3.

  73 AHN, Inquisición, Libro 938, folio 168r: the case of Pedro Mufferi of Chelva, near Valencia, dating from 1602.

  74 Benassar (1987) 178.

  75 Ibid.

  76 Ibid.

  77 Contreras and Henningsen (1986) 120; for a fuller discussion of the imposition of the reign of fear see Contreras (1987) 53–4.

  78 Benassar (1987) 183.

  79 As we shall see, it is not for nothing that some historians see in the Inquisition the basic elements of modern totalitarian regimes. See Lewin (1967) 9; Gilman (1972) 168.

  80 Bradley (1931) 319–22.

  One – THE END OF TOLERANCE

  1 Thus in 1484 the Reyes Católicos had had to order the elite of Ciudad Real not to shelter ‘heretics’ to protect them from the Inquisition, which had been installed there in 1483; Beinart (1974–85) Vol. 4, 295–6.

  2 Pinta Llorente (1961) 56.

  3 There is considerable academic argument as to the nature of these conversions. The traditional view of this wave of conversion was that it largely followed the violent pogroms against the Jews which broke out in Seville in June 1391 and spread rapidly across the country to places such as Cordoba, Toledo, Cuenca, Majorca, Valencia and Barcelona (Baer (1966) Vol. 1, 96–110). Though some recent historiography supports this view (Netanyahu (1995a) 148–51), Norman Roth has argued persuasively that there was much royal defence of the Jews (see also Suárez Fernández (1980) 215) and that those who were forcibly converted to Christianity could have returned to Judaism had they wished to (2002: 33–45); instead, he sees the voluntary conversions among the elites as precipitating a spiritual crisis in Spanish Jewry which led to waves of voluntary conversions, fuelled by the firebrand preaching of St Vincent Ferrer. Certainly, the fact that some Jews themselves participated in the pogroms suggests that the traditional view is in need of a little revision (Blázquez Miguel (1989) 127–8).

  4 García-Arenal (1996) 165.

  5 Monter (1990) 6.

  6 Pinta Llorente (1961) 60–1; such actions make Menéndez y Pelayo ’s claim (1945: Vol. 3, 433) that the resistance in Aragón was ‘light’ (leve) difficult to comprehend.

  7 Monter (1990) 7–9.

  8 Ibid. 9.

  9 There were more Moors in Aragon than anywhere else in Spain other than Granada; in the countryside they outnumbered the Christians (García Mercadal (1999) Vol. 1, 301) and it was their skills in ploughing, cultivating and irrigating which supported the lifestyle of the nobility. A local saying went, ‘Quien no tiene moros, no tiene oro’ – Whoever has no Moors has no gold (Ibid. Vol. 1, 388).

  10 I have drawn this general account of Zaragoza from the Venetian ambassador Navajero’s account of 1525 – García Mercadal (1999) Vol. 2, 16.

  11 Trasmiera (1664) 4–5.

  12 Ibid. 52–3.

  13 Zurita (1610) Book 20, 341.

  14 Ibid. 342.

  15 Ibid.

  16 Sabatini (1928) 217.

  17 Llorente (1841) 144.

  18 Zurita (1610), Book 20, 342.

  19 Trasmiera (1664) 73–4.

  20 Ibid. 82–3.

  21 Sabatini (1928) 221; Llorente (1841) 158–9.

  22 Sabatini (1928) 222–3.

  23 Jama (2001) 35–47.

  24 It is of the first importance that the initial anger of the conversos was matched by that of caballeros and gente principal: Zurita (1610) Book 20, 341.

  25 Amador de los Ríos (1960) 29, 69.

  26 Green (2006) 30–1; Fonseca (1995) 15 (following Barradas de Carvalho). The shift in importance from a geography of human places to one of physical spaces accompanied the modernization of consciousness and the growth of an abstract, scientific world view.

  27 Bernis (1978) Vol. 1, 16–17.

  28 Ibid. Vol. 1, 20–3.

  29 Ibid. Vol. 2, 20 – the view of Alonso de Palencia, Henry IV’s chronicler.

  30 Ibid. Vol. 2, 21.

  31 Ibid.

  32 Castro (1954) 126.

  33 Ibid. 121; moreover Islamic influence also extended to the Jewish community, in the architecture of its great synagogue known as El Tránsito in Toledo, for instance, and in its literature and theology (Ibid. 446; Roth (1994) 170–82).

  34 Castro (1972), xxix.

  35 Fletcher (1992) 143.

  36 Roth (2002) 66.

  37 Roth (1994) 133.

  38 Nirenberg (1998) 138–9.

  39 Fletcher (1992) 138.

  40 The Christians in Spain could not have accomplished the reconquest if they had dedicated themselves to intellectual ideas (Castro (1972) lii).

  41 Escandell Bonet (1984a) 270.

  42 The evidence of the Florentine ambassador Francesco Guicciardini – García Mercadal (ed.) (1999) Vol. 1, 578.

  43 Bernáldez (1962) 15–16.

  44 Ibid. 18.

  45 Ibid. 15.

  46 Valera (1927) 5.

  47 Douglas (1984) 4, 38. I am indebted to my doctoral supervisor, Paulo Farias, for bringing this insight to bear on the position of the conversos.

  48 Pérez de Guzmán (1965) 43.

  49 Sicroff (1985) 52–3.

  50 Benito Ruano (1961) 186.

  51 Ibid. 188.

  52 Ibid. 187–8.

  53 Pérez de Guzmán (1965) 39.

  54 Ibid. 45–6.

  55 Ibid. 46.

  56 The importance of the weakness of John II in this matter is noted by Sicroff (1985) 56.

  57 Benito Ruano (1961) 206.

  58 Ibid. 193: ‘facen otros géneros de olocaustos e sacrificios judaizando’.

  59 Ibid. 193, 194–5.

  60 Netanyahu (1995) 357–9.

  61 Ladero Quesada’s analysis from Badajoz, Toledo and Andalusia shows that, in the last third of the 15th century, only 10 –15 per cent of conversos were involved in commerce, and that the vast majority (between 50 and 77.5 per cent) were artisans (1992: 42–4)); in Osma’s bishopric at the end of the 15th century only 3.1 per cent of conversos were active in commerce (Valdeón Buruque (1995) 56).

  62 Valdeón Buruque (1995) 71–81.

  63 Fromm (1951: 69) is particularly good at showing how the inconsistencies in an argument may reveal the underlying feeling which propels it.

  64 In the early 15th century, less than 20 years after the events of 1391, the Jews of Évora in Portugal complained that the Jewish quarter in the town was not big enough, which meant that the cost of owning houses was prohibitively expensive and many Jews were emigrating to Castile (Almeida (1967: Vol. 2, 389); in 1467, riots and forced conversions of Jews in Tlemcen, North Africa, caused a rabbi, Yeshu’ah ha-Levi, to migrate to Toledo: as ha-Levi put it, he ‘came to the land of Castilla to keep [his] life from danger for a while’ (Hirschberg (1974) 388–9). The dichotomy between the violence directed at conversos and the absence of any similar behaviour towards Jews is noted in Sicroff (1985: 85).

  65 Suárez Fernández (ed.) (1964) 21; Roth (2002) 50–1, 82–5.

  66 The idea that resentment of the conversos derived from hostility towards urban centres is explored more fully in Green (2007: Appendix B); see also Ladero Quesada (1999) 314.

  67 Beinart (1974–85), Vol. 4 (1985) 8–11.

  68 Ibid. (1985) 26.

  69 Beinart (1981) 67.

  70 Bernáldez (1962) 96–8.

  71 This is the unanswerable argument of Netanyahu (1966).

  72 Roth (2002) xix.

  73 Baer (1966) Vol. 2, 272.

  74 The evidence of Pulgar on Toledo, cited in Benito Ruano (2001) 31.

  75 Beinart (1971a), 435.

  76 Kamen (1997) 40.

  77 Sabatini (1928) 124–5; see also Kamen’s (1997) discussion of the evidence from Ciudad Real.

  78 Kamen (1997) 60.

  79 Gitlitz (1996: 18–19): ‘In many ways it [the Inquisition] helped to create the very culture it was dedicated to eradicate’; see also Novins
ky (1972: 37); Azevedo (1974: 108).

  80 Mariana (1751) Vol. 8, 186.

  81 Ibid. Vol. 8, 185.

  82 Bernáldez (1962) 76.

  83 García Mercadal (ed.) (1999) Vol. 1, 380–1.

  84 Bernis (1978) Vol. 1, 39.

  85 This was the report of Nicolau von Popplau c. 1485 (García Mercadal (ed.) (1999: vol. 1 298). On the extraordinary influence of conversos at the court of Isabella see also Amador de los Ríos (1960) 683–4.

  86 Collantes de Terán (1977) 74–8.

  87 Ladero Quesada (1976) 49.

  88 Pulgar (1943) Vol. 1, 310.

  89 Llorente (1841) 112–13.

  90 Beinart (1981) 10–20. A recent account of Espina’s Fortalitium Fidei is Vidal Doval (2005); little is known of Espina’s origins, although he appears to have written largely for a court audience and to have been attempting to propitiate a faction at court. Once thought to have been a converso himself, this is now seen as unlikely; see Netanyahu (1997).

  91 Barrios (1991) 19; the foundational bull only makes mention of the converso heresy (Llorca (1949: 49–50), which makes García Cárcel and Moreno Martínez’s (2000: 43) claim that the ‘Inquisition was not only created to resolve the converso problem’ extraordinary.

  92 The suggestion of Llorente (1841: 111).

  93 León Tello (1979) Vol. 1, 531–2. Even those who came forward during the period of grace had to give part of their goods to help in the war against Granada; see Jiménez Monteserín (ed.) (1980) 90.

  94 Gil (2000–1) Vol. 1, 35; note also Edwards (1999: 55–6), who suggests that the role of the civil war in the establishment of the Inquisition was that the factions in Andalusia became allied to factions in the civil war between Isabella and her rival claimant to the throne Juana la Beltraneja, who was supported by Portugal. Edwards suggests that by linking opposition to her claim to Judaizing conversos and establishing an Inquisition, Isabella legitimized her position as monarch.

  95 Kamen (1997) 7. This pattern is in keeping with Adorno et al. (1950) and Ackerman and Jahoda’s (1950) findings on the way in which anti-Semitism – and indeed all acts of demonization of others – can be a defensive psychological strategy for the warding off of mental illness; in the case of Castile the ‘illness’ can be interpreted as the civil wars and the demonization as the invention of the converso Judaizers.

  96 Barrios (1991) 20.

  97 Gil (2000–1) Vol. 1, 93–110.

  98 Domínguez Ortiz (1971) 34.

  99 Gil (2000–1) Vol. 1, 123–38.

  100 Pulgar (1943) 337.

  101 Blázquez Miguel (1989) 90–1, 134.

  102 Barrios (1991) 20; Bernáldez (1962) 100.

  103 Barrios (1991) 20.

  104 Ibid.

  105 Bernáldez (1962) 99.

  106 Llorente (1841) 121

  107 Kamen (1997: 47) and Netanyahu (1995a) suggest that the death of Susán on the scaffold is a myth, since he is said to have died before 1479. However, it was documented by Bernáldez, who is usually a reliable chronicler for names and dates; this inclines me to believe that the story is true.

  108 Sabatini (1928) 127.

  109 Bernaldez (1962) 101.

  110 Gil (2000–1) Vol. 1, 155.

  111 Collantes de Terán (1977) 109–13.

  112 Ibid. 103.

  113 Bernáldez (1962) 101.

  114 Ibid. 99.

  115 Martínez Millán (1984) 12; this was a part of the modernization of administrative structures completed by the Reyes Católicos (Escandell Bonet (1980a: 275); Benítez Sánchez-Blanco (1983: 65); Ruiz (1987: 42)).

  116 Beinart (1974–85) Vol. 1, xvi–xvii.

  117 Ibid. 2–25.

  118 Ibid. 41–69.

  119 Ibid. 275.

  120 Ibid. 302.

  121 Ibid. 92–130.

  122 Ibid. 17–18.

  123 Ibid. 391–2.

  124 Ibid. 254.

  125 Blázquez Miguel (1990) 28.

  126 Another defendant, Maria González la Panpana, the wife of Juan Panpan, said that she had refused to Judaize with her husband and had not gone with him when he had left the city ten years before so as not to follow his doctrinal errors. Again, her account was largely confirmed by priests, but even though she had confessed to what had only been minor wrongdoings during the period of grace, she too was burnt. Ibid.; Beinart (1974) Vol. 1, 71–89.

  127 Ibid. 36.

  128 Llorca (1949) 68–9.

  129 León Tello (1979) Vol. 1, 512–14.

  130 Bethencourt (1994) 45.

  131 Domínguez Ortiz (1993) 37.

  132 Pulgar (1943) Vol. 1, 336; this makes Kamen’s (1997: 60) estimate of 2,000 deaths up to 1530 look like an underestimate.

  133 Bernaldez (1962) 102.

  134 López (1613) 365, 369.

  135 Ibid. 369.

  136 Jiménez Monteserín (1980) 111 – the situation throughout Spain in 1488 according to instructions drawn up in Valladolid.

  137 Blázquez Miguel (1990) 29; Monter’s figure of 80 deaths by 1530 for Zaragoza is probably an underestimate (1990: 18).

  138 BL, Egerton 1832, folios 37v–38v.

  139 Monter (1990) 17.

  140 La Mantia (1977) 42–3.

  141 Ibid. 38.

  142 Monter (1990) 18; La Mantia (1977) 44, 53.

  143 Llorente (1841) 140.

  144 The classic modern statement of this view is López Martínez (1954); it is no coincidence that this is one of the most egregious works of anti-Semitism in the history of writings on the Jews of Spain.

  145 The key work arguing for the racialization of the movement of which the Inquisition was a spearhead is Netanyahu (1995a).

  146 Unlike other European countries the vernacular had been the language of governance in Spain since the 13th century (Castro (1954) 357). Anderson (1991: 12–18) has persuasively argued that the use of the vernacular was an important element in the rise of European nationalism, and the fact that this occurred much earlier in Spain than elsewhere in Europe would explain why the institutionalization of persecution also occurred earlier. This use of the vernacular was itself the legacy of the convivencia and the role of Jews in transmitting Arab culture to the Christian powers of the north (Castro (1954: 451–8). For a more general discussion of this process see Green (2007) Appendix B.

  Two – SPREADING THE FIRES

  1 Caro Baroja (1978) Vol. 1, 145.

  2 CRP, 967–8.

  3 Ibid. 972–7.

  4 Ibid. 972, 978–9.

  5 IAN/TT, Inquisição de Évora, Proceso 8779, folios 1r–3r; 6r for his age.

  6 Ibid. 6r–-v.

  7 Ibid. 3r, 8r.

  8 Ibid. 66v; the trial of Jorge exists in the IAN/TT but access is denied owing to the bad condition of the document. The skeleton outline of Jorge’s case in the index in IAN/TT confirms that the arrest of Jorge was also on 10 January 1545.

  9 Ibid. 67r.

  10 Roth (1959) 54.

  11 Tavares (1982) Vol. 1, 425; Herculano (1854) Vol. 1, 108.

  12 IAN/TT, Inquisição de Évora, Proceso 8779, 66v; confirmed in Toro (1982) 278–9.

  13 Thus Gaspar de Carvajal died in Benavente (Ibid. 279), as did Álvaro and Jorge’s father Antonio (ibid.); subsequent members of the family lived in Salamanca and Medina del Campo (ibid.).

  14 Godinho (1969) 425.

  15 Boxer (1948) 1.

  16 Godinho (1969) 829.

  17 Herculano (1854) Vol. 1, 184 – complaints from the Cortes of Torres Novas, 1525: King Manoel I had died in 1521.

  18 Marques (1972) Vol. 1, 80.

  19 IAN/TT, Inquisição de Évora, Proceso 8779, 17r–v.

  20 Góis (1949) Vol. 1, 11–12.

  21 Ibid. Vol. 2, 223–6.

  22 Costa Lobo (1979) 130.

  23 The evidence of Nicolaus von Popplau (c. 1485) – García Mercadal (ed.) (1999) Vol. 1, 289, 295.

  24 Lobo (1979) 117.

  25 Douglas (1984) 38.

  26 Révah (1971) 483.

  27 Góis
(1949) Vol. 1, 42.

  28 Osorio (1944) Vol. 1, 81.

  29 Tavim (1997) 83–84.

  30 Osorio (1944) Vol. 1, 81.

  31 Ibid.

  32 Lobo (1979) 34.

  33 This is all taken from Góis (1949) Vol. 1, 254 –7; see also Bernáldez (1962) 505.

  34 Azevedo (1922) 59.

  35 IAN/TT, Inquisição de Évora, Proceso 8779, folios 23r–v.

  36 Ibid. 27v–28r.

  37 Ibid. 134r–137v.

  38 Azevedo (1922) 61–3.

  39 AG, Vol. 1, 116; Nunes’s account of his experiences among the conversos of Lisbon is published in AG, Vol. 1, 103–18.

  40 Ibid. 107–15.

  41 Ibid. 343–4.

  42 Tavares (1987) 113.

  43 Monteiro (1750) Vol. 2, 424.

  44 Saraiva (1985) 41.

  45 Herculano (1854) Vol.1, 262–4.

  46 Ibid. Vol. 2, 1–90; Almeida (1968) Vol. 2, 387–401; Tavares (2004) 146.

  47 The foregoing two paragraphs are taken from Góis (1949) Vol. 2, 112.

  48 Mendonça and Moreira (1980) 121.

  49 Almeida (1967) Vol. 2, 404–6; Azevedo Mea (1997) 61–5.

  50 Azevedo (1922) 95.

  51 Almeida (1967) Vol. 2, 414–415.

  52 Remedios (1928) Vol. 2, 50.

  53 Roth (1959) 73.

  54 IAN/TT, Inquisição de Évora, Proceso 8779, folio 158r.

  55 Toro (1982) 279; Espejo and Paz (1908) 41.

  56 Toro (1944) Vol. 1, 40.

  57 Baião (1921) 21.

  58 The evidence of a Polish ambassador dated 1524; García Mercadal (1999) (ed.), 770.

  59 Documentos de la Época de los Reyes Católicos, 338–9.

  60 Contreras (1987) 48.

  61 Barrios (1991) 31.

  62 Ibid. 31–2.

  63 García Fuentes (1981), xxii.

  Three – TORTURED JUSTICE

  1 Llorente (1841) 229.

  2 Barrios (1991) 58.

  3 Gracia Boix (ed) (1982) 96–101; for a more general confirmation of this see Anonymous (ed.) (1964) 153–4.

  4 Barrios (1991) 57.

  5 Herculano (1854) Vol. 1, 230; cited in Lipiner (1977) 171.

  6 Meseguer Fernández (1980) 379–89; Fernández García (1995) 480.

  7 Gracia Boix (1982) 30–1.