The Spanish Inquisition

by Henry Kamen

  Pressures and tensions were, inevitably, also present. In Castile a 1412 decree, inspired in part by the zealous Valencian saint, Vincent Ferrer (who shares some responsibility for the events of 1391), and the converso chancellor, Bishop Pablo de Santa María, deprived Jews of the right to hold office or possess titles, and prevented them changing their domicile. They were also excluded from various trades such as those of grocer, carpenter, tailor and butcher; they could not bear arms or hire Christians to work for them; they were not allowed to eat, drink, bathe or even talk with Christians; and they were forbidden to wear any but coarse clothes. In practice, extreme legislation of this type was unenforceable, and either ignored or revoked.

  In Catalonia in 1413–14 Vincent Ferrer helped to organize a top-level debate between Christian and Jewish scholars, which Pope Benedict XIII ordered to be held in his presence at Tortosa. At this famous Disputation of Tortosa38 the chief star on the Christian side was the recently converted papal physician Joshua Halorqui, who now took the name Jerónimo de Santa Fe. The Disputation brought about more conversions, including members of the prominent Aragonese family de la Caballería and entire aljamas in Aragon.

  Though the Disputation had threatened to extinguish the Jewish community in Aragon (some three thousand were baptized), it also had a favorable sequel. Vincent Ferrer took his campaign north to France in 1416. In Aragon a new king, Alfonso V, guided by the now Christian members of the Caballería family, reversed all the anti-Jewish legislation of the Ferrer epoch. From 1416 onwards the Aragonese crown protected the Jews and conversos firmly, rejecting all attacks on them.39 In Tortosa in 1438 the crown insisted, against the protests of the bishop, that Jewish and Muslim doctors could visit Christian patients if the latter wished.40 Restrictions on the movements and rights of Jews were lifted.

  A policy of separating Jews from Christians had frequently been attempted. But the Castilian legislation of 1412, which required separation, was never enforced; and in Aragon the crown under King Alfonso refused to sanction ghettos. Subsequent local measures met the same fate. In Seville in 1437 Jews were ordered to live only in their quarter, but by 1450 they could be found in different parts of the city.41 Separation orders in Soria in 1412 and 1477 were never observed.42 From the 1460s Christian spokesmen in Castile—among them the general of the Jeronimite order, Alonso de Oropesa—returned to the theme, arguing that the conversos would be less tempted to maintain their Jewish links if Jews were clearly separated. In the 1480 Cortes at Toledo, the crown agreed to decree a general enforcement of separation in Castile. Jews were to remain in their ghettos, if necessary separated by a wall. This went the way of previous laws. In Soria in 1489 the richer Jews still had their houses outside the ghetto. In Orense the city authorities solemnly met in the synagogue in 1484 and ordered the Jewish community to “observe the laws of Toledo,” giving them three days in which to do so. In practice, on neither side were any steps made to observe the law. Four years later, in 1488, vain efforts were still being made in Orense to enforce separation.43 In the crown of Aragon at the same period some cities, such as Saragossa, attempted to enclose the Jews, but both Isabella and Ferdinand came out firmly against such measures.44 We should remember, in parentheses, that separation was sometimes in the interests of Jews themselves, to protect them from harassment and to save the public authorities from the cost of repressing community riots.

  In the century after the 1391 riots, therefore, there is ambiguous evidence of pressure on Jews. In many areas their situation was difficult, but this was nothing new. Repressive legislation, though decreed, was regularly unenforced. In 1483 Ferdinand ordered Jews in Saragossa to wear distinguishing symbols (a red patch), but there is no evidence it was observed. Moreover, the crown actively favored Jews and former Jews. The reign was one in which the Jewish financiers Seneor and Abravanel flourished, and in which the Caballería family dominated politics in Saragossa.

  The fall in numbers, all the same, left its mark. The mass conversions of 1391 depleted many communities. In the crown of Aragon, by 1492 there remained only one-fourth of the Jews of a century before.45 The rich aljamas of Barcelona, Valencia and Mallorca, the biggest cities in these realms, had disappeared altogether; in smaller towns they either disappeared or were reduced to tiny numbers. The famous community of Girona was, with only twenty-four taxpayers left, now a shadow of its former self.46 In the realms of Castile, there was a mixture of survival and attrition. Seville had around five hundred Jewish families prior to the riots; a half century later it had only fifty. By the time Isabella succeeded to the throne, Jews in Castile totaled fewer than eighty thousand.47 In 1492 the communities were scattered through some two hundred centers of population, but in some former centers, such as Cuenca, there was no Jewish presence at all.

  From the beginning of their reign in 1474, Ferdinand and Isabella determined to maintain between Jews and Christians the same peace that they were trying to establish in the cities and among the nobility. The monarchs were never personally anti-Semitic. As early as 1468 Ferdinand had a Catalan Jew from Tárrega, David Abenasaya, as his physician, and both he and Isabella continued to have Jewish doctors and financiers as their closest collaborators. In both Aragon and Castile they followed the policy of their predecessors: taking the Jews under their direct personal control on the same terms as other Christian and Muslim communities which were in the royal jurisdiction. “All the Jews in my realms,” Isabella declared in 1477 when extending her protection to the community in Trujillo, “are mine and under my care and protection and it is my duty to defend and aid them and keep justice.” Likewise in 1479 she gave her protection to the fragile Jewish community in Cáceres.48 Given that Jews were constantly on the defensive against powerful municipal interests, the interventions of the crown in local politics present an impressive picture of the monarchy protecting its Jews. In 1475, for example, the city of Bilbao was ordered by the crown to revoke commercial restrictions it had placed on Jews in the town of Medina de Pomar; in 1480 the town of Olmedo was ordered to construct a gate in the wall of the judería to give Jews access to the town square.49 The monarchs intervened repeatedly against municipalities that tried to eliminate the commercial activity of the Jews.

  Royal policy, however, had to contend with social tensions. In 1476 the Cortes of Madrigal, on the initiative not of the crown but of the towns, passed sumptuary laws against Jews and Mudéjares, enforcing the wearing of a distinctive symbol and restricting the practice of usury. Jews were inevitably unhappy (in Avila they refused to lend any money until the regulations on usury were clarified), but it was not until the legislation of the 1480 Cortes of Toledo, which tried to put into effect a policy of separation and restricted Jews to aljamas, that real hardships were suffered. There is no doubt that anti-Jewish groups in the municipalities were responsible for such measures. In Burgos in 1484 Jews were not allowed to sell food; in 1485 they were ordered to shut the aljama on all Christian feast days; in 1486 a limit was put on the number of Jews in the ghetto (the order was subsequently annulled by the crown).50 In Saragossa during the late fifteenth century there was an unmistakable rise in anti-Jewish pressure, fomented by the clergy. The penalties against Jews for not paying respect to the religious procession on the day of Corpus Christi increased threefold within the short period of ten years.51

  The anti-Jewish measures of the period did not represent any qualitative worsening of the position of Jews. In fact, the totality of existing legislation in Castile, had it been put into practice, was already highly prejudicial to them.52 We need to look beyond the laws. Only then, in the realm of what really happened, is it possible to appreciate the extent to which community tolerance, administrative laxity and royal policy combined to guarantee the survival and viability of the minority faiths.

  The position of Jews was undoubtedly affected by religious hostility to conversos, who as converts were entitled to the same civil privileges as Christians but who were repeatedly seen to be practicing their former faith
. The monarchs became firmly convinced that a separation of Jews from Christians was the most effective answer to the situation, and in 1478 they set in motion a body whose entire concern was with judaizers: the Inquisition. Though the Inquisition had authority only over Christians, Jews quickly realized that they too were in the line of fire and all their worst travails date from those years.

  The existence of the Inquisition—whose activities will concern us presently—forced Jews to revise their attitude to conversos. When the great conversions took place at the end of the fourteenth century, Jews may have felt that the neophytes were still their brethren. A century later, the perspective was somewhat different. Jewish dignitaries, scholars and leaders had, not always under active persecution, voluntarily embraced the Catholic faith. The poet Selomoh Bonafed, writing in the wake of the Disputation of Tortosa, lamented how “many of the most respected leaders of our aljamas abandoned them.”53 Some converts, especially those who entered the clergy, became bitter persecutors of the Jews. The Jews of Burgos in 1392 complained that “the Jews who recently turned Christian oppress them and do them much harm.”54 A visible gap opened up in some communities between Jews and ex-Jews. In the early fifteenth century rabbis were still expressing the view that most of the conversos were unwilling converts (anusim). By mid-century they took the view that most were meshumadim (renegades), real and voluntary Christians. Normal, friendly social relations between conversos and Jews could still be found at all levels.55 But there were also ominous signs of tension.56

  When the Inquisition began its operations many Jews found no difficulty in cooperating with it against the conversos. They themselves were, as non-Christians, exempt from its jurisdiction. By contrast, they could now pay off old scores. In small communities, the coexistence of Jews and conversos concealed long-standing tensions, even among those with close and apparently friendly family ties. In the town of Calatayud (Aragon) in 1488 one of the Jews, Acach de Funes, was scorned by both Jews and Christians as a liar and a cheat. He lived up to his reputation by bearing false witness before the Inquisition against several conversos of the town, who, he claimed, were practicing Jews.57 In Aranda in the 1480s a Jewish resident went around “looking for Jewish witnesses to testify before the Inquisition” against a local converso. The same Jew admitted confidentially to a Christian friend that “it was all false” and that he was doing it out of personal enmity.58

  False witness by Jews in Toledo was reported by Hernando de Pulgar. They were, wrote the royal secretary, “poor and vile men who from enmity or malice gave false testimony against some conversos saying that they judaized. Knowing the truth, the queen ordered them arrested and tortured.”59 In Soria in 1490 a Jewish doctor testified freely against several conversos. He said that one converso, a legal official, had called Torquemada “the most accursed man in the world.” “It really grieves me,” the doctor told the inquisitors contritely, “to say these things against him, but everything I have said has been the unvarnished truth.”60 In the town of Uclés in 1491, a dozen Jews spoke freely to the inquisitor about conversos they knew to have observed Jewish customs.61 The Inquisition itself, according to Rabbi Capsali, demanded that the synagogues should impose an obligation on Jews to denounce conversos.62 It seems, in any case, that Jews frequently told the inquisitors what they knew about the religious practices of their converso neighbors.63

  Cooperation with the Inquisition was not a tactic that brought any benefits. From the 1460s, as we have seen, some Church leaders had begun to advocate the separation of Jews from Christians. This policy, as adopted by the Inquisition, took the form of a partial expulsion of Jews, in order to minimize the contact with conversos. At the end of 1482, a partial expulsion of the Jews of Andalucia was ordered.64 The exiles were free to go to other provinces of Spain. In January 1483 Jews were ordered to be expelled from the dioceses of Seville, Córdoba and Cadiz. The crown delayed implementation and they were not actually driven out from Seville until summer 1484. It is possible that the expulsions were in part motivated by fear of Jewish collaboration with the Muslim kingdom of Granada, then under attack by Ferdinand’s forces; but the role of the Inquisition was paramount. In the event, the expulsions of these years were never fully carried out. A few years later, Jews were living without any problems in Cadiz and Córdoba.65 In 1486 in Aragon the Inquisition issued an order expelling Jews from the dioceses of Saragossa, Albarracín and Teruel. The order was postponed, and later cancelled; no expulsions took place.66 Meanwhile some towns carried out their own unauthorized expulsions, ignoring the protests of the crown.67

  Though Ferdinand and Isabella intervened repeatedly to protect their Jews from excesses (as late as 1490 they began an enquiry into Medina del Campo’s ban on Jews setting up shops in the main square), the monarchs appear to have been thoroughly convinced by Inquisitor General Torquemada of the need for a separation of Jews. When the local expulsions had failed, after ten long years, to stem the alleged heresies of the conversos, the crown decided on the most drastic measure of all—a total expulsion of Jews.

  Jews expelled by other countries in medieval times had been tiny minorities.68 In Spain, by contrast, they had for centuries been a significant, prosperous and integral part of society. Their fate was now in the balance in a country where there was growing pressure against the other cultural minority, the Muslims. Since 1480 the whole economy of the state was geared to the war against Granada. There was also less tolerance of Islam. In 1490 the Muslims of Guadalajara were accused of converting a Jewish boy to Islam. Though they claimed in defense that such conversions “had been the custom in these realms,” the royal council ruled that “hereafter no Jew may turn Moor”; nor indeed could Moors turn Jew.69 It had, of course, long been illegal (since at least 1255) for Christians to turn Jew or Muslim. When during the Granada war groups of ex-Christians were captured after the fall of Málaga, they were immediately put to death.70 By contrast, after the fall of Granada several ex-Christians there who had turned Muslim were accepted back into the Church.71

  Ferdinand and Isabella hesitated for some time over the idea of expulsion. The crown stood to lose revenue from the disappearance of a community whose taxes were paid directly to the crown, and which moreover had helped to finance the war in Granada. Many people in Spain may have been anxious to get rid of the Jews for social and economic reasons: the Old Christian elites and several municipalities saw in them a source of conflict and competition.72 The decision to expel, however, was the crown’s alone, and it appears to have been taken exclusively for religious reasons. There are no grounds for maintaining that the government stood to profit, and Ferdinand himself admitted that the measure hurt his finances.73 The king and queen were undoubtedly encouraged in their policy by the fall of Granada in January 1492, which seemed a signal of divine favor. On 31 March, while they were in the city, they issued the edict of expulsion, giving the Jews of both Castile and Aragon until 31 July to accept baptism or leave the country.

  The decree gave as its main justification “the great harm suffered by Christians [i.e., conversos] from the contact, intercourse and communication which they have with the Jews, who always attempt in various ways to seduce faithful Christians from our Holy Catholic Faith.” “Over twelve years” of Inquisition had failed to solve the problem, nor had the recent expulsions from Andalucia been sufficient. It was now decided that “the only solution to all these ills is to separate the said Jews completely from contact with Christians, and expel them from all our realms.”74

  When the news broke, a deputation of Jews led by Isaac Abravanel went to see the king. Their pleas failed, and at a second meeting they offered the king a large sum of money if he would reconsider his decision. There is a story that when Torquemada heard of the offer he burst into the monarchs’ presence and threw thirty pieces of silver on the table, demanding to know for what price Christ was to be sold again to the Jews. At a third meeting which Abravanel, Seneor and the Jewish leaders had with the king, it became clear that
Ferdinand was determined to go ahead. In despair they turned to the queen. She, however, explained that the decision, which she firmly supported, came from Ferdinand: “the Lord has put this thing into the heart of the king.”75

  The proposal to expel came in fact from the Inquisition. There can be no doubt about this because the king said so clearly in the text of the edict issued in Aragon, a ferocious document that was obviously drawn up by the inquisitors and reeks of a virulent anti-Semitism not present in the Castilian text.76 There was more than a grain of truth in the story of Torquemada and the pieces of silver. The general expulsion was an extension of the regional expulsions that the Inquisition had been carrying out, with Ferdinand’s support, since 1481. The king also confirmed the key role of the Inquisition in a letter that he sent to the principal nobles of the realm. The copy sent to the count of Aranda on the same day as the edict explained the circumstances concisely:

  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: and we do so despite the great harm to ourselves, seeking and preferring the salvation of souls above our own profit and that of individuals.77