by Henry Kamen
The evidence is incontrovertible that zeal for blood purity never formed the dominant ideology of Church and state in early modern Spain,85 though it was persistent enough—above all in Castile—for many prominent Spaniards to speak out against it. Anti-Semitic discrimination could be found everywhere (as in other European societies where people of Jewish origin had a visible public role), but not necessarily in the form of statutes of limpieza, which were few and haphazardly observed. The statutes focused attention, of course, because they became relevant when applying for certain posts and honors in old regime Castile and its colonies. If a member of a family were refused a post because of alleged impurity of blood, it could create a stigma on the rest of his kin. The demand for proofs threatened to expose both humble and elite persons to infamy.
The widespread rejection of blood purity proofs eventually provoked a revolutionary crise de conscience in the very citadel of orthodoxy, the Inquisition.86 From about 1580, when Cardinal Quiroga was inquisitor general, serious doubts about statutes were raised in the Holy Office. “I was in the council of the Inquisition in 1580,” reports a subsequent inquisitor general, Guevara, “and saw this matter proceed very far, with the council resolved to petition the king about it, and putting forward many pressing reasons.” Nothing more seems to have happened until the 1590s, when Philip II himself had second thoughts. The king, reports a later writer, “was very attached to the statutes, but in the last days of his life, when experience had matured, he ordered a big committee to be set up specifically to discuss this matter, and all of them agreed with His Majesty that the statutes should be restricted to one hundred years,” meaning that freedom from the taint of heresy for three generations should make any converso fit for office.
Because of the king’s death, nothing came of the proposal, but the ground was prepared for the great attack on the statutes mounted by the noted Dominican theologian Agustín Salucio, whose Discourse on limpieza, which he had apparently discussed directly with Philip II, was published in 1599.87 Salucio, then aged seventy-six (he died in 1601), felt that “I could not be true to my conscience if I did not speak my opinion on so important a matter.” His book was supported by personal letters from the very highest authorities: the patriarch of Valencia, Juan de Ribera; the archbishop of Burgos; the duke of Lerma.88 Taking his stand on the innumerable abuses committed in the process of limpieza proofs—false testimony, bribery, forgery, lies—Salucio protested that “the scandals and abuses . . . have provoked a secret war against the authority of the statutes.” “It is said,” he commented, “that there is no peace when the state is divided into two factions, as it is now divided almost in half, as in a civil war.” He presented two main objections of principle to the statutes: they had outlived their purpose; and whatever good they achieved was outweighed by the harm. “It would be a great comfort to the assurance of peace in the realm,” he summed up, “to restrict the statutes so that Old Christians and Moriscos and conversos should all come to form one united body, and that all should be Old Christians and in peace.”
The work caused an immediate crisis in the Inquisition. The Suprema overruled the inquisitor general and banned the book. However, deputies to the Cortes had been sent copies of the Discourse by wily old Salucio, and they at once insisted on debating the matter. On 11 February 1600 they presented a memorial to Philip III, petitioning “how important it is to make a decision on this matter, because of the great offenses caused to God every day.” At the same time they set up a committee to report on Salucio’s paper. In a discussion paper sent by the Cortes to the committee, they complained that “in Spain we esteem a common person who is limpio more than a hidalgo who is not limpio.”89 As a result, the memorial continued, there were now two sorts of nobility in Spain, “a greater, which is that of hidalguia; and a lesser, which is that of limpieza, whose members we call Old Christians.” Irrational criteria of purity had also come into existence: swordsmen were reputed limpios and physicians were reputed Jews; people from León and Asturias were called Old Christians and those from Almagro conversos. “All this is so absurd that were we another nation we would call ourselves barbarians who governed themselves without reason, without law, and without God.”
Another evil effect, they said, was that because of rigorous genealogical proofs the state lost eminent subjects who had the talent to become great theologians and jurists but who did not follow these professions because they knew they would not be admitted to any honors. As a result, people of no rank and little learning had risen to high posts in the country, while true and learned nobility had been deprived of the chance to pursue their careers. Discrimination against Jewish blood would only make the conversos become more compact, defensive and dangerous; whereas in France and Italy the lack of discrimination had allowed them to merge peacefully into the community. The natural consequence of limpieza proofs would be that those who were irrefutably limpios (and hence alone capable of holding office) would soon be a tiny minority in the country with the great mass of the people against them, “affronted, discontented and ripe for rebellion.”
In the summer of 1600 the duke of Lerma asked the new inquisitor general, Cardinal Niño de Guevara, to report on Salucio’s book and various other documents. In August Guevara sent the king an astonishing report,90 which contradicted the views of the majority of the Suprema and praised Salucio as “a very learned friar to whom the whole Catholic Church and particularly the Holy See owe a great deal.” The split in the Inquisition was not resolved, and Salucio’s book remained under ban. However, with so many eminent leaders of Church and state hostile to the statutes, the floodgates to public discussion had been opened. In about 1613 a New Christian of Portuguese origin, Diego Sánchez de Vargas, issued in Madrid an attack against the statutes. In 1616 the Madrid magistrate Mateo López Bravo complained in his On the King that for those excluded by the limpieza laws “there remains no way of hope except the sowing of discord.” In 1619 Martín González de Cellorigo, a noted writer on economic matters who was now resident in Toledo and an official of the Inquisition, wrote a Plea for Justice on behalf of the New Christians: it was addressed to the inquisitor general but not actually published.91
In about 1621 an inquisitor, Juan Roco Campofrío, bishop of Zamora and later of Soria, wrote a Discourse92 against the statutes. It is an interesting document, because the great debate had already passed, and he relied on exaggeration in order to present his arguments. According to him, the proofs of limpieza were a source of moral and political scandal in the nation. The stigma of impurity had divided Spain into two constantly warring halves. The outrages and quarrels provoked by the statutes had been responsible for over 90 percent of the civil and criminal trials in Spanish courts. The racialism of the statutes was wrong, for many conversos and Moriscos had been more virtuous than so-called Old Christians, and many of those brought to trial by the Inquisition had in fact been true Christians and not Jews. The great danger, the inquisitor went on, was that the greater part of the population of Spain would soon be branded as impure, and the only remaining guarantee of Old Christian blood would be one’s plebeian origin.
The inquisitor’s tract was only one of the many written on the subject. It was now the period when Spaniards were questioning the mistaken policies of their leaders, and they did not omit the theme of racialism. A censor of the Inquisition, Francisco Murcia de la Llana, in a Discourse of 1624 condemned both the racialism and the xenophobia of his contemporaries:
Look into yourself [he addressed Spain] and consider that no other nation has these statutes, and that Judaism has flourished most where they have existed. Yet if any of your sons marries a Frenchwoman or a Genoan or an Italian you despise his wife as a foreigner. What ignorance! What overwhelming Spanish madness!93
In his famous Conservation of Monarchies (1626) Pedro Fernández de Navarrete also attacked discrimination against conversos and Moriscos, warning that “all realms in which many are excluded from honors run a great risk of coming to rui
n.”94
Though Lerma had been opposed to the statutes, he did little to change them. It was otherwise with Olivares, who came to power in 1621 at the accession of Philip IV. Olivares never made a secret of his hostility to limpieza. At his instigation, the Inquisition in 1626 issued perhaps the most remarkable document ever to proceed from the inner portals of the Holy Office.95 Conceding that there were now few or no judaizers in Spain, the Suprema in this 1626 document argued that “it follows that since what gave rise to the statutes has totally ceased, it would be civic and political prudence that at least the rigor of their practice should cease.” Denouncing the widespread perjuries and forgeries involved, the inquisitors said: “nobody can doubt this if he sees what goes on today in every city, town or village, even in the testimonials for familiars in any little hamlet. No one could better inform Your Majesty of this abuse, from direct experience, than the Holy Office.” After analyzing in detail the evils of the system of genealogical proofs, the Suprema went on to argue that Hebrews no less than Gentiles were members of Christ’s Church and that unity of all, without discrimination, was essential. In words that could have been written by Olivares himself, the council of the Inquisition stated that its aspirations were exactly those of Philip IV:
that your several kingdoms should act in conformity and unity for both good and ill, joining together in friendly equality, so that Castile should act with Aragon, and both with Portugal, and all of them with Italy and the other realms, to help and aid each other as though they were one body (fortunate enough to have Your Majesty as head). These considerations, so in keeping with God’s intentions, are in large measure frustrated if there remain such odious divisions and such bloody enmities as those which exist between those held to be limpios, and those held to be stained with the race of Judaism.
In this favorable climate it was possible for the Committee for Reform (Junta de Reformación) in February 1623 to decree new rules modifying the practice of limpieza. One act (involving three positive proofs of limpieza in any one of the four lines of descent) was enough when applying for office and no others were needed when promoted or changing one’s job. Verbal evidence was not admitted if unsupported by more solid proof, and “rumor” was disallowed. All literature purporting to list the descent of families from Jews, such as the notorious Green Book of Aragon (Libro verde de Aragón), was ordered to be publicly burnt. Although these measures aroused much opposition, they also released a flood of anti-limpieza writings which take their stand with the other literature that makes this reign a time of intellectual crisis in Spanish history. That the problem was appreciated in the highest circles is shown by the report given by one member of the Committee for Reform, who claimed that limpieza was
the cause and origin of a great multitude of sins, perjuries, falsehoods, disputes and lawsuits both civil and criminal. Many of our people, seeing that they are not admitted to the honors and offices of their native land, have absented themselves from these realms and gone to others, in despair at seeing themselves covered with infamy. So much so that I have been told of two eminent gentlemen of these realms who were among the greatest soldiers of our time and who declared on their deathbeds that since they were unable to gain entry into the orders of chivalry they had very often been tempted by the devil to kill themselves or to go over and serve the Turk, and that they knew of some who had done so.96
The reform of February 1623 was ordered to be observed “by all the councils, courts, Colegios Mayores and statute communities.” In fact, it remained a dead letter and was not observed by a single body outside the government and the Inquisition. The latter, not surprisingly, soon ceased to observe the reform. Controversy therefore continued well into the seventeenth century. The inquisitor general in 1623 commissioned a further reasoned attack on the statutes by Diego Serrano de Silva, a member of the Suprema.
From its inception in the 1580s, this impressive and astonishing campaign against the statutes of limpieza was led, at every stage, by inquisitors general and officials of the Inquisition, supported by ministers of state such as Lerma and Olivares. Their view, as events showed, might have been powerful in elite circles but was a minority one within the Holy Office. By the 1630s confusion reigned once again in the limpieza rules. The Suprema by majority vote in 1628 declared that “we are convinced that observance of the statutes of limpieza is both just and praiseworthy.”97 Government ministers were concerned at the problems that would continue to rise in applications for posts and titles. Eventually in 1638 the crown issued yet another decree, reinforcing the reform of 1623.98
The predictable conservatism of the inquisitors was no guide to the state of informed opinion in Castile. As they had done in the sixteenth century, prominent individuals both inside and outside the Holy Office continued to express their disagreement with discrimination based on racial origin.99 In his well-known Five Excellences of the Spaniard (1629), Fray Benito de Peñalosa commented that “when we come to the question of limpieza, there are things much to be lamented. . . . It is something absurd and most prejudicial.” He pleaded for reforms.100 In 1632 a powerful and persuasive argument against limpieza was published by Fernando de Valdés, rector of the Jesuit seminary in Madrid and a consultant for the Inquisition. Basing himself on Salucio’s discourse but going further in his attack on the statutes, Valdés summed up: “Let the final and strongest argument against the statutes be that our republic has lost its respect for them.”101 In 1635 the noted political writer Jerónimo de Zeballos, repeating arguments used by his predecessors, wrote his own Discourse against the practice of limpieza.102
The publication of these works, and indeed the half century or so of open controversy over the question, demonstrates irrefutably that limpieza was never an untouchable theme. Numerous prominent intellectuals from the mid-sixteenth century onwards questioned it and attacked it openly, and it would be irresponsible to deny that they did so. As we have observed above, discrimination by limpieza was never accepted officially in Spanish law, nor in the vast majority of the institutions, churches and municipalities of Spain.103 What did exist very widely, thanks to centuries of coexistence with Jews and conversos, was a pervasive anti-Semitism that might take the form of social prejudice and discrimination, but not within the ambit of any limpieza regulations, for those existed in very few areas. The prejudice hurt most deeply and profoundly, as racial discrimination tends to do, in the sphere of status, rank and promotion. But at no point did it ever become a national obsession.104
On the other hand, it tended to survive precisely because struggles for status are a feature of the human condition. In mid-seventeenth-century Logroño, those who opposed the existing elite on the city council tried to base their campaign on the alleged lack of limpieza among the councilors.105 In personal disputes and rivalries, insults used racial references as the point of attack. “Juan Ruiz de Vergara called another” who was competing for a post in a military order “commoner”; whereupon “the other responded that if he was a commoner Ruiz was a converso.” In another case, “the man called Juan de Clavijo a ‘Jew,’ but not because he was one.”106 The use of the word “Jew” in insults became a commonplace of Spanish discourse, as the documents of Castilian criminal courts show. In 1609, in Yébenes (Toledo) María Prieta called Pedro Hernández a “moro judío ladrón infame” (“dirty Moor Jew crook”), a delightful set of expletives that got her in trouble but clearly did not seriously concern principles of honor or of limpieza.107 The deliberate use of racial insults to discredit enemies and rivals ended only in discrediting limpieza itself. By the late seventeenth century the few remaining statutes were being openly ignored and contravened in every walk of life. In the reign of the last Habsburg, the converso Manuel José Cortizos, whose father was known to have been a practicing Jew, was nevertheless elevated to the rank of marquis; and the Madrid society doctor Diego Zapata continued his career despite being imprisoned twice for judaizing.108
The only exception to this strange mixture of persecuti
on and tolerance occurred in the island of Mallorca, where the converso community suffered from prejudice. As late as the mid-eighteenth century, “although good Catholics, their sons were denied entrance to the higher ranks of the clergy, and their daughters to the religious orders. They were forced to live in a restricted area of the city, and the people calumniated them with the names Hebreos, Judios, Chuetas. Guilds, army, navy and public offices were closed to them.”109 Despite various efforts by the government and some clergy, discrimination continued up to the end of the nineteenth century. In 1858 they were still “refused all public offices and admission to guilds and brotherhoods so that they were confined to trading. They were compelled to marry among themselves, for no one would contract alliances with them nor would the ecclesiastical authorities grant licenses for mixed marriages.”110
Echoes of the statutes continued in Spain through the eighteenth century. In 1751 a government minister, José de Carvajal, thought the treatise of Agustín Salucio so convincing that he ordered a copy of it to be made for himself;111 and the prime minister, the count of Floridablanca, went on record with the statement that the penalties for impurity were unjust because “they punish a man’s sacred action, that is, his conversion to our holy faith, with the same penalty as his greatest crime, that is, apostasy from it.”112 Despite such criticisms, the residual practice of anti-Semitism survived the abolition of the Inquisition. So far did purity of blood cease to have any connection with the Jewish problem, however, that in 1788 we find Charles III’s minister Aranda using the phrase limpieza de sangre in the sense of purity from any taint of servile office or trade, so that the synonymous term limpieza de oficios also came into existence by the end of the century.113 Official recognition of its practice ceased with a royal order of 31 January 1835 directed to the Economic Society of Madrid, but up to 1859 it was still necessary for entrance into the corps of officer cadets. The last official act was a law of 16 May 1865 abolishing proofs of purity for marriages and for certain government posts. The removal of legal barriers could not, evidently, wholly efface an attitude rooted in the practice of centuries.