by Henry Kamen
Many of the converso families of the earlier generation were by now merged into Castilian society. The families around Ciudad Rodrigo, for example, were dedicated to the soil and to herding.26 By contrast the newer conversos, who had not yet had the opportunity of integrating, earned their living in commerce and the professions. The Portuguese newcomers around Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajoz were traders and administrators of taxes. Of 343 known occupations among judaizers tried in Granada during the seventeenth century, just over half were traders, with shop keeping, medicine and tax collecting figuring prominently among the professions.27 In the Cuenca area the new immigrants were small traders and dealers in money. Their aptitude for business prompted Spaniards in the area to claim, in a phrase that explains much about the subsequent persecution, that they were “very rich and grasping people” and “ate in style and did much business.”28
The return to Spain signified the emergence of a new tendency in the life of peninsular Jews. Till then the general trend had been towards emigration or integration. Since well before 1492, conversos and Jews had fled abroad. A feeling for Sepharad permeated the memory of exiles and helped to stimulate developments in thought and literature. Jews and conversos living outside Spain felt that they were different from others and different even from other Jews, precisely because they were from Sepharad. The word Sepharad, however, was always imprecise, because at most it could refer to the old areas of Jewish settlement in southern Spain, mainly Andalucia and part of Castile; it never signified what we know today as “Spain.” The cultivation of specific Hispanic cultural habits, which meant combining features of both Spain and Portugal, became a distinguishing feature of the communities that left the peninsula. Everywhere, the refugees clung on to the memory of where they came from. One hundred years after the expulsion, the Jews who had ended up in Tunis were still called “the community of the exile,” and in the eighteenth century their insistence on their origins made them set up their own synagogue and cemetery, separate from that of the other Jews.29
The yearning for Sepharad, however, changed perspectives and brought a new generation back to the land of their fathers.30 Hundreds returned to the peninsula though they knew full well that as practicing Jews they might fall foul of the Inquisition. Their motives included a wish to live again in a cultural environment that formed part of their being, and for it they were willing to accept the Christian faith. Many also were part of the mercantile network run by Jews in Western European ports.31 They had no problems crossing the land frontier or entering through Portugal. Several lived to regret having come back. One such was Baltasar López, arrested in Santiago in 1677, who regretted that he had not stayed in Bayonne (France), where he had his home and his wife and had at least been able to “live freely as a Jew.”32
The immigrants brought a new perspective into the life of the Inquisition, which now found that it had to struggle against the royal wish to tolerate such wealthy subjects as the Portuguese. Just after 1602 the Portuguese offered Philip III a gift of 1,860,000 ducats (not to mention enormous gifts to the royal ministers) if the crown would issue a general pardon to judaizers of their nation for past offenses. That the conversos could afford so great a sum is clear from their own admission that they were worth 80 million ducats all told. Royal penury gave way before such a magnificent offer, and application was made to Rome. The papal decree for a pardon was issued on 23 August 1604 and published on 16 January 1605; on the latter date the three Portuguese tribunals released a total of 410 prisoners.33 By this astonishing agreement the Spanish crown revealed its own financial bankruptcy and its willingness to jettison religious ideals when the profits from a bribe exceeded those from confiscations.
This did not mean any more than a temporary respite in the work of the Inquisition, which resumed activity in both Portugal and Spain as soon as the terms of the pardon had been worked off. In Portugal particularly, the Inquisition resumed work with a thoroughness it had not shown in the old days, and when in 1628 the prelates of Portugal proposed new measures to be enforced against the New Christians, the latter paid Philip III another handsome sum, probably well over 80,000 ducats, to allow them to leave for Spain. The emigrants, however, left not only for Spain but also for foreign lands of the dispersion, so swelling the numbers of the communities in France, Holland and England. It was perfectly obvious to everyone that such emigration was a grave loss to Spain, and the matter was discussed with the royal ministers by the Portuguese residing in Spain under Philip IV. A memorandum sent to the king by the New Christian merchants claimed that they were the financial mainstay of the crown, since their contribution lay in
sending to the East Indies countless ships laden with merchandise, whose customs duties maintain the navy and enrich the kingdom; supporting Brazil and producing the machinery to obtain sugar for all Europe: maintaining the trade to Angola, Cabo Verde and other colonies from which Your Majesty has obtained so many duties; delivering slaves to the Indies for their service, and journeying and trading from Spain to all the world. Finally, the New Christians are today in Portugal and Castile those who maintain commerce, the farming of the revenues to Your Majesty, and the agreements to supply money outside the realm.34
Because of emigration, they claimed, the advantages of their services were being lost and Rouen, Bordeaux, Nantes and Florence were benefiting from it. The Spanish authorities were susceptible to this kind of argument, and to stories that the commercial powers—particularly Holland and, in Cromwell’s day, England—were controlled by Jews. The Portuguese merchants must therefore be retained in the peninsula. This became easier after the first state bankruptcy of Philip IV’s reign, in 1626. The losses suffered on that occasion by the Genoese bankers created a vacuum into which Portuguese financiers moved, although not without great protests from contemporaries. One of these, the writer Pellicer de Ossau, in 1640 expressed the following objections:
It was thought that the evils brought about by the Genoese financiers could be cured by resorting to the Portuguese, for since they were at the time subjects of the crown, to make use of them would also benefit the crown. But this was only to go from bad to worse. For since most of the Portuguese merchants were Jews, fear of the Inquisition made them establish their main trading houses in Flanders and cities of the north, keeping only a few connections in Spain. The result was that far from Spain benefiting, most of the profits went to the Dutch and other heretics.35
The count duke of Olivares, prime minister of Philip IV, saw matters in quite a different light. He ignored any protests which might interrupt his plans to use Jewish finance to restore the fortunes of the monarchy, and the years of his ministry in Spain were those when converso bankers flourished most.36 His modification of the statutes of limpieza in 1623 was the first public break to be made with official anti-Semitism. In 1634, and again in 1641, he is said to have opened negotiations with the exiled Jews in Africa and the Levant, to persuade them to return to Spain under guarantees which would reverse the negative consequences of their expulsion. This radical and certainly unpopular policy seems to have contributed eventually to the downfall of Olivares.
In 1628 Philip IV granted the Portuguese financiers freedom to trade and settle without restriction, hoping thereby to win back from foreigners a section of the Indies trade. Thanks to this, the New Christians extended their influence to the principal trading channels of Spain and America. However successful they may have been in business, they could nevertheless not escape the consequences of their cultural origin, and several of them had to suffer the rigors of the Inquisition. From the 1630s to the 1680s some of the wealthiest men in Spain were ruined in fame and fortune by the Holy Office. The Portuguese financiers among them were, in addition, tarnished by identification with their nation, which was in revolt against Madrid after 1640; and with the disgrace of Olivares in 1643 their last great protector disappeared.
In 1636 the Inquisition brought the financier Manuel Fernández Pinto to trial for judaizing. On one occasion du
ring his career he had lent Philip IV the sum of 100,000 ducats. Now the tribunal extorted from him the enormous sum of 300,000 ducats in confiscations.37 Even more prominent than Pinto was Juan Núñez Saravía,38 whom we first meet as contributor, with nine other Portuguese financiers, to a loan of 2,159,438 ducats made to Philip IV in 1627. In 1630 Saravía was denounced to the Inquisition as a judaizer and protector of judaizers. No action was taken by the tribunal, which continued to accumulate evidence from France and America showing that, besides his religious errors, Saravía was also guilty of exporting bullion to his co-religionists abroad and importing base money in its place.
Early in 1632 Saravía and his brother Enrique were arrested, and after the usual delays of the Inquisition Juan was finally in 1636 put to mild torture, under which he admitted nothing. He was condemned to abjure de vehementi and fined 20,000 ducats, appearing with his brother and other judaizers in the Toledo auto of 13 December 1637. From men of Saravía’s standing the tribunal could expect to make large profits, and besides the fine on Juan it is estimated that his brother Enrique was condemned to confiscations which amounted to over 300,000 ducats. Juan Saravía was no doubt ruined by a case which had destroyed his good name and obliged him to fritter away five years in an inquisitorial prison, for he never makes any further appearance among the number of bankers who served the crown.
After 1640, as we have observed, the Portuguese financiers in Spain were in a difficult position, without a native country and without official support, particularly after the fall of Olivares.39 The wealthier among them were eliminated one by one. In 1641 a probable relative of Saravía called Diego de Saravía was tried by the Inquisition and suffered the confiscation of 250,000 ducats in gold, silver and coin. In 1646 the aged financier Manuel Enrique was arrested and condemned, and in 1647 another financier (not named in the records I have consulted) was tried at Toledo. The documents bring out the close connections between the accused. In 1646, for instance, the property of the wealthy financier Esteban Luis Diamante was sequestrated by the Inquisition. Diamante was a colleague in the banking firm of his brothers-in-law Gaspar and Alfonso Rodríguez Pasarino, of whom the latter was in prison accused of judaizing, while the former had saved himself by flight. Alfonso had a daughter named Violante who was married to the eminent banker Simon de Fonseca Piña, an astute and wealthy businessman who seems never to have come into conflict with the Holy Office. The property confiscated from the Pasarinos on this occasion probably exceeded 100,000 ducats.40
Apart from the wealthy few, there were whole families of ordinary conversos living in Madrid who suffered from the renewal of persecution. The 1650s saw the beginning of wholesale arrests and trials which turned into a reign of terror for the Portuguese converso minority in the capital. A contemporary living in Madrid in mid-century supplies us with a dramatic account of facts and rumors about arrests.41 “No one trusts the Portuguese financiers any more. They are going bankrupt and fleeing from the Inquisition. I have been assured that after the auto at Cuenca over two hundred families took to flight during the night. This is what fear can do” (22 August 1654). “In Seville at the beginning of April four wealthy Portuguese merchants were seized at night by the Inquisition” (17 May 1655). “The Cardosos have fled to Amsterdam, taking 200,000 ducats in wool and 250,000 in gold. It is said this was because the Inquisition wished to arrest them, and so they are in search of a land where one lives in greater freedom than in Spain” (2 June 1655). The wealthy Cardoso brothers, who administered taxes in several provinces, fled because a blackmailer had threatened to testify that they were judaizers unless they paid for silence. Faced with the possibility of having to prove their case against false testimony, “they preferred to fly from punishment rather than remain in jail until the truth was established” (29 May 1655). The diarist thought it a serious matter that lying witnesses should be able to ruin the lives of prominent men like these.
The fact is that if it is the practice in the Holy Office, as they say it is, not to punish false witnesses because no one would denounce if they did so, then that is terrible and even inhuman, to leave the life, honor and property of one who may be innocent to the mercy of his enemies. Every day we see many people like this emerging from their travails after great sufferings and years of prison.
“On Monday the thirteenth at midnight the Inquisition seized fourteen Portuguese traders and financiers, in particular two tobacco merchants. These people sprout like mushrooms” (15 September 1655). “Since last Saturday the Inquisition in Madrid has imprisoned seventeen Portuguese families. . . . In the street of the Peromostenses they are hurriedly building a prison big enough to hold all the people that fall every day into the trap. It is said for certain that there is not a Portuguese of high or low degree in Madrid who does not judaize” (18 September 1655). “There is not a single tobacco merchant in Madrid whom the Inquisition hasn’t arrested. The other day they took away two entire families, both parents and children. Many others are fleeing to France” (23 October 1655).
The condemnation of judaizers and the flight of wealthy fugitives brought about precisely the situation Olivares had attempted to avoid: bankruptcies among the trading classes of Madrid and other cities, leading to a collapse of confidence in some leading financiers and a consequent contraction in the size of the group of bankers on whom the crown could ultimately rely. Heads continued to roll. “There has been an auto at Cuenca. Brito abjured de vehementi; he was condemned to the sanbenito, banishment and to pay 6,000 ducats. Montesinos met the same fate, but the fine was higher: 10,000 ducats. Blandon, 4,000. El Pelado, 300. . . . All were from Madrid and had lived years there; very rich men” (8 January 1656). Brito was the financier Francisco Díaz Méndez Brito, who was made to do penance this once, and then again at a later date imprisoned by the Inquisition. Montesinos was the banker and merchant Fernando de Montesinos Téllez, a prominent financier who at the age of sixty-six was imprisoned together with his wife, Serafina de Almeida, in 1654, by the Inquisition of Cuenca. Serafina was a cousin of the Cortizos family, whom we shall meet presently. Fernando was a man of enormous fortune. His assets at the time of his arrest amounted to 567,256 ducats; of this sum a substantial part was tied up in Amsterdam, so that his effective assets were put at 474,096 ducats. His household goods alone, worth 10,000 ducats, were a testimony to his affluence,42 yet the Inquisition penalized the couple only, and left the fortune undisturbed. Fernando and Serafina were fined a total of 8,000 ducats. After this “he went to Amsterdam to live there freely, terrified of being burnt if he returned. He left his sons behind, having given them all his property. It is said that they will send the property over there bit by bit, and then one day do the same as he” (22 November 1656). Montesinos, therefore, apparently returned to the open practice of Judaism in Amsterdam. But his sons, far from following his example, continued the family’s financial services to the crown. The great deflation of 1680 began their ruin as bankers, and by the beginning of the eighteenth century they had gone into liquidation.
The liberal attitude of the Inquisition towards Montesinos’s fortune was not dictated by unselfishness. The fact was that so many wealthy financiers were appearing before the tribunal that the government took alarm at the possible threat to the financial stability of the state. On 7 September 1654 the council of Finance came to an agreement with the Inquisition that the latter was to attend only to the personal property of those accused, and that money which was involved in official contracts was to be dealt with by the former. The agreement had the virtue of differentiating between a financier and his firm. As a result we find that the imprisonment of principals such as Fernando Montesinos did not automatically lead to the dissolution of their business.
The auto de fe held at Cuenca on 29 June 1654 included among its accused the financier Francisco Coello, administrator of taxes in Malaga.43 In 1658 Francisco López Pereira, administrator of taxes in Granada, who had once before been tried by the Inquisition of Coimbra, in 1651, made another appeara
nce before the tribunal in Spain but had his case suspended. Diego Gómez de Salazar, administrator of the tobacco monopoly in Castile and a fervent judaizer, was reconciled in the auto held at Valladolid on 30 October 1664 and almost all his family suffered condemnation in due course.
Among the most prominent conversos in mid-century was the financier Manuel Cortizos de Villasante, born in Valladolid of Portuguese parents.44 His astuteness and financial dealings raised him to the highest ranks in the kingdom, and he had become by the end of his life a knight of the Order of Calatrava, lord of Arrifana, a member of the council of Finance and secretary of the Contaduría Mayor de Cuentas, the principal department of the treasury. All this occurred at a time when the statutes of limpieza were theoretically in full force, so that his rise confirms what we know of their peripheral role in public life. Suddenly, after his death in 1650, it was discovered that he had been a secret judaizer and had been buried according to Jewish rites. The discovery would normally have led to the ruin of his family, but their rank and influence saved them from disaster. Indeed, notwithstanding the strong suspicion that other members of family were also secret Jews, Manuel’s son Sebastian was in 1657 appointed Spanish ambassador to Genoa; while another son, Manuel José Cortizos, continued his father’s work as a financier of the crown, obtained the title of viscount of Valdefuentes in 1668 and shortly afterwards that of marquis of Villaflores. Throughout the reign of Charles II, Cortizos was second to none in the financial services he rendered the crown. In 1679, thanks to defaulting by his creditors, he was obliged to ask for a moratorium on his transactions, even though his assets were worth several million ducats.