A History of the Inquisition of Spain, Volume One-- Master Page
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A History of the Inquisition of Spain, Volume One-- Master Page Contents THE LIBRARY OF IBERIAN RESOURCES ONLINE Preface Book 1.1 Book 1.2 Book 1.3 Book 1.4 A History of the Book 1.5 Book 2.1 Inquisition of Spain Book 2.2 Book 2.3 VOLUME ONE Book 2.4 Book 2.5 Appendix 1 Appendix 2 Appendix 3 Documents Search Survey Henry Charles Lea users have consulted this volume. http://libro.uca.edu/lea1/1lea.htm4/2/2006 11:09:57 PM Contents THE LIBRARY OF IBERIAN RESOURCES ONLINE A History of the Inquisition of Spain Volume 1 Henry Charles Lea Contents Preface Book 1: Origin and Establishment Chapter 1: The Castilian Monarchy Chapter 2: The Jews and the Moors Chapter 3: The Jews and the Conversos Chapter 4: Establishment of the Inquisition Chapter 5: The Kingdoms of Aragon Book 2: Relations with the State Chapter 1: Relations with the Crown Chapter 2: Supereminence Chapter 3: Privileges and Exemptions Chapter 4: Conflicting Jurisdictions Chapter 5: Popular Hostility Appendices List of Tribunals List of Inquisitors-General Spanish Coinage Documents http://libro.uca.edu/lea1/index.htm4/2/2006 11:10:02 PM Preface: A History of the Inquistion of Spain, vol. 1 THE LIBRARY OF IBERIAN RESOURCES ONLINE A History of the Inquisition of Spain Volume 1 Henry Charles Lea Preface [v] In the following pages I have sought to trace, from the original sources as far as possible, the character and career of an institution which exercised no small influence on the fate of Spain and even, one may say, indirectly on the civilized world. The material for this is preserved so superabundantly in the immense Spanish archives that no one writer can pretend to exhaust the subject. There can be no finality in a history resting on so vast a mass of inedited documents and I do not flatter myself that I have accomplished such a result, but I am not without hope that what I have drawn from them and from the labors of previous scholars has enabled me to present a fairly accurate survey of one of the most remarkable organizations recorded in human annals. In this a somewhat minute analysis has seemed to be indispensable of its structure and methods of procedure, of its relations with the other bodies of the State and of its dealings with the various classes subject to its extensive jurisdiction. This has involved the accumulation of much detail in order to present the daily operation of a tribunal of which the real importance is to be sought, not so much in the awful solemnities of the auto de fe, or in the cases of a few celebrated victims, as in the silent influence exercised by its incessant and secret labors among the mass of the people and in the limitations which it placed on the Spanish intellect--in the resolute conservatism with which it held the nation in the medieval groove and unfitted it for the exercise of rational liberty when the nineteenth century brought in the inevitable Revolution. [vi] The intimate relations between Spain and Portugal, especially during the union of the kingdoms from 1580 to 1640, has rendered necessary the inclusion, in the chapter devoted to the Jews, of a brief sketch of the Portuguese Inquisition, which earned a reputation even more sinister than its Spanish proto-type. I cannot conclude without expressing my thanks to the gentlemen whose aid has enabled me to collect the documents on which the work is largely based -- Don Claudio Pérez Gredilla of the Archives of Simancas, Don Ramon Santa María of those of Alcalá de Henares prior to their removal to Madrid, Don Fran cisco de Bofarull y Sans of those of the Crown of Aragon, Don J. Figueroa Hernández, formerly American Vice-consul at Madrid, and to many others to whom I am indebted in a minor degree. I have also to tender my acknowledgements to the authorities of the Bodleian Library and of the Royal Libraries of Copenhagen, Munich, Berlin and the University of Halle, for favors warmly appreciated. http://libro.uca.edu/lea1/Preface.htm (1 of 2)4/2/2006 11:10:05 PM Preface: A History of the Inquistion of Spain, vol. 1 HENRY CHARLES LEA. PHILADELPHIA, OCTOBER, 1905. http://libro.uca.edu/lea1/Preface.htm (2 of 2)4/2/2006 11:10:05 PM Book1: Origin and Establishment, Chapter 1 THE LIBRARY OF IBERIAN RESOURCES ONLINE A History of the Inquisition of Spain Volume 1 Henry Charles Lea Book 1: Origin and Establishment Chapter 1: The Castilian Monarchy [1] It were difficult to exaggerate the disorder pervading the Castilian kingdoms, when the Spanish monarchy found its origin in the union of Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragón. Many causes had contributed to prolong and intensify the evils of the feudal system and to neutralize such advantages as it possessed. The struggles of the reconquest from the Saracen, continued at intervals through seven hundred years and varied by constant civil broils, had bred a race of fierce and turbulent nobles as eager to attack a neighbor or their sovereign as the Moor. The contemptuous manner in which the Cid is represented, in the earliest ballads, as treating his king, shows what was, in the twelfth century, the feeling of the chivalry of Castile toward its overlord, and a chronicler of the period seems rather to glory in the fact that it was always in rebellion against the royal power. (1) So fragile was the feudal bond that a ricohome or noble could at any moment renounce allegiance by a simple message sent to the king through a hidalgo. (2) The necessity of attracting [2] population and organizing conquered frontiers, which subsequently became inland, led to granting improvidently liberal franchises to settlers, which weakened the powers of the crown, (3) without building up, as in France, a powerful Third Estate to serve as a counterpoise to the nobles and eventually to undermine feudalism. In Spain the business of the Castilian was war. The arts of peace were left with disdain to the Jews and the conquered Moslems, known as Mudéjares, who were allowed to remain on Christian soil and to form a distinct element in the population. No flourishing centres of industrious and independent burghers arose out of whom the kings could mould a body that should lend them efficient support in their struggles with their powerful vassals. The attempt, indeed, was made; the Córtes, whose co-operation was required in the enactment of. laws, consisted of representatives from seventeen cities, (4) who while serving enjoyed personal inviolability, but so little did the cities prize this privilege that, under Henry IV, they complained of the expense of sending deputies. The crown, eager to find some new sources of influence, agreed to pay them and thus obtained an excuse for controlling their election, and although this came too late for Henry to benefit by it, it paved the way for the assumption of absolute domination by Ferdinand and Isabella, after which the revolt of the Comunidades proved fruitless. Meanwhile their influence diminished, their meetings were scantily attended and they became little more than an instrument which, in the interminable strife that cursed the land, was used alternately by any faction as opportunity offered. (5) The crown itself had contributed greatly to its own abasement. When, in the thirteenth century, a ruler http://libro.uca.edu/lea1/1lea1.htm (1 of 26)4/2/2006 11:10:11 PM Book1: Origin and Establishment, Chapter 1 such as San Fernando III made the laws respected and vigorously extended the boundaries [3] of Christianity, Castile gave promise of development in power and culture which miserably failed in the performance. In 1282 the rebellion of Sancho el Bravo against his father Alfonso was the commencement of decadence. To purchase the allegiance of the nobles he granted them all that they asked, and to avert the discontent consequent on taxation he supplied his treasury by alienating the crown lands. (6) Notwithstanding the abilities of the regent, María de Molina, the successive minorities of her son and grandson, Fernando IV and Alfonso XI, stimulated the downward progress, although the vigor of the latter in his maturity restored in some degree the lustre of the crown and his stern justice re- established order, so that, as we are told, property could be left unguarded in the streets at night. (7) His son, Don Pedro, earned the epithet of the Cruel by his ruthless endeavor to reduce to obedience his turbulent nobles, whose disaffection invited the usurpation of his bastard brother, Henry of Trastamara. The throne which the latter won by fratricide and the aid of the foreigner, he could only hold by fresh concessions to his magnates which fatally reduced the royal power. (8) This heritage he left to his son, Juan I, who forcibly described, in the Córtes of Valladolid in 1385, how he wore mourning in his heart because of his powerlessness to administer justice and to govern as he ought, in consequence of the evil customs which he was unable to correct. This depicts the condition of the monarchy during the century intervening between the murder of Pedro and the accession of Isabella--a dreary period of endless revolt and civil strife, during which the central authority was steadily growing less able to curb the lawless elements tending to eventual anarchy. The king was little more than a puppet of which rival factions sought to gain possession in order to cover their ambitions with a cloak of legality, and those which failed to secure his person treated his authority with contempt, or set up some rival in a son or brother as an excuse for rebellion.