 Book 1, Chapter 3, Part 2, of History of the Inquisition of Spain, Volume 1. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Sue Anderson. History of the Inquisition of Spain, Volume 1. By Henry Charles Lee. Book 1, Chapter 3. The Jews and the Conversals, Part 2. These provisions indicate the direction in which Dominican zeal was striving to curtail the privileges so long enjoyed by the Jews, and the royal intention to protect them against local legislation which had doubtless been attempted under this impulsion. They were not remiss in gratitude, for when, in 1274, Jaime attended the Council of Lyon, they contributed seventy-one thousand sueldos to enable him to appear with fitting magnificence. The royal protection was speedily needed, for the tide of persecuting zeal was rising among the clergy, and, shortly after his return from Lyon on a good Friday, the ecclesiastics of Herona rang the bells, summoned the populace, and attacked the Judaria, which was one of the largest and most flourishing in Catalonia. They would have succeeded in destroying it but for the interposition of Jaime, who chanced to be in the city, and who defended the Jews with force of arms. After the death of Jaime in 1276, the ecclesiastics seemed to have thought that they could safely obey the commands of Clement IV, especially as Nicholas IV, in 1278, instructed the Dominican general to depute pious brethren everywhere to convoke the Jews and labor for their conversion, with a significant addition that lists of those refusing baptism were to be made out and submitted to him when he would determine what was to be done with them. While the frialis interpreted the papal utterances is indicated in a letter of Pedro III to Pedro Bishop of Herona in April of this same year, 1278, reciting that he had already appealed repeatedly to him to put an end to the assaults of the clergy on the Jews, and now he learns that they have again attacked the Judaria, stoning it from the Tower of the Cathedral and from their own houses, and then assaulting it, laying waste the gardens and vineyards of the Jews, and even destroying their graves, and, when the royal herald stood up to forbid the work, drowning his voice with yells and derisions, Pedro accuses the bishop of stimulating the clergy to these outrages, and orders him to put a stop to it and punish the offenders. He was still more energetic when the French crusade under Philippe Le Ardi was advancing to the Siege of Herona in 1285, and his Moorish soldiers in the garrison undertook to sack the Karl-Judich or Judaria when he threw himself among them, mace in hand, struck down a number and finished by hanging several of them. He offered no impediment, however, to the conversion of the Jews. For in 1279 he ordered his officials to compel them to listen to the Franciscans, who, in obedience to the commands of the Pope, might wish to preach to them in their synagogues. These intrusions of phrylase into the Judarias inevitably led to trouble, for there is significance in a letter of Jaime II, April 4, 1305, to his representative in Palma, alluding to recent scandals for the future prevention of which he orders that no priest shall enter the Judaria to administer the sacraments without being accompanied by a secular official. This precaution was unavailing, for it doubtless was the continuance of such provocation that led to a disturbance, about 1315, affording to King Jaime an excuse for confiscating the whole property of the Alhama of Palma and then commuting the penalty to a fine of 95,000 Libras. The source of these troubles is suggested by a royal order of 1327 to the governor of Mallorca, forbidding the baptism of Jewish children under seven years of age, or the forcible baptism of Jews of any age. During all this period there had been an inquisition in Otagon which, of course, could not interfere with Jews as such, for they were beyond its jurisdiction, but which stood ready to punish any more or less veritable efforts at propagandism or offences of photorship. The crown had no objection to using it as a means of extortion, while preventing it from exterminating or crippling subjects so useful. A diploma of Jaime II, October 14, 1311, recites that the inquisitor, Fray Juan Lothger, had learned that the Alhamas of Barcelona, Tarragona, Mont Blanc, and Villa Franca had harbored and fed certain Jewish converts who had relapsed to Judaism, as well as others who had come from foreign parts. He had given Fray Juan the necessary support enabling him to verify the accusations on the spot and had received his report to that effect. Now therefore he issues a free and full pardon to the offending Alhamas with assurance that they shall not be prosecuted, either civilly or criminally, for which grace on October 10 they had paid him 10,000 sueldos. In this case there seems to have been no regular trial by the inquisition, the king having superseded it by his action. In another more serious case he intervened after trial and sentence to commute the punishment. In 1326 the Alhama of Calatayu subjected itself to the inquisition by not only receiving back a woman who had been baptized but by circumcising two Christians. Tried by the inquisitor and the bishop of Tarragona it had been found guilty and it had been sentenced to a fine of 20,000 sueldos and its members to confiscation. But King Jaime, by a cedula of February the 6th, 1326, released them from the confiscation and all other penalties on payment of the fine. Although Castile was slower than Aragón to receive impulses from abroad, in the early 14th century we begin to find traces of a similar movement of the church against the Jews. In 1307 the Alhama of Toledo complained to Fernando IV that the dean and chapter had obtained from Clement V bulls conferring on them jurisdiction over Jews, in virtue of which they were enforcing the canons against usury and stripping the Jewish community of its property. At this time there was no question in Spain such as we shall see debated hereafter of the royal prerogative to control obnoxious papal letters. And Fernando at once ordered the chapter to surrender the bulls. All action under them was pronounced void, and restitution in double was threatened for all damage inflicted. The Jews, he said, were his Jews. They were not to be incapacitated from paying their taxes, and the pope had no power to infringe on the rights of the crown. He instructed Ferran Núñez de Pantoja to compel obedience, and after some offenders had been arrested the frightened canons surrendered the bulls and abandoned their promising speculation. But the affair left behind it enmities which displayed themselves deplorably afterwards. In spite of the royal favor and protection the legislation of the period commences to manifest a tendency to limit the privileges of the Jews, showing that popular sentiment was gradually turning against them. As early as 1286 Sancho IV agreed to deprive them of their special judges, and though the law was not generally enforced, it indicates the spirit that called for it and procured its repetition in the Cortes of Valladolid in 1307. Turbulents were loud and numerous of the Jewish tax-gatherers, and the young Fernando IV was obliged repeatedly to promise that the revenues should not be farmed out nor their collection be entrusted to caballeros, ecclesiastics, or Jews. The turbulence which attended his minority and short reign, and the minority of his son Alfonso XI, afforded a favorable opportunity for the manifestation of hostility, and the royal power was too weak to prevent the curtailment in various directions of the Jewish privileges. We have seen in the preceding chapter the temper in which the Spanish prelates returned from the Council of Vien in 1312, and the prescriptive legislation enacted by them in the Council of Zamora in 1313 and its successors. Young favored the development of this spirit of intolerance, and at the Cortes of Burgos in 1315 the regents of the young Alfonso XI conceded that the Clementine canon abrogating all laws that permitted usury should be enforced, that all mixed actions, civil and criminal, should be tried by the royal judges, that the evidence of a Jew should not be received against a Christian, while that of a Christian was good against a Jew, that Jews were not to assume Christian names, Christian nurses were not to suckle Jews, and sumptuary laws were directed against the luxury of Jewish vestments. This may be said to mark the commencement of the long struggle which in spite of their wonderful powers of resistance was to end in the destruction of the Spanish Jews. Throughout the varying phases of the conflict the Church, in its efforts to arouse popular hatred, was powerfully aided by the odium which the Jews themselves excited through their ostentation, their usury, and their functions as public officials. A strong race is not apt to be an amiable one. The Jews were proud of their ancient lineage and the purity of their descent from the kings and heroes of the Old Testament. A man who could trace his ancestry to David would look with infinite scorn on the Hidalgos who boasted of the blood of Laien Kalvo, and, if the favor of the monarch rendered safe the expression of his feelings, his haughtiness was not apt to win friends among those who repaid his contempt with interest. The Oriental fondness for display was a grievous offense among the people. The wealth of the kingdom was, to a great extent, in Jewish hands. Aforting ample opportunity of contrast between their magnificence and the poverty of the Christian multitude, and the lavish extravagance with which they adorn themselves, their women and their retainers, was well fitted to excite envy more potent for evil because more widespread than enmity arising from individual wrongs. Shortly before the catastrophe at the close of the 15th century, Afonso the Fifth of Portugal, who was well affected towards them, asked the chief rabbi, Josef Ben Yahea, why he did not prevent his people from a display provocative of the assertion that their wealth was derived from robbery of the Christians, adding that he required no answer for nothing safe spoliation and massacre would cure them of it. A more practical and far-reaching cause of enmity was the usury through which a great portion of their wealth was acquired. The moneylender has everywhere been an unpopular character, and in the Middle Ages he was especially so. When the church pronounced any interest or any advantage, direct or indirect, derived from loans to be a sin for which the sinner could not be admitted to penance without making restitution. When the justification of taking interest was regarded as a heresy to be punished as such by the inquisition, a stigma was placed on the moneylender, his gains were rendered hazardous, and his calling became one which an honorable Christian could not follow. Mercantile Italy early outgrew these dogmas, which retarded so greatly all material development, and it managed to reconcile, per faus et nephos, the cannons with the practical necessities of business. But elsewhere throughout Europe, wherever Jews were allowed to exist, the lending of money or goods on interest inevitably fell, for the most part, into their hands, for they were governed by their own moral code, and were not subject to the church. It exhausted all devices to coerce them through their rulers, but the object aimed at was too incompatible with the necessities of advancing civilization to have any influence save the indefinite postponement of relief to the borrower. The unsavoriness of the calling, its risks, and the scarcity of coin during the Middle Ages, conspired to render the current rates of interest exorbitantly oppressive. In Aragón the Jews were allowed to charge twenty percent per annum in Castile thirty-three, and the constant repetition of these limitations and the provisions against all manner of ingenious devices by fictitious sales and other frauds to obtain an illegal increase, show how little the laws were respected in the grasping avarice with which the Jews speculated on the necessities of their customers. In thirteen twenty-six, the Alhama of Cuenca, considering the legal rate of thirty-three percent too low, refused absolutely to lend either money or wheat for the sewing. This caused great distress, and the town council entered into negotiations, resulting in an agreement by which the Jews were authorized to charge forty percent. In thirteen eighty-five, the Cortes of Valladolid described one cause of the necessity of submitting to whatever exactions the Jews saw fit to impose, when it says that the new lords to whom Henry of Trastamara had granted towns and villages were accustomed to imprison their vassals and starve and torture them to force payment of what they had not got, obliging them to get money from Jews to whom they gave whatever bonds were demanded. Books as well as peasants were subject to these impositions. In the Var a law of Felipe III in thirteen thirty limited the rate of interest to twenty percent, and we find this paid by his grandson Carlos III in thirteen ninety-nine for a loan of one thousand florins, but in fourteen oh one he paid at the rate of thirty-five percent for a loan of two thousand florins, and in fourteen oh two his queen Donia Leonore borrowed seventy florins from her Jewish physician Abraham at four florins a month, giving him silver plate as security. Finding at the end of twenty-one months that the interest amounted to eighty-four florins, she begged a reduction and he contented himself with thirty florins. When money could be procured in no other way, when the burger had to raise it to pay his taxes or the extortions of his lord and the husband had to procure seed-corn or starve, it is easy to see how all had to submit to the exactions of the moneylender. How in spite of occasional plunder and scaling of debts, the Jews absorbed the floating capital of the community and how recklessly they aided the friolis in concentrating popular detestation on themselves. It was in vain that the Ordenamiento de Alcalá in thirteen forty-eight prohibited usury to Moors and Jews as well as to Christians. It was an inevitable necessity, and it continued to flourish. Equally effective in arousing antipathy were the functions of the Jews as holders of office, and especially as al-Moharifes and Reykabdores, farmers of the revenues and collectors of taxes, which brought them into the closest and most exasperating relations with the people. In that age of impoverished treasuries and rude financial expedience, the customary mode of raising funds was by farming out the revenues to the highest bidder of specific sums. As the profit of the speculation depended on the amount to be wrung from the people, the subordinate collectors would be merciless in exaction and indefatigable in tracing out delinquents, exciting odium which extended to all the race. It was in vain that the Church repeatedly prohibited the employment of Jews in public office. Their ability and skill rendered them indispensable to monarchs, nobles, and prelates, and the complaints which rose against them on all sides were useless. Thus in the quarrel between the Chapter of Toledo and the Great Archbishop Rodrigo, in which the former appealed to Gregory the Ninth in 1236, one of the grievances alleged is that he appointed Jews to be provosts of the common table of the Chapter, thus enabling them to defraud the cannons. They even passed through the Church and often entered the Chapter House itself to the great scandal of all Christians. They collected the ties and thirds, and governed the vassals and possessions of the Church, greatly enriching themselves by plundering the patrimony of the crucified, wherefore the Pope was earnestly prayed to expel the Jews from these offices and compel them to make restitution. When prelates such as Archbishop Rodrigo paid so little heed to the commands of the Church, it is not to be supposed that monarchs were more obedient, or were more disposed to forego the advantages derivable from the services of these accomplished financiers. How these men assisted their masters while enriching themselves is exemplified by Don Sa de la Maleja al-Moharife Major to Alfonso X, when the king in 1257 was raising an army to subdue Abben Northfolk, king of Niebla, Don Sa undertook to defray all the expenses of the campaign in consideration of the assignment to him of certain taxes, some of which he was still enjoying in 1272. It was useless for the people who groaned under the exactions of these efficient officials to protest against their employment and to extort from the monarch's repeated promises no longer to employ them. The promises were never kept, and, until the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, this source of irritation continued. There was, it is true, one exception, the result of which was not conducive to a continuance of the experiment. In 1385 the Cortes of Valladolid, obtained from Juan I, a decree prohibiting the employment of Jews as tax collectors, not only by the king, but also by prelates and nobles, in consequence of which ecclesiastics obtained the collection of the royal revenues, but when they were called upon to settle they excommunicated the alcoholies who sought to compel payment, leading to great confusion and bitterer complaints than ever. When the Jews thus gave ground so ample for popular dislike, it says much for the kindly feeling between the races that the efforts of the Church to excite a spirit of intolerance made progress so slow. These took form as a comprehensive and systematic movement at the Council of Zamora in 1313 and its successors described in the preceding chapter, but in spite of them all Fonsil XI continued to protect his Jewish subjects, and the labors of the good fathers awoke no particular response. In Aragon, a canon of the Council of Lérida in 1325, forbidding Christians to be present at Jewish weddings and circumcisions shows how fruitless as yet had been the effort to produce mutual alienation. Navarre had the earliest foretaste of the wrath to come. It was then under its French princes, and when Charles Labelle died, February 1, 1328, a zealous Franciscan, Frey Pedro Oligoyan, apparently taking advantage of the interregnum, stirred with his eloquent preaching the people to rise against the Jews, and led them to pillage and slaughter. The storm burst on the Alhama of Estela, March 1, and rapidly spread throughout the kingdom. Neither age nor sex was spared, and the number of victims is variously estimated at from six to ten thousand. Queen Jean and her husband Philippe Léverot, who succeeded to the throne, caused Oligoyan to be prosecuted, but the result is not known. They further speculated on the terrible massacre by imposing heavy fines on Estela and Viana, and by seizing the property of the dead and fugitive Jews, and they also levied on the ruined Alhamas the sum of fifteen thousand livres to defray their coronation expenses. Thus fatally weakened, the Jews of Navarre were unable to endure the misfortunes of the long and disastrous reign of Charlotte Mouvet, 1350, 1387. A general emigration resulted to arrest which Charles prohibited the purchase of landed property from Jews without special royal license. A list of taxables in 1366 shows only 453 Jewish families and 150 Moorish, not including Pampeluna, where both races are taxable by the bishop. Although Charles and his son Charles Lenovo, 1387-1425, had Jews for Almoharifes, it was in vain that they endeavored to allure the fugitives back by privileges and exemptions. The Alhamas continued to dwindle until the revenue from them was inconsiderable. In Castile and Aragon the black death caused massacres of Jews as elsewhere throughout Europe, though not so widespread and terrible. In Catalonia the troubles commenced at Barcelona and spread to other places in spite of the efforts of Pedro IV both in prevention and punishment. They had little special religious significance, but were rather the result of the relaxation of social order in the fearful disorganization accompanying the pestilence and after it had passed the survivors. Christians, Jews, and Mudejaris were, for a moment, knit more closely together in the bonds of a common humanity. It is to the credit of Clement VI that he did what he could to arrest the fanaticism, which, especially in Germany, offered to the Jews the alternative of death or baptism. Following, as he said, in the footsteps of Calyxtus II, Eugenius III, Alexander III, Clement III, Colestine III, Innocent III, Gregory IX, Nicholas III, Honorius IV, and Nicholas IV, he pointed out the absurdity of attributing the plague to the Jews. They had offered to submit to judicial examination and sentence, besides which the pestilence raged in lands where there were no Jews. He therefore ordered all prelates to proclaim to the people assembled for worship that Jews were not to be beaten, wounded, or slain, and that those who so treated them were subjected to the anethema of the Holy See. It was a timely warning, and worthy of one who spoke in the name of Christ, but it availed little to overcome the influence of the assiduous teaching of intolerance through so many centuries. When Pedro the Cruel ascended to the throne of Castile in 1350, the Jews might reasonably look forward to a prosperous future, but his reign in reality proved the turning point in their fortunes. He surrounded himself with Jews and confided to them the protection of his person, while the rebellious faction headed by Henry of Trastamara, his illegitimate brother, declared themselves the enemies of the race, and used Pedro's favor for them as a political weapon. He was asserted to be a Jew, substituted for a girl born of Queen Maria, whose husband, Alfonso XI, was said to have sworn that he would kill her if she did not give him a boy. It was also reported that he was no Christian but an adherent of the law of Moses, and that the government of Castile was holy in the hands of Jews. It was not difficult, therefore, to arouse clerical hostility as manifested by Urban V, who denounced him as a rebel to the church, a foetor of Jews and Moors, a propagator of infidelity, and a slayer of Christians. Of this the insurgents took full advantage, and demonstrated their piety in the most energetic manner. When in 1355 Henry of Trastamara and his brother, the master of Santiago, entered Toledo to liberate Queen Blanche, who was confined in the Alcazar, they sacked the smaller Judaria and slew its twelve hundred inmates without sparing sex or age. They also besieged the principal Judaria, which was walled around, and defended by Pedro's followers until his arrival with reinforcements drove off the assailants. Five years later, when, in 1360, Henry of Trastamara invaded Castile with the aid of Pedro IV of Aragon, on reaching Nahara he ordered a massacre of the Jews, and, as Ayala states that this was done to win popularity, it may be assumed that free license for pillage was granted. Apparently stimulated by this example, the people of Miranda del Ebro, led by Pedro Martinez, son of the Precentor, and by Pedro Sánchez de Banuelas, fell upon Jews in their town, but King Pedro hastened thither, and, as a deterrent example, boiled one leader and roasted the other. When at length, in 1366, Henry led into Spain, Bertrand de Gueslan, and his hordes of free companions, the slaughter of the Jews was terrible. Pedro's fled, and the French chronicler deplores the number that sought refuge in Paris, and prayed upon the people with their usuries. The Alhama of Toledo purchased exemption with a million of Maravedis, raised in ten days, to pay off the mercenaries. But as the whole land lay for a time at the mercy of the reckless bands, slaughter and pillage were general. Finally the Fractus side at Montiel, in 1369, deprived the Jews of their protector, and left Henry undisputed master of Castile. What they had to expect from him was indicated by his levying, June 6, 1369, within three months of his brother's murder, twenty thousand doblus on the Deuteria of Toledo, and authorizing the sale at auction, not only of the property of the inmates, but of their persons into slavery, or their imprisonment in chains with starvation or torture, until the amount should be raised. It was doubtless to earn popularity that about the same time he released all Christians and Moors from obligation to pay debts due to Jews, though he was subsequently persuaded to rescind this decree, which would have destroyed the ability of the Jews to pay their imposts. End of Book 1, Chapter 3, Part 3 of History of the Inquisition of Spain, Volume 1. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. History of the Inquisition of Spain, Volume 1. By Henry Charles Lee. Book 1, Chapter 3. The Jews and the Conversals. Part 3. Yet the Jews were indispensable in the conduct of affairs, and Henry was obliged to employ them like his predecessors. His Contador Mayor was Youssef Pichon, a Jew of the highest consideration, who incurred the enmity of some of the leaders of his people. They accused him to the king, who demanded of him forty thousand doblas, which some he paid within twenty days. With Rancor unsatisfied when Henry died in 1379, and his son Juan I came to Burgos to be crowned, they obtained from him an order to his Alguacil to put to death a mischief-making Jew whom they would designate. Armed with this they then took the Alguacil to Pichon's house in the early morning, called him on some pretext from his bed, and pointed him out as a designated person to the Alguacil, who killed him on the spot. Juan was greatly angered. The Alguacil was punished with the loss of a hand. The Judge of the Judaria of Burgos was put to death, and the Jews of Castile were deprived of jurisdiction over the lives of their fellows. We have already seen how the legislation of this period was rapidly taking a direction unfavorable to the Jews. The accession of the house of Tostamata had distinctly injured their position. The Church had freer scope to excite popular prejudice, while their retention as tax collectors and their usurious practices afforded ample material for the stimulation of popular vindictiveness. The condition existed for a catastrophe, and the man to precipitate it was not lacking. Ferran Martinez, Archdeacon of Ecija and official or judicial representative of the Archbishop of Seville, Pedro Barroso, was a man of indomitable firmness, and, though without much learning, was highly esteemed for his unusual devoutness, his solid virtue, and his eminent charity, which latter quality he evinced in founding and supporting the Hospital of Santa Maria in Seville. Unfortunately he was a fanatic, and the Jews were the object of his remorseless zeal, which his high official position gave him ample opportunity of gratifying. In his sermons he denounced them savagely, and excited popular passion against them, keeping them in constant apprehension of an outbreak. While as ecclesiastical judge he extended his jurisdiction illegally over them to their frequent damage. In conjunction with other Episcopal officials he issued letters to the magistrates of the towns ordering them to expel the Jews, letters which he sought to enforce by personal visitations. The Alhama of Seville, the largest and richest in Castile, to the king, and little as Henry of Trastamara loved the Jews, the threatened loss to his finances led him, in August 1378, to formally command Martinez to desist from his incendiary course. Nor was this the first warning, as is shown by illusions to previous letters of the same import. To this Martinez paid no obedience, and the Alhama had recourse to Rome where it procured bulls for its protection, which Martinez disregarded as contemptuously as he had the royal mandate. Complaint was again made to the throne, and Juan I in 1382 repeated his father's commands to no effect. For another royal letter of 1383 accuses Martinez of saying in his sermons that he knew the king would regard as a service any assault or slain of the Jews, and that impunity might be relied upon. For this he was threatened with punishment that would make an example of him, but it did not silence him, and in 1388 the frightened Alhama summoned him before the Alcaldes and had the three royal letters read, summoning him to obey them. He replied with insults, and a week later put in a formal answer to which he said that he was but obeying Christ and the laws, and that if he were to execute the laws he would tear down the 23 synagogues in Seville as they had all been illegally erected. The dean and chapter became alarmed and appealed to the king. But Juan, in place of enforcing his neglected commands, replied that he would look into the matter. The zeal of the Archdeacon was holy, but it must not be allowed to breed disturbance, for although the Jews were wicked they were under the royal protection. This vacillation encouraged Martinez, who labored still more strenuously to inflame the people, newly prejudiced against the Jews by the murder of Yusef Pichon, who had been greatly beloved by all Seville. No one dared to interfere in their defense, but Martinez furnished an opportunity of silencing him by calling in question in his sermons the powers of the pope in certain matters. He was summoned before an assembly of theologians and doctors when he was as defiant of the Episcopal authority as of the royal, rendering himself contumacious and suspect of heresy, wherefore on August 2, 1389 Archbishop Baroso suspended him both as to jurisdiction and preaching until his trial should be concluded. This gave the Jews a breathing space, but Baroso died July 7, 1390, followed October 9 by Juan I. The chapter must have secretly sympathized with Martinez, for it elected him one of the provisors of the diocese Seje Vacante, thus clothing him with increased power, and we hear nothing more of the trial for heresy. Juan had left as his successor Henry III, known as Eldoliente, or the Invalid, a child of eleven, and quarrels threatening civil war at once arose over the question of the regency. Martinez now had nothing to fear, and he lost no time in sending December 8 to the clergy of the towns in the diocese, commands under pain of excommunication, to tear down within three hours the synagogues of the enemies of God calling themselves Jews. The building materials were to be used for the repair of the churches. If resistance was offered, it was to be suppressed by force and an interdict to be laid on the town until the good work was accomplished. These orders were not universally obeyed, but enough ruin was brought to lead the frightened Ahama of Seville to appeal to the regency, threatening to leave the land if they could not be protected from Martinez. The answer to this was prompt and decided. On December 22 a missive was addressed to the dean and chapter and was officially read to them January 10, 1391. It held them responsible for his acts as they had elected him provisor, and had not checked him. He must be at once removed from office, be forced to abstain from preaching and to rebuild the ruined synagogues, in default of which they must make good all damages and incur a fine of a thousand gold doblus each with other arbitrary punishments. Letters of similar import were addressed at the same time to Martinez himself. On January 15 the chapter again assembled and presented its official reply, which deprived Martinez of the provisorship, forbade him to preach against the Jews, and required him within a year to rebuild all synagogues destroyed by his orders. Then Martinez arose and protested that neither king nor chapter had jurisdiction over him, and their sentences were null and void. The synagogues had been destroyed by order of Archbishop Baroso, two of them in his lifetime, and they had been built illegally without license. His defiant answer concluded with a declaration that he repented of nothing that he had done. The result justified the dauntless reliance of Martinez on the popular passion which he had been stimulating for so many years. What answer the Regency made to this denial of its jurisdiction the documents failed to inform us, but no effective steps were taken to restrain him. His preaching continued as violent as ever, and the civil mob grew more and more restless in the prospect of gratifying at once its zeal for the faith and its thirst for pillage. In March the aspect of affairs was more alarming than ever. The rabble were feeling their way without rages and insults, and the judería was in hourly danger of being sacked. Juan Alonso Guzman, Count of Niebla, the most powerful noble of Andalusia, was adelantado of the province and Alcalde Mayor of Seville, and his kinsman, Alvar Pérez de Guzman, was Aguasil Mayor. On March 15 they seized some of the most turbulent of the crowd and proceeded to scourge two of them, but in place of awe in the populace this led to open sedition. The Guzmans were glad to escape with their lives, and popular fury was directed against the Jews, resulting in considerable bloodshed and plunder, but at length the authorities aided by the nobles prevailed, and order was apparently restored. By this time the agitation was spreading to Córdoba, Toledo, Burgos, and other places. Everywhere fanaticism and greed were aroused, and the Council of Regency vainly sent pressing commands to all the large cities in the hope of averting the catastrophe. Martinez continued his inflammatory harangues, and sought to turn to the advantage of religion the storm which he had aroused, by procuring a general forcible conversion of the Jews. The excitement increased, and on June 9 the tempest broke in a general rising of the populace against the Judaria, few of its inhabitants escaped. The number of slain was estimated at four thousand, and those of the survivors who did not succeed in flying only saved their lives by accepting baptism. Of the three synagogues two were converted into churches for the Christians who settled in the Jewish quarter, and the third sufficed for the miserable remnant of Israel which slowly gathered together after the storm had passed. From Seville the flames spread throughout the kingdoms of Castile, from shore to shore. In the paralysis of public authority, during the summer and early autumn of 1391, one city after another followed the example. The Judarias were sacked, the Jews who would not submit to baptism were slain, and fanaticism and cupidity held their orgies unchecked. The Moors escaped, for though many wished to include them in the slaughter, they were restrained by a wholesome fear of reprisals on the Christian captives in Granada and Africa. The total number of victims was estimated at fifty thousand, but this is probably an exaggeration. For this wholesale butchery and its accompanying rapine there was complete immunity. In Castile there was no attempt made to punish the guilty. It is true that when Henry attained his majority in 1395 and came to Seville he caused Martinez to be arrested, but the penalty inflicted must have been trivial, for we are told that it did not affect the high estimation in which he was held, and on his death in 1404 he bequeathed valuable possessions to the Hospital of Santa Maria. The misfortunes of the Ahama of Seville were rendered complete, when in January 1396 Henry bestowed on two of his favorites all the houses and lands of the Jews there, and in May he followed this by forbidding that any of those concerned in the murder and pillage should be harassed with punishment or fines. In Aragón there was a king more ready to meet the crisis, and the warning given at Seville was not neglected. Popular excitement was manifesting itself by assaults, robberies, and murders in many places. In the city of Valencia, which had a large Jewish population, the authorities exerted themselves to repress these excesses, and King Juan I ordered gallows to be erected in the streets, while a guard made nightly rounds along the walls of the Judaria. These precautions and the presence of the Infante Martín, who was recruiting for an expedition to Sicily, postponed the explosion, but it came at last. On Sunday, July 9, 1391, a crowd of boys with crosses made of cane and a banner marched to one of the gates of the Judaria, crying death or baptism for the Jews. By the time the gate was closed a portion of the boys were inside, and those excluded shouted that the Jews were killing their comrades. Hard by there was a recruiting station, with its group of idle vagabonds, who rushed to the Judaria and the report spread through the city that the Jews were slaying Christians. The magistrates and the Infante hastened to the gate, but the frightened Jews kept it closed, and thus they were excluded, while the mob affected entrance from adjoining houses and by the old rampart below the bridge. The Judaria was sacked, and several hundred Jews were slain before the tumult could be suppressed. Demonstrations were also made on the moriria, but troops were brought up and the mob was driven back. Some seventy or eighty arrests were made, and the next day a searching investigation as to the vast amount of plunder led to the recovery of much of it. This added to the agitation which went on increasing. With August 4th came the feast of St. Dominic, when the Dominicans were everywhere conspicuous and active, the next day as though in concert the tempest burst into Leto and Barcelona, in the former city with fearful massacre and conflagration. In the latter, despite the warning at Valencia, the authorities were unprepared when the mob arose and rushed into the call or jury, slain without mercy. A general demand for baptism went up, and when the civic forces arrived the slaughter was stopped, but the plunder continued. Some of the pillagers were arrested, and among them a few Castilians who as safe victims were condemned to death the next day. Under pretext that this was unjust, the mob broke into the jail and liberated the prisoners. Then the cry arose to finish with the Jews, who had taken refuge in the Castillo Nuevo, which was subjected to a regular siege, wringing the bells brought in crowds of peasants eager for disorder and spoil. The Bailea was attacked and the registers of crown property destroyed in the hope of evading taxes. On August 8 the Castillo Nuevo was entered, and all Jews who would not accept baptism were put to the sword. The castle was sacked, and the peasants departed laden with booty. The Judaria of Barcelona must have been small, for the number of slain was estimated at only three hundred. At Palma, the capital of Mallorca, some three hundred Jews were put to death, and the rest escaped only by submitting to baptism. The riots continued for some time and spread to attacks on the public buildings, until the gentlemen of the city armed themselves and, after a stubborn conflict, suppressed the disturbance. The chief alchamas of the kingdom were the a-panage of the queen consort, and Queen Violante made good her losses by levying on the island a fine of a hundred and fifty thousand gold florins. The gentlemen of Palma remonstrated at the hardship of being punished after putting down the rioters. She reduced the fine to a hundred and twenty thousand, swearing by the life of her unborn child that she would have justice. The fine was paid, and soon afterward she gave birth to a stillborn infant. Thus in one place after another, Herona Lérida Saragossa, the subterranean flame burst forth, fed by the infernal passions of fanaticism, greed, and hatred. It seems incredible that, with the royal power resolved to protect its unhappy subjects, these outrages should have continued throughout the summer into autumn, for when the local authorities were determined to suppress these uprisings as at Murviedo and Castellón de la Plana, they were able to do so. If Juan I was unable to prevent the massacres, he at least was determined not to let them pass unpunished. Many executions followed, and some commutations for money payments were granted. The alchama of Barcelona had been a source of much profit to the crown, and he strove to re-establish it in new quarters, offering various privileges and exemptions to attract newcomers. It was crushed, however, beyond resuscitation, but few of its members had escaped by hiding. Nearly all had been slain or baptized, and, great as were the franchises offered, the memory of the catastrophe seems to have outweighed them. In 1395 the new synagogue was converted into a church or monastery of Trinitarian monks, and the wealthy alchama of Barcelona, with its memories of so many centuries, ceased to exist. About the year 1400 the city obtained a privilege which prohibited the formation of a juda-ria or the residence of a Jew within its limits. Antipathy to Judaism, as we shall see, was rapidly increasing, and when, in 1425, Alfonso VI confirmed this privilege, he decreed that all Jews then in the city should depart within sixty days under penalty of scourging, and thereafter a stay of fifteen days with the utmost limit allowed for temporary residence. If I have dwelt in what may seem disproportionate length on this guera sacra contra los judeos, as Villa Nueva terms these massacres, it is because they form a turning point in Spanish history. In the relations between the races of the peninsula the old order of things was closed, and the new order which was to prove so benumbing to material and intellectual development was about to open. The immediate results were not long in becoming apparent. Not only was the prosperity of Castile and Aragon diminished by the shock to the commerce and industry so largely in Jewish hands, but the revenues of the crown, the churches, and the nobles, based upon the taxation of the Jews suffered enormously. Pius foundations were ruined, and bishops had to appeal to the king for assistance to maintain the services of their cathedrals. Of the Jews who had escaped, the major portion had only done so by submitting to baptism, and these were no longer subject to the capitation tax and special imposts which had furnished the surest part of the income of cities, prelates, nobles, and sovereigns. Still the converted Jews with their energy and intelligence remained unfettered and unhampered in the pursuit of wealth and advancement which was to benefit the community as well as themselves. It was reserved for further progress in the path that now entered to deprive Spain of the services of her most industrious children. The most deplorable result of the massacres was that they rendered inevitable this further progress in the same direction. The church had at last succeeded in opening the long desired chasm between the races. It had looked on in silence while the Archdeacon of Ecija was bringing about the catastrophe and pope and prelate uttered no word to stay the long tragedy of murder and spoliation which they regarded as an act of God to bring the stubborn Hebrew into the fold of Christ. Henceforth the old friendliness between Jew and Christian was, for the most part, a thing of the past. Fanaticism and intolerance were fairly aroused. To grow stronger with each generation as fresh wrongs and oppression widened the abyss between believer and unbeliever, and as new preachers of discord arose to teach the masses that the kindness to the Jew was sin against God. Thus gradually the Spanish character changed until it was prepared to accept the inquisition which by a necessary reaction stimulated the development of bigotry until Spain became what we shall see it in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. That the Archdeacon of Ecija was in reality the remote founder of the inquisition will become evident when we consider the fortunes of the new class created by the massacres of 1391, that of the converted Jews known as New Christians, Maranos, or Conversos. Conversion, as we have seen, was always favored by the laws, and the convert was received with a hardiness of social equality which shows that as yet there was no antagonism of race but only of religion. The Jew who became a Christian was eligible to any position in church or state, or to any matrimonial alliance for which his abilities or character fitted him. But conversions had hitherto been too rare and the converts for the most part too humble for them to play any distinctive part in the social organization. While the massacres doubtless were largely owing to the attractions of disorder and pillage, the religious element in them was indicated by the fact that everywhere the Jews were offered the alternative of baptism, and that where willingness was shown to embrace Christianity, slaughter was at once suspended. The pressure was so fierce and overwhelming that whole communities were baptized, as we have seen at Barcelona and Paloma. At Valencia, an official report made on July 14th, five days after the massacre, states that all the Jews, except a few who were in hiding, had already been baptized. They came forward demanding baptism in such droves that, in all the churches, the holy chism was exhausted and the priests knew not where to get more, but each morning the chrismera would be found miraculously filled so that the supply held out. Nor was this by any means the only sign that the whole terrible affair was the mysterious work of providence to affect so holy an end. The chiefs of the synagogues were included among the converts, and we can believe the statement, current at the time, that in Valencia alone the conversions amounted to eleven thousand. Moreover it was not only in the scenes of massacre that this good work went on, so startling and relentless was the slaughter that panic destroyed the unyielding fortitude so often manifested by the Jews under trial. In many places they did not wait for a rising of the Christians, but at the first menace or even in mere anticipation of danger they came eagerly forward and clamored to be admitted into the church. In Aragon the total number of conversions was reckoned at a hundred thousand, and in Castile as certainly not less, and this is probably no great exaggeration. Neophytes such as these could scarce be expected to prove steadfast in their new faith. In this tempest of proselytism the central figure was San Vicente Ferrer, to the fervor of whose preaching posterity attributed the popular excitement leading to the massacres. This doubtless does him an injustice but the fact that he was on hand in Valencia on the fatal ninth of July may perhaps be an indication that the affair was pre-arranged. His eloquence was unrivaled, immense crowds assembled to drink in his words. No matter what was the native language of the listener we are told that his Catalan was intelligible to Moor, Greek, German, Frenchman, Italian, and Hungarian, while the virtue which flowed from him on these occasions healed the infirm and repeatedly restored the dead to life. Such was the man who, during the prolonged massacres and subsequently while the terror which they excited continued to dominate the unfortunate race, traversed Spain from end to end with restless and indefatigable zeal preaching, baptizing, and numbering his converts by the thousand on a single day into ladle he is said to have converted no less than four thousand. It is to be hoped that, in some cases at least, he may have restrained the murderous mob if only by hiding its victims in the baptismal font. The Jews slowly recovered themselves from the terrible shock. They emerged from their concealment and endeavored with characteristic dauntless energy to rebuild their shattered fortunes. Now, however, with diminished numbers and exhausted wealth they had to face new enemies. Not only was Christian fanaticism inflamed and growing even stronger, but the wholesale baptisms had created the new class of conversals who were thenceforth to become the deadliest opponents of their former brethren. Many chiefs of the synagogue learned rabbis and leaders of their people had cowered before the storm and had embraced Christianity. Whether their conversion was sincere or not they had broken with the past and with the keen intelligence of their race they could see that a new career was open to them in which energy and capacity could gratify ambition unfettered by the limitations surrounding them in Judaism. That they should hate with an exceeding hatred those who had proved true to the faith amid tribulation was inevitable. The renegade is apt to be bitterer against those whom he has abandoned than is the opponent by birthright, and in such a case as this consciousness of the contempt felt by the steadfast children of Israel for the weaklings and whirllings who had apostatized from the faith of their fathers gave a keener edge to enmity. From early times the hardest blows endured by Judaism had always been dealt by its apostate children whose training had taught them the weakest points to a sale and whose necessity of self-justification led them to attack these mercilessly. In 1085 Rabbi Samuel of Morocco came from Fez and was baptized at Toledo when he wrote a tract to justify himself which had great currency throughout the Middle Ages. Rabbi Moses, one of the most learned Jews of his time, who was converted in 1106, wrote a dissertation to prove that the Jews had abandoned the laws of Moses while the Christians were fulfilling them. It was Nicholas de Rupela, a converted Jew who started the long crusade against the Talmud by pointing out in 1236 to Gregory the Ninth, the blasphemies which it contained against the Saviour. We have seen the troubles excited in Aragon by the disputatious converso by Pablo Cristia, and he was followed by another Dominican convert, Ramon Martin, in his celebrated Pugio Fidei. In this work, which remained an authority for centuries, he piled up endless quotations from Jewish writers to prove that the race was properly reduced to servitude, and he stimulated the bitterness of hatred by arguing that Jews esteemed it meritorious to slay and cheat and to spoil Christians. History of the Inquisition of Spain, Volume 1 by Henry Charles Lee, Book 1, Chapter 3, The Jews and the Converses, Part 4 The most prominent among the new conversos was Salimo Ha Levy, a rabbi who had been the most intrepid defender of the faith and rights of his race. On the eve of the massacres, which perhaps he foresaw and influenced by an opportune vision of the Virgin in 1390, he professed conversion, taking the name of Pablo de Santa Maria, and was followed by his two brothers and five sons, founding a family of commanding influence. After a course in the University of Paris he entered the church, rising to the sea of Cartagena and then to that of Burgos, which he transmitted to his son Alfonso. At the Cortes of Toledo in 1406 he so impressed Henry III that he was appointed tutor and governor of the Infante Juan II, mayor of Castile, and a member of the Royal Council. When in the course of the same year the king died, he named Pablo among those who were to have the conduct and education of Juan during his minority. When the regent Fernando of Antequera left Castile to assume the crown of Aragon, he appointed Pablo to replace him, and the pope honored him with the position of legate Alaterre. In 1432 in his 81st year he wrote his Scrutinium scriptuorum against his former co-religionists. It is more moderate than his customary in these controversial writings, and seems to have been composed rather as a justification of his own course. Another prominent converso was the rabbi Juho Shoah A. Lorke, who took the name of Heronimo de Santa Fe, and founded a family almost as powerful as the Santa Marias. He too showed his zeal in the book named Hebreo Mastix, in which he exaggerated the errors of the Jews in the manner best adapted to excite the execration of Christians. Another leading converso family was that of the Caballerias, of which eight brothers were baptized, and one of them, Bonafos, who called himself Miser Pedro de la Caballeria, wrote in 1464 the Celo de Cristo contra los Judíos, in which he treated them with customary obliquy as the synagogue of Satan, and argues that the hope of Christianity lies in their ruin. In thus stimulating the spirit of persecuting fanaticism, we shall see how these men sold the wind and reaped the whirlwind. Meanwhile, the position of the Jews grew constantly more deplorable. Decimated and impoverished, they were met by a steadily increasing temper of hatred and oppression. The massacres of 1391 had been followed by a constant stream of emigration to Granada and Portugal, which threatened to complete the depopulation of the Alhamas, and with the view of arresting this, Henry III, in 1395, promised them the royal protection for the future. The worth of that promise was seen in 1406, when in Cordoba the remnant of the Judaria was again assailed by the mob, hundreds of Jews were slain, and their houses were sacked and burned. It is true that the king ordered the magistrates to punish the guilty and expressed his displeasure by a fine of 24,000 doblus on the city, but he had the year before, in the Cortes of 1405, assented to a series of laws depriving the Jews at once of property and of defense by declaring void all bonds of Christians held by them, reducing to one half all debts due them, and requiring a Christian witness and a debtor's acknowledgment for the other half, annulling their privileges in the trial of mixed cases, and requiring the hateful red circle to be worn except in traveling when it could be laid aside in view of the murders which it invited. This was cruel enough, yet it was but a foretaste of what was in store. In 1410, when the queen regent Donia Catalina was in Segovia, there was revealed a sacrilegious attempt by some Jews to maltreat a consecrated host. The story was that the Sacristan of San Fagun had pledged it as security for a loan, the street in which the bargain was made acquiring in consequence the name of Calle de Malconcejo. The Jews cast it repeatedly into a boiling cauldron when it persistently arose and remained suspended in the air, a miracle which so impressed some of them that they were converted and carried the form to the Dominican convent and related the facts. The wafer was piously administered in communion to a child who died in three days. Donia Catalina instituted a vigorous investigation which implicated Don Mayor, one of the most prominent Jews in the kingdom, whose services as physician had prolonged the life of the late king. He was subjected to torture sufficient to elicit not only his participation in the sacrilege but also that he had poisoned his royal master. The convicts were drawn through the streets and quartered, as were also some others who in revenge had attempted to poison Juan de Tordesillas, the bishop of Segovia. The Jewish synagogue was converted into the Church of Corpus Christi, and an annual procession still commemorates the event. San Vicente Ferrer turned it to good account, for we are told that in 1411 he almost destroyed the remnants of Judaism in the bishopric. The affair made an immense impression, especially it would seem, on San Vicente, convincing him of the advisability of forcing the Jews into the bosom of the Church by reducing them to despair. At Ayon in 1411 he represented to the regents the necessity of further repressive legislation, and his eloquence was convincing. The ordenamiento de Donia Catalina promulgated in 1412 and drawn up by Pablo de Santa Maria as Chancellor of Castile was the result. By this rigorous measure Jews and Moors under savage and ruinous penalties were not only required to wear the distinguishing badges, but to dress in coarse stuffs, and not to shave or to cut the hair round. They could not change their abodes, and any nobleman or gentleman receiving them on his lands was heavily fined and obliged to return them whence they came, while expatriation was forbidden under pain of slavery. Not only were the higher employments of farming the revenues, tax collecting, and practicing as physicians and surgeons forbidden, but any position in the households of the great and numerous trades, such as those of apothecaries, grocers, ferriers, blacksmiths, peddlers, carpenters, tailors, barbers, and butchers. They could not carry arms or hire Christians to work in their houses or on their lands. That they should be forbidden to eat, drink, or bathe with Christians, or be with them in feasts and weddings, or serve as God-parents was a matter of course under the canon law, but now even private conversation between the races was prohibited. Nor could they sell provisions to Christians, or keep a shop or ordinary for them. It is perhaps significant that nothing was said about usury. Money lending was almost the only occupation remaining open, while the events of the last twenty years had left little capital wherewith to carry it on, and the laws of 1405 had destroyed all sense of security in making loans. They were more over-deprived of the guarantees so long enjoyed and were subjected to the exclusive jurisdiction, civil and criminal of the Christians. They were thus debarred from the use of their skill and experience in the higher pursuits, professional and industrial, and were condemned to the lowest and rudest forms of labour. In fine a wall was built around them from which their only escape was through the baptismal font. Fernando of Antequera carried the law in all its essentials to Aragon, and King Duarte adopted it in Portugal, so that it ruled the whole peninsula except the little kingdom of Navarre, where Judaism was already almost extinct. It is significant that Fernando in promulgating it in Mallorca alleged in justification the complaints of the inquisitors as to the social intercourse between Jews and Christians. While San Vicente and Pablo de Santa Maria were thus engaged in reducing to despair the Jews of Castile, the other great converso, Jerónimo de Santa Fe, was laboring in a more legitimate way for their conversion in Aragon. He had been appointed physician to the Avignonese Pope Benedict XIII, who had been obliged across the Pyrenees, and who on November 25, 1412 summoned the Alhamas of Aragon to send, in the following January, their most learned rabbis to San Mateo, near Tortosa, for a disputation with Jerónimo on the proposition that the Messiah had come. Fourteen rabbis selected from the synagogues of all Spain, with Fidal Ben Veniste at their head, accepted the challenge. The debate opened February 7, 1414, under the presidency of Benedict himself, who warned them that the truth of Christianity was not to be discussed, but only sixteen propositions put forward by Jerónimo, thus placing them wholly on the defensive. Despite this disadvantage, they held their ground tenaciously during seventy-nine sessions, prolonged through a term of twenty-one months. Jerónimo covered himself with glory by his unrivaled dialectical subtlety and exhaustless stores of learning, and his triumph was shown by his producing a division between his opponents. During this colloquy, in the summer of 1413, some two hundred Jews of the synagogues of Saragossa, Calatayud, and Alcanyis professed conversion. In 1414 there was a still more abundant harvest, a hundred and twenty families of Catalaud, Daroka, Fragha, and Barbastro presented themselves for baptism, and these were followed by the whole alchamas of Alcanyis, Caspé, Maella, Lérida, Tamarit, and Alcalea, amounting to about thirty-five hundred souls. The repressive legislation was accomplishing its object, and hopes were entertained that with the aid of the inspired teaching of San Vicente Judaism would become extinct throughout Spain. To stimulate the movement by an increase of severity towards the recalcitrant, Benedict issued his constitution Etsy doctoribus gentium, in which he virtually embodied the ordenamiento de Donia Catalina, thus giving to its system of terrible repression the sanction of church as well as of state. He further forbade the possession of the Talmud or of any books contrary to the Christian faith, ordering the bishops and inquisitors to make semi-annual inquests of the alchamas and to proceed against all found in possession of such books. No Jew should even bind a book in which the name of Christ or the Virgin appeared. Princes were exhorted to grant them no favors or privileges and the faithful at large were commanded not to rent or sell houses to them, or to hold companionship or conversation with them. Moreover they were prohibited to exercise usury and thrice a year they were to be preached to and worn to abandon their errors. The bishops in general were ordered to see to the strict enforcement of all these provisions, and the execution of the bull was specially confided to Gonzalo, Bishop of Siguenza, son of the great conversor Pablo de Santa Maria. As the utterance of the anti-pulp Benedict, this searching and cruel legislation, designed to reduce the Jews to the lowest depths of poverty and despair, was current only in the lands of his obedience. But when his triumphant rival, Martin V, confirmed the charge confided to the Bishop of Siguenza, he accepted and ratified the act of Benedict. Nay more. In 1434 Alfonso de Santa Maria, Bishop of Burgos, another son of the conversor Pablo, when a delegate to the Council of Basli, procured the passage of a decree in the same sense. The quarrel of the Council with a papacy, it is true, deprived its utterance of ecumenic authority, but this deficiency was supplied when, in 1442 Eugenius IV issued a bull, which was virtually a repetition of the law of Donia Catalina, and of the Constitution of Benedict XIII, while this was followed in 1447 by an even more rigorous one of Nicholas V. Thus all factions of the Church, however much they might wrangle on other points, cheerfully united in rendering the life of the Jew as miserable as possible, and in forbidding princes to show him favor. This was symbolized when, in 1418, the Legate of Martin V, was solemnly received in Herona, and the populace within urine instinct celebrated the closing of the great schism and the reunion of the Church by playfully sacking the Judaria, though the royal officials, blind to the piety of the demonstration, severely punished the perpetrators. The immediate effect of this policy corresponded to the intentions of its authors, though its ultimate results can scarce have been foreseen. The Jews were humiliated and impoverished. Despite their losses by massacre and conversion, they still formed an important portion of the population, with training and aptitudes to render service to the State. But, debarred from pursuits for which they had been fitted, they were crippled both for their own recuperation and for the benefit of the public. The economic effect was intensified by the inclusion of the Mudejares in the repressive legislation. Commerce and manufactures, Decade, and many products which Spain had hitherto exported, she was now obliged to import at advanced prices. On the other hand, the Converso saw open to them a career fitted to stimulate and satisfy ambition. Confident in their powers, with intellectual training superior to that of the Christians, they aspired to the highest places in the courts, in the universities, in the Church, and in the State. Wealth and power rendered them eligible suitors, and they entered into matrimonial alliances with the noblest houses in the land, many of which had been impoverished by the shrinkage of the revenues derived from their Jewish subjects. Alfonso de Santa Maria, in procuring the decree of Basli, was careful to insert in it a recommendation of marriage between converts and Christians as the surest means of preserving the purity of the faith, and the advice was extensively followed. Thus the time soon came when there were few of the ancient nobility of Spain who were not connected closely or remotely with the Jew. We hear of marriages with lunas, mendosas, via hermosas, and others of the proudest houses. As early as 1449 a petition to López de Barientes, Bishop of Cuenca, by the Conversos of Toledo, enumerates all the noblest families of Spain as being of Jewish blood, and among them the Enriques from whom the future Ferdinand the Catholic descended through his mother Juana Enriques. It was the same in the Church, where we have seen the rank attained by the Santa Marías. Juan de Torquemada, Cardinal of San Sisto, was of Jewish descent, and so, of course, was his nephew, the first Inquisitor-General, as was likewise Diego Deisa, the second Inquisitor-General, as well as Hernando de Talavera, Archbishop of Granada. It would be easy to multiply examples, for in every career the vigor and keenness of the Jews made them conspicuous, and, in embracing Christianity, they seemed to be opening a new avenue for the development of the race in which it would become dominant over the old Christians. In fact, an Italian nearly contemporary describes them as virtually ruling Spain, while secretly perverting the faith by their covert adherence to Judaism. This triumph, however, was short-lived. Their success showed that thus far there had been no antagonism of race, but only of religion. This speedily changed. The hatred and contempt which, as apostates, they lavished on the faithful sons of Israel reacted on themselves. It was impossible to stimulate popular abhorrence of the Jew without at the same time stimulating the envy and jealousy excited by the ostentation and arrogance of the new Christians. What was the use of humiliating and exterminating the Jew if these upstarts were not only to take his place in grinding the people as tax-gatherers, but were to bear rule in court and camp and church? Meanwhile the remnant of the Jews were slowly but indomitably recovering their position. It was much easier to enact the Ordena Miento de Umnia Catalina than to enforce it, and, like much previous legislation, it was growing obsolete in many respects. In the early days of Juan II, Abraham Benaviste was virtually finance minister, and when the infante Henry Araragon seized the king at Todesillas and carried him off, he justified the act by saying that it was because the government was in the hands of Abraham. In fact there are indications of a reaction in which the Jews were used as a counter-poise to the menacing growth of conversal influence. When in 1442 the cruel bull of Eugenius IV was received, although its scarce contained more than the laws of 1412, and the bull of Benedict XIII, Álvaro de Luna, the all-powerful favorite, not only refused to obey it, but proceeded to give legal sanction to the neglect into which those statutes had fallen, he induced his master to issue the Pagmatical of Arevalo, April 6, 1443, condemning the refusal of many persons to buy or sell with Jews and Moors, or to labor for them in the fields under color of a bull of Eugenius IV, published at Toledo during his absence. Punishment is threatened for those audacities, for the bull and the laws provide that Jews and Moors and Christians shall dwell together in harmony and no one is to injure or slay them. It was not intended to prevent Jews and Moors and Christians from dealing together, nor that the former should not follow industry's base and servile, such as all manner of mechanical trades, and Christians can serve them for proper wages and guard their flocks and labor for them in the fields, and they can prescribe for Christians if the medicines are compounded by Christians. Thus a revulsion had taken place in favor of the prescribed race, which threatened to undo the work of Vicente Ferrer and the Conversals. It was in vain that in 1451 Nicholas V issued another bull repeating and confirming that of Eugenius IV. It received no attention, and under the protection of Alvaro de Luna the Jews made good use of the breathing space to reconstruct their shattered industries and to demonstrate their utility to the state. The conspiracy, which sent Alvaro to the block in 1453, was a severe blow, but on the ascension of Henry IV in 1454 they secured the goodwill of his favorites and even procured the restoration of some old privileges, the most important of which was the permission to have their own judges. One element in this was the influence enjoyed by the royal physician Jacob Aben Nunez, on whom was conferred the office of Rob Mayor. In the virtual anarchy of the period, however, when every noble was a law unto himself, it is impossible to say how far royal decrees were effective or to postulate any general conditions. In 1458 the Constable Velasco orders his vassals of the town of Otto to observe the law forbidding Christians to labor for Jews and Moors, but he makes the wise exception that they may do so when they can find no other work wherewith to support themselves. Even under these conditions the superior energy of the non-Christian races was rapidly acquiring for them the most productive lands, if we may trust a decree of the town of Oro in 1453 forbidding Christians to sell their estates to Moors and Jews, for if this were not stopped the Christians would have no ground to cultivate as the Moors already held all the best of the irrigated lands. The nobles had seen the disadvantage of the sternly oppressive laws and disregarded them to their own great benefit, thus raising the envy of the districts obliged to observe them. For the Cortes of 1462 petitioned Henry to restore liberty of trade between Christian and Jew, alleging the inconvenience caused by the restriction and the depopulation of the crown lands for, as trade was permitted in the lands of the nobles, the Jews were concentrating there. When further the Cortes asked that Jews should be permitted to return with their property and trades to the cities in the royal domains from which they had been expelled, it indicates that popular adversion was becoming directed to the conversos rather than to the Jews. It may be questioned whether it was to preserve the advantage here indicated, or to gain popular favor, that the revolted nobles, in 1460, demanded of Henry that he should banish from his kingdoms all Moors and Jews who contaminated religion and corrupted morals, and that when they deposed him in 1465 at Avila and elevated to the throne the child Alfonso, the Concordia Compromissoria, which they dictated annulled the pragmatica of Arrevalo and restored to vigor the laws of 1412 and the bull of Benedict XIII. This frightened the Jews, who offered to Henry an immense sum for Gibraltar, who they proposed to establish a city of refuge, but he refused. The fright was superfluous for, in the turbulence of the time, the repressive legislation was speedily becoming obsolete. When the reforming Council of Aranda, in 1473, made but a single reference to Jews and Moors, and this was merely to forbid them to pursue their industries publicly on Sundays and feast days, with a threat against the judges who, through bribery, permitted this desecration, it is fair to conclude that the law of 1412, if observed at all, was enforced only in scattered localities. That the restrictions on commercial activity were obsolete is manifest from a complaint, in 1475, to the sovereigns from the Jews of Medina del Pomar, setting forth that they had been accustomed to purchase in Bilbao from foreign traders, cloths, and other merchandise which they carried through the kingdom for sale, until recently the port had restricted all dealings with foreigners to the resident Jews, whereupon Ferdinand and Isabella ordered these regulations rescinded, unless the authorities could show good reasons within fifteen days. With a settlement of affairs under Ferdinand and Isabella, the position of the Jews grew distinctly worse. Although Don Abraham Sr., one of Isabella's most trusted Councilors, was a Jew, her piety led her to revive and carry out the repressive policy of San Vicente Ferrer, and in codifying the royal edicts in the Ordinances Reales, confirmed by the Cortes of Toledo in 1480, all the savage legislation of 1412 was reenacted, except that relating to mechanical trades, and the vigor of the government gave assurance that the laws would be enforced, as we have seen in the matter of the separation of the Judarius. Ferdinand's assent to this shows that he adopted the policy, and in his own dominions, by an edict of March 6, 1482 he withdrew all licenses to Jews to lay aside the dangerous badge while traveling, and he further prohibited the issuing of such licenses under penalty of a thousand Florence. Another edict of December 15, 1484, recites that at Celia, a village near Teruel, some Jews had recently taken temporary residence. As there is no Judaria in order to avoid danger to souls, he orders them driven out, and that none be allowed to remain more than twenty-four hours under pain of a hundred Florence and a hundred lashes. This recudescence of oppression probably had an influence on the people, for there came a revulsion of feeling adverse to the prescribed race, inflamed by the ceaseless labors of the frailest whose denunciatory eloquence knew no cessation. Under these circumstances the Jews and Moors seemed to have had recourse to the Roman Curia, always ready to speculate by selling privileges, whether it had power to grant them or not, and then to withdraw them for a consideration. We shall have ample occasion to see hereafter prolonged transactions of the kind arising from the operation of the Inquisition. Those with the Jews at this time seemed to have been closed by a motu proprio of May 31, 1484, doubtless procured from Sixtus the Fourth by pressure from the Sovereigns, in which the Pope expresses his displeasure at learning that, in Spain, especially in Andalusia, Christians, Moors, and Jews, dwell together, that there is no distinction of vestments, that the Christians act as servants and nurses, the Moors and Jews as physicians, apothecaries, farmers of ecclesiastical revenues, etc., pretending that they hold papal privileges to that effect. Any such privileges he withdraws, and he orders all officials, secular and ecclesiastical, to enforce strictly the canonical decrees respecting the prescribed races. Under these impulses the municipalities, which, in 1462, had petitioned to have the prescriptive laws repealed, now enforced them with renewed vigor, and even exceeded them, as at Balmaceda, where the Jews were ordered to depart. They appealed to the throne, representing that they lived in daily fear for life and property, and begged the royal protection, which was duly granted. Subjected to these perpetual and harassing vicissitudes, the Jews had greatly declined both in numbers and wealth. An assessment of the poll tax, made in 1474, shows that, in the dominions of Castile, there were only about twelve thousand families left, or from fifty to sixty thousand souls, although there were still two hundred and sixteen separate Alhamas. Their weakness and poverty are indicated by the fact that such communities as those of Seville, Toledo, Córdoba, Burgos, etc., paid much less than inconspicuous places prior to 1391. The Alhama of Ciudad Real, which had paid in 1290 a tax of 26,486 Maravedis, had disappeared. The only one left in La Mancha was Almagro, assessed at 800 Maravedis. The work of Martinez and San Vicente Ferrer was accomplishing itself. Popular adhorrence had grown, while the importance of the Jews as a source of public revenue had fatally diminished. The end was evidently approaching, but a consideration of its horrors must be postponed while we glance at the condition of the renegades who had sought shelter from the storm by adopting the faith of the oppressor. The conversos, in steadily increasing numbers, had successfully worked out their destiny, accumulating honors, wealth, and popular hatred. In both Castile and Aragon they filled lucrative and influential positions in the public service, and their preponderance in church and state was constantly becoming more marked. In Catalonia, however, they were regarded with contempt, and, though the boast that Catalan blood was never polluted by intermixture is exaggerated, it is not holy without foundation. The same is true of Valencia, where intermarriage only occurred among the rural population. Throughout Spain, moreover, the farming of all the more important sources of revenue passed into their hands, and thus they inherited the odium as well as the profits of the Jews. The beginning of the end was seen at Toledo, where, in 1449, Álvaro de Luna made a demand on the city for a million maravedes for the defense of the frontier, and it was refused. He ordered the tax-gatherers to collect it. They were conversos, and when they made the attempt the citizens arose and sacked and burnt not only their houses but those of the conversos in general. The latter organized in self-defense and endeavored to suppress the disturbance but were defeated when those who were wealthy were tortured and immense booty was obtained. In vain Juan II sought to punish the city. The triumphant citizens, with the magistrates at their head, organized a court in which the question was argued whether the conversos could hold any public office. In spite of the evident illegality of this and of active opposition led by the famous López de Barrientos, Bishop of Cuenca, it was decided against the conversos in a quasi-judicial sentence known as the Sentencia Estatuto, which in the bitterness of its language reveals the extreme tension existing between the old and new Christians. The conversos were stigmatized as more than suspect in the faith, and as in reality Jews. They were declared incapable of holding office and of bearing witness against old Christians and those who held positions were ejected. The disturbances spread to Ciudad Real where the principal offices were held by conversos. The order of Calatrava, which had long endeavored to get possession of the city, espoused the side of the old Christians. There was considerable fighting in the streets, and for five days the quarter occupied by the conversos was exposed to pillage. Thus the hatred which of old had been merely a matter of religion had become a matter of race, the one could be conjured away by baptism, the other was indelible, and the change was of the most serious import, exercising for centuries its sinister influence on the fate of the peninsula.