Century
Political and natural disasters
Though Spain recognized the independence of the Dutch United Prov-inces in 1648, she did not find the peace she needed. Rebellions had to be suppressed in Catalonia and Italy, and England had to be fought in the Caribbean. In 1656 and 1657, the British destroyed Spanish fleets off Cadiz and Santa Cruz de Teneriffe. Spain was blockaded. Portuguese independence from Spain was assured at the battle of Elvas. It was impossible to go on fighting a losing battle. Spain had to reach an agreement with her enemies. The Treaty of the Pyrenees of 7 May 1659 deprived Spain of what remained of her Habsburg inheritance. As Span-ish power in Europe collapsed, Philip IV died on 17 September 1665, to be succeeded by his physically and mentally degenerate son, Charles II.1 Natural disasters were regular aspects of seventeenth-century life.
Spain was swept by epidemics: influenza decimated Málaga in 1674, and plagues left Cartagena, Murcia and most of Andalusia desolate between 1676 and 1680. The earthquake of 9 October 1680 caused widespread destruction in Málaga. Crops rotted, prices inflated and thousands died of hunger.
Vigour of the Inquisition at the century’s end
The weakening of Spain did not lead to a decline in the Inquisition’s activity. On the contrary, the statistics show a marked rise in the number of autos de fe between 1670 and 1690. In many courts the fig-ures reached those previously achieved only in the early years of the
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Holy Office two hundred years before.2 There were 89 trials of Judaizers in Toledo between 1680 and 1700,3 but the real increase was seen in the delegated court in Madrid. In the last two decades of the century 205 Judaizers were tried in the capital.4
In Málaga, which was suffering so many natural disasters, the years between 1668 and 1678 saw mass roundups, in which more than 500 people were arrested. Málaga was a bustling seaport, open to inter-national currents of opinion. Judaizers passed through it on their way to freedom overseas.5 The evidence from one large trial stated that up to one hundred Judaizers met to pray regularly in a field where they thought they were safe. As a result, 79 appeared at an auto de fe in 1672;
six died at the stake and others held out till the last moment, when their courage failed them and they asked for mercy and to make a full confession.
The city suffered the loss of many enterprising families. From then onwards, few would trust their merchandise or extend credit to Portu-guese merchants for fear of the Holy Office confiscating their goods and seizing the funds of their debtors.
The Inquisition’s hand was felt particularly heavily in Palma de Mallorca, where 212 Judaizers were reconciled in four large autos de fe in 1679. Nevertheless, secret Judaism was not destroyed. The remaining Marranos planned to flee to Leghorn in 1687 aboard an English merchant ship. Their attempt ended in disaster. Over the next three years the court was swamped with a large number of cases of Judaizers who had already been reconciled once. In 1691, 93 men and women appeared at four more autos, and 36 of them died at the stake. A con-temporary work by the Jesuit Father Garau, though violently hostile to the victims, gives much useful historical information about the trials and the autos de fe on Majorca.6 Garau explains that there were only three obstinate Jews: Rafael Valls and Caterina and Rafael Benet Tarongí, who were brother and sister. They died proclaiming that they were Jews. Given the immense pressure to which the victims were subjected to make them confess and save their eternal souls, even if not their earthly bodies, it is amazing that anybody could resist, before a crowd estimated at thirty thousand, and accept death without even the aid of the executioner’s garrotte.
For Father Garau, of course, the undeniable valour of these three negativos could be explained by the presence of the Devil within them.
This could clearly be seen, explained the Jesuit, by the expressions of fear and rage on their faces, and their struggles against their bonds, while those who had confessed and saved their souls sat tranquilly
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through the auto de fe. Like some of the preachers at autos de fe, Father Garau, directing his barbs perhaps at other secret Jews who might read his book, accuses them of being not only bad Christians but also bad Jews, as though they had even the slightest chance of obeying the demands of Judaism more than minimally. He writes that some of the victims claimed to be rabbis, though by this is to be understood not formally qualified teachers of Jewish law but spiritual leaders who knew somewhat more of their religion than the vague ideas possessed by most of the descendants of the fifteenth-century converts. One of these would have been the negativo Rafael Valls, of whose agonizing death Garau gives a particularly nauseating description. During his trials, Valls had compared the planned flight from Majorca to Leghorn to the rescue of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego from the fiery furnace in the Book of Daniel. For the Jesuit, the failure of the escape attempt and the cap-ture and trial of most of the Judaizers allowed them to save their souls.
The violence of the Inquisition displayed in these autos de fe reveals a level of fear and hatred unparalleled since the early decades of the Holy Office in Spain. Secret Judaism on Majorca was wiped out, though the descendants of the reconciled victims, known as chuetas, have remained identifiable until today.7
The great general auto de fe of 30 June 1680
118 victims appeared at this giant spectacle in Madrid, the last of these costly public acts. Its image has been preserved in Francisco Rizzi’s canvas in the Prado. Its purpose was for the king to demonstrate his religious zeal by honouring the act with his presence and by taking the oath to support the efforts of the Holy Office, which was always uttered by the highest secular official present.
For the auto de fe to be sufficiently grandiose to merit the royal pres-ence, prisoners were brought to Madrid from Inquisition gaols all over the country. They are portrayed in Rizzi’s painting, sitting on four rows of raked seats on the right as one looks towards the royal box, actors in a solemn drama, when, before the hushed crowd, Church and State demonstrated their unity in the struggle against heresy.
Next came the sermon, after which the penitents were brought one by one from their places to hear their sentences. The first to stand before the Inquisition secretaries were those who claimed to be sorcerers and witches, pretended priests, bigamists and suchlike. With number 11, María Ruiz, known as ‘La Esmeralda’, the secretary began to read out the sentences for Judaizing. María abjured de vehementis; she was
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strongly suspected but full proof was lacking. She was sentenced to some years of exile from Madrid and Toledo. The next man was less fortunate. This was Manuel Díaz Sardo, if that was his real name, for he used several aliases in his life as a swindler who had already been condemned to ten years in the galleys by the criminal court. Now he learned that, if he survived the galleys, he would be immured in the Inquisition’s penitential prison for the rest of his life. The next man was a Portuguese from Mogadoiro, who sold spices in the street. He received two hundred lashes for being vario y revocante, that is changing and then denying his confession. Next came an entire family named Núñez Márquez, all Portuguese. There was Pedro, who sold cloth, his brother Jerónimo, a doctor, Leonor, widow of Rodrigo de Silva and Angela, widow of Francisco Correa, with her daughter Blanca. All received sentences of imprisonment.
Altogether, at that auto 56 Judaizers were reconciled in person, 22 fugitives were burnt in effigy and the bones of another eight were taken to the stake in wooden boxes. Eighteen Judaizers were burnt to death. This supreme penalty was inflicted on only one non-Judaizer.
The was Luis Fernández, alias Mustafa, a Christian who had adopted Islam and who refused to renege.8
For these Judaizers, whether they had confessed and abjured, or whether they obstinately refused to confess or proclaimed their Judaism impenitently, the auto de fe came after months or often years of resist-ance, doubts and anxiety. The auto meant that the inquisitors had finished with them, that there would be no more interrogations when they would stand before the court and try to answer questions about events which might have happened years earlier or which they may not even have understood properly. These men and women would emerge from their dark, solitary cells into the bright light of the Madrid summer day. They would look around, anxiously searching for parents, brothers and sisters, spouses and children. Surrounded as they were by familiars of the Inquisition, they would not be able to talk to their relatives. Nor did they know what to expect, unless they had observed another auto de fe or they had been found guilty of Judaizing for the second time. In the latter case, the auto de fe was the anteroom of death. Those who were going to be reconciled with the Church did not know their penance – was it imprisonment only, or public shame and whipping as well? – while those who were to die were informed of their fate a day earlier. This, the Inquisition hoped, would give them time to repent and save their souls.
Did the victims know that they were to play a part in a drama, to contribute to a ritual, perfect in its tiniest degree? The great auto de fe of
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1680 was announced a month in advance. Even in the solitary cells of the Inquisition prison some rumours may have penetrated about the ritualized ceremony in which the Judaizers were to be important protagonists.
The stage built for the auto of 1680 occupied 1,500 square metres of the Plaza Mayor. It was 3.6 metres high, the height of two tall men.9 It was even larger than the stage built for the great auto held in Córdoba in 1655, which was 1.155 square metres in area and two metres high:
The day after the Auto was announced, bids were invited for making the dais, and the lowest bid was taken, as is customary. I must describe the stage so that readers may get a clear idea of the drama which was played on it. This city has a very capacious square, known as the Corredera, because bulls are fought in it and spectacles are provided for the public as the rulers of nations have done through-out the ages for public enjoyment.
In these words Dr Nicolás Martínez, medical officer of the Córdoba court, described the preparations for the great auto de fe of 3 May 1655.10 The spectators had a good view of the penitents. While before the auto the procedures of the Inquisition had been concealed by a thick veil of secrecy, now, in the theatre, the victims and their emotions, hatred and rancour or, more probably, shame, depression and terror, were exposed to the full light of day. The spectators could see the altar, with the green cross of the Holy Office, the plinths for the preacher and for the secretaries who read out the sentences.
Everything was regulated down to the smallest detail, as in the bull-fight today. And indeed, the victims had to play their role as do the bulls, to accept their penance well and to behave as expected. They might repent even at the last minute, just as the bull who has refused to play his part and fight may turn against the matador at the end. Only the negative victim refused to play his part, like the bull who will not fight. Even so, all the victims, penitent and impenitent alike, acted like protagonists in a classical tragedy. The auto de fe, however, was a literal act of faith performed by the Church, the civil authorities and the spectators. It exalted the triumph of Spanish Catholicism and sought to redress the insult with which heresy had offended the Divinity.
The auto de fe was also a major public ceremony, where places were reserved according to the social rank of the spectators. It affirmed estab-lished power and demonstrated the rightness and good order of Spanish society, with Crown and Church united at its apex. In the presence of
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2 Number 23 of the series ‘Los Caprichos’ by Francisco Goya (1746–1828). The title Aquellos polbos (‘Those powders’) refers to the accusation that the penitent had claimed some supernatural or perhaps immoral powers by selling powders to the naíve.
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condemned heretics, the spectators, consumed with morbid curiosity at the sight of the victims in their mitres and yellow penitential tunics, experienced a form of catharsis. When the long day was over, they went home, purged of any doubts they might have had, aware that Christian truth had been reinforced and that the unity of civil society and the Church had been confirmed.
From the early hours of the morning, the Inquisition officials had begun to prepare the penitents. They were given food, though one wonders if their anxiety allowed them to eat. Over their heads went the sanbenitos, tunics of coarse yellow linen on which was painted a St Andrew’s Cross with a double, single or half crosspiece according to the severity of the offence. The victims probably did not know the significance of the different forms of the cross, but they would soon understand the meaning of the flames painted on some of their fellows’
sanbenitos. People who had escaped the stake by the skin of their teeth wore robes with the flames painted upside down (de fuego revuelto), while those who were to be burnt at the stake wore robes painted right way up with flames and devils. Each one wore a mitre on his head, also painted with devils and flames. Every victim, except those who were to be cast out and burnt, carried a candle which would be lit after they had abjured and when they were absolved and received back into the Church. Then all were placed in order, first those who had been absolved with a warning (ad cautelam), then those who would abjure though the court had only suspicions of their heresy (either de levis or de vehementis), then the reconciled and lastly those who were to be
‘relaxed to the secular arm’. The rear was brought up by the life-sized effigies of fugitives and the boxes of bones of the dead. These would be burnt and the ashes scattered, so that nothing would remain of the memory of these heretics who were now in Hell. As each victim took his place in the procession, a familiar stood on either side, exhorting him, particularly the negative ones for whom this was the last chance to save their souls, to repent of the fearful sin of heresy.
During the first few hours of the auto de fe, which in hot summer days often lasted from early morning until after dark, the penitents had little to do: assemble, put on their sanbenitos and mitres and walk in proces-sion between the familiars to the place, usually a church, where the auto was to be held. Then, called one by one to hear their sentences, they were to say nothing until the moment of abjuration. Everything was ritual, ceremony, spectacle, indeed theatre, as is clear from the many reports sent up from the local courts to the Suprema. These reports reflected the Inquisition’s desire that everything should go well, that
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nothing should minimize the prestige of the Holy Office in its role as Spain’s guardian against heterodoxy. The penitents played the part of silent objects here. For this reason the gaoler had prepared gags for con-demned victims who might cry out their loyalty to Judaism and disturb the solemnity of the moment. There was certainly no fear on the part of the Inquisition that the spectators would sympathize with the victims.
On the contrary, the military escorts which were present occasionally had to protect them from assault by the excited crowd. Any interrup-tion to the order and dignity of the ritual would affect the prestige of the Holy Office.
Even though the burning at the stake of a negativo was a failure on the part of the court and the friars who had ceaselessly tried to persuade him to confess and abjure his sin, it nevertheless represented the triumph of Good over Evil. If, at the last moment, the friars who stood by the victim until the smoke and flames forced them away convinced themselves that they had noticed a spark of repentance, and if they could summon the executioner to garrotte the wretch before the flames reached him, this would also prove the triumph of Truth.
A high point in the auto de fe was the sermon preached by a eminent religious orator. One of the best-known examples, because it was rebut-ted in a famous essay by Rabbi David Nieto, Haham or spiritual leader of the Spanish and Portuguese community in London, was that of the Archbishop of Cranganore, Diogo da Anunciação Justiniano Alvares, preached at an auto de fe in the Plaza del Rocío in Lisbon on 6 Septem-ber 1705. The archbishop turned to face the Judaizers whom he described as the ‘wretched relics of Judaism’ (desgraçadas reliquias do Judaismo), and told them that not even real Jews respected them: ‘You are the detested laughing stock of the Jews, because you are so ignorant that you do not know how to observe the very law in which you live.’ Some crypto-Jews did indeed confuse Judaism and Christianity. As has been seen, some Marranos may have thought that a symbiotic Christian–
Jewish religion was possible. That the Marranos were ignorant of norm-ative Judaism was evident. However, if the archbishop thought he knew enough about Jewish communities to be able to state that the Jews despised the Marranos (it was exactly the opposite case – Marranos who
Jewish religion was possible. That the Marranos were ignorant of norm-ative Judaism was evident. However, if the archbishop thought he knew enough about Jewish communities to be able to state that the Jews despised the Marranos (it was exactly the opposite case – Marranos who