Political and Religious Factors in the Spanish Inquisition

Introduction

Jews have lived in the Iberian Peninsula since ancient times, perhaps even since the First Exile in 586 BCE. Yet we know very little about their existence there before 418 CE, from which we have a record of a pogrom and the forced conversion to Christianity of the Jews of the island of Minorca.

After the Visigoths (German tribes who embraced heretical Arian Christianity) toppled the Western Roman Empire in 476, they soon also invaded and conquered Iberia, which had been a Roman province. The Arian Christian rulers temporarily lived in relative peace with the Jews, putting what had become the “normal” Jewish restrictions on them, including special taxes.

When the Visigoth king converted to Roman Catholicism in 589, however, he began persecuting the Jews to force them to convert or emigrate, something which was also happening in neighboring France and North Africa. Many Jews were forcibly converted, but a number of others were sheltered from persecution by the still Arian nobility, who needed the Jews to help them run their estates. Yet, in 634, the Visigothic Code enacted harsh restrictions prohibiting much of Jewish religious observance and property ownership.

Meanwhile, in Arabia in 610, Mohammed began preaching Islam, a militant religion that spread rapidly throughout the Middle East and Africa. In 711, they invaded Iberia and quickly toppled the Visigoths from power in nearly the entire peninsula, establishing a caliphate in Cordoba, and ruling the land with the Islamic custom of those days of toleration for Christians and Jews, as long as they submitted to Muslim rule.

Although the Spanish Jews had long been accused of trying to topple the Christian government, little is known about their role in this war. One could easily imagine, however, that the Muslim conquest, with its policy of relative toleration, was a relief to the Jews after 100 years of severe Visigothic persecution.

In 750, the even more moderate Muslim Umayyad Dynasty gained control of most of Iberia, and they granted the Jews nearly equal rights. The alien Muslim rulers of the indigenous Spanish population used the Jews as intermediaries between them and their subjects in matters of taxation and government, and many Jews rose to great wealth and power in Islamic Iberia.  

The Visigoths did not give up so easily, however, and launched counterattacks against the Muslims, leading to the establishment of small Christian kingdoms in various cities around Castille. Because they needed Jewish support in these battles and in order to run their kingdoms, they ceased persecuting the Jews in their areas and granted them rights and government positions. Internal Muslim religious and political rivalries soon broke up their Spanish empire into many small kingdoms, making it easier for the Christians to re-conquer their land, one city or small kingdom at a time.

In the endless battles that followed, both the Muslim and Christian rulers competed for Jewish support and loyalty by granting them power and rights, leading to a great improvement in Spanish Jewish life and scholarship. Jews served in the courts as doctors, writers, treasurers, tax-farmers, diplomats, foreign ministers, and even “prime ministers” of sorts.

The Golden Era for Jews and Its End

Despite occasional outbreaks of persecution and riots in various towns, Iberia quickly became the best place in Europe for Jews, giving rise to tremendous population growth, literature, scholarship, wealth, and a flourishing religious and political life. Some of the greatest Jewish scholars, including the Rambam, the Ramban, Ibn Ezra, and Judah Halevi lived in Spain in this Golden Era, which some Jews even hailed as the fulfillment of the Messianic Age.

Not all was peaceful and prosperous for the Jews, however. Faced with Islamic conquests all over the world, Christianity also became increasingly militant, and the Church launched the First Crusade in 1096, which perpetrated many atrocities against all the Jews and Muslims in its path to the Holy Land. Likewise, during this time the Spanish Christian kingdoms began trying to permanently reconquer Iberia, working from north to south.

This “Reconquista” continued for hundreds of years of fighting, retreating, and advancing, leaving the people never certain from one day to the next which government would rule them. Most of the time the new Muslim or Christian rulers kept the Jews in their court positions to stabilize the government, but occasionally there were still anti-Jewish riots, pillaging, and murders carried out by both sides of the conflict, since the peasants viewed the Jews as agents of whichever government they were rebelling against. This violent turmoil led many Jews to seek refuge in Kabbala, messianic pretenders, and apocalyptic expectations that this war would be the “birth pangs of the Messiah,” and culminate in the Messianic Age.

The Muslims imported more fighters from North Africa to retake their positions, the Almorivides and the Almohades, the latter of which were a more fanatical sect of Islam. When they invaded southern Iberia around 1140, they killed any Jews and Christians who refused conversion to Islam. Even Rambam’s family had to temporarily convert to Islam to save their lives before they managed to flee northeast.

This fanaticism led most of the Jews to flee northward into the Christian kingdoms, in which they were considered the personal property of the kings whose whims determined the fate of their lives and fortunes. Each ruler pursued his own contradictory policy towards the Jews, some writing highly restrictive laws but not enforcing them, others leaving them alone completely, and still others engaging in severe persecution.

In 1182, France became the first country to expel all its Jews, and although it let them return a few years later, it set a precedent of expulsion. Contemporaneously, anti-Jewish actions and sentiment increased all over Europe, with France putting the Talmud on public trial and burning it in the streets before expelling all its Jews again in 1254. Many antisemitic Frenchmen moved into Northern Iberia, and popular sentiment against the Jews kept growing.

Jews Under Christian Rule

The Christian rulers sought to solve their “Jewish problem” through forcing the Jews to listen to sermons about the superiority of Christianity, and through public disputations. They hoped to keep the Jews, with their money and scholarship, in the country, and to simply convince them to convert through these missionary endeavors.

Some did convert for various economic and occasionally religious reasons, but many of them became virulent antisemites who collaborated with the Church hierarchy to denounce Jews, and used their skills in Bible and Talmud to attack Judaism. They also wrote apologetic books and tracts to prove the Messiah had already come by using passages in the Bible and Talmud.

In 1263, a Jewish convert renamed Pablo Christiani convinced King Jaime I to force the Jews to publicly debate him in Barcelona. Nachmanides was chosen as the Jewish champion, and the Jews were compelled to listen to the debate. The king guaranteed the right to free speech in this now infamous Barcelona Disputation, and in the end both sides naturally claimed victory.

The Jews who did convert quickly found out that being “Christians” still did not guarantee their safety, as they then became subject to suspicions and accusations of mixed loyalties, a lack of true Christian zeal and belief, and the secret practice of Jewish rites. Some were tried by the Inquisition, the Papal commission to investigate and eliminate heresies within the Church.

Contrary to popular misconceptions about the Inquisition, it had little to no power over Jews, and in fact only had jurisdiction to try Jews who had converted to Christianity. Other victims of this early Inquisition were French Jews who had been forcibly converted to Catholicism while still in France, fled to Spain, and with new identities tried to return to Judaism in their new communities. Jews who helped their former co-religionists return to Judaism were punished with high fines and property confiscation.

At this stage of the Reconquista, the Muslims retreated to the southern end of Iberia, in the area of Granada, with the Christian kings consolidating their small holdings into several larger kingdoms - Aragon, Castille, Catalonia, Navarre, and Portugal. By the end of the 13th Century, the whims of the Christian kings became more consistently negative toward the Jews, although there were still occasional cases of indispensable Jewish government officials.

As the Christian kingdoms established themselves more securely, the populace successfully lobbied for their removal, and the reduction of Jewish privileges, and the kings began to use them as a source of tax revenue at a very high rate instead. The missionary campaigns continued, with Jews being forced to listen to apologetic sermons, often followed by riots in which peasant mobs killed or baptized any Jews they found on the streets, and looted their property, in what was just a small foreshadowing of what was to come.

Historian Yitzhak Baer says of this era,

This state of affairs continued, until in the mid-1300s a civil war broke out in Castille over who was the legitimate king. Each rival fined the Jews huge sums to finance the war, and imported English and French mercenary troops, who frequently massacred the Jewish communities of the towns they conquered. Blood libels, hostile informers, and host (Eucharist bread) desecration charges popped up and spread all over the peninsula in the decades following the war, and brought many sorrows.

By the end of the 1300s, many young Jews became discouraged with their restrictions and persecutions and began converting to Christianity for their own social benefit.

In 1378, Archbishop Ferrant Martinez began preaching sermons urging violence against the Jews in Seville. Action did not follow immediately, but the king feared to try to stop him, and when the king died in 1390, leaving the crown prince still a minor, the cataclysm began.

On June 4, 1391, Martinez incited anti-Jewish riots in Seville, which spread to nearly every city and town in Castille within a month. Whole Jewish communities were wiped out by murder and conversion, some by force and some by choice, with synagogues torn down and property looted. In July and August these riots spread to Aragon, Valencia, the islands, and Catalonia, with only Navarre remaining relatively unscathed.

In some cases, the rulers attempted to save their Jews by granting them temporary refuge in their castles, sending a few troops to quell the rioters, and punishing a handful of the ringleaders. For the most part, however, the rulers waited until the storm was over and then contented themselves with launching weak investigations into what had happened, and confiscating for themselves the property of the Jewish martyrs.

A few Jews, such as Rabbi Hasdai Crescas, managed to hide or flee until the riots ended, and so preserve their lives and religion, but scholars estimate that only a third of Spain’s Jewish population survived the summer of 1391, and did their best to rebuild their shattered communities. Even many of the community leaders and rabbis converted to Christianity in this period and the decades that followed, making restoration very difficult.  

These riots were the source of Spain’s converso problem.

Some of these Marranos eventually managed to flee to Israel or other countries under Muslim rule where they re-adopted Judaism, but the majority stayed in their homes in hopes they could outlast the persecutions and return to their faith when times became more favorable to Jews.

Then, in the early 1400s, a preacher named Vincent Ferrer began to stir up anti-Jewish riots in Castille, and convinced the king to enact severely restrictive laws in 1412, in hopes the Jews would convert to avoid them. He also propagated similar laws in Aragon, and then convinced the Pope to force the Jews of Aragon and Catalonia to supply spokesmen for and attend a disputation in Tortosa against the prominent convert Joshua Halorki.

The Tortosa Disputation continued for 14 long months in 1413-1414, ending with a self-proclaimed Christian victory. It led to many conversions, due to the lower scholarship and lack of freedom of speech granted the Jewish defendants, the absence of the Jewish leaders from their communities since they were required in Tortosa, and the hostile tactics of the Christian accusers.

Next, the Church demanded that the Jews defend the Talmud in another disputation in San Mateo for the rest of 1414, which the Jewish scholars escaped by saying that they were too ignorant to respond to the charges, and begging to return home. Riots, forced conversions, and more restrictive anti-Jewish laws followed the Disputations, which nearly decimated the community, until a political accident set milder kings on the thrones of Castille and Aragon, and a milder Pope in Rome, who granted the remaining Jews a few of their former rights.

The Jewish community of Castille underwent a brief revival in the 15th century with the eased restrictions, and many of the Marranos returned to Judaism as best they could, or at least kept Jewish traditions in secret while officially being Christians. They visited and contributed to synagogues, asked rabbis for halachic opinions, and practiced Jewish rituals.

Most of the Marranos failed to integrate into Christian society, which differed from them greatly, and always regarded them with suspicion. Most of these Jews were too wealthy and educated to fit in with the Christian peasants, but not wealthy, educated, or “pure-blooded” enough to be accepted by the Christian upper classes. A few conversos rose to great heights of power in the Church and the government, since they were now unrestricted by anti-Jewish laws, became targets of Jewish contempt, and in turn ridiculed and made Jewish life more difficult in an attempt to deny their connection to them.

From 1449 onward, however, race riots broke out in several cities between the “Old Christians” and the “New Christians,” with the former claiming that these Jews had converted in order to destroy the Church from within and to dilute the “pure Spanish blood” with their Jewish descent. It was not long before the Inquisition resumed, dragging many of the Marranos to trial, torturing them, and forcing them to confess to being secret Jews before their execution. Despite these dangers, many of them still participated in the Jewish community whenever they could, and the Jews tried to aid their brothers’ return to Judaism.

In 1469, when Isabella, the heiress of the throne of Castile, married Ferdinand, the prince of Aragon, both Jews and Marranos alike were still being slaughtered in all of the peninsula. In 1479, the couple inherited their respective crowns, united the kingdoms of Aragon and Castile into “Spain,” and proceeded to reorganize their kingdom politically, socially, and religiously in their goal to establish a state of “law, justice, and religious unity.”

At first, they remained relatively tolerant of the Jews and Marranos, many of whom served as their close advisors. Yet by 1480, Ferdinand and Isabella decided to purify the Spanish Church by forcibly separating the Jews from the Marranos. They therefore decreed that Christians, Muslims, and Jews live in separate districts and minimize contact with one another in order to prevent the Jews from influencing their brothers to return to Judaism, and they hand-picked their own Church officials to run the Spanish Inquisition. Within only twelve years, thousands of Marranos had been burned at the stake and many more forced to repent in public and return to the Church after torture and trials that ignored all principles of justice.

Several Marranos personally traveled to Rome in 1483 to request Papal intervention, and he shortly afterward demanded legal trials, the right to appeal, and the removal of some of the worst inquisitors. Ferdinand and Isabella were infuriated at the Pope’s attempt to reduce their power and redoubled their efforts, as they appointed their own new chief inquisitor, Thomas Torquemada, and effectively “nationalized the Inquisition” in order to bypass the Pope’s leniencies.

The Spanish Inquisition

In that same year, they decided to solve the converso problem in one province by expelling all the Jews from it, a solution they were to pursue en masse in the future.

As the Inquisition moved from city to city, its usual method was to first proclaim a “period of grace” in which any converso had a month to come to the court, confess his Jewish practices, repent, receive mild penalties, and be received back into the Church. After this grace period finished, however, the court encouraged anonymous denunciations of Marranos by “Old Christians,” fellow converts, servants, family members, and even Jews.

The Expulsions

There is no space here to recount all the travesties of justice that occurred in these “trials,” which spared no one, regardless of class, position, or wealth. As the Inquisition approached each city in succession, many Marranos fled, and so succeeded in only being burned in effigy.

Of those who remained, some were let off with various penalties or imprisonment, but the majority was condemned and burned at the stake. This process culminated in a huge show trial in 1491, which had the goal of

During Ferdinand and Isabella’s reign, they renewed the Reconquista against the Muslims in their last Iberian stronghold, Granada. After a ten-year war, on January 2, 1492, they finally drove the last Muslim armies out of Spain, entered Granada, and officially united the entire peninsula under Christian rule.

Now that they had accomplished their goal of reunification, and the absolute political power of the Church in Spain, they made new plans for the Jews whom they no longer needed to help them win the war.

The Inquisition had clearly revealed that, as long as a Jewish community existed in Spain, the Marranos would be drawn to return to it, since all other methods of separation had failed. Therefore, on March 31, 1492, (the same year “Columbus sailed the ocean blue”) the monarchs signed the Edict of Expulsion, which ordered all the Jews to leave Spain before the 9th of Av (in July) of that same year, and forbade them to take most of their wealth with them.

At the same time, the Church promoted conversion as an alternative to expulsion, and thousands flocked to be baptized. Beginning in May, the government seized the Jewish quarters and property, with all those who were able to do so (about 50,000) boarding ships and sailing to Muslim countries for refuge. France forbade the entry of Jews, so the only land emigration options were Portugal, which allowed 120,000 of them (at a high head tax) to enter its domain temporarily, and the small kingdom of Navarre, which allowed 12,000 immigrants.

Those who could not flee were forcibly baptized and soon terrorized by the Inquisition, and many of these “Christians” fled the country and “re-converted” to Judaism in the coming years. There is no space to tell of the many horrors the exiled Spanish Jews met on their journeys to find new homes and religious freedom, but many of them met death from starvation, exposure, drowning, and violence in lands far from their homes.

For the Jews who fled to Portugal, the trauma had only just begun, however. Conditions for Portuguese Jews had been mostly favorable for many centuries, although they never reached the heights of the Golden Age of Spanish Jewry. Unfortunately, King John II’s good treatment of his own Jews did not extend to the new immigrants, whom he enslaved if they stayed longer than 8 months in Portugal. He stole their children, forcibly baptized them, and then sent them to an island to be raised as Christians by strangers.

A brief respite occurred in 1495, when King Emanuel took the Portuguese throne, freed the slaves, and tried to convert them with kindness instead of cruelty. This relief lasted only one year, until Emanuel desired to marry the Spanish princess. Ferdinand and Isabella made the marriage conditional upon Emanuel expelling all the Jews from Portugal as well.

Forced Conversion

He reluctantly issued an Edict of Expulsion, giving the Jews three months to leave or convert, but he in fact had no intention of allowing their wealth and talents to escape. He therefore stole and baptized as many Jewish children as he could find and ordered all those Jews who intended to emigrate to report to Lisbon in 1497, where he promised to furnish them ships for the journey.

Once there, they were crowded into a small area and deprived of food and water for several days until many of them accepted baptism just to escape the torment. Those who remained were driven into Rossio square in Lisbon, where dozens of priests infiltrated the crowd and sprinkled holy water on the heads of everyone within reach.

The confused Jews were then informed that they had been baptized for their own sakes and also by proxy as representatives of every Jew in Portugal, and that as Christians they were now forbidden to leave. They were promised a 20-year respite from the Inquisition, as long as they kept their Jewish practices strictly private, and sent back to their homes, with the entire Jewish community of Portugal neatly eliminated in a single day by this unique baptism by proxy. In what was to his eyes an ingenious plan, Emanuel got to keep the money and talents of his Jews, marry the princess, and still solve all his religious problems on a technicality.

This ended the greatest Jewish communities of the Middle Ages in a long, multi-act tragedy of religious and political factors which conspired together for their destruction. Baer summarizes the situation with these words,

The long and bitter exile exacted its terrible price, which only in our generation finally has a chance for redemption. May we be quick to seize this, our first and last opportunity to release our brothers in captivity.

Footnote

This article is based primarily on the chronology presented in Baer, Yitzhak. The History of the Jews in Christian Spain. Vols. 1-2. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1961, with other details included from Lindo, Elias Haim. The History of the Jews of Spain and Portugal. New York: Burt Franklin, 1970, and the lectures of Professor Yom-Tov Assis of Hebrew University.