The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Volume I Part 24

The Jews were astounded by the bolt, which had fallen so unexpectedly upon them. Some succeeded in making their escape to Granada, others to France, Germany, or Italy, where they appealed from the decisions of the Holy Office to the sovereign pontiff. [37] Sixtus the Fourth appears for a moment to have been touched with something like compunction; for he rebuked the intemperate zeal of the inquisitors, and even menaced them with deprivation. But these feelings, it would seem, were but transient; for, in 1483, we find the same pontiff quieting the scruples of Isabella respecting the appropriation of the confiscated property, and encouraging both sovereigns to proceed in the great work of purification, by an audacious reference to the example of Jesus Christ, who, says he, consolidated his kingdom on earth by the destruction of idolatry; and he concludes with imputing their successes in the Moorish war, upon which they had then entered, to their zeal for the faith, and promising them the like in future. In the course of the same year, he expedited two briefs, appointing Thomas de Torquemada inquisitor-general of Castile and Aragon, and clothing him with full powers to frame a new const.i.tution for the Holy Office. This was the origin of that terrible tribunal, the Spanish or modern Inquisition, familiar to most readers, whether of history or romance; which, for three centuries, has extended its iron sway over the dominions of Spain and Portugal. [38] Without going into details respecting the organization of its various courts, which gradually swelled to thirteen during the present reign, I shall endeavor to exhibit the principles which regulated their proceedings, as deduced in part from the code digested under Torquemada, and partly from the practice which obtained during his supremacy. [39]

Edicts were ordered to be published annually, on the first two Sundays in lent, throughout the churches, enjoining it as a sacred duty on all, who knew or suspected another to be guilty of heresy, to lodge information against him before the Holy Office; and the ministers of religion were instructed to refuse absolution to such as hesitated to comply with this, although the suspected person might stand in the relation of parent, child, husband, or wife. All accusations, anonymous as well as signed, were admitted; it being only necessary to specify the names of the witnesses, whose testimony was taken down in writing by a secretary, and afterwards read to them, which, unless the inaccuracies were so gross as to force themselves upon their attention, they seldom failed to confirm.

[40]

The accused, in the mean time, whose mysterious disappearance was perhaps the only public evidence of his arrest, was conveyed to the secret chambers of the Inquisition, where he was jealously excluded from intercourse with all, save a priest of the Romish church and his jailer, both of whom might be regarded as the spies of the tribunal. In this desolate condition, the unfortunate man, cut off from external communication and all cheering sympathy or support, was kept for some time in ignorance even of the nature of the charges preferred against him, and at length, instead of the original process, was favored only with extracts from the depositions of the witnesses, so garbled as to conceal every possible clue to their name and quality. With still greater unfairness, no mention whatever was made of such testimony, as had arisen in the course of the examination, in his own favor. Counsel was indeed allowed from a list presented by his judges. But this privilege availed little, since the parties were not permitted to confer together, and the advocate was furnished with no other sources of information than what had been granted to his client. To add to the injustice of these proceedings, every discrepancy in the statements of the witnesses was converted into a separate charge against the prisoner, who thus, instead of one crime, stood accused of several. This, taken in connection with the concealment of time, place, and circ.u.mstance in the accusations, created such embarra.s.sment, that, unless the accused was possessed of unusual acuteness and presence of mind, it was sure to involve him, in his attempts to explain, in inextricable contradiction. [41]

If the prisoner refused to confess his guilt, or, as was usual, was suspected of evasion, or an attempt to conceal the truth, he was subjected to the torture. This, which was administered in the deepest vaults of the Inquisition, where the cries of the victim could fall on no ear save that of his tormentors, is admitted by the secretary of the Holy Office, who has furnished the most authentic report of its transactions, not to have been exaggerated in any of the numerous narratives which have dragged these subterranean horrors into light. If the intensity of pain extorted a confession from the sufferer, he was expected, if he survived, which did not always happen, to confirm it on the next day. Should he refuse to do this, his mutilated members were condemned to a repet.i.tion of the same sufferings, until his obstinacy (it should rather have been termed his heroism) might be vanquished. [42] Should the rack, however, prove ineffectual to force a confession of his guilt, he was so far from being considered as having established his innocence, that, with a barbarity unknown to any tribunal where the torture has been admitted, and which of itself proves its utter incompetency to the ends it proposes, he was not unfrequently convicted on the depositions of the witnesses. At the conclusion of his mock trial, the prisoner was again returned to his dungeon, where, without the blaze of a single f.a.got to dispel the cold, or illuminate the darkness of the long winter night, he was left in unbroken silence to await the doom which was to consign him to an ignominious death, or a life scarcely less ignominious. [43]

The proceedings of the tribunal, as I have stated them, were plainly characterized throughout by the most flagrant injustice and inhumanity to the accused. Instead of presuming his innocence, until his guilt had been established, it acted on exactly the opposite principle. Instead of affording him the protection accorded by every other judicature, and especially demanded in his forlorn situation, it used the most insidious arts to circ.u.mvent and to crush him. He had no remedy against malice or misapprehension on the part of his accusers, or the witnesses against him, who might be his bitterest enemies; since they were never revealed to nor confronted with the prisoner, nor subjected to a cross-examination, which can best expose error or wilful collusion in the evidence. [44] Even the poor forms of justice, recognized in this court, might be readily dispensed with; as its proceedings were impenetrably shrouded from the public eye, by the appalling oath of secrecy imposed on all, whether functionaries, witnesses, or prisoners, who entered within its precincts.

The last, and not the least odious feature of the whole, was the connection established between the condemnation of the accused and the interests of his judges; since the confiscations, which were the uniform penalties, of heresy, [45] were not permitted to flow into the royal exchequer, until they had first discharged the expenses, whether in the shape of salaries or otherwise, incident to the Holy Office. [46]

The last scene in this dismal tragedy was the _act of faith_, (auto da fe,) the most imposing spectacle, probably, which, has been witnessed since the ancient Roman triumph, and which, as intimated by a Spanish writer, was intended, somewhat profanely, to represent the terrors of the Day of Judgment. [47] The proudest grandees of the land, on this occasion, putting on the sable livery of familiars of the Holy Office and bearing aloft its banners, condescended to act as the escort of its ministers; while the ceremony was not unfrequently countenanced by the royal presence. It should be stated, however, that neither of these acts of condescension, or, more properly, humiliation, were witnessed until a period posterior to the present reign. The effect was further heightened by the concourse of ecclesiastics in their sacerdotal robes, and the pompous ceremonial, which the church of Rome knows so well how to display on fitting occasions; and which was intended to consecrate, as it were, this b.l.o.o.d.y sacrifice by the authority of a religion, which has expressly declared that it desires mercy, and not sacrifice. [48]

The most important actors in the scene were the unfortunate convicts, who were now disgorged for the first time from the dungeons of the tribunal.

They were clad in coa.r.s.e woollen garments, styled _san benitos_, brought close round the neck, and descending like a frock down to the knees. [49]

These were of a yellow color, embroidered with a scarlet cross, and well garnished with figures of devils and flames of fire, which, typical of the heretic's destiny hereafter, served to make him more odious in the eyes of the superst.i.tious mult.i.tude. [50] The greater part of the sufferers were condemned to be _reconciled_, the manifold meanings of which soft phrase have been already explained. Those who were to be _relaxed_, as it was called, were delivered over, as impenitent heretics, to the secular arm, in order to expiate their offence by the most painful of deaths, with the consciousness, still more painful, that they were to leave behind them names branded with infamy, and families involved in irretrievable ruin.

[51]

It is remarkable, that a scheme so monstrous as that of the Inquisition, presenting the most effectual barrier, probably, that was ever opposed to the progress of knowledge, should have been revived at the close of the fifteenth century, when the light of civilization was rapidly advancing over every part of Europe. It is more remarkable, that it should have occurred in Spain, at this time under a government which had displayed great religious independence on more than one occasion, and which had paid uniform regard to the rights of its subjects, and pursued a generous policy in reference to their intellectual culture. Where, we are tempted to ask, when we behold the persecution of an innocent, industrious people for the crime of adhesion to the faith of their ancestors, where was the charity, which led the old Castilian to reverence valor and virtue in an infidel, though an enemy? Where the chivalrous self-devotion, which led an Aragonese monarch, three centuries before, to give away his life, in defence of the persecuted sectaries of Provence? Where the independent spirit, which prompted the Castilian n.o.bles, during the very last reign, to reject with scorn the proposed interference of the pope himself in their concerns, that they were now reduced to bow their necks to a few frantic priests, the members of an order, which, in Spain at least, was quite as conspicuous for ignorance as intolerance? True indeed the Castilians, and the Aragonese subsequently still more, gave such evidence of their aversion to the inst.i.tution, that it can hardly be believed the clergy would have succeeded in fastening it upon them, had they not availed themselves of the popular prejudices against the Jews. [52]

Providence, however, permitted that the sufferings, thus heaped on the heads of this unfortunate people, should be requited in full measure to the nation that inflicted them. The fires of the Inquisition, which were lighted exclusively for the Jews, were destined eventually to consume their oppressors. They were still more deeply avenged in the moral influence of this tribunal, which, eating like a pestilent canker into the heart of the monarchy, at the very time when it was exhibiting a most goodly promise, left it at length a bare and sapless trunk.

Notwithstanding the persecutions under Torquemada were confined almost wholly to the Jews, his activity was such as to furnish abundant precedent, in regard to forms of proceeding, for his successors; if, indeed, the word forms may be applied to the conduct of trials so summary, that the tribunal of Toledo alone, under the superintendence of two inquisitors, disposed of three thousand three hundred and twenty-seven processes in little more than a year. [53] The number of convicts was greatly swelled by the blunders of the Dominican monks, who acted as qualificators, or interpreters of what const.i.tuted heresy, and whose ignorance led them frequently to condemn as heterodox propositions actually derived from the fathers of the church. The prisoners for life, alone, became so numerous, that it was necessary to a.s.sign them their own houses as the places of their incarceration.

The data for an accurate calculation of the number of victims sacrificed by the Inquisition during this reign are not very satisfactory. From such as exist, however, Llorente has been led to the most frightful results. He computes, that, during the eighteen years of Torquemada's ministry, there were no less than 10,220 burnt, 6860 condemned, and burnt in effigy as absent or dead, and 97,321 reconciled by various other penances; affording an average of more than 6000 convicted persons annually. [54] In this enormous sum of human misery is not included the mult.i.tude of orphans, who, from the confiscation of their paternal inheritance, were turned over to indigence and vice. [55] Many of the reconciled were afterwards sentenced as relapsed; and the Curate of Los Palacios expresses the charitable wish, that "the whole accursed race of Jews, male and female, of twenty years of age and upwards, might be purified with fire and f.a.got!" [56]

The vast apparatus of the Inquisition involved so heavy an expenditure, that a very small sum, comparatively, found its way into the exchequer, to counterbalance the great detriment resulting to the state from the sacrifice of the most active and skilful part of its population. All temporal interests, however, were held light in comparison with the purgation of the land from heresy; and such augmentations as the revenue did receive, we are a.s.sured, were conscientiously devoted to pious purposes, and the Moorish war! [57]

The Roman see, during all this time, conducting itself with its usual duplicity, contrived to make a gainful traffic by the sale of dispensations from the penalties incurred by such as fell under the ban of the Inquisition, provided they were rich enough to pay for them, and afterwards revoking them, at the instance of the Castilian court.

Meanwhile, the odium, excited by the unsparing rigor of Torquemada, raised up so many accusations against him, that he was thrice compelled to send an agent to Rome to defend his cause before the pontiff; until, at length, Alexander the Sixth, in 1494, moved by these reiterated complaints, appointed four coadjutors, out of a pretended regard to the infirmities of his age, to share with him the burdens of his office. [58]

This personage, who is ent.i.tled to so high a rank among those who have been the authors of unmixed evil to their species, was permitted to reach a very old age, and to die quietly in his bed. Yet he lived in such constant apprehension of a.s.sa.s.sination, that he is said to have kept a reputed unicorn's horn always on his table, which was imagined to have the power of detecting and neutralizing poisons; while, for the more complete protection of his person, he was allowed an escort of fifty horse and two hundred foot in his progresses through the kingdom. [59]

This man's zeal was of such an extravagant character, that it may almost shelter itself under the name of insanity. His history may be thought to prove, that, of all human infirmities, or rather vices, there is none productive of more extensive mischief to society than fanaticism. The opposite principle of atheism, which refuses to recognize the most important sanctions to virtue, does not necessarily imply any dest.i.tution of just moral perceptions, that is, of a power of discriminating between right and wrong, in its disciples. But fanaticism is so far subversive of the most established principles of morality, that, under the dangerous maxim, "For the advancement of the faith, all means are lawful," which Ta.s.so has rightly, though perhaps undesignedly, derived from the spirits of h.e.l.l, [60] it not only excuses, but enjoins the commission of the most revolting crimes, as a sacred duty. The more repugnant, indeed, such crimes may be to natural feeling, or public sentiment, the greater their merit, from the sacrifice which the commission of them involves. Many a b.l.o.o.d.y page of history attests the fact, that fanaticism, armed with power, is the sorest evil which can befall a nation.

Don Juan Antonio Llorente is the only writer who has succeeded in completely lifting the veil from the dread mysteries of the Inquisition.

It is obvious how very few could be competent to this task, since the proceedings of the Holy Office were shrouded in such impenetrable secrecy, that even the prisoners who were arraigned before it, as has been already stated, were kept in ignorance of their own processes. Even such of its functionaries, as have at different times pretended to give its transactions to the world, have confined themselves to an historical outline, with meagre notices of such parts of its internal discipline as might be safely disclosed to the public.

Llorente was secretary to the tribunal of Madrid from 1790 to 1792. His official station consequently afforded him every facility for an acquaintance with the most recondite affairs of the Inquisition; and, on its suppression at the close of 1808, he devoted several years to a careful investigation of the registers of the tribunals, both of the capital and the provinces, as well as of such other original doc.u.ments contained within their archives, as had not hitherto been opened to the light of day. In the progress of his work he has anatomized the most odious features of the inst.i.tution with unsparing severity; and his reflections are warmed with a generous and enlightened spirit, certainly not to have been expected in an ex-inquisitor. The arrangement of his immense ma.s.s of materials is indeed somewhat faulty, and the work might be recast in a more popular form, especially by means of a copious retrenchment. With all its subordinate defects, however, it is ent.i.tled to the credit of being the most, indeed the only, authentic history of the modern Inquisition; exhibiting its minutest forms of practice, and the insidious policy by which they were directed, from the origin of the inst.i.tution down to its temporary abolition. It well deserves to be studied, as the record of the most humiliating triumph, which fanaticism has ever been able to obtain over human reason, and that, too, during the most civilized periods, and in the most civilized portion of the world.

The persecutions, endured by the unfortunate author of the work, prove that the embers of this fanaticism may be rekindled too easily, even in the present century.

FOOTNOTES

[1] Mosheim, Ecclesiastical History, translated by Maclaine, (Charlestown, 1810,) cent. 13, p. 2, chap. 5.--Sismondi, Histoire des Francais, (Paris, 1821,) tom. vi. chap. 24-28; tom; vii. chap. 2, 3.--Idem, De la Litterature du Midi de l'Europe, (Paris, 1813,) tom. i. chap. 6.--In the former of these works M. Sismondi has described the physical ravages of the crusades in southern France, with the same spirit and eloquence, with which he has exhibited their desolating moral influence in the latter.

Some Catholic writers would fain excuse St. Dominic from the imputation of having founded the Inquisition. It is true he died some years before the perfect organization of that tribunal; but, as he established the principles on which, and the monkish militia by whom, it was administered, it is doing him no injustice to regard him as its real author.--The Sicilian Paramo, indeed, in his heavy quarto, (De Origine et Progressu Officii Sanctae Inquisitionis, Matriti, 1598,) traces it up to a much more remote antiquity, which, to a Protestant ear at least, savors not a little of blasphemy. According to him, G.o.d was the first inquisitor, and his condemnation of Adam and Eve furnished the model of the judicial forms observed in the trials of the Holy Office. The sentence of Adam was the type of the inquisitorial _reconciliation_; his subsequent raiment of the skins of animals was the model of the _san-benito_, and his expulsion from Paradise the precedent for the confiscation of the goods of heretics.

This learned personage deduces a succession of inquisitors through the patriarchs, Moses, Nebuchadnezzar, and King David, down to John the Baptist, and even our Saviour, in whose precepts and conduct he finds abundant authority for the tribunal! Paramo, De Origine Inquisitionis, lib. 1, t.i.t. 1, 2, 3.

[2] Sismondi, Hist. des Francais, tom. vii. chap. 3.--Limborch, History of the Inquisition, translated by Chandler, (London, 1731,) book 1, chap.

24.--Llorente, Histoire Critique de l'Inquisition d'Espagne, (Paris, 1818,) tom. i. p. 110.--Before this time we find a const.i.tution of Peter I. of Aragon against heretics, prescribing in certain cases the burning of heretics and the confiscation of their estates, in 1197. Marca, Marca Hispanica, sive Limes Hispanicus, (Parisiis, 1688,) p. 1384.

[3] Nic. Antonio, Bibliotheca Vetus, tom. ii, p. 186.--Llorente, Hist. de l'Inquisition, tom. i. pp. 110-124.--Puigblanch cites some of the instructions from Eymerich's work, whose authority in the courts of the Inquisition he compares to that of Gratian's Decretals in other ecclesiastical judicatures. One of these may suffice to show the spirit of the whole. "When the inquisitor has an opportunity, he shall manage so as to introduce to the conversation of the prisoner some one of his accomplices, or any other converted heretic, who shall feign that he still persists in his heresy, telling him that he had abjured for the sole purpose of escaping punishment, by deceiving the inquisitors. Having thus gained his confidence, he shall go into his cell some day after dinner, and, keeping up the conversation till night, shall remain with him under pretext of its being too late for him to return home. He shall then urge the prisoner to tell him all the particulars of his past life, having first told him the whole of his own; and in the mean time spies shall be kept in hearing at the door, as well as a notary, in order to certify what may be said within." Puigblanch, Inquisition Unmasked, translated by Walton, (London, 1816,) vol. i. pp. 238, 239.

[4] Mariana, Hist. de Espana, lib. 12, cap. 11; lib. 21, cap. 17.-- Llorente, Hist. de l'Inquisition, tom. i. chap. 3.--The nature of the penance imposed on reconciled heretics by the ancient Inquisition was much more severe than that of later times. Llorente cites an act of St. Dominic respecting a person of this description, named Ponce Roger. The penitent was commanded to be "_stripped of his clothes and beaten with rods by a priest, three Sundays in succession, from the gate of the city to the door of the church_; not to eat any kind of animal food during his whole life; to keep three Lents a year, without even eating fish; to abstain from fish, oil, and wine three days in the week during life, except in case of sickness or excessive labor; to wear a religious dress with a small cross embroidered on each side of the breast; to attend ma.s.s every day, if he had the means of doing so, and vespers on Sundays and festivals; to recite the service for the day and the night, and to repeat the _pater noster_ seven times in the day, ten times in the evening, and _twenty times at midnight_"! (Ibid., chap. 4.) If the said Roger failed in any of the above requisitions, he was to be burnt as a relapsed heretic! This was the encouragement held out by St. Dominic to penitence.

[5] Montesquieu, Esprit des Loix, liv. 28, chap. 1.--See the canon of the 17th council of Toledo, condemning the Israelitish race to bondage, in Florez, Espana Sagrada, (Madrid, 1747-75,) tom. vi. p. 229.--Fuero Juzgo (ed. de la Acad. (Madrid, 1815,) lib. 12, t.i.t. 2 and 3,) is composed of the most inhuman ordinances against this unfortunate people.

[6] The Koran grants protection to the Jews on payment of tribute. See the Koran, translated by Sale, (London, 1825,) chap. 9.

[7] The first academy founded by the learned Jews in Spain was that of Cordova, A. D. 948. Castro, Biblioteca Espanola, tom. i. p. 2.--Basnage, History of the Jews, translated by Taylor, (London, 1708,) book 7, chap.

5.

[8] In addition to their Talmudic lore and Cabalistic mysteries, the Spanish Jews were well read in the philosophy of Aristotle. They pretended that the Stagirite was a convert to Judaism and had borrowed his science from the writings of Solomon. (Brucker, Historia Critica Philosophiae, (Lipsiae, 1766,) tom. ii. p. 853.) M. Degerando, adopting similar conclusions with Brucker, in regard to the value of the philosophical speculations of the Jews, pa.s.ses the following severe sentence upon the intellectual, and indeed moral character of the nation. "Ce peuple, par son caractere, ses moeurs, ses inst.i.tutions, semblait etre destine a rester stationnaire. Un attachement excessif a leurs propres traditions dominait chez les Juifs tous les penchans de l'esprit: ils restaient presque etrangers aux progres de la civilisation, au mouvement general de la societe; ils etaient en quelque sorte moralement isoles, alors meme qu'ils communiquaient avec tous les peuples, et parcouraient toutes les contrees. Aussi nous cherchons en vain, dans ceux de leurs ecrits qui nous sont connus, non seulement de vraies decouvertes, mais meme des idees reellement originales." Histoire Comparee des Systemes de Philosophie, (Paris, 1822,) tom. iv. p. 299.

[9] Castro, Biblioteca Espanola, tom. i. pp. 21, 33, et alibi.--Benjamin of Tudela's celebrated Itinerary, having been translated into the various languages of Europe, pa.s.sed into sixteen editions before the middle of the last century. Ibid., tom. i. pp. 79, 80.

[10] The beautiful lament, which the royal psalmist has put into the mouths of his countrymen, when commanded to sing the songs of Sion in a strange land, cannot be applied to the Spanish Jews, who, far from hanging their harps upon the willows, poured forth their lays with a freedom and vivacity which may be thought to savor more of the modern troubadour than of the ancient Hebrew minstrel. Castro has collected, under Siglo XV., a few gleanings of such as, by their incorporation into a Christian Cancionero, escaped the fury of the Inquisition. Biblioteca Espanola, tom.

i. pp. 265-364.

[11] Castro has done for the Hebrew what Casiri a few years before did for the Arabic literature of Spain, by giving notices of such works as have survived the ravages of time and superst.i.tion. The first volume of his Biblioteca Espanola contains an a.n.a.lysis accompanied with extracts from more than seven hundred different works, with biographical sketches of their authors; the whole bearing most honorable testimony to the talent and various erudition of the Spanish Jews.

[12] Basnage, History of the Jews, book 7, chap. 5, 15, 16.--Castro, Biblioteca Espanola, tom. i. pp. 116, 265, 267.--Mariana, Hist. de Espana, tom. i. p. 906;--tom. ii. pp. 63, 147, 459.--Samuel Levi, treasurer of Peter the Cruel, who was sacrificed to the cupidity of his master, is reported by Mariana to have left behind him the incredible sum of 400,000 ducats to swell the royal coffers. Tom. ii. p. 82.

[13] Sir Walter Scott, with his usual discernment, has availed himself of these opposite traits in his portraits of Rebecca and Isaac in Ivanhoe, in which he seems to have contrasted the lights and shadows of the Jewish character. The humiliating state of the Jews, however, exhibited in this romance, affords no a.n.a.logy to their social condition in Spain; as is evinced not merely by their wealth, which was also conspicuous in the English Jews, but by the high degree of civilization, and even political consequence, which, notwithstanding the occasional ebullitions of popular prejudice, they were permitted to reach there.

[14] Calumnies of this kind were current all over Europe. The English reader will call to mind the monkish fiction of the little Christian,

"Slain with cursed Jewes, as it is notable,"

singing most devoutly after his throat was cut from ear to ear, in Chaucer's Prioresse's Tale. See another instance in the old Scottish ballad of the "Jew's Daughter" in Percy's "Reliques of Ancient Poetry."

[15] Bernaldez, Reyes Catolicos, MS., cap. 43.--Mariana, Hist. de Espana, tom. ii. pp. 186, 187.--In 1391, 5000 Jews were sacrificed to the popular fury, and, according to Mariana, no less than 10,000 perished from the same cause in Navarre about sixty years before. See tom. i. p. 912.

[16] According to Mariana, the restoration of sight to the blind, feet to the lame, even life to the dead, were miracles of ordinary occurrence with St. Vincent. (Hist. de Espana, tom. ii. pp. 229, 230.) The age of miracles had probably ceased by Isabella's time, or the Inquisition might have been spared. Nic. Antonio, in his notice of the life and labors of this Dominican, (Bibliotheca Vetus, tom. ii. pp. 205, 207,) states that he preached his inspired sermons in his vernacular Valencian dialect to audiences of French, English, and Italians, indiscriminately, who all understood him perfectly well; "a circ.u.mstance," says Dr. McCrie, in his valuable "History of the Progress and Suppression of the Reformation in Spain," (Edinburgh, 1829.) "which, if it prove anything, proves that the hearers of St. Vincent possessed more miraculous powers than himself, and that they should have been canonized, rather than the preacher." P. 87, note.

[17] They were interdicted from the callings of vintners, grocers, taverners, especially of apothecaries, and of physicians, and nurses.

Ordenancas Reales, lib. 8, t.i.t. 3, leyes 11, 15, 18.

[18] No law was more frequently reiterated than that prohibiting the Jews from acting as stewards of the n.o.bility, or farmers and collectors of the public rents. The repet.i.tion of this law shows to what extent that people had engrossed what little was known of financial science in that day. For the multiplied enactments in Castile against them, see Ordenancas Reales, (lib. 8, t.i.t. 3.) For the regulations respecting the Jews in Aragon, many of them oppressive, particularly at the commencement of the fifteenth century, see Fueros y Observancias del Reyno de Aragon, (Zaragoza, 1667,) tom. i. fol. 6.--Marca Hispanica, pp. 1416, 1433.--Zurita, a.n.a.les, tom.

iii. lib. 12, cap. 45.

[19] Bernaldez, Reyes Catolicos, MS., cap. 43.--Llorente, Hist. de l'Inquisition, pref. p. 26.--A ma.n.u.script ent.i.tled _Tizon de Espana_, (Brand of Spain,) tracing up many a n.o.ble pedigree to a Jewish or Mahometan root, obtained a circulation, to the great scandal of the country, which the efforts of the government, combined with those of the Inquisition, have not been wholly able to suppress. Copies of it, however, are now rarely to be met with. (Doblado, Letters from Spain, (London, 1822,) let. 2.) Clemencin notices two works with this t.i.tle, one as ancient as Ferdinand and Isabella's time, and both written by bishops.

Mem. de la Acad. de Hist., tom. vi. p. 125.

[20] Mariana, Hist. de Espana, tom. ii. p. 479.--Pulgar, Reyes Catolicos, part. 2, cap. 77.

[21] Reyes Catolicos, MS., cap, 43. Vol. I.?21.