PENITENTS IN TOLEDO
The inquisitor, Pedro Díaz, had preached the first sermon on May 24th, and, after the defeat of the conspiracy, the tribunal entered vigorously on its functions. The customary Term of Grace of forty days was proclaimed and after some delay we are told that many applied for reconciliation rather through fear of concremation than through good will. After the expiration of the forty days, letters of excommunication were published against all cognizant of heresy who should not denounce it within sixty days—a term subsequently extended by thirty more. Another very effectual expedient was adopted by summoning the Jewish rabbis and requiring them, under penalty of life and property, to place a major excommunication on their synagogues and not remove it until all the members should have revealed everything within their knowledge respecting Judaizing Christians. This was only perfecting a device that had already been employed elsewhere. In 1484, by a cédula of December 10th, Ferdinand had ordered the magistrates of all the principal towns in Aragon to compel, by all methods recognized in law, the rabbis and sacristans of the synagogues and such other Jews as might be named, to tell the truth as to all that might be asked of them, and in Seville we are told that a prominent Jew, Judah Ibn-Verga, expatriated himself to avoid compliance with a similar demand. The quality of the evidence obtained by such means may be estimated from the fact that when, in the assembly of Valladolid, in 1488, Ferdinand and Isabella investigated the affairs of the Inquisition, it was found that many Jews testified falsely against Conversos in order to encompass their ruin, for which some of those against which this was proved were lapidated in Toledo. Whether true or false, the Toledan Inquisition reaped by these methods a plentiful harvest of important revelations. It is easy, in fact, to imagine the terror pervading the Converso community and the eagerness with which the unfortunates would come forward to denounce themselves and their kindred and friends, especially when, after the expiration of the ninety days, arrests began and quickly followed each other.[472]
The penitents were allowed to accumulate and at the first auto de fe, held February 12, 1486, only those of seven parishes—San Vicente, San Nicolás, San Juan de la leche, Santa Yusta, San Miguel, San Yuste, and San Lorenzo—were summoned to appear. These amounted to seven hundred and fifty of both sexes, comprising many of the principal citizens and persons of quality. The ceremony was painful and humiliating. Bareheaded and barefooted, except that, in consideration of the intense cold, they were allowed to wear soles, carrying unlighted candles and surrounded by a howling mob which had gathered from all the country around, they were marched in procession through the city to the cathedral, at the portal of which stood two priests who marked them on the forehead as they entered with the sign of the cross, saying “Receive the sign of the cross which you have denied and lost.” When inside they were called one by one before the inquisitors while a statement of their misdeeds was read. They were fined in one-fifth of all their property for the war with the Moors; they were subjected to lifelong incapacity to hold office or to pursue honorable avocations or to wear other than the coarsest vestments unadorned, under pain of burning for relapse, and they were required to march in procession on six Fridays, bareheaded and barefooted, disciplining themselves with hempen cords.[473] The loving mother Church could not welcome back to her bosom her erring children without a sharp and wholesome warning, nor did she relax her vigilance, for this perilous process of confession and reconciliation was so devised as to furnish many subsequent victims to the stake, as we shall see hereafter.
The second auto was held on April 2, 1486, where nine hundred penitents appeared from the parishes of San Roman, San Salvador, San Cristóval, San Zoil, Sant Andrés and San Pedro. The third auto, on June 11th, consisted of some seven hundred and fifty from Santa Olalla, San Tomás, San Martin and Sant Antolin. The city being thus disposed of, the various archidiaconates of the district were taken in order. That of Toledo furnished nine hundred penitents on December 10th, when we are told that they suffered greatly from the cold. On January 15, 1487, there were about seven hundred from the archidiaconate of Alcaraz and on March 10th, from those of Talavera, Madrid and Guadalajara about twelve hundred, some of whom were condemned in addition to wear the sanbenito for life. While the more or less voluntary penitents were thus treated there were numerous autos de fe celebrated of a more serious character in which there were a good many burnings, including not a few frailes and ecclesiastical dignitaries, as well as cases of fugitives and of the dead, who were burned in effigy and their estates confiscated.[474]
TRIBUNAL OF GUADALUPE
In 1485 a temporary tribunal was set up at Guadalupe, where Ferdinand and Isabella appointed as inquisitor (under what papal authority does not appear) Fray Nuño de Arevalo, prior of the Geronimite convent there. Apparently to guide his inexperience Doctor Francisco de la Fuente was transferred from Ciudad-Real and, with another colleague, the Licentiate Pedro Sánchez de la Calancha, they purified the place of heresy with so much vigor that, within a year, they held in the cemetery before the doors of the monastery seven autos de fe in which were burnt a heretic monk, fifty-two Judaizers, forty-eight dead bodies and twenty-five effigies of fugitives, while sixteen were condemned to perpetual imprisonment and innumerable others were sent to the galleys or penanced with the sanbenito for life. These energetic proceedings do not appear to have made good Christians of those who were spared for, July 13, 1500, Inquisitor-general Deza ordered all the Conversos of Guadalupe to leave the district and not to return.[475] The same year, 1485, saw a tribunal assigned to Valladolid, but it must have met with effective resistance, for in September, 1488, Ferdinand and Isabella were obliged to visit the city in order to get it into working condition; it forthwith commenced operations by arresting some prominent citizens and on June 19, 1489, the first auto de fe was held in which eighteen persons were burnt alive and the bones of four dead heretics.[476] Still, the existence of this tribunal would seem to have long remained uncertain for, as late as December 24, 1498, we find Isabella writing to a new appointee that she and the inquisitor-general have agreed that the Inquisition must be placed there and ordering him to prepare to undertake it, and then on January 22, 1501, telling Inquisitor-general Deza that she approves of its lodgement in the house of Diego de la Baeza, where it is to remain for the present; she adds that she and Ferdinand have written to the Count of Cabra to see that for the future the inquisitors are well treated.[477] Permanent tribunals were also established in Llerena and Murcia, of the early records of all of which we know little. In 1490 a temporary one was organized in Avila by Torquemada, apparently for the purpose of trying those accused of the murder of the Santo Niño de la Guardia; it continued active until 1500 and during these ten years there were hung in the church the insignias y mantetas of seventy-five victims burnt alive, of twenty-six dead and of one fugitive, besides the sanbenitos of seventy-one reconciled penitents.[478]
The various provinces of Castile thus became provided with the machinery requisite for the extermination of heresy, and at an early period in its development it was seen that, for the enormous work before it, some more compact and centralized organization was desirable than had hitherto been devised. The Inquisition which had been so effective in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries was scattered over Europe; its judges were appointed by the Dominican or Franciscan provincials, using a course of procedure and obeying instructions which emanated from the Holy See. The papacy was the only link between them; the individual inquisitors were to a great extent independent; they were not subjected to visitation or inspection and it was, if not impossible, a matter of difficulty to call them to account for the manner in which they might discharge their functions. Such was not the conception of Ferdinand and Isabella who intended the Spanish Inquisition to be a national institution, strongly organized and owing obedience to the crown much more than to the Holy See. The measures which they adopted with this object were conceived with their customary sagacity, and were carried out with their usual vigor and success.
ORGANIZATION
At this period they were earnestly engaged in reorganizing the institutions of Castile, centralizing the administration and reducing to order the chaos resulting from the virtual anarchy of the preceding reigns. In effecting this they apportioned, in 1480, with the consent of the Córtes of Toledo, the affairs of government among four royal councils, that of administration and justice, known as the Concejo Real de Castella,