THE INQUISITION SUCCUMBS
By the agreement of Villafáfila, June 27, 1506, Ferdinand bound himself to abandon Castile to Philip and Juana; he departed for Aragon and busied himself with preparations for a voyage to Naples, whither he set sail September 4th. Philip assumed the government and disembarrassed himself of his wife by shutting her up as unfit to share in the cares of royalty. He was amenable to the golden arguments of the Conversos and doubtless had not forgotten the contempt with which had been treated his order of the previous year to suspend the Inquisition. He therefore naturally was in no haste to revive its functions. Ferdinand’s secretary Almazan writes to Rojas, July 1st, that the king and the grandees have imprisoned Juana and no one is allowed to see her; he has in vain sought to get some prelates to carry letters from her to her father, but no one ventures to do so; the grandees have done this to partition among themselves the royal power, the Conversos to free themselves from the Inquisition, which is now extinct.[546]
The people of Córdova made haste to take advantage of the situation. They sent a powerful appeal to Philip and Juana, stating that their previous complaints had been intercepted through Deza’s influence and accusing Lucero of the most arbitrary iniquities.[547] They asked that all the inquisitorial officials at Córdova and Toro should be removed and the whole affair be committed to the Bishop of Leon. Philip referred the matter to the Comendador mayor, Garcilasso de la Vega and to Andrea di Borgo, ambassador of Maximilian I, two laymen, to the great scandal, we are told, of all ecclesiastics.[548] The Conversos were triumphant and the Inquisition succumbed completely. The Suprema, including Deza himself, hastened to disclaim all responsibility for Lucero’s misdeeds in a letter addressed to the chapter of Córdova, in which it said that the accusations brought against him seemed incredible, for even highwaymen, when robbing their victims, spare their lives, while here not only the property but the lives of the victims were taken and the honor of their descendants to the tenth generation. But, after hearing the narrative of the Master of Toro there could no longer be doubt and to tolerate it would be to approve it. Therefore, the chapter was instructed to continue to prevent these iniquities, and their majesties would be asked to apply a remedy and to punish their authors.[549] The remedy applied was to compel Deza to subdelegate irrevocably to Diego Ramírez de Guzman, Bishop of Catania and member of the Council of State, power to supersede Lucero and revise his acts, which was confirmed by a papal brief placing in Guzman’s hands all the papers and prisoners in Córdova, Toro and Valladolid.[550] Lucero endeavored to anticipate this by burning all his prisoners so as to get them out of the way, but after the auto de fe was announced there came orders from the sovereigns which fortunately prevented the holocaust.[551]
The relief of the sufferers seemed assured, but the situation was radically changed by the sudden death of Philip, September 25, 1506, for although Juana was treated nominally as queen, she exercised no authority. Deza promptly revoked Guzman’s commission, of which the papal confirmation seems not to have been received; he took possession of the prisoners at Toro and sent the Archdeacon of Torquemada to Córdova to do the same, but Francisco Osorio, the representative of Guzman, refused to obey. The people of Córdova were in despair. It was in vain that they sent delegations to Deza and petitioned the queen to save them. Deza was immovable and the queen refused to act in this as in everything else. The chapter, every member of which was an Old Christian, proud of his limpieza, assembled on October 16th to consider the situation. Some of the most prominent dignitaries of the Church had already been arrested by Lucero and had been treated by him as Jewish dogs; he had asserted that all the rest, and most of the nobles and gentlemen of the city and of other places, were apostates who had converted their houses into synagogues; in view of the impending peril, it was unanimously resolved to defend themselves, while the citizens at large declared that they would sacrifice life and property rather than to submit longer to such insupportable tyranny.[552]
PERSECUTION RENEWED
If the eclipse of the royal authority had enabled Deza to restore Lucero to power it also afforded opportunity for forcible resistance. The grandees of Castile were striving to recover the independence enjoyed under Henry IV, and a condition of anarchy was approaching rapidly. The two great nobles of Córdova, the Count of Cabra, Lord of Baena and the Marquis of Priego, Lord of Aguilar and nephew of the Great Captain, were nothing loath to listen to the entreaties of the citizens, especially as the marquis had been summoned by Lucero to appear for trial. Meetings were held in which formal accusations of Lucero and his promotor fiscal, Juan de Arriola, were laid before Padre Fray Francisco de Cuesta, comendador of the convent of la Merced, who seems to have assumed the leadership of the movement. He pronounced judgement, ordering Lucero and the fiscal to be arrested and their property to be confiscated. Under the lead of Cabra and Priego the citizens arose to execute the judgement. On November 9th they broke into the alcázar, where the Inquisition held its seat, they seized the fiscal and some of the subordinates and liberated the prisoners, whose recital of their wrongs excited still more the popular indignation, but no blood was shed and Lucero saved himself by flight.[553] The whole proceeding appears to have been orderly: a commission of ecclesiastics and laymen was appointed, to which the kinsmen and friends of the prisoners gave security that they should be forthcoming for trial as soon as there should be a king in the land to administer justice. This engagement was duly kept and their temporary liberation under bail was justified on the ground that many of them had been incarcerated for six or seven years and that all were in danger of perishing by starvation, for they were penniless, their property having been confiscated and Deza having ordered the receiver of confiscations not to provide for them.[554]
When the news of this uprising reached Deza he promptly, November 18th, commissioned his nephew, Pedro Juárez de Deza, Archbishop-elect of the Indies, to prosecute and punish all concerned, while by his orders the tribunal of Toledo intercepted and threw into prison Doctor Alonso de Toro, sent by the city to present its case to the queen. Other envoys, however, bore instructions to ask for the removal of Deza and the prosecution of Lucero and his officials, coupled with the intimation that steps had been taken to convoke all the cities of Andalusia and Castile to devise measures of protection against the intolerable tyranny of the Inquisition.[555] This plan seems to have been abandoned but, early in January, 1507, the Bishop of Córdova, Juan de Daza, in conjunction with the clerical and secular authorities, sent a solemn appeal to the pope, asking him to appoint Archbishop Ximenes and the Bishop of Catania or of Málaga, with full power to investigate and to act, and this they accompanied, January 10th, with a petition to Ferdinand, who was still in Naples, to support their request to the pope.[556] Deza, however, continued to command Ferdinand’s unwavering support and the result was seen in the prompt and uncompromising action of Julius II. He wrote to Deza that the Jews, pretending to be Christians, who had dared to rise against the Inquisition, must be exterminated root and branch; no labor was to be spared to suppress this pestilence before it should spread, to hunt up all who had participated in it and to exercise the utmost severity in punishing them, without appeal, for their crimes.[557]
Thus stimulated and encouraged, Lucero resumed his activity and the liberated prisoners were surrendered to him. Peter Martyr writes from the court, March 7, 1507, to Archbishop Talavera, that his sister and his nephew the Dean of Granada, Francisco Herrera—who had doubtless been released in the rising of November 9th—had been thrown in prison in Córdova. Talavera himself, moreover, was put on trial before the papal nuncio, Giovanni Ruffo, and assessors duly commissioned by the pope, showing that Ferdinand’s scruples as to scandalizing the people of Granada had vanished in the fierce resolve to vindicate Lucero and that the missing papal brief had been duly found. Peter Martyr describes his earnest efforts to convince the judges of Talavera’s holy life and spotless character, to which they replied that all this might be true but their business was to ascertain the secrets of his heart.[558] By the time the evidence was sent to Rome, however, his conviction was no longer