Chapter XXIV

SPANISH INTOLERANCE.--THE INQUISITION.--PERSECUTION OF JEWS AND MOORS.--PERSECUTION OF CHRISTIANS FOR OPINION.--STATE OF THE PRESS IN SPAIN.--CONCLUDING REMARKS ON THE WHOLE PERIOD.

The condition of things in Spain at the end of the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella seemed, as we have intimated, to announce a long period of national prosperity. But one institution, destined soon to discourage and check that intellectual freedom without which there can be no wise and generous advancement in any people, was already beginning to give token of its great and blighting power.

The Christian Spaniards had, from an early period, been essentially intolerant. To their perpetual wars with the Moors had been added, from the end of the fourteenth century, an exasperated feeling against the Jews, which the government had vainly endeavoured to control, and which had shown itself, at different times, in the plunder and murder of multitudes of that devoted race throughout the country. Both races were hated by the mass of the Spanish people with a bitter hatred: the first as their conquerors; the last for the oppressive claims their wealth had given them on great numbers of the Christian inhabitants. In relation to both, it was never forgotten that they were the enemies of that cross under which all true Spaniards had for centuries gone to battle; and of both it was taught by the priesthood, and willingly believed by the laity, that their opposition to the faith of Christ was an offence against God, which it was a merit in his people to punish.[734] Columbus wearing the cord of Saint Francis in the streets of Seville, and consecrating to wars against misbelief in Asia the wealth he was seeking in the New World, whose soil he earnestly desired should never be trodden by any foot save that of a Roman Catholic Christian, was but a type of the Spanish character in the age when he adopted it.[735]

[734] The bitterness of this unchristian and barbarous hatred
of the Moors, that constituted not a little of the foundation
on which rested the intolerance that afterwards did so much to
break down the intellectual independence of the Spanish people,
can hardly be credited at the present day, when stated in general
terms. An instance of its operation, must, therefore, be given to
illustrate its intensity. When the Spaniards made one of those
forays into the territories of the Moors that were so common for
centuries, the Christian knights, on their return, often brought,
dangling at their saddle-bows, the heads of the Moors they had
slain, and threw them to the boys in the streets of the villages,
to exasperate their young hatred against the enemies of their
faith;--a practice which, we are told on good authority, was
continued as late as the war of the Alpuxarras, under Don John of
Austria, in the reign of Philip II. (Clemencin, in Memorias de
la Acad. de Hist., Tom. VI. p. 390.) But any body who will read
the “Historia de la Rebelion y Castigo de los Moriscos del Reyno
de Granada,” by Luis del Marmol Carvajal, (Málaga, 1600, fol.,)
will see how complacently an eyewitness, not so much disposed
as most of his countrymen to look with hatred on the Moors,
regarded cruelties which it is not possible now to read without
shuddering. See his account of the murder, by order of the
chivalrous Don John of Austria, (f. 192,) of four hundred women
and children, his captives at Galera;--“muchos en su presencia,”
says the historian, who was there. Similar remarks might be made
about the second volume of Hita’s “Guerras de Granada,” which
will be noticed hereafter. Indeed, it is only by reading such
books that it is possible to learn how much the Spanish character
was impaired and degraded by this hatred, inculcated, during the
nine centuries that elapsed between the age of Roderic the Goth
and that of Philip III., not only as a part of the loyalty of
which all Spaniards were so proud, but as a religious duty of
every Christian in the kingdom.

[735] Bernaldez, Chrónica, c. 131, MS. Navarrete, Coleccion de
Viages, Tom. I. p. 72; Tom. II. p. 282.

When, therefore, it was proposed to establish in Spain the Inquisition, which had been so efficiently used to exterminate the heresy of the Albigenses, and which had even followed its victims in their flight from Provence to Aragon, little serious opposition was made to the undertaking. Ferdinand, perhaps, was not unwilling to see a power grow up near his throne with which the political government of the country could hardly fail to be in alliance, while the piety of the wiser Isabella, which, as we can see from her correspondence with her confessor, was little enlightened, led her conscience so completely astray, that she finally asked for the introduction of the Holy Office into her own dominions as a Christian benefit to her people.[736] After a negotiation with the court of Rome, and some changes in the original project, it was therefore established in the city of Seville in 1481; the first Grand Inquisitors being Dominicans and their first meeting being held in a convent of their order, on the 2d of January. Its earliest victims were Jews. Six were burned within four days from the time when the tribunal first sat, and Mariana states the whole number of those who suffered in Andalusia alone during the first year of its existence at two thousand, besides seventeen thousand who underwent some form of punishment less severe than that of the stake;[737] all, it should be remembered, being done with the rejoicing assent of the mass of the people, whose shouts followed the exile of the whole body of the Jewish race from Spain in 1492, and whose persecution of the Hebrew blood, wherever found, and however hidden under the disguises of conversion and baptism, has hardly ceased down to our own days.[738]

[736] Prescott’s Ferdinand and Isabella, Part I. c. 7.

[737] Mariana, Hist., Lib. XXIV. c. 17, ed. 1780, Tom. II. p.
527. We are shocked and astonished, as we read this chapter;--so
devout a gratitude does it express for the Inquisition as a
national blessing. See also Llorente, Hist. de l’Inquisition,
Tom. I. p. 160.

[738] The eloquent Father Lacordaire, in the sixth chapter
of his “Mémoire pour le Rétablissement de l’Ordre des Frères
Prêcheurs,” (Paris, 1839, 8vo,) endeavours to prove that the
Dominicans were not in anyway responsible for the establishment
of the Inquisition in Spain. In this attempt I think he fails;
but I think he is successful when he elsewhere maintains that the
Inquisition, from an early period, was intimately connected with
the political government in Spain, and always dependent on the
state for a large part of its power.

The fall of Granada, which preceded by a few months this cruel expulsion of the Jews, placed the remains of the Moorish nation no less at the mercy of their conquerors. It is true, that, by the treaty which surrendered the city to the Catholic sovereigns, the property of the vanquished, their religious privileges, their mosques, and their worship were solemnly secured to them; but in Spain, whatever portion of the soil the Christians had wrested from their ancient enemies had always been regarded only as so much territory restored to its rightful owners, and any stipulations that might accompany its recovery were rarely respected. The spirit and even the terms of the capitulation of Granada were, therefore, soon violated. The Christian laws of Spain were introduced there; the Inquisition followed; and a persecution of the descendants of the old Arab invaders was begun by their new masters, which, after being carried on above a century with constantly increasing crimes, was ended in 1609, like the persecution of the Jews, by the forcible expulsion of the whole race.[739]

[739] See the learned and acute “Histoire des Maures Mudejares
et des Morisques, ou des Arabes d’Espagne sous la Domination des
Chrétiens,” par le Comte Albert de Circourt, (3 tom. 8vo, Paris,
1846,) Tom. II., _passim_.

Such severity brought with it, of course, a great amount of fraud and falsehood. Multitudes of the followers of Mohammed--beginning with four thousand whom Cardinal Ximenes baptized on the day when, contrary to the provisions of the capitulation of Granada, he consecrated the great mosque of the Albaycin as a Christian temple--were forced to enter the fold of the Church, without either understanding its doctrines or desiring to receive its instructions. With these, as with the converted Jews, the Inquisition was permitted to deal unchecked by the power of the state. They were, therefore, from the first, watched; soon they were imprisoned; and then they were tortured, to obtain proof that their conversion was not genuine. But it was all done in secrecy and in darkness. From the moment when the Inquisition laid its grasp on the object of its suspicions to that of his execution, no voice was heard to issue from its cells. The very witnesses it summoned were punished with death or perpetual imprisonment, if they revealed what they had seen or heard before its dread tribunals; and often of the victim nothing was known, but that he had disappeared from his accustomed haunts in society, never again to be seen.

The effect was appalling. The imaginations of men were filled with horror at the idea of a power so vast and so noiseless; one which was constantly, but invisibly, around them; whose blow was death, but whose steps could neither be heard nor followed amidst the gloom into which it retreated farther and farther as efforts were made to pursue it. From its first establishment, therefore, while the great body of the Spanish Christians rejoiced in the purity and orthodoxy of their faith, and not unwillingly saw its enemies called to expiate their unbelief by the most terrible of mortal punishments, the intellectual and cultivated portions of society felt the sense of their personal security gradually shaken, until, at last, it became an anxious object of their lives to avoid the suspicions of a tribunal which infused into their minds a terror deeper and more effectual in proportion as it was accompanied by a misgiving how far they might conscientiously oppose its authority. Many of the nobler and more enlightened, especially on the comparatively free soil of Aragon, struggled against an invasion of their rights whose consequences they partly foresaw. But the powers of the government and the Church, united in measures which were sustained by the passions and religion of the lower classes of society, became irresistible. The fires of the Inquisition were gradually lighted over the whole country, and the people everywhere thronged to witness its sacrifices, as acts of faith and devotion.

From this moment, Spanish intolerance, which through the Moorish wars had accompanied the contest and shared its chivalrous spirit, took that air of sombre fanaticism which it never afterwards lost. Soon, its warfare was turned against the opinions and thoughts of men, even more than against their external conduct or their crimes. The Inquisition, which was its true exponent and appropriate instrument, gradually enlarged its own jurisdiction by means of crafty abuses, as well as by the regular forms of law, until none found himself too humble to escape its notice, or too high to be reached by its power. The whole land bent under its influence, and the few who comprehended the mischief that must follow bowed, like the rest, to its authority, or were subjected to its punishments.

From an inquiry into the private opinions of individuals to an interference with the press and with printed books there was but a step. It was a step, however, that was not taken at once; partly because books were still few and of little comparative importance anywhere, and partly because, in Spain, they had already been subjected to the censorship of the civil authority, which, in this particular, seemed unwilling to surrender its jurisdiction. But such scruples were quickly removed by the appearance and progress of the Reformation of Luther; a revolution which comes within the next period of the history of Spanish literature, when we shall find displayed in their broad practical results the influence of the spirit of intolerance and the power of the Church and the Inquisition on the character of the Spanish people.

* * * * *

If, however, before we enter upon this new and more varied period, we cast our eyes back towards the one over which we have just passed, we shall find much that is original and striking, and much that gives promise of further progress and success. It extends through nearly four complete centuries, from the first breathings of the poetical enthusiasm of the mass of the people down to the decay of the courtly literature in the latter part of the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella; and it is filled with materials destined, at last, to produce such a school of poetry and elegant prose as, in the sober judgment of the nation itself, still constitutes the proper body of the national literature. The old ballads, the old historical poems, the old chronicles, the old theatre,--all these, if only elements, are yet elements of a vigor and promise not to be mistaken. They constitute a mine of more various wealth than had been offered, under similar circumstances and at so early a period, to any other people. They breathe a more lofty and a more heroic temper. We feel, as we listen to their tones, that we are amidst the stir of extraordinary passions, which give the character an elevation not elsewhere to be found in the same unsettled state of society. We feel, though the grosser elements of life are strong around us, that imagination is yet stronger; imparting to them its manifold hues, and giving them a power and a grace that form a striking contrast with what is wild or rude in their original nature. In short, we feel that we are called to witness the first efforts of a generous people to emancipate themselves from the cold restraints of a merely material existence, and watch with confidence and sympathy the movement of their secret feelings and prevalent energies, as they are struggling upwards into the poetry of a native and earnest enthusiasm; persuaded that they must, at last, work out for themselves a literature, bold, fervent, and original, marked with the features and impulses of the national character, and able to vindicate for itself a place among the permanent monuments of modern civilization.[740]

[740] It is impossible to speak of the Inquisition as I have
spoken in this chapter, without feeling desirous to know
something concerning Antonio Llorente, who has done more than
all other persons to expose its true history and character. The
important facts in his life are few. He was born at Calahorra
in Aragon in 1756, and entered the Church early, but devoted
himself to the study of canon law and of elegant literature. In
1789, he was made principal secretary to the Inquisition, and
became much interested in its affairs; but was dismissed from his
place and exiled to his parish in 1791, because he was suspected
of an inclination towards the French philosophy of the period.
In 1793, a more enlightened General Inquisitor than the one who
had persecuted him drew Llorente again into the councils of the
Holy Office, and, with the assistance of Jovellanos and other
leading statesmen, he endeavoured to introduce such changes
into the tribunal itself as should obtain publicity for its
proceedings. But this, too, failed, and Llorente was disgraced
anew. In 1805, however, he was recalled to Madrid; and in 1809,
when the fortunes of Joseph Bonaparte made him the nominal king
of Spain, he gave Llorente charge of every thing relating to the
archives and the affairs of the Inquisition. Llorente used well
the means thus put into his hands; and having been compelled to
follow the government of Joseph to Paris, after its overthrow in
Spain, he published there, from the vast and rich materials he
had collected during the period when he had entire control of
the secret records of the Inquisition, an ample history of its
conduct and crimes;--a work which, though neither well arranged
nor philosophically written, is yet the great store-house from
which are to be drawn more well-authenticated facts relating to
the subject it discusses than can be found in all other sources
put together. But neither in Paris, where he lived in poverty,
was Llorente suffered to live in peace. In 1823, he was required
by the French government to leave France, and being obliged to
make his journey during a rigorous season, when he was already
much broken by age and its infirmities, he died from fatigue
and exhaustion, on the 3d of February, a few days after his
arrival at Madrid. His “Histoire de l’Inquisition” (4 tom., 8vo,
Paris, 1817-1818) is his great work; but we should add to it
his “Noticia Biográfica,” (Paris, 1818, 12mo,) which is curious
and interesting, not only as an autobiography, but for further
notices respecting the spirit of the Inquisition.

HISTORY
OF
SPANISH LITERATURE.

SECOND PERIOD.

THE LITERATURE THAT EXISTED IN SPAIN FROM THE ACCESSION OF THE
AUSTRIAN FAMILY TO ITS EXTINCTION, OR FROM THE BEGINNING OF THE
SIXTEENTH CENTURY TO THE END OF THE SEVENTEENTH.

HISTORY
OF
SPANISH LITERATURE.

SECOND PERIOD.