A History of the Inquisition of Spain; vol. 1Lea, Henry Charles
History
A History of the Inquisition of Spain; vol. 1
Lea, Henry Charles
Inquisition -- Spain
The affair made an immense impression especially, it would seem, on San
Vicente, convincing him of the advisability of forcing the Jews into the
bosom of the Church by reducing them to despair. At Ayllon, in 1411, he
represented to the regents the necessity of further repressive
legislation and his eloquence was convincing.[339] The _Ordenamiento de
Doña Catalina_, promulgated in 1412 and drawn up by Pablo de Santa María
as Chancellor of Castile, was the result. By this rigorous measure, Jews
and Moors, under savage and ruinous penalties, were not only required to
wear the distinguishing badges, but to dress in coarse stuffs and not to
shave or to cut the hair round. They could not change their abodes and
any nobleman or gentleman receiving them on his lands was heavily fined
and obliged to return them whence they came, while expatriation was
forbidden under pain of slavery. Not only were the higher employments of
farming the revenues, tax-collecting, and practising as physicians and
surgeons forbidden, but any position in the households of the great and
numerous trades, such as those of apothecaries, grocers, farriers,
blacksmiths, peddlers, carpenters, tailors, barbers, and butchers. They
could not carry arms or hire Christians to work in their houses or on
their lands. That they should be forbidden to eat, drink or bathe with
Christians, or be with them in feasts and weddings, or serve as
god-parents was a matter of course under the canon law, but now even
private conversation between the races was prohibited, nor could they
sell provisions to Christians or keep a shop or ordinary for them. It is
perhaps significant that nothing was said about usury. Money-lending was
almost the only occupation remaining open, while the events of the last
twenty years had left little capital wherewith to carry it on and the
laws of 1405 had destroyed all sense of security in making loans. They
were moreover deprived of the guarantees so long enjoyed and were
subjected to the exclusive jurisdiction, civil and criminal, of the
Christians.[340] They were thus debarred from the use of their skill and
experience in the higher pursuits, professional and industrial, and were
condemned to the lowest and rudest forms of labor; in fine, a wall was
built around them from which their only escape was through the baptismal
font. Fernando of Antequera carried the law in all its essentials to
Aragon and King Duarte adopted it in Portugal, so that it ruled the
whole Peninsula except the little kingdom of Navarre where Judaism was
already almost extinct. It is significant that Fernando, in promulgating
it in Majorca, alleged in justification the complaints of the
inquisitors as to the social intercourse between Jews and
Christians.[341]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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