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
After the death of Jaime, in 1276, the ecclesiastics seem to have
thought that they could safely obey the commands of Clement IV,
especially as Nicholas IV, in 1278, instructed the Dominican general to
depute pious brethren everywhere to convoke the Jews and labor for their
conversion, with the significant addition that lists of those refusing
baptism were to be made out and submitted to him, when he would
determine what was to be done with them.[277] How the frailes
interpreted the papal utterances is indicated in a letter of Pedro III
to Pedro Bishop of Gerona, in April of this same year, 1278, reciting
that he had already appealed repeatedly to him to put an end to the
assaults of the clergy on the Jews, and now he learns that they have
again attacked the Judería, stoning it from the tower of the cathedral
and from their own houses and then assaulting it, laying waste the
gardens and vineyards of the Jews and even destroying their graves and,
when the royal herald stood up to forbid the work, drowning his voice
with yells and derisions. Pedro accuses the bishop of stimulating the
clergy to these outrages and orders him to put a stop to it and punish
the offenders.[278] He was still more energetic when the French crusade
under Philippe le Hardi was advancing to the siege of Gerona, in 1285,
and his Moorish soldiers in the garrison undertook to sack the _Call
Juhich_, or Judería, when he threw himself among them, mace in hand,
struck down a number and finished by hanging several of them.[279] He
offered no impediment, however, to the conversion of the Jews for, in
1279, he ordered his officials to compel them to listen to the
Franciscans, who, in obedience to the commands of the pope, might wish
to preach to them in their synagogues.[280] These intrusions of frailes
into the Juderías inevitably led to trouble, for there is significance
in a letter of Jaime II, April 4, 1305, to his representative in Palma,
alluding to recent scandals, for the future prevention of which he
orders that no priest shall enter the Judería to administer the
sacraments without being accompanied by a secular official. This
precaution was unavailing, for it doubtless was a continuance of such
provocation that led to a disturbance, about 1315, affording to King
Jaime an excuse for confiscating the whole property of the aljama of
Palma and then commuting the penalty to a fine of 95,000 _libras_. The
source of these troubles is suggested by a royal order of 1327 to the
Governor of Majorca, forbidding the baptism of Jewish children under
seven years of age or the forcible baptism of Jews of any age.[281]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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