The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 08: The Later Renaissance: from Gutenberg to the Reformation
History
The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 08: The Later Renaissance: from Gutenberg to the Reformation
World history
A few months before the publication of the bull, but long after every
person in Spain knew the purport of its contents, and in the certainty
that it would be carried into execution, the Cortes of Toledo met;
but, instead of avoiding any act that would interfere with the new
jurisdiction then to be introduced, they made several provisions for
separating Jews and Christians by the enclosure of Jewries in the towns,
and for compelling the former to wear a peculiar garb, and abstain from
exercising the vocation of surgeon or physician or innkeeper or barber
or apothecary among Christians. The parliament plainly ignored the
Inquisition in making this enactment on their own authority.
And what said the magistracy and the people? Seville represented
the general state of feeling at the time. There, when a company of
inquisitors presented themselves, conducted into the city by men and
horses which had been impressed for the purpose by royal order, the civil
authorities refused to help them, notwithstanding the injunctions of the
bull, the obligations of canon law, and a mandate from the Crown. The new
inquisitors found themselves unable to act for want of help; meanwhile
the objects of their mission forsook the city, and found shelter in the
neighboring districts; and Ferdinand had to issue specific orders to
overpower the hostility of all the classes of the people and to compel
the magistrates to assist the new set of officers ecclesiastic. These
orders were most reluctantly obeyed.
Thus fortified, the inquisitors took up their abode in the Dominican
convent of St. Paul, and issued their first mandate January 2, 1481.
They said that they were aware of the flight of the New Christians, and
commanded the Marquis of Cadiz, the Count of Arcos, and all the dukes,
marquises, counts, gentlemen, rich men, and others of the kingdom of
Castile to arrest the fugitives and send them to Seville within a
fortnight, sequestrating their property. All who failed to do this were
excommunicated as abettors of heresy, deposed from their dignities, and
deprived of their estates; and their subjects were to be absolved from
homage and obedience. Crowds of fugitives were driven back into Seville,
bound like felons; the dungeons and apartments of the convent overflowed
with prisoners; and the King assigned the castle of Triana, on the
opposite bank of the Guadalquiver, to the "New and Holy Tribunal," to be
a place of safe custody. There the inquisitors, elate with triumph over
the reluctant magistrates and panic-stricken people, shortly afterward
erected a tablet with an inscription in memory of the first establishment
of the modern Inquisition in Western Europe. The concluding sentences
of the inscription were: "God grant that, for the protection and
augmentation of the faith, it may abide unto the end of time!--Arise, O
Lord, judge thy cause!--Catch ye the foxes!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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