The inquisition in the Spanish dependencies: Sicily—Naples—Sardinia—Milan—the Canaries—Mexico—Peru—New GranadaLea, Henry Charles
History
The inquisition in the Spanish dependencies: Sicily—Naples—Sardinia—Milan—the Canaries—Mexico—Peru—New Granada
Lea, Henry Charles
Inquisition
Judaizing New Christians, who furnished, in the Peninsula, so abundant a
source of exploitation, formed a comparatively insignificant feature in
the activity of the Canary tribunal. At first there was better promise,
as we have seen in the statistics of the earlier autos, but these
energetic proceedings seem either to have driven them away or to have
thoroughly converted them and, in the subsequent period, the cases of
Judaism are singularly few, in so far as we can learn from existing
documents. In 1635 there is a denunciation of a Dutchman named Rojel,
who had been in Tenerife and who subsequently was seen in Holland,
dressed and living as a Jew. In 1636, a man named Mardocheo, aged 80,
resident of La Laguna in Tenerife, was accused of talking Judaism by a
man who had been a fellow-prisoner with him in the public gaol. In 1638
the Licenciado Diego de Arteaga was suspected of being _de casta de
Judío_, in consequence of irregular conduct in a procession. In 1653,
Francisco Vicente, a West Indian, who had accompanied his master Diego
Rodrigo Arias from Havana to London and thence to Tenerife, denounced
him for taking a crucifix every night from his chest and flogging it for
half an hour. In 1659 we have seen the relaxation in effigy of Duarte
Henríquez Alvarez. In 1660 Fray Matias Pinto accused Antonio Fernández
Carvajal of saying that he was a Jew since Protector Cromwell had broken
peace with Spain. In 1662 Gaspar Pereyra, alias de Vitoria, was
convicted of Judaism and sent to Seville to serve out his term of
imprisonment. His grandmother had been burnt and his business as a
merchant had carried him to Brazil, Angola, Lisbon, Madrid, Antwerp,
Amsterdam, Middelburg and many other places, so that he had a
comprehensive acquaintance with the communities of Jewish refugees
everywhere, and the care with which the minute evidence that he gave
concerning them was collected and ratified, although they were all out
of reach, shows that the paucity of cases in the records is not the
result of any lack of desire to persecute. It was natural however that
the inquisitors should enquire about Gerónimo Gómez Pesoa, a rich Lisbon
merchant who disappeared just in time to avoid arrest and, as an English
vessel sailed that night without a licence, he was supposed to have
escaped in it--a supposition fortified by learning that he had joined
the colony of Conversos in Rouen and had thence gone to Amsterdam.[307]
Doubtless there were more cases than these, but the records available do
not furnish them.
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