gentle Redeemer had prayed in His expiring moments: a matter this which escaped the attention of the Archdeacon of Ecija, being—like many another—too full of piety to find room for Christianity in his soul.
Appeals against him were made to the Archbishop of Seville, whose official, or representative, he was. He was ordered by his Archbishop to desist, and when in flagrant disobedience to his superior he continued to preach his gospel of blood and hatred, appeals were made to the King, and even to the Pope; and by King and Pope was he commanded to cease his inflammatory sermons.
But he defied them all alike. In his fanatical fury he carried his contumacy so far as to call in question the papal authority, and to declare illicit the sanction given by the popes for the erection and preservation of synagogues. This was perilously akin to heresy. Men had been sent to the stake for less, and Hernando Martinez must have been utterly mad if he conceived that the Church would permit him to continue the diffusion of such doctrines.
He was brought before the episcopal court to answer for his words. He answered defiantly—told them that the breath of God was in him, and that it was not for men to stop his mouth.
Thereupon Don Pedro Barroso—the archbishop—ordered that he should stand his trial for contumacy and heresy, and meanwhile suspended him from all jurisdiction and all duties as archiepiscopal official.
It happened, however, that Barroso died shortly thereafter, before the trial could take place; and Martinez contrived to get himself elected by the Chapter to the position of one of the provisors of the diocese pending the appointment of a successor to Barroso. Thus he resumed his power and the faculty to preach; and he used it so ruthlessly that in December of 1390 several synagogues in Seville were laid in ruins by the mob acting in obedience to his incitement.
The Jews appealed to the King for protection, and the authorities, now thoroughly roused, ordered that Martinez be deposed from his office and forbidden to preach, and that the demolished synagogues be rebuilt by the Chapter which had made itself responsible by electing him.
But Martinez, ever defiant, disregarded both King and Chapter. He pursued his bloodthirsty mission, stirring up a populace that was but too ready to perceive—through his arguments—a way to perform an act that must be pleasing to God whilst enriching itself at the same time. What populace could have been proof against such reasoning?
Finally, in the summer of 1391, the whole country was ablaze with fanatical persecution. The fierce flames broke out first in Seville, under the assiduous fanning of the deposed archdeacon.
Three years before, in view of the harm that it was urged the Jews were doing to religion by their free intermingling with Christians, King John I had ordered them to live apart in districts appointed for them, which came to be known as Juderias (Jewries or ghettos). It was commanded that the Christians should not enter these, and that for purposes of trade the Jews should come to the public markets and there erect tents, but they must own no house or domicile beyond the precincts of the Juderias, and they must withdraw to these at nightfall.
Into the Juderia of Seville the mob now penetrated, wrought by Martinez to a pitch of frenzy almost equal to his own. They went armed, and they put the place to sack and slaughter, butchering its every tenant without discrimination or pity for age or sex. The number of the slain has been estimated at some four thousand, men, women, and children.45
From Seville the conflagration spread to the other cities of Spain, and what had happened there happened in Burgos, Valencia, Toledo, and Cordova, and further in Aragon, Cataluna, and Navarre, whilst the streets of Barcelona are said to have run with the blood of immolated Jews.
Into the Jewry of every town went the infuriated mob to force Christ—as these Christians understood Him—upon the inhabitants; to offer the terror-stricken Jews the choice between steel and water—death and baptism.
So mighty and violent was the outbreak that the authorities were powerless to quell it, and where they attempted to do so with any degree of determination they were themselves caught in the fury of the populace. Nor did the slaughter cease until the Christians were glutted, and some fifty thousand Jews had perished.
The churches were now filled with Jews who came clamouring for baptism, having perceived that through its waters lay the way to temporal as well as to spiritual life, and having in most cases—in the abject state of terror to which they had been reduced—more concern for the former than for the latter. Llorente estimates the number of baptized at over a million, and this number was considerably swelled by the conversions effected by St. Vincent Ferrer, who came forth upon his mission to the Jews in the early years of the fifteenth century, and who induced thousands to enter the fold of Christianity by his eloquence and by the marvels which it is said he wrought.
The fury of the mob having spent itself, peace was gradually restored, and little by little those Jews who had remained faithful to their religion and yet survived began to come forth from their hiding-places, to assemble, and, with the amazing, invincible patience and pertinacity of their race, to build up once more the edifice that had been demolished.
But if the sword of persecution was sheathed, the spirit that had guided it was still abroad, and the Jews were made to experience further repressive measures. Under decrees of 1412-13 they lost most of the few privileges that the late king had left them.
It was ordained by these that henceforth no Jew should occupy the position of a judge even in a Hebrew court, nor should any Jew be permitted to bear witness. All synagogues were to be closed or converted into Christian temples, with the exception of one in every town in which Jews should be established. They were forbidden to continue the practice of the professions of medicine, surgery, and chemistry, in which they had specialised with such good results to the community. They were no longer to occupy the offices of tax-collectors, and all commerce with Christians was forbidden them. They must neither buy nor sell in trade with Christians, nor eat with them, nor use their baths, nor send their children to the same schools. The ghetto was ordered to be walled round, so as to be enclosed and cut off from the rest of the city, and they were forbidden to issue from it. Intercourse between a Jew and a Christian woman was forbidden under pain of death by burning, even though the woman were a prostitute. They were forbidden to shave, and compelled to allow their beards and hair to grow, in addition to which they were ordered to wear as a distinguishing mark a circle of red cloth upon the shoulder of their gabardines. They were further compelled to hear three sermons annually from a Christian preacher, whose aim it was to pour abuse and contumely upon them, to inveigh against their accursed race and creed, to assure them of the certainty of the damnation that awaited them, and to exalt before them the excellences of the Catholic religion (based, be it remembered, that we may fully savour the irony, upon Faith, Hope, and Charity).46
When King John I had established the Juderias in 1388, curtailing at the same time the privileges which until then the Jews had enjoyed—at least by paying for them—there had been many who, finding the restraint imposed upon them altogether intolerable, had abandoned the faith of their fathers and embraced Christianity. Those who held the affairs of this world in esteem had sought baptism, and whilst many in doing so had entirely broken with the past—and often, as is the way of converts, become zealots in their observance of the faith embraced—many others, whilst outwardly complying with the obligations of the Christian religion, continued in secret to observe the law of Moses and their Jewish rites. Similarly these further decrees against their liberty had the effect of causing still more numerous conversions to Christianity.
These converts were termed “New-Christians” by the Spaniards. By those of their own race who had remained faithful they were called “marranos”—a contemptuous epithet derived from Maran-atha, (“The Lord is coming”), but supposed by the Christians to signify “accursed.” It came into general use before very long.
These New-Christians, as a consequence of their conversion, gained not merely the privileges recently lost to them as Jews, but found themselves upon a footing of absolute equality with the Old-Christians; every profession was open to them, and by applying themselves to these with all their energy and intelligence, they found themselves before very long in possession of some of the highest offices in the land.