Sources and Trial Records
From Hauben, Paul J., ed. The Spanish Inquisition. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1969.
Cecil Roth:
An Edict of Faith
The excerpt from Sir Cecil Roth’s synthesis of the history of the Inquisition (in Portugal as well as Spain) show us a typical Edict of Faith. . . . His work appeared between Hitler’s accession to power in Germany and the start of World War II. . . .In the following, a typical edict "Edict of Faith," issued at Valencia in 1519, the prominence given to unimportant customs and mere superstitions is noteworthy.
"EDICT OF FAITH"
We Doctor Andres de Palacio, Inquisitor against the heresy and apostolic perversity in the city and kingdom of Valencia, etc.
To all faithful Christians, both men and women, chaplains, friars and priests of every condition, quality and degree: whose attention to this will result in salvation in our Lord Jesus Christ, the true salvation; who are aware that, by means of other edicts and sentences of the Reverend inquisitors, our predecessors, they were warned to appear before them, within a given period, and declare and manifest the things which they had seen, known, and heard tell of any person or persons, either alive or dead, who had said or done anything against the Holy Catholic Faith; cultivated and observed the law of Moses or the Mohammedan sect, of the rites and ceremonies of the same; or perpetrated diverse crimes of heresy; observing Friday evenings and Saturdays; changing into clean personal linen on Saturdays and wearing better clothes than on other days; preparing on Fridays the food for Saturdays, in stewing pans on a small fire; who do not work on Friday evenings and Saturdays as on other days; who kindle lights in clean lamps with new wicks, on Friday evenings; place clean linen on the beds and clean napkins on the table; celebrate the festival of unleavened bread, eat unleavened bread and celery and bitter herbs; observe the fast of pardon (Day of Atonement) when they do not eat all day until the evening after star-rise, when they pardon one another and break their fast; and in the same manner observe the fasts of Queen Esther, of tissabav, and resessena; who say prayers according to the law of Moses, standing up before the wall, swaying back and forth, and taking a few steps backwards; who give money for oil for the Jewish temple or other secret place of worship; who slaughter poultry according to the Judaic law, and refrain from eating sheep or any other animal which is trefa; who do not wish to eat salt pork, hares, rabbits, snails, or fish that have not scales; who bathe the bodies of their dead and bury them in virgin soil according to the Jewish custom; who, in the house or mourning do not eat meat but fish and hard-boiled eggs, seated at low tables; who separate a morsel of dough when baking and throw it on the fire; who become, or know of others who become circumcised; who invoke demons, and give to them the honor that is due to God; who say that the law of Moses is good and can bring about their salvation; who perform many other rites and ceremonies of the same; who say that our Lord Jesus Christ was not the true Messiah promised in Scripture, not the true God nor son of God; who deny that he died to save the human race; deny the resurrection and his ascension to heaven; and say that our Lady the Virgin Mary was not the mother of God or a virgin before the nativity and after; who say and affirm many other heretical errors; who state that what they had confessed before the inquisitors was not the truth; who remove their penitential robes and neither remain in the prison nor observe the penance imposed upon them; who say scandalous things against our holy Catholic Faith against the officials of the Inquisition; or who influence any infidel who might have been drawn towards Catholicism to refrain from converting; who assert that the Holy Sacrament of the altar is not the true body and blood of Jesus Christ our Redeemer, and that God cannot be omnipresent; or any priest holding this damnable opinion, who recites and celebrates the mass, not saying the holy words of the consecration; saying and believing that the law of Mahomet and its rites and ceremonies are good and can bring about their salvation; who affirm that life is but birth and death, and that there is no paradise and no hell; and state that to practice usury is no sin; if any man whose wife still lives, marries again, or any woman remarries in the lifetime of her first husband; if any know of those who keep Jewish customs, and name their children on the seventh night after their birth and with silver and gold upon a table, pleasurably observe the Jewish ceremony; and if any know that when somebody dies, they place a cup of water and a lighted candle and some napkins where the deceased died, and for some days, do not enter there; if any know of the effort of a Jew or convert, secretly to preach the law of Moses and convert others to this creed, teaching the ceremonies belonging to the same, giving information as to the dates of festivals and fasts, teaching Jewish prayers; if any know of anyone who attempts to become a Jew, or being Christian walks abroad in the costume of a Jew; if any know of anyone, converted or otherwise, who orders that his dress shall be made of canvas and not of linen, as the good Jews do; if any know of those who, when their children kiss their hands, place their hands on the children’s heads without making the Sign (of the Cross); or who, after dinner or supper, bless the wine and pass it to everyone at the table, which blessing is called the veraha [beracha]; if any know that in any house, people congregate for the purpose of carrying on religious services, or read out of bibles of the vernacular or perform other Judaic ceremonies, and if any know that when someone is about to set out on a journey, certain words of the law Moses are spoken to him, and a hand placed on his head without making the Sign (of the Cross). And if any know of anyone who has professed the Mosaic creed, or awaited the coming of the Messiah, saying that our Redeemer and Savior Jesus Christ was not come and that now Elijah was to come and take them to the promised land; and if any know that any person had pretended to go into a trance and wandered in heaven and that an angel had conducted him over green fields and told him that was promised land which was being saved for all converts whom Elijah was to redeem from the captivity in which they lived; and if any know that any person or persons be children or grandchildren of the condemned, and being disqualified, should make use of public office, or bear arms or wear silk and fine cloth, or ornament their costumes with gold, silver, pearls or other precious stones or coral, or make use of any other thing which they are forbidden and disqualified to have, and if any know that any persons have or possessed any confiscated goods, furniture, money, gold, silver, or other jewels belonging to those condemned for heresy, which should be brought before the receiver of goods confiscated for the crime of heresy. All these things, having been seen, heard or known, you, the above mentioned faithful Christians, have, with obstinate hearts, refused to declare and manifest, greatly burden and prejudice of your souls; thinking that you were absolved by the bulls and indulgences issued by our holy father, and by promises and donations which you had made, for which you have incurred the sentence of excommunication and other grave penalties under statutory law; and thus you may be proceeded against as those who have suffered excommunication and as abetters of heretics, in various ways; but, wishing to act with benevolence, and in order that your souls may not be lost, since our Lord does not wish the death of the sinner but his reformation and life; by these presents, we remove and suspend the censure promulgated by the said former inquisitors against you, so long as you observe and comply with the terms of this our edict, by which we require, exhort and order you, in virtue of the holy obedience, and under penalty of complete excommunication, within nine days from the time that the present edict shall have been read to you, or made known to you in whatsoever manner, to state all that you know. Have seen, heard, or heard tell in any manner whatsoever, of the things and ceremonies above-mentioned, and to appear before us personally to declare and manifest what you have seen, heard, or heard tell secretly, without having spoken previously with any other person, or borne false witness against anyone. Otherwise, the period having passed, the canonical admonitions having been repeated in accordance with the law, steps will be taken to give our and promulgate sentence of excommunication against you, in and by these documents; and through such excommunication, we order that you be publicly denounced; and if, after a further period of nine days, you should persist in your rebellion and excommunication, you shall be excommunicated, anathematized, cursed, segregated, and separated as an associate of the devil, from union with and inclusion in the holy Mother-Church, and the sacraments of the same. And we order the vicars, rectors, chaplains, and sacristans and any other religious or ecclesiastical persons to regard and treat the above-mentioned as excommunicated and accursed for having incurred the wrath and indignation of Almighty God, and of the glorious Virgin Mary, His Mother, and of the beatified apostles Saint Peter and Saint Paul, and all the saints of the celestial Court; and upon such rebels and disobedient ones who would hide the truth regarding the above-mentioned things, be all the plagues and maledictions which befell and descended upon King Pharaoh and his host for not having obeyed the divine commandments; and the same sentence of divine excommunication encompass them as it encompassed the people of Sodom and Gomorrah who all perished in flames; and of Athan and Abiron who were swallowed up into the earth for the great delinquencies and sins which the committed in disobedience and rebellion against our Lord God; and may they be accursed in eating and drinking, in waking and sleeping, in coming and going. Accursed be they in living and dying, and may they ever be hardened to their sins, and the devil be at their right hand always; may their vocation be sinful, and their days be few and evil; may their substance be enjoyed by others, and their children be orphans, and their wives widows. May their children ever be in need, and may none help them; may they be turned out of their homes and their goods taken by usurers; and may they find nobody to have compassion on them; may their children be ruined and outcast, and their names also; and their wickedness be ever present in the divine memory. May their enemies vanquish them and despoil them of all they possess in the world; and may they wander from door to door without relief. May their prayers be turned to maledictions; and accursed be the bread and wine, the meat and fish, the fruit and other food that they eat; likewise the houses they inhabit and the raiment they wear, the beasts upon which they ride and the beds upon which they sleep, and the tables and the napkins upon which they eat. Accursed be they to Satan and to Lucifer and to all the devils in hell, and these be their lords, and accompany them by night and day. Amen. And if any persons incurring the said excommunications and maledictions, should persist therein for the space of a year, they should be regarded as heretics themselves, and shall be prosecuted by the same process as against heretics or suspects of the crime of heresy. Given on the March, in the year of our Lord God, one thousand five hundred and twelve.
(Item: Of no avail is the confession made to the confessor for procuring absolution from the sentence of excommuncation to which the heretic might be subject, from the time the crime was committed.)
(Item: All who know anything of the things mentioned in this present edict, or of other heresies, and do not come forward to denounce and declare the same, are hereby excommunicated and may not be absolved by their confessors.)
El doctor
Palacio, inquisidor
Yitzhak Fritz Baer:
Jewish and Converso Trials
The selections about the Inquisition’s investigations of Jews and Marranos. . .revealed the tremendous and tragic pressures under which Jews and Marranos alike labored. Many of the latter clearly were hounded by some sort of "ancestral guilt." . . . Many Jews, prior, of course, to the expulsion of all professing Jews in 1492, were torn between envy of the Marranos’ escape from their own increasingly precarious situation, which, however, was marked by equally growing "Old Christian" hostility toward the converts, and pride in their religious streadfastness, however occasionally self-defeating that might be. Equally, numbers of "New Christians" resented the remaining Jews as many became increasingly sincere and devout Catholics, whereas some Jews, at least, though unrealistically - and dangerously - in terms of reclaiming the apostates to the old faith.. . . . From the Catholic viewpoint, there was enough relapsing into Judaizing practices by Marranos to warrant the "final solution" of 1492. . . . One notes from Baer the success of the Inquisition (indeed, of society itself in general) in playing off the various accused and witnesses against one another; in this the law of silence affecting inquisitorial proceedings was of fundamental significance.
April 30, 1492. Statement of Rabbi Levi aben Sento of Zaragoza who had preached in the synagogue about the ban on speaking on the Inquisition and the expulsion edict of April 29:
". . . about two years ago at the inquisitors’ behest I have three sermons on three successive Saturdays’ . . . exhorting the Jews to tell all they knew about Christians who were judaizing or engaging in heretical practices [saying that] the inquisitors would pardon them if they did thusly . . ." [Since technically the Holy Office was not supposed to have authority over unconverted Jews this brief statement speaks volumes about the Jewish communities’ precarious situation in the last years up to the expulsion.]
February-August, 1468. The Toleda-Cordoba process against the converso Master of the Order of Santiago, Juan de Pineda. . . .Pineda "heretic. . . denying the advent of our savior and redeemer, Jesus Christ, desiring the Turk to be the Messiah [in terms of saving Spanish Jewry], wishing others to glorify the Mosaic law and that Judaism should have good Jews and prophets saved by the Mosaic Law alone. . . ."
Pineda’s statements in his self-defense:
". . . I always wrote as a Christian, enemy of the Turks [and rejoiced at] news of Christian victories. . . [he suggests that the jealousy and envy of others is behind his present troubles, particularly concerning his favor from Rome and a dispute over one of his estates] . . . I have always believed in . . . Christ. . . detesting the sect of Turks and Moors. . . I never praised the Mosaic Law nor said that Christian conversos were wrong for being good Christians. . . the Turks would oppress Jews more than Christians. . . I never said that the Turks would come to Castile [disposed towards] the conversos. . . ."
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