6 - Valencia: taming the magnates

Summary

Y procure que el Santo Oficio conozca destos Moriscos con toda brevedad, pues debaxo del cielo no paresce que ay otro remedio mejor para que estos sean Christianos y vivan como tales, a lo menos en el publico.

Archbishop of Valencia, 1561 (quoted by García Cárcel, Herejía y sociedad, p. 55).

Que se diga a los tres Estados del Reino de Valencia que se dexen de pedir, que se les muestre los poderes que tienen los Inquisidores.

Suprema to Valencia, 1540 (quoted by García Cárcel, Herejía y sociedad, p. 141).

Entendemos que esta prision sera de mucho importancia … y que se seguiran de ella otros buenos effectos de que Nuestro Señor y su Magestad se sirvan.

Inq., Libro, 912, fol. 53. (to Suprema, after 1569 arrest of Admiral of Aragon)

In 1563 the Venetian ambassador claimed that the Inquisition punished malefactors throughout Spain except in the Kingdom of Valencia, “where in certain respects this Office has hitherto not had complete authority.” But a decade later one of his successors reported that “very recently in Valencia the Inquisition has forced some gentlemen to abjure as suspect of heresy; those,” he specified, “who for their greater profit had permitted their Moriscos to live almost openly as Mohammedans.” The whole drama of the Holy Office in Valencia during the Aragonese century is compressed between these dates.