Page:History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Vol. II.djvu/162

138 133 EXPULSION OF THE JEWS. PART pieces of silver. Your Highnesses would sell him — '- — anew for thirty thousand ; here he is, take him, and barter him away." So saying, the frantic priest threw the crucifix on the table, and left the apart- ment. The sovereigns, instead of chastising this presumption, or despising it as a mere freak of in- sanity, were overawed by it. Neither Ferdinand nor Isabella, had they been left to the unbiassed dictates of their own reason, could have sanction- ed for a moment so impolitic a measure, which involved the loss of the most industrious and skilful portion of their subjects. Its extreme injustice and cruelty rendered it especially repugnant to the naturally humane disposition of the queen. ^ But she had been early schooled to distrust her own reason, and indeed the natural suggestions of hu- manity, in cases of conscience. Among the rever- end counsellors, on whom she most relied in these matters, was the Dominican Torquemada. The situation which this man enjoyed as the queen's confessor, during the tender years of her youth, gave him an ascendency over her mind, which must have been denied to a person of his savage, fanati- cal temper, even with the advantages of this spirit- ual connexion, had it been formed at a riper period of her life. Without opposing further resistance to the representations, so emphatically expressed, 4 Llorente, Hist, de I'lnquisi- the Jews in Guipuscoa and Toledo, tion, torn. i. chap. 7, sect. 5. in 1482, plainly intimates, that Puljrar, in a letter to the cardi- they were not at all to the taste of nal of Spain, animadverting with the queen. See Letras, (Amstel- much severity on tiie tenor of cer- odami, 1G70,) let. 31. tain municipal ordinances against