to the piety of Queen Isabella, and were careful that tales of Jewish murders and Jewish desecrations should be poured incessantly into the royal ear.  Ferdinand had no scruple.  He sincerely prayed the Pope to sanction such a measure, and, swiftly as couriers could bring it, came the desired bull.  Isabella could not blame the zeal of priests and monks; for she, too, was a zealot.  She could not gainsay the urgency of the nuncio.  She could not quench in her husband’s bosom the thirst of gold.  But she had brought half the kingdom as her dower; and therefore some deference was due to her conscience and judgment, and both in conscience and judgment she desired gentler measures.  During two or three years her orator and confessor wrote books, and preachers were permitted to publish arguments, and disputants to enter into conferences, for the conviction of the Jews.

At her majesty’s request, Cardinal Mendoza issued a constitution in Seville, in 1478, containing “the form that should be observed with a Christian from the day of his birth, as well in the sacrament of baptism as in all other sacraments which he ought to receive, and of what he should be taught, and ought to do and believe as a faithful Christian, every day, and at all times of his life, until the day of his death.  And he ordered this to be published in all the churches of the city, and put in tables in each parish, as a settled constitution.  He also published a summary of what curates and clerks should teach their parishioners, and what the parishioners should observe and show to their children.”  Thus does Hernando del Pulgar, in his Chronicle of the Catholic Sovereigns, describe what some too hastily call a catechism.  It was merely a standard of things to be believed and done, set forth by authority.  The King and Queen also, not the Cardinal, commanded “some friars, clerks, and other religious persons to teach the people.”  But no true Jew would let himself be taught that idolatry is not damnable; and even the less discouraging issues of controversy with the vacillating or the ignorant were not honestly reported.

The constitution of Cardinal Mendoza and the harangues of the friars were ineffectual, as well they might be, for the Jews knew that the Christians had a sacred book, said to be written by divine inspiration, as well as the Law of Moses; and if that book was not put into their hands, they could scarcely be expected to believe a religion whose chief written authority was kept out of sight.  That it was, indeed, kept out of sight was undeniable; and the notorious Alfonso de Castro, chaplain of Philip II, boasted in his book against heresies that there was “an edict of the most illustrious and Catholic sovereigns of Spain, Ferdinand and Isabella, in which, under the severest penalties, they forbade anyone to translate the holy Scriptures into a vulgar language, or to have any such version in his possession.  For they were afraid lest any occasion of error should be given to the people over whom God had made them governors.”  The clergy maintained that conversion to the truth by argument was impossible, and, at their instance, the bull was no longer kept in reserve, but was published in 1480.