This essay contains an important story for the ages. Given current events, and the absolute truth that history does repeat, the lesson is plain, and chilling. 

One of my treasured possessions from the years I lived in Spain is a 16th-century manuscript. It’s a big book, about fifteen by twenty inches, and it contains around 40 hand-written and hand-illuminated parchment pages. According to a faded and somewhat mysterious note inserted between two of the pages, itself very old and its ink faded, “This book contains the responsive readings and Benedictions for all the Masses of all the Saturdays.” 

My parents bought the book at a junk shop one Sunday morning in Madrid’s famous flea market, El Rastro. When asked how much the book cost, the shop owner picked it up, hefted it to assess its weight, shrugged his shoulders, and declared, “140 Pesetas.” About two dollars. Years later, They passed it on to me.

There’s nothing in the book that identifies its origins, other than its Catholic purpose. I’ve studied and researched it extensively, and spent countless hours with scholars of ancient manuscripts. Here’s what I know. The cover is most likely Spanish, as evidenced by the intricately tooled designs in the leather. The pattern is made up of rows of tiny rosettes, similar to covers from the same period which were often inlaid with ivory and precious stones. The binding mimics the German style of binding of the same period.

The contents are mid-16th-century. There is handwriting toward the end of the book appears to be in the style of the early 18th-century, which implies that the book must have been in use until at least the 1700s.

The book is divided into sections by crude index tabs, hand-labeled and made of vellum, a stronger paper than the high-quality rag of the manuscript itself. A careful examination of one of the pages under a special microscope designed for the purpose reveals a pattern of lines pressed into the surface, a consistent fraction of a millimeter apart, a result of the mold and deckle used in the paper manufacturing process. This line pattern confirms the date of the book.

The pages are hand-written in Latin, and the lines of text alternate with musical staff for the choir that chanted them.

A year or so ago, I decided that I wanted to know more about this strange and ancient book that fell into my hands. I wanted to know where it came from; who wrote it; what the ink was made from; where the paper was sourced; what church or cathedral it was used in; and what was going on in the world at the time. I wanted to know about socioeconomics, geopolitical happenings, and cultural mores. Was it used in a church that was abandoned due to declining attendance, its assets scattered? Was the book looted during the Spanish Civil War? I didn’t know, but I wanted to.

I started by looking into the time period just before the book was first created and used. I don’t know for sure and probably never will, but based on my own research and the insights of academics and scholars far more informed than I, the middle of the 15th-century seemed like a good place to start. 

During the mid-1400s, the late Middle Ages were coming to a close, and the Renaissance, with its focus on the arts, music, and the humanities, was beginning. The Hundred Years’ War between England and France was finally drawing to a close, the Byzantine Empire fell to the Ottoman Turks with the capture of Constantinople in 1453, and Spain and Portugal were demonstrating their sea powers, on the hunt for new trade routes with the rest of the world. 

Equally important was the invention of the printing press in Europe, which arrived too late for my book, but had a profound impact, nonetheless, on the spread of global knowledge, insight, awareness, and ideas. 

In essence, the mid-15th century was a period of transformation, of turnover from one set of guiding principles to another. It was here, shortly after this moment of transition, that my manuscript book came into existence.

The Iberian Peninsula, which comprises Spain and Portugal, has been a multicultural melting pot for its entire existence. For centuries, Muslims, Jews, and Christians coexisted, each playing a role in the rich cultural development of what ultimately became modern Spain. Ten centuries ago, Muslims brought science, architecture, medicine, and extraordinary art, while the Jewish community developed the country’s economy and served as its powerful merchant class. The Christians provided administrative governance. In fact, when Alfonso X, also known as Alfonso the Wise, died in the latter half of the 13th century, he ordered that it be inscribed on his tomb that he was ‘King of the Three Religions.’ Even today it’s impossible NOT to see the influence of the three belief structures that characterized ancient Spain. Look at the Mezquita Cathedral in Córdoba,  where a Catholic church has been built to surround a mosque. The country was a palimpsest of contradictions, but it worked.

In the mid-1400s, things changed in a way that is eerily reminiscent of current events. Alonso de Ojeda, a Dominican friar from Seville who had the attention of the Catholic Kings, Fernando and Isabela, told Queen Isabela during an official visit to Seville that large numbers of Jews who had converted to Christianity were actually Christians in name only—that they in fact continued to practice what came to be known as crypto-Judaism. A study, written by the Archbishop of Seville and Tomás de Torquemada (a Jewish convert himself and soon-to-be administrator of the Spanish Inquisition), offered the same conclusion. I don’t know if this was the first example of a conspiracy theory, but it certainly qualifies as one.

In response to these baseless claims, Fernando and Isabela requested a mandate from the Pope to establish an inquisition in Spain. The Pope agreed, and granted them permission to select a panel of priests to serve as Inquisitors.

In 1482 Fernando sought to take over the existing Papal Inquisition in the province of Aragon, which resulted in major resistance because it infringed on local rights. Relatives and friends of those accused complained of the brutality to the Pope, who wanted to maintain control of the Inquisition. The Pope wrote that “… in Aragon, Valencia, Mallorca and Catalonia, the Inquisition has for some time been moved not by zeal for the faith and the salvation of souls, but by lust for wealth, and that many true and faithful Christians, on the testimony of enemies … have without any legitimate proof been thrust into secular prisons, tortured and condemned as relapsed heretics, deprived of their goods and property and handed over to the secular arm to be executed, to the peril of souls, setting a pernicious example, and causing disgust to many.”

The Pope, whose position on the “new Christians” was far more tolerant than those of the Spanish Catholic Kings, tried to maintain control over the Inquisition to ensure that the punishments being meted out were appropriate and justly assigned. He issued a new order that stipulated a more tolerant approach to the practices of the Inquisition.

Fernando was outraged, arguing that no sensible pope would have published such a document. In May of 1482, he wrote a threatening letter to Rome, saying: “Take care therefore not to let the matter go further, and to revoke any concessions and entrust us with the care of this question.” In response, cowed by the power of the Spanish monarchy, the Pope changed his stance to full cooperation, and issued a new order in 1483 that appointed Torquemada as Inquisitor General of Aragon, Catalonia and Valencia, in the process creating a single entity to administer nationwide punishment without oversight. 

The first victims were burned at the stake in Aragon in 1484. Fierce opposition continued, protesting the loss of local autonomy. Meanwhile, the Pope withdrew all papal inquisitors from the region, handing total control to the Inquisitor General Torquemada, including the handling of all appeals. The Catholic Church abdicated its oversight, effectively washing its hands of the whole affair.

Keep in mind that the Jews represented the country’s merchant class—the artisans, shopkeepers, laborers, and craftspeople. In 1483, all Jews living in the province of Andalusia were expelled from the country. The Pope was troubled by this aggressive stance, but his protest fell on deaf ears because of political pressure from King Fernando, who threatened the Pope if he continued to question the actions of the Catholic Kings. The Pope backed down, and in short order Torquemada established additional arbitrary rules for persecution. One of them was that new courts could be established on an ad hoc basis as needed, with a thirty-day grace period for the accused to confess. And as for the accused, they were guilty until proven innocent based on such ludicrous things as the lack of chimney smoke coming from their homes, clear evidence that they were observing the Sabbath. The accused were allowed to confess and do penance, but if they relapsed—and all it took was the whispered word of an angry neighbor—they were executed. Those who had nothing to confess were tortured until they came up with something, anything, to make the pain stop. Then they were executed.

1492 is widely recognized as the year that Christopher Columbus received permission from the Catholic Kings to sail off to the New World in pursuit of untold riches that would add wealth to the Crown’s coffers. His voyages, often taught as brave forays into the unknown, were in fact expeditions of hegemonic terror.

The Catholic Kings gave Columbus, whose actual name was Cristobal Colón, the title of admiral, viceroy, and governor of any land he discovered. And, he was allowed to keep ten percent of any treasure he found, which motivated him greatly to do so—and by any horrific means necessary. 

But 1492 is also studied by Spanish historians because of a less well-known but far more profound event: by royal decree, all of Spain’s remaining Jews were expelled that year. They left the country by the tens of thousands, taking with them what amounted to the entire merchant class of the country—and the economy that they made possible. As a result, Spain slid into a slow but inevitable economic collapse. The country found itself morally and economically bankrupt, its trade routes disrupted, its trading partners non-existent. Spain entered its own Dark Age, hopelessly crippled.

It doesn’t take a degree in Medieval Spanish History to do a little plug-and-play exercise here, replacing 15th-century names with names from the 21st, substituting one ethnic group for another, inserting a 15th-century excuse for an unspeakable action for one that is similarly vile from the 21st-century. 

I’ve quoted George Santayana a lot lately about the state of things, so I think I’ll end with a quote this time from Polish poet Stanislaw Lec: “When smashing monuments, save the pedestals—they always come in handy.”