1492 After forcing many Jews to be baptized and then referring to them as Marranos (swine), and after an Inquisition in which some 700 Marranos were burnt at the stake for showing signs of "Jewish" taint, Spain expels all Jews from the country
1497 Jews are expelled from Portugal
Must have been a small window of ' safer living arrangements'.
Alexander did indeed have "interesting relations;"
Of Alexander's many mistresses the one for whom passion lasted longest was a certain Vannozza (Giovanna) dei Cattani, born in 1442, and wife of three successive husbands. The connection began in 1470, and she bore him four children whom he openly acknowledged as his own: Cesare (born 1475), Giovanni, afterwards duke of Gandia (born 1476) , Lucrezia (born 1480), and Goffredo or Giuffre (born 1481 or 1482). Five other children, Girolama, Isabella, Pedro-Luiz, Bernardo, and Laura, were of uncertain parentage.
For a period of time, before legitimizing his children after becoming Pope, Rodrigo pretended that his four children with Vannozza were his niece and nephews and that they were fathered by Vannozza's husbands.[citation needed]
Before his elevation to the papacy, Cardinal Borgia's passion for Vannozza somewhat diminished, and she subsequently led a very retired life. Her place in his affections was filled, according to some, by the beautiful Giulia Farnese ("Giulia la Bella"), wife of an Orsini, but his love for his children by Vannozza remained as strong as ever and proved, indeed, the determining factor of his whole career. He lavished vast sums on them and lauded them with every honor. The atmosphere of Alexander's household is typified by the fact that his daughter Lucrezia apparently lived with Giulia.[10]
He is an ancestor of virtually all royal houses of Europe, mainly the southern and western ones, for being the ancestor of Dona Luisa de Guzmán, wife of King John IV of Portugal, of the House of Braganza.
The debased state of the curia was a major scandal. Opponents such as the powerful demagogic Florentine friar Girolamo Savonarola launched invectives against papal corruption and appealed for a general council to confront the papal abuses. Alexander is reported to have been reduced to laughter when Savonarola's denunciations were related to him. Nevertheless, he appointed Sebastian Maggi to investigate the friar, and he responded on 16 October 1495:
It is important to keep in mind that, in Italy at the time, the Spanish were looked down upon. Thus, the prominent Italian families looked down on the Borgia family, and they resented their power, which they sought for themselves. This is, at least partially, why both Pope Callixtus III and Pope Alexander VI gave powers to family members whom they could trust.[25]
In these circumstances, Pope Alexander VI, feeling more than ever that he could only rely on his own kin, turned his thoughts to further family aggrandizement. He had annulled Lucrezia's marriage to Giovanni Sforza, who had responded to the suggestion that he was impotent with the unsubstantiated counter-claim that Pope Alexander VI and Cesare indulged in incestuous relations with Lucrezia, in 1497.[26] And, unable to arrange a union between Cesare and the daughter of King Frederick IV of Naples (who had succeeded Ferdinand II the previous year), he induced Frederick by threats to agree to a marriage between the Duke of Bisceglie, a natural son of Alfonso II, and Lucrezia. Cesare, after resigning his cardinalate, was sent on a mission to France at the end of the year, bearing a bull of divorce for the new French king Louis XII, in exchange for which he obtained the duchy of Valentinois (a duchy chosen because it was consistent with his already known nickname of Valentino), a promise of material assistance in his schemes to subjugate the feudal princelings of papal Romagna, and a marriage to a princess of Navarre.
Pope Alexander VI hoped that Louis XII's help would be more profitable to his house than that of Charles VIII had been. In spite of the remonstrances of Spain and of the Sforza, he allied himself with France in January 1499 and was joined by Venice. By autumn Louis XII was in Italy expelling Lodovico Sforza from Milan. With French success seemingly assured, the Pope determined to deal drastically with the Romagna, which although nominally under papal rule was divided into a number of practically independent lordships on which Venice, Milan, and Florence cast hungry eyes. Cesare, empowered by the support of the French, began to attack the turbulent cities one by one in his capacity as nominated gonfaloniere (standard bearer) of the church. But the expulsion of the French from Milan and the return of Lodovico Sforza interrupted his conquests, and he returned to Rome early in 1500 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Alexander_VI#Mistresses_and_family
Another alleges:
The man pictured above is the poster boy for Catholic debauchery. His name was Pope Alexander VI. He wasn't the first, nor the last, of a string of simply sinful popes. In fact if he had a trading card the back might read something like this:
"Achievements: Successfully started the world's first recorded crime family, sired at least four bastard children, hosted orgies within the walls of the Vatican, and shunned the poor in favor of flamboyant decadence.
Good Qualities: Severe loyalty to kith and kin (even to the point of almost plunging Italy into all out war just so his bastard children could have the life he wanted for them. Awe.)
Scandals: Still being accused of breaking up his daughter's marriage in favor if an incestuous relationship with himself, whispered to be involved in a few choice assassinations, and oh yes, there was that whole mistress and string of wild Vatican orgy parties...
God's Judgment: Death by slow intestinal bleeding." http://theophanes.hubpages.com/hub/Popes-Gone-Wild-What-the-Catholic-Church-Would-Rather-You-Forget
They also targeted our rabbinical brethren, for whom Alexander, in response to abuses in the Spanish Inquisition, had made safer living arrangements.
Sound like a spin that could be used in the future to imprison Christians.
In conferring the title "Catholic" upon Ferdinand and Isabella, 1495, Alexander VI. gave as one of the reasons the expulsion of the Jews from Spain, 1492. The institution of the Spanish Inquisition, which began its work twelve years before, was directed primarily against the conversos, people of Jewish blood and members of the Church who in heart and secret usage remained Jews. - http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/hcc6.iii.viii.iv.html
The penalty of scourging was executed in public on the bodies of the victims, bared to the waist, by the public executioner. Women of 86 to girls of 13 were subjected to such treatment. Galley labor as a mode of punishment was sanctioned by Alexander VI., 1503. The sentence of perpetual imprisonment was often relaxed, either from considerations of mercy or for financial reasons. Up to 1488, there had been 5000 condemnations to lasting imprisonment
The king and queen issued the Alhambra Decree less than three months after the surrender of Granada. This was primarily a decision of Isabella, not her husband Fernando. That her confessor had just changed from the tolerant Hernando de Talavera to the very intolerant Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros suggests that Cisneros may well have had a role in Isabel's decision.[10] In it, Jews were accused of trying "to subvert their holy Catholic faith and trying to draw faithful Christians away from their beliefs." These measures were not new in Europe.[11]
Some Jews were only given four months and ordered to convert to Christianity or leave the country. Under the edict, Jews were promised royal "protection and security" for the effective three-month window before the deadline. They were permitted to take their belongings with them – except "gold or silver or minted money".[citation needed]
The punishment for any Jew who did not convert or leave by the deadline was death without trial.[1] The punishment for a non-Jew who sheltered or hid Jews was the confiscation of all belongings and hereditary privileges.
By the 14th century, most of the Iberian Peninsula (present-day Spain and Portugal) had been conquered by the Christian kingdoms of Castile, Aragon, Leon, Galicia, Navarre, and Portugal.
Overt hostility against Jews became more pronounced, finding expression in brutal episodes of violence and oppression. Thousands of Jews sought to escape these attacks by converting to Christianity; they were commonly called conversos, New Christians, or marranos. At first these conversions seemed an effective solution to the cultural conflict: many converso families met with social and commercial success. But eventually their success made these new Catholics unpopular with some of the clergy of the Church and royal hierarchies.
Other Spanish Jews (estimates range between 50,000 and 70,000)[citation needed] chose to avoid expulsion by conversion to Christianity. However, their conversion did not protect them from ecclesiastical hostility after the Spanish Inquisition came into full effect; persecution and expulsion were common. Many of these "New Christians" were eventually forced to either leave the countries or intermarry with the local populace by the dual Inquisitions of Portugal and Spain. Many settled in North Africa, Latin America [15] or elsewhere in Europe, most notably the Netherlands < /p>
"The edict [Alhambra Decree that had expelled the Jews] was formally rescinded on December 16, 1968." In 2014, the government of Spain passed a law allowing dual citizenship to Jewish descendants who apply, in order to "compensate for shameful events in the country’s past." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alhambra_Decree
The consuls of Carcassonne in 1286 complained to the pope, the King of France, and the vicars of the local bishop against the inquisitor Jean Garland, whom they charged with inflicting torture in an absolutely inhuman manner, and this charge was no isolated one. The case of Savonarola has never been altogether cleared up in this respect. The official report says he had to suffer three and a half tratti da fune (a sort of strappado). When Alexander VI showed discontent with the delays of the trial, the Florentine government excused itself by urging that Savonarola was a man of extraordinary sturdiness and endurance, and that he had been vigorously tortured on many days (assidua quaestione multis diebus, the papal prothonotary, Burchard, says seven times) but with little effect. - http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08026a.htm
Thus another of Matthew's attempt's at damage control, AKA "Catholic analysis," serves to expose the emperor's lack of clothes.