THE INQUISITION ABROAD

The acquisition of Spanish America opened a fresh field for the activity of the Inquisition. Besides the natives there were the New Christians who had fled across the seas seeking refuge from intolerance in the old country. Although the emigration of heretics was forbidden after a time, lest they should spread the hateful doctrines, Cardinal Ximenes, when inquisitor-general, resolved that the New World should have its own Holy Office, and appointed Fray Juan de Quevedo, then Bishop of Cuba, as inquisitor-general of the "Tierra Firma" as the Spanish mainland was commonly called. The Inquisition was more broadly established by Charles V, who empowered Cardinal Adrian to organise it and appoint new chiefs. The Dominicans were supreme, as in the old country, and proceeded with their usual fiery vigour, wandering at large through the new territories and spreading dismay among the native population. The Indians retreated in crowds into the interior, abandoned the Christianity they had never really embraced, and joined the other native tribes still unsubdued. The Spanish viceroys alarmed at the general desertion complained to the king at home and the excessive zeal of the inquisitors was checked for a time. But when Philip II came into power he would not agree with this milder policy, and although the inquisitors were no longer permitted to perambulate the country districts hunting up heretics, the Holy Office was established with its palaces and prisons in the principal cities and acted with great vigour. Three great central tribunals were created at Panama, Lima, and at Cartagena de las Indias, and persecution raged unceasingly, chiefly directed against Jews and Moors. In the city of Mexico also there was an inquisitor-general. A royal edict proclaimed that "no one newly converted to our Holy Faith from being Moor or Jew nor his child shall pass over into our Indies without our express license." At the same time the prohibition was extended to any who had been "reconciled," and to the child or grandchild of anyone who had worn the sanbenito or of any person burnt or condemned as a heretic ... "all, under penalty of loss of goods and peril of his person, shall be perpetually banished from the Indies, and if he have no property let them give him a hundred lashes, publicly."

The emperor, Charles V, is responsible for the extension of the Inquisition from Spain to the Low Countries, by which he repaid the loyal service and devotion the Dutch people had long rendered him. This Inquisition was headed at first however by a layman, and then four inquisitors chosen from the secular clergy were named. The Netherlanders resisted stoutly its establishment and its operation, and in 1646 it was provided that no sentence should go into effect unless approved by some member of the provincial council. Heretics were condemned of course, but the number was not large, though in some way grossly exaggerated reports of the numbers of victims have gained credence. Finally, on the application of the people of Brabant, who declared that the name would injure commercial prosperity in their district, the name was dropped altogether. At best it was a faint and feeble copy of the Spanish institution, and during the reign of Charles was little feared. In proof we may cite the fact that eleven successive edicts were necessary to keep the Inquisition at work between 1620 and 1650.

Philip II, on his accession, attempted to increase the power of the institution, with the hope of uprooting the reformed doctrines. The assertion, often made, however, that the Inquisition is responsible for the revolt of the Netherlands is entirely too broad. Other factors than religious differences entered into the complex situation. The terrible war which finally resulted in the independence of the Protestant Netherlands, falls outside the plan of this volume.

Philip wished to extend the sway of the Inquisition and planned a naval tribunal to take cognisance of heresy afloat. He created the Inquisition of the Galleys, or, as it was afterwards styled, of the Army and Navy. In every sea port a commissary general visited the shipping to search for prohibited books and make sure of the orthodoxy of crews and passengers. Even cargoes and bales of merchandise were examined, lest the taint of heresy should infect them. This marine inspection was most active in Cadiz, at that time the great centre of traffic with the far West. A visitor from the Holy Office with a staff of assistants and familiars boarded every ship on arrival and departure and claimed that their authority should be respected, so that nothing might be landed or embarked without their certificate. The merchants resented this system which brought substantial commercial disadvantages, and the ships' captains disliked priestly interference with their crews, whose regular duties were neglected. The men were kept below under examination, when they were wanted on deck to make or shorten sail or take advantage of a change in the wind or a turn in the tide. By degrees the marine Inquisition was thought to impede business on the High Seas and fell into disuse.

Under succeeding sovereigns the Holy Office was still favoured and supported, but the reign of Philip III witnessed loud and frequent remonstrances against its operation. The Cortes of Castile implored the king to put some restraint upon the too zealous inquisitors, but they still wielded their arbitrary powers unchecked, and Philip sought further encouragement for them from Rome. The accession of Philip IV to the throne was celebrated by an auto da fÉ, but no victim was put to death, and the only corporal punishment inflicted was the flogging of an immoral nun who professed to have made a compact with the devil. She was led out gagged, and, wearing the sanbenito, received two hundred lashes followed by perpetual imprisonment. Philip IV strove for a time to check the activity of the Inquisition, but he was too weak and wavering to make permanent headway against an institution, the leaders of which knew precisely what they were striving for, and pertinaciously pursued it.

A graphic account of what purport to have been the painful experiences of a poor soul who fell at a later date into the clutches of the inquisitors is related by himself in a curious pamphlet printed in Seville, by one Carcel, who was a goldsmith in that city. Evidently there is the work of another hand in it, however, as it is written with too much regard for the dramatic to have been his own composition. The description of the auto is also unusual, and not according to the usual procedure.

He says that he was arrested on the 2nd of April, 1680, at ten o'clock in the evening, as he was finishing a gold necklace for one of the queen's maids of honour. A week after his first arrest Carcel was examined. We will quote his own words:—

"In an ante-room," he says, "a smith frees me of my irons and I pass from the ante-chamber to the 'Inquisitor's table,' as the small inner room is called. It is hung with blue and citron-coloured taffety. At one end, between the two grated windows, is a gigantic crucifix and on the central estrade (a table fifteen feet long surrounded by arm-chairs), with his back to the crucifix, sits the secretary, and on my right, Francisco Delgado Ganados, the Grand Inquisitor, who is a secular priest. The other inquisitors had just left, but the ink was still wet in their quills, and I saw on papers before their chairs some names marked with red ink. I am seated on a low stool opposite the secretary. The inquisitor asks my name and profession and why I come there, exhorting me to confess as the only means of quickly regaining my liberty. He hears me, but when I fling myself weeping at his knees, he says coolly there is no hurry about my case; that he has more pressing business than mine waiting, (the secretary smiles), and he rings a little silver bell which stands beside him on the black cloth, for the alcaide who leads me off down a long gallery, where my chest is brought in and an inventory taken by the secretary. They cut my hair off and strip me of everything, even to my ring and gold buttons; but they leave me my beads, my handkerchief and some money I had fortunately sewn in my garters. I am then led bareheaded into a cell, and left to think and despair till evening when they bring me supper.

"The prisoners are seldom put together. Silence perpetual and strict is maintained in all the cells. If any prisoner should moan, complain or even pray too loud, the gaolers who watch the corridors night and day warn them through the grating. If the offence is repeated, they storm in and load you with blows to intimidate the other prisoners, who, in the deep grave-like silence, hear your every cry and every blow.

"Once every two months the inquisitor, accompanied by his secretary and interpreter, visits the prisoners and asks them if their food is brought them at regular hours, or if they have any complaint to make against the gaolers. But this is only a parade of justice, for if a prisoner dares to utter a complaint, it is treated as mere fanciful ravings and never attended to.

"After two months' imprisonment," goes on Carcel, "one Saturday, when, after my meagre prison dinner, I give my linen, as usual, to the gaolers to send to the wash, they will not take it and a great cold breath whispers at my heart—to-morrow is the auto da fÉ. When, immediately after the vespers at the cathedral, they ring for matins, which they never do but when rejoicing on the eve of a great feast, I know that my horrid suspicions are right. Was I glad at my escape from this living tomb, or was I paralysed by fear, at the pile perhaps already hewn and stacked for my wretched body? I know not. I was torn in pieces by the devils that rack the brains of unhappy men. I refused my next meal, but, contrary to their wont, they pressed it more than usual. Was it to give me strength to bear my torture? Do God's eyes not reach to the prisons of the Inquisition?

"I am just falling into a sickly, fitful sleep, worn out with conjecturing, when, about eleven o'clock at night, the great bolts of my cell grind and jolt back and a party of gaolers in black, in a flood of light, so that they looked like demons on the borders of heaven, come in.

"The alcaide throws down by my pallet a heap of clothes, tells me to put them on and hold myself ready for a second summons. I have no tongue to answer, as they light my lamp, leave me and lock the door behind them. Such a trembling seizes me for half an hour, that I cannot rise and look at the clothes which seem to me shrouds and winding sheets. I rise at last, throw myself down before the black cross I had smeared with charcoal on the wall, and commit myself, as a miserable sinner, into God's hands. I then put on the dress, which consists of a tunic with long, loose sleeves and hose drawers, all of black serge, striped with white.

"At two o'clock in the morning the wretches came and led me into a long gallery where nearly two hundred men, brought from their various cells, all dressed in black, stood in a long silent line against the wall of the long, plain vaulted, cold corridor where, over every two dozen heads, swung a high brass lamp. We stood silent as a funeral train. The women, also in black, were in a neighbouring gallery, far out of our sight. By sad glimpses down a neighbouring dormitory I could see more men dressed in black, who, from time to time, paced backwards and forwards. These I afterwards found were men doomed also to be burnt, not for murder—no, but for having a creed unlike that of the Jesuits. Whether I was to be burnt or not I did not know, but I took courage, because my dress was like that of the rest and the monsters could not dare to put two hundred men at once into one fire, though they did hate all who love doll-idols and lying miracles.

"Presently, as we waited sad and silent, gaolers came round and handed us each a long yellow taper and a yellow scapular, or tabard, crossed behind and before with red crosses of Saint Andrew. These are the sanbenitos that Jews, Turks, sorcerers, witches, heathen or perverts from the Roman Catholic Church are compelled to wear. Now came the gradation of our ranks—those who have relapsed, or who were obstinate during their accusations, wear the zamarra, which is gray, with a man's head burning on red faggots painted at the bottom and all round reversed flames and winged and armed black devils horrible to behold. I, and seventy others, wear these, and I lose all hope. My blood turns to ice; I can scarcely keep myself from swooning. After this distribution they bring us, with hard, mechanical regularity, pasteboard conical mitres (corozas) painted with flames and devils with the words 'sorcerer' and 'heretic' written round the rim. Our feet are all bare. The condemned men, pale as death, now begin to weep and keep their faces covered with their hands, round which the beads are twisted. God only—by speaking from heaven—could save them. A rough, hard voice now tells us we may sit on the ground till our next orders come. The old men and boys smile as they eagerly sit down, for this small relief comes to them with the refreshment of a pleasure.

"At four o'clock they bring us bread and figs, which some drop by their sides and others languidly eat. I refuse mine, but a guard prays me to put it in my pocket for I may yet need it. It is as if an angel had comforted me. At five o'clock, at daybreak, it was a ghastly sight to see shame, fear, grief, despair, written on our pale livid faces. Yet not one but felt an undercurrent of joy at the prospect of any release, even by death.

"Suddenly, as we look at each other with ghastly eyes, the great bell of the Giralda begins to boom with a funeral knell, long and slow. It was the signal of the gala day of the Holy Office, it was the signal for the people to come to the show. We are filed out one by one. As I pass the gallery in the great hall, I see the inquisitor, solemn and stern, in his black robes, throned at the gate. Beneath him is his secretary, with a list of the citizens of Seville in his wiry twitching hands. The room is full of the anxious frightened burghers, who, as their names are called and a prisoner passes through, move to his trembling side to serve as his godfather in the Act of Faith. The honest men shudder as they take their place in the horrible death procession. The time-serving smile at the inquisitor, and bustle forward. This is thought an honourable office and is sought after by hypocrites and suspected men afraid of the Church's sword.

"The procession commences with the Dominicans. Before them flaunts the banner of the order in glistening embroidery that burns in the sun and shines like a mirror, the frocked saint, holding a threatening sword in one hand, and in the other, an olive branch with the motto, 'Justitia et misericordia' (Justice and mercy). Behind the banner come the prisoners in their yellow scapulars, holding their lighted torches, their feet bleeding with the stones and their less frightened godfathers, gay in cloak and sword and ruff tripping along by their side, holding their plumed hats in their hands. The street and windows are crowded with careless eyes, and children are held up to execrate us as we pass to our torturing death. The auto da fÉ was always a holiday sight to the craftsmen and apprentices; it drew more than even a bull fight, because of the touch of tragedy about it. Our procession, like a long black snake, winds on, with its banners and crosses, its shaven monks and mitred bare-footed prisoners, through street after street, heralded by soldiers who run before to clear a way for us—to stop mules and clear away fruit-stalls, street-performers and their laughing audiences. We at last reach the Church of All the Saints, where, tired, dusty, bleeding and faint we are to hear mass.

"The church has a grave-vault aspect and is dreadfully like a charnel house. The great altar is veiled in black, and is lit with six silver candlesticks, whose flames shine like yellow stars with clear twinkle and a soft halo round each black, fire-tipped wick. On each side of the altar, that seems to bar out God and his mercy from us and to wrap the very sun in a grave cloak, are two thrones, one for the grand-inquisitor and his counsel, another for the king and his court. The one is filled with sexton-like lawyers, the other with jewelled and feathered men.

"In front of the great altar and near the door where the blessed daylight shines with hope and joy, but not for us, is another altar, on which six gilded and illuminated missals lie open; those books of the Gospels, too, in which I had once read such texts as—God is love; Forgive as ye would be forgiven; Faith, hope, charity: these three, but the greatest of these is charity. Near this lesser altar the monks had raised a balustraded gallery, with bare benches, on which sat the criminals in their yellow and flame-striped tabards with their godfathers. The doomed ones came last, the more innocent first. Those who entered the black-hung church first, passing up nearest to the altar sat there, either praying or in a frightened trance of horrid expectancy. The trembling living corpses wearing the mitres, yellow and red, came last, preceded by a gigantic crucifix, the face turned from them.

"Immediately following these poor mitred men came servitors of the Inquisition, carrying four human effigies fastened to long staves, and four chests containing the bones of those men who had died before the fire could be got ready. The coffers were painted with flames and demons and the effigies wore the dreadful mitre and the crimson and yellow shirt all a-flame with paint. The effigies sometimes represented men tried for heresy since their death and whose estates had since been confiscated and their effigies doomed to be burnt as a warning; for no one within their reach may escape if they differ in opinion with the Inquisition.

"Every prisoner being now in his place—godfathers, torchmen, pikemen, musketeers, inquisitors, and flaunting court—the Provincial of the Augustins mounted the pulpit, followed by his ministrant and preached a stormy, denouncing, exulting sermon, half an hour long (it seemed a month of anguish), in which he compared the Church with burning eloquence to Noah's ark; but with this difference, that those animals who entered it before the deluge came out of it unaltered, but the blessed Inquisition had, by God's blessing, the power of changing those whom its walls once enclosed, turning them out meek as the lambs he saw around him so tranquil and devout, all of whom had once been cruel as wolves and savage and daring as lions.

"This sermon over, two readers mounted the pulpit to shout the list of names of the condemned, their crimes (now, for the first time, known to them) and their sentences. We grew all ears and trembled as each name was read.

"As each name was called the alcaide led out the prisoner from his pen to the middle of the gallery opposite the pulpit, where he remained standing, taper in hand. After the sentence he was led to the altar where he had to put his hand on one of the missals and to remain there on his knees.

"At the end of each sentence, the reader stopped to pronounce in a loud, angry voice, a full confession of faith, which he exhorted us, the guilty, to join with heart and voice. Then we all returned to our places. My offence, I found, was having spoken bitterly of the Inquisition, and having called a crucifix a mere bit of cut ivory. I was therefore declared excommunicated, my goods confiscated to the king, I was banished Spain and condemned to the Havana galleys for five years with the following penances: I must renounce all friendship with heretics and suspected persons; I must, for three years, confess and communicate three times a month; I must recite five times a day, for three years, the Pater and Ave Maria in honour of the Five Wounds; I must hear mass and sermon every Sunday and feast day; and above all, I must guard carefully the secret of all I had said, heard, or seen in the Holy Office (which oath, as the reader will observe, I have carefully kept).

"The inquisitor then quitted his seat, resumed his robes and followed by twenty priests, each with a staff in his hand, passed into the middle of the church and with divers prayers some of us were relieved from excommunication, each of us receiving a blow from a priest. Once, such an insult would have sent the blood in a rush to my head, and I had died but I had given a return buffet; now, so weak and broken-spirited was I, I burst into tears.

"Now, one by one, those condemned to the stake, faint and staggering, were brought in to hear their sentences, which they did with a frightened vacancy, inconceivably touching, but the inquisitors were gossiping among themselves and scarcely looked at them. Every sentence ended with the same cold mechanical formula: That the Holy Office being unhappily unable to pardon the prisoners present, on account of their relapse and impenitence, found itself obliged to punish them with all the rigour of earthly law, and therefore delivered them with regret to the hands of secular justice, praying it to use clemency and mercy towards the wretched men, saving their souls by the punishment of their bodies and recommending death, but not effusion of blood. Cruel hypocrites!

"At the word blood the hangmen stepped forward and took possession of the bodies, the alcaide first striking each of them on the chest to show that they were now abandoned to the rope and fire." Then he goes on to describe the scene at the quemadero, which, however, included nothing of importance not already mentioned elsewhere.

After the death of Philip IV, and during the minority of his son, Charles II, Father Nithard, a Jesuit, who combined the two forces long in opposition, the disciples of Loyola and the descendants of Torquemada, was for a time inquisitor-general. The Holy Office was hotly opposed by Don John of Austria, a natural son of Philip IV, who rose to political power and would have fallen a victim to the Inquisition had not popular indignation sided with him against Nithard, who fled from Spain to Rome. He was stripped of all his offices but still kept the favour of the queen-mother who finally secured for him from Pope Clement X the coveted cardinal's hat. Don John was unequal to the task of curbing the power of the Inquisition, however, and the institution claimed wider and wider jurisdiction.

Growing dissatisfaction prevailed, and in 1696, the king, Charles II, summoned a conference or Grand Junta to enquire into the complaints that poured in from all quarters against the Inquisition. It was composed of two councillors of state from Castile, Aragon, the Indies, and the Spanish provinces in Italy, with two members of the religious orders. It reported that the Holy Office exercised illegal powers, still arrogated the right to throw persons of rank into prison and cover their families with disgrace. It punished with merciless severity the slightest opposition or disrespect shown to dependents or familiars who had come to enjoy extensive and exorbitant privileges. They claimed secular jurisdiction in matters nowise appertaining to religion, and set aside restrictions contained in their own canon law. The Junta strongly recommended that these restrictions should be rigidly enforced, and that no one should be thrown into the prisons of the Inquisition, save on charges of an heretical nature. It urged the right of appeal to the throne, and the removal of all causes to the royal courts for trial. It detailed the privileges granted to the servants of the Holy Office. Even a coachman or a lackey demanded reverence and might conduct himself with unbounded insolence. If a servant girl were not treated obsequiously in a shop she might complain and the offender was liable to be cast into the dungeons of the Inquisition. So great was the discontent, so many tumults arose, that the Junta would have all such unrighteous privileges curtailed, and would authorise the civil courts to keep the encroachments of the Holy Office in check.

With the eighteenth century the authority of the Holy Office visibly waned. Philip V, a French prince, and a grandson of Louis XIV, whose succession produced the long protracted war of the Spanish Succession, declined to be honoured with an auto da fÉ at his coronation, but he maintained the Inquisition as an instrument of despotic government, and actually used it to punish as heretics those who had any doubt concerning his title to the crown. Yet he rather used the Inquisition than supported it; for he deprived of his office an inquisitor-general who had presumed to proceed for heresy against a high officer. The Cortes of Castile again, (1714), recorded their condemnation, but without any further benefit than that which must eventually result from the disclosure of a truth. The same body reiterated their disapproval a few years afterwards, (1720). But while Philip V used the Inquisition for his own service, and the heretical doctrine which had prevailed two centuries before no longer left a trace behind, there were multitudes of persons accused of attempting to revive Judaism and others gave offence by their efforts to promote Freemasonry. This gave the inquisitors abundant pretext for the discharge of their political mission.

During the reigns of Charles III and Charles IV, a revival of literature and an advance in political science guided the attention of the clergy and the government to the position of the court of Rome, as well as to the proceedings of the inquisitors. The former of these monarchs nearly yielded to the advice of his councillors to suppress the Inquisition, as well as to expel the Jesuits. He banished the Society, but, in regard to the Inquisition, said: "The Spaniards want it and it gives me no trouble."

Meanwhile death sentences nearly ceased, and once when a good man was sentenced to be delivered to the secular arm, in compliance with the letter of the law, the inquisitors let him go free. By this contrivance Don Miguel Solano, priest of Esco, a town in Aragon, walked out of the prison of the Inquisition in Saragossa, as a maniac, forgiven his heresy, and lived on as a maniac, exempted from priestly ministrations, while every one knew him to be a reasonable man and treated him accordingly. In the end he died, refusing Extreme Unction, and was buried in unconsecrated ground within the walls of the Inquisition on the banks of the Ebro.