Hello, then Welcome to Western Siev Episode two hundred and seventy nine. The
Inquisition structure and organization. From its very beginnings, Isabella and Ferdinand expected the
Inquisition to be under the control of the Spanish crown. This was a huge
change in policy compared to the medieval Inquisition, which was a papal institution.
Oddly, Pope Sixtus the Fourth decided to go along with this idea, indicating
just how far the power of the pope had fallen since the High Middle Ages.
Thus, the Inquisition was in every way an instrument of royal policy and
remained politically subject to the crown. The central organization of the new Inquisition was
a council called the Conseijo de la Suprema Eheneral Inquisition. Crucially, this council
was dominated by one of our remaining monastic orders, the Dominicans. The Dominicans
were generally opposed by the Jesuits, the other major monastic order to survive the
end of the Middle Ages. Often, writers seeking to get books published sought
to exploit this rivalry, and in fact, by the late seventeenth century,
the Jesuits, thanks to lobbying and politiking efforts, had become influential in the
Inquisition as well in terms of its overall structure. The new Inquisition was modeled
essentially on the Medieval Though this was a new institution, inquisitors in the fifteenth
century had to rely on the earlier model. There simply wasn't any other precedent
to follow, so inquisitors followed right down to the last detail the thirteenth century
practices for arrest, trial procedures, confiscations, and even recruitment of personnel.
Oftentimes this is why, say, in the seventeenth century, the Inquisition both
looks and feels so anachronistic, so out of place. The Council of the
Inquisition, sometimes known for short as the Suprema, was presided over by the
Inquisitor General. All authority exercised by inquisitors was at one time held to be
direct delegation from the Pope, but later this was modified to the opinion that
it was the Visitor General himself who was actually delegating the papal powers. Though
he might be nominated by the Crown, only the Pope had the power in
the end to appoint him. With The Pope always followed the Spanish crown growth
of the Inquisitor General's power was modified by the increasing authority of the Suprema.
The relationship between the Suprema and the Inquisitor General was never satisfactorily settled, because
they usually acted in concert and neither disputed the other's supremacy, but there were
several occasions when the Council attempted to take an independent line. In the early
seventeenth century, the Suprema consisted of about six members. These usually met every
morning and three afternoons a week. The afternoon sessions, normally on legal business,
were attended by two members of the Council of Castile. Correspondence was divided
between two secretaries, one for Aragon and one for Castile. Members of the
Suprema were appointed by the King alone, and the Suprema usually issued orders without
need for any vote by the Inquisitor General. When divisions arose in the Council,
a decision was taken by majority vote, in which the vote of the
Inquisitor General didn't count for any more or any less than any other member.
The growth of the Suprema's authority led to greater centralization. This in turn made
the institution even easier for the Spanish crown to dominate. Remember, there were
huge legal and procedural differences between Castile and Aragon. The inquisition was the only
institution that spanned both with any real success. Now, the tribunals themselves,
those that actually tried people for heresy in the early days, were itinerant,
that is to say, they traveled much like how judges, maybe in colonial
America wrote the circuits. Each tribunal was to consist of two inquisitors, a
jurist and a theologian, or sometimes two jurists. There was also an assessor,
a constable, a prosecutor, and all kinds of other necessary subordinates.
The number of personnel grew rapidly throughout the centuries. By the end of the
sixteenth century, the major tribunals of the Iberian Peninsula had three inquisitors each.
Now, contrary to the image still somewhat current, the inquisitors of small minded
clerics and theologians fanatically dedicated to the extripication of heresy. In the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries, inquisitors were nothing more than bureaucrats. Elite bureaucrats, sure,
but just bureaucrats. Nonetheless, because the Holy Office was a court. All
these administrators had to be trained lawyers, not fanatics. Perhaps the most surprising
aspect of the administration of the Inquisition was its totally inadequate funding. Though technically
a Spanish governmental agency, the Spanish monarchs left it defend for itself. The
Inquisition, in fact, never received a fixed source of revenue, so the
Inquisition had to finance itself, and that, my friends, very much dictated
how it operated. The incentive was to find people guilty so that you could
confiscate their wealth. As you can imagine, that relationship set a very bad
precedent. Not surprisingly, many Spaniards came to the conclusion that the Inquisition existed
solely to rob people of their wealth. In fact, one resident of Quenca
lamented, quote, they were burnt only for the money they had. They
burned the well off because they have property. The others they leave alone end
quote. Some of this money went to the Spanish Crown, though determining exactly
how much is impossible. Still, by their very nature, confiscations and sequestrations
could never bring in reliable income. The vast majority of all those accused by
the Inquisition were people of a humble means, and the inquisitors would need to
have a regular annual turnover of hundreds of prisoners in order to get anything even
close to a substantial revenue windfalls. Like a couple of the Great Persecutions in
the sixteen eighties, those were exceptions to the rule. The normal picture would
have been of tribunals desperately trying to find income for the cost of administration,
prosecution, maintenance of prisoners, and increasingly expenses active faiths. The documentation is
full of complaints by local inquisitors that they cannot provide either for themselves or for
their prisoners. The regular state of deficit in the tribunals can be seen in
the statements of income and expenses for the years sixteen eighteen, sixteen seventy one
through seventy eight, and seventeen oh five. Income in Granada in sixteen eighteen,
for example, was three percent more than costs, but in sixteen seventy
one costs were actually three percent higher than income, and in fact, by
the time we get to seventeen oh five, the inquisition was running and the
red with twenty seven percent more costs than income. The figures leave no doubt
that the inquisition was often and in perilous financial straits. The most critical source
of income for the Inquisition was investment income, or as the sources referred to
it, zenus. Now that being said, even with this income, the
institution was never wealthy. The estates that it held at the end of the
eighteenth century, when the Inquisition finally came to an end, were of modest
value at best. Still, in fifteen seventy three, seventy four percent of
the Inquisition's income came from these sinsos, and in fifteen seventy six that number
had risen to eighty percent. It's really interesting that the crown never chose to
support an institution that it saw primarily as its tool, but that is the
case regardless. Later historians came to regard the Inquisition as a secular rather than
ecclesiastical institution. They weren't wrong. The Suprema was a Spanish government council.
The Crown had absolute power to appoint and dismiss inquisitors everyone except the Inquisitor General.
So interestingly, at least from a superficial perspective, the Papacy was never
willing to concede this reality. The papacy went along continuing to confirm the Inquisition's
jurisdiction as though it had a lot of influence over the Body, which it
didn't, And for its part, the Inquisition seemed content to hedge its bet
and claim both royal and papal jurisdiction. Inevitably, as a result of its
secular nature, the Inquisition became involved in a series of political disputes. King
Ferdinand endeavored it to use it as a political level as much as possible,
though it's arguable as to whether he honestly ever got anything out of it.
The biggest example would be Seesare Borgia. He tried to use the Inquisition to
prosecute Cesare, but his death and battle in fifteen oh seven removed our best
test case for just how much the Inquisition might have helped the King pursue his
political enemies. Now let's turn for a bit to how the Inquisition operated.
The coming of the Inquisition to a town was in principle designed to cause fear.
In his commentary on the fourteenth century, Manuel of Emerek stated quote,
we must remember that the main purpose of the trial and execution is not to
save the soul of the accused, but to achieve public good and put fear
into others end quote. The public activity of the whole The office was thus
based on the premise common too all policing systems that fear was the best deterrent.
When the inquisitors began operations in a district, they would first present their
credentials to the local church and secular authorities, then announce a Sunday or a
feast day when the residents would have to go to high Mass together with their
children and servants, to hear an edict read. At the end of the
sermon or the creed, the inquisitor or as representative would hold a crucifix in
front of the congregation and ask everyone to raise their right hand, cross themselves,
and repeat after him a solemn oath to support the Inquisition and its ministers.
Then he would proceed to read the edict. In the early years,
this took the form of an edict of grace, modeled on those of the
medieval Inquisition, which recited a list of heresies and invited those who wish to
discharge their consciences to come forward and denounce themselves or others if they came forward
within the quote period of grace end quote. This was usually thirty to forty
days, they would be reconciled to the Church without suffering serious penalties. Clearly,
this system was designed to encourage self denunciation. In the earlier period,
heresies were principally either listed as Judaic or Islamic, though more were added over
time. While the Inquisition itself was feared by the population, like all the
other tribunals throughout Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, it depended principally on
collaboration to succeed. Hence, what most people seem to fear wasn't that they
would be persecuted by the Inquisition, but that they would be denounced by their
friends and neighbors. Petty denunciations were the rule rather than the exception. Indeed,
for most the Inquisition became an easy way to settle old scores. The
fear of the Inquisition generated had its origins and social disharmony. Its records are
replete with instances in which neighbors denounced neighbors, friends denounced friends, and so
on and so forth. But there was a flip side to this coin in
places where there was less social discord, where the bonds of fellowship were stronger,
the Inquisition could not penetrate. In Catalonia, for example, the community
utterly rejected the Inquisition's invitation to turn on itself. Hence, in that very
insular region of Spain, the Institution failed to propagate. As a result,
even the inquisitors hated traveling on visitations. They often had to go into counties
where they were despised and the local authorities hostile. I wouldn't have wanted to
go on these trips either. Still, inquisitors spent about half their time traveling
on visitations. These were generally done out in the villages, where a few
trials ever took place. Nor were these visitations effective. The Inquisition simply did
not have the resources to do them with enough frequency to make them potent expressions
of its power. It was easy for distant villagers to weather the occasional visitation
and simply move on with their lives. For as much vile as is often
heaped on the Inquisition, the men running it weren't fanatical idiots. They could
and often did distinguish between true and false cases, and would reject those denunciations
made out of pure malice and without a grain of truth to them. Judicially.
Honestly, the inquisition was on par with the secular courts of the time.
It wasn't worse, and it wasn't more vicious. I suppose there was
one exception. Witnesses names were concealed in the inquisitional courts, and of course
this did increase the incentive for people to come forward. Before an arrest took
place, the evidence in the case was presented to a number of theologians who
acted as consultants or assessors to determine whether the charges involved heresy. If they
decided that there was sufficient proof, the prosecutor actually called the fiscal drew up
a demand for the arrest of the accused, who was taken into custody.
Such, at least were the rules that, in numerous cases arrest preceded the
examination, so that all the preliminary safeguards against wrongful arrest were dispensed with.
As a result, prisoners wound up sitting in inquisitorial jails without any charges ever
having been produced against them, making matters worse. Arrest was accompanied by the
immediate seizure of goods held by the accused prior to conviction. This could include
everything down to your pots pans, and in some cases we have documentation to
show the cutlery. The arrested person was immediately taken to the inquisition prison.
Inquisition prisons were actually better than secular ones, which explains why the populace preferred
them to royal prisons or even ordinary ecclesiastical ones. Still, I mean,
if you had your druthers, you didn't want to go to prison at all,
because prisoners were cut off from communication from the outside world and their accommodations
were often overcrowded. Insanity and suicide were regular consequences of such imprisonment. When
necessary, interrogations took place in the presence of a notary who recorded as much
as possible. Sadly, because the Inquisition was in this nasty habit of destroying
its records, we have little of these remaining today. The use of torture,
inherited from the medieval Inquisition was not considered an end in and of itself.
The Instructions of fifteen sixty one laid down no rules for its use,
but urged that its application should be according to quote the conscience and will of
the appointed judges. Following law, reason and good conscience, Inquisitors should take
great care that the sentence of torture is justified and follows precedent end quote.
At a time when the use of torture was universal in European criminal courts,
the Spanish inquisition followed a policy of circumspection that makes it compare favorably with other
institutions. Torture was normally used as a last resort and applies in only a
minority of cases. Often, the accused was merely placed in the sight of
the torture instruments to provoke a confession. Confessions gained under torture were never accepted
as valid because they had obviously been obtained by pressure. It was therefore essential
for the accused to ratify his confession the day after the ordeal. If he
refused to do this, a legal trick was involved, as the rules forbade
anyone to be tortured more than once. The end of every torture session was
treated as a suspension, and a refusal to ratify the convention will be met
with a threat to continue the torture. Besides being compelled to confess their own
heresies, accused were often tortured to confess the crimes of others. Now,
of course, In statistical terms, it would be correct to say the torture
was used infrequently. Out of more than four or one hundred conversos tried by
one tribunal, only two were known to have been tortured. Torture was employed
exclusively to illicit punishment, and never used as a punishment. Physicians, interestingly,
were usually on hand in case of an emergency. The basic rule in
torture was that the accue should suffer no damage to life or limb. By
Church law, ecclesiastical tribunes could not kill, nor were they allowed to shed
blood. No distinctive tortures were used by the Inquisition. Those most often employed
were in common use in other secular and ecclesiastical tribunals, and any complaints of
novel tortures would certainly refer to rare exceptions. The three main ones were the
garachu, toka, and porto. The garadsha or pully involved being hung by
the wrists from a pulley on the ceiling with heavy weights attached to the feet.
Accused was raised slowly and then suddenly allowed to fall with a jerk.
The effect was to stretch and perhaps dislocate arms and legs. The toka or
water torture was more complicated. The accused was tied down at a rack,
his mouth kept forcibly open, and a toca or linen cloth was put down
his throat to conduct water poured slowly from a jar. The severity of the
torture varied with the number of jars of water used. The porto, which
was the most common after the sixteenth century, involved being bound tightly on a
rack by chords which were passed around the body and limbs were controlled by the
executioner, who tightened them by turns of the cords at the end. With
each turn, the chords bit into the body and traveled around the flesh.
In all these tortures it was the rule to strip the accused first. Both
men and women were stripped naked and left with minimal garments to cover themselves.
While the Inquisition did not usually subject the very old or very young to torture,
there were cases where that happened. In fact, there are some records
of women between the ages of seventy and ninety having been tortured. It was
also standard practice at the time to write down all the details of torture for
the record, although again we have lost many of these in terms of the
actual trial process. Since the Inquisition normally arrested subjects only after the evidence against
them seemed conclusive and had been approved, the accused was naturally presumed guilty from
the start, and it fell on him to prove his own innocence. The
sole task of the inquisition was to obtain from its prisoner an admission of guilt.
If in the process of inquiry it found that the evidence was false and
the prisoner presumably innocent, he was immediately set free. The main task of
the tribunal, however, was to act not as a court of justice,
but as a disciplinary body called into existence to meet a national emergency. In
these circumstances, and considering the practice of the time, the courts of the
Inquisition were adequate for this task. Apart from the much hated insistence on the
secrecy of witnesses, in broad terms, they conformed to the principles of the
courts of Castile. One of the peculiarities of the inquisitorial procedure, which brought
hardship and suffering to many, was the refusal to divulge the reason for your
arrest, so that prisoners went for days and months without knowing why they were
in the cells of the tribunal at all. Instead of accusing the prisoner,
the inquisitors would approach him and give three warnings over a period of weeks to
search his conscience, confess the truth, and trust to the mercy of the
inquisition. The third war n was accompanied by information that the prosecutor intended to
present an accusation and that it would be wise to confess before the charges were
laid bare. The effect of this enforced ignorance was to depress and break down
a prisoner. If innocent, he would be bewildered about what to confess,
or else confess crimes the inquisition was not even accusing him of. If he
was guilty, he'd be left to wonder how much of the truth the inquisition
really knew, and whether it was a trick to force him to confess.
When after three warnings the prosecutor eventually read the articles of accusation, the accused
was required to answer charges on the spot, with no time or advocate to
help him present his defense. Any reply made in these circumstances could hardly fail
to incriminate himself. Only after this was permission given to enlist legal help for
the defense. One important concession made by the Spanish but not by the medieval
Inquisition, was that the accused could have the services of an advocate. This
was written into the Instructions of fourteen eighty four and generally upheld. The later
modifications to the rules sometimes rendered the use of a lawyer farcical. In the
early years, the accused could choose their lawyers freely, but the growing caution
of the Holy Office later confined the choice to special lawyers nominated by the tribunal,
so that by the mid sixteenth century the prisoner's advocates were recognized as officials
of the Inquisition, dependent on and working with the inquisitors. This new class
of lawyers was obviously distrusted by some prisoners, for in fifteen fifty nine we
have a case of a prisoner in Valencia telling his cellmate quote, though the
inquisitor might give him an advocate, he would give him no one good,
but a fellow would only do what the inquisition wanted, And if by chance
he asked for an advocate or solicitor not of the Inquisition, they would not
serve, for if they went contrary to the inquisitor's wishes, he would get
up to some charge of false belief or want of respect and cast them into
prison. End quote. Now this does not mean that those advocates assigned as
defense didn't do their duty consciously, but they were of course hindered by the
restrictions of the tribunal and the subtle and dangerous task of defending the prisoner while
condemning his heresy. Some special cases exist where counsel were allowed of their own
choice, but these were exceptions. When a prisoner was finally accused, he
was given a copy of the evidence against him in order to help him prepare
a defense. This publication of the evidence was by no means as helpful as
it might be today. In the first place, the names of all the
witnesses were stricken. Even more important, all evidence that might help identify witnesses
was stricken from the record. This meant the prisoner was also just deprived of
any details of the complete case against him. In this way, the inquisitors
were free to use his evidence information that had not been communicated to the accused.
While this helped protect witnesses against identification and recrimination, it often crippled the
defense. The accused had several avenues of defense. Short of proving the complete
falsity of an accusation, He could call favorable witnesses disable hostile witnesses by proving
personal enmity or object to his judges. This was a last resort. Several
extenuating circumstances, such as drunkenness and sanity, extreme youth, and so on
and so forth, could also be pleaded. All these expedients were resorted to
regularly, but not always with equal success. In the great majority of trials
before the Spanish Inquisition, the defense consisted solely in the resort to witnesses,
since this was the only way to get to unknown sources of evidence. Hence,
for the accused to resort to favorable witnesses was a diet See proposition.
At best. A defendant's best chance was to undercut the credibility of a hostile
witness. Accusations were often made more out of malice than religious zeal for the
truth. It wasn't hard in many cases for the defendant to show the financial
gain the accusers might hope to gain if they cooperated. Defendants might also call,
as I said, for the judges to accuse themselves, but this was
extremely risky. If they did not, well, then you might as well
just confess. And given the almost complete lack of oversight, it should not
shock you that only rarely did one resort to this defense. Now, there
was no such thing as a single trial in the period of the Inquisition.
Rather, over a period of time, the prosecution and defense would present evidence
and arguments until each side declared itself done. Then a quote unquote consultation was
formed. These consisted of one of the inquisitors, one represents of the local
bishop, and one theologian. Together they voted. If the inquisitor and the
bishop's representative agreed, then the matter was decided. If not, more representatives
might be called in and another vote held. Of course, the obvious problem
with all this was that the Inquisition was both judge, prosecution, and in
most cases defense, hence the high conviction rate. As a rule, tribunals
did try to bring cases to trial quickly. It was expensive to keep people
locked up, but in some cases there was very little the inquisition could do.
In fifteen ninety in Lerna, for example, some prisoners had to wait
seven years for a trial because of the sheer number of the denunciations. This
was not the Inquisition's fault per se, but it was another indication of why
it's poor funding was a major issue for everyone. It is very difficult to
say anything specific about the punishments meted out by the Inquisition with any degree of
certainty. For the first few years, nearly all the documentation of the Inquisition
no longer exists, beyond that records are incomplete at best. In the Tribunal
of Valencia, an estimate for three thousand, seventy five of the trials between
fifteen sixty six and sixteen oh nine suggests that they concluded as follows. Forty
four percent of those were penanced, forty percent were reconciled, two percent absolved,
nine percent were received suspended sentences, two zero point one percent were burnt
in effigy two percent were burnt in person. In Galesia between fifteen sixty and
seventeen hundred, of two thy two hundred and three people, eighteen percent were
absolved, sixty two percent were penanced, sixty one percent were reconciled, two
percent were burnt in effigy, and less than one percent were burnt in person.
To be penanced was the least of the punishments imposed. Those who did
penance had to quote abjure and quote their offenses spiritually. For a lesser offense,
the penitent swore to avoid his sin in the future, and if he
swore again and committed it, any relapse made him liable for severe punishment on
the next occasion. Penitents were then condemned to physical penalties, sometimes also fine
banishment, or even the galleys. Reconciliation was in theory the return of the
sinner to the church after due spiritual penance had been performed. In practice,
it was the most severe punishment the inquisition could inflict, short of being burnt
all. The penalties were heavier in reconciliation. In addition to any physical punishment,
accused persons could also be condemned to flogging, to long spells in prison,
or the galleys. In most cases, confiscation of goods occurred, so
that even if the prisoner escaped with a prison sentence of a few months,
he came out of an orthodox Catholic but facing a life of being a beggar.
An additional rule frequently enforced was that anyone who committed a further offense after
reconciliation was to be treated as a relapsed heretic and would be burnt at the
stake. Now, most of the punishments involved something that was called the san
benito, which is a corrupt form of older words sacho benito. It's a
penitential garment used in the medieval Inquisition and ultimately taken over by the Spanish one.
It was usually yellow with one or two diagonal crosses imposed on it.
Penitents were condemned to wear the san benito as a mark of infamy for a
period of a few months, or in some cases for life. Those who
were to appear at the attau de fe or the acts of faith had to
wear a black san benito, on which there were painted flames and demons and
other interesting decorations. Anyone condemned to wearing the ordinary yellow san benito had to
put an on whenever he or she went outside, a practice by no means
popular in the first few years of the Inquisition. Now, the order to
wear a san benito for life, though wasn't literal, it was ultimately and
invariably commuted to a much shorter period at the discretion of the inquisitor. The
chief criticism leveled at the time against these garments was less over the deliberate shame
they were meant to cast on their wearers, then on the policy of perpetuating
infamy by hanging them up in the local church as a permanent record of the
offense. The imprisonment decreed by the Inquisition could be for a short term of
months and years, or even for life, the latter usually being classified as
quote perpetual and irremissible end quote. Prison. Sentences then as now were not
literally observed. By the seventeenth century, perpetual prison normally signified a few months
and rarely involved imprisonment for more than three years, especially if the prisoner was
repentant. A lifetime sentence was normally completed in ten years. Despite this,
the Inquisition continued to decree perpetual sentences, probably because in canon law it was
the custom to condemn heretics to life imprisonment. None of the sentences necessarily involved
actual confinement in a prison. By the instructions of fourteen eighty eight, inquisitors
could at their discretion confine a man to his own house or to some other
institution, such as a monastery or hospital, with the result that many prisoners
served their sentences in moderate comfort. The main reason for this surprising concession was
that the tribunals lacked the prison space because their cells were already full, and
it was also just too expensive to keep people in prison for lengthy periods of
time. Remember what we're talking about, The inquisition is very much an unfunded
mandate. Important prisoners normally underwent house arrest rather than imprisonment. Oddly, even
when prison itself was the sentence, there was very much an open door policy.
See, prisoners were free to go often during the day and go about
their business. They just had to return to the I guess I'll keep calling
it a prison at night. The galleys were a punishment unknown to the medieval
Inquisition. These were devised by King Ferdinand, and there was a reason.
King Ferdinand wanted a cheap source of labor for his navy without having to resort
to open slavery. By the mid eighteenth century, the Inquisition had ceased using
galley terms as sentences, as it had for the sake of argument the Spanish
crown. In secular courts, Interestingly, an accused might be sentenced to different
punishments simultaneously. For example, one accused in Grenada in sixteen seventy two,
was sentenced to four years banishment, six years in the galley, and one
hundred strokes of the lash. Unfortunately, based on the record, I couldn't
tell if the first two punishments, the galleys and banishment, were consecutive or
concurrent, that is, whether they were served simultaneously, or he was banished
and then served six years in the galleys. Of course, the ultimate penalty
was burning at the stake. The execution of heretics was by the fifteenth century
such a common place event in Christendom that the Spanish Inquisition cannot be accused of
any innovation. It had been the practice hallowed by the medieval Inquisition for the
Church courts to condemn a heretic and then hand him over or quote unquote relax
him to the secular authorities. These were then obliged to carry out the sentence
of blood, which the Holy Office was forbidden by law to carry out.
In all of this, there was no pretense that the Inquisition was not the
body fully and directly responsible for the deaths that occurred. Two classes of people
qualified for the stake, unrepentant heretics and relapsed heretics, The latter consisted of
those who, after being pardoned a first time, had repeated the offense and
were adjudged to have relapsed into heresy. Those who were sentenced did not always
die at the stake. They were normally given the choice between repenting before the
Atta de fay reached its climax, in which case they were mercifully strangled when
the flames were lit, or you could remain unrepentant, in which case you
were burnt alive. The vast majority of those who were burned, in fact,
were burnt in effigy only because they had either died before the act or
the ata de fay, or because they had saved themselves by fleeing. In
the early years of the Inquisition. The large number of accused burnt in effigy
testifies to the number of refugees escaping from the tribunal. The proportionately small number
of executions is an effective argument against the legend of the blood thirsty Tribunal.
Nothing certainly can efface the horror of the terrible first twenty or sore years,
but it is far from clear that the Inquisition was the juggernaut of death that
has oftentimes assumed it to be still, we do need to remember that while
the overall death rate was low, it fell disproportionately on people of Jewish and
Muslim origin. Executions probably had a minor impact on the population at large,
but were a significant burden on the conversos. Most Europeans knew the Inquisition because
of the acts of faith, or, as they were called at the time,
Autos de fe. These were the public condemnation ceremonies that combined preaching,
prayer, denunciations, verdicts and sentences. People flocked to see them. They
were truly a novelty throughout Europe, truly uniquely Spanish. The Auto de Fey
in its heyday was an event without parallel Visitors from other countries would throng in
when it was announced one would be held. The Auto de fe in sixteen
ten at Lorengo attracted, according to an official of the Inquisition, thirty thousand
people from countries like France, Aragon, Navarre, Basque Country and Castile.
Since the town had only a population of four thousand, the number of visitors
would have created a memorable and historic impression. Though the number is clearly exaggerated.
The scene would invariably be set at the biggest square or public space available.
The elaborate and impressive staging of the proceedings, depicted clearly in prints of
the period, made for heavy expense, and because of this auto's de fe
were not frequent. Their frequency depended entirely on the discretion of the individual tribunals
and the availability of prisoners. When necessary, prisoners could be brought from the
very ends of the peninsula. For the great sixteen eighty Auto in Madrid,
Condemned were brought in from Galicia and Andalasia. When enough prisoners had accumulated to
make the holding of an act of faith worthwhile, a date was fixed for
the event, and the inquisitors informed the authorities of the municipality and the cathedral.
One calendar month before the Auto de fe, a procession consisting of familiars
and notaries of the inquisition would march through the streets of the town, proclaiming
the date of the ceremony. Orders went out carpenters and masons to prepare the
scaffolding for the occasion, and decorations were made ready. The evening before the
Auta da fe, a special proceeding took place, known as the Procession of
the Green Cross, during which familiars and others carried the cross of the Holy
Office to the site of the ceremony. All that night, prayers and preparations
were made. Then early the next morning, Mass was celebrated, Breakfast was
given to all who appeared in the Auta de Fay, including those condemned,
and a procession began which led directly to the square where it would be held.
There is one contemporary account of the first Attada Fay, held in Toledo
on Sunday, the twelfth of February fourteen eighty six, during which over seven
hundred Jews were reconciled to the church. At this early epic, ceremonial and
ritual were notably absent. The inquisitors were occupied solely with the task of reconciling
large number of heretics quickly and efficiently. Here's the account all the reconciled when
in procession to the number of persons seven fifty, including both men and women,
they went in procession from the Church of Saint Peter Martyr in the following
way. The men were all together in a group, bare headed and unshod,
and since it was extremely cold, they were told to wear souls under
their feet, which were otherwise bare, and their hands were unlit candles.
The women were together in a group, their heads uncovered and their faces bare,
unshod, like the men when with candles. Among all these were many
prominent men in high office. With the bitter cold and dishonor and disgrace they
suffered from the great number of spectators. They went along, howling loudly and
weeping, and tearing out their hair, no doubt more for the dishonor they
were suffering than for any offense they had committed against God. Thus they went
in tribulation through the along which the Corpus Christi procession goes, until they came
to the cathedral. At the door of the church were two chaplains who made
the sign of the Cross on each other's forehead, saying, quote, received
the sign of the cross, which you denied and lost through being deceived end
quote. Then they went into the church until they arrived at a scaffolding erected
by a new gate, and on it were the further inquisitors. Nearby was
another scaffolding, on which stood an altar, at which they sent mass and
delivered a sermon. After this, a notary stood up and began to call
each one by name. Quote is ex here end quote. The penitent would
raise his candle and say yes. There in the public they read all the
things which he had done. The same was done for the women. When
this was over, they were publicly allotted penance and ordered to go in procession
for six fridays, including scourging their bodies, bare backed, unshown, and
bare headed. They were to also fast for those six fridays. It was
also ordered that all the days of their life they were to hold no public
office, or to be public scriveners or messengers, and that those who held
public office were to lose them, and that they were not to become money
changers, shopkeepers or grocers, or hold any post whatsoever. They were not
to wear silk or scarlet, or colored cloth, or gold or silver,
or pearls or any jewels, nor could they stand as witnesses. And they
were ordered that if they relapsed, that is, if they fell into the
same error again and resorted to any of the forementioned things, they would be
condemned to the fire. And when all this was over they went away.
It was two o'clock in the afternoon end quote. Burning at the stake was
even rarer. We have one following account from the Auta de Fay felt at
Laurento in August seventeen nineteen. Around the jew are a number of religious people,
who quote pressed the accused with great anxiety and zeal to convert himself.
With perfect serenity, he said, I will convert myself to the faith of
Jesus Christ, words which he had not been heard to utter until then.
This overjoyed all the religious, who began to embrace him with tenderness and gave
finite thanks to God for having opened them a door for his conversion. And
as he was making his confession of faith, a learned religious man of the
Franciscan order asked him in what law do you die? He turned and looked
him in the eye and said, father, I have already told you that
I die in the faith of Jesus Christ. This caused great pleasure and joy
among all, and the Franciscan, who was kneeling down, arose and embraced
the accused. All the others did the same with great satisfaction, giving thanks
for the finite goodness of God. God. At this moment the accused saw
the executioner, who had put his head out from behind the stake, and
asked him, why did you call me a dog before? The executioner replied,
because you denied the faith of Jesus Christ. But now that you have
confessed, we are brothers. And if I have offended you by what I
said, I beg pardon on my knees. The accused forgave him gladly,
and the two embraced and desirous that the soul which had given so many signs
of conversion would not be lost. I went round casually behind the stake to
where the executioner was and gave him the order to strangle him immediately, because
it was very important not to delay. This. He did with great expedition.
When it was certain he was dead, the executioner was ordered to set
fire at the four corners of the pyre to the brushwood and charcoal that had
been piled up. He did this at once, and it began to burn
on all sides, the flames rising swiftly up the platform and burning the wood
and clothing. When the cords binding the accused had been burnt off, he
fell through the open trap door into the pire, and his whole body was
reduced to ashes. Quote. There was no age limit for those condemned to
the stake. Women in their eighties and boys and their teens were treated the
same. By the mid sixteenth century, acts of faith autos de fe were
so rare that they had become essentially once in lifetime events. By the second
half of that century, they had become obsolete. Only private acts of faith
happened during those thirty odd years. Perhaps, as one commenter dryly observed,
the heretics had been purged out of existence. So that's it for our look
at the Inquisition in general. Next week, we returned to our Galileo story
to wrap up his trial and his confrontation with the Inquisition. Spoiler alert,
He's not going to be burned at the stake now. As always, if
you're looking for more Western SIEV, I've got links in the show notes.
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