Spanish Prisons / The Inquisition at Home and Abroad, Prisons Past and Present

by Arthur Griffiths

The trial and sentence of the bodies of the dead was common, but it was not peculiar to the Inquisition. As late as 1600, in Scotland, the bodies of the Earl of Gowrie and his brother were brought into court, and sentenced to be hanged, quartered and gibbeted. Logan of Restalrig, in 1609, three years after his death, was tried on the charge of being concerned in the same conspiracy, was found guilty and his property was confiscated.

In recounting the punishments imposed by the Inquisition, we must not forget that it assumed jurisdiction over many crimes which to-day are tried by the civil courts. Bigamy was punished as, by a second marriage, the criminal denied the authority of the Church which makes marriage a sacrament. Certain forms of blasphemy also were brought before it, and perjury as well. Personation of the priesthood, or of officials of the Inquisition, was punished, and later it gained jurisdiction over unnatural crimes. Sorcery and witchcraft, which in other states, including the American colonies, were considered subjects for the secular courts, were within the jurisdiction of the Spanish Inquisition.

Strange as it may appear at first thought, the attitude of the Inquisition toward the witchcraft delusion was one of skepticism almost from the beginning. Individual inquisitors, influenced by the well nigh universal belief, were occasionally active, but the Suprema moderated their zeal. In 1610 an auto was held at Logroño, which was the centre of wild excitement. Twenty-nine witches were punished, six of whom were burned, and the bones of five others who had died in prison were also consumed. The eighteen remaining were "reconciled." In 1614, however, the Suprema drew up an elaborate code of instructions to the tribunals. While not denying the existence of witchcraft, these instructions treated it as a delusion and practically made proof impossible. As a result of this policy the victims of the craze in Spain can be counted almost by the score, while in almost every other country of Europe, they are numbered by the thousand. In Great Britain the best estimate fixes the number of victims at thirty thousand, and as late as 1775 the great legal author, Sir William Blackstone, says that to deny "the actual existence of witchcraft and sorcery is at once flatly to contradict the revealed word of God."[8]

Heresy, of course, according to the views not only of Catholics but of Protestants, deserved death as a form of treason. Tolerance is a modern idea. Calvin burned Servetus at Geneva and was applauded for it. Protestants in England persecuted other Protestants as well as Catholics. The impenitent heretic in Spain was burned alive. That one, who after conviction, expressed his repentance, and his desire to die in the Church was usually strangled before the flames touched him. Before going on to describe some famous autos da fé and the subsequent infliction of the death penalty, a word of explanation is in order.

Protestant doctrines were introduced into Spain either by foreigners or by natives who travelled or studied in foreign lands, but made slow headway. In 1557 a secret organisation, comprising about one hundred and twenty members, was discovered in Seville. The next year another little band of about sixty was found in Valladolid.

The almost simultaneous exposure of these two heretical organisations, both of which included some prominent people, created great commotion. Charles V, then living at San Yuste, whither he had retired after his abdication, wrote to his daughter Juana, who was acting as regent in the absence of Philip II, urging the most stringent measures and advocating that the heretics be pursued mercilessly. Little stimulation of the Inquisition was necessary, and the two little congregations were destroyed.

A part of those condemned at Valladolid were sentenced at a great auto da fé held on Trinity Sunday, May 21st, 1559, in Valladolid, not before Philip II, who was abroad, but his sister, Princess Juana, presided and with her was the unhappy Prince, Don Carlos. It was a brilliant gathering, a great number of grandees of Spain, titled noblemen and gentlemen untitled, ladies of high rank in gorgeous apparel, all seated in great state to watch the arrival of the penitential procession. Fourteen heretics were to die, sixteen more to be "reconciled" but to be branded with infamy and suffer lesser punishments. Among the sufferers were many persons of rank and consideration such as the two brothers Cazalla and their sister, children of the king's comptroller, one of them a canon of the Church, the other a presbyter, and all three members of the little Lutheran congregation. Their mother had died in heresy and on this occasion her effigy, clad in her widow's weeds and wearing a mitre with flames, was paraded through the streets and then burned publicly. Her house, where Lutherans had met for prayer, was razed to the ground and a pillar erected with an inscription setting forth her offence and sentence. Another victim was the licentiate, Antonio Herrezuelo, an impenitent Lutheran, the only one who went to the stake unmoved, singing psalms by the way, and reciting passages of scripture. They gagged him at last and a soldier in his zeal stabbed him with his halberd, but the wound was not mortal and bleeding and burning, he slowly expired.

The sixteen who survived the horrors of the day were haled back to the prison of the Inquisition to spend one more night in the cells. Next morning they were again taken before the inquisitors who exhorted them afresh, and their sentences were finally read to them. Some destined to the galleys were transferred first to the civil prison to await removal, after they had been flogged through the streets and market places. Others clad in the sanbenito and carrying ropes were exposed to the hoots and indignities of the ribald crowd. All who passed through the hands of the Holy Office were sworn to seal up in everlasting silence whatever they had seen, heard or suffered, on peril of a renewed prosecution.

Philip II was present at the second great auto in Valladolid in October of the same year, when the remainder of the Protestants were sentenced. His wife, Queen Mary of England, was dead, and he returned to Spain by way of the Netherlands, embarking at Flushing for Laredo. Rough weather and bad seamanship all but wrecked his fleet in sight of port, and Philip vowed if he were permitted to set foot on shore, to prosecute the heretics of Spain unceasingly. He was saved from drowning and went at once to Valladolid to carry out his vow.