"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.