A History of the Inquisition of Spain; vol. 2

by Henry Charles Lea

To this the spiritual courts offered a contrast in their customary benignity towards clerical offenders, amounting almost to immunity. The course of procedure was that, when a denunciation was made to the provisor or vicar-general, he took testimony or sent an official to make inquisition; the accused was summoned and was admitted to bail; the trial took the shape of an action between him and the fiscal, who presented an accusation to which the defence made reply. Witnesses for the defence were examined, publication of evidence was made and, when both parties had concluded, the judge named a day for pronouncing sentence. From two cases of the sixteenth century, of which the papers are before me, it would appear that there was little delay, that formalities were loosely observed and that the proverbial leniency shown to the cloth rendered the whole a matter of comparative indifference. One of these illustrates the expiring episcopal jurisdiction over heresy and its supplantation by the Inquisition. In 1551, Diego de Carcano, a priest of Ciudad Real, was tried for heretical acts and speeches, which he freely admitted, saying that they had been in jest and that he ought not to have trifled with the things of God. The trial was concluded within three weeks and Diego was confined for a few days in a parish church with spiritual exercises, besides paying costs, amounting to about thirty-two reales. Two years later, Inquisitor Valtodano, on a visitation, chanced to hear of the affair; he treated the episcopal trial as invalid and vindicated together the faith and the inquisitorial jurisdiction by a second prosecution of the unlucky priest.[1366]

The laxity of the Church towards its erring members was still further illustrated by the reforms adopted in the provincial synod of Toledo, held in 1565 to receive the Council of Trent. The fiscal was ordered not to denounce any one to the judge; no inquisition was to be made, unless there was a legitimate general report against a culprit, and then the judge was required to investigate carefully whether it arose from malevolence or from reputable persons. If the fiscal desired to accuse any one he was subjected to the laws concerning accusers and, if he failed to prove the charges, he was liable for the costs and to punishment at the discretion of the judge. All pecuniary penalties were to be expended in pious uses, and not for the advantage of the bishop or his vicar-general, and an official was to be deputed to receive them and render a strict account.[1367]

The most marked distinction between the procedure of the Inquisition and that of the other jurisdictions was the inviolable secrecy in which all its operations were shrouded. There were, indeed, other evil peculiarities, but this it was which inflicted the greatest wrong on its victims and exposed the inquisitor to the strongest temptation to abuse his power. It was an inheritance from the thirteenth century, when the Inquisition early discovered the greater freedom of action and the increased popular dread resulting from the mystery which emancipated it from public opinion and veiled all its actions, until their outcome was revealed in the solemnities of the auto de fe. The Roman Inquisition retained it, but in a somewhat modified degree. All its officials were sworn to silence as to everything that occurred in the Congregation but, in 1629, this was explained as restricted only to matters that might prejudice cases.[1368] Very different was the awful silence so enforced in Spain that it formed an important factor in the power of the Holy Office.

SECRECY

It is not a little remarkable that, when the institution was introduced in Castile, so little was known of its practical working that its procedure was public, like that of the secular and spiritual courts. Thus, in 1483, the record of a trial in Ciudad Real speaks of the inquisitors sitting in public audience; the notaries specify as present at the hearing certain persons by name “and many others who were there present;” the inquisitors were listening to all who came before them, while the fiscal and notary were making reports.[1369] It was deemed necessary that there should be spectators to bear witness to the proceedings; sometimes these were connected with the tribunal, sometimes they were citizens called in for the purpose, whose names were regularly entered upon the record.[1370] Even the prison, subsequently guarded so jealously, was not as yet known as the cárceles secretas, but as a cárcel publica.[1371] In 1488, the Instructions order the records to be kept “in a public place, where the inquisitors customarily perform the duties of the Inquisition.”[1372] The earliest indication of a change in this respect occurs in the Instructions of 1498, where the oath prescribed for inquisitors and other officials contains a pledge of secrecy.[1373] This did not, as yet however, extend to a complete exclusion of publicity, for some Toledo trials of 1501 describe the fiscal as presenting his clamosa, or demand for prosecution, where the inquisitors were sitting as customary in their public audience, but, during the trial itself, they sat in the “audiencia de cárcel.”[1374] From the expressions used we may assume that as yet the inquisition building and the prison were separate; that public audiences were held in the former, and that the latter contained a room to which the accused could be brought from his cell when on trial. The secreto, which subsequently embraced the prison and everything beyond the ante-chambers, as yet only designated a chest or a room in which the records and registers were kept in safety.[1375]

Yet even during this early period there had commenced, in certain portions of procedure, a practice of secrecy which markedly differentiated the Inquisition from the ecclesiastical and secular courts. The suppression of the names and identity of witnesses and the strict seclusion of prisoners from the outside world are matters which will be more fully discussed hereafter, but already they had become distinctive features of the inquisitorial process, inflicting great hardship on the accused, which was keenly felt. The tendency of all such abuses to development, the facility with which the reasons alleged in justification could be extended over all the acts of the Inquisition, and the attraction of the arbitrary and irresponsible power thus gained, readily explain the rapid evolutionary process which enveloped, with an impenetrable veil of secrecy, everything connected with the tribunals, from the preliminary inquest and the arrest of the accused, to his discharge or appearance in an auto de fe.

SECRECY

The obligation of the oath of secrecy was rigidly construed when, in 1523, the vicar-general of Saragossa seems to have babbled about what he had heard when called in to vote at a consulta de fe, and the Suprema ordered the inquisitors to summon him and warn him not to reveal the secrets of the Holy Office.[1376] In 1544, Mari Serrana, on trial at Toledo, was charged with impeding the Inquisition, because she had endeavored to ascertain whether a certain person had testified in another case and what he had said—the mere attempt to learn what went on within those mysterious walls was treated as a crime.[1377] In 1547, when the tribunal of Granada was moved into new quarters, it found its secrecy imperilled by the fact that it was overlooked by some windows in the house of Francisco de Santa Cruz, and, on its complaint to Prince Philip, he ordered the corregidor to have those windows closed up—apparently without compensation to the owner.[1378] So impenetrable was the shroud enveloping all that took place within the tribunal that, when Philip II deemed it imperative to consult a distinguished surgeon who had been arrested, Inquisitor-general Quiroga left two applications unanswered and to a third replied that, if the person was there, he could not be taken out, nor could it even be told whether he was or was not a prisoner, whereupon the king desisted from his request. On this the comment of an inquisitor is that to all inquiries the answer must be that nothing is known.[1379] So when, in 1643, the Suprema argued against the claim of the Justicia of Aragon to grant his manifestacion or habeas corpus in secular cases, the chief reason alleged was that, if a tribunal could be required to differentiate cases of faith from others and to admit that it had a certain person in its prison, and the cause, its secrecy would be violated.[1380] This was emphasized, in 1678, by a declaration of the Suprema that an inquisitor admitting that any individual was in the secret prison would incur excommunication removable only by the pope.[1381] It is easy to understand why the prison was habitually designated as the cárceles secretas and why, when a person was arrested, he disappeared as utterly as though the earth had swallowed him.

At every step in the progress of a case minute precautions were taken to insure absolute secrecy. It was not only all officials who were thus sworn, but accuser and accused and their witnesses were subjected to the same obligation. As early as 1531, a witness when dismissed was ordered to observe silence as to all that he had said or heard, under pain of excommunication and a thousand ducats, and of the other penalties of those who violate the secrecy of the Holy Office.[1382] As late as 1817, in a trifling case which was suspended, the informer was fined for not having preserved secrecy.[1383] It was the same with the accused. At the very first audience, the oath administered to tell the truth contained a clause pledging him to silence, not only as to his own case but as to all that he might see or hear. When he was dismissed, whether to punishment or to freedom, he was required to sign a pledge under oath to the same effect, to which was added a threat of punishment, occasionally taking the shape of one or two hundred lashes.[1384] In the later years of the Inquisition this was frequently reinforced by including in the sentence a clause prohibiting the culprit from talking in any manner about his case.[1385] The tribunal thus was relieved from responsibility and could commit injustice without fear of unpleasant revelations, and the Holy Office could boast, as it customarily did, of the exquisite equity of its judgements, without danger of contradiction. To what extent this was justified may be guessed from a remark of Peña, that no inspection was allowed of the acts of the tribunals because they were often in conflict with the common law and the universal opinion of the doctors.[1386]

Nothing connected with the proceedings of the Inquisition was allowed to remain outside of its walls. Every letter, or mandate, or instruction, or warrant, sent out was invariably required to be returned with the answer or endorsement of its execution. Even the Edicts of Faith and Anathemas given out for publication in the churches were returned with statements of the day on which they were publicly read.[1387] This applied to the counsel entrusted with the defence of the accused. Not only was he sworn to secrecy and to communicate with no one concerning the cases, but the scanty papers entrusted to him were to be kept under lock and key and be scrupulously returned to the tribunal, so that there should be no trace or memory of them. The formal defence which he prepared had to be written by his own hand and no rough draft of it be preserved; no printer was allowed to print such a document nor, indeed, any other paper relating to the Inquisition, without special licence from the inquisitor-general or Suprema, under pain of excommunication and a hundred ducats.[1388] This jealous reserve explains the form in which the records of the Inquisition reach us—those of each process rudely but firmly sewed together and never bound, for they could not be given out to a binder nor could one be admitted into the sacred precincts of the secreto. These injunctions of secrecy were not allowed to be a dead letter. In the Edicts of Faith special clauses called for the denunciation of all cases of violation, or of papers concerning its acts being in the possession of any one.[1389]