A History of the Inquisition of Spain; vol. 2

by Henry Charles Lea

SEGREGATION

This strictness was not observed at first. The Instructions of 1488 call attention to the evils arising from communication with prisoners and order inquisitors to see in future that it is not permitted, except by the admittance of religious persons for their spiritual benefit.[1509] This received scant attention, for the Instructions of 1498 order alguazils and gaolers not to permit the entrance of wives or kindred, and whatever is sent to prisoners must be examined to ensure that no letters or messages reach them. Even inquisitors and other officials were forbidden to speak with prisoners except in the presence of another official.[1510] This rigor was relaxed, for an order of the Suprema, in 1514, provided that no one from the outside should speak with a prisoner, except by special licence of the inquisitor, and then only in his presence or that of a notary, and a further concession, in 1536, was that, if a prisoner desired an interview with his wife, the inquisitor, if he saw fit, could grant permission.[1511] These slender concessions, however, were soon withdrawn and, in 1546, officials were reminded that only those permitted by the Instructions could be admitted and any contraventions would be severely punished.[1512] Surreptitious communications were difficult to prevent, and so little were the officials trusted that two locks were required on each cell-door, so that the alcaide or gaoler could not enter without his assistant.[1513] The success with which all this was enforced is boastingly alluded to in a report of the Valladolid auto de fe of May 21, 1559, where it is declared that the inquisitorial process was so secret that no one knew what was the offence of any prisoner till he appeared on the scaffold.[1514]

The increasing importance attached to this is revealed in the Instructions of 1561, which take for granted that all access from outside is forbidden and which regulate the interior life of the prison with the same object. Everything brought to a prisoner, whether provisions or other matters, was reported to the inquisitors who decided as to its delivery; if allowed, it was minutely examined to see that it transmitted no message. If it were found that prisoners had communicated with each other, no pains were spared to find how it was done and what had passed between them. When prisoners were confined together, if their cell was changed, they were kept together and not scattered among others. The segregation from the world was maintained to the end; at the auto de fe no one was allowed to speak with penitents, except the confessors assigned to them, and those who were burnt were sent to their last reckoning without being allowed to learn what was the fate of those whom they held dear. When penitents left the prison, after the auto, they were subjected to the avisos de cárceles, in which they were examined under oath as to all that they had seen or heard while confined, and were ordered, under heavy penalties, to reveal nothing of their own experiences.[1515] All this was not wanton and cold-blooded cruelty; it was merely the pitiless enforcement of a rule which was superior to all the promptings of humanity.

In the fulfilment of the rule the most minute regulations were multiplied and reiterated. The alcaide was warned to be especially careful about his wife and children, who were never to be allowed to see the prisoners; no one was to be admitted to the cells, except the sworn attendant who served the food, and when, as in some tribunals, it was served uncooked for the prisoners to cook, it was not to be wrapped in paper but was to be brought in earthen pots. In serving food and in cleaning cells, the door of one was always to be securely locked before opening another; no windows which looked upon those of the cells were allowed to be opened; in Murcia, the water-carrier who served the Inquisition was not allowed to enter the court-yard to fill the jars, but to do so from a window opening upon the court, or to have the water in a room where the jars could be filled.[1516] No precaution was too minute, no watchfulness too careful, when the supreme object was concerned of isolating the prisoners from their friends and from each other.

WRITING MATERIALS

Yet there were ways of eluding the vigilance of the tribunals, of which bribery of the underlings was the most frequent. Even the alcaides were not insensible to such seductions and a writer advises them to take warning by the example of those who enter office in honor and leave it in ignominy.[1517] The kindred and friends of prisoners were frequently people of means and there could be no hesitation in outlays to circumvent the cruel rules which forbade to them and to the captives all knowledge of each other’s fate. The Inquisition was by no means consistent in its treatment of those who thus violated its regulations. In 1635, Miguel de Maradillo, a bricklayer working on the roof of the prison of Valladolid, carried a message from one prisoner to another informing him that his wife and son had been arrested. On another occasion he told the same prisoner that his daughter had been relieved of the sanbenito and he conveyed a paper from him to them. In this he seems to have been actuated merely by compassion and his punishment was light—a reprimand, six months’ exile from Valladolid and prohibition of future employment on the building of the Inquisition. In 1655, Francisco López Capadocia, on trial by the tribunal of Valladolid, was subjected to a second prosecution, for communicating with other prisoners and was sentenced only to reprimand and exile.[1518] Greater severity seems to have been shown when employees of the tribunals were the guilty parties. In 1591, when Don Alonzo de Mendoza was confined in Toledo on a charge of heresy, his friends outside established correspondence by means of the cook, Francisca de Saavedra, who conveyed the letters in the dishes. She admitted having received bribes to the amount of 8160 maravedís and was punished with a fine of 6000, besides a hundred lashes and four years’ exile.[1519] Still harsher was the treatment, about 1650, in Mexico, of Esteban Domingo, a negro slave employed as an assistant in the crowded inquisitorial prison. He was detected in carrying for money communications between the prisoners and their friends, for which he was condemned to two hundred lashes and six years in the galleys.[1520]

Towards the close of its career the Inquisition seems to manifest a disposition to relax somewhat in its rigidity. In 1815 the Madrid tribunal referred to the Suprema a petition from Doña Manuela Osorno to be permitted to see her husband, Don Vicente Lema, then in its prison. The answer was that, after he had completed his declarations, she might be allowed to see him once or twice a week, in the presence of an inquisitor, but only to confer on their domestic affairs. To this tendency may also be attributed the leniency shown to Alfonso González, barber of the tribunal of Murcia, who made use of his position to convey letters and paper to Francisco Villaescusa, a prisoner, and who was benignantly treated with a reprimand and disability to hold office under the Inquisition.[1521]

A necessary feature of the prohibition of communication was that prisoners were debarred from the use of writing materials, except under the strictest supervision. Some use of them was unavoidable, when drawing up a defence or a petition to the tribunal, opportunity for which was never refused, but they were required to apply to the inquisitors for paper, stating the number of sheets wanted, when these were carefully numbered and rubricated by the secretary, at the upper right-hand corner, and were required to be scrupulously returned, so that there could be no withholding of any for another purpose. This device was prescribed by the Suprema in 1534 and remained the invariable rule.[1522] Thus when Fray Vicente Selles, in Valencia, at an audience of June 27, 1692, asked for two sheets of paper and, on June 30th, returned one and a half in blank, saying that what he had written on the other half-sheet was false and he had thrown it into the filth, he was made to fetch it, filthy as it was.[1523] Whatever quantity a prisoner asked was given to him, and some consumed paper by the quire—indeed, Fray Luis de Leon relieved the tedium and anxiety of his four years’ imprisonment at Valladolid by writing his classical devotional work, the “Nombres de Cristo.”

While, as we have seen, great care was taken to prevent prisoners from communicating with each other, it by no means follows that confinement was solitary. As a general rule it was regarded as preferable that male prisoners should be alone, and that women should have companionship, but there could be no hard and fast line of policy followed, except that accomplices and negativos (those who denied the accusation) should not be placed together. Husband and wife were thus always separated but, when occasion required, there was no hesitation in crowding four or five persons together and, in the careless confidence of common misfortune, this often opened a valuable source of information, for there never seems to have been any scruple in betraying that confidence in the hope of winning favor by reporting to the tribunal the compromising utterances of cell-companions. The object in keeping apart those who were accomplices was to prevent their encouraging each other in denial and agreeing on a common line of defence. Men who were confined by themselves sometimes asked for a companion and women more frequently did so.[1524]

REGULATIONS