A History of the Inquisition of Spain; vol. 2

by Henry Charles Lea

Of course there was occasional danger and of course there were efforts, by threats or otherwise, to deter informers and witnesses, but this is common in all criminal justice, though there was no thought of applying concealment to the secular courts. It was a privilege exclusively in favor of the faith. Considering the provocation and the number of the victims, attacks on witnesses would appear to be singularly few and wholly inadequate to justify their protection by such means, although the Inquisition never ceased to proclaim it as an ever-present danger. In August, 1500, Ferdinand and Isabella asked of Manoel of Portugal the extradition of Juan de Zafra and his son-in-law for seeking to kill Juan López of Badajoz, who had testified against Zafra and, not finding him, had beaten to death his pregnant wife and stabbed his young son and had escaped to Portugal. They were surrendered, but there seem to have been no precedents for their prosecution and, in January, 1501, we find Ferdinand writing to the tribunal of Seville to hold a consultation as to the procedure in the case. Again, in January 1502, when a witness in Calatayud was threatened, Ferdinand ordered the inquisitor, if the report was true, to take such action as comported with the honor of the Holy Office and the protection of witnesses.[1649] Evidently cases had been so rare that no method of dealing with them had been formulated. Still, apprehension was lively and when, in 1507, at Llerena, some Conversos living near the Inquisition were suspected of watching to see what witnesses went there, Ferdinand empowered the inquisitors to remove six of them summarily and replace them with persons beyond suspicion.[1650]

The suppression of the names of witnesses was necessarily felt as an extreme hardship by the Conversos, not only as impeding defence but as stimulating false accusations, which there was no opportunity of disproving. The Jaen memorial of 1506 does not hesitate to accuse the officials of the tribunal of thus piling up fictitious charges, and Lucero’s career at Córdova shows how successfully this could be done when witnesses need not be either named or produced. That efforts should be made to purchase relief was natural. When, in 1512, Ferdinand was lacking in funds for the conquest of Navarre, an offer of 600,000 ducats was made to him, if he would remove the seal of secrecy from the names of informers and witnesses, but we are told that he preferred his God and his faith and the preservation of religion. Soon after his death an attempt was made to tempt the young Charles V with a bribe of 800,000 crowns. His greedy advisers favored the petition, but Ximenes interposed with a strong remonstrance, reciting Ferdinand’s refusal and predicting the ruin of the Holy Office. Recently he added at Talavera la Reina, a Judaizing Converso, punished by it, obtained knowledge of the informer, lay in wait for him and slew him, and such is the infamy inflicted by the Inquisition and such the hatred engendered by it that, if the names of the witnesses were published, they would be slain, not only in solitudes but in the streets and even in the churches; no one would be able to denounce heretics, save at the peril of his life, so that the Inquisition would be ruined and God would have no defender. Charles was convinced and the dazzling bribe was rejected.[1651]

SUPPRESSION OF WITNESSES’ NAMES

Thus the policy of the Inquisition was settled, and so completely was it embodied in the estilo that it was frequently enforced in cases where its ostensible reason was inapplicable. When Juan Franco was burnt for Protestantism at Toledo, in 1570, the only witness against him was another Frenchman, Jean de Provins, who had confessed to being a Protestant dogmatizer and as such was undoubtedly burnt. His only evidence had been some idle talk between them, eight years previously; he was eminently safe from vengeance and yet his name was carefully suppressed in the publication of evidence.[1652] For all this, when the rule was applied to the inquisitors, as it was in the visitations, when the inspector was interrogating the officials about each other, they fully recognized its injustice. Thus, in 1574, during an inspection of the Canary tribunal, when the inquisitor Ortiz de Funes was inculpated, he complained bitterly that it rendered it impossible for him to verify or invalidate the testimony of the witnesses—a scruple which he had never felt when administrating justice in this fashion.[1653]

The fiction was persistently maintained that the usefulness of the Inquisition depended wholly on the suppression of the names of witnesses. In the struggle over the evocation to Rome of the case of Villanueva, the main argument, repeatedly advanced by the Suprema, was that if appeals to Rome were permitted they would destroy its efficiency in the suppression of heresy, for no one would denounce heretics or testify against them, if there was risk that their names would become known in Rome by the papers being carried thither.[1654]

The idleness of this talk is indicated by the rarity of cases of injury or threats to witnesses and the moderation with which they were customarily punished. The most serious case that I have met was that which followed the condemnation to lifelong reclusion in a monastery of Luis Pallas, Lord of Cortes, by the tribunal of Valencia, in 1571, for protecting his Morisco vassals from the Inquisition. Suspicion of having informed on him fell upon Francisco González and the Pallas family ordered his murder, for which, in 1577, four of the Pallas retainers were relaxed to the captain-general for execution. So unusual was the case that the latter had scruples as to his duty, which Philip II told him were superfluous and had unnecessarily delayed the punishment.[1655] Like any other murder, this involved the death-penalty, but as a rule offences of minor degree were leniently treated. In 1631, Francisca Muñoz of Segovia wounded Juan Martínez in the face, after asking why he had put her mother-in-law in the Inquisition, for which she was only reprimanded in the audience-chamber and banished for two years from Segovia.[1656] In various other cases of threatening witnesses, the severest punishment I have met is a hundred lashes, coupled with more or less exile and this, considering the liberality with which scourging was administered, implies that the offence was not regarded as requiring severe repression.[1657] Although thus the penalties were not greatly deterrent, the cases would appear to be singularly few. In the Toledo record, from 1648 to 1794, the only one occurred in 1650, when Pedro de Vega, alcalde of Mombeltran, after trial for a proposition without conviction, had threatened and insulted the witnesses; for this he was prosecuted and escaped with a severe reprimand and warning.[1658]

CONFRONTATION

To appreciate fully the hardship which the suppression of witnesses’ names inflicted on the accused, it must be borne in mind that his only opportunity of knowing what was the evidence against him was in the so-called publication. This will be considered more in detail hereafter, and it suffices here to point out how the effort to mislead the prisoner as to the identity of his accusers led to the garbling of the evidence in a manner necessarily adding impediments to the exceedingly limited opportunities allowed him for defence. Yet we occasionally meet with cases which suggest that inquisitors were less solicitous about the safety of their witnesses than to create the belief in safety that would encourage denunciation. Thus, in the trial of Hans of Antwerp in Toledo for Lutheranism, in 1561, there was no scruple in setting forth the evidence in such wise that he could not fail to identify the witness.[1659] This could scarce be avoided in the very fruitful source of evidence volunteered by cell-companions. Thus in the Toledo case of Pedro Flamenco, in 1570, the testimony of two fellow-prisoners as to his talk and conduct in prison is so set forth as to render their identification inevitable and, as it included their opinions that he was a scoundrel and villain, there must have been lively times in that cell on his return from his audience.[1660] In cases of solicitation, the attempt to prevent identification was futile, for the confessor could not fail, from the incidents freely detailed, to recognize the women whom he had seduced or attempted to seduce.

In secular procedure there was occasional recourse to “confrontation”—bringing the accused face to face with the accuser or the witnesses and letting them debate the questions that had puzzled the judges, but it was regarded as a doubtful expedient, to be resorted to only when all else had failed.[1661] In 1491, in the case of the Santo Niño de la Guardia, where the accused were witnesses against each other and their confessions under torture were irreconcilable, confrontation was tried with dubious success.[1662] This indicates that under supreme pressure the veil of secrecy might be withdrawn, and probably the example was occasionally followed, for Valdés, in the Instructions of 1561, felt it necessary to say that, although confrontation was practised in other jurisdictions, it was not customary in the Inquisition for, besides the violation of secrecy, experience had shown that when tried it was disadvantageous.[1663] This did not wholly put an end to it for, in 1568, the Suprema sharply rebuked the tribunal of Barcelona for various irregularities, among which was the frequent recourse to confrontation.[1664] The latest allusion to the practice that I have met with in Spain occurs in the Valladolid case, in 1620, of the priest Juan de Gabana and his accomplice Gerónima González, when the consulta de fe proposed to confront them, but referred the matter to the Suprema. Its decision would doubtless have been in the negative, but was never rendered as Gabana died before it replied.[1665] In the Roman Inquisition confrontation was sparingly admitted, and only when both parties were of low estate—never between those of higher station or of different classes.[1666]

While sedulous care was taken to prevent the accused from identifying the witnesses, it often was necessary for the witnesses to identify the accused, to prevent mistakes liable to occur in the arbitrary methods of the Inquisition. This was so managed as to accomplish both objects. The somewhat crude plan adopted, in 1528, in the trial at Toledo of Diego de Uceda, was to conceal the witnesses in the torture chamber, while he was walked up and down for a quarter of an hour, until they fully identified him.[1667] Subsequently it was found expedient to furnish the audience-chamber with a celosia—a jalousy or lattice-work, through which the witness could peer without being discovered. Its utility was strikingly demonstrated in 1649, in a Valladolid case of alleged bigamy, when one of the wives, Ana Roman, was brought to inspect the accused through the lattice and declared that he was not the Juan González whom she had married, as he differed in age, in size, and in features, whereupon he was discharged.[1668]