Suspicion might be aroused by negative as well as by positive indications and, in the Spain of the Inquisition, it behooved every man to be scrupulously exact in the performance of what were regarded as evidences of orthodoxy, as well as in the avoidance of what created doubt, for everywhere around him were zealous spies, eager to serve the faith. In 1635, Manuel Mardes, travelling with his wife and two other women, passed two men laboring in a field without saluting them. One of them asked him why he did not say “Praised be Jesus Christ” or “Praised be the most Blessed Sacrament,” to which he imprudently replied that God was not known in his own land. The laborers promptly denounced him to the nearest commissioner of the Inquisition, who arrested him. The calificadores voted that this was manifest Judaism and he was thrown into the secret prison of Valladolid, with sequestration. Then there came additional evidence from a cell-companion that he washed his hands on rising and before eating. He denied all intention until he was smartly tortured, when he confessed all that was desired.[1714]

Naturally this negative evidence was habitually sought by the tribunals. In the trials for Judaism and Mahometanism, the accused was always interrogated as to his training in Christian formulas. He was asked to recite the credo and the customary prayers of the Paternoster, the Ave Maria and the Salve Regina, and was made to cross himself, to see whether or not he did it in a manner to show that it was habitual. In Spain there were two forms of this—santiguarse and signarse—the former consisting in making the sign of the cross, with the thumb and forefinger joined, passing them from forehead to cheek and from the left to the right shoulder; the latter in touching the forehead, mouth and chest with the thumb and forefinger of the right hand, or with the thumb alone. This was often a crucial test. Of Mari Gómez it is recorded, July 15, 1550, “She repeated the Ave Maria; she was imperfect in the Paternoster and the creed and said she did not know the Salve Regina. She performed the signo ill but the santiguada well.”[1715]

It has seemed worth while to enter thus minutely into the details of inquisitorial treatment of evidence, as it was so largely a determining factor in the fate of the accused. From this examination it is impossible to resist the conclusion that the system of procedure was framed rather to secure conviction than to ascertain the truth. Guilt was presumed in the fact of arrest and the business of the tribunal was to prove it.

CHAPTER VI.
CONFESSION.

THE heretic was not only a criminal but a sinner. This imposed on the Inquisition a two-fold function—to discover and punish crime and to save the soul of the sinner. Its position was anomalous. It could scarce be called a spiritual tribunal, for inquisitors and members of the Suprema, as we have seen, might be laymen. The jurisdiction over heresy was a special delegation from the Holy See but, although the inquisitor might excommunicate, when the censure was to be removed he did not do it himself but empowered any priest to perform the ceremony.[1716] He never received sacramental confessions or administered the sacrament of penitence; even when a Protestant applied to him to be admitted to the bosom of the Church, a priest was called in to hear the confession and grant absolution.

Thus, while exercising spiritual jurisdiction, the inquisitor, even if in holy orders, abstained from exercising spiritual functions. Yet, as a judge, his duties were not purely secular. In theory the object of the Inquisition was the saving of souls; the detection and punishment of heresy were merely a necessary means to that end. The burning of the obstinate impenitent, besides avenging the offence to God, was the removal of a gangrened member to preserve the body from infection. The penalties inflicted on the repentant were not punishment but penance and he was not a convict but a penitent; whatever statement he made during his trial, even in obstinately denying the charges, was a confession, and the penal prison to which he was consigned was a casa de penitencia or de misericordia. Even denunciations and the evidence of witnesses for the defence were sometimes called confessions.

While the distinction was fully recognized between judicial and sacramental confession, and the inquisitor was in no sense a confessor, there was a curious assumption that in the tribunal confession was of a mixed character, partaking of both classes.[1717] The whole procedure was directed to induce the accused to confess his errors, to profess repentance and to beg for mercy. He was adjured by the love of God and his Blessed Mother to discharge his conscience and save his soul by a full confession, as to himself and others, without uttering false testimony as to himself or to them. The so-called advocate who was furnished to defend him was instructed to urge him to this, and to explain that the Holy Office was not like the other tribunals whose business it was to punish the body, for here the only object was to cure the soul and to reunite to the Church those who, by their sins, had left the holy congregation of Christians, in violation of their baptismal promises; he should therefore cast aside all thought of that which concerns the body and think only of his soul, confessing his crimes so that the Holy Office could cure his infirmity, which was beyond the power of any other judge or confessor.[1718]

No doubt there were many inquisitors who conscientiously believed that this was the lofty duty to which they were devoted. There was another motive, however, which was not without weight in prompting the earnest and sometimes cruel means resorted to, for it was held that confession, however it might be obtained, cured all defects and irregularities in the trial.[1719] An inquisitor conscious of having overstepped the limits was therefore doubly anxious to extort from the accused admissions which should exonerate him.

Thus, from the first audience to the final reading of the sentence at the auto de fe, the effort of the tribunal was to bring the sinner to repentance, or at least to confession, by adjurations, by misleading promises of mercy, by threats and, if necessary, by torture. On his way to the stake, the man who had persistently denied his guilt was accompanied by confessors urging him to admit it and to repent. Similar advantage was taken of the death-bed fears of those who died in prison, when, as we have seen, confessors sent to them were instructed to listen to them only in case they confessed sufficiently to “satisfy” the adverse testimony.

SPONTANEOUS CONFESSION