A History of the Inquisition of Spain; vol. 3

by Henry Charles Lea

The penal resources of the Inquisition, as we shall see, were endless. While, for certain well-defined offences, certain penalties were customary, the discretion of the consultas de fe was bound by no definite limitations as to what were known as penas extraordinarias, and they could devise whatever seemed appropriate to special cases. Infinite gradations and intricate combinations were resorted to in the effort to fit the penalty to the offence of each individual, and also doubtless often to secure unanimity in the consulta de fe, so that not infrequently there are six or eight separate and distinct inflictions in a single sentence. It would be too much to expect that, in so composite an institution, during more than three centuries of existence, there should have been strict consistency in the exercise of this discretional power, but, making allowance for the infirmities of human nature under the temptation of irresponsibility, it can scarce be said that it habitually abused its authority, according to the barbarous standard of the times, except in the infliction of pecuniary penalties on which its finances depended, and in the vindication of its authority against all who dared to question its supremacy. It was callous to the sufferings of those whom it prejudged as guilty; it devised the most atrocious formulas of procedure; but, when it had secured confession or conviction, it was not systematically and ferociously cruel as has so often been asserted.

As regards the enforcement of the sentence, it is to be observed that the penalties divide themselves into two classes. Some, such as relaxation, confiscation, fines, scourging, the galleys, reconciliation and abjuration, were within the power of the tribunal. Others, like imprisonment, the sanbenito, exile and reclusion, depended to a greater or less degree on the will or the fears of the penitent. Theoretically, as we have seen, punishment was regarded as penance, voluntarily accepted by the penitent for the salvation of his soul, but the Inquisition, unlike the father confessor, did not rely wholly on the penitential ardor of the sinner. Punishment retained enough of the character of penance to justify the theologian in treating its non-performance as a proof that repentance had been feigned, and that the offender had relapsed into heresy, the penalty for which, under the canons, was death by fire without trial. In the earlier time this was enforced in so far as was possible. Thus, in 1486, at Saragossa, Rodrigo de Gris, who had been condemned to perpetual imprisonment in a designated house, with the penalty of relapse for leaving it, escaped and was burnt in effigy as a relapsed and, in 1487, Cristóval Gelva, to whom the Hospital of Nuestra Señora de la Gracia was assigned as a perpetual prison, was burnt in effigy for escaping.[266] This continued for some time to be the theory but, in practice, while summoning the fugitive as an impenitent relapsed, to appear for judgement, it was deemed safer to proceed against him in the ordinary way in absentia, waiting for a year and prosecuting him for contumacy. Such a case appears to be that of Bartolomé Gallego, who escaped in 1525 from the penitential prison of Toledo and was condemned to relaxation in effigy, November 3, 1527.[267] Some forty years later, Pablo García explains that the suspicion arising from flight, joined with that of remaining under excommunication for a year, afforded sufficient proof for declaring the fugitive a relapsed heretic and relaxing his effigy. It was only when evidence could be had of subsequent acts of heresy that direct proceedings for relapse were justified, and this was decided in a case where a fugitive was relaxed in effigy, and the Suprema revoked the sentence and rescinded the confiscation.[268]

NON-PERFORMANCE

The theory of relapse was evidently giving way. Simancas tells us that, although supported by high authorities, it is cruel and false and not founded in law; the fugitive is impenitent, not relapsed; if he returns or is captured he is to be heard, and if prepared to obey the Church, his flight only deserves an increase of penalty.[269] How rapidly the ancient severity was disappearing is manifested by a case in Valencia, in 1570. Pedro Luis Verga was prosecuted for Protestantism on a vague accusation that, when studying in Paris in 1555, he had consorted with the dreaded Juan Pérez and had shared his opinions, for which he was reconciled and sentenced not to leave the kingdom. He disobeyed and, in 1570, he was heard of in Genoa, giving utterance to heretical opinions. Now this was a case of relapse, as well as of non-fulfilment of penance, but he was prosecuted for contumacy as a simple fugitive.[270] It was an evidence that the old rule had become obsolete when inquisitors sometimes prescribed in their sentences that the penance was to be performed under pain of impenitent relapse, as in the case of Juan Franco, condemned at Toledo, in 1570, to eight years of galleys for Protestantism, and of Juan Cote, by the same tribunal, in 1615, to irremissible perpetual prison for the same heresy.[271] Towards the middle of the seventeenth century, Alberghini gives the various opinions held on the subject, and concludes that that of Simancas was commonly accepted.[272]

Cases of non-fulfilment were not infrequent for, as we shall see, the discipline of the penitential prisons was exceedingly lax; any penitent could absent himself and then throw off the sanbenito, which was the customary accompaniment of imprisonment, but, although this was canonically relapse, such cases were treated with what in those days might be considered as mercy. Thus Diego González, reconciled for Judaism at Valladolid, in 1644, and condemned to prison and habit, was recognized in 1645, at Medina de Rioseco, without the sanbenito. On being tried for this, the consulta de fe was not unanimous and the Suprema sentenced him to a hundred lashes.[273] It was the same with sentences of exile. In 1667, at Toledo, Francisco López Rodríguez, who had been reconciled in 1665 and had already been prosecuted for non-fulfilment of penance, was tried for doing so again, and was condemned only to a hundred lashes and two years more of exile. So in 1669, Juan López Peatin, for infraction of exile, had only two years added to the original term.[274]

A curious case, however, in 1606, shows how penitents were expected to fulfil their penances. Gaspar Godet, a Morisco, had been condemned at Valencia to reconciliation, a hundred lashes, and perpetual prison, of which the first eight years were to be passed in the galleys. After five years’ service, his galley was captured by the English, near Lisbon, and he was set free. He ought strictly to have conveyed himself on board of another galley to serve out his term, but he seems to have imagined that he was released from his sentence; he quietly returned to his native Torre de Llovis and resumed his profession of surgeon. He was, of course, reported to the tribunal, which seized him in August, 1606, and condemned him not only to complete his sentence but to undergo a hundred lashes and to pay a fine of two hundred libras, although the maximum fine that could legally be imposed on a Morisco was ten ducats.[275]

The renewed activity of the Inquisition, in the early eighteenth century, seems to have been accompanied with a recrudescence of severity in these cases. In the Valencia auto de fe of February 24, 1723, Antonio Rogero was reconciled and condemned to irremissible prison and sanbenito. He escaped but was captured and, in the auto of March 12, 1724, he was condemned to two hundred lashes and five years of galleys, after which he was to be returned to prison, but the inquisitor-general mercifully commuted the scourging and galleys to five years of presidio, or labor in an African garrison. So, in the Valencia auto of June 25, 1724, Joseph Ventura, of Fez, a Moorish convert, had been reconciled with three years of prison and sanbenito; he fled, was captured and, in the auto of July 1, 1725, his prison was made perpetual and irremissible; again he fled, to be again caught and, in the auto of September 17, 1725, he was condemned to five years of galleys, after which he was to be returned to prison.[276]

NON-FULFILMENT OF PENANCE

All these were cases of formal heresy, for relapse in which the canonical punishment was burning. For offences less heinous, which inferred only suspicion of heresy, there was an occasional practice of including in the sentence a penalty for non-fulfilment of the penance. This was in every respect an arbitrary matter, concerning which no generalization can be formulated, for it is frequently impossible to divine why, in a group of similar cases, some sentences should carry this threat and some should not. This apparently objectless diversity is markedly exhibited in the auto of May 13, 1565, at Seville, where there were a large number of penitents thus arbitrarily differentiated. In the cases where the threat was employed, there was slender indication of mercy, for where exile for life or for a term of years was imposed, the penalty for non-fulfilment was that it should be completed in the galleys. In one case, that of Abel Jocis, for conveying arms to Barbary, the sentence was merely a prohibition to sail to Barbary, but a violation of this was visited with the galleys for life.[277] It should be added, however, for the credit of the Inquisition, that it not infrequently made threats which it had not the cruelty to execute. Thus the tribunal of Toledo, on a charge of divination, banished from Spain a priest named Fernando Betanzas, with a threat of the galleys for disobedience. Not long afterwards the Bishop of Salamanca found and arrested him, and the Suprema, December 22, 1636, ordered the tribunal of Valladolid to investigate the case, after which the Suprema contented itself with deporting him to Portugal, and warning him that, if he returned again, he should be sent to the galleys.[278]

The case of the Augustinian Fray Diego Caballero, in 1716, indicates how non-fulfilment of penance might convert into formal heresy that which was mere suspicion. For uttering unacceptable propositions, he had been sentenced by the tribunal of Córdova to reclusion for four years in the convent of Guadix. He fled from there and continued to repeat his erroneous utterances, for which the Toledo tribunal pronounced him to be relapsed in grave crime and sentenced him to abjure de vehementi, to be suspended from his orders for a year, to perpetual deprivation of preaching, confessing and the right to vote and be voted for, to ten years’ exile from a number of places, to four years’ reclusion in a designated house, where for six months he was to be confined in a cell. He was also to wear a sanbenito, while his sentence was read in the audience-chamber, and the next day it was to be read to the assembled brethren of his Toledo convent, who were to administer to him a circular discipline, and he was to forfeit half his peculium—and all this under pain of being held as an impenitent relapsed.[279] What is noteworthy here is not only the severity of this long accumulation of penalties, but also the abjuration de vehementi which rendered reincidence in the abjured errors a matter for the stake.