A History of the Inquisition of Spain; vol. 3

by Henry Charles Lea

The same spirit is seen in the instructions of the Suprema, October 14, 1819, to the Cuenca tribunal, authorizing the arrest and trial of María Martínez for propositions. In case, it says, the trial shows that she has not erred in the matters charged, or in anything else, she is to be reprimanded and warned and told that the tribunal is keeping a watch over her acts.[304]

There was another kind of suspension, by far the most frequent of all. It often happened, especially in the later periods, that the sumaria, or collection of evidence against a presumed offender, proved insufficient to justify prosecution. In such cases it would be quietly voted to suspension; it was filed away in its place among the records, ready to be exhumed at any time, when further information might supply deficiencies and induce active proceedings. Thousands of these abortive processes reposed in the secreto of the tribunals, the subjects of which were unconscious of the dangers which had threatened them, or that their names were on the lists of suspects of the dreaded tribunal. That they were kept under surveillance is indicated by an occasional note, such as one respecting a certain Johann Wegelin, a Calvinist—“there is a sumaria which has been withdrawn because he became insane and returned to his own country,” or in another case “suspended because he died in 1802.”[305]

Yet, taking it as a whole, when we consider that the inquisitorial system was so framed as to put every temptation in the way of the judges to condemn, for the sake of confiscations, fines, penances, dispensations and commutations, it is rather creditable that acquittals and suspensions should occur in the records even as frequently as we find them there, though of course we have no means of knowing whether those who thus escaped were among the wealthy or the poor.

There was still another possible form of sentence. The Barbarians who overthrew the Roman Empire brought with them an ancestral custom, known as compurgation or, in England, as the Wager of Law, by which a defendant, in either a civil or criminal action, could maintain his title or his innocence by taking an oath and bringing a specified number of men who swore to their belief in its truth. They were known as conjurators or compurgators and were in no sense witnesses; they pretended to no knowledge of the facts but only to their confidence in the veracity of their principal. This crude method of establishing the truth was maintained in all the lands occupied by the Teutonic tribes except in Spain, where the Wisigoths early yielded to the influence of the Roman law. It was eagerly adopted by the clergy, who found in it a convenient means of escaping from the harsher expedients of the ordeal or the wager of battle, so that it acquired the name of canonical purgation.[306] In the thirteenth century, the Inquisition found it used in the trial of heretics and necessarily included it among the resources for doubtful cases, although inquisitorial methods were too thorough to call for its frequent employment.

The Spanish Inquisition naturally inherited compurgation among the other traditions of the institution. When conviction could not be had by evidence or torture, and yet the suspicion was too grave to justify acquittal, it could sentence the accused to undergo compurgation. He could not demand it, nor could he decline it, though he might appeal from the sentence; and failure in compurgation was equivalent to conviction, while success was not acquittal but required abjuration and penance at the discretion of the tribunal, because, although legally shown not to be a heretic, the accused had to be punished for “suspicion.”

COMPURGATION

The early Instructions are silent on the subject, and such cases of the period as I have met indicate that there was no rigidly prescribed method of procedure, although, in the main, they accord in showing it to be a kind of trial by jury, after the tribunal had failed to reach a decision. The general features of the process can be gathered from the case at Saragossa of Beatriz Beltran, wife of the Juan de la Caballería, accused of complicity in the murder of San Pedro Arbues, who died in prison and was relaxed in effigy in the auto of July 8, 1491. She was put on trial for Judaism in 1489; the evidence against her was by no means decisive, while the defence discredited the witnesses and proved by abundant testimony her devotion to the Church, her regular attendance at mass and confession for more than twenty years, her liberality in the celebration of masses and her long hours spent in daily prayer. She could not be tortured in view of her advanced age and severe infirmities and, on August 9, 1492, the consulta de fe voted unanimously that, as torture was out of the question, she be sentenced to canonical purgation, at the judgement of the inquisitors when, if she should purge herself, she should abjure publicly as vehemently suspect of heresy and of Judaizing, and should perform penance at the discretion of the tribunal. The next day the inquisitors pronounced that she was not convicted but vehemently suspect, wherefore she should purge herself with twelve conjurators. They were duly selected and a term of three days was assigned, within which the ceremony should be performed. They assembled in the Aljafería on August 23d, when the publication of evidence and the defence were read to them. She was sworn to tell the truth and was asked whether she had committed these crimes, to which she replied in the negative and was then removed from the room. The inquisitors again read the accusatory evidence and the defence, the compurgators were sworn to tell the truth, and the inquisitors polled them. The first one, Pedro Monterde, said that he believed Beatriz to have sworn truly, for he had known her for fifteen years and had always held her to be a good Christian, the rest unanimously concurred and the purgation was successful. Then, on September 8th, she appeared in an auto as a penitent and, on the 17th, she abjured all heresies and especially those of which she was vehemently suspected, after which the inquisitors rendered sentence, declaring her to be vehemently suspect of the crimes which she had abjured and, as these suspicions and crimes could not be left unpunished, they penanced her with forbidding her to commit these crimes, with the payment of all costs of her trial, the taxation of which they reserved to themselves, and with performing such penance as they might impose on her. The record fails to inform us what was that penance, but it probably transferred to the tribunal a large portion of the property that had escaped her husband’s confiscation.[307]

The threat that failure would imply condemnation was by no means an idle one. About this time, Fray Juan de Madrid was tried before the tribunal of Toledo; there was much adverse evidence in full detail, and the only defence lay in disabling the witnesses. This was partially successful, but enough remained to justify the inquisitors in saying in the sentence that he could have been condemned on it but that, in benignity and mercy, he was offered compurgation. He willingly accepted it and named his compurgators, but half of them refused to sustain his oath of denial, declaring that through their knowledge of him they held him as suspect. This was conclusive; he was considered to be convicted of the charges and the consulta de fe had no hesitation in voting him to relaxation. In like manner, on February 3, 1503, Jayme Benet was burnt at Barcelona because he failed in the compurgation enjoined on him.[308]

A change, probably attributable to the growing desire for absolute secrecy, prescribed by the Instructions of 1500, altered profoundly the prevailing theory of compurgation, for it prohibited the reading to the compurgators of the evidence and defence. In their presence the accused was to deny under oath the charges which were recapitulated by the inquisitors, and the compurgators were simply to be asked whether they believed that he swore the truth, and no other questions.[309] There seems to have been some trouble in abrogating the custom of reading the evidence, for the prohibition had to be repeated in 1514.[310]

COMPURGATION