A History of the Inquisition of Spain; vol. 3

by Henry Charles Lea

At length the Instructions of 1561 endeavored to introduce some system in this scandalous state of things. The sentence of reconciliation condemned the penitent to prison and sanbenito for a specified term, during which he was to wear the abito publicly over his other garments; he was to be confined in the perpetual prison, going to mass and sermon on Sundays and feast days, and on Saturdays performing certain devotions at a designated shrine.[426] To enforce this discipline the Instructions stated that, as many tribunals had no perpetual prison, houses should be bought for the purpose as, without them there were no means of knowing whether the reconciled performed their penance. The alcaide should help them in their necessity by giving them materials to work at their trades and help to support themselves, and the inquisitors should visit the prison several times a year.[427] This seems to have been followed by an effort to induce the tribunals to provide prisons, for, in 1562, Toledo was taken to task for having none. It not only did not supply the deficiency but demurred to the suggestion that it should at least furnish a person to see that the penitents performed their penance, and it was told that for three or four thousand maravedís of extra pay the portero could attend to this.[428]

THE PENITENTIAL PRISON

In 1570 the Suprema resumed the attempt to bring about this much needed reform. It told the tribunals that they could rent houses until they should be able to purchase, and they must appoint proper persons as alcaides to keep watch over the penitents.[429] The result of this pressure was gradual. In 1577 the Cistercian convent of Santa Fe, in Saragossa, made formal complaint to the pope of the number of penitents quartered upon it, and Cardinal Savelli, the head of the Roman Inquisition, interposed with the Suprema to relieve it of this oppression.[430] It was not until 1598 that the Mexican tribunal, nearly thirty years after its foundation, built a capacious prison adjoining its own structure.[431] In 1600, for the first time, there is an allusion in the Toledo record to a “carcel de la peniténcia” and, in 1609, Valencia was busy in erecting one at a cost of 5110 libras; it had been planned to have three floors, but was economically reduced to two.[432] Whether all the tribunals yielded to the pressure and established penitential prisons it would be impossible to say, but they probably did so, if only in some perfunctory fashion that justified the appointment of an alcaide. Simultaneously with this there came a change in the name, and the carcel perpetua was known as the casa de la peniténcia or de la misericórdia.

It does not follow that the establishment of prisons was attended with any increased strictness of discipline. The Inquisition persistently refused to accept the burden of supporting its prisoners and left them to shift for themselves. Where prisons existed there were few penitents in them, although condemnations to imprisonment were frequent and, in 1641, Philip IV conceived the idea of liberating them all. The Suprema sent his decree to the tribunals with orders to report whether they had any prisoners and what were their cases, to which Valencia replied that it had one, imprisoned for persistent sorcery, whereupon the Suprema ordered the sentence to be commuted and the prisoner to be discharged.[433]

The royal project fell through. All prisons were not as empty as that of Valencia and a discussion occurring, in 1654, at Granada, to which allusion has already been made, illustrates the character of the imprisonment rendered necessary by the refusal to support the prisoners. They gained their living chiefly by hawking goods around the city; this at length aroused the shopkeepers, and the corregidor represented to the tribunal that scandals were occasioned by their entering houses and committing indecencies; there was loss to the king for, as penitents, they were not subject to the alcavala and other imposts; thus favored they undersold the shopkeepers, who had lost half of their trade, while the penitents grew rich, for they came almost naked from the secret prison and, in a short time, they were well clothed and enriched. The tribunal admitted the force of this and, on December 24, 1654, issued an order that, for two weeks, they might cry their wares through the streets, but not enter houses, and subsequently be restricted to selling in shops. At this the prisoners complained bitterly of the deprivation of a privilege of long standing in all places where there was a tribunal, for without it they could not earn a living or support their wives and families. Thereupon the fiscal, Doctor Joseph Francisco Cresco de Escobar, seeing that both sides would appeal to the Suprema, printed for its enlightenment a memorial which reveals to us the character of penitential imprisonment. He states that, in accordance with the Instructions of 1488, the tribunals had provided penitential prisons, the one at Granada being of ample capacity for the observance of the Instructions of 1561. He quotes the canons and conciliar decrees to show that recanting heretics are to be immured for life, whence he argues that the prison should be afflictive and penal. Now, however, it is only nominal; the so-called prisoners go out at all hours of the day, without restriction, without a companion, without labor save what they voluntarily undertake, all of which is liberty and not captivity. They wander at will through the city and suburbs, they amuse themselves at the houses of their friends, they spend, if they choose, only part of the night in the prison, which serves them as a comfortable lodging-house, free of rent. The Instructions require that the alcaide shall see that they perform their penance, but this has become impossible, and there are no means of restricting their intercourse with the faithful. As for their plea that they leave the secret prison broken in health and stripped of their property, that they have no chance to learn trades and must support their families by trading, the answer is that only through the mercy of the Holy Office do they escape burning, and they should be thankful that their lives are spared; their poverty is a trifling penalty for their crimes, and their children only share the punishment of paternal heresy.[434]

THE PENITENTIAL PRISON

With all this laxity, there was a pretence of maintaining the old rigor, which regarded prison-breaking as relapse, but the real offence lay in the fugitive throwing off the sanbenito. There seems to have been little desire to recapture those who absented themselves, for the formula of the mandate to search for and arrest fugitives only concerns itself with those who escape from the secret prison and who thus are still on trial,[435] but when from any cause penitents were returned to the tribunal, their treatment is exemplified in the case of Juan González, who escaped from the casa de la peniténcia of Valladolid, July 3, 1645. His story was that, having gone out to collect some money due to him, he gambled it away, got drunk, went to sleep under the walls of the Carmelite convent in the suburbs and, on awaking next morning and fearing punishment, he wandered away, throwing off the sanbenito and seeking work. Thus he reached Irun and designed passing into France, but was recognized by a priest who had seen him in Valladolid; he was handed over to the commissioner and was passed from familiar to familiar till he was lodged in the secret prison of Valladolid. The fiscal claimed that his flight and throwing off the sanbenito proved him to be an impenitent and pertinacious relapsed into Judaism who must be relaxed; but his sentence was only two hundred lashes and irremissible prison.[436]

Sentences to imprisonment continued as usual, but growing indifference as to providing for their execution is indicated by a correspondence between Barcelona and the Suprema in 1718. At that time the tribunal had but four cases under trial; it still occupied the ancient royal palace but, after it had condemned for Judaism María Meneses to irremissible, and her daughter Catalina de Solis, to perpetual prison, it did not know what to do with them and applied for instructions. There was, it said, no penitential prison nor could it find that there ever had been one, neither was there an alcaide; it possessed no house that could be used for the purpose, and no official could be spared from his other duties. The Suprema replied by inquiring whether there was a prison for familiars in which a room could be used for the women, or whether some little house near the palace could be had and some official or familiar could serve as alcaide. The tribunal rejoined negativing the proposed use of the prison for familiars; it would see whether a house could be had, but there was no money for the purpose; as for the officials, they were all fully occupied and no one would take the position without salary. This the Suprema met with a peremptory order to rent a little house and appoint an alcaide at the ordinary wages. Under this pressure some kind of provision must have been made for, in an auto of January 31, 1723, the tribunal condemned four Judaizers to irremissible prison.[437]

During the recrudescence of persecution at this period, the number of condemnations to imprisonment was large; in the Granada auto of December 21, 1720, there were twenty-seven and, in sixty-four autos between 1721 and 1727, there were seven hundred and forty.[438] How these numerous prisoners were accommodated it would be difficult to guess, for the neglect of the penitential prisons was progressive and, in the census of all the tribunals, about 1750, but three reported to have alcaides—Córdova, Granada and Murcia.[439] It does not follow that others had not prisons, but only that they had no prisoners and cared to have none. For instance, in 1794, when the Suprema inquired of Valencia whether its prison would suit for the priest Juan Fernández Sotelo, whose health required a change from the convent where he was recluded, the tribunal craftily replied that its prison was constructed with cells and dungeons and that, in the eyes of the people, confinement in it produced infamy, so that quarters for Sotelo had better be found in some convent in the suburbs. Apparently it forgot all this when, in 1802, it complained that the salaries of its secretaries had not been raised in 1795, while that of the alcaide of the penitential prison had been increased from a hundred and twenty to twenty-two hundred reales, although he had nothing to do, and enjoyed the use of a house in the prison as good as those of the inquisitors.[440]

DURATION OF IMPRISONMENT