A History of the Inquisition of Spain; vol. 3

by Henry Charles Lea

RECANTATION

The number of burnings in the Spanish Inquisition, during its first half century, could never have occurred under the old rules. Indeed, in the first rush and fury, the case of Juan Chinchilla in 1483 (Vol. II, p. 468) indicates that even frank confession failed to save from the stake those who had sought reconciliation in a Term of Grace, but had been prevented by causes beyond their control. Even when rules began to be framed, the Instructions of 1484 placed the lives of those on trial at the discretion of the tribunal, for they required that repentance and asking for reconciliation must be expressed prior to rendering the final sentence, to entitle the culprit to mercy; while even then, if the inquisitors considered that the repentance was feigned, and they had not fair hope of genuine conversion, they were empowered to declare him an impenitent and relax him to the secular arm—all of which was left to their consciences.[557]

The rule thus expressed presents two points, the development of which requires separate consideration. As regards the time of confessing and begging mercy, which the Instructions limit to the period prior to the rendering of the sentence, this was extended to the time of reading of the sentence at the auto de fe. Yet this was grudgingly admitted by the Instructions of 1561, which say that often when convicts on the staging profess conversion the inquisitors receive them to reconciliation, but this ought rarely to be done, for it is a very perilous thing which should be suspected to come from dread of death rather than from true repentance.[558] Yet, in spite of this warning, it was customary to suspend proceedings with those who, at the auto de fe, before the reading of their sentences, claimed to be penitent. They were remanded to the Inquisition and, if they confessed fully as to themselves and others, they were reconciled with appropriate punishment. Such cases were of constant occurrence; in the Córdova auto of April 12, 1722, there were four. Even while the sentence was being read, the doubt was thrown in favor of the culprit, as in the Murcia auto of May 17, 1722, when Inez Alvárez Pereira, convicted as an impenitent Judaizer, begged mercy during the reading of her sentence, professed that she wished to confess and be converted, and was sent back to prison, where she was reconciled.[559] In fact, in public autos, where there were convicts to be relaxed, there was always a room arranged under the staging to which the repentant culprit was at once transferred and one of the inquisitors descended to take his confession before he should have time to change his good resolutions. In such cases reconciliation was accompanied with confiscation, irremissible prison and sanbenito and usually one or two hundred lashes for tardy confession.[560]

The Instructions of 1561 were justified in claiming that little reliance was to be placed on conversions thus obtained. For the most part the awful experience led penitents, who thus escaped, to cherish their beliefs in secret, but occasionally there was one whose conscience could not pardon the weakness that led to a betrayal of faith. Diego López Duro, an humble retailer of tobacco, condemned for Judaism, recanted while on the staging and was reconciled with imprisonment. In 1700, one day, when hearing mass, he stood apart from his fellow-prisoners and, in a loud voice, told the priest that he lied for the Law of Moses was the only true one. He would have been slain on the spot had he not been hurried out to save him from popular wrath, but for him there could be no mercy. The inquisitors labored long to save his soul by inducing him to recant without success; he was pertinacious to the last and was burnt alive in the Seville auto of October 28, 1703—one of those martyrs whose constancy explains why Judaism has been indestructible.[561]

GARROTTING BEFORE BURNING

After the reading of the sentence was concluded, recantation did not avert the death-penalty, as in the elder Inquisition, but it was modified to garrotting or strangling before burning, for it was received as a principle that a Christian was not to be burnt alive. This was recognized at least as early as 1484, when in a Saragossa auto a culprit is recorded as strangled before burning “porque murio reducido.”[562] In addition to this, the traditions of the Old Inquisition introduced at first a certain irregularity in practice, and it did not follow that delivery to the secular arm inevitably inferred execution. In a list of quemados y relaxados at Ciudad Real, there are several cases, up to 1523, of those who were “relaxed” and yet had penances of various kinds, showing that they had recanted after delivery to the magistrate and yet were spared the death-penalty.[563] In fact, it continued for some time to be a matter of debate, in which opinions were divided, whether a man who had been returned by the secular judge to the inquisitors, because he recanted and promised full confession, could be again relaxed for execution. The older doctors inclined to the merciful view and Simancas tells us of such a case in Cuenca, which was referred to the Suprema, when many experts held that the culprit could not be again relaxed, for he had made a true confession, and the secular arm had renounced its rights. Even as late as 1640 an inquisitor says that the rigor of executing a man who repents after delivery to the magistrate is not customary in Spain.[564]

In this he would seem to be mistaken. I have never met with a case, later than those alluded to, in which conversion professed after sentence secured reconciliation. The tendency to rigor was too strong. The Instructions of 1561 make no allusion to such a possibility, as they grudgingly allow mercy for earlier confession. Peña forbids it; he admits that it was the ancient custom, but such conversions are not to be trusted and experience shows that such penitents are only rendered worse.[565] It was the universal practice to garrote those who professed repentance after sentence, and the dreadful alternative of death by fire, when thus impending so imminently, wrought so many conversions on the way to the brasero, even among those whose resolve had held out thus far, that burning alive became comparatively infrequent. In the first three autos held at Barcelona in 1488 and 1489, all the converts professed a desire to die in the Christian faith and all were strangled before burning.[566] At the great auto of May 21, 1559, at Valladolid where Dr. Cazalla and other Protestants suffered, there were fourteen relaxed in person, of whom only one, the Bachiller Herrezuelo, is characterized as a pertinacious heretic and consequently burnt alive, the rest being garrotted as repentant converts.[567] In 1571 there were hanging, in the parish church of Logroño, 157 sanbenitos, of which 101 were of those reconciled and 56 of those relaxed. Of the latter nine were in effigy and 47 in person, of whom only four are specified as burnt alive.[568] The weakness of human nature afforded but rare examples of those who could stand the final test of fiery martyrdom.

Notwithstanding the practice of executing all who delayed conversion until after hearing their sentences, there still were those who argued that they should be admitted to reconciliation, basing their contention on the ancient rule and on the silence of the Instructions of 1561 on this point. In 1674 the Suprema felt called upon to quiet the doubts of the Granada tribunal, by insisting that this rigor had been the invariable custom of the Holy Office. Still the question was debated until a carta acordada of May 24, 1699, disposed of it authoritatively. This declared that, in consequence of existing doubts, the Suprema had examined the matter carefully, reaching the conclusion that technically the delivery to the secular arm was coincident with the reading of the sentence; the Inquisition thus remained without jurisdiction which had passed to the royal justice for the execution of the sentence. Therefore, if the convict was not converted before the reading of the sentence, he was not to have mercy or to be admitted to reconciliation, even if he begged for it, but the royal justice was to execute and fulfil the sentence. If the conversion was real and not feigned—the latter being presumable at such a time—any of the confessors who assisted the culprit could reconcile him to the church and confess him sacramentally.[569] Thus his body was irrevocably forfeited, although his soul might be saved.

After so formal a definition, no arguments in favor of mercy could be urged. In the sixty-four autos de fe, between 1721 and 1727, there was a total of seventy-seven cases of relaxation in person. In the relations it is not always stated distinctly whether the victim was burned alive or garrotted but, from the details given, the estimate cannot be far wrong that not over thirteen, or about one in six, endured the severer punishment. In the Granada auto of January 21, 1722, there were eleven relaxed, all of whom professed conversion after their sentences were read, and all were garrotted before burning. So rigid was the interpretation of the rule that it could not be dispensed with even to gratify the intense longing for expiation which sometimes possessed the eleventh hour convert. In the Córdova auto of April 12, 1722, Antonio Gabriel de Torre Zavallos, relaxed for Judaism, was converted after the reading of his sentence. At the brasero, with copious tears and signs of repentance, he loudly proclaimed his Christian faith, praising the mercy of God and of the Holy Office and demanding to be burnt alive, in order to offer to God satisfaction for his sins, but this was refused; he was duly garrotted and “he gave his soul to God to the great consolation and edification of all the people.”[570]