PERTINACITY
An unpleasant doubt obtrudes itself whether in all cases the preliminary strangling really relieved the sufferer from death by fire. Spanish executioners are said to possess such dexterity in manipulating the garrote that they can prolong the death-agony for hours when they are not bribed to give a speedy release. In the universal venality of the period, it is possible that those, whose friends failed to earn the good-will of the minister of justice, were by no means insensible when the torch was applied to the faggots. There may have been more than mere lack of skill in the incident at the Cuenca auto of June 29, 1654, which gave Bartolomé López the opportunity of displaying his nerve. He had delayed professing conversion until after the reading of his sentence and was consequently relaxed for strangulation and burning. At the brasero, seeing that the executioner, Pedro de Alcalá, bungled in garrotting Violante Rodríguez and Ana de Guevara, he said to him “Pedro, if you do not treat me better, you had better burn me alive.”[571]
According to inquisitorial jurisprudence, there were several causes which entailed relaxation. The first of these was pertinacity—the obstinacy which led the heretic or apostate to avow and defend his errors, and to resist the well-meant effort of his judges to save his soul by inducing conversion. This heroic temper, which preferred martyrdom to denying what it believed to be the truth, was not common, but the annals of the Inquisition are illustrated by cases of unknown and forgotten victims, whose persistence through torment and persuasion, to the fiery death at the brasero, ennobles human nature, whether they were Moslems or Jews, Protestants or Mystics. It was a blind perversity that refused to see in this aught but hardness of heart, inspired by Satan, and with empty rhetoric sought to draw a distinction between this and true martyrdom. Thus Simancas tells us that we should not be surprised to see heretics sometimes carried rejoicing to the stake. This is not true alacrity but madness, not patience but fierceness, and there is wide difference between barbarous fierceness and the modest constancy of the true martyr. Then there are those who, by certain arts, so benumb the body that it does not feel torments; there are also those who deprive the mind of sense, so that they meet death without fear, but that gentleness and placidity, that sublime humility and humble sublimity, we see only in the martyrs of Christ.[572]
Yet, to do it justice, the Inquisition—at least after the first fury of its career was spent—earnestly sought the salvation of its victims, rather than to send them through temporal to eternal flame. We have seen that, in the case of those sentenced to relaxation, it advanced the notification of their fate, in order to enlarge the opportunity of the ghostly counsellors, whom it deputed to labor with them. Even before this extension, the Instructions of 1561 order inquisitors to do everything in their power to induce conversion, so that, if nothing else can be accomplished, the culprit may not die without the knowledge of God.[573] During the fortnight previous to an auto de fe those sentenced to relaxation were to be summoned to repeated audiences, when they were to be earnestly entreated to confess and recant, with promises of mercy, and learned theologians were required to be present to aid in the exhortations.[574] Even prior to the consulta de fe, pious inquisitors spared no effort to convince the erring of their errors. One relates how, in 1630, he had to deal with two Protestants, an Englishman and a Frenchman, who were pertinacious, saying that they had been brought up in their pretended reformed religion and knew nothing of Catholicism. Their simplicity went so far as to ask to be allowed to return to their native lands, or that persons learned in both religions should dispute before them, so that they might learn which was best for, as they were illiterate, they could not themselves dispute. The inquisitor set theologians to work upon them when, after considerable labor, they were converted; devotional books were given to them, which they eagerly devoured; the trial was delayed and, by the time the witnesses were ratified, the heretics were good Catholics.[575]
PERTINACITY
When three days’ notice of impending relaxation was given, the time was utilized to the utmost. There was a pertinacious heretic to suffer in the Seville auto of December 10, 1719—a Moorish slave, baptized under the name of Francisco Andrés, who had renegaded and was persistent when his sentence was made known to him. Then twelve calificadores—two each from the Orders of Mercenarians, Minims, Franciscans, Dominicans, Augustinians and Jesuits—with eight familiars were assigned to his conversion. They were successful and he escaped with prison and sanbenito for four years.[576] A remarkable case, at the Seville auto of July 5, 1722, shows however that, after delivery to the secular arm, the Inquisition considered that its functions were ended. There were four pertinacious Jews, two men and two women. Nine calificadores and eleven familiars labored with them in vain during the three days; they persisted through the reading of the sentences and were delivered to the secular magistrate. The two men and the elder of the women succumbed at the last, professed conversion and were garrotted and burnt. The younger woman, known as La Almiranta, at the brasero begged audience of the deputy assistente, told him that she desired to confess and give evidence as to other Jews and was remanded to the royal prison. Word was sent to the tribunal, which replied that it had nothing further to do with her. She was kept until the 7th and, when taken to the brasero was more pertinacious, than ever, saying that, as her companions had died as Catholics, they were accursed and that she had pretended to yield in order that her ashes, which were holy, should not be mingled with theirs. Of course she had the martyrdom which she craved.[577]
In exceptional cases pertinacity seems to have been allowed the privilege of preliminary strangulation. At a Valladolid auto of May 29, 1691, there were five pertinacious women condemned for Judaism, described as being from 24 to 27 years of age and very handsome, who excited general compassion. On being delivered to the magistrate two of them weakened, while three persisted in their faith, yet they were all garrotted before burning.[578]
A large portion of the cases of pertinacity arose from the death in prison, during trial, of those who did not ask on the death-bed for the consolations of religion, and who had no opportunity of obtaining mercy by conversion. Thus in the Granada auto of May 13, 1725, out of seven burnings in effigy, six were of those who had died in prison.[579] Suicide in prison was treated harshly, for Simancas tells us that the suicide is to be condemned as fully convicted and impenitent, even though he had previously confessed and professed repentance, to which Rojas adds that, although his effigy is to be burnt, his heirs are allowed to prove insanity, difficult as that is.[580]
THE NEGATIVO—THE DIMINUTO