A History of the Inquisition of Spain; vol. 3

by Henry Charles Lea

POLICE POWER OF THE TRIBUNAL

It was essential that both inquisitors should be present, and a single inquisitor was forbidden to celebrate a public auto in the absence of his colleague. The day selected must be a feast-day—ordinarily a Sunday—in order to insure a larger attendance. It sometimes chanced, however, in the eccentricities of spiritual jurisdiction, that the city lay under an interdict on the day appointed and, in such case, the Inquisition had to yield. In 1582 the Suprema instructed the tribunals that, when this occurred, they should endeavor to have the interdict lifted for the occasion, but, if those who had cast it refused, the inquisitors must not assume to lift it of their own authority, and must postpone the auto or do the best they could.[629]

In all other respects the inquisitors were masters of the situation. Repeated royal cédulas, commencing in 1523, addressed to the authorities of the cities, made the inquisitors virtual rulers for the time. They were authorized to erect stagings in the public plazas, to regulate the police arrangements of the towns, and even to assign to the secular and clerical officials such seats and precedence as they saw fit. The climax would appear to be reached when Philip II empowered them to distribute at their will the windows of the private houses overlooking the scene. Against this, in 1595, the president and judges of the Audiencia of Granada protested, begging that house-owners should be allowed to rent their windows, and pointing out the hardship of a gentleman of high degree securing the use of a window for his family, and being turned out because the inquisitors chose to give it to a notary for the use of his wife. Philip, however, held good, except in so far that he gave the inquisitors instructions to have special consideration for the houses of the judges and alcaldes.[630] How the tribunals exercised the police power thus conferred on them is exemplified in the Seville auto of September 24, 1559, when they forbade any one, between the preceding midnight and the close of the solemnity, to carry arms or ride on horseback in the city, under penalty, for common folk, of a hundred lashes, and for gentlemen, of forfeiture of the horse or mule, thirty days of prison, and a fine of fifty thousand maravedís.[631]

Numerous relations are extant, in print and in MS., of the great autos publicos generales, giving in more or less detail the elaborate ceremonial which developed itself, in the effort to render impressive these crowning manifestations of the piety that regarded, as the highest service to God, the extermination of those who persisted in worshipping him according to their own consciences. These show that fashions varied somewhat with time and place; they give the point of view of the spectator, and we may preferably take as our guide a memoir of the seventeenth century showing the internal machinery, according to the custom of Toledo, drawn up for the instruction of succeeding inquisitors.[632] The minuteness of the rules prescribed shows what importance was attached to rendering the spectacle imposing and to making manifest the subordination of the civil power, while the care taken to designate the exact place of every man or body of men indicates how fruitless was the authority granted to the tribunal in these matters to prevent the inveterate quarrels as to precedence. At the great Madrid auto of 1632, the Franciscans, indignant at the position assigned to them in the procession, after lively altercation, retired sullenly to their convent, for which the Suprema prosecuted them. These undignified squabbles were so much a matter of course that our author, in describing the report to be made to the Suprema, assumes that a place must be reserved in it for them, and for the reasons which governed the tribunal in its decisions.

When cases sufficient for an auto have accumulated, the tribunal reports them to the Suprema, which orders it to be held. Then the inquisitors determine on a feast-day, which should be at least a month off, in order to give sufficient time for the preparations. Word is then sent to the corregidor and the dean of the cathedral chapter to convene their respective bodies at nine o’clock the next morning, to receive a communication from the Inquisition and, at the appointed hour, some of the higher officials, with familiars, announce to them and to the bishop the expected celebration. Then in due time mounted familiars and notaries, with drums and trumpets and clarions and the standard of the Inquisition, move in procession through the streets, and at stated places a bell-man rings a bell and the town crier proclaims “Know all dwellers in this city that the Holy Office of the Inquisition, for the glory and honor of God and the exaltation of our holy Catholic faith, will celebrate a public auto de fe at such a place on such a day.”

PREPARATIONS

No time is lost in making preparation. Commissioners are appointed for the erection and ornamentation of the staging, and wax is provided for the candles in the procession of the Green Cross on the evening before the auto. All the Mendicant Orders and the parish churches are invited to take part in the procession and the auto. Letters of convocation are despatched, summoning all familiars, notaries, commissioners, consultores and calificadores of the district, under penalties and censures, to come on the day previous to the procession of the Green Cross.[633] The frailes, who are to assist the condemned during their last night on earth, are selected and notified. Corozas (conical mitres, about three quarters of an ell in height) are ordered, with flames for those who are to be relaxed, and in the ordinary form for bigamists, sorcerers and false-witnesses; also sanbenitos with flames for the relaxed, with two aspas for the reconciled, and with one aspa, behind and before, for those abjuring de vehementi; also halters for the relaxed and for those to be scourged. If there are effigies, they are made half length, to be carried on poles by porters; if there are bones, the boxes containing them are black, to be placed at the foot of those to which they belong; the effigies wear mitres with flames, and sanbenitos with flames on one side and, on the other, the name, residence and crime of the culprit.[634] Green crosses are also provided to be carried by the relaxed, yellow wax candles for the penitents and bundles of osiers for the reconciliation ceremonies. There must also be a box for carrying the sentences, of crimson velvet with gold fringe and a gilt lock and key, while a list of the relaxed and the effigies is given to the magistrates, so that they may have the sentences ready. Besides these there is the large green cross to be borne by the Dominican prior, and the white cross by the mayordomo of the Cofradia, in the procession of the preceding evening. The standard to be carried by the fiscal is to be made of crimson damask, richly embroidered on one side with the royal arms, a green cross rising from the crown, and the sword and olive-branch to right and left, on the other side a shield with arms of San Pedro Martir; the staff is to be gilt, ending in a cross, with pendant cords bearing gold and silver tassels. Elaborate trappings are to be provided for the mules ridden by the officials, and silver-plated batons for the familiars who marshal the procession. The parish church usually supplies the carpets, hangings, and other adornments of the staging, and the singers for the evening procession and the reconciliation ceremonies. Then the preacher is appointed—usually a Dominican calificador—though in Galicia a bishop is generally selected and, in Madrid, the royal confessor. The day before the auto, the altar on the staging is decorated, and torches and candles are arranged around the place where the green cross is to be set. The inquisitors assign all the windows overlooking the plaza; they order that no coaches shall traverse the streets, and decide where the barriers are to be erected; the municipal authorities surrender the city to them and do whatever they require.

THE CELEBRATION

In the evening preceding the auto, the procession of the Green Cross takes place—a solemn affair in which the standard is borne by a crowd of familiars and gentlemen; the white cross follows with the religious Orders, the cross of the parish church with its clergy, the Green Cross carried by the Dominican prior and his frailes with torches and chanting the Miserere. The procession winds through the designated streets to the plaza, where the Green Cross is planted above the altar and is guarded by Dominicans during the night. The white cross is carried on to the brasero, where it is guarded by a body, existing in some cities, known as the soldiers of the Zarza, whose function is to guard the brasero and plaza and to furnish the wood for the burning.[635] The Inquisition itself is guarded during the night by soldiers who, before day-break, arouse the officials by beat of drum. Within the building, the sanbenitos and insignia are arranged in order and porters are assembled in readiness to carry the effigies and bones and such penitents as have been disabled from walking. At 9 P.M. the senior inquisitor, with a secretary, visits those who are to be relaxed and informs them of their approaching fate; with each of them he leaves two frailes to guide them. If any of the pertinacious or negativos are converted, they are to be heard immediately and their confessions received, when the inquisitors with the Ordinary determine whether to admit them to reconciliation, and the same is done with those converted on the staging.

Before dawn mass is celebrated in the audience-chamber, and also at the altar of the Green Cross. By daylight breakfast is given to all who are to appear in the auto, and also to the frailes assigned to the relaxed.[636] They are not taken from their cells till the hour of forming the procession, when the penitents are ranged along the walls of the audience-chamber in the order of their marching; all are dressed in their sanbenitos with the requisite insignia.