A History of the Inquisition of Spain; vol. 3

by Henry Charles Lea

The procession starts with the soldiers of the Zarza at its head; then the cross of the parish church, shrouded in black, with an acolyte who tolls a bell mournfully at intervals. Then come the penitents, one by one, each with a familiar on either side; first are the impostors, then personators of officials of the Inquisition, followed in order by blasphemers, bigamists, Judaizers, Protestants, the effigies and chests of bones and finally those to be relaxed, each with two frailes. Mounted officials follow, then familiars in pairs, the standard of the Inquisition, and finally the inquisitors bring up the rear. Thus the procession moves through the designated streets, filled with a densely packed crowd, kept off by railings, to the plaza, where the culprits are seated in the same order, the lightest offenders on the lowest benches.

The staging is provided with two pulpits, from which the sentences are read alternatively. Between them is a bench elevated on two steps, on which the penitents are brought successively, to sit with their faces to the tribunal and hear their sentences read; the bench is furnished with a rail, kindly provided for them to cling to, in case of fainting, for, with the exception of the relaxed, this is the first definite announcement to them of their fate. Below the seats of the tribunal there is a room handsomely fitted up for refreshments, to which the inquisitors, officials, municipal officers and clergy resort from time to time, and a similar one is provided for the familiars and persons of note. To the former is brought any pertinacious convict who may be converted on the staging previous to hearing his sentence, and there an inquisitor and secretary take his confession, after which the inquisitors and Ordinary consider the case: if he is to be admitted to reconciliation he is sent back to the Inquisition in a coach or chair, or is replaced on the staging, to return with the rest of the penitents. If any culprit dies on the staging, if he is condemned to relaxation his sentence is read, and his body is delivered to the secular arm; if he is one of those to be reconciled, he is absolved and the parish church buries him in consecrated ground; if simply one penanced, he is absolved ad cautelam and the church buries him.

After the preaching of the sermon, a secretary mounts a pulpit and, in a loud voice, reads the customary oath, elaborately pledging all the officials and people present to obedience to the Holy Office, and to the active persecution of heretics and heresy, to which every one responds Amen! If the king is present, the senior inquisitor goes to his balcony and, on the cross and gospels, administers to him an oath to defend the faith, to persecute heretics and to show all necessary favor to the Inquisition.[637]

THE CELEBRATION

Then the sentences are read from the alternate pulpits, the alguazil mayor producing each culprit to hear his sentence. In this there must be no interruption, as all the sentences must be read, if it lasts till nightfall, for which torches and torch-bearers must be in readiness.[638] Although the sentences of the relaxed are left to the last, yet, if the auto is prolonged into the night they are introduced earlier, as it is essential that the burning should be executed in broad day-light. As these sentences are read, the effigies and chests of bones are ranged on one side of the stage, and the living convicts on the other. They are then delivered to the secular arm, and the judge who utters the sentences does so, either on the stage, or at the table of the secretaries or outside of the staging. If there is a compañia de la Zarza, it marches in squadron into the plaza, when the sentences are read, and the men discharge their arquebuses. They surround the condemned and march with them to the brasero, to protect them from the populace which, in some places, is accustomed to maltreat and even to kill them, against which the inquisitors give special instructions. The magistrates provide the asses on which they ride and the wood to burn them. The frailes in charge attend them to the last breath and exhaust all effort to bring about their repentance and conversion.

The public solemnities conclude with the ceremonies of abjuration and reconciliation, after which the alguazil mayor and familiars conduct the penitents back to the Inquisition, where they have supper and are locked up, three or four in a cell. The priests of the parish church remove the black veil from their cross and take it back, while the Dominicans bear the green cross to the Inquisition, singing psalms and escorted by the municipal officials. The next morning the reconciled have the terms of their sentences read over to them; they and the other penitents take the oath of secrecy, and they are conveyed by the alcaide to the penitential prison. At ten o’clock the alguazil mayor, with a secretary and familiars, all mounted, with the public executioner and town-crier, take out those sentenced to scourging and vergüenza, and the punishment is duly administered through the customary streets. On their return, those whose sentences include the galleys are furnished a certificate of their length of service and are transferred to the royal prison, and with this concludes the stately ceremony by which the Holy Office, at the height of its power, impressed its terror on the population.

The place of burning—the quemadero or brasero—as a rule was outside of the city. With this the tribunal had nothing to do, except that a secretary and alguazil were present to certify and report as to the execution of the sentences.[639] Consequently the documents of the Inquisition furnish no details, but some may be gleaned from a relation of the Madrid auto of 1632. For this occasion the city had constructed the brasero beyond the Puerta de Alcalá; as there were seven to be burnt, it was made fifty feet square, and had the requisite stakes with garrotes. The confusion and crowd were great, and so also was the fire, which lasted until eleven o’clock at night, by which time the bodies were reduced to ashes, so that the memory of the impious might vanish from the earth.[640] The scattering of the ashes over the fields, or into running water, was a prescription of old standing, to prevent disciples of heresiarchs from preserving fragments to be venerated as relics. This was not an easy matter, for the total calcination of a human skeleton requires a prolonged intensity of heat not likely to be maintained where wood was expensive, and the bones found with the cinders on the site of the old quemadero of Madrid, when, about 1868, the Calle de Carranza was cut through it, would indicate that part, at least, of the remains of the victims were allowed to lie where they had perished.

THE AUTO PARTICULAR

The auto público general, while looming large in popular imagination, represented, in truth, but a small part of inquisitorial activity. It was a solemnity on a grand scale, in which the Holy Office magnified its importance, but by far the greater number of cases were despatched in autos particulares or autillos, held in churches, or in the audience-chamber, or anywhere that circumstances might dictate. In the Toledo record, from 1575 to 1610, there are contained but twelve autos generales, in which three hundred and eighty-six culprits appeared, while seven hundred and eighty-six cases were settled in autos particulares.[641] As stated above, appearance in a public auto was, in itself, a severe punishment, and the sentence always specified whether the offender was to be subjected to a humiliation entailing consequences on him and his family so greatly dreaded that, at a Toledo auto of December 13, 1627, Juan Nuñez Saravia, a wealthy Portuguese, vainly offered twelve thousand ducats to escape it.[642] The great majority of cases deserved no such severity. The jurisdiction of the Inquisition extended over a wide field; it was, in a certain sense, a custos morum and took cognizance of a vast number of comparatively trivial offences—careless speeches, blasphemies, propositions of all kinds, indecent writings and works of art, sorceries and conjurations more or less innocent and the like—which it disposed of without summoning the entire population as spectators. Clerical offenders, moreover, as we have seen, unless degraded for formal heresy, were shielded from the scandal of publicity in the audience chamber.

The auto particular, or private auto, was often celebrated in a church, to which the spiritual and civil authorities were not invited, but where such portion of the public as could find room were at liberty to be present. More frequently it was held in the sala, or audience-chamber, and here again there was a distinction, for the sentence defined whether it should be with open doors or closed and, in the former case, the bell was often tolled in order to invite a curious crowd of spectators. Even the apartments of the senior inquisitor were sometimes used in this manner, as when, March 23, 1680, three alguaziles of the corregidor of Toledo, for maltreating the purveyor of the tribunal, were sentenced in the apartments to various terms of exile. When nuns were the culprits, the autillo was customarily performed in their convent, as in the case, August 8, 1658, of Sor Josefa de Villegas, for superstitions and sorceries, who was sentenced to various penances, through the grating of the Augustinian nunnery of San Torquato, in presence of the nuns and, on February 13, 1685, Sor Dionisia de Rojas was sentenced in the choir of the Franciscan house of Santa Isabel, in the presence of the superior and four elderly sisters.[643]