A History of the Inquisition of Spain; vol. 3

by Henry Charles Lea

As financial distress grew more and more acute, in the seventeenth century, the tribunals shrank from the heavy expenses attendant on the elaborate demonstrations of the great public autos which, however gratifying to their pride, bore too heavily upon their diminishing resources, exposed as they were to the royal exactions. In Barcelona, there would seem to have been no public auto between 1627 and the revolt of 1640; in Valladolid, none between 1644 and 1667. In Toledo one was held, after prolonged consideration, January 1, 1651, in which the number of culprits shows that it relieved the prisons of a long accumulation; it was the last public auto celebrated in Toledo, and there was none even in a church, between 1656 and 1677.[644] Seville appears to have been less hampered and celebrated public autos generales in 1631, 1643, 1648, 1656, and a most impressive one in 1660 at which less fortunate tribunals unloaded their convicts, for there were seven relaxations in person, twenty-seven in effigy and fifty-two penitents, but this appears to be the last of its kind there.[645]

CONTRIBUTORY AUTOS

In fact, the public auto would have been abandoned ere this, but for the rule that judgements of blood must not be rendered in churches. As early as 1568 the Suprema had decreed that, when there was a relaxation, the auto must be held in the plaza and not in a church, which was in accordance with the ancient authorities.[646] When the public autos became an onerous burden, we can imagine that this led to hesitation in pronouncing death-sentences for, when this was unavoidable, the convict became a troublesome personage. A suggestive case was that of Juan López, condemned to relaxation for Judaism, at Valladolid, in 1633; after he lay in prison for thirty months with no prospect of getting rid of him, the Suprema ordered him to be tortured and another vote to be taken, which resulted, September 1, 1637, in a revised sentence of reconciliation, with severe punishments.[647] A device less damaging to the purity of faith was to transfer a convict from one tribunal to another for execution. Thus when, at Valencia, the Morisco Gerónimo Buenaventura was condemned for pertinacity, there was no auto in which to execute the sentence. On November 19, 1635, the Suprema ordered him to be sent to Valladolid, apparently under the impression that he could be burnt there but, after two years, Valladolid reported that it had no public auto in which to despatch him, so, in 1638 the Suprema ordered his transfer to Saragossa.[648] Whether he met a speedy death there we have no means of knowing, but there is something peculiarly revolting in thus sending a poor wretch from one corner of Spain to another, in order to find some place in which to burn him economically.

When any tribunal managed to celebrate a public auto, it was utilized to disembarrass the others. Thus the Toledo auto of 1651 had effigies contributed by Cuenca, Córdova and Seville. In 1655 Santiago celebrated a public auto, to which Valladolid sent for relaxation one living person and four effigies, two of the latter having been kept waiting since 1644 and 1648. The consulta de fe of Murcia, on July 18, 1658, voted to relax nine fugitive Judaizers of Beas, but the formal sentence was delayed until December 5, 1659, in preparation for the great public auto at Seville, April 13, 1660, when the effigies were duly cremated.[649] The imposing Madrid auto of 1680—the last of its kind—was a general gaol delivery to which all the tribunals contributed their embarrassing convicts.

There was no prospect of an improvement in the situation, although it was supremely humiliating to the Inquisition that it could not afford to burn those whom it condemned, promptly and on the scene of their transgressions, under the alternative of exercising a compulsory mercy. Some relief must be found, and a partial attempt was made, in a carta acordada of September 4, 1657, permitting effigies to be relaxed at autos particulares in churches. Toledo promptly availed itself of this by relaxing, December 9th, eight effigies of fugitives in such an auto,[650] but the other tribunals seem to have discountenanced the device. The further step, of overthrowing the traditional prohibition of uttering sentences of blood in churches, appears to have been under consideration in 1664, when the Suprema called on the tribunals for information as to relaxations in person or in effigy in autos particulares. In reply, Valencia reported that the sentence of Gaspar López, to be relaxed in effigy, voted in 1641, had never been published, for lack of an auto, although the corresponding sentence of confiscation had been executed—which the Suprema pronounced to be highly irregular.[651]

It required time to familiarise the conscience with so revolutionary a measure, and the project slumbered for a quarter of a century, but the pressure to escape the burden of public autos increased, and the Suprema finally conquered its scruples. A carta acordada, of September 23, 1689, pointed out that, in view of the diminished resources from confiscations and of the increased cost of celebrating these public functions with due solemnity, they were avoided as far as possible, and it was no longer practicable to reserve for them the relaxed, whose numbers unfortunately were daily increasing. They had to be fed while lying forgotten in their cells, after their cases were finished; even the expense of transferring them from one tribunal to another was considerable, and it was kindly added that there was risk to their souls in detaining them so long while in ignorance of their fate. Weighing all this and, in view of the fact that there were cases of relaxation in churches both before and after the Instructions of 1561, and that the Council of Constance, sitting in the cathedral, had condemned Jerome of Prague, the Suprema reached the conclusion that judgement of relaxation could be rendered in churches, provided the sentence of the civil magistrate was uttered outside. The tribunals were therefore instructed that they could relieve themselves of their convicts in autos particulares in churches, delivering them to the secular arm outside of the sacred limits. To such autos the civic and cathedral chapters were not to be invited, and the rule as to time was to be observed, so that the burning could be performed by daylight.[652]

AUTOS HELD IN CHURCHES

Against this there arose a protest on the part of the secular magistrates, who felt slighted at not being invited and having seats allotted to them. To meet this, the Suprema, April 7, 1690, addressed to the king a consulta deploring the impossibility of celebrating the autos with the ceremonial and impressiveness of old. But great numbers of those deserving relaxation had accumulated in most of the tribunals; there were not funds to maintain them in prison, or to despatch them in general autos, and to bring them together would excite horror, as occurred in the auto of 1680. It therefore proposed that the secular officials be stationed outside of the church, where the convicts could be delivered to them, but this was not acceptable to the civil authorities and a compromise was effected, July 20th, designating the single official who was to represent the secular arm. The tribunal was to send him a message, appointing time and place; he was to be at the church door when the procession arrived; he was to follow the inquisitors, the fiscal and the Ordinary, and have a seat near them and, after the sentences of relaxation were pronounced, he was to leave the church for a place agreed upon, where the convicts were to be brought to him, when he sentenced them and executed the sentences.[653]

Thus came to an end the gorgeous general public autos in which, during its more prosperous days, the Inquisition had made so profound an impression on the imaginations of men. Thenceforth, no matter how many living beings and effigies were consigned to the quemadero, the ceremony was conducted within the sacred precincts of a church, in a simpler and more economical fashion. The great autos of Majorca, in 1691, in which so many unfortunates perished, were held in the church of San Domingo. Yet still there was elaboration of display. A writer, in 1724, giving an account of the autos celebrated in Seville since 1719, is vastly more concerned with enumerating the names of officials and familiars, with describing the ceremonial and dilating upon the crimson velvet chairs and cushions and canopies embroidered in gold and silver and the diamond badges worn by the functionaries, than with the real work of the tribunal, grim and cruel though it continued to be.[654]

These gauds might gratify the vanity of the Inquisitors, but the old attractiveness of the imposing public ceremonial had vanished. The population no longer poured in from all the surrounding district, camping out in the fields, in the vast crowds described with so much pride in the relations of the great autos. When we remember the thousand familiars and officials in Logroño, and the grandees who eagerly competed for positions of honor in the processions, we can estimate the change that compelled the complaint of the Seville tribunal, in 1729. It denounced the luke-warmness of the familiars in accompanying its processions, whereby it was losing the respect of the people, and compared unfavorably with the public demonstrations of the Audiencia and civic authorities. It was with this object that the familiars had been so greatly increased in numbers and had been favored with so many privileges and exemptions. Besides the occasional autos, the tribunal made salidas, or processions, on five principal feasts of the year, and it ordered the Hermandad de San Pedro Martir to nominate eight familiars, from among whom it would select four, two to accompany it on the regular salidas and two for the autos, with threats of fine and imprisonment for neglect of duty.[655]