A History of the Inquisition of Spain; vol. 4

by Henry Charles Lea

When all impediments were overcome and conviction was reached, the penalties inflicted were singularly disproportionate to the gravity of the offence, especially when compared with the severity exercised on those whose guilt consisted in putting on clean linen on Saturdays and avoiding the use of pork. The earliest definition as to punishment occurs in the Sardinia instructions of 1577, where the prescriptions embody the general features of the policy pursued to the end, including the secrecy preserved by reading the sentence in the audience-chamber. The penalties, it is stated, are customarily arbitrary, varying with the character, degree and frequency of the offence but, in all cases, there must be abjuration de levi and perpetual deprivation of the faculty of administering the sacrament of penitence; as to the other sacraments and preaching, or reclusion or exile, it is discretional. For religious there may be discipline in the chapters of their convents, while a notary reads the sentence or, in atrocious cases, a discipline in the audience-chamber; there may also be other penances, such as reclusion and suspension or deprivation of sacerdotal functions, deprivation of active and passive voice, being last in choir and refectory, and penance for heavy sin, discipline, prayers etc. For secular priests, besides the general penalties, there may be reclusion, deprivation or suspension of functions and benefice, fines, secret disciplines, fasts and prayers.[273]

PUNISHMENT

How these general rules were reduced to practice, at this period, may be gathered from a few examples in Toledo, all of whom had of course the regular abjuration de levi and reprimand. In 1578 the Carmelite, Fray Agustin de Cervera, against whom there were ten witnesses, was sentenced to perpetual deprivation of confession, reclusion for a year in a convent of his Order, where he was to receive a discipline, and Friday fasting on bread and water. The Dominican Fray Domingo de Revisto, against whom there were forty-nine witnesses, besides others who came after the conclusion of the case, was perpetually deprived of confessing and recluded in a desert convent for ten years, during which, for a year, he was deprived of active and passive voice, of preaching and of saying mass. In 1581, Pedro de Villalobos, acting cura of Halía, had many witnesses as to his acts in the confessional and an infinite number as to his general licentiousness, for he kept a concubine, had debauched two sisters and their aunt, and committed much else of the same kind. These latter sins were outside of inquisitorial jurisdiction; for the solicitation he was exiled from Halía for three years, of which the first was to be passed in a monastery with suspension from celebrating, he was perpetually suspended from confessing, and was fined in fifteen thousand maravedís. Fray Juan Romero was accused by five women; he admitted using words of endearment, but innocently, as he claimed to be impotent. Either the claim or the fact seems to have been regarded as an aggravation, for he was deprived of confessing and was recluded for ten years, without active and passive voice, to be last in choir and refectory, with a monthly discipline during the first year, a discipline in the audience-chamber and one in the convent of San Pablo while his sentence was read.[274]

These examples will suffice to show the spirit in which aggravated cases were treated. Those of less gravity had concessions in the variable factors, but the deprivation of confessing was perpetual. About 1600, Miguel Calvo summarizes the practice, with a distinct inclination towards greater severity, and adds that, when the culprit has solicited men, the penalties are to be increased.[275] On the other hand, in 1611, a Cunha pleads for moderation, and warns the inquisitor not to drive the culprit to despair, while de Sousa endeavors to argue away the stern penalties prescribed by Gregory XV, and repeats the warning as to despair.[276]

It was wholly superfluous to plead for leniency. The Spanish Inquisition paid no attention to Gregory’s brief, although, in 1629, it ordered the tribunals to follow its prescriptions, for it even began to show an increased tendency towards benignity. The severest sentence I have met at this period concerned a peculiarly scandalous case before the tribunal of Valladolid where, in 1625, the Trinitarian Fray Juan de Ramírez was accused by five youths and one woman, and besides he had once celebrated mass without confessing. He was verbally degraded, deprived perpetually of confessing and condemned to ten years of reclusion, lifelong exile from Burgos and a circular discipline in his convent. This was justice tempered with mercy, but there was much mercy and little justice, in 1637, in the case of the Franciscan Fray Alonso del Valle before the same tribunal. He was accused by two sisters of his Order; there was a vote in discordia and the Suprema ordered suspension of the case, but, before this could be done, there supervened two more witnesses with evidence of the foulest character. The result was a sentence April 14, 1638, of deprivation of confessing women, one year’s reclusion and four years of exile from Toro and Astorga. Equally fortunate was the Dominican Fray Juan Gómez, accused by two women, with one of whom, for fifteen years, he had illicit relations in the chapels used for confession. Some sisters of his Order likewise denounced him and, for all this he was sentenced, February 4, 1638, to be deprived of confessing women and to Friday fasting for six months. Even greater was the benignity shown, in 1642, to the Licenciate Morales, cura of Robadillo, against whom there were two accusers. The vote of the consulta de fe on the sumaria was not unanimous, when the Suprema cut the affair short by ordering suspension, with a private reprimand of the accused in the apartments of the inquisitor.[277]

PUNISHMENT

Evidently the Inquisition was beginning to regard the offence with a compassionate eye, and it would be superfluous to adduce more cases of its tenderness. Still the regular scheme of punishments was nominally held in force, and is duly recapitulated by an old inquisitor about 1640, who includes fines for secular priests and adds that the galleys might be inflicted, and that those who relapsed deserved them. Abjuration de vehementi was never imposed and, although the papal constitution permitted relaxation, this was never used, though it is well that there is a faculty for it in extreme cases.[278] Even the fines here alluded to were not heavy. Another authority of about the same date says that, if the priest is rich, he may be mulcted in from six to ten thousand maravedís.[279] The heaviest pecuniary penalty that I have met was imposed, in 1744, on Fernández Puyalon, cura of Ciempozuelos, who was fined in half his property, but here solicitation was complicated with heretical propositions, which, as we have seen, greatly enhanced guilt.[280]

As regards the galleys, I have met with but one case of their employment—that of the Licentiate Lorenzo de Eldora, assistant cura in Torre de Beleña, tried in Toledo in 1691. He had already been punished for the same offence in Granada, and had relapsed, which explains the severity of the sentence suspending him from orders and banishing him from a number of places for ten years, of which the first five were to be spent in the galleys.[281] That this punishment was reserved for relapse may be inferred from a case which, about the same time, was occupying the Barcelona tribunal and which certainly deserved it. The Mercenarian Padre Estevan Ramoneda was accused in 1690, but it was not until 1694 that a second denunciation enabled action to be taken. After many evasions, in ignorance of the exact charge, he confessed to much more than was required. Since entering a convent, in 1660, as a boy of fifteen, his life had been one of sexual abominations, almost warranting the belief that the monasteries of the time were outposts of Sodom. The number of women whose testimony was obtained was only eight, but among these were some with whom extraordinary obscenities were practised in church. He had no defence to offer and, in his sentence, September 11, 1696, all reference to his unnatural crimes of all kinds was carefully omitted. He was deprived of confession, had a circular discipline in his convent, and was recluded for four years in the house of N. Señora del Olivar, from which he was allowed to return in October 1700.[282] This was considered sufficient punishment for a brute whose life had been spent in corrupting men, women and beasts.

There is one feature in these cases which shows how great was the dread of scandal. We frequently find details of the worst excesses committed in the churches. According to the canon law (Cap. 5, Extra, v, xvi) a church thus polluted required to be reconciled, but there is no trace in any of the records of the observance of this rule. It was presumably for the purpose of averting knowledge of such disgraceful occurrences that casuists discovered that pollution occurred only when the act was public and not occult.[283]