A History of the Inquisition of Spain; vol. 4

by Henry Charles Lea

It was a favorite device, when a confessor had reason to fear that a denunciation was impending, for him to denounce himself, in the expectation of merciful treatment. Roman practice encouraged this by conferring virtual immunity in such cases, as was experienced by the Minim Hilario Caone of Besançon, who fled from Spain, in 1653, and presented himself before the Roman Inquisition, stating that for ten years he had heard confessions in the church of San Francisco de Paula in Seville, and that he had come in post to confess that he had solicited in confession some forty women, mostly with success. When questioned as to belief and intention, he answered satisfactorily and was only sentenced to abjure de vehementi, to visit the seven privileged altars of St. Peter’s, and for three years to recite weekly the chaplet of the Virgin. This was not exceptional mercy for, in the same year, an equivalent sentence was pronounced on Vincenzo Barzi, who similarly denounced himself, and the existing rule is to impose only spiritual penance on the self-accuser, with advice to avoid in future those whom he has solicited.[284]

SELF-DENUNCIATION

The Spanish Inquisition, at least at first, was not so lenient and it followed its rule with espontaneados of examining for confirmation those whom the delinquent named as the objects of his solicitations. In the early cases there is little difference in the sentences between those who denounced themselves and those who were accused. In 1582, the Franciscan Fray Sebastian de Hontoria accused himself to the Toledo tribunal for having, as vicar of a nunnery, corrupted several of the nuns under peculiarly aggravating circumstances. On examination they confirmed his confession, and he was sentenced to a circular discipline in the convent of San Juan de los Reyes, to be deprived of confessing, and reclusion in a convent for ten years, without active or passive voice and being last in choir and refectory.[285] He had confessed fully and freely. In another case, in 1589, before the same tribunal, the Franciscan Fray Marcos de Latançon, in accusing himself, suppressed the worst features of his offence. He confessed that, at Orche, he had handled indecently some five or six unmarried and perhaps six or eight married women, but averred that this was without any licentious feeling or intention to induce them to sin. Five of the girls were examined, whose concurrent testimony showed that the confessions were heard in a chamber in which there was a bed. As each one entered he locked the door; when the confession was half through he would interrupt it with the foulest indecencies and violence, after which the confession was resumed and absolution was granted. For this profanation of the sacrament the sentence was the same as in the last case, except that the reclusion was for only four years.[286]

So long as the practice of examining the woman was continued, self-denunciation always had the advantage that they would very frequently, in defence of their honor, deny everything. The result of this, and the prevailing tendency towards leniency, are indicated in rules expressed about 1640, which tell us that, if one witness has already testified against the culprit, self-denunciation ensures a lighter penalty; there is no imprisonment and it is customary to deprive him of confessing women. If he accuses himself before there is any evidence against him, and if the women are numerous and they confirm his statements, the case proceeds to deprivation of confessing; if they deny, the case is suspended, with a warning to him. If there is but one and the case is not grave, he is merely reprimanded.[287]

The custom of examining the women compromised by the self-accuser gradually grew obsolete, doubtless because they mostly protected themselves from exposure by denial. Thus, in 1707, in the Madrid tribunal, when Padre Pablo Delgado, provost of the Casa del Espiritu Santo, accused himself, there seems to have been no examination of the women and his case was promptly suspended, with a monition to abstain for six months from confessing women.[288] So, in the case of the Observantine Fray Gabriel Pantoja, who denounced himself, May 8, 1720, to the Toledo tribunal, for offences committed during the previous ten years, which show him to have lost no opportunity of seducing women, in the confessional or out of it, and of promising absolution if they would yield to his desires, the absence of his name from the record of autos particulares shows that none of the women were examined and that no action was deemed necessary.[289] Indeed, what chiefly impresses one, in a series of these cases, is the matter of fact way in which every body—priests, penitents and inquisitors—seems to take it for granted that such things were a matter of course and that the confessor should be in pursuit of every woman who came before him. So, in a letter of the Mexican tribunal, May 13, 1719, to its commissioner, in the case of Fray Antonio Domínguez, who had denounced himself, the instructions are that the culprit is to be exhorted to abstain in future and to sunder an illicit connection with a daughter of confession; he is to be absolved sacramentally which, as the rule in all cases of self-denunciation, is to be made known to all confessors in the district “for the solace and comfort of their souls”—thus assuming them to be all guilty of the same offence.[290]

INDIFFERENCE

Still, practice as yet was not uniform. In 1740, the Recollect Fray Joseph Rives accused himself before the Valencia tribunal, when the evidence of two women was taken, showing the beastliness to which such men resorted to inflame the passions of their penitents. A formal trial resulted, ending in his deprivation of confession and three years’ exile from Valencia and the scenes of his excesses.[291] This was probably one of the latest cases in which an espontaneado suffered. A writer shortly afterwards complains of the uncertainty of practice, as the Suprema constantly issued varying decisions under conditions precisely similar, but he states the rule to be that, when a priest accuses himself, the registers are searched and, if nothing is found of record against him, he is discharged with a charitable warning, and a recommendation to abstain from the confessional save when necessary to avert scandal.[292] Complete immunity soon followed for self-accusation. In 1780 the Suprema seems to have desired to introduce uniformity, and enquired of the tribunals whether they were accustomed to make espontaneados abjure and then absolve them, or whether they suspended the cases, to which Valencia replied that the custom was to suspend, without abjuration or absolution, unless there was complication of mala doctrina.[293] When self-denunciation thus secured immunity it naturally was frequent. In a list of a hundred and eight cases in Madrid, between 1670 and 1772, thirty-two, or thirty per cent., are espontaneados.[294]

In fact, during the later period, the whole matter seems to have excited but a languid interest, and to have been treated commonly with indifference. We meet with instances in which accusations are pigeon-holed without even making the prescribed inquiries of other tribunals, or cases are suspended without examining the accuser.[295] So relaxed was discipline that when, in 1806, the Franciscan Fray Francisco de Paula Lozano had been deprived by Córdova of the faculty of confessing, and not only disregarded the inhibition but complicated his offence by opening a letter from the tribunal of Granada to the cura of Salar, he was tried by Granada and merely reprimanded with a warning of what would happen to him if he persisted in his evil courses.[296]

It would be interesting sociologically if complete statistics could be compiled, from the time when jurisdiction was conferred on the Inquisition, but this is impossible, for there are only a few fragmentary sources of the earlier period, although for the eighteenth century there are satisfactory materials in the special registers kept of this class of cases. In no case, however, do they furnish a standard by which to estimate the frequency of the crime, for the difficulty of inducing women to accuse left the great majority of cases buried in secrecy, in addition to which a marked feature of the records is the disproportion between the accusations and the trials, owing principally to the impediment arising from the requirement of at least two accusations, so that the trials and sentences are comparatively few in number. The working of this is exhibited, as early as 1597, in a report by Inquisitor Heredia of Barcelona of a visitation of part of his district, in which ten cases of solicitation were brought before him. Of these seven are noted as suspended in consequence of there being but one witness, another is suspended because the offender had been already tried and punished, leaving but two in which arrest and trial were ordered. In the visitation the whole number of cases was eighty-eight and the only offences more numerous than solicitation were unnatural lusts, of which there were fifteen, propositions which furnished twelve, the assertion that marriage is better than celibacy which furnished eleven, while blasphemy was on an equality with ten. All, or nearly all, of these latter classes doubtless led to prosecutions, while solicitation resulted in only two trials.[297]