Thus to the last the Inquisition, in small things as in great, sought to control the thoughts and the speech of all men and to make every Spaniard feel that he was at the mercy of an invisible power which, at any moment, might call him to account and might blast him for life.
CHAPTER VIII.
SORCERY AND OCCULT ARTS.
MAN’S effort to supplement the limitations of his powers by the assistance of spiritual agencies, and to obtain foreknowledge of the future, dates from the earliest ages and is characteristic of all races. When this is attempted through the formulas of an established religion it is regarded as an act of piety; when through the invocation of fallen gods, or of the ministers of the Evil Principle, or through a perverted use of sacred rites, it is the subject of the severest animadversion of the law-giver. When it assumes to use mysterious secrets of nature, it has at times been regarded as harmless, and at others it has been classed with sorcery, and the effort to suppress it has been based, not on its being a deceit, but a crime.
When the Roman domination in Spain was overthrown by the Wisigoths, the Barbarians brought with them their ancestral superstitions, to be superadded to the ancient Ligurian beliefs and the more recent Christianized paganism. The more current objectionable practices are indicated by the repressive laws of successive Wisigothic monarchs, and it illustrates the imperishable nature of superstitions that under their generalizations can be classed most of the devices that have endured the incessant warfare of the Church and the legislator for a thousand years. The Wisigothic ordinances were carried, with little change, into the Fuero Juzgo, or Romance version of the code, but their moderation was displeasing to Ramiro I, who, in 943, prescribed burning for magicians and sorcerers and is said to have inflicted the penalty in numerous instances.[380] It is not probable that this severity was permanent for, as a rule, medieval legislation was singularly lenient to these offences, although, about the middle of the thirteenth century, Jacobo de las Leyes, in a work addressed to Alfonso X, classes among the worst offenders those who slay men by enchantment.[381]
Alfonso himself, in the Partidas, treated magic and divination as arts not involving heresy, to be rewarded or punished as they were used for good or for evil.[382] In no land were they more widely developed or more firmly implanted in popular belief, for Spain not only preserved the older errors of Wisigothic times but had superadded those brought by the Moors and had acquired others from the large Jewish population. The fatalism of Islam was a fruitful source of devices for winning foreknowledge. The astrologer and the diviner, so far from being objects of persecution, were held in high honor among the Moors, and their arts were publicly taught as essential to the general welfare. In the great school of Córdova there were two masters who taught astrology, three of necromancy, pyromancy and geomancy, and one of the ars notoria. Seven thousand seven hundred Arabic writers are enumerated on the interpretation of dreams, and as many on goetic magic, while the use of amulets as preservatives from evil was universal.[383] Spain was the classic land of magic whither, during the middle ages, resorted for instruction from all Europe those who sought knowledge of its mysteries, and the works on the occult arts, which were circulated everywhere, bore for the most part, whether truly or falsely, the names of Arabic authors.
MEDIEVAL TOLERATION
Long after these pursuits had fallen elsewhere under the ban of the Church, the medieval spirit of toleration continued in Spain. Until the fourteenth century was drawing to an end, astrology, we are told, was in general vogue among the upper classes, while the lower placed full confidence in the wandering mountebanks who overspread the land—mostly Moorish or Jewish women—who plied their trade under the multifarious names of saludadores, ensalmadores, cantadores, entendederas, adivinas and ajodadores, earning a livelihood by their various arts of telling fortunes, preserving harvests and cattle, curing disease, protecting from the evil eye, and exciting love or hatred.[384] So little blame attached to these pursuits that Miguel de Urrea, Bishop of Tarazona from 1309 to 1316, was popularly known as el Nigromántico, and his portrait in the episcopal palace of Tarazona had an inscription describing him as a most skilful necromancer, who even deluded the devil with his own arts.[385]
The Church, however, did not share in this tolerant spirit and was preparing to treat these practices with severity. There is comparative mildness, in 1317, in the definition of its policy by Astesanus, the leading canonist of his time who, after reciting the ferocious imperial legislation, adds that the canons impose for these arts a penance of forty days; if the offender refuses to perform this he should, if a layman, be excommunicated and, if a cleric, be confined in a monastery. If he persists in his evil ways, he should, if a slave be scourged and, if a freeman, be imprisoned. Bishops should expel from their dioceses all such persons and, in some places, this is laudably accompanied with curtailing their garments and their hair. Yet the uncertainty still prevailing is indicated by the differences among the doctors as to whether priests incurred irregularity who misused in magic rites the Eucharist, the chrism and holy water, or who baptized figurines to work evil on the parties represented, and in this doubt Astesanus counsels obtaining a dispensation as the safest plan.[386]
All doubts as to such questions were promptly settled. Pope John XXII divided his restless activity between persecuting the Spiritual Franciscans, warring with the Visconti, combating Ludwig of Bavaria and creating a wholesome horror of sorcery in all its forms. Imagining that conspirators were seeking his life through magic arts, he ordered special inquisitors appointed for their extermination and urged the regular appointees to active persecution. In various bulls, and particularly one known as Super illius specula, issued about 1326, he expressed his grief at the rapid increase of the invocation and adoration of demons throughout Christendom, and ordered all who availed themselves of such services to be publicly anathematized as heretics and to be duly punished, while all books on the subject were to be burnt. The faithful were warned not to enter into compacts with hell, or to confine demons in mirrors and rings so as to foretell the future, and all who disobeyed were threatened with the penalties of heresy.[387] Thus the Church asserted authoritatively the truth of the powers claimed by sorcerers—the first of a long series of similar utterances which did more, perhaps, than aught else to stimulate belief and foster the development of the evil. The prosperity of the sorcerer was based on popular credulity, and the deterrent influence of prospective punishment weighed little against the assurance that he could in reality perform the service for which he was paid.
There was no Inquisition in Castile, and the repression of these unhallowed arts rested with the secular power, which was irresponsive to the papal commands. The Partidas, with their quasi approval of magic, were formally confirmed, by the Córtes of 1348, as the law of the land, and remained the basis of its jurisprudence. Yet the new impulse from Rome commenced soon afterwards to make itself felt. About 1370 a law of Enrique III declared guilty of heresy and subject to its penalties all who consulted diviners.[388] In this the injection of heresy is significant of the source of the new policy, reflected further in a law of Juan I, in 1387, which asserts that all diviners and sorcerers and astrologers, and those who believe in them, are heretics to be punished as provided in the Partidas, laymen by the royal officials and clerics by their prelates.[389] That these laws accomplished little is indicated by the increasing severity of the pragmática of April 9, 1414, which ordered all royal and local judges, under pain of loss of office and one-third confiscation, to put to death all sorcerers, while those who harbored them were to be banished and the pragmática itself was to be read monthly in the market-places so that no one could pretend ignorance.[390] Even the Mudéjares assimilated themselves in this to their Christian conquerors, threatening the practice of sorcery with death, and warning all to avoid divination and augury and astrology. This accomplished little, however, and, after their enforced conversion, the Moriscos continued to enjoy the reputation of masters of the black arts.[391]