A History of the Inquisition of Spain; vol. 4

by Henry Charles Lea

The tribunals evidently were less doubtful than the Suprema as to their powers. Among the practitioners who speculated on popular credulity there were some called zahories, who claimed a special gift of being able to see beneath the surface when it was not covered with blue cloth, and who were employed to discover springs of water, veins of metal, buried treasure and corpses, as well as aposthumes and other internal diseases. There was no pretence of magic in this but, in 1567, Juan de Mateba, a boy of 14, who claimed among other gifts to be a zahori, was sentenced by the Saragossa tribunal to fifty lashes in the prison, to six years’ reclusion in a convent under instruction, and subsequently to a year’s exile, together with prohibition, under pain of two hundred lashes through the streets, to cure by conjurations, or to claim that he has grace to effect cures, to divine the future, or to see corpses and other things under the earth.[408]

Whatever doubts existed rapidly disappeared. It would be difficult to see where the heresy lay which earned, from the Saragossa tribunal, in 1585, a public scourging for Gracia Melero, because she kept the finger of a man who had been hanged, together with a piece of the halter, thinking that they would bring her good luck.[409] In fact, by this time the omnipresent demon was held accountable for everything. A case exciting considerable attention in 1588 was that of Elvira de Cespedes, tried by the tribunal of Toledo, who, as a slave-girl at the age of 16, was married to Cristóval Lombardo of Jaen and bore to him a son, still living at Seville. Subsequently at San Lucar she fell in love with her mistress and seduced her, as well as many other women. Running away, she assumed male attire and, during the rebellion of Granada served as a soldier in the company of Don Luis Ponce. In Madrid she worked in a hospital, obtained a certificate as a surgeon and practised the profession. At Yepes she offered marriage to a girl, but the absence of beard and her effeminate appearance caused her sex to be questioned; she was medically examined, pronounced to be a man and the Vicar of Madrid granted a licence under which the marriage was solemnized. Doubts, however, still continued; she was denounced to the magistrates of Ocaña, who arrested her and handed her over to the Inquisition. In the course of her trial she was duly examined by physicians, who declared her to be a woman and that her career could only be explained by the arts of the demon. This explanation satisfied all doubts; she was sentenced to appear in an auto, to abjure de levi, to receive two hundred lashes and to serve in a hospital ten years without pay. In this the tribunal was merciful, for hermaphrodites customarily had a harsher measure of justice.[410]

CONFIRMATION OF BELIEF

It is thus easy to understand how the definition of pact by the University of Paris came to be so extended as to cover every possible act that might be classed as superstitious—all the old women’s cures and all the traditional usages and beliefs that had accumulated through credulous generations trained to place confidence in unintelligible phrases and meaningless actions—for any result greater than could naturally be produced, if not attributable to God was perforce ascribed to pact with the demon. Torreblanca thus assures us that, in the cure of disease, pact is to be inferred when nothing, either natural or supernatural, is employed, but only words, secretly or openly uttered, a touch, a breathing, or a simple cloth which has no virtue in itself. So it is with prayers and verbal formulas approved by the Church, but used for purposes other than those for which they were framed, or even exorcisms or conjurations against disease and tempests and caterpillars and drought, employed without the rites prescribed by the Church, or by those who have not the Order of Exorcists. There is pact in the use of idle prayers, as to stop bleeding with In sanguine Adæ orta est mors, or Sanguis mane in te ut sanguis Christi mansit in se; or of false ones, as for head-ache Virgo Maria Jordanum transivit et tunc S. Stephanus ei obviavit; or of absurd ones as the old Danatadaries, or the more modern Abrach Haymon etc., or that inscribed on bread Irivni Teherioni etc.; or that against the bite of mad dogs, Hax, Pax, Max. Suspect of pact are pious and holy prayers, in which some extraneous or unknown sign is introduced, written and hung on the neck, or anything by the wearing of which protection is expected from sudden death or imprisonment or the gallows: also the use of natural objects which, by their nature are not fitted for the expected results, or which are inefficient of themselves and are supposed to derive virtue from words employed, or are applied with prayers and observances not prescribed by the Church and, finally, all cures of disease which physicians cannot explain.[411] Moreover, theologians decided that in sorcery there was no parvitas materiæ, or triviality, which redeemed it from being a mortal sin.[412]

Thus all wise-women and charlatans became subject to the jurisdiction of the Inquisition, and no richer field for the folklorist can be found than in their numerous trials, where all the details of their petty devices and spells and charms are reported at length. There was the corresponding duty imposed on it to exterminate all popular superstitions throughout the land, and possibly it might have had a measure of success in this if it could have treated these practitioners as impostors. Unfortunately its jurisdiction over them was based on the reality of their exercising demonic powers, and their persecution only tended to confirm popular belief in the efficacy of their ministrations, while the public reading of their sentences con meritos spread abroad the knowledge of their powers and formulas.

If aught was lacking to strengthen belief in sorcery and divination it was furnished, in 1585, by Sixtus V, in his solemn bull Cœli et Terræ. In this he denounced astrology and all other species of divination, all magic incantations, the invocation and consultation of demons, the abuse of the sacraments, the pretended imprisonment of demons in rings, mirrors and vials, the obtaining of responses from demoniacs or lymphatic or fanatic women; he commanded all prelates and bishops and inquisitors diligently to prosecute and punish all who were guilty of these illicit divinations, sorceries, superstitions, magic, incantations and other detestable wickedness, even though hitherto they had no faculty to do so, and the rules of the Tridentine Index, prohibiting all works on divination and magic were to be strictly enforced.[413] The Spanish Inquisition, as we have seen, had long before exercised all the faculties conferred by the bull, and it is difficult to understand why, in 1595, it obtained for the first time, in the commission issued to Inquisitor-general Manrique de Lara, a clause covering all who practised these diabolical arts, and all who believed and employed them—a clause retained in all subsequent commissions.[414] The Inquisition, in fact, had not welcomed the bull, possibly in fear of claims based on it of cumulative episcopal jurisdiction. It did not allow it to be published in Spain until 1612 when, for some reason, a Romance version was printed and sent to all the tribunals with orders for its publication and enforcement, leading subsequent writers to attribute to it the cognizance of these matters by the Inquisition.[415]

EXCLUSIVE JURISDICTION

Not only had the Inquisition, as we have seen, exercised jurisdiction over sorcery, but as usual it claimed this to be exclusive and warned off all trespassers. As a matter of form it conceded that non-heretical sorcery was mixti fori—was subject to either the secular or spiritual court which first commenced action[416]—but non-heretical sorcery had become non-existent, and the Inquisition was as resolute in maintaining its exclusive claims in this as in all else. It mattered little that, in 1598, the Córtes petitioned for the total abolition of all kinds of sorcery, divination, auguries and enchantments, and that Philip II responded by ordering the revival and enforcement of the ferocious law of 1414 inflicting severe penalties on secular judges who did not put sorcerers to death.[417] If this produced any effect, which is doubtful, it was but temporary. Already, in 1594, we find the Toledo tribunal compelling the corregidor to surrender Isabel de Soto, after he had pronounced sentence. Her offences had been the giving of love-powders, which she asserted were holy and need not be confessed; curing a child with a parchment inscribed with crosses, and using certain divinations to bring a man from the Indies—all harmless enough frauds, for which she was sentenced to abjure de levi, to hear mass in the audience-chamber and to undergo six years of exile. This severity, however, was mercy itself in comparison with the corregidor’s sentence, which had been scourging and perpetual exile.[418]

This assertion of exclusive cognizance continued. In 1648, Ana Andrés was undergoing prosecution in both the secular and episcopal courts, when the Valladolid tribunal claimed her, took her and tried and sentenced her.[419] In 1659, Pedro Martínez Ruvio, Archbishop of Palermo, issued an edict in which he proposed to enforce a brief of Gregory XV, in 1623, directed against sorcerers. The Suprema promptly presented to Philip IV a consulta, representing that simple superstitions were justiciable by bishops but, where there was even light suspicion of heresy, the Inquisition had exclusive cognizance. It could inhibit him with censures it said, but a royal order prohibiting him from proceeding with so prejudicial an innovation was preferable as less demonstrative, and there can be no doubt that Philip signed whatever letters the Suprema laid before him.[420]

When dealing with the common run of officials, the Inquisition enforced its claims with its customary peremptory aggressiveness. In 1701, the Valencia tribunal learned that the paheres, or local officials of Tortosa, were trying for sorcery Jusepa Zorita, Francisca Caset and a girl. On November 30th they were ordered to cease proceedings under pain of excommunication and five hundred ducats for each official concerned, while Pedro Martin Aycart, archdeacon of the cathedral, was commissioned, in case of disobedience, to post them on the church doors as excommunicated, and to take possession of the accused in the royal prison and hold them until further orders. There was some delay and, on January 4, 1702, the authorities of Tortosa were served with a demand, under the same penalties, to surrender the prisoners and the papers to Aycart, with notification that prosecution would follow refusal. This was effectual; the prisoners were surrendered and were duly tried by the tribunal.[421]