A History of the Inquisition of Spain; vol. 4

by Henry Charles Lea

In connection with this subject it may be mentioned that the Inquisition also took cognizance of a class of cases, alluded to above under Solicitation, in which laymen managed to hear confessions of women, not with a view to administer the sacrament of penitence, but through jealousy, or for the opportunity of asking indecent questions, or in the hope of listening to prurient details. These cases were by no means infrequent. In 1785, there were three before the tribunal of Valencia; in 1793, one in Murcia; in 1796, Joseph Herranz was prosecuted in Madrid for doing this in order to hear his wife’s confession. The same year there was a case in Seville; in 1797, one in Barcelona and, in 1807, Miguel Domínguez, sacristan of San Miguel de Niebla, pretended to be a Capuchin with the object to listening to the confession of a woman.[740] With what severity such cases were treated, I have not been able to ascertain.

PERSONATION OF OFFICIALS

Personation of Officials.

In the universal dread inspired by the Holy Office, the temptation was great to personate its agents, and to extort money as the price of forbearance, for no one ventured to question the authority or acts of any stranger who presented himself as an official.

The opportunities thus afforded were speedily recognized and utilized. As early as 1487, at Saragossa, a special auto was held, April 1st, at which appeared a cleric who had pretended to be an inquisitor and as such had made an arrest. The penalty inflicted is not recorded, but evidently the opportunity was taken to make an impressive warning[741].

The systematic writers assume that in these cases there should be careful consideration of the injury inflicted, for the pretender may deserve exemplary punishment. The usual offence is asserting that there are accusations and that he will save the accused from prosecution; for this he must refund the money received, appear in an auto and suffer two hundred lashes and five years of galley service. If the imposture is assumed only to escape from some trouble and causing no damage, there is some penalty of fine or exile; if there has been only an assertion of official position, the penalty is very light and secret.[742] Other authorities tell us that, if the culprit is of a low class, he has two hundred lashes and four years of galleys, more or less according to the gravity of the offence; if he is a noble or rich, he is fined one or two thousand ducats and serves for two or three years, without pay, as a gentleman in the galleys, or against the Moors or heretics[743]. Evidently in an offence which varied so much in motive and result, much was necessarily left to the discretion of the tribunal and a few cases will serve to indicate the different methods of operating and the deterrent penalties inflicted.

PERSONATION OF OFFICIALS

In the Seville auto of September 24, 1559, there were three cases of personation. Alonso de Hontiveros, for pretending to be a familiar and endeavoring to make arrests for the purpose of extortion, appeared with halter and gag and was sent to Xeres his place of residence to receive a hundred lashes; Juan de Aragon, of Málaga, for the same offence, was spared the gag, but wore a mitre and had a scourging at Málaga and another where his offence was committed, besides two years of exile, while his accomplice, Francisco Prieto, received the same sentence, with the substitution of vergüenza for scourging[744]. On the other hand, at Toledo, in 1581, Francisco de la Bastida was visited with the utmost rigor. He represented himself as an alguazil, carrying a vara de justicia and using the name of the inquisitor-general. He would summon the alcades and other officials to render assistance, which was freely given without question; he would make arrests, carry his prisoners to some distance, take their money, leave them in charge of some local familiar and disappear. In this way he moved from Fuente de Enzina to Almaden and Madrid, and thence to Saragossa where he was arrested. He confessed freely at once and was condemned to relaxation, by virtue of a special brief obtained from Gregory XIII, but the Suprema, with doubtful mercy, commuted this to six hundred lashes—two hundred each in Toledo, Almaden and Fuente de Enzina—and the galleys irremissibly for life[745]. Zapata relates what is evidently the exploit which brought to a close the promising career of this enterprising knave. At Almagro, he says, the agent of the Fuggers of Augsburg was Juan Xelder, a man highly esteemed and reputed to be of great wealth. Suddenly a stranger appeared, with the vara of an alguazil of the Inquisition, who sought out two familiars and commanded them to assist him in making an arrest. Proceeding to Xelder’s house he made the arrest, locked him up in a room and consoled the frightened family by assuring them of the customary mercy of the Inquisition. He then summoned a notary and placed all the property of the prisoner under sequestration, except two thousand ducats which he said he had orders to take for the expenses of the trial. The whole town was thrown into commotion, but no one dared to ask for papers, or authority, or identification. Xelder was placed in a carriage, with strict orders that no one should exchange a word with him; the familiars were required to accompany it to the next halting place, where they and the carriage were dismissed with handsome gratuities and the stranger confided Xelder to the care of a familiar of high standing, with orders to guard him carefully, incomunicado, while he would proceed to Toledo and send instructions. Ten days passed when the familiar, growing tired of the expense, made inquiries and ascertaining the facts released the prisoner. Meanwhile the impostor, fearing to carry the gold, deposited it with a banker and took a bill of exchange on Saragossa, so that he was readily tracked and arrested when he presented the bill for payment. The secular court claimed him, but the Inquisition asserted its jurisdiction—fortunately, Zapata says, for the culprit, for the offence was capital and he escaped with scourging and the galleys[746].

Another method of speculation on the fears and hopes of the defenceless appears in the case of Gerónimo Roche, son of the secretary of the University of Lérida. He pretended to be an official, to have much influence with the tribunal, and to hold faculties to remit four sanbenitos and to appoint four familiars. He approached a Morisca who, with her three daughters, had been reconciled, and offered to relieve her of her sanbenito for two hundred ducats, and those of her three daughters if one of them would abandon herself to him. He was forbidden the house but he persisted in writing letters of mingled threats and love. For this he appeared in the Saragossa auto of June 6, 1585, where he was sentenced to vergüenza and eight years in the galleys, being spared the scourging in consideration of his father[747].

There appears to have been a very lenient view taken, in 1582, by the Toledo tribunal, of the case of Pedro Moreno, a sacristan, who pretended to be a familiar and as such visited the hospital and asked the inmates whether they had confessed, when he arrested and carried off those who had not. It was in evidence also that, on seeing two men quarrelling in a church, he arrested one in the name of the Inquisition. There does not seem to have been a pecuniary motive in these eccentricities, and he escaped with a reprimand and banishment for a year[748]. Another motive, which was regarded with a lenient eye, was assuming official position in order to enjoy the exemptions and privileges of the Inquisition. Thus when Jayme Corvellana of Barcelona in this manner bluffed off the officers of justice who came to his house to seize some salt, Inquisitor Padilla imposed on him a fine of fifty ducats and some spiritual penance, and was rebuked by the Suprema for inflicting so heavy a penalty for so trifling a cause—“en causas tan livianas.”[749]