Cases of imposture were not infrequent. Whether this in itself rendered the impostor liable to prosecution by the Inquisition may be doubted but, in the deception, she was very apt to commit acts or to utter blasphemies which brought her under its jurisdiction. Thus, in 1796, we find the Valencia tribunal prosecuting Benita Gargori, a pretended demoniac, and Francisca Signes, an accomplice, for irreligious actions and utterances.[756]
The exorciser also occasionally laid himself open to inquisitorial animadversion. Thus, in 1749, Fray Jaime Sans, a lay-brother of the Order of San Francisco de Assis, used to visit the sick and pronounce them to be possessed, when he would make the sign of the cross and sprinkle them with holy water. He was denounced to the Barcelona tribunal, which warned him to desist, for he had no power to exorcise, and threatened to proceed against him, whereupon he promised to obey[757]. Exorcists also sometimes abused their opportunities by committing indecencies upon their patients. I have not met with such cases in the Spanish Inquisition, but in this it would doubtless follow the example of the Roman Congregation, which, in 1639, ordered the prosecution of a most flagrant one, reported by the Inquisitor of Bergamo[758].
Considered as a whole, the influence of the Inquisition must have been decidedly beneficial in restraining the development of this disease, for experienced inquisitors recognized that the methods usually adopted only aggravated it. Cardinal Scaglia († 1639), in treating of these epidemics among nuns, remarks that the superiors, not content with exorcisms, commence prosecutions, examine witnesses and interrogate the pretended criminals suggestively and absurdly and threaten them with torture, thus extracting whatever confessions they desire and creating still greater disturbance in the convent and the city[759].
Insults to Images.
Allusion has already been made to the invasion of episcopal jurisdiction by the assumption of the Inquisition that outrages or insults offered to sacred images fell under its cognizance. For this there was more justification than for some other inferential heresies, for wilful irreverence to the objects of universal cult was reasonably regarded as causing suspicion of erroneous belief, and during the period of active persecution of crypto-Judaism and of Protestantism such offences were readily ascribable to heretical fanaticism.
INSULTS TO IMAGES
In one instance, at least, the secular magistrates exercised jurisdiction. In December, 1643, Madrid was much excited by a robbery committed on a miracle-working image of Nuestra Señora de la Gracia, when all its jewels, ornaments and vestments were taken, and worst of all, the image was left lying face downwards on the ground. Great efforts were made to detect the perpetrators of the sacrilege, and it was accounted miraculous when they were identified while investigating another robbery. They must have been tried by the criminal judges, for no mention is made of the Inquisition and all three were hanged in March, 1644, in presence of an immense crowd[760].
This was exceptional, and the jurisdiction of the Inquisition was generally admitted. We are told, by a writer of the period, that, when images of the saints are outraged by word or act, if the accused belongs to a nation infected with iconoclastic heresy, and the evidence is sufficient and he denies intention, he must be tortured. Overcoming the torture, without having sufficiently purged the evidence, he can be sentenced to an extraordinary penalty and to abjuration, either de levi or de vehementi: if he confesses both fact and intention and begs for mercy, he is to be reconciled, but if pertinacious he must be relaxed[761]. This however applies to cases of absolute heretics, in which the sacrilege was apt to be merely an aggravating incident, while the great majority of cases consisted of more or less reckless Catholics, whose punishment varied with the circumstances and was rarely vindictive. In the Toledo tribunal, from 1575 to 1610, there were but four cases, which illustrate the general principles of treatment and the extreme susceptibility felt with regard to any irreverence towards sacred objects. The first of these occurs in 1579, when Francisco del Espinar, a boy of 13, was tried for pulling up a way-side cross, playing with it until he broke it and cast the fragments into a vineyard, and then alleging that it was no sin because the cross was not a blessed one. He confessed freely and pleaded that it was not through irreverence, because he was drunk, but he was punished with sixty lashes and two years of exile. The second was in 1595, when Fernando Rodríguez was accused by three witnesses of throwing a stick at a paper image of the Virgin on an altar, tearing it and uttering a filthy jest, but he proved an alibi and the case was suspended. The next was in 1600, when Anton Ruiznieto was punished with abjuration de levi and three years’ exile, for maltreating a crucifix and using offensive words to it. The fourth, in 1606, illustrates the circumspection requisite to avoid even the appearance of irreverence, and the danger of denunciation which constantly impended over every one. Isabel de Espinosa was denounced by three witnesses because she had placed on a close-stool, which she kept in her living-room, a painted board on which were representations of Christ and some saints. A neighbor removed it and she replaced it, when the neighbor spoke to her and she changed its place. She was brought from Ocaña to Toledo and a house was assigned to her as a prison. In defence she explained that her mother-in-law had left her some old furniture, which her husband had just brought to the house; among it was this board, black and indistinguishable with age and, without examination, she had put it on the objectionable article, but when this was pointed out to her she had removed it. As she was a simple woman and there was no apparent malice, the case was suspended[762].
In contrast with the severity of the secular courts, as manifested by the Madrid case of 1644 above referred to, and the French case of the Chevalier de La Barre, the Inquisition was singularly merciful. In 1661, Francisco de Abiles, chief auditor of the Priors of St. John, for insults to an image of Christ, was only exiled for two years by the Toledo tribunal, which likewise, in 1689 merely exiled for one year Juan Martin Salvador for stabbing a cross[763]. Perhaps the instance of greatest rigor that I have met was that visited, in 1720, by the Madrid tribunal on a youth named Joseph de la Sarria. While confined in the royal prison he became enraged in gambling and, in his wrath, he threw in the dirt a picture of the Virgin and tore up another, for which he was sentenced to two hundred lashes, five years in the galleys and eight years of exile from Madrid and his native province of Galicia[764].
UNCANONIZED SAINTS