If we are to trust the list of sanbenitos hung in the cathedral of Mexico, after the great auto of 1601, there ensued a period of comparative inaction for nearly half a century, in which Protestants almost disappeared and were replaced by comparatively few Judaizers.[450] The sanbenitos however represent only the serious cases and the tribunal continued to gather its customary harvest of bigamists, blasphemers, sorcerers, solicitors and other minor offenders, some of whom yielded a liberal amount of fines.[451] In fact, a report of the cases pending in 1625 amounts to the very considerable number of sixty-three, showing that there was ample business on hand, receiving attention with more or less diligence.[452] After this however the activity of the tribunal diminished so greatly that, on July 12, 1638, it reported that it had not a single case pending, and a year later that it had but one, which was against a priest charged with solicitation in the confessional.[453] This is a singular tribute to the efficacy of the Edict of Faith—a proclamation requiring, under pain of excommunication, the denunciation of all offences enumerated under it, of which any one might be cognizant or have heard of in any way. According to rule, this should be solemnly published every year in all parish and conventual churches; it kept the faithful on the watch for all aberrations and rendered every one a spy and an informer. It had, however, at this time, fallen into desuetude. In a letter of February 13, 1634, the inquisitors say that for ten years the publications had been suspended in consequence of the indecency which attended it after the viceroys refused to be present, owing to quarrels as to ceremonial, and they ask that a royal order should be issued through the Council of Indies requiring the attendance of the civil magistracy in the procession and publication.[454]
Nearly ten years more, however, were to elapse, before the questions of etiquette and precedence were settled, and at last, on March 1, 1643, the Edict was read with all solemnity in the cathedral of Mexico and was followed by an abundant harvest of denunciations.[455] How numerous these habitually were may be gathered from partial statistics of those received after a publication of the Edict in 1650. These were recorded in eight books, of which four, representing presumably one-half, have been preserved, containing altogether two hundred and fifty-four cases of the most varied character, as may be seen by the summarized classification below.[456]
The most significant feature in this mass of so-called testimony is the manner in which the most trivial acts inferring suspicion were watched and denounced, so that every man lived under a universal spy-system stimulated by the readiness of the Inquisition to listen to and make record of the veriest gossip passing from mouth to mouth. Thus one informer relates how in 1642, eight years before, he saw Simon de Paredes quietly put to one side on his plate a piece of pork that came to him from among the miscellaneous contents of the olla. Another gravely deposes how a man had casually told him that he had heard how a miner named Blas Garcés, of the mines of Los Papagayos, now dead, had once taken some of the herb Peyote to find some mines of which he had chanced to see specimens, and the marvels which thence ensued.[457] From the book of Membretes kept by the tribunal it would appear that when this kind of evidence did not lead to a prosecution it was carefully preserved and indexed for reference in case of subsequent testimony against an individual. Such was the training of the population and such was the shadow of terror under which every man lived.
Meanwhile, during the quiescent period of the tribunal, the class of New Christians, who secretly adhered to the ancient faith, increased and prospered, accumulating wealth through the opportunities of the colonial trade which they virtually monopolized. Their fancied security, however, was approaching its end. The vigorous measures taken in Spain, between 1625 and 1640, to exterminate the Portuguese Judaizers, revealed the names of many accomplices who had found refuge in the New World; these were carefully noted and sent to the colonial tribunals.[458] Moreover, from 1634 to 1639, the Lima Inquisition was busy in detecting and punishing a large number of its most prominent merchants guilty of the same apostasy, who had relations with their Mexican brethren, revealed during the trials. The tribunal seems to have been somewhat slow in realizing the opportunities thus afforded, but in 1642 there opened an era of active and relentless persecution which was equally effective in enriching its treasury and in purifying the faith. To prevent the escape of its victims, on July 9th it sent orders to Vera Cruz prohibiting the embarkation of any Portuguese who could not show a special licence from it. A wealthy merchant named Manuel Alvarez de Arrellano had already sailed for Spain, but his ship was wrecked on Santo Domingo and he was compelled to return to Havana. The tribunal was on his track and, on December 1st, it sent orders to its commissioner at Havana to arrest him, seize all his property, sell it at auction and send him in chains with the proceeds to Vera Cruz. This was successfully accomplished and, in acknowledging his arrival, the tribunal gave further instructions as to some cases of cochineal, which it understood to have been saved from the wreck.[459]
There was small chance of escape for any culprit. The New Christians were closely connected by family, religious and business ties, and each new prisoner was forced to implicate his friends and kindred. Gabriel de Granada, a child of 13, arrested in July, 1642, was made to give evidence against 108 persons, including his entire family.[460] There were then three inquisitors, Francisco de Estrada y Escobedo, Bernabé de la Higuera y Amarilla and Juan Saenz de Mañozca, whose names became a terror to the innocent as well as to the guilty. Their cruel zeal is manifested in a letter to the Suprema virtually asking authority to relax ten persons, although they had confessed and professed repentance in time to entitle them, by the rules of the Inquisition, to reconciliation.[461] It was a wild revel of prosecutions and condemnations. Medina Rico, the visitador or inspector who came in 1654, reported that, in reviewing the proceedings, he found that no attention had been paid to the defences presented by the accused, although in many cases they were just. A single case will indicate the heartlessness of the tribunal. September 24, 1646, Doña Catalina de Campos sought an audience to say that she was very sick and near unto death and that she would die in the Catholic faith in which she had lived. She was sent back to her cell, no attention was paid to her and some days later she was found dead and gnawed by rats.[462]
The result of this method of administering justice was a succession of autos particulares, in 1646, 1647 and 1648, followed by an auto general in 1649.
In 1646 there were thirty-eight Judaizers reconciled and, as reconciliation, in addition to prison and sanbenito, inferred confiscation, the harvest as we have seen was large. In 1647 the number was twenty-one.[463] In 1648 there were two autos—a public one on March 29th and an auto particular in the Jesuit church on March 30th. In the former there were eleven penitents for various offences, eight Judaizers penanced and eight reconciled, two reconciliations for Mahometanism, twenty-one effigies of Judaizers burnt and one burning in person. In the latter there was one penitent brought from the Philippines for suspicion of Mahometanism, who escaped with abjuration de levi and servitude for life in a convent for instruction; there were two for personating priesthood and administering sacraments without orders, who received 300 and 200 lashes respectively and were sent to the galleys; one for marrying in orders, who abjured de vehementi and was sent to serve in a hospital for five years; a bigamist who had 200 lashes and the galleys; a curandera, who employed charms to cure disease and was visited with 200 lashes and perpetual exile from Puebla, and finally there were twenty-one Judaizers. Of these, two escaped with fines of 2000 and 3000 ducats respectively and perpetual exile from Mexico, one was only exiled and eighteen were reconciled with confiscation and various terms of imprisonment, in addition to which five of them were scourged and, of these latter, two were also sent to the galleys.[464]
The great auto general of April 11, 1649, marks the apogee of the Mexican Inquisition and of this we have a very florid account, written by an official.[465] A month in advance the solemn proclamation announcing it was made in Mexico, March 11th, with a gorgeous procession, to the sound of trumpet and drum, and this had previously been sent to every town in New Spain, so that it was published everywhere at the same hour. Consequently, for a fortnight in advance of the appointed day, crowds began to pour in, some of them from a distance of a hundred or two hundred leagues, till, as we are told, it looked as though the country had been depopulated. The reporter exhausts his eloquence in describing the magnificence of the procession of the Green Cross, on the afternoon preceding the auto, when all the nobles and gentlemen of the city, in splendid holiday attire, took part, and the standard of the Inquisition was borne by the Count of Santiago, whose grandfather had done the same in the great auto of 1574 and his father in that of 1601. A double line of coaches extended through the streets, from the Inquisition to the plazuela del Volador, where the ceremonies were to be performed, and so anxious were their occupants not to lose their positions that they remained in them all night and until the show was over. It might seem that all Mexico, from the highest to the lowest, was assembled to demonstrate the ardor of its faith and to gain the indulgence which the Vicar of Christ bestowed on those who were present at these crowning exhibitions of the triumph of the Church Militant. Inside of the Inquisition the night was spent in notifying of their approaching fate those who were about to die and in preparing them for death.
Of the one hundred and nine convicts there was but one Protestant, a Frenchman named François Razin, condemned to abjure for vehement suspicion of heresy and to two years’ service in a convent for instructions; as he was penniless, we are told that he was not fined. There were nine Judaizers who abjured for vehement suspicion and were banished to Spain; three of them, being impoverished, were not fined but on the other six were imposed mulcts, ranging from 1000 to 6000 ducats, amounting in all to 15,000 ducats and one in addition had 200 lashes. There were nineteen reconciled, whose estates of course were confiscated, as also were those of the relaxed, seventy-eight in number. Of these, fifty-seven were effigies of the dead, of whom ten had died in prison, two of the latter being suicides, in addition to which were eight effigies of fugitives. Thirteen were relaxed in person, but of these twelve were garroted before burning, having professed repentance and conversion in time. Only one was burnt alive—the hero of the occasion, Tomás Treviño of Sobremonte. His mother had been burnt at Valladolid, and nearly all of his kindred, as well as those of his wife, had been inmates of the Inquisition. He had been reconciled in the auto of 1625 and there could be no mercy for a relapsed apostate, though he could have escaped the fiery death by professing conversion again. He had lain in prison for five years during his trial, always denying his guilt, but when notified of his conviction, the night before the auto, he proclaimed himself a Jew, declaring that he would die as such, nor could the combined efforts of all the assembled confessors shake his resolution. To silence what were styled his blasphemies, he was taken to the auto gagged, in spite of which he made audible assertion of his faith and of his contempt for Christianity. It is related that, after his sentence, when he was mounted to be taken to the quemadero, the patient mule assigned to him refused to carry so great a sinner; six others were tried with the same result and he was obliged to walk until a broken-down horse was brought, which had not spirit enough to dislodge its unholy burden. An Indian was mounted behind him, who sought to convert him and, enraged at his failure, beat him about the mouth to check his blasphemies. Undaunted to the last, he drew the blazing brands towards him with his feet and his last audible words were—“Pile on the wood; how much my money costs me!”[466]
The inquisitor-general, Arce y Reynoso, on October 15, 1649, congratulated Philip IV on this triumph of the faith, which had been the source of joy and consolation and universal applause, whereat the pious monarch expressed his gratification and desired the inquisitors to be thanked in his name. As summarized by Arce y Reynoso the results of the four autos were two hundred and seven penitents of whom a hundred and ninety were Jews, nearly all Portuguese. There was one drawback to his satisfaction. The penitents sentenced to banishment were directed to be sent to Spain, and repeated royal orders required that they should be transported free of charge, but the captains of all vessels, both naval and commercial, refused to carry them without pay and, as they had been stripped of all their possessions, they could not defray the passage-money themselves, while the Inquisition made no offer to supply the funds. Consequently they remained in Vera Cruz or wandered through the land, throwing off their sanbenitos and infecting the population with their errors. Arce y Reynoso suggested to the king that he should give them rations while on board ship so as to help to bring them over. It never seemed to occur to him that the Inquisition, which was enriching itself with their confiscations, could spare the trifle requisite for the execution of its sentences on these homeless and penniless wretches.[467]