There were eleven relaxations in person and the effigy of one who had committed suicide during trial. Of the eleven, seven are said to have died pertinacious and impenitent and therefore presumably were burnt alive, true martyrs to their belief. Of these there were two especially notable—Maldonado whose case has been mentioned above, and Manuel Bautista Pérez. The latter was the leader and chief among the Portuguese, who styled him the capitan grande. He was the greatest merchant in Lima and his fortune was popularly estimated at half a million pesos. It was in his house that were held the secret meetings in which he joined in the learned theological discussions, but outwardly he was a zealous Christian and had priests to educate his children; he was greatly esteemed by the clergy who dedicated to him their literary effusions in terms of the warmest adulation. He owned rich silver mines in Huarochiri and two extensive plantations; his confiscated house has since been known as the casa de Pilatos, and his ostentatious mode of life may be judged by the fact that when his carriage was sold by the tribunal it fetched thirty-four hundred pesos. He had endeavored to commit suicide by stabbing himself, but he never faltered at the end. He listened proudly to his sentence and died impenitent, telling the executioner to do his duty. There was one other prisoner who did not appear. Enrique Jorje Tavares, a youth of 18, was among those arrested in August, 1635. He denied under torture and after various alternations became permanently insane, for which reason his case was suspended in 1639.
The next day the mob of Lima enjoyed the further sensation of the scourging through the streets. These exhibitions always attracted a large crowd, in which there were many horsemen who thus had a better view, while boys commonly pelted the bigamists and sorceresses who were the usual patients. On this occasion the tribunal issued a proclamation forbidding horses or carriages in the streets through which the procession passed, and any pelting of the penitents under pain, for Spaniards, of banishment to Chile, and for Indians and negroes, of a hundred lashes. There were twenty-nine sufferers in all; they were marched in squads of ten, guarded by soldiers and familiars, while the executioners plied the scourges, and the brutalizing spectacle passed off without disturbance, and with the pious wish of the tribunal that it would please God to make it serve as a warning.[725]
The holocaust had been duly offered to a Savior of love and mercy; the martyrs had sealed in flame and torment their adherence to the Ancient Faith, and the mob had had its spectacle. Satisfied with the results of their pious labors for the greater glory of God, the inquisitors calmly went forward to gather in the gleanings from the ruined commerce and industry of the kingdom, to retain what they could for themselves and to account for as little as they might to their superiors. The process was long and complex and it was years before all the tangled skeins were ravelled out, and the clamorous creditors of the victims had their claims satisfied or rejected.
There were still some remnants of the hated Portuguese to be dealt with. After the auto, seven cases, which had been pending for three years or more, were suspended, followed, in 1639 and 1640, by others of reconciliation or suspension. In 1641 there was an auto, November 17th, in which three Judaizers were reconciled and seven others sentenced to confiscation and a hundred lashes apiece. There still remained of the “complicidad grande” Manuel Henríquez, who had been arrested in December, 1635, and had confessed under torture, after which he revoked, and several extravagances led to his being thought crazy, but in 1647 he was condemned to the stake. The tribunal however waited for other victims to justify the expense of an auto and, in 1656, he was still lingering in prison; he was not burnt until 1664 in company with the effigy of Murcia de Luna, the victim of torture. The Inquisition, in fact, had passed its apogee and had become inert as its wealth increased. In 1648 it reported that its only prisoner was Manuel Henríquez, who was awaiting the execution of his sentence.[726]
This was not because the Portuguese had been exterminated. They were still numerous, although the revolt of Portugal, in 1640, had rendered them, if not as yet foreigners, at least citizens whose loyalty might well be suspect. Political as well as religious motives may therefore be ascribed to the action of the Viceroy Pedro de Toledo, Marquis of Mancera, at the instance of the Audiencia, under impulsion of the tribunal, when, in 1646, he issued an edict that all Portuguese should present themselves with their arms and should leave the country. More than six thousand are said to have come forward and by payment of a large sum to have obtained a revocation of the measure—a venal transaction which formed the basis of one of the accusations brought against Mancera in the residencia or customary investigation at the close of his term of office.[727]
Either the tribunal had become too indolent for active work, or the Portuguese population had been cowed into sincere acceptance of Catholicism, for we hear little subsequently of Judaism. It was not that sensitiveness to Jewish observances had decreased, for in 1666 Juan Leon Cisneros was accused of buying scaleless fish on Fridays and of not sending his children to school on the Sabbath, for which suspicious actions he was sentenced to abjuration.[728] From that time there is a long interval and even the ferocious recrudescence of persecution in Spain, during the first third of the eighteenth century, awoke but a feeble echo in Peru.
The next two cases that present themselves are highly significant of inquisitorial methods. About 1720 Alvaro Rodríguez was prosecuted for Judaism but died in prison and his case was never concluded. Still his sequestrated property, amounting to fourteen thousand pesos, was remitted to the Suprema, although the Inquisition had no claim on it, for he had left no relatives in Peru and Philip V had ordered the seizure of all Portuguese property as a measure of retaliation in the relations between the two countries. The other case was that of Don Teodoro Candioti, a Levantine Christian, who had married in Lima. He was arrested, probably somewhat before 1722, on suspicion of Judaism arising from his keeping the day before Christmas as a fast, according to the custom of his country. He had also said that St. Moses was a great saint and as such was venerated in his land. There was some talk of his being circumcised, but this was unfounded. He died in prison, May 19, 1726, making a most Christian end and saying that salvation was to be had by keeping the law of God, through the grace of Jesus Christ. His body was thrust into one of the graves of the tribunal but the Suprema ordered, November 24, 1728, that his bones should be secretly transferred and buried with Christian rites in the parish church and that an entry be made in the parish register of his burial as of the day of his death, without stating that he had died in prison, and further that a certificate of no disability be given to his widow and children, including capacity to hold offices in the Inquisition. Evidently the falsification of church records was a matter of course when the injustice of the Inquisition was to be concealed. The tribunal itself had still less scruple. It replied, August 26, 1729, that it had already, on December 23, 1727, reported the translation of the remains to the church of the Dominican college of St. Thomas; another exhumation seemed unnecessary, but it had had the required entry made in the parish register. The widow had presented the genealogies of her two sons, Don Antonio and Don Juan Candioti, asking that they be made familiars and, as the viceroy was much interested in the family, the request had been granted.[729] This case brings before us one of the deplorable results of the system of secrecy; a husband and father disappears into the prison; he dies, and his family only learn his fate after seven years of suspense.
A more flagrant case was that of Doña Ana de Castro, a married woman of good social position but of dubious character, as she was reported to have sold her favors to one of the viceroys and to many of the rich colonial nobles. Accused of Judaism, she persistently denied; when, in 1731, her case was reported to the Suprema, she had been voted to relaxation with preliminary torture, to which the Suprema replied, February 4, 1732, that if the torture and efforts of the theologians did not bring repentance, the sentence was to be executed, but, if she confessed and gave signs of repentance, she was to be reconciled. She was held until the solemn public auto of December 23, 1736, when she was relaxed to the secular arm as a Judaizing Jew, convicted, negative and pertinacious. On her way to the brasero she is said to have shed tears, but the alguazil mayor paid no attention to them and she was duly burnt—probably without preliminary strangulation. All, apparently, was in accordance with routine procedure but, when the records came to be investigated in the visitation of Arenaza, Amusquíbar reported that the day before the auto she sought two audiences; no record was made of what occurred, but there could be no doubt that she confessed more than enough to entitle her to reconciliation; even if she did not entirely satisfy the evidence, what more could be expected of a poor woman in such agitation of mind and ignorant of the trap laid for her by Calderon, who acted as fiscal? The printed official account of the auto rather superfluously recites how she was notified of her sentence at ten o’clock of December 21st, after which two theologians, relieved every hour until 6 A.M. of December 23d, labored vainly to induce her to confess and to return to the faith. Amusquíbar, on the contrary, states that there was no record that she was notified of the sentence; that the book of votes did not contain such a sentence and that, even if there was one, it was invalid in consequence of the absence of the Ordinary; moreover that, in spite of her confessions, no new consulta de fe was summoned to consider them. Altogether, if Amusquíbar is to be believed, it was a cold-blooded judicial murder contrived, like the burning of Ulloa in effigy, for the purpose of rendering more impressive the spectacle of the auto de fe. In the same auto there was a reconciliation in effigy of Pedro Núñez de la Haba, a Judaizer of Valdivia, who had escaped from prison after his case was finished. If recaptured he was to be confined in the castle of Chagre, until he could be sent to the penitential prison of Seville, and was to have two hundred lashes for his flight. A small auto particular followed, November 11, 1737, in which Juan Antonio Pereyra, a Portuguese, was sentenced to abjure de vehementi, two hundred lashes, ten years of presidio at Valdivia and half confiscation.[730]
These are the only cases of Judaism recorded at this period and if the number is so scanty this must be attributed to the lack of Judaizers and not to indifference of the tribunal. How ready it was to prosecute is exhibited in the next case, that of Don Juan de Loyola y Haro, a scion of the family of St. Ignatius and an elderly gentleman of high consideration. He was arrested, July 9, 1743, on a charge of Judaism based on the flimsiest testimony of a negro slave. Other evidence was gathered, but with it the commissioner of Ica wrote that the current belief regarded it as a conspiracy on the part of his slaves, and that this had been confessed by one of the witnesses when dying. In spite of this his trial continued, nor was he released when, in February, 1745, the four false witnesses were arrested. He fell sick; in July he was transferred to a convent, where he died, December 27th of the same year, and was secretly buried in the chapel of S. María Magdalena. Evidently his family were kept in ignorance until an auto was held October 19, 1749, when the witnesses were punished and a great parade was made of the equity of the tribunal. His effigy was carried in procession, bearing in one hand a palm-branch and in the other a gold baton symbolical of his military rank as maestre de campo. His acquittal was read, empowering his brothers to carry the effigy around the town on a white horse, to exhume the remains and bury them where he had indicated on his death-bed, and certificates were granted to them that his imprisonment inflicted no disabilities on his kindred. On the next day the procession of the white horse took place with much pomp and circumstance. The Suprema, on reviewing the report, pronounced the whole proceedings to be vicious from the start and destitute of all the safeguards provided against injustice.[731] It is perhaps worth noting that most of it occurred after Calderon and Unda had been superseded by Arenaza and Amusquíbar. With this the formal persecution of Judaism in Peru comes to an end, except that, in 1774, the tribunal wrote to the Suprema that the only cases then pending were thirteen for Judaizing, but that they had no basis.[732]
With regard to the general character of the punishments inflicted it may be remarked that they vary capriciously, in accordance doubtless with the temper of the inquisitors, whose discretion had few limits. In the earlier days there would seem to be a tendency to greater rigor than that customary in Spain. In the auto of 1578 the sentences, as a rule, are exceedingly severe.[733] When Judaism came to be conspicuous, the penalties which we have seen inflicted were very similar to those imposed for the same offence by the home tribunals. As the galleys went out of fashion and were replaced by forced labor in the presidios, the principal destination to which culprits were sent was Valdivia, though occasionally they were assigned to Callao, Chagre or other ports where fortifications were under construction. Scourging, as in Spain, was a favorite resort, without distinction of sex. We have seen how ruthlessly it was employed in the great auto of 1639 and this continued as long as the tribunal was active. In the auto of 1736 there were sixteen sentences of two hundred lashes, half of them on women, for bigamy, sorcery and other similar offences. In that of 1737 there were only nine penitents, five of them being women; all of them were sentenced to two hundred lashes apiece, but this was remitted in the case of one of the men.[734] In addition to the suffering, there was the severest of humiliations for those sensitive to shame. The so-called penitents were marched in procession through the streets, naked from the waist up, with insignia or inscriptions denoting their offences, while the executioner plied the lash. The assembled mob was in the habit of manifesting its piety by stoning the poor wretches, to repress which the tribunal occasionally issued a proclamation, such as we have seen in 1639. Similarly, before the auto of October 19, 1749, it forbade the throwing of stones, apples, oranges or other missiles at the penitents, under pain of a hundred pesos for Spaniards and ten pesos with four days of prison for others.[735] Although there are frequent sentences to imprisonment for longer or shorter terms, there is no allusion anywhere to a casa de la misericordia or de la penitencia, as it was called in Spain, in which the penitents could perform their penance. Occasional instances in which they are ordered to be shipped to the home country renders it probable that this was the usual recourse in such cases. Exile was a frequent penalty, sometimes to a designated place, but more frequently from certain cities or districts, where the culprit had committed offences; when this happened to be his native home, where his trade or profession was established, it might be a most severe infliction, depriving him of his means of livelihood; when the culprit was a vagrant or an old sorceress it mattered little.