Fig. 336.—Fuego revolto. Garment worn by those who escaped being burnt alive by making a confession after they had been condemned.
Fig. 337.—Samarra. Garment worn by those who, refusing to confess, were about to be burnt.
Fac-simile of Engravings on Copper in the work of Philip of Limborch, entitled “Historia Inquisitionis:” in folio, Amsterdam, 1592.
The third, worn by those who died impenitent, had at the lower end the head of a man in the midst of fire and enveloped in flames. The other parts of the garment were covered with forked flames shooting upwards, as a token that the heretic would actually be burnt alive. Grotesque figures of demons were also represented upon the san-benito and upon the coroza as well.
At the church whither the cortége repaired, chanting prayers on its way, ten white tapers were alight in silver candlesticks upon the high altar, which was hung in black; to the right, there was a kind of raised dais for the Inquisitor and his councillors; to the left, another such a one for the king and his court. Facing the high altar was a scaffolding covered with black cloth upon which the reconciled stood to make their abjurations upon missals which had been opened and arranged beforehand.
After the reconciliation of these latter, the impenitent heretics were handed over to the secular power, together with the prisoners who had been guilty of ordinary misdemeanour. The Auto-da-fé was then over, and the Inquisitors withdrew. An historian, in giving a detailed account of a trial before the tribunals of the Inquisition, tells us that the civil punishment was not inflicted until the day after the Auto-da-fé. Nor was it always the case that it was followed by execution, for Llorente cites that of February 12th, 1486, at Toledo, when there were seven hundred and fifty heretics brought up for punishment, not one of whom was put to death, though they had to do public penance. At another great Auto-da-fé, also held at Toledo in April of the same year, out of nine hundred repentant or condemned persons none underwent the extreme penalty. A third, on the 1st of May, comprised seven hundred and fifty persons; and at a fourth, on the 10th of December, there were nine hundred and fifty, but in both these instances no blood was shed. Out of a total of three thousand three hundred persons who had to do penance for transgressing the rules of the Church at this epoch, Llorente states that only twenty-seven were put to death. It must be remembered that the Spanish Inquisition, in conformity with the royal decree, had to try not only heretics, but those accused of unnatural crimes, brigands, lay or clerical seducers, blasphemers, persons guilty of sacrilege, usurers, and even murderers and rebels. In addition to this, those who supplied the enemy with horses and stores in time of war, together with the then frequent cases of sorcery, magic, and other similar frauds, were also brought within the jurisdiction of the tribunals of the Inquisition. Thus the twenty-seven individuals who were executed in 1486 may have been made up of malefactors of every class.
The political aim of the kings of Spain was attained, for the maintenance of religious unity preserved the kingdom from the bloody catastrophes which at that period spread desolation throughout France and England. This is admitted even by Voltaire, in his “Essai sur l’Histoire Générale.” While deploring the horrors of the Inquisition, he says, “In Spain there were none of those bloody revolutions, conspiracies, or cruel reprisals which disgraced every other European nation. Neither Count Olivarès nor the Duke of Lerma sent their enemies to the scaffold, and sovereigns were never assassinated as in France, nor did they suffer beneath the headsman’s axe, as in England.”
