Now, whilst the publication by M. Fidel Fita of the records of the trial of Yucé Franco has shed a good deal of light upon the affair, it is not to be denied that much still remains to be explained, and that until such explanations are forthcoming—until the records of the proceedings against Yucé’s co-accused are brought to light and we are able to compare them one with another—the affair of the Holy Infant of La Guardia must to a certain extent continue in the category of historic mysteries.
Meanwhile, however, in spite of the glaring contradictions contained in the evidence at present available, in spite of the incongruities which refuse to fit into the general scheme, we cannot hold that M. Loeb is justified of his conclusion that the Holy Infant of La Guardia—and consequently the crime with which we have dealt—never had any real existence.[220]
M. Loeb makes a twofold contention:
(a) If the crime of La Guardia ever did take place, then upon the evidence itself, it was not ritual murder at all, but a case of sorcery in which Christians were concerned as well as Jews.
(b) No such crime ever did take place.
He bases his somewhat daring final conclusion upon three premises:
(a) The depositions of the witnesses, obtained under torture or the threat of it, are full of contradictions, of improbabilities, and of facts materially impossible.
(b) The judges made no inquest to discover the truth.
(c) The Inquisition is unable to fix the date of the crime; it did not verify the disappearance or discover the remains of any child.
The first of these premises is the most worthy of attention. The other two appear to us to overlook the fact that our present knowledge is confined to the record of the trial of one of the accused, and this one a youth who was guilty of participating in the crime in a comparatively minor degree.
No one is in a position to say that the judges made no inquest to discover the truth. All that we know is that it does not transpire from Yucé’s trial that any such efforts were made. But then such efforts may not so much concern Yucé’s trial as the trials of some of the ringleaders, and it is very possible that the records of the latter may divulge some such inquest. It is more than possible. The compiler of the résumé of seven of the trials distinctly shows that this was done.[221] He cites the fact that when Juan Franco had confessed that he and his brother Alonso buried the boy, the inquisitors took him to the place where he stated that the body had been inhumed, and made him point out the exact spot, “and they discovered the truth and demonstration of all this.”[222]
This, of course, does not mean that the body was found. It simply means—as we are told—that the place indicated by Juan Franco presented the appearance of having lately served the purpose of a grave. The failure to find the body is undoubtedly one of the unexplained mysteries of this affair. But it does not justify the statement that no inquest was made—a statement which in itself implies that the inquisitors knew the whole story to be false, and therefore deliberately avoided inquiries which should expose that falseness.
The vagueness and confusion that appear to exist on the subject of the date when the crime was committed certainly call for comment.