It is very clear, from the records we have, that the Holy Office must have been content to depend upon the engines already in existence, or, rather, upon a limited number of the most efficacious. There were exceptions, of course. The torture of fire—which consisted in toasting the feet of the patient after anointing them with fat—appears upon rare occasions to have been employed; and a barbarous piece of supererogative cruelty was practised at a great Auto de Fé held at Valladolid in 1636: ten Jews convicted of having whipped a crucifix were made to stand with one hand nailed to an arm of a St. Andrew’s cross whilst sentence of death was being read to them.
As a rule, however, both in torturing and in punishing the inquisitors avoided novelties. For the question they usually resorted to one of three methods: the rack; the garrucha, which is the torture of the hoist, the tratta di corda of the Italians; and the escalera, or potro, or ladder, or water torture.
The inquisitors attended in person—as prescribed by Torquemada—to question the patient, accompanied by their notary, who wrote down in fullest detail an account of the proceedings.
The hoist was the simplest of all engines; it consisted of no more than a rope running through a pulley attached to the ceiling of the torture-chamber.
The patient’s wrists were pinioned behind him, and one end of the rope was attached to them. Slowly then the executioners drew upon the other end, gradually raising the patient’s arms behind him as far as they would go, backwards and upwards, and continuing until they brought him to tip-toe and then slowly off the ground altogether, so that the whole weight of his body was thrown upon his straining arms.
At this point he was again questioned and desired to confess the truth.
If he refused to speak, or if he spoke to no such purpose as his questioners desired, he was hoisted towards the ceiling, then allowed to drop a few feet, his fall being suddenly arrested by a jerk that almost threw his arms out of their sockets. Again was the question put, and if he continued stubborn he was given a further drop, and so on until he had come to the ground once more, or until he had confessed. If he reached the ground without confessing, weights were now attached to his feet, thus increasing the severity of the torture, which was resumed. And so it continued. The weights were increased, the drops were lengthened—or else he might be left hanging—until confession was extracted, or until with dislocated shoulders the patient had reached the limit of his endurance.[112]
In the latter case the torture might be suspended, as we have seen, to be continued two or three days later, when the prisoner should sufficiently have recovered.
The notary made a scrupulous record of the audiencia—the weights attached, the number of hoists endured, the questions asked and the answers delivered.
The potro, or water-torture, was more complex, far more cruel, and appears to have been greatly favoured by the Holy Office.