There was nothing to interest a stranger in the empty halls where once these legalized murderers had held their nightly meetings, and I wandered away toward the prison and the place of torture, where, inch by inch, the life had been torn from the victims of priestly vengeance. I shuddered as I entered the prison door-way, though fifty years had passed since the last and most distinguished of its victims had entered here, the Vice-king Iturrigaray. Here, too, the hand of the white-washer had been busy, and the cells were now made comfortable rooms for the soldiery. The instruments of torture were all carefully removed from the place of torture, and the room bore no marks of the shocking scenes which had here so often transpired. Here poor Ramé, the Frenchman, had dragged out his long imprisonment, and here William Lamport, the unfortunate Irish victim, prepared himself for death. But Lamport's story is worth giving in full, to illustrate the scenes.
STORY OF WILLIAM LAMPORT.
William Lamport was an Irishman by birth, and must have been a Roman Catholic, or he could not have obtained a license to visit Mexico. He was probably one of that large class of Irish Catholics who emigrated to Spain in order to enjoy their religion more freely than they could at home, under English oppression. It was probably two intercepted letters that cost this Irishman his life. His accusation sets forth that he was the author of two writings, in one of which "things were said against the Holy Office, its erection, style, mode of process, &c., in such a manner that, in the whole of it, not a word was to be found that was not deserving of reprehension, not only as being injurious, but also insulting to our holy Catholic faith." The Prosecuting Attorney (fiscal) says of the other writing "that it contained detestable bitterness of language, and contumelies so filled with poison as to manifest the heretical spirit of the author, and his bitter hatred against the Holy Office." Let his fate be a warning to all traveling letter-writers who are disposed to criticise too severely "the erection and style" of a very awkward-looking building, and the mode of process therein used in condemning men to the flames. Probably, before he got through with his intercourse with the Inquisition, he many times wished himself back under the liberal government of the Anglo-Saxon oppressors of his country!
It was a delightful day in the year 1569, when the most splendid auto da fe that ever took place in Mexico was celebrated upon the occasion of the burning of Lamport. A throne had been placed for the Vice-king, and conspicuous seats were prepared for the audiencia. All the officials of the city and of the department were present to add importance to the grand performance ("funcion"). Not less brilliant was the display which the whole body of the priesthood made upon the occasion. The Archbishop, as spiritual Vice-king, displayed a bearing that dazzled the populace, while his attendant clergy, with the whole body of the monastic orders, added immensely to the grand spectacle. The procession, headed by the Grand Inquisitor and his subordinates, was followed by the officials and familiars, while the poor Irishman walked with his eyes raised to Heaven, for the purpose, said the priests, "of seeing if the devil, his familiar, would come to his assistance."[58] ] The sermon and the ordinary exercises, including the oath administered to all the dignitaries present to support the Holy Office, were spun out to an unusual length, so that it proved to be a protracted meeting, as well as the greatest festival the Mexicans ever witnessed since the time that Montezuma offered human sacrifices. But in the midst of the preliminary exercises Lamport escaped burning alive, for when his neck had been placed in the ring, he let himself fall and broke his neck, so that the crowd were compelled indignantly to put up with burning of the dead body of a heretic. The unbeliever cheated them out of half their expected sport.
THE INQUISITION IN SPAIN.
It may look like wandering from the main topic of discussion to devote a chapter to an institution which has ceased to exist for forty years. But no one can fully comprehend the social and political character of the diverse and conflicting nationalities and discordant elements that for three hundred years constituted the Spanish empire without fully understanding the character and workings of the Inquisition, which, from "the Council of the Supreme" in Spain, extended, with its complicated ramifications, through all the provinces, and penetrated every social organization in Europe and America,[59] ] and even to the most distant East India possessions, binding all the several parts together as the nervous system does the parts of the human body; or rather by external folds, as the anaconda does its victim. The Inquisition was emphatically the nervous system of the Spanish monarchy. From the time of Philip II. to the last of her kings, Spain had but one monarch that could have escaped a lunatic asylum on a commission ad inquirendo, and not a single royal family in all that time that had not at least one judicially declared idiot in the household; and more than once it was the regular successor to the throne. And yet this ingeniously contrived craft of priests held all most firmly together, and made it capable of resisting every outside pressure until the French imperial armies entered Madrid.
When French gunpowder was applied to the Holy Office, the Spanish empire lost its nationality, and its different parts fell to pieces like a rope of sand, and revealed to the world the sad truth that the Spanish race, whether in the Peninsula or in the colonies, was now incapable of self-government. The Inquisition had consumed its powers of vitality. So long accustomed to submit to and lean upon despotic authority, its various nationalities had lost the power of self-support. Spain, from the earliest historical periods, had ever been the victim of foreign colonial despotisms or imported tyrants until Philip II., under whom the Inquisition becoming firmly established, it thenceforward continued a Catholic province of the Roman Church, until Rome and the Papal Spanish empire fell together by the hands of Napoleon. From that time onward, Spain and all her former provinces have continued the sport of military insurgents—a melancholy evidence of the mental, physical, and moral ruin that overtakes a country abandoned to the despotism of priests.
Though the origin of the Inquisition of Spain is familiar to all, yet few are accustomed to look upon it in its political bearings. The "pious" Isabella, or, as she is called by the descendants of the Moriscoes, "Isabella the Accursed," is conceded to have been the founder of the modern Inquisition, and yet her great piety did not prevent her from giving a death-blow to the Fuero of Castile, the most liberal government of Europe except that of Aragon. The popularity which she acquired by the conquest of Granada, the religious furor excited by that successful war, and the union with Aragon, enabled her to establish the Inquisition. By means of her priests associated in its gloomy tribunals she was able to suppress popular rights. A shadow of the Fueros of Catalonia, Valencia, and Aragon still remained, but she had sapped the foundation on which they rested by the establishment of the Holy Office. Charles V. was sufficiently powerful to disregard such humble instrumentalities in carrying out any purpose he deemed to be of advantage to his states. He was not a bigot by education, and we have to look to disappointed ambition as the cause of the virulence with which he persecuted the least indication of heresy. He had been thwarted in his ambitious schemes; this he attributed to the Reformation, which he himself had fostered at its beginning, in order to sow discord among the princes of Germany. He had hoped that upon their mutual jealousy he might establish despotic authority; but the treason of Maurice of Saxony had subverted his darling scheme at the moment of its apparent success, and in disgust he retired from public life to spend the remainder of his days in recruiting his health and cursing the heretics.
PHILIP II. AND THE INQUISITION.
The Inquisition burned with renewed flames under Philip II. from precisely the same cause that had made it tolerable to his father. To the troubles caused by the Reformation he attributed the election of his uncle Maximilian "King of the Romans," and his own consequent loss of the Germanic empire. But, as a compensation for this loss, he had substantially acquired England by his marriage with Queen Mary, and had the satisfaction of having his soldiers mingled with those of England in his war against France, and of seeing his own Archbishop of Toledo preside in the tribunal that condemned to the flames the Protestant bishops of England. The autos da fe of Smithfield were weeding out heresy and liberty from England, which he already began to look upon as a province of his empire, when his wife died, and the avowed heresy of Elizabeth blasted his hopes in that quarter. The heretic Prince of Nassau had raised insurrection in the Netherlands, which deprived him of Holland. When the French Catholic League, which he had so long subsidized, was about to declare him, or at least his daughter, sovereign of France, the relapsed heretic, Henry IV., blasted this hope by laying siege to Paris. On the side of the Catholic states of Europe his affairs went on most prosperously. He had acquired Portugal, with all her American and East India provinces. But in these new acquisitions he was not safe from the assaults of the heretics. The Dutch robbed him of Brazil, and of the Cape of Good Hope, and of the islands of Ceylon and Java in the East Indies. When his missionary emissaries had excited an insurrection by which he might have acquired Japan in a religious war, the Dutch were there with their ships, and, laying them alongside the rebel camp, they cannonaded it, while the imperial army on the land side utterly destroyed together emissary priests and rebels, and forever excluded Spain and her emissaries from the islands, and even England after the negotiation of a Spanish marriage. Nor were his treasure-ships safe from these audacious Dutch, who prowled about the West Indies and seized his galleons. The ships from Goa, laden with the treasures of the East, had to take a circuitous route to avoid the Dutch, who were continually on the look-out at the Cape of Good Hope. As if this was not enough, the failure of his great armada sent against England, and the ravaging of his own coasts by Essex, increased his hatred against the heretics to something like a mania.