The method of torturing, and the degree of tortures now used in the Spanish inquisition, will be well understood from the history of Isaac Orobio, a Jew, and doctor of physic, who was accused to the inquisition as a Jew, by a certain Moor his servant, who had by his order before this been whipped for thieving; and four years after this he was again accused by a certain enemy of his for another fact, which would have proved him a Jew. But Orobio obstinately denied that he was one. I will here give the account of his torture, as I had it from his own mouth. After three whole years which he had been in jail, and several examinations, and the discovery of the crimes to him of which he was accused, in order to his confession, and his constant denial of them, he was at length carried out of his jail, and through several turnings brought to the place of torture. This was towards the evening. It was a large under-ground room, arched, and the walls covered with black hangings. The candlesticks were fastened to the wall, and the whole room enlightened with candles placed in them. At one end of it there was an inclosed place like a closet, where the inquisitor and notary sat at a table; so that the place seemed to him as the very mansion of death, every thing appearing so terrible and awful. Here the inquisitor again admonished him to confess the truth, before his torments began. When he answered he had told the truth, the inquisitor gravely protested, that since he was so obstinate as to suffer the torture, the holy office would be innocent, if he should shed his blood, or even expire in his torments. When he had said this, they put a linen garment over his body, and drew it so very close on each side, as almost squeezed him to death. When he was almost dying, they slackened at once the sides of the garment; and after he began to breathe again, the sudden alteration put him to the most grievous anguish and pain. When he had overcome this torture, the same admonition was repeated, that he would confess the truth, in order to prevent farther torment. And as he persisted in his denial, they tied his thumbs so very tight with small cords, as made the extremities of them greatly swell, and caused the blood to spurt out from under his nails. After this he was placed with his back against a wall, and fixed upon a little bench. Into the wall were fastened little iron pullies, through which there were ropes drawn, and tied round his body in several places, and especially his arms and legs. The executioner drawing these ropes with great violence, fastened his body with them to the wall; so that his hands and feet, and especially his fingers and toes being bound so straitly with them, put him to the most exquisite pain, and seemed to him just as though he had been dissolving in flames. In the midst of these torments, the torturer, of a sudden, drew the bench from under him, so that the miserable wretch hung by the cords without any thing to support him, and by the weight of his body drew the knots yet much closer. After this a new kind of torture succeeded. There was an instrument like a small ladder, made of two upright pieces of wood, and five cross ones sharpened before. This the torturer placed over against him, and by a certain proper motion struck it with great violence against both his shins; so that he received upon each of them at once five violent strokes, which put him to such intolerable anguish that he fainted away. After he came to himself, they inflicted on him the last torture. The torturer tied ropes about Orobio’s wrists, and then put those ropes about his own back, which was covered with leather to prevent his hurting himself. Then falling backwards, and putting his feet up against the wall, he drew them with all his might, till they cut through Orobio’s flesh even to the very bones; and this torture was repeated thrice, the ropes being tied about his arms about the distance of two fingers breadth from the former wound, and drawn with the same violence. But it happened, that as the ropes were drawing the second time, they slid into the first wound; which caused so great an effusion of blood, that he seemed to be dying. Upon this the physician and surgeon, who are always ready, were sent for out of a neighbouring apartment, to ask their advice, whether the torture could be continued without danger of death, lest the ecclesiastical judges should be guilty of an irregularity, if the criminal should die in his torments. They, who were far from being enemies to Orobio, answered that he had strength enough to endure the rest of the torture, and hereby preserved him from having the tortures he had already endured repeated on him, because his sentence was, that he should suffer them all at one time, one after another. So that if at any time they are forced to leave off through fear of death, all the tortures, even those already suffered, must be successively inflicted to satisfy the sentence. Upon this the torture was repeated the third time, and then it ended. After this he was bound up in his own clothes, and carried back to his prison, and was scarce healed of his wounds in seventy days. And inasmuch as he made no confession under his torture, he was condemned, not as one convicted, but suspected of Judaism, to wear for two whole years the infamous habit called Sambenito, and after that term to perpetual banishment from the kingdom of Seville.
Ernestus Eremundus Frisius,[[264]] in his History of the Low Country Disturbances, gives us an account from Gonsalvius, of another kind of torture. There is a wooden bench, which they call the wooden horse, made hollow like a trough, so as to contain a man lying on his back at full length; about the middle of which there is a round bar laid across, upon which the back of the person is placed, so that he lies upon the bar instead of being let into the bottom of the trough, with his feet much higher than his head. As he is lying in this posture, his arms, thighs, and shins are tied round with small cords or strings, which being drawn with screws at proper distances from each other, cut into the very bones, so as to be no longer discerned.[[265]] Besides this,[[266]] the torturer throws over his mouth and nostrils a thin cloth, so that he is scarce able to breathe through them; and in the mean while a small stream of water like a thread, not drop by drop, falls from on high, upon the mouth of the person lying in this miserable condition, and so easily sinks down the thin cloth to the bottom of his throat; so that there is no possibility of breathing, his mouth being stopped with water, and his nostrils with the cloth; so that the poor wretch is in the same agony as persons ready to die, and breathing out their last. When this cloth is drawn out of his throat, as it often is, that he may answer to the questions, it is all wet with water and blood, and is like pulling his bowels through his mouth. There is also another kind of torture peculiar to this tribunal, which they call the fire. They order a large iron chafin-dish full of lighted charcoal to be brought in, and held close to the soles of the tortured person’s feet, greased over with lard, so that the heat of the fire may more quickly pierce through them.
This is inquisition by torture, when there is only half full proof of their crime. However, at other times torments are sometimes inflicted upon persons condemned to death, as a punishment preceding that of death. Of this we have a remarkable instance in William Lithgow, an Englishman, who, as he tells us in his travels, was taken up as a spy in Mallagom, a city of Spain, and was exposed to the most cruel torments upon the wooden horse. But when nothing could be extorted from him, he was delivered to the inquisition as an heretic, because his journal abounded with blasphemies against the pope and the Virgin Mary. When he confessed himself a Protestant before the inquisitor, he was admonished to convert himself to the Roman church, and was allowed eight days to deliberate on it. In the mean while the inquisitor and Jesuits came to him often, sometimes wheedling him, sometimes threatening and reproaching him, and sometimes arguing with him. At length they endeavoured to overcome his constancy by kind assurances and promises; but all in vain. And therefore as he was immoveably fixed, he was condemned, in the beginning of Lent, to sutler the night following eleven most cruel torments; and after Easter to be carried privately to Granada, there to be burnt at midnight, and his ashes to be scattered into the air. When night came on his fetters were taken off, then he was stripped naked, put upon his knees, and his hands lifted up by force; after which opening his mouth with iron instruments, they filled his belly with water till it came out of his jaws. Then they tied a rope hard about his neck, and in this condition rolled him seven times the whole length of the room, till he was almost quite strangled. After this they tied a small cord about both his great toes, and hung him up thereby with his head towards the ground, and then cut the rope about his neck, letting him remain in this condition till all the water discharged itself out of his mouth; so that he was laid on the ground as just dead, and had his irons put on him again. But beyond all expectation, and by a very singular accident, he was delivered out of jail, escaped death, and fortunately sailed home to England. But this method of torturing doth not belong to this place, where we are treating only of the inquisition of a crime not yet fully proved.
If when the person is decently tortured he confesses nothing, he is allowed to go away free; and if he demands of his judges that he be cleared by sentence, they cannot deny it him; and they pronounce, that having diligently examined the merits of the process, they find nothing of the crime of which he was accused legally proved against him.
But if, when under the question, he confesses, it is written in the process; after which he is carried to another place, where he hath no view of the tortures, and there his confession made during his torments is read over to him, and he is interrogated several times, till the confession be made. But here Gonsalvius observes,[[267]] that when the prisoner is carried to audience, they make him pass by the door of the room where the torture is inflicted, where the executioner shews himself on the purpose to be seen in that shape of a devil I have described before; that as he passes by, he may, by seeing him, be forced to feel, as it were over again, his past torments.
If there be very strong evidence against the criminal, if new proofs arise, if the crime objected to him be very heinous, and the discoveries against him undoubted; if he was not sufficiently tortured before, he may be tortured again, but then only “when his mind and body are able to endure it.”
If he doth not persist in his first confession, and is not sufficiently tortured, he may be put to the torture again; not by way of repetition, but continuation of it.
But if he persists in his confession, owns his fault, and asks pardon of the church, he is condemned as guilty of heresy by his own confession, but as penitent. But if he obstinately persists in heresy, he is condemned, and delivered over to the secular arm to be punished with death. If he confesses any thing by torture, he must be forced to abjure it.
When a person accused of heresy is found to be only slightly suspected of it, he is considered either as suspected publicly or privately. If he is publicly suspected, this was formerly the manner of his abjuration. On the preceding Lord’s day the inquisitor proclaims, that on such a day he will make a sermon concerning the faith, commanding all to be present at it. When the day comes, the person to abjure is brought to the church, in which the council hath determined that he shall make his abjuration. There he is placed upon a scaffold, erected near the altar, in the midst of the people, and is not allowed to sit, but stands on it, that all may see him, bare-headed, and with the keepers standing round him. The sermon being made on the mass, to the people and clergy there present, the inquisitor says publicly, that the person there placed on the scaffold is suspected from such and such appearances and actions, of the heresy that hath been refuted in the public sermon; and that therefore it is fit that he should purge himself from it, by abjuring it, as one slightly suspected. Having said this, a book of the gospels is placed before him, on which laying his hands, he abjures his heresy. In this oath he not only swears that he holds that faith which the Roman church believes, but also that he abjures every heresy that extols itself against the holy Roman and apostolic church: and particularly the heresy of which he was slightly suspected, naming that heresy: and that if he shall do any of the aforesaid things for the future, he willingly submits to the penalties appointed by law to one who thus abjures, and is ready to undergo every penance, as well for the things he hath said and done, as for those concerning which he is deservedly suspected of heresy, which they shall lay on him; and that with all his power he will endeavour to fulfil it.
If he hath not been publicly suspected, he abjures privately after the same manner in the episcopal palace, or inquisitor’s hall.