The king, standing up bareheaded, having on one side of him a grandee of Spain, holding the royal sword with the point upward, swore to observe the oath which a counsellor of the Inquisition had just read to him. The king continued in this posture till such time as the grand-inquisitor was returned back to his seat, where he took off his pontifical vestments. Then one of the secretaries of the Inquisition ascended a pulpit appointed for that purpose, and read an oath to the same purport, which he administered to all the grandees who were then present; and this part of the ceremony was followed by that of a Dominican going up into the pulpit, and delivering a sermon full of flattery in praise of the Inquisition.
About two o’clock in the afternoon they began to read the sentences of the condemned criminals; and they began with those who had died in prison, or who had been outlawed. Their figures in pasteboard were carried up to the little scaffold, and put into the cages, and then they read the sentences to each of the criminals who were alive, and they were, one by one, put into the cages, in order that every person present might know them. There were, in all, twenty persons, of both sexes, condemned to the flames; and of these, six men and two women could not be prevailed on either to confess or repent of their errors. A young woman was remanded to prison because she had always made the strongest protestations of her innocence, and therefore they thought it would be proper to re-examine the evidence that had been produced against her. Lastly, they read the sentences of those who had been found guilty of bigamy, or witchcraft, with several other crimes, and this lasted till about nine in the evening, when mass was finished.
Mass being finished, the grand-inquisitor, clothed in his pontifical vestments, pronounced a solemn absolution on all those who would repent; and then, the king being withdrawn, the criminals who had been condemned to be burnt, were delivered over to the civil power, and, being mounted upon asses, were carried in this manner through the gate called Foncural. About three hundred paces from it they were chained to stakes, and executed a little after midnight. Those who persisted in their errors were burnt alive; but such as repented, were first strangled before the fire was lighted. Those condemned to lesser punishments were remanded to prison, and the inquisitors returned home to their palace!
To us, in our enlightened times, it must appear very astonishing, that proceedings so inhuman and shocking could be witnessed and sanctioned by a great monarch and his mighty nobles. Yet these outrages continued, but not without complaints against the Inquisition from some of the nobility and statesmen, so that no less than 9,216 victims of that court are reckoned in the reign of Charles II., from A.D. 1666 to A.D. 1700: of these, 1,728 were burnt to death; 576 were burnt in effigy; and 6,912 were subjected to severe penances, in Spain.
ACT OF FAITH AT LISBON, A.D. 1682.
Dr. Michael Geddes, an eminent English divine, and chaplain to the factory at Lisbon for several years, until he was apprehended by the Inquisition in 1686, when he was interdicted from officiating in his ministerial capacity, and returned to England, witnessed an auto da fé, in 1682, and he describes it as follows:—
“In the morning of the day, the prisoners are all brought into a great hall, where they have the habits put on they are to wear in the procession, which begins to come out of the Inquisition about nine of the clock in the morning. The first in the procession are the Dominican friars, who carry the standard of the Inquisition, which on the one side hath their founder Dominic’s picture, and on the other side, a cross between an olive leaf and a sword, with this motto, Justitia et Misericordia. Next after the Dominicans come the penitents, some with benitos, some without, according to the nature of their crimes; they are all in black coats without sleeves, and bare-footed, with a wax candle in their hand. Next come the penitents who have narrowly escaped being burnt, who, over their black coat, have flames painted, with their points turned downwards, to signify their having been saved, but so as by fire: this habit is called by the Portuguese fuego revolto, or flames turned upside down. Next come the negative and relapsed, that are to be burnt, with flames upon their habit, pointing upward; and next come those who profess doctrines contrary to the faith of the Roman church, and who, besides flames on their habit, pointing upward, have their picture, which is drawn two or three days before, upon their breasts, with dogs, serpents, and devils, all with open mouths, painted upon it. Pequa, a famous Spanish inquisitor, calls this procession, Horrendum ac tremendum spectaculem; and so it is in truth, there being some things in the looks of all the prisoners, besides those that are to be burnt, that is ghastly and disconsolate, beyond what can be imagined; and in the eyes and countenance of those that are to be burnt, there is something that looks fierce and eager.
“The prisoners that are to be burnt alive besides a familiar, which all the rest have, have a Jesuit on each hand of them, who are continually preaching to them to abjure their heresies; but if they offer to speak anything in defence of the doctrine, for professing which they are going to suffer death, they are immediately gagged, and not suffered to speak a word more. This I saw done to a prisoner presently after he came out of the gates of the Inquisition, upon his having looked up to the sun, which he had not seen before for several years, and cried out in rapture, ‘How is it possible for people to behold that glorious body, to worship any being but Him that created it?’ After the prisoners come a troop of familiars on horseback, and after them the inquisitors, and other officers of the court, upon mules, and last of all comes the inquisitor-general, upon a white horse, led by two men, with a black hat and a green hatband, and attended by all the nobles that are employed as familiars in the procession.
“In the Terceiro de Paco, which may be as far from the Inquisition as Whitehall is from Temple Bar, there is a scaffold erected, which may hold two or three thousand people; at the one end sit the inquisitors, and at the other end the prisoners, and in the same order as they walked in the procession, those that are to be burnt being seated on the highest benches behind the rest, and which may be ten feet above the floor of the scaffold. After some prayers, and a sermon, which is made up of encomiums on the Inquisition, and invectives against heretics, a secular priest ascends a desk, which stands near the middle of the scaffold, and who, having first taken all the abjurations of the penitents, who kneel before him, one by one, in the same order as they walked in the procession, at last he recites the final sentence of the Inquisition upon those who are to be put to death, in the words following:—
“‘We, the inquisitors of heretical pravity, having, with the concurrence of the most illustrious N., lord archbishop of Lisbon, or of his deputy, M., called on the name of his Lord Jesus Christ, and of His glorious mother, the Virgin Mary, and sitting on our tribunal, and judging with the holy Gospels lying before us, that so our judgment might be in the sight of God, and our eyes might behold what is just in all matters between the magnific Doctor N., advocate-fiscal, on the one part, and you, N., now before us, on the other; we have ordained that in this place, and on this day, you should receive your definitive sentence. We do, therefore, by this our sentence, put in writing, define, pronounce, declare, and sentence thee, N., of the city of Lisbon, to be a convicted, confessing, affirmative, and professed heretic, and to be delivered by us as such to the secular arm; and we, by this sentence, do cast thee out of the ecclesiastical court, as a convicted, confessing, affirmative, and professed heretic, and we do leave and deliver thee to the secular arm, and to the power of the secular court, but at the same time do most earnestly beseech that court so to moderate its sentence as not to touch thy blood, or to put thy life in any danger.’