The Inquisition revealed

by Thomas Timpson

“The sentence being read, he was led to the table, where, on his knees, he recanted his errors, and acknowledged his implicit belief in the articles of the Roman Catholic faith. Four priests in surplices, and with wands in their hands, then came in. They repeatedly laid their wands across his shoulders while a Miserére was sung. He then withdrew from the inquisition.

“However rigorous this punishment may appear, yet it is mild when compared with the severity with which the Inquisition formerly visited similar offences. Nothing less than the personal interference of the monarch himself, and the clemency of the grand-inquisitor, could probably have prevented a repetition of those dreadful scenes which have rendered this formidable tribunal an object of universal horror; for the confessor, and many of the subordinate members, insisted on the necessity of an auto da fé, in which Olavides would have been infallibly committed to the flames.”

Olavides made his escape from the convent in which he had been confined, and retired to France. There he wrote a book, entitled, “The Gospel Triumphant; or, the Converted Philosopher,” for which he obtained pardon and permission to return to Spain.

4. Sufferings of a Beata.—Beatas, or blessed females, are devotees in the Romish church. One of this class, a lady of extraordinary piety and courage, perished at the stake of the Inquisition in Seville, about the year 1780. She had adopted the principles of Michael de Molinos, a Romish priest, of a noble family in Spain, founder of the Quietists. They placed religion in spiritual feeling, in opposition to ceremonies, deducing his principles from the Scriptures. Molinos having published a book, entitled “Spiritual Guide,” at Rome, A.D. 1675, he was imprisoned in the Inquisition, condemned as a heretic, and died under torture.

In a “Letter to the Spanish Inquisition,” about 1810, the writer says of this lady:—“The confinement of the Beata lasted three or four years, during which time there was scarcely a graduate of any order, who did not, in turn, undertake the conversion of the heretic. The assessors to the inquisitors exhausted the syllogistic art, but hardened as she was, she would not yield to their powerful arguments and authorities. The poor wretch was not aware of her danger in not being convinced, and the cause was drawing towards a conclusion. This arrived, and she insisted in arguing. The tribunal declared her an obstinate heretic, and appointed a time for the auto da fé. Scarce an inhabitant of Seville but went to see this solemn act. It lasted from the early part of the morning until night. The criminal was conducted, gagged, and mounted on an ass, in the midst of divines, who endeavoured to subdue her obstinacy by new arguments, and vie with the multitude in stunning her with repeated shouts of Viva la fé (long live the faith). Her cause was read from the pulpit, in the principal church of the Dominicans, intermixed with obscenities expressed in the grossest terms. Nothing now remained but to deliver her up to the secular judge, that she might be punished with death. A retraction, previous to this act, might have saved her life, but the unfortunate fanatic persisted in not making it, and was delivered up. The approaching punishment, and depression of spirits, occasioned by the fatigues of the day, made her desist from her obstinacy when it was too late. She was converted, to the satisfaction of the monks who were present; but the punishment could not even be deferred. She alone obtained as a favour to be burnt after death; and was strangled in the evening, amidst the tears of all devout souls, who admired the pious artifice by which this opportunity was taken of sending her to heaven, to prevent her falling again into heresy.”

“You will have no difficulty,” says the writer, “in persuading yourself, that this happened only thirty years ago. But remember, that the same laws now exist in all their force, and that it is scarce a year since the famous Quemadero, [the pile on which criminals are burnt,] where this scene was represented, was destroyed at Seville, because it stood in the way of the fortifications which were erecting against the French. A Quemadero, on which many thousands have perished, and which, doubtless owing to the frequent call for it, was constructed of solid materials, unlike other scaffolds, which are erected merely as occasion requires. Imagine to yourself that the greater part of the people are still disposed to look quietly on the repetition of such scenes; and tell me then, whether the Inquisition can be viewed in the light in which you place it?

“The time has gone by, it is true, when these scenes were exhibited daily; when the victims groaned in subterraneous dungeons, and made the hall of the tribunal resound at night with the cries which torture wrung from them; the time has passed, though not long since. It has passed, though it depends on the will of three men to restore it. It has passed:—then why all this declamation? Leave this question to those, who, forced by the circumstances of the times to conceal their inclinations and their opinions, clothe themselves in sheep-skins, anxiously awaiting the day when they may wreak their vengeance on those who have constrained them to show a mildness and forbearance. You strangers, who have lately visited Spain, have no means of forming a correct idea of the slow and endless oppression which this tribunal occasions, even in its actual state of slumber.”

5. Joseph da Costa, Pereira Furtado de Mendonia.—Da Costa was a native of Colonia da Sacramenta, on the river La Plata; but he suffered from the Inquisition in Portugal. In his “Narrative,” he says, “Three or four days had elapsed, after my arrival at Lisbon from England, in July, 1802, when a magistrate abruptly entered my apartments, and telling me who he was, informed me that he had orders to seize all my papers, and to conduct me to prison, where I was to be rigorously kept aloof from all communication. I doubted whether he were the person he represented himself to be, not only on account of his unpolished manners, but also because he had neither his official staff, nor any other sign of power; and though I knew that this was an error of essential consequence in a magistrate, that it justified me in impugning his authority, and considering him as a mere intruder upon the sacred asylum of my abode, I invited him civilly to sit down, and entreated that he would show me the order he pretended to possess, or tell me by whose authority it had been issued. He then showed me a letter from the intendant-general of police, which directed my imprisonment, the seizure of my papers, and that endeavours should be made to find, upon or about me, some masonical decorations. The motive of this proceeding, as stated in the order, was, that I had been to England without a previous passport.

“When I had read this fatal note, all the sorrowful consequences of an imprisonment rushed upon my mind, sensible that the fury of my persecutor would know no limits. I had sufficient coolness, however, to represent to this myrmidon of justice, that the harsh treatment of the intendant-general, without having any previous information of my case, was not a little surprising, since, so far from having gone to England without a passport, I had previously procured one from his Royal Highness the Prince Regard, which leave I had solicited, in consequence of being employed in the royal service as one of the literary directors of the royal printing-office, and my not deeming it proper to leave the kingdom without my sovereign’s permission; that I had not only obtained leave of absence, in writing, from the secretary of state’s office, and procured a formal passport from the minister of foreign affairs, but that the minister of finance had charged me, by the sovereign’s command, to transact some business relative to the royal service in London; and that, in proof of this, I could show him the official letters, some of which were directed to me in Lisbon, before my departure, and others were forwarded to London after my arrival in that city. I pleaded, therefore, my right to expect that the intendant-general of police should have been informed of all this, before he proceeded against me with such severity, or alleged, as a cause of his proceedings against me, that I had gone to England without a passport.

“The corregidor, willing to show me that there had been no precipitation in his way of proceeding, accused me of rashness for thinking that so excellent a magistrate as the intendant-general, whose probity was equal to his knowledge and learning, would have proceeded in a case of such importance without mature deliberation; and he showed me another letter. In this he was ordered by the intendant of police to take care of every thing that I might have brought from England belonging to the royal service, such as a collection of books I had purchased for the public library of Lisbon, some instruments directed to be made in England, and some books and other things belonging to the royal printing-office.