“While this was going on,” said Colonel Lehmanowsky, “I gave orders for the library, paintings, and furniture to be carefully removed, and sent to the city for a large quantity of gunpowder. Placing this in the vaults and subterranean places of the buildings, and a slow match being set, we all withdrew to a distance, and awaited the result in silence. Presently, loud cheers rent the air; the walls and turrets of the massive structure rose majestically towards the heavens, impelled by the tremendous explosion, and fell back to the earth—a vast heap of ruins. The Inquisition was no more!”
Terrible as was this overthrow of the Inquisition at Madrid, it still existed in other cities of Spain; and Mr. Jacobs, travelling in that country, was permitted, in 1809, to view some of the buildings of the Holy Office at Seville. But he was allowed to see only the light, clean, and cheerful apartments, being unable to obtain any reply to his inquiries, whether there were any prisoners in dungeons, or any instruments of torture!
Intelligence continued to advance in Spain, and a reformation seemed determined on; so that, in 1813, the Cortes decreed the abolition of the Inquisition in every part of the country, as pernicious to the interests of the community, and incompatible with the constitution. But Ferdinand being restored to the throne, he entered Madrid, May 14, 1814; and, influenced by the priesthood, issued his proclamation, on the 21st of July, for the re-establishment of the Holy Office. He gave intimation of some alteration in its mode of administration; and Don Francisco Xavier, “the most excellent lord-inquisitor-general,” published his first edict, April 5, 1815. Little improvement was effected in the court; yet it was restrained by being partially under secular authority. In 1820, however, the Cortes finally abolished the Inquisition, and it has never since been restored in Spain.
Blaquire, the historian of the Spanish Revolution, states, in writing from Madrid, in October, 1820,—“If reports which I have heard both here and at Saragossa be true, the torture must have been resorted to in several instances. Amongst the memoranda found on the walls of the Inquisition here, one, after declaring the innocence of the writer, points out his mother as his accuser; another seems to have been traced by a victim upon whom the torture of la pendola had been exercised. This was performed by placing the sufferer in a chair sunk into the earth, and letting water fall on the crown of his head, from a certain height, in single drops. Though far from appearing so, the pendola is supposed to have been the most painful operation practised by the defenders of the faith. In a third inscription, dated on the 11th of November, 1818, the writer complains of having been shut up for a political offence, and in consequence of a false denunciation.”
When the Inquisition was thrown open, in 1820, by order of the Cortes, twenty-one prisoners were found in it, not one of whom knew the name of the city in which he was; some had been confined three years, some a longer period, and not one knew perfectly the nature of the crime of which he was accused. One of these prisoners had been condemned, and was to have suffered on the following day. His punishment was to be death by the pendulum. The method of thus destroying the victim was as follows:—The condemned was fastened in a groove upon a table, on his back; suspended above him was a pendulum, the edge of which was sharp; and it was so constructed as to become longer with every movement. The wretch saw this implement of destruction swinging to and fro above him, and every moment the keen edge approaching nearer and nearer; at length it cut the skin of his nose, and gradually cut on until life was extinct. This, it appears, was one of the substitutes for the more barbarous exhibitions in public, when the inquisitors did not dare to perform an auto da fé. And this, let it be remembered, was one of the modes of punishing those accused of heresy, by the secret tribunal of the Romish Inquisition, A.D. 1820!
Spain still groans under the dreadful domination of popery. Christian liberty is unknown to her people. They are kept by the Romish priesthood in a state of the most debasing ignorance, bound with the chains of a deplorable superstition. They are still held by the gloomy spirit of the Inquisition, though its courts are not in operation; but the more intelligent—and the number of this class, even in Spain, is believed to be increasing—enumerate, with horror, its past victims. The most complete estimate of the wretched sufferers by the “Holy Office” has been made by Jean Antoine Llorente, Secretary of the Inquisition at Madrid, in 1789-1790. In the “Preface” to his valuable “History” of that court, he says, “My perseverance has been crowned with success far beyond my hopes; for, in addition to an abundance of materials, obtained with labour and expense, consisting of unpublished manuscripts and papers mentioned in the inventories of deceased inquisitors and other officers of the institution, in 1809, 1810, and 1811, when the Inquisition in Spain was suppressed, all the archives were placed at my disposal; and, from 1809 to 1812, I collected everything that appeared to me of consequence in the registers of the council of the Inquisition, and in the provincial tribunals, for the purpose of compiling this History.”
Llorente gives the following as the total numbers of the victims, ascertained from the records of the Inquisition in Spain:—
| Persons who were condemned and perished in the flames | 31,912 |
| Persons burnt in effigy | 17,659 |
| Persons condemned to severe penances | 291,450 |
| Total | 341,021 |
Besides these, however, it is presumed that very many died under torture by the inquisitors, and that large numbers perished in prison, without any record on earth being made of their sufferings or their names. The last person that was publicly burnt by the inquisitors in Spain, is said to have been a Beata; and she was charged with having entered into a compact with the devil: she suffered, November 7th, 1781.
Spain, at present, is proverbial for its degradation, under the blighting intolerance and bigotry of popery. This is testified by intelligent travellers, who represent the debasement of the nation as resulting from the past operations and the remaining spirit of the Romish Inquisition. The testimony of two of these discriminating observers of society may suffice for the present purpose.