But while using these facts to prevent us from thinking of the inquisitors as men of diabolical invention unlike their kind or their time in manner of thought or action, and while giving these facts their due weight in palliation of the personal offences of the inquisitors against fundamental principles of justice and mercy, we must not forget that, though the church took the idea of torture from the civil law and compelled the civil officials to administer it, yet the church enlarged the methods of torment and the causes for its use; the church forced upon the law and upon the monarchs many extremes of cruelty to which they were reluctant and against which they often mutinied.
And finally, seeing that the best men of the time were supposed to enter the church, and that the church appointed as inquisitors only its most exemplary members,[192] the defence of the Inquisition by some of its apologists on the ground of its origin in the customs of the period, really amounts to the astounding implication that the best men of the church were only a little worse than the average of their time.
It is stupefying to reflect on the character of the torments which crowds of people once watched for hours with joy, and which the supposedly best and gentlest spirits, the church fathers, inflicted day after day with all the fascination of ingenuity put to its utmost test. Such torments we of to-day can neither approve nor permit, and can hardly read of without nausea. None the less, lest we forget the horrors to which the doctrine of religious intolerance can drive mankind, and lest we lose the lesson of all history that no excess of punishment ever yet stopped the human hunger for liberty of thought and action, it will be well to place here a few of the more authentic instances of inquisitorial outrage.
We may well begin with the description from contemporaries, such as the history of Gonsalvius Montanus[o] or Gonzalez de Montés, a Spanish Protestant, who narrowly escaped death, whose friend was martyred, and who published a book on the Inquisition at Heidelberg in 1597. He is quoted with others in the history of Limborch,[b] which was published in 1692, and based almost solely on the church’s own accounts.[a]
A Contemporary Account of the Preliminaries to Torture
The place of torture in the Spanish Inquisition is generally an underground and very dark room, to which one enters through several doors. There is a tribunal erected in it, where the inquisitor, inspector, and secretary sit. When the candles are lighted, and the person to be tortured is brought in, the executioner, who was waiting for the other, makes an astonishing and dreadful appearance. He is covered all over with a black linen garment down to his feet, and tied close to his body. His head and face are all hid with a long black cowl, only two little holes being left in it for him to see through. All this is intended to strike the miserable wretch with greater terror in mind and body, when he sees himself going to be tortured by the hands of one who thus looks like the very devil.[o]
Whilst the officers are getting things ready for the torture, the bishop and inquisitor by themselves, and other good men zealous for the faith, endeavour to persuade the person to be tortured freely to confess the truth, and if he will not, they order the officers to strip him, who do it in an instant. Clergymen however must not be tortured by a lay officer or torturer unless they cannot find any clergymen who know how to do it, or are willing, because it would be in vain for the judges to order any clergyman or monk to the torture, if there was nobody to inflict it; and therefore in such a case it is usual to torture them by lay officers.
Whilst the person to be tortured is stripping, he is persuaded to confess the truth. If he refuses it, he is taken aside by certain good men, and urged to confess, and told by them that if he confesses, he will not be put to death, but only be made to swear that he will not return to the heresy he hath abjured. The inquisitor and bishop promise the same, unless the person be a relapse.
If he is persuaded neither by threatenings nor promises to confess his crime, he is tortured either more lightly or grievously, according as his crime requires, and frequently interrogated during the torture, upon those articles for which he is put to it, beginning with the lesser ones, because they think he will sooner confess the lesser matters than the greater. According to the directions of Royas,[u] one of the Spanish inquisitors: “The criminals are with great care and diligence to be admonished by the inquisitors, and especially when they are under torture, that they should not by any means bear false witness against themselves or others, through fear of punishment or torments, but speak the truth only. Nor may the inquisitors promise pardon or forgiveness of the offence, to compel the criminals to confess crimes which they have not committed, out of their great zeal to inquire out the truth. And such a false confession the accused person may safely revoke.”
The inquisitors themselves must interrogate the criminals during their torture, nor can they commit this business to others, unless they are engaged in other important affairs, in which case they may depute certain good and skilful men for the purpose. Although in other nations criminals are publicly tortured, yet in Spain it is forbidden by the royal law for any to be present whilst they are torturing, besides the judges, secretaries, and torturers. The inquisitors must also choose proper torturers, born of ancient Christians, who must be bound by oath by no means to discover their secrets, nor to report anything that is said. The judges also usually protest that if the criminal should happen to die under his torture, or by reason of it, or should suffer the loss of any of his limbs, it is not to be imputed to them, but to the criminal himself, who will not plainly confess the truth before he is tortured. A heretic may not only be interrogated concerning himself, but in general also concerning his companions and accomplices in his crime, his teachers and his disciples, for he ought to discover them, though he be not interrogated; but when he is interrogated concerning them, he is much more obliged to discover them than his accomplices in any other the most grievous crimes.