A person also suspected of heresy, and fully convicted, may be tortured upon another account, i.e., to discover his companions and accomplices in the crime. This must be done when he hesitates, or it is half fully proved at least that he was actually present with them, or he hath such companions and accomplices in his crime; for in this case he is not tortured as a criminal, but as a witness. But he who makes full confession of himself is not tortured upon a different account; whereas if he be a negative, he may be tortured upon another account, to discover his accomplices and other heretics, though he be full convicted himself, and it be half fully proved that he hath such accomplices. The reason of the difference in these cases is this, because he who confesses against himself would certainly much rather confess against other heretics if he knew them. But it is otherwise when the criminal is a negative.
Whilst these things are doing, the notary writes everything down in the process, as what tortures were inflicted, concerning what matters the prisoner was interrogated, and what he answered. If by these tortures they cannot draw from him a confession, they show him other kind of tortures and tell him he must undergo all of them, unless he confesses the truth. If neither by this means they can extort the truth, they may, to terrify him and engage him to confess, assign the second or third day to continue, not to repeat, the torture, till he hath undergone all those kinds of them to which he is condemned.
The degrees of tortures formerly used were five, which were inflicted in their turn, and are described by Julius Clarus[v] [member of the council to Philip II of Spain]. “Know therefore,” says he, “that there are five degrees of torture, viz., first, the being threatened to be tortured; secondly, being carried to the place of torture; thirdly, by stripping and binding; fourthly, the being hoisted upon the rack; fifthly, squassation.”
The stripping is performed without any regard to humanity or honour, not only to men, but to women and virgins, though the most virtuous and chaste, of whom they have sometimes many in their prison. For they cause them to be stripped, even to their very shifts, which they afterwards take off, forgive the expression, and then put on them straight linen drawers, and then make their arms naked quite up to their shoulders.
As to squassation, it is thus performed: the prisoner hath his hands bound behind his back, and weights tied to his feet, and then he is drawn up on high till his head reaches the very pulley. He is kept hanging in this manner for some time, that by the greatness of the weight hanging at his feet all his joints and limbs may be dreadfully stretched, and on a sudden he is let down with a jerk, by the slacking the rope, but kept from coming quite to the ground, by which terrible shake his arms and legs are all disjointed, whereby he is put to the most exquisite pain; the shock which he receives by the sudden stop of the fall, and the weight at his feet stretching his whole body more intensely and cruelly.[b]
The inquisitors sometimes shamefully and rashly proceed to the torture of innocent persons, as will evidently appear by one instance, not to mention more, given us by Gonsalvius.[o] “They apprehended in the Inquisition at Seville a noble lady, Joan Bohorquia, the wife of Francis Varquius, a very eminent man, and lord of Higuera, and daughter of Peter Garsia Xeresius, a wealthy citizen of Seville. The occasion of her imprisonment was that her sister, Mary Bohorquia, a young lady of eminent piety, who was afterwards burned for her pious confession, had declared in her torture that she had several times conversed with her sister concerning her own doctrine. When she was first imprisoned, she was about six months gone with child, upon which account she was not so straightly confined, nor used with that cruelty which the other prisoners were treated with, out of regard to the infant she carried in her.
“Eight days after her delivery, they took the child from her, and on the fifteenth shut her close up, and made her undergo the fate of the other prisoners, and began to manage her with their usual arts and rigour. In so dreadful a calamity she had only this comfort, that a certain pious young woman, who was afterwards burned for her religion by the inquisitors, was allowed her for her companion. This young creature was, on a certain day, carried out to her torture, and being returned from it into her jail, she was so shaken, and had all her limbs so miserably disjointed, that when she laid upon her bed of rushes it rather increased her misery than gave her rest, so that she could not turn herself without the most excessive pain. In this condition, as Bohorquia had it not in her power to show her any, or but very little outward kindness, she endeavoured to comfort her mind with great tenderness. The girl had scarce begun to recover from her torture, when Bohorquia was carried out to the same exercise, and was tortured with such diabolical cruelty upon the rack, that the rope pierced and cut into the very bones in several places, and in this manner she was brought back to prison, just ready to expire, the blood immediately running out of her mouth in great plenty. Undoubtedly they had burst her bowels, insomuch that the eighth day after her torture she died.
“And when, after all, they could not procure sufficient evidence to condemn her, though sought after and procured by all their inquisitorial arts, yet as the accused person was born in that place, where they were obliged to give some account of the affair to the people, and indeed could not by any means dissemble it, in the first act of triumph appointed her death, they commanded her sentence to be pronounced in these words: ‘Because this lady died in prison (without doubt suppressing the causes of it), and was found to be innocent upon inspecting and diligently examining her cause, therefore the holy tribunal pronounces her free from all charges brought against her by the fiscal, and absolving her from any further process, doth restore her both as to her innocence and reputation, and commands all her effects, which had been confiscated, to be restored to those to whom they of right belonged,’ etc. And thus, after they had murdered her by torture with savage cruelty, they pronounced her innocent!”[o]