Fortieth, Felipe Beltran, bishop of Salamanca, was general inquisitor after Quintano, in 1774. He exercised this function until he died, which appears to me to have been about 1783. In his time there were 2 burned, none burned in effigy, 16 condemned to public penances, and very many in secret without infamy or confiscation. My departure from Madrid for Valencia on the 10th of August, 1812, since which I never returned to court, prevented me from completing this catalogue with the exact dates, but the substance of my narrative is most exact. The last victim who perished in the flames was a beata of Seville, on the 7th of November, 1781. She was condemned for having a compact and illicit personal intercourse with the devil, and for impenitent denial of the offence, according to the trial. Her life would have been spared had she pleaded guilty to the crimes of which she was accused.
Forty-first, Augustin Rubin de Cevallos, bishop of Jaen, knight of the grand cross of the royal Spanish order of Charles III. He immediately succeeded Beltran and was general inquisitor from 1784 until 1792, when he died. No one was burned in person nor in effigy in his time; 14 were condemned to public penances, and many in secret but without infamy or confiscation. Forty-second, Manuel Abad-y-la-Sierra, bishop of Astorga, archbishop of Selimbra and general inquisitor, appointed in 1792. He resigned in 1794 by order of Charles IV. In his time 16 were condemned to public and many to private penances; no one was burned. Forty-third, Francisco Antonio de Lorenzana, cardinal-archbishop of Toledo, was appointed general inquisitor in 1794, and resigned by order of Charles IV in 1797. In his time 14 were condemned to public and many to private penances; no one was burned.
Forty-fourth, Ramón Josef de Arce, archbishop of Burgos and of Saragossa, patriarch of the Indies, councillor of state, general director of the Royal University of Madrid, and knight of the grand cross of the royal order of Charles III. He was general inquisitor from 1798 to 1808. In his time 20 were condemned to public and many to private penances, without infamy or confiscation of goods. One effigy was burned at Cuenca, but no one was burned in person, for though sentence was pronounced against the curate of Esco, the general inquisitor and supreme council refused to confirm it, in order to prevent its execution. Recapitulation: burned in person, 31,912; burned in effigy, 17,659; condemned to severe penances, 291,450; total, 341,021.
My design is to calculate the number of victims at the lowest figure possible, and I am convinced that from the year 1481, when the tribunal was established, until the end of the reign of Philip II, the numbers were much more than I have stated, considering the records of the tribunals of Toledo and Saragossa, which did not notably exceed the rest. If we were to add the victims punished by the tribunals of Mexico, Lima, Cartagena de las Indias (Cartagena in Colombia), Sicily, and in the galleys at sea, the number would be incalculable. Still more so were we to count the victims which resulted from the attempts to establish the Inquisition in Naples, Milan, and Flanders, for all these belonged to Spain, and felt the influence of the Spanish tribunal. How many died in their beds of illness caused by the infamy which fell upon them through the condemnation of their relations? No possible calculation could include all this misery.[k]
EFFECTS AND INFLUENCES OF THE INQUISITION
Geddes,[q] in 1714, made this contemporary observation, and his point should not be forgotten in an estimate of the far-reaching evils. “By this list we see what a terrible havoc is made by the Inquisition in Portugal, and especially among the trading people, to the great diminution both of its stock in trade and of the number of its current and expert merchants. For though there were but four persons burned this year in Lisbon by the Inquisition, there were above threescore undone by it. Anyone of a family’s being taken up by the Inquisition goes a great way towards ruining it, filling them with such horrors as drive them into countries that are out of the reach of the Inquisition.”
A recent writer, a churchman, Dean Kitchin,[ll] has said:
“The hand of the Holy Office was outstretched against all; no lofty dignity in church or state, no eminence in art or science, no purity of life, could defend from its attacks. It is said to have threatened Charles V and Philip II; it persecuted Archbishop Carranza, head of the church in Spain; destroyed De Dominis, archbishop of Spalatro; it smote Galileo, murdered Giordano Bruno, attacked Pico di Mirandola, and even is said to have threatened Cæsar Borgia. With equal vigour, in combination with the Jesuits, the Inquisition made war on books and learning, religious or secular alike; we have seen how baleful was its effect in earlier days on literature and art in Provence, and in the time of the Catholic sovereigns on the material well-being of Spain. ‘In the love of Christ and his maid-mother,’ says Queen Isabella, ‘I have caused great misery, and have depopulated towns and districts, provinces and kingdoms.’”[ll]
A CATHOLIC VIEW OF THE INQUISITION (C. J. HEFELE)
The word inquisition with the original signification of an ecclesiastical court of faith, was later applied to a state institution which, on account of its real or alleged harshness, has become a by-word in Europe for everything horrible. There is no doubt that, an ecclesiastical court of inquiry existed among the Christians from the beginning, but it is equally certain that in the earliest times the penalties for heresy were only ecclesiastical and clerical without any civil effect. The case was altered when Emperor Constantine appeared as both the protector and the secular arm of the church, for which reason he considered it necessary to exile the heretics, who were threatening the church with danger, in order to put them out of the way of doing harm. More severe punishments than exile were first inflicted upon the Catholics by the Arians when their co-religionists Constantius and Valens occupied the throne. The former introduced the practice of imprisoning the orthodox, the latter of drowning them, and Arian princes in the later Germanic kingdoms always exercised violence towards those of different faiths.