The History and Romance of Crime

FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES
TO THE PRESENT DAY

THE GROLIER SOCIETY
LONDON

Spanish Prisons

THE INQUISITION AT HOME AND ABROAD
PRISONS PAST AND PRESENT

by

MAJOR ARTHUR GRIFFITHS

Late Inspector of Prisons in Great Britain
Author of
"The Mysteries of Police and Crime
"Fifty Years of Public Service," etc.

The Inquisitor-General and the Catholic Sovereigns

The mandate of expulsion of the Jews from Spain was issued by Ferdinand and Isabella in 1492. This edict no doubt originated with Torquemada, who was very bitter against the Jews. When he learned that a number of their leaders were in conference with the King and Queen, and offering an immense ransom, Torquemada rushed into the presence bearing a crucifix on high and crying in stentorian tones that the sovereigns were about to act the part of Judas Iscariot. "Here He is!" he exclaimed. "Sell Him again, not for thirty pieces of silver, but for thirty thousand!" and flinging the crucifix on the table he ran out in a frenzy. This turned the tables and the decree for expulsion was confirmed.

THE GROLIER SOCIETY

Spanish Prisons

THE INQUISITION AT HOME AND ABROAD PRISONS PAST AND PRESENT

by

MAJOR ARTHUR GRIFFITHS

Late Inspector of Prisons in Great Britain

Author of
"The Mysteries of Police and Crime
"Fifty Years of Public Service," etc.

THE GROLIER SOCIETY

EDITION NATIONALE

Limited to one thousand registered and numbered sets.

NUMBER 307

INTRODUCTION

A considerable portion of this volume is devoted to the Spanish Inquisition, which was, for three centuries, the most important force in Spain. Thousands were condemned by its tribunals, and its prisons and punishments make up a large part of the penal history of that country. Much exaggeration has crept into the popular accounts, but the simple truth must cause a shudder, when read to-day.

The institution was created to deal with heresy, that is, with a departure from the accepted canons. The idea that there can be unity in diversity was not understood. The spiritual and the temporal powers were closely related, and bishop and king, pope and emperor, all believed that uniformity was necessary. Hence, heresy was everywhere treated as high treason not only to the Church but to the State as well. The Spanish Inquisition was a state affair as well as an ecclesiastical court.

We shall see that the jurisdiction of the Inquisition was not confined to the suppression of heresy. Many crimes which to-day are purely state concerns, were then punished by it, including bigamy, blasphemy, perjury, unnatural crimes, and witchcraft. The Spanish Inquisition deserves credit for discouraging persecution of the last named offence, and thereby saved the lives of thousands, who, in any other state would have been executed.

The adaptation to penal purposes of ancient buildings, to be found throughout the length and breadth of Spain, was very common, as these were immediately available although generally unsuitable. Chief among them are the many monastic buildings vacated when the laws broke up religious houses in Spain and which were mostly converted into prisons, but little deserving the name. Some of these houses have been utilised as gaols pure and simple; some have served two or more purposes as at Huelva, where the convent-prison was also a barrack.

Spain has been slow in conforming to the movements towards prison reform. She could not afford to spend money on new constructions along modern lines, and the introduction of the cellular system is only of recent date. The model prison of Madrid, which has replaced the hideous Saladero, was only begun in 1887. But a few separate prisons had already been created, such as those of Loja, Pontevedra, Barcelona, Vittoria and Naval Carnero. These establishments are new to Spain but their methods and aims are too well known to call for fresh description. More interest attaches to the older forms that have so long served as places of durance.

CONTENTS

List of Illustrations

SPANISH PRISONS

CHAPTER I

THE INQUISITION IN SPAIN

Beginning and growth of religious persecution—Temporal power of the Papacy—Pope Innocent III creates the first "Inquisitors"—Domingo de Guzman founder of the Inquisition—Founder of the Dominican Order of Friars—The "ancient" Inquisition—Penances inflicted—Persecution of the Jews in Spain—Institution of the "modern" Inquisition under Ferdinand and Isabella—Headquarters at Seville—Frequent autos da fé—Thomas de Torquemada the first Inquisitor-General—The privileges of the office—Torquemada's life and character—Sufferings of accused persons.

The record of religious persecution furnishes some of the saddest pages in the world's history. It began with the immediate successors of Constantine the Great, the first Christian prince. They promulgated severe edicts against heretics with such penalties as confiscation, banishment and death against breaches of Catholic unity. In this present tolerant age when every one may worship God after his own fashion, it is difficult to realise how recent a growth is toleration. For more than six centuries the flames of persecution burned fiercely throughout Christendom, lighted by the strong arm of the law, and soldiers were constantly engaged to extirpate dissent from the accepted dogmas with fire and sword. The growth of the papacy and the assumption of the temporal power exalted heresy into treason; independence of thought was deemed opposition to authority and resistance to the universal supremacy of the Church. The popes fighting in self-defence stimulated the zeal of their followers unceasingly to stamp out heresy. Alexander III in the 12th century solemnly declared that every secular prince who spared heretics should be classed as a heretic himself and involved in the one common curse.

When the temporal power of the popes was fully established and acknowledged, the papacy claimed universal sovereignty over all countries and peoples and was in a position to enforce it by systematic procedure against its foes. Pope Innocent III, consumed with the fervour of his intolerant faith, determined to crush heresy. His first step was to appoint two "inquisitors" (the first use of the name) and two learned and devout friars, who were really travelling commissioners, were sent to perambulate Christendom to discover heresy. They were commended to all bishops, who were strictly charged to receive them with kindness, treat them with affection, and "help them to turn heretics from the error of their way or else drive them out of the country." The same assistance was expected from the rulers of states who were to aid the inquisitors with equal kindness.

The mission began in the south of France and a crusade was undertaken against the Albigensians and Waldensians, those early dissidents from the Church of Rome, who drew down on themselves the unappeasable animosity of the orthodox. The campaign against these original heretics raged fiercely, but persecution slackened and might have died out but for the appearance of one devoted zealot whose intense hatred of heresy, backed by his uncompromising energy, revived the illiberal spirit and organised fresh methods of attack. This was Domingo de Guzman, a Spanish monk who accompanied Foulques, Bishop of Toulouse, when he left his desolated diocese to take part in the fourth Lateran Council, assembled at Rome in 1215. This Domingo, historically known as St. Dominic, was the founder of the Dominican order of friars.

Though generally accepted as such by Church historians, it is now argued that St. Dominic was not really the founder of the Inquisition[1] and that although he spent the best years of his life in combating heresy he took no more prominent part in persecution than hundreds of others. His eulogistic biographer describes him as "a man of earnest, resolute purpose, of deep and unalterable convictions, full of burning zeal for the propagation of the faith, yet kindly in heart, cheerful in temper and winning in manner.... He was as severe with himself as with his fellows.... His endless scourgings, his tireless vigils, his almost uninterrupted prayer, his superhuman fasts, are probably only harmless exaggerations of the truth." The Dominicans boasted that their founder exhaled "an odour of sanctity" and, when his tomb was opened, a delicious scent issued forth, so penetrating that it permeated the whole land, and so persistent that those who touched the holy relics had their hands perfumed for years.

Whatever the personal character of Dominic and whether or no he laboured to carry out the work himself, there can be no doubt that his Order was closely identified with the Inquisition from the first. Its members were appointed inquisitors, they served in the prisons as confessors, they assisted the tribunals as "qualificators," or persons appointed to seek out proof of guilt, or estimate the extent or quality of the heretical opinions charged against the accused; the great ceremonials and autos da fé were organised by them; they worked the "censure" and prepared the "Index" of prohibited books. The Dominicans were undoubtedly the most active agents in the Inquisition and they owed their existence to him, even if he did not personally take part in its proceedings.

The following quotation from Prescott's "History of Ferdinand and Isabella" may well be inserted here. "Some Catholic writers would fain excuse St. Dominic from the imputation of having founded the Inquisition. It is true he died some years before the perfect organisation of that tribunal; but as he established the principles on which, and the monkish militia by whom it was administered, it is doing him no injustice to regard him as its real author." The Sicilian writer, Paramo, indeed, in his heavy quarto, traces it up to a much more remote antiquity. According to him God was the first inquisitor and his condemnation of Adam and Eve furnished the models of the judicial forms observed in the trials of the Holy Office. The sentence of Adam was the type of the Inquisitional "reconciliation," his subsequent raiment of skins of animals was the type of the sanbenito, and the expulsion from Paradise, the precedent for the confiscation of the goods of heretics. This learned personage deduces a succession of inquisitors through the patriarchs, Moses, Nebuchadnezzar, and King David, down to John the Baptist, and he even includes our Saviour in whose precepts and conduct he finds abundant authority for the tribunal.

The "Ancient Inquisition," as that first established in Spain is generally called, had many of the features of the "modern" which dates from the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, and which will presently be described at some length. Its proceedings were shrouded in the same impenetrable secrecy, it used the same insidious modes of accusation, supported them by similar tortures, and punished them with similar penalties. A manual drawn up in the fourteenth century for the guidance of judges of the Holy Office prescribes the familiar forms of artful interrogation employed to catch the unwary, and sometimes innocent victim. The ancient Inquisition worked on principles less repugnant to justice than the better known, but equally cruel modern institution, but was less extensive in its operations because in the earlier days there were fewer heretics to persecute.

The ancient Inquisition was so unsparing in its actions that it almost extirpated the Albigensian heresy. The punishments it inflicted were even more severe than in the modern. Upon such as escaped the stake and were "reconciled," as it was styled, a terrible "penance" was imposed. One is cited by Llorente[2] as laid down in the ordinances of St. Dominic. The penitent, it was commanded, should be stripped of his clothes and beaten by a priest three Sundays in succession from the gate of the city to the door of the church; he must not eat any kind of meat during his whole life; must abstain from fish, oil and wine three days in the week during life, except in case of sickness or excessive labour; must wear a religious dress with a small cross embroidered on each breast; must attend mass every day, if he has the means of doing so, and vespers on Sundays and festivals; must recite the service for the day and night and repeat the paternoster seven times in the day, ten times in the evening, and twenty times at midnight. If he failed in any of these requirements, he was to be burned as a "relapsed heretic."

Chief among the causes that produced the new or "modern" Inquisition was the envy and hatred of the Jews in Spain. Fresh material was supplied by the unfortunate race of Israel, long established in the country, and greatly prosperous. They had come in great numbers after the Saracenic invasion, which indeed they are said to have facilitated, and were accepted by some of the Moorish rulers on nearly equal terms, and were treated with a tolerance seldom seen among Mahometans, though occasional outbursts of fanaticism rendered their position not quite secure. Under these generally favourable auspices the Jews developed in numbers and importance. Their remarkable instinct for money making and their unstinting diligence brought them great wealth. Their love of letters and high intelligence gave them preëminence in the schools of the Moorish cities of Cordova, Toledo and Granada, where they helped to keep the flame of learning bright and shining through the darkest ages. They became noted mathematicians, learned astronomers, devoted labourers in the fields of practical and experimental science. Their shrewdness in public affairs and their financial abilities commended them to the service of the state, and many rose to the highest civic dignities at both Christian and Moorish courts. Often, despite prohibitory laws, they collected the revenues and supervised the treasuries of the kingdoms of Castile and Aragon, while in private life they had nearly unlimited control of commerce and owned most of the capital in use.

After the Christian conquest, their success drew down upon them the envy and hatred of their less flourishing fellow subjects, who resented also that profuse ostentation of apparel and equipage to which the Jewish character has always inclined. Their widespread practice of usury was a still more fruitful cause for detestation. Often large sums were loaned, for which exorbitant rates of interest were charged, owing to the scarcity of specie and the great risk of loss inherent to the business. As much as twenty, thirty-three, and even forty per cent. per annum was exacted and paid. The general animosity was such that a fanatical populace, smarting under a sense of wrong, and urged on by a no less fanatical clergy broke out at times into violence, and fiercely attacked the Jews in the principal cities. The Juderías, or Jewish quarters, were sacked, the houses robbed of their valuable contents, precious collections, jewels and furniture were scattered abroad, and the wretched proprietors were massacred wholesale, irrespective of sex and age. According to the historian, Mariana, fifty thousand Jews were sacrificed to the popular fury in one year, 1391, alone.

This was the turning point in Spanish history. Fanaticism once aroused, did not die until all Jews were driven out of Spain. It brought into being another class also, the Conversos, or "New Christians," i. e. Jews who accepted Christian baptism, though generally without any spiritual change. At heart and in habits they remained Jews.

The law was invoked, too, to aggravate their condition. Legislative enactments of a cruel and oppressive kind were passed. Jews were forbidden to mix freely with Christians, their residence restricted to certain limited quarters, they were subject to irksome, sumptuary regulations, debarred from all display in dress, forbidden to carry valuable ornaments or wear expensive clothes, and they were held up to public scorn by being compelled to appear in a distinctive, unbecoming garb, the badge or emblem of their social inferiority. They were also interdicted from following certain professions and callings. They might not study or practise medicine, might not be apothecaries, nurses, vintners, grocers or tavern keepers, were forbidden to act as stewards to the nobility or as farmers or collectors of the public revenues, although judging from repeated re-enactments, these laws were evidently not strictly enforced, and often in some districts were not enforced at all.

Fresh fuel was added to the fiery passions vented on the Jews by the unceasing denunciation of their heresy and dangerous irreligion, and public feeling was further inflamed by grossly exaggerated stories of their hideous and unchristian malpractices. The curate of Los Palacios has detailed some of these in his "Chronicle," and they will serve, when quoted, to show what charges were brought against the Jew in his time. "This accursed race (the Israelites)," he says, speaking of the proceedings taken to bring about their conversion, "were either unwilling to bring their children to be baptised, or if they did, they washed away the stain on the way home. They dressed their stews and other dishes with oil instead of lard, abstained from pork, kept the passover, ate meat in Lent, and sent oil to replenish the lamps of their synagogues, with many other abominable ceremonies of their religion. They entertained no respect for monastic life, and frequently profaned the sanctity of religious houses by the violation or seduction of their inmates. They were an exceedingly politic and ambitious people, engrossing the most lucrative municipal offices, and preferring to gain their livelihood by traffic, in which they made exorbitant gains, rather than by manual labour or mechanical arts. They considered themselves in the hands of the Egyptians whom it was a merit to deceive and rob. By their wicked contrivances they amassed great wealth, and thus were able often to ally themselves by marriage with noble Christian families."

The outcry against the Jews steadily increased in volume. The clergy were the loudest in their protests against the alleged abominations, and one Dominican priest, Alonso de Hojeda, prior of the monastery of San Pablo in Seville, with another priest, Diego de Merlo, vigorously denounced the "Jewish leprosy" so alarmingly on the increase and besought the Catholic sovereigns to revive the Holy Office with extended powers as the only effective means of healing it. The appeal was strongly supported by the papal nuncio at the Court of Castile. Ferdinand and Isabella, as devout Catholics, deplored the prevalence of heresy, which they acknowledged to be rampant, and yet they hesitated to surrender any of their independence. No other state in Europe was so free from papal control or interference. Some of the Conversos held high places about the court and they, of course, used every effort to strengthen the reluctance of the queen, particularly. On the other hand, the Dominican monk, Thomas de Torquemada, her confessor in her youth, strove to instil the same spirit of unyielding fanaticism that possessed himself, and earnestly entreated her to devote herself to the "extirpation of heresy for the glory of God and the glorification of the Catholic faith." She long resisted but yielded at last to the unceasing importunities of the priests around her, and consented to solicit a bull from the pope, Sixtus IV, to introduce the Modern Inquisition into Castile. It was issued, under the date of November 1st, 1478, and authorised the appointment of two or three ecclesiastical inquisitors for the detection and suppression of heresy throughout Spain.

One difference from the usual form establishing such tribunals was the location of the power of appointment of inquisitors, which was vested in the king and queen instead of in Provincials of the Dominican or Franciscan Orders. Heretofore the appointment of inquisitors had been considered a delegation of the authority of the Holy See, something entirely independent of the secular power. But so jealous of outside interference were the Spanish rulers and the Spanish people, that the pope was forced to give way. Though he and his successors vainly strove to recover the power thus granted, they were never entirely successful, and the Spanish Inquisition remained to a large extent a state affair, and this fact explains much which otherwise is inexplicable. For example the confiscations passed into the royal instead of into the papal treasury.

At first mild measures were to be tried. Cardinal Mendoza, Archbishop of Seville, had drawn up a catechism instructing his clergy to spare no pains in illuminating the benighted Israelites by a candid exposition of the true principles of Christianity. Progress was slow, and after two years the results were so meagre that it was thought necessary to proceed to the nomination of inquisitors, and two Dominican monks, Fra Miguel de Morillo, and Juan de San Martin, were appointed with full powers, assisted by an assessor and a procurator fiscal.

The Jews played into the hands of their tormentors. Great numbers had been terrified into apostasy by the unrelenting hostility of the people. Their only escape from the furious attacks made upon them had been conversion to Christianity, often quite feigned and unreal. The proselytising priests, however, claimed to have done wonders; one, St. Vincent Ferrer, a Dominican of Valencia, had by means of his eloquence and the miraculous power vouchsafed him, "changed the hearts of no less than thirty-five thousand of house of Judah." These numerous converts were of course unlikely to be very tenacious in their profession of the new faith, and not strangely laid themselves open to constant suspicion. Many were denounced and charged with backsliding, many more boldly reverted to Judaism, or secretly performed their old rites. Now uncompromising war was to be waged against the backsliding "new Christians" or Conversos.

The inquisitors installed themselves in Seville, and made the Dominican convent of San Pablo their first headquarters, but this soon proved quite insufficient in size and they were allowed to occupy the fortress of the Triana, the great fortress of Seville, on the right bank of the Guadalquivir, the immense size and gloomy dungeons of which were especially suitable. This part of the city was much exposed to inundations, and when, in 1626, it was threatened with destruction by an unusually high flood, the seat of the tribunal was removed to the palace of the Caballeros Tellos Taveros in the parish of San Marco. In 1639 it returned to the Triana which had been repaired, and remained there till 1789, when further encroachments of the river caused it to be finally transferred to the College of Las Beccas. The Triana is now a low suburb, inhabited principally by gipsies and the lower classes. It was at one time the potters' quarter where the famous azulejo tiles were made, and its factories to-day produce the well known majolica vases and plates with surface of metallic lustre.

One of the first steps of the Inquisition was to put a summary check to the exodus of the Jews who had been fast deserting the country. All the magnates of Castile, dukes, counts, hidalgos and persons in authority, were commanded to arrest all fugitives, to sequestrate their property and send them prisoners to Seville. Any who disobeyed or failed to execute this order were to be excommunicated as abettors of heresy, to be deposed from their dignities and deprived of their estates. Such orders were strange to the ears of the turbulent nobles who had been accustomed to pay little heed to pope or king. A new force had arisen in the land.

On the Castle of the Triana,[3] already described, a tablet was erected over the portals with an inscription, celebrating the inauguration of the first "modern Inquisition" in Western Europe. The concluding words were:—"God grant that for the protection and augmentation of the faith it may abide unto the end of time. Arise oh Lord, judge Thy cause! Catch yet the foxes (heretics)!"

Just now, by an ill-advised move, the Conversos lost the sympathy of all. Diego de Susan, one of the richest citizens of Seville, called a meeting of the "New Christians" in the church of San Salvador. It was attended by many high officials, and even ecclesiastics of Jewish blood. Susan suggested that they collect a store of arms, and that at the first arrest, they rise and slay the inquisitors. The plan was adopted but was betrayed by a daughter of Susan, who had a Christian lover. The plotters were arrested at once, and on February sixth, 1481, six men and women were burned and others were severely punished.

The hunt was cunningly organised. An "Edict of Grace" was published promising pardon to all backsliders if they would come voluntarily and confess their sins. Many sought indulgence and were plied with questions by the inquisitors to extract evidence against others. On the information thus obtained the suspected were marked down, seized and carried off to the prisons. Any adherence to Jewish customs gave opportunity for denunciation, and the severe measures rapidly reduced the numbers of the backsliding Jewish-Christians. In Seville alone, according to Llorente, two hundred and ninety-eight persons were burnt in less than a year, and seventy-nine were condemned to perpetual imprisonment. Great sums ought to have passed into the treasury, then and afterwards, from the confiscated property of rich people who perished at the stake or were subjected to fine and forfeiture. But the great engine of the Inquisition was excessively costly. The pageants at the frequent autos da fé were lavishly expensive, a great staff of officials, experts, familiars and guards was maintained, and, in addition, the outlay on the place of execution, the "quemadero" or burning place, a great pavement on a raised platform adorned with fine pillars and statues of the prophets, was very considerable, while the yearly bill for fuel, for faggots and brush wood rose to a high figure. Undoubtedly there was considerable embezzlement also.

There was evidently too much work for two men, so in February, 1482, seven additional inquisitors were commissioned by the pope on the nomination of the sovereigns, and some of these were exceedingly zealous. There was, however, much confusion because of the lack of a unifying authority. The sovereigns were determined that the institution must be kept under the control of the state, and so a council of administration usually called la Suprema was added to those already existing, and was charged with jurisdiction over all measures concerning the faith. At the head was placed a new officer, later called the inquisitor-general. The inquisitor-general was hardly a subject. He had direct access to the sovereign and exercised absolute and unlimited power over the whole population and was superior to all human law. No rank, high or low escaped his jurisdiction. Royal personages were not exempt from his control, for the Holy Office invaded the prince's palace as well as the pauper's hovel. There was no sanctity in the grave, for corpses of heretics were ruthlessly disinterred, mutilated and burned.

The first inquisitor-general under the new organisation was Thomas de Torquemada, who has won for himself dreadful immortality from the signal part he played in the great tragedy of the Inquisition. He was a Dominican monk, a native of old Castile, who had been confessor and keeper of the Queen's conscience to Isabella in her early days and constantly sought to instil his fiery spirit into her youthful mind. "This man," says Prescott, "who concealed more pride under his monastic weeds than might have furnished forth a convent of his order, was one of that class with whom zeal passes for religion and who testify their zeal by a fiery persecution of those whose creed differs from their own; who compensate for their abstinence from sensual indulgence by giving scope to those deadlier vices of the heart, pride, bigotry and intolerance which are no less opposed to virtue and are far more extensively mischievous to society." The cruelties which he perpetrated grew out of a pitiless fanaticism, more cruel than the grave. He was rigid and unbending and knew no compromise. Absolutely fearless, he directed his terrible engine against the suspect no matter how high-born or influential.

Torquemada was appointed in 1483 and was authorised from Rome to frame a new constitution for the Holy Office. He had been empowered to create permanent provincial tribunals under chief inquisitors which sat at Toledo, Valladolid, Madrid and other important cities, and his first act was to summon some of these to Seville to assist him in drawing up rules for the governance of the great and terrible engine that was to terrorise all Spain for centuries to come. The principles of action, the methods of procedure, the steps taken to hunt up victims and bring them under the jurisdiction of the court, secure conviction and enforce penalties, are all set out at length in the record of the times. "A bloody page of history," says the historian, "attests the fact that fanaticism armed with power is the sorest evil that can befall a nation." For generations the Spanish people, first the Jews, then the Moriscos, lastly the whole native born community lay helpless in the grip of this irresponsible despotism. Few, once accused, escaped without censure of some sort. Llorente declares with his usual exaggeration that out of a couple of thousand cases, hardly one ended in acquittal and the saying became proverbial that people if not actually roasted by the Inquisition were at least singed.

In order to appreciate fully the harshness of the Spanish Inquisition and the cruelties perpetrated for several centuries, under the guise of religion, we must trace the steps taken by the Holy Office, its guiding principles and its methods of procedure.

The great aim at the outset was to hunt up heretics and encourage the denunciation of presumed offenders. Good Catholics were commanded by edicts published from the pulpits of all churches to give information against every person they knew or suspected of being guilty of heresy, and priests were ordered to withhold absolution from any one who hesitated to speak, even when the suspected person was a near relation, parent, child, husband or wife. All accusations whether signed or anonymous were accepted, but the names of witnesses were also required. On this sometimes meagre inculpation victims might be at once arrested, though in some cases, censors must first pass upon the evidence. Often not a whisper of trouble reached the accused until the blow actually fell.

Kept thus in solitary imprisonment, cut off entirely from his friends outside, denied the sympathy or support he might derive from their visits or communications, he was left to brood despairingly, a prey to agonised doubts, in ignorance even of the charges brought against him. A few brief extracts from the depositions of witnesses might be read to him, but the statements were so garbled that he could get no clue to names or identities. If there were any facts favourable to him in the testimony they were withheld from him. If he could, however, name as mortal enemies some of the witnesses, their testimony was much weakened. Facts of time, place and circumstance in the charges preferred were withheld from him and he was so confused and embarrassed that unless a man of acuteness and presence of mind he might become involved in inextricable contradictions when he attempted to explain himself.

On the other hand judges were guided and supported by the most minute instructions. "It is the high and peculiar privilege of the tribunal that its officers are not required to act with formality; they need observe no strict forensic rules and therefore the omission of what ordinary justice might exact does not invalidate its actions, provided only that nothing essential to the proof be wanting." The first essential of justice, as we understand it, was ignored. An accused person arraigned for heresy was expected to incriminate himself, to furnish all necessary particulars for conviction. Testimony could be received from persons of any class or character. "They might be excommunicate, infamous, actual accomplices, or previously convicted of any crime." The evidence of Jews and infidels might be taken also, even in a question of heretical doctrine. Wife, children, relatives, servants, might depose against a heretic. "A brother may declare against a brother and a son against a father." The witnesses met with no mercy. If any one did not say all he could, or seemed reluctant to speak, the examiners occasionally ruled that torture should be applied.

CHAPTER II

PERSECUTION OF JEWS AND MOORS

Increased persecution of the Jews—Accusations made against them—Ferdinand introduces the modern Inquisition into the Kingdom of Aragon in 1484—Fray Gaspar Juglar and Pedro Arbués appointed Inquisitors—Assassination of Pedro Arbués—Punishment of his murderers—Increased opposition against the Holy Office—Arrest of the Infante Don Jaime for sheltering a heretic—Expulsion of the Jews from Spain—Appeal to the King to revoke this edict—Ferdinand inclined to yield, but Torquemada over-rules him—Sufferings of the Jews on the journey—Death of Torquemada—Hernando de Talavera appointed archbishop of Granada—His success with the Moors—Don Diego Deza new Inquisitor-General—Succeeded by Ximenes de Cisneros—His character and life—Appointed Primate of all Spain—His severity with the Moors—University of Alcalá founded by Ximenes—Accession of Charles V—Persecution of Moors—Expulsion.

The fires of the modern Inquisition, it was said, had been lighted exclusively for the Jews. The fiery zeal of Torquemada and his coadjutors was first directed against the Spanish children of Israel. The Jews constantly offered themselves to be harassed and despoiled. They were always fair game for avaricious greed. The inquisitors availed themselves of both lines of attack. Jewish wealth steadily increased as their financial operations and their industrial activities extended and flourished. When the Catholic Kings embarked upon the conquest of Granada, the Jews found the sinews of war; Jewish victuallers purveyed rations to the armies in the field; Jewish brokers advanced the cash needed for the payments of troops; Jewish armourers repaired the weapons used and furnished new tools and warlike implements.

At the same time the passions of the populace were more and more inflamed against the Jews by the dissemination of scandalous stories of their blasphemous proceedings. It was seriously asserted by certain monks that some Jews had stolen a consecrated wafer with the intention of working it into a paste with the warm blood of a newly killed Christian child and so produce a deadly poison to be administered to the hated chief inquisitor. Another report was to the effect that crumbs from the holy wafer had been detected between the leaves of a Hebrew prayer book in a synagogue. One witness declared that this substance emitted a bright effulgence which gave clear proof of its sanctity and betrayed the act of sacrilege committed. Other tales were circulated of the diabolical practices of these wicked Jewish heretics.

Ferdinand in 1484 proceeded to give the modern Inquisition to the Kingdom of Aragon, where the "ancient" had once existed but had lost much of its rigour. It was a comparatively free country and the Holy Office had become little more than an ordinary ecclesiastical court. But King Ferdinand was resolved to reëstablish it on the wider basis it had assumed in Castile and imposed it upon his people by a royal order which directed all constituted authorities to support it in carrying out its new extended functions. A Dominican monk, Fray Gaspar Juglar, and a canon of the church, Pedro Arbués, were appointed by Torquemada to be inquisitors for the diocese of Saragossa. The new institution was most distasteful to the Aragonese, a hardy and independent people. Among the higher orders were numbers of Jewish descent, filling important offices and likely to come under the ban of the Inquisition. The result was a deputation to the pope and another to the king representing the general repugnance of the Aragonese to the institution and praying that its action might be suspended. Neither pope nor king would listen to the appeal and the Holy Office began its work. Two autos da fé were celebrated in Saragossa, the capital, in 1484, when two men were executed.

Horror and consternation seized the Conversos and a fierce desire for reprisals developed. They were resolved to intimidate their oppressors by some appalling act of retaliation and a plot was hatched to make away with one of the inquisitors. The conspirators included many of the principal "New Christians," some of whom were persons of note in the district. A considerable sum was subscribed to meet expenses and pay the assassins. Pedro Arbués was marked down for destruction but, conscious of his danger, continually managed to evade his enemies. He wore always a coat of mail beneath his robes when he attended mass in the Cathedral, and every avenue by which he could be approached in his house was also carefully guarded.

At length he was taken by surprise when at his devotions. He was on his knees before the high altar saying his prayers at midnight, when two men crept up behind him unobserved and attacked him. One struck him with a dagger in the left arm, the other felled him with a violent blow on the back of the neck by which he was laid prostrate and carried off dying. With his last breath he thanked God for being selected to seal so good a cause with his blood. His death was deemed a martyrdom and caused a reaction in favour of the Inquisition as a general rising of the New Christians was feared. The storm was appeased by the archbishop of Saragossa who gave out publicly that the murderers should be rigorously pursued and should suffer condign punishment. The promise was abundantly fulfilled. A stern recompense was exacted from all who were identified with the conspiracy. The scent was followed up with unrelenting pertinacity, several persons were taken and put to death, and a larger number perished in the dungeons of the Inquisition. All the perpetrators of the murder were hanged after their right hands had been amputated. The sentence of one who had given evidence against the rest was commuted in that his hand was not cut off till after his death.

A native of Saragossa had taken refuge in Tudela where he found shelter and concealment in the house of the Infante, Don Jaime, the illegitimate son of the Queen of Navarre, and nephew of King Ferdinand himself. The generous young prince could not reject the claims of hospitality and helped the fugitive to escape into France. But the Infante was himself arrested by the inquisitors and imprisoned as an "impeder" of the Holy Office. His trial took place in Saragossa, although Navarre was outside its jurisdiction, and he was sentenced to do open penance in the cathedral in the presence of a great congregation at High Mass. The ceremony was carried out before the Archbishop of Saragossa, a boy of seventeen, the illegitimate son of King Ferdinand, and this callow stripling in his primate's robes ordered his father's nephew to be flogged round the church with rods.

The second story is much more horrible. One Gaspar de Santa Cruz of Saragossa had been concerned in the rebellion, but escaped to Toulouse where he died. He had been aided in his flight by a son who remained in Saragossa, and who was arrested as an "impeder" of the Holy Office. He was tried and condemned to appear at an auto da fé, where he was made to read an act which held up his father to public ignominy. Then the son was transferred to the custody of the inquisitor of Toulouse who took him to his father's grave, forced him to exhume the corpse and burn it with his own hands.

The bitter hatred of the Jews culminated in the determination of the king and queen, urged on by Torquemada, to expel them entirely from Spain. The germ of this idea may be found in the capitulation of Granada by the Moors, when it was agreed that every Jew found in the city was to be shipped off forthwith to Barbary. It was now argued that since all attempts to convert them had failed, Spain should be altogether rid of them. The Catholic King and Queen were induced to sign an edict dated March 30th, 1492, by which it was decreed that every Jew should be banished from Spain within three months, save and except those who chose to apostasise and who, on surrendering the faith of their fathers, might be suffered to remain in the land of their adoption, with leave to enjoy the goods they had inherited or earned. No doubt this edict originated with Torquemada.

Dismay and deep sorrow fell upon the Spanish Jews. The whole country was filled with tribulation. All alike cried for mercy and offered to submit to any laws and ordinances however oppressive, to accept any terms, to pay any penalties if only they might escape this cruel exile. Leading Jews appeared before King Ferdinand and pleaded abjectly for mercy for their co-religionists, offering an immediate ransom of six hundred thousand crowns in gold. The king was inclined to clemency, but the queen was firm. He saw the present advantage, the ready money, and doubted whether he would get as much from the fines and confiscations promised by the inquisitors. But at that moment, so the story goes, Torquemada rushed into the presence bearing a crucifix on high and cried in stentorian tones that the sovereigns were about to act the part of Judas Iscariot. "Here he is! Sell Him again, not for thirty pieces of silver, but for thirty thousand!" and flinging the crucifix on to the table, he ran out in a frenzy. This turned the tables, and the decree for expulsion was confirmed.

The terms of the edict were extremely harsh and peremptory. As a preamble the crimes of the Jews were recited and the small effect produced hitherto by the most severe penalties. It was asserted that they still conspired to overturn Christianity in Spain and recourse to the last remedy, the decree of expulsion, under which all Jews and Jewesses were commanded to leave Spain and never return, even for a passing visit, on pain of death, was therefore necessary. The last day of July, 1492, or four months later, was fixed for the last day of their sojourn in Spain. After that date they would remain at the peril of their lives, while any person of whatever rank or quality who should presume to receive, shelter, protect or defend a Jew or Jewess should forfeit all his property and be discharged from his office, dignity or calling. During the four months, the law allowed the Jews to sell their estates, or barter them for heavy goods, but they were forbidden to remove gold or silver or take out of the kingdom other portable property which was already prohibited by law from exportation.

During the preparation for, and execution of this modern exodus, the condition of the wretched Israelites was heart-rending. Torquemada had tried hard to proselytise, had sent out preachers offering baptism and reconciliation, but at first few listened to the terms proposed. All owners of property and valuables suffered the heaviest losses. Enforced sales were so numerous that purchasers were not to be easily found. Fine estates were sold for a song. A house was exchanged for an ass or beast of burden; a vineyard for a scrap of cloth or linen. Despite the prohibition much gold and silver were carried away concealed in the stuffing of saddles and among horse furniture. Some exiles at the moment of departure swallowed gold pieces, as many as twenty and thirty, and thus evaded to some extent the strict search instituted at the sea ports and frontier towns.

At last in the first week of July, all took to the roads travelling to the coast on foot, on horse or ass-back or were conveyed in country carts. According to an eye-witness, "they suffered incredible misfortunes by the way, some walking feebly, some struggling manfully, some fainting, many attacked with illness, some dying, others coming into the world, so that there was not a Christian who did not feel for them and entreat them to be baptised." Here and there under the pressure of accumulated miseries a few professed to be converted, but such cases were very rare. The rabbis encouraged the people as they went and exhorted the young ones to raise their voices and the women to sing and play on pipes and timbrels to enliven them and keep up their spirits.

Ships were provided by the Spanish authorities at Cadiz, Gibraltar, Carthagena, Valencia and Barcelona on which fifteen hundred of the wealthy families embarked and started for Africa, Italy and the Levant, taking with them their dialect of the Spanish language, such as is still talked at the places where they landed. Of those who joined in the general exodus some perished at sea, by wreck, disease, violence or fire, and some by famine, exhaustion or murder on inhospitable shores. Many were sold for slaves, many thrown overboard by savage ship captains, while parents parted with their children for money to buy food. On board one crowded ship a pestilence broke out, and the whole company was landed and marooned on a desert island. Other infected ships carried disease into the port of Naples, where it grew into a terrible epidemic, by which twenty thousand native Neapolitans perished. Those who reached the city found it in the throes of famine, but were met in landing by a procession of priests, led by one who carried a crucifix and a loaf of bread, and who intimated that only those who would adore the first would receive the other. In papal dominions alone was a hospitable reception accorded. The pope of the time, Alexander VI, was more tolerant than other rulers.

The total loss of population is now difficult to ascertain, but undoubtedly it has been greatly exaggerated. The most trustworthy estimate fixes the number of emigrants at one hundred and sixty-five thousand, and the number dying of hardships and grief before leaving at about twenty thousand. Probably fifty thousand more accepted baptism as a consequence of the edict. The loss entailed in actual value was incalculable and a vast amount of potential earnings was sacrificed by the disappearance of so large a part of the most industrious members of the population. The king and queen greatly impoverished Spain in purging it of Hebrew heresy. Their action however was greeted with applause by other rulers who did not go to the same lengths on account of economic considerations. They were praised because they were willing to sacrifice revenue for the sake of the faith.

Open Judaism no longer existed in Spain. There were left only the apostates, or New Christians. That many of these were Christians in name and kept the Mosaic law in every detail is undoubted. As Jews they were not subject to the Inquisition. As professing Christians, any departure from the established faith subjected them to the penalties imposed upon heretics. In spite of the high positions which many achieved, they were objects of suspicion, and with the increasing authority of the Inquisition their lot grew harder.

Torquemada had been active not only against the Jews, but against all suspected of any heresy, no matter how influential. The odium he incurred raised up constant accusations against him, and he was obliged on three occasions to send an agent to Rome to defend his character. Later his arbitrary power was curtailed by the appointment of four coadjutors, nominally, to share the burthens of office, but really to check his action. On the whole he may be said to take rank among those who have been the authors of evil to their species. "His zeal was of such an extravagant character that it may almost shelter itself under the name of insanity." His later days were filled with constant dread of assassination, and when he moved to and fro his person was protected by a formidable escort, a bodyguard of fifty familiars of the Holy Office mounted as dragoons and a body of two hundred infantry soldiers. Yet he reached a very old age and died quietly in his bed.

Estimates of the numbers convicted and punished during his administration differ widely. Llorente, who is, however, much given to exaggeration, states that eight thousand eight hundred were burned alive, and that the total number condemned was more than one hundred and five thousand. On the other hand Langlois,[4] whose estimate is accepted by Vancandard, and other Catholic writers, thinks that the number put to death was about two thousand.

Death overtook him when a fresh campaign against heresy was imminent. The conquest of the Kingdom of Granada by Ferdinand and Isabella opened up a new field for the proselytising fervour of the Inquisition, which was now resolved to convert all Mahometan subjects to the Christian faith. A friar of the order of St. Jerome, Hernando de Talavera, a man of blameless life, a ripe scholar, a persuasive preacher, deeply read in sacred literature and moral philosophy, had been one of the confessors to Royalty, and had been raised to the bishopric of Avila. But he had begged to be allowed to resign it and devote himself entirely to the conversion of the Moors. The pope granted his request and appointed him archbishop of Granada with a smaller revenue than that of the diocese he left, but he was humble minded, had no craving to exhibit the pomp and display of a great prelate and devoted himself with all diligence to the duties of his new charge.

He soon won the hearts of the Moors who loved and venerated him. He proceeded with great caution, made no open show of his desire to convert them, and strictly refrained from any coercive measures, trusting rather to reason them out of their heterodox belief. He caused a translation to be made of the Bible into Arabic, distributed it, encouraged the Moors to attend conferences, and come to him in private to listen to his arguments. Being thus busily engaged, he withdrew to a great extent from the court of Ferdinand and Isabella, who came more and more under the influence of fiery bigots, to whom the mild measures of the archbishop became profoundly displeasing. The inquisitors, with Don Diego Deza who had succeeded Torquemada, at their head, incessantly entreated the sovereigns to proceed with more severity, and went the length of advising the immediate expulsion of all Moors who hesitated to accept conversion and baptism forthwith. They urged that it was for the good of their souls to draw them into the fold and insisted that it would be utterly impossible for Christian and Moslem to live peacefully and happily side by side. The king and queen demurred, temporising as they had done with the revival of the Inquisition. It might be dangerous, they argued, to enforce penalties that were too harsh. Their supremacy was hardly as yet consolidated in Granada; the Moors had not yet entirely laid aside their arms and unwise oppression might bring about a resumption of hostilities. They hoped that the Moors, like other conquered peoples, would in due course freely adopt the religion of their new masters. Loving kindliness and gentle persuasion would more surely gain ground than fierce threats and arbitrary decrees.

So for seven or more years the conciliatory methods of Archbishop Talavera prevailed and met with the approval of Ferdinand and Isabella. But now a remarkable man of very different character appeared upon the scene and began to advocate sterner measures. This was a Franciscan monk, Ximenes de Cisneros, one of the most notable figures in Spanish history, who became in due course inquisitor-general and regent of Spain. A sketch of his life may well be given to enable us better to understand the times.

Ximenes de Cisneros better known, perhaps, under his first name alone, was the scion of an ancient but decayed family and destined from his youth for the Church. He studied at the University of Salamanca and evinced marked ability. After a stay in Rome, the best field for preferment, he returned to Spain with the papal promise of the first vacant benefice in the See of Toledo. The archbishop had other views, however, and when Ximenes claimed the cure of Uceda, he was sent to prison in its fortress and not to the presbytery. For six years Ximenes asserted his pretensions unflinchingly and was at last nominated, when he exchanged to a chaplaincy in another diocese, that of Siguenza, where he continued his theological studies and acquired Hebrew and Chaldee. Here he came under the observation of the Bishop Mendoza, who afterwards became Cardinal Primate of Spain, and who enjoyed the unbounded confidence of Queen Isabella. Mendoza when invited to recommend to her a new confessor, in succession to Talavera on his translation to the See of Granada, fixed upon Ximenes of whom he had never lost sight since their first acquaintance at Siguenza.

Ximenes, meanwhile, had become more and more devoted to his sacred calling. His marked business aptitudes had gained for him the post of steward to a great nobleman, the Conde de Cifuentes, who had been taken prisoner by the Moors. But secular concerns were distasteful to him and Ximenes resigned his charge. His naturally austere and contemplative disposition had deepened into stern fanatical enthusiasm and he resolved to devote himself more absolutely to the service of the Church. He entered the Franciscan order, threw up all his benefices and employments, and became a simple novice in the monastery of San Juan de los Reyes in Toledo, where his cloister life was signalised by extreme severity and self-mortification. He wore haircloth next his skin, slept on the stone floor with a wooden pillow under his head, tortured himself with continual fasts and vigils, and flogged himself perpetually. At last he became a professed monk, and because of the fame of his exemplary piety, great crowds were attracted to his confessional. He shrank now from the popular favour and retired to a lonely convent in a far off forest, where he built himself a small hermitage with his own hands and where he passed days and nights in solemn abstraction and unceasing prayer, living like the ancient anchorites on the green herbs he gathered and drinking water from the running streams. Self centred and pondering deeply on spiritual concerns, constantly in a state of mental exaltation and ecstasy, he saw visions and dreamed dreams, believing himself to be in close communication with celestial agencies and was no doubt on the eve of going mad, when his superiors ordered him to reside in the convent of Salceda, where he became charged with its administration and management, and was forced to exercise his powerful mind for the benefit of others.

It was here that the call to court found him and he was summoned to Valladolid and unexpectedly brought into the presence of the queen. Isabella was greatly prepossessed in his favour by his simple dignity of manner, his discretion, his unembarrassed self-possession and above all his fervent piety in discussing religious questions. Yet he hesitated to accept the office of her confessor, and only did so on the condition that he should be allowed to conform to the rules of his order and remain at his monastery except when officially on duty at the court.

Soon afterwards, he was appointed Provincial of the Franciscans in Castile and set himself to reform their religious houses, the discipline of which was greatly relaxed. Sloth, luxury and licentiousness prevailed and especially in his own order, which was wealthy and richly endowed with estates in the country, and stately dwellings in the towns. These monks, styled "conventuals," wasted large sums in prodigal expenditure, and were often guilty of scandalous misconduct which Ximenes, as an Observantine, one of a small section pledged to rigid observance of monastic rules, strongly condemned. He was encouraged and supported in the work of reform by Isabella and a special bull from Rome armed him with full authority. His rigorous and unsparing action met with fierce opposition, but he triumphed in the end and won a notable reward. When the archbishop of Toledo died, in 1495, Ximenes, unknown to himself, was selected for the great post of primate of all Spain and Lord High Chancellor of Castile.

The right to nominate was vested in the Queen, and Ferdinand in this instance begged her to appoint his natural son, Alfonso, already archbishop of Saragossa, but a child almost in years. She firmly and unhesitatingly refused and recommended her confessor to the pope as the most worthy recipient of the honour. When the bull making the appointment arrived from Rome, the queen summoned Ximenes to her presence handed him the letter and desired him to open it before her. On reading the address, "To our venerable brother, Francisco Ximenes de Cisneros, Archbishop of Toledo," he changed colour, dropped the letter, and crying, "There must be some mistake," ran out of the room. The queen, in surprise, waited, but he did not return and it was found that he had taken horse and fled to his monastery. Two grandees were despatched in hot haste to ride after him, overtake him and bring him back to Madrid. He returned but still resisted all the entreaties of his friends and the clearly expressed wishes of his sovereign. Finally his persistent refusal was overborne, but only by the direct command of the pope, who ordered him to accept the post for which his sovereigns had chosen him. He has been sharply criticised for his apparent humility, but it is generally admitted that he was sincere in his refusal. He was already advanced in years, ambition was dying in him, he had become habituated to monastic seclusion and his thoughts were already turned from the busy turmoil of this world to the life beyond the grave.

However reluctant to accept high office, Ximenes was by no means slow to exercise the power it gave him. He ruled the Spanish Church with a rod of iron, bending all his energies to the work of reforming the practices of the clergy, enforcing discipline and insisting upon the maintenance of the strictest morality. He trod heavily, made many enemies, and stirred so much ill feeling that the malcontents combined to despatch a messenger to lay their grievances before the pope. The officious advocate, however, got no audience but went home to Spain, where twenty months' imprisonment taught him not to offend again the masterful archbishop of Toledo.

Ximenes in insisting upon a strict observance of propriety and the adoption of an exemplary life, was in himself a model to the priesthood. He never relaxed the personal mortifications which had been his rule when a simple monk. He kept no state and made no show, regulating his domestic expenditure with the strictest and most parsimonious economy, until reminded by the Holy See that the dignity of his great office demanded more magnificence. Still, when he increased his display and the general style of living in household, equipages and the number of his retainers, he continued to be as harsh as ever to himself.

In spite of all opposition and discontent he pursued his course with inflexible purpose. His spirit was unyielding, and his energetic proceedings were unremittingly directed to the amelioration and improvement in the morals of the clergy with marked success. And now he set himself with the same uncompromising zeal to extirpate heresy. Having begged Archbishop Talavera to allow him to join in the good work at Granada, he took immediate advantage of the consent given and began to attack the Moorish unbelievers in his own vigorous fashion. His first step was to call together a great conference of learned Mussulman doctors, to whom he expounded with all the eloquence he had at his command, the true doctrines of the Catholic faith and their superiority to the law of Mahomet. He accompanied his teaching with liberal gifts, chiefly of costly articles of apparel, a specious though irresistible bribery, which had the desired effect. Great numbers of the Moorish doctors came over at once and their example was speedily followed by many of their illiterate disciples. So great was the number of converts that no less than three thousand presented themselves for baptism in one day, and as the rite could not be administered individually, they were christened wholesale by sprinkling them from a mop or hyssop which had been dipped in holy water, and from which the drops fell upon the proselytes as it was twirled over the heads of the multitude. These early successes stimulated the primate's zeal and he next adopted more violent measures by proceeding to imprison and impose penalties upon all Moors who still stood out against conversion. He was resolved not merely to exterminate heresy, but to destroy the basis of belief contained in the most famous Arabic manuscripts, large quantities of which were collected into great piles and burned publicly in the great squares of the city. Many of these were beautifully executed copies of the Koran; others, treasured theological and scientific works, and their indiscriminate destruction is a blot upon the reputation of the cultivated prelate who had created the most learned university in Spain.

More temperate and cautious people besought Ximenes to hold his hand. But he proceeded pertinaciously, declaring that a tamer policy might serve in temporal matters, but not where the interests of the soul were at stake. If the unbeliever could not be drawn he must be driven into the way of salvation, and he continued with unflinching resolution to arrest all recusants, and throw them into the prisons which were filled to overflowing. Discontent grew rapidly and soon broke into open violence. When an alguazil in Granada was leading a woman away as a prisoner, the people rose and released her from custody. The insurrection became general in the city and assumed a threatening aspect. Granada was full of warlike Moors and a mob besieged Ximenes in his house until he was rescued by the garrison of the Alhambra.

The king and queen were much annoyed with Ximenes and condemned his zealous precipitancy, but he was clever enough to vindicate his action and bring the sovereigns to believe that it was imperative that the rebellious Moors must be sharply repressed. Now a long conflict began. Forcible conversion became the order of the day; baptism continued to be performed in the gross upon thousands, the alternative being exile, and numbers were actually deported to Barbary in the royal ships. A fierce civil conflict broke out in the Alpujarras beyond Granada, which required a royal army to quell. The object sought was the welfare of the state by producing uniformity of faith.

Peint par Benjamin Constant Photogravure Goupil & C^ie.

The Alhambra Palace, Granada

The beautiful Moorish stronghold during the time of the supremacy of the Moors was often made the home of slaves captured in near-by frontier towns of Andalusia, who endured hateful bondage under the rule of the Mohammedan monarch. Granada and its palace were finally captured by Ferdinand and Isabella, and the Alhambra is to-day the finest example of Moorish architecture, with its delicate elaboration of detail.

Ximenes found a strenuous supporter in Diego Deza, the inquisitor-general, who was eager to emulate the strictness of his predecessor, Torquemada. Deza was a Dominican who had been at one time professor of theology and confessor to the queen. He was by nature and predilection exactly fitted for his new office upon which he entered with extensive powers. A bull from Pope Alexander VI dated 1499 invested him with the title of "Conservator of the Faith" in Spain.

Deza gave a new constitution to the Holy Office and prescribed that there should be a general "Inquest" in places not yet visited, and that edicts should be republished requiring all persons to lay information against suspected heretics. He stirred up the zeal of all subordinate inquisitors and was well served by them, especially by one, Lucero, commonly called el Tenebroso, "the gloomy," whose savage and ruthless proceedings terrorised Cordova where he presided. He made a general attack upon the most respectable inhabitants and arrested great numbers, many of whom were condemned and executed. Informers crowded Lucero's ante-chamber bringing monstrous tales of heretical conspiracies to reëstablish Judaism and subvert the Church. His familiars dragged the accused from their beds to answer to these charges and the prisons overflowed. Cordova was up in arms and many would have offered armed resistance to the Inquisition, but the more circumspect people, the Bishop and Chapter, some of the nobility and the municipal council appealed to Deza praying him to remove Lucero. The inquisitor-general however turned furiously upon the complainants and caused them to be arrested as abettors of heresy. Philip I, acting for his wife Juana, the daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, was inclined to listen to the complainants, and suspended both Deza and Lucero from their functions. But his sudden death stayed the relief he had promised, and the tormenting officials returned to renew their oppression.

The Cordovese would not tamely submit and appealed to force. A strong body of men under the Marques de Priego attacked the "Holy House," broke open the prison and liberated many of those detained, shutting up the officers of the Inquisition in their place. Lucero took to flight upon a swift mule and escaped. Though for a time Deza continued to keep his influence, he was shortly forced to resign and Cordova became tranquil. Deza's persecution had spared no one. In the eight years during which he held office, one account, probably greatly exaggerated, says that 2,592 persons were burned alive, some nine hundred were burned in effigy, and thirty-five thousand were punished by penance, fines and confiscations.

The fall of Deza and the hostile attitude of the people warned the authorities that the affairs of the Inquisition must be managed more adroitly. New inquisitors must be appointed and choice fell upon Ximenes de Cisneros, who had already played a foremost part in proselytising, but who now was willing to adopt more moderate measures. The Pope in giving his approval sent him a cardinal's hat as a recompense for past services, and as an encouragement to act wisely in the future. He had a difficult task. Disaffection, strongly pronounced, prevailed through the kingdom and the Inquisition was everywhere cordially detested. Ximenes strove to appease the bitter feeling by instituting a searching inquiry into the conduct of his immediate predecessor, Deza, and promising to hear all complaints and redress all grievances. He created a "Catholic Congregation" as a special court to investigate the actions of Lucero in the proceedings growing out of the charges against Archbishop Talavera and his family. This court in due course pronounced a verdict of acquittal and rehabilitation of the Talaveras. Ruined houses were rebuilt, the memory of the dead restored to honour and fame, and this act of grace was published at Valladolid with great solemnity in the presence of the kings, bishops and grandees.

Nevertheless Ximenes had no desire to remodel the Holy Office or limit its operations to any considerable extent. On the contrary, he bent all his efforts to develop its influence and make it an engine of government, utilising it as a political as well as a religious agency. It was as rigorous as ever but he set his face like a flint against dishonesty. He systematised the division of the realm into inquisitorial provinces, each under its own inquisitor with headquarters in the principal cities, such as Seville, Toledo, Valladolid, Murcia, and in Sardinia and Sicily beyond the seas. His personal ascendancy became extraordinary. He enjoyed the unbounded confidence and favour of the sovereign. He had been created Cardinal of Spain, a title rarely conferred. As archbishop of Toledo, he was the supreme head of the Spanish clergy, and as inquisitor-general, he was the terror of every priest and every layman within his jurisdiction. He had, in fact, reached the highest ecclesiastical rank, short of the papacy and as he rose higher and higher he wielded powers little short of an independent absolute monarch, and his zeal in the cause of his religion grew more and more fervent and far-reaching. No doubt in an earlier age he would have turned crusader, but now he sought to crush the fugitive Moors who had escaped into Northern Africa, whence they made constant descents upon the south of Spain, burning to avenge the wrongs of their co-religionists, and were a constant scourge and source of grievous trouble.

The evils centred in the province of Oran, a fortified stronghold—the most considerable of the Moslem possessions on the shores of the Mediterranean—whence issued a swarm of pirate cruisers, manned by the exiles driven out of Spain, who had sought and found a welcome refuge in Oran. Ximenes was resolved to seize and sweep out this hornets' nest and undertook its conquest on his own account. Much ridicule was levelled at this "monk about to fight the battles of Spain," but he went forth undeterred at the head of a powerful army, conveyed by a strong fleet from Cartagena, which he landed at the African port of Mazalquivir, and after some desperate fighting made himself master of Oran. After his successful African campaign he resumed his duties of chief inquisitor, and the Holy Office under his fierce and vigorous rule became more than ever oppressive. Ximenes pursued his unwavering course and encouraged his inquisitors in their unceasing activity. He desired to extend the power and influence of the Inquisition, and established it in the new countries recently added to the Spanish dominion. A branch was set up in the newly conquered province of Oran, and another farther afield in the recently discovered new world beyond the Atlantic. On the initiative of Ximenes Fray Juan Quevedo, Bishop of Cuba, was appointed chief inquisitor in the kingdom of Terrafirma, as the territories of the new world were styled.

The energetic pursuit of heresy did not monopolise the exertions of Ximenes. He founded the great University of Alcalá, a vast design, a noble seat of learning richly endowed with magnificent buildings and a remarkable scheme of education, which produced the ablest and most eminent scholars. Another great monument is the well known polyglot Bible, designed to exhibit the scriptures in their various ancient languages, a work of singular erudition upon which the munificent cardinal expended vast sums.

Ximenes lived to the advanced age of eighty-one, long enough to act as regent of Spain during the interregnum preceding the arrival of Charles I, better known as the Emperor Charles V. The immediate cause of his death was said to have been the receipt of a letter from the Emperor in which he was coldly thanked for his services and desired to retire to his diocese, to "seek from heaven that reward which heaven alone could adequately bestow." In his last moments he is reported to have said, "that he had never intentionally wronged any man; but had rendered to every one his due, without being swayed, as far as he was conscious, by fear or affection."

He combined a versatility of talent usually found only in softer and more flexible characters. Though bred in the cloister, he distinguished himself both in the cabinet and the camp. For the latter, indeed, so repugnant to his regular profession, he had a natural genius, according to the testimony of his biographer; and he evinced his relish for it by declaring that "the smell of gunpowder was more grateful to him than the sweetest perfume of Arabia!" In every situation, however, he exhibited the stamp of his peculiar calling; and the stern lineaments of the monk were never wholly concealed under the mask of the statesman or the visor of the warrior. He had a full measure of the religious bigotry which belonged to the age; and he had melancholy scope for displaying it, as chief of that dread tribunal over which he presided during the last ten years of his life.

The accession of the grandson of Ferdinand and Isabella to the Spanish throne as Charles I (better known as the Emperor Charles V), seemed to foreshadow a change in the relations of the Inquisition and the state. The young sovereign was born in Ghent and was more Fleming than Spaniard. Though his grandfather left in his will solemn injunctions "to labour with all his strength to destroy and extirpate heresy" and to appoint ministers "who will conduct the Inquisition justly and properly for the service of God and the exaltation of the Catholic faith, and who will also have great zeal for the destruction of the sect of Mahomet," it was reported that he sympathised with the critics of the Inquisition and was disposed to curtail its activity. The influence of his old tutor, Adrian of Utrecht, whom he commissioned inquisitor-general, first of Aragon, and, after the death of Ximenes, of Castile also, changed him however into a strong friend and staunch supporter of the institution.

Cardinal Manrique, who followed as inquisitor-general, was a man of more kindly disposition, charitable and a benefactor to the poor. He was inclined to relax the severities of the Holy Office but it was urged upon him that heresy was on the increase on account of the appearance of Lutheran opinions and the bitterest persecution was more than ever essential. Protestants began to appear sporadically and called for uncompromising repression. The writings of Luther, Erasmus, Melancthon, Zwingli, and the rest of the early reformers were brought into Spain, but the circulation was adjudged a crime, though Erasmus had once been a favourite author.

The Inquisition later prepared an Index Expurgandorum, or list of condemned and prohibited literature. All books named on it were put under the ban of the law. Possession of a translation of the Bible in the vulgar tongues was forbidden in 1551, and the prohibition was not lifted until 1782. By that time there was no longer such keen interest in its contents, and the Book was little circulated. In 1825 the British and Foreign Bible Society sent one of its agents into Spain to distribute it, and his adventures are described autobiographically in that interesting work, George Borrow's "Bible in Spain."

In spite of all the efforts to make good Catholics and good Spaniards of the Moriscos, little real progress was made. They had accepted baptism under compulsion, not realising that thereby they were brought under control of the Church. Little effort was made to instruct them, moreover, and as a result thousands, nominally Christians, observed scrupulously the whole Moslem ritual, used the old language, and kept their old costume. Some, to be sure, were hardly to be distinguished from the Spaniards with whom they had intermarried, but, on the whole, they seemed an unassimilable element in the population.

When Philip II succeeded his father, Charles V, in 1556, he determined to take strong measures. A decree proclaimed in Granada in 1566 forbade the use of the distinctive dress and of the Moorish names. The old customs were to be abandoned, and all the baths were to be destroyed. Rebellion followed this edict, and, for a time, it was doubtful whether it could be crushed. Finally open resistance was overcome, and several thousand were transferred to the mountains of Northern Spain. Meanwhile the Inquisition was active, and thousands were brought to trial for pagan practices.

Prejudice continued to grow, and fanatics declared that Spain could never prosper until the "evil seed" was destroyed or expelled from the Christian land. Jealousy of the prosperity of the Moriscos led the populace to agree with the bigots, and finally expulsion was unanimously decreed by the Council of State, in 1609, during the reign of Philip III. Valencia was first purged, and next Murcia, Granada, Andalusia, Old and New Castile and Aragon. Afterward vigorous attempts to root out individuals of Moorish blood, who had become indistinguishable because of their strict conformity, were made. Great suffering was incurred by the unfortunate exiles and many died. Those who reached Africa carried with them a hatred which persists to the present.

The number driven out is uncertain. The estimates vary from three hundred thousand to three million. Probably the most accurate estimate is that of six hundred thousand. In this number were included the most skilful artisans, and the most industrious and most thrifty portion of the population. It was a mistake from which Spain has never recovered.

CHAPTER III

PRISONS AND PUNISHMENTS

Prisons, usually, a part of the building occupied by court—Better than civil prisons—Torture inflicted—No new methods invented—Description of various kinds—Two Lutheran congregations broken up—Description of some famous autos da fé—Famous victims—Englishmen punished—Archbishop Carranza's trial.

The prisons of the Inquisition fall under two great heads, the "secret prisons" in which those awaiting trial were confined, and the "penitential prisons" where sentences were served. Generally there were also cárceles de familiares where officers of the institution charged with wrong-doing were confined. In some tribunals there were others variously called cárceles medias, cárceles comunes, and cárceles públicas, where offenders not charged with heresy might be confined.

The secret prisons, however, have most fired the imagination. A man might disappear from his accustomed haunts, and for years his family and friends be ignorant of his condition, or even of his very existence, until one day he might appear at an auto da fé. What went on within the walls was a mystery. Seldom did any hint of the proceedings leak out. Everyone was sworn to secrecy, and the arm of the Inquisition was long, if the luckless witness or attendant failed to heed his instructions.

These prisons were almost invariably a part of the building occupied by the tribunal. In Valencia, it was the archbishop's palace; in Saragossa, the royal castle; in Seville, the Triana; in Cordova, the Alcázar, and so on. In some, there were cells and dungeons already prepared, in others, they were constructed. There was no common standard of convenience or sanitation. In many cases, generally, perhaps, they were superior to the common jails in which ordinary prisoners were confined. Yet we know that some were entirely dark and very damp. Others were so small that a cramped position was necessary, and were hardly ventilated at all. Sometimes they were poorly cared for, and loathsome filth and vermin made them unendurable. Many places were used for prisons during the three hundred years of the Inquisition, and no statement is broad enough to cover them all. The mortality was high, yet not so high as in the prisons generally. Since many were unsuitable and often unsafe, the wearing of fetters was common. Prisoners often, incidentally, speak of their chains.

Occasionally more than one prisoner occupied the same room, and much evidence was secured in this way, as each hoped to lighten his own punishment by inculpating others. Writing materials were permitted, though every sheet of paper must be accounted for and delivered into an official's hands. Lights were not permitted however.

Yet entire secrecy was not always secured. Attendants were sometimes bribed, and by various ingenious methods, communications occasionally found their way in or out. Again in cases of severe sickness, the prisoner might be transferred to a hospital, which however must account for him if he recovered. Cardinal Adrian, the inquisitor-general, reminded the tribunals that the prison was for detention, not for punishment, that prisoners must not be defrauded of their food, and that the cells must be carefully inspected.

These and similar instructions issued at intervals were not always obeyed, for inquisitors were often negligent. According to Lea, "no general judgment can be formed as to the condition of so many prisons during three centuries, except that their average standard was considerably higher than that in other jurisdictions, and that, if there were abodes of horror, such as have been described by imaginative writers they were wholly exceptional."[5] Again the same author quotes instances where prisoners speak of improved health, due to better food in prison than they were accustomed to at home, and in summing up declares that the general management was more humane than could be found elsewhere, either in or out of Spain.

We may briefly recapitulate the various processes of the Inquisition in order, as they obtained. First came the denunciation, followed by seizure and the commencement of an inquiry. The several offences imputed were next submitted to those logical experts named "qualifiers" who decided, so to speak, "whether there was a true bill," in which case the procurator fiscal committed the accused to durance. Three audiences were given him, and the time was fully taken up with cautions and monitions. The charges were next formulated but with much prolixity and reduplication. They were not reduced to writing and delivered to the accused for slow perusal and reply, but were only read over to him, hurriedly. On arraignment he was called upon to reply, then and there, to each article, to state at once whether it was true or false. The charges were usually originated by an informer and resort was had, if necessary, to "inquiry," the hunting up of suspicious or damaging facts on which evidence was sought, in any quarter and from any one good or bad. If the accused persisted in denial he was allowed counsel, but later the counsel became an official of the Inquisition and naturally made only a perfunctory defence. An appeal to torture was had if the prisoner persisted in denying his guilt, in the face of plausible testimony, or if he confessed only partially to the charges against him, or if he refused to name his accomplices. A witness who had retracted his testimony or had contradicted himself, might be tortured in order that the truth might be made known.

It was admitted, however, that torture was by no means an infallible method for bringing out the truth. "Weak-hearted men, impatient of the first pain, will confess crimes they never committed and criminate others at the same time. Bold and strong ones will bear the most severe torments. Those who have been already on the rack are likely to bear it with greater courage, for they know how to adapt their limbs to it and can resist more powerfully." It may be admitted that the system was so far humane that the torture was not applied until every other effort had been tried and had failed. The instruments of torture were first exhibited with threats, but when once in use, it might be repeated day after day, "in continuation," as it was called, and if any "irregularity" occurred, such as the death of a victim, the inquisitors were empowered to absolve one another. Nobles were supposedly exempted from torture, and it was not permissible by the civil laws in Aragon, but the Holy Office was nevertheless authorised to torture without restriction all persons of all classes.

Torture was not inflicted as a punishment by the Inquisition, nor was it peculiar to its trials. Until a comparatively recent date it was a recognised method of securing testimony, accepted in nearly all courts of Europe as a matter of course. The Inquisition seems to have invented no new methods, and seldom used the extreme forms commonly practised. In fact in nearly every case, torture was inflicted by the regular public executioner who was called in for the purpose and sworn to secrecy. The list of tortures practised on civil prisoners was long, and they seem to us now fiendish in their ingenuity. A complete course would require many hours, and included apparently the infliction of pain to every organ or limb and to almost every separate muscle and nerve. The records of the Inquisition show almost invariably the infliction of a few well known sorts.

Some sorts were abandoned because of the danger of permanent harm, and others less violent, but probably no less painful, were substituted. Often the record states that the prisoner "overcame the torture," i. e. was not moved to confess. Evidently, though the whole idea is abhorrent to us to-day, torture as inflicted was less awful than some writers would have us believe.[6]

A curious memento of the methods employed by the Holy Office has been preserved in an ancient "Manual of the Inquisition of Seville," a thin quarto volume bound in vellum, with pages partly printed, partly in manuscript. It bears the date 1628, and purports to be compiled from ancient and modern instructions for the order of procedure. It was found in the Palace of the Inquisition at Seville, when it was sacked in the year 1820. One part of this manual details the steps to be taken, "when torture has to be performed." The criminal having been brought into the audience, was warned that he had not told the entire truth, and as he was believed to have kept back and hidden many things, he was about to be "tormented" to compel him to speak out. Formal sentence to the torture chamber was then passed, after "invoking the name of Christ." It was announced that the "question" would be administered. The method of infliction was detailed whether by pulleys or by water or cords, or by all, to be continued for "as long a time as may appear well," with the proviso that if in the said torment, "he (or she) should die or be wounded, or if there be any effusion of blood or mutilation of member, the blame should be his (or hers) not ours."

Here follows in manuscript the description of the torments applied to one unfortunate female whose name is not given.

"On this she was ordered to be taken to the chamber of Torment whither went the Lords Inquisitors, and when they were there she was admonished to tell the truth and not to let herself be brought into such great trouble.

"Her answer is not recorded.

"Carlos Felipe, the executor of Justice, was called and his oath taken that he would do his business well and faithfully and that he would keep the secret. All of which he promised.

"She was told to tell the truth or orders would be given to strip her. She was commanded to be stripped naked.

"She was told to tell the truth or orders would be given to cut off her hair. It was taken off and she was examined by the doctor and surgeon who certified that there was no reason why she should not be put to the torture.

"She was commanded to mount the rack and to tell the truth or her body should be bound; and she was bound. She was commanded to tell the truth, or they would order her right foot to be made fast to the trampazo."[7]

After the trampazo of the right foot that of the left followed. Then came the binding and stretching of the right arm, then that of the left. After that the garrote or the compression of the fleshy parts of the arms and thighs with fine cords, a plan used to revive any person who had fainted under the torture. Last of all the mancuerda was inflicted, a simultaneous tension of all the cords on all the limbs and parts.

The water torture was used to extort confession. The patient was tightly bound to the potro, or ladder, the rungs of which were sharp-edged. The head was immovably fastened lower than the body, and the mouth was held open by an iron prong. A strip of linen slowly conducted water into the mouth, causing the victim to strangle and choke. Sometimes six or eight jars, each holding about a quart, were necessary to bring the desired result. This is the "water-cure" found in the Philippines by American soldiers when the islands were captured.

If these persuasions still failed of effect, or if the hour was late, or "for other considerations" the torment might be suspended with the explanation that it had been insufficiently tried and the victim was taken back to his prison to be brought out again after a respite. If, on the other hand, a confession was secured, it was written down word for word and submitted to the victim for ratification after at least twenty-four hours had elapsed. If he revoked the confession, he might be tortured again.

When a number of cases had been decided, the Suprema appointed a day, usually a Sunday or a feast day, for pronouncing sentence. This was an auto da fé, literally an "act of faith." The greater festivals, Easter day, Christmas day, or Sundays in Advent or Lent were excepted because these holy days had their own special musical or dramatic entertainments in the churches. The day fixed was announced from all the pulpits in the city (Seville or Madrid or Cordova as the case might be) and notice given that a representative of the Inquisition would deliver a "sermon of the faith" and that no other preacher might raise his voice. The civil authorities were warned to be ready to receive their victims. At the same time officials unfurled a banner and made public proclamation to the effect that "no person whatever his station or quality from that hour until the completion of the auto should carry arms offensive or defensive, under pain of the greater excommunication and the forfeiture of such arms; nor during the same period should any one ride in coach, or sedan chair, or on horseback, through the streets in the route of the procession, nor enter the enclosure in which the place of execution (quemadero) was erected," which was usually beyond the walls.

On the eve of the great day a gorgeous procession was organised, for which all the communities of friars in the city and neighbourhood assembled at the Holy House of the Inquisition, together with the commissaries and familiars of the Holy Office. They sallied forth in triumphal array, followed by the "qualifiers" and experts, all carrying large white tapers, lighted. In their midst a bier was borne covered with a black pall, and, bringing up the rear, was a band, instrumental and vocal, performing hymns. In this order the procession reached the public square, when the pall was removed from the bier and a green cross disclosed which was carried to the altar on the platform, and there erected surrounded by a dozen candles. The white cross was carried to the burning place. Now a strong body of horse and a number of Dominican friars took post to watch through the night and the rest of the actors dispersed. At the same time those who were to suffer were prepared for the fatal event. All were shaved close, both head and beard, so that they might present an appearance of nakedness and humiliation suitable to their forlorn condition. At sunrise on their last day they were arrayed in the prescribed garb and brought from their cells into the chapel or great hall. The least heinous offenders were in coarse black blouses and pantaloons, and were bare-footed and bare-headed. The worst culprits were in the sanbenito or penitential sack of yellow canvas, adorned with a St. Andrew's cross in bright red paint, and they often carried a halter round their necks as a badge of ignominy. Those to die at the stake were distinguished by black sanbenitos with painted flames and wore on their heads a conical paper headdress in the shape of a bishop's mitre, but also resembling somewhat a fool's cap. This was called the coroza, a contemptuous form of corona or crown. To make the clothing more hideous, it was decorated by coarse pictures of devils in flames. The condemned as they passed on their way were assailed to the last with importunate exhortations to repent, and a promise was held out to them that if they yielded they would be rewarded by a less painful death, and would be strangled before the flames reached them. All the penitents were obliged to sit upon the ground in profound silence and without so much as moving a limb, while the slow hours dragged themselves along. In the morning a sumptuous meal was set before them, and they were suffered to eat their fill. All the officials and visitors were also regaled before the day's business began.

After the sermon, the secretary read to all the people the oath pledging them to support the Inquisition. Then sentences were pronounced, beginning with the lesser offenders and proceeding to the graver. The punishments ranged from a reprimand, through abjuration, fines, exile, for a longer or shorter period, destruction of residence, penance, scourging, the galleys, imprisonment, wearing the sanbenito or penitential garment, up to "relaxation to the secular arm;" i. e. death by fire. These penalties carried with them civil disability, and tainted the blood of the descendants of the condemned as well.

Penance might be inflicted in various forms. The condemned, perhaps, might be required to fast one day in every week, to recite a specified number of prayers on appointed days, or to appear at the church door with a halter around his neck on successive Sundays. When scourging was inflicted, the penitent, naked to the waist, was placed astride an ass, and paraded through the principal streets preceded by the town crier. Meanwhile the executioner, accompanied by a clerk to keep tally, plied the penca or leather strap, but was charged most solemnly not to draw blood. Usually two hundred lashes was the limit.

Theoretically a heretic who escaped the stake by confession was sentenced to perpetual imprisonment. This penalty might be served in a prison, a monastery, or in a private house. As a matter of fact, comparatively few were kept in prisons as the expense of maintenance was a heavy burden, and the sentences were usually changed to deportation to the colonies, or assignment to the galleys, or else the sentence was shortened.

The trial and sentence of the bodies of the dead was common, but it was not peculiar to the Inquisition. As late as 1600, in Scotland, the bodies of the Earl of Gowrie and his brother were brought into court, and sentenced to be hanged, quartered and gibbeted. Logan of Restalrig, in 1609, three years after his death, was tried on the charge of being concerned in the same conspiracy, was found guilty and his property was confiscated.

In recounting the punishments imposed by the Inquisition, we must not forget that it assumed jurisdiction over many crimes which to-day are tried by the civil courts. Bigamy was punished as, by a second marriage, the criminal denied the authority of the Church which makes marriage a sacrament. Certain forms of blasphemy also were brought before it, and perjury as well. Personation of the priesthood, or of officials of the Inquisition, was punished, and later it gained jurisdiction over unnatural crimes. Sorcery and witchcraft, which in other states, including the American colonies, were considered subjects for the secular courts, were within the jurisdiction of the Spanish Inquisition.

Strange as it may appear at first thought, the attitude of the Inquisition toward the witchcraft delusion was one of skepticism almost from the beginning. Individual inquisitors, influenced by the well nigh universal belief, were occasionally active, but the Suprema moderated their zeal. In 1610 an auto was held at Logroño, which was the centre of wild excitement. Twenty-nine witches were punished, six of whom were burned, and the bones of five others who had died in prison were also consumed. The eighteen remaining were "reconciled." In 1614, however, the Suprema drew up an elaborate code of instructions to the tribunals. While not denying the existence of witchcraft, these instructions treated it as a delusion and practically made proof impossible. As a result of this policy the victims of the craze in Spain can be counted almost by the score, while in almost every other country of Europe, they are numbered by the thousand. In Great Britain the best estimate fixes the number of victims at thirty thousand, and as late as 1775 the great legal author, Sir William Blackstone, says that to deny "the actual existence of witchcraft and sorcery is at once flatly to contradict the revealed word of God."[8]

Heresy, of course, according to the views not only of Catholics but of Protestants, deserved death as a form of treason. Tolerance is a modern idea. Calvin burned Servetus at Geneva and was applauded for it. Protestants in England persecuted other Protestants as well as Catholics. The impenitent heretic in Spain was burned alive. That one, who after conviction, expressed his repentance, and his desire to die in the Church was usually strangled before the flames touched him. Before going on to describe some famous autos da fé and the subsequent infliction of the death penalty, a word of explanation is in order.

Protestant doctrines were introduced into Spain either by foreigners or by natives who travelled or studied in foreign lands, but made slow headway. In 1557 a secret organisation, comprising about one hundred and twenty members, was discovered in Seville. The next year another little band of about sixty was found in Valladolid.

The almost simultaneous exposure of these two heretical organisations, both of which included some prominent people, created great commotion. Charles V, then living at San Yuste, whither he had retired after his abdication, wrote to his daughter Juana, who was acting as regent in the absence of Philip II, urging the most stringent measures and advocating that the heretics be pursued mercilessly. Little stimulation of the Inquisition was necessary, and the two little congregations were destroyed.

A part of those condemned at Valladolid were sentenced at a great auto da fé held on Trinity Sunday, May 21st, 1559, in Valladolid, not before Philip II, who was abroad, but his sister, Princess Juana, presided and with her was the unhappy Prince, Don Carlos. It was a brilliant gathering, a great number of grandees of Spain, titled noblemen and gentlemen untitled, ladies of high rank in gorgeous apparel, all seated in great state to watch the arrival of the penitential procession. Fourteen heretics were to die, sixteen more to be "reconciled" but to be branded with infamy and suffer lesser punishments. Among the sufferers were many persons of rank and consideration such as the two brothers Cazalla and their sister, children of the king's comptroller, one of them a canon of the Church, the other a presbyter, and all three members of the little Lutheran congregation. Their mother had died in heresy and on this occasion her effigy, clad in her widow's weeds and wearing a mitre with flames, was paraded through the streets and then burned publicly. Her house, where Lutherans had met for prayer, was razed to the ground and a pillar erected with an inscription setting forth her offence and sentence. Another victim was the licentiate, Antonio Herrezuelo, an impenitent Lutheran, the only one who went to the stake unmoved, singing psalms by the way, and reciting passages of scripture. They gagged him at last and a soldier in his zeal stabbed him with his halberd, but the wound was not mortal and bleeding and burning, he slowly expired.

The sixteen who survived the horrors of the day were haled back to the prison of the Inquisition to spend one more night in the cells. Next morning they were again taken before the inquisitors who exhorted them afresh, and their sentences were finally read to them. Some destined to the galleys were transferred first to the civil prison to await removal, after they had been flogged through the streets and market places. Others clad in the sanbenito and carrying ropes were exposed to the hoots and indignities of the ribald crowd. All who passed through the hands of the Holy Office were sworn to seal up in everlasting silence whatever they had seen, heard or suffered, on peril of a renewed prosecution.

Philip II was present at the second great auto in Valladolid in October of the same year, when the remainder of the Protestants were sentenced. His wife, Queen Mary of England, was dead, and he returned to Spain by way of the Netherlands, embarking at Flushing for Laredo. Rough weather and bad seamanship all but wrecked his fleet in sight of port, and Philip vowed if he were permitted to set foot on shore, to prosecute the heretics of Spain unceasingly. He was saved from drowning and went at once to Valladolid to carry out his vow.

The ceremony was organised with unprecedented pomp and splendour. The king came in state, rejoicing that several notable heretics had been reserved to die in torments, for his especial delectation. His heir, Don Carlos, Prince of Asturias, was also present but under compulsion; he was, at that time, no more than fourteen years of age and had writhed with agony at the sight of the suffering at the former auto. Moreover, when called upon to swear fidelity to the Inquisition, he had taken the oath with great reluctance. Not so King Philip, who when called upon to take the same oath at the second auto da fé, rose in his place, drew his sword and brandished it as he swore to show every favour to the Holy Office and support its ministers against whomsoever might directly or indirectly impede its efforts or affairs. "Asi lo juro," he said with deep feeling. "Thus I swear."

The victims at this great auto da fé were many and illustrious. One was Don Carlos de Seso, an Italian of noble family, the son of a bishop, a scholar who had long been in the service of the Emperor Charles V, and was chief magistrate of Toro. He had married a Spanish lady and resided at Logroño, where he became an object of suspicion as a professor of Lutheranism, and was arrested. They took him to the prison of Valladolid, where he was charged, tortured and condemned to die. When called upon to make confession, he wrote two full sheets denouncing the Catholic teaching, claiming that it was at variance with the true faith of the gospel. The priests argued with him in vain, and he was brought into church next morning, gagged, and so taken to the burning place, "lest he should speak heresy in the hearing of the people." At the stake the gag was removed and he was again exhorted to recant but he stoutly refused and bade them light up the fire speedily so that he might die in his belief.

Much grief was felt by the Dominicans at the lapse of one of their order, Fray Domingo de Rojas, who was undoubtedly a Lutheran. On his way to the stake he strove to appeal to the king who drove him away and ordered him to be gagged. More than a hundred monks of his order followed him close entreating him to recant, but he persisted in a determined although inarticulate refusal until in sight of the flames. He then recanted and was strangled before being burned. One Juan Sanchez, a native of Valladolid, had fled to Flanders, but was pursued, captured and brought back to Spain to die on this day. When the cords which had bound him snapped in the fire, he bounded into the air with his agony but still repelled the priests and called for more fire. Nine more were burned in the presence of the king, who was no merely passive spectator, but visited the various stakes and ordered his personal guard to assist in piling up the fuel.

The congregation at Seville were sentenced at autos held in 1559 and 1560. On December 22d of the latter year, there were fourteen burned in the flesh and three in effigy. The last were notable people. One was Doctor Egidio, who had been a leading canon of Seville Cathedral, and who had been tried and forced to recant his heresies in 1552. After release he renewed his connection with the Lutherans, but soon died and was buried at Seville. His corpse was exhumed, brought to trial, and burnt with his effigy; all his property was confiscated and his memory declared infamous. Another was Doctor Ponce de la Fuente, a man of deep learning and extraordinary eloquence who had been chaplain and preacher to the emperor. He followed the Imperial Court into Germany, then returned to charm vast congregations in Seville, but his sermons were reported by spies to be tainted with the Reformed doctrines. He was seized by the Inquisition and many incriminating papers were also taken. When cast into a secret dungeon and confronted with these proofs of his heresy, he would make no confession, nor would he betray any of his friends. He was transferred to a subterranean cell, damp and pestiferous, so narrow he could barely move himself, and was deprived of the commonest necessaries of life. Existence became impossible under such conditions, and he died, proclaiming with his last breath that neither Scythians nor cannibals could be more cruel and inhuman than the barbarians of the Holy Office. The third effigy consumed was that of Doctor Juan Pérez de Pineda, then a fugitive in Geneva.

Chief among the living victims was Julian Hernandez, commonly called el Chico, "the little," from his diminutive stature. Yet his heart was of the largest and his courage extraordinary. He was a deacon in the Reformed Church and dared to penetrate the interior of Spain, disguised as a muleteer, carrying merchandise in which Lutheran literature was concealed. Being exceedingly shrewd and daring he travelled far and wide, beyond Castile into Andalusia, distributing his books among persons of rank and education in all the chief cities. His learning, skill in argument, and piety, were not less remarkable than the diligence and activity by which he baffled all efforts to lay hold of him. At last he was caught and imprisoned. Relays of priests were told off to controvert his opinions, and he was repeatedly tortured to extract the names of those who had aided him in his long and dangerous pilgrimage through the Peninsula, but he was staunch and silent to the last.

A citizen of London, one Nicholas Burton, was a shipmaster who traded to Cadiz in his own vessel. He was arrested on the information of a "familiar" of the Inquisition, charged with having spoken in slighting terms of the religion of the country. No reason was given him, and when he protested indignantly, he was thrown into the common gaol and detained there for a fortnight, during which he was moved to administer comfort and preach the gospel to his fellow-prisoners. This gave a handle to his persecutors and he was removed on a further charge of heresy to Seville, where he was imprisoned, heavily ironed in the secret gaol of the Inquisition in the Triana. At the end he was condemned as a contumacious Lutheran, and was brought out, clad in the sanbenito and exposed in the great hall of the Holy Office with his tongue forced out of his mouth. Last of all, being obdurate in his heresy, he was burned and his ship with its cargo was taken possession of by his persecutors.

The story does not end here. Another Englishman, John Frampton, an attorney of Bristol, was sent to Cadiz by a part-owner to demand restoration of the ship. He became involved in a tedious law suit and was at last obliged to return to England for enlarged powers. Bye and bye he went out a second time to Spain, and on landing at Cadiz was seized by the servants of the Inquisition and carried to Seville. He travelled on mule back "tied by a chain that came three times under its belly and the end whereof was fastened in an iron padlock made fast to the saddle bow." Two armed familiars rode beside him, and thus escorted and secured, he was conveyed to the old prison and lodged in a noisome dungeon. The usual interrogatories were put to him and it was proved to the satisfaction of the Holy Office that he was an English heretic. The same evidence sufficed to place him on the rack, and after fourteen months, he was taken to be present as a penitent at the same auto da fé which saw Burton, the ship's captain, done to death. Frampton went back to prison for another year and was forbidden to leave Spain. He managed to escape and returned to England to make full revelation of his wrongs, but the ship was never surrendered and no indemnity was obtained.

Other Englishmen fell from time to time into the hands of the Inquisition. Hakluyt preserved the simple narratives of two English sailors, who were brought by their Spanish captors from the Indies as a sacrifice to the "Holy House" of Seville, though the authenticity of the statement has been attacked. One, a happy-go-lucky fellow, Miles Phillips, who had been too well acquainted in Mexico with the dungeons of the Inquisition, slipped over the ship's side at San Lucar, near Cadiz, made his way to shore, and boldly went to Seville, where he lived a hidden life as a silk-weaver, until he found his chance to steal away and board a Devon merchantman. The other, Job Hortop, added to his two years of Mexican imprisonment, two more years in Seville. Then "they brought us out in procession," as he tells us, "every one of us having a candle in his hand and the coat with S. Andrew's cross on our backs; they brought us up on an high scaffold, that was set up in the place of S. Francis, which is in the chief street in Seville; there they set us down upon benches, every one in his degree and against us on another scaffold sate all the Judges and the Clergy on their benches. The people wondered and gazed on us, some pitying our case, others said, 'Burn those heretics.' When we had sat there two hours, we had a sermon made to us, after which one called Bresina, secretary to the Inquisition, went up into the pulpit with the process and called on Robert Barret, shipmaster, and John Gilbert, whom two familiars of the Inquisition brought from the scaffold in front of the Judges, and the secretary read the sentence, which was that they should be burnt, and so they returned to the scaffold and were burnt.

"Then, I, Job Hortop and John Bone, were called and brought to the same place, as the others and likewise heard our sentence, which was, that we should go to the galleys there to row at the oar's end ten years and then to be brought back to the Inquisition House, to have the coat with St. Andrew's cross put on our backs and from thence to go to the everlasting prison remediless.

"I, with the rest were sent to the Galleys, where we were chained four and four together.... Hunger, thirst, cold and stripes we lacked none, till our several times expired; and after the time of twelve years, for I served two years above my sentence, I was sent back to the Inquisition House in Seville and there having put on the above mentioned coat with St. Andrew's cross, I was sent to the everlasting prison remediless, where I wore the coat four years and then, upon great suit, I had it taken off for fifty duckets, which Hernandez de Soria, treasurer of the king's mint, lent me, whom I was to serve for it as a drudge seven years." This victim, too, escaped in a fly-boat at last and reached England.

The records of the Inquisition of this period contain the name of an eminent Spanish ecclesiastic who offended the Holy Office and felt the weight of its arm. This was Bartolome de Carranza, Archbishop of Toledo, Primate of Spain, a Dominican,—whose rise had been rapid and who was charged with leanings toward Lutheranism. In early life he had passed through the hands of the Inquisition and was censured for expressing approval of the writings of Erasmus, but no other action was taken. His profound theological knowledge indeed commended him to the Councils of the Church, for which he often acted as examiner of suspected books.

Carranza's connection with English history is interesting. At the time of Queen Mary's marriage with Philip II, he came to London to arrange, in conjunction with Cardinal Pole, for the reconciliation of England to Rome. He laboured incessantly to win over British Protestants, "preached continually, convinced and converted heretics without number, ... guided the Queen and Councils and assisted in framing rules for the governance of the English Universities." He was particularly anxious for the persecution of obstinate heretics, and was in a measure responsible for the burning of Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury. His zeal and his great merits marked him down as the natural successor to the archbishopric of Toledo, when it became vacant, and he was esteemed as a chief pillar of the Catholic Church, destined in due course to the very highest preferment. He might indeed become cardinal and even supreme pontiff before he died.

Yet when nearing the topmost pinnacle he was on the verge of falling to the lowest depths. He had many enemies. His stern views on Church discipline, enunciated before the Council of Trent, alienated many of the bishops, who planned his ruin and secretly watched his discourses and writings for symptoms of unsoundness. Valdés, the chief inquisitor, was a leading opponent and industriously collected a mass of evidence tending to inculpate Carranza. He had used "perilous language" when preaching in England, especially in the hearing of heretics, and one witness deposed that some of his sermons might have been delivered by Melancthon himself. He had affirmed that mercy might be shown to Lutherans who abjured their errors, and had frequently manifested scandalous indulgence to heretics. Valdés easily framed a case against Carranza, strong enough to back up an application to the pope to authorise the Inquisition to arrest and imprison the primate of Spain. Paul IV, the new pope, permitted the arrest. Great circumspection was shown in making it because of the prisoner's rank. Carranza was invited to come to Valladolid to have an interview with the king, and, with some misgivings, the archbishop set out. A considerable force of men was gathered together by the way—all loyal to the Inquisition—and at the town of Torrelaguna, the arrest was made with great formality and respect.

On reaching Valladolid the prisoner begged he might be lodged in the house of a friend. The Holy Office consented but hired the building. The trial presented many serious difficulties. Here was no ordinary prisoner; Carranza was widely popular, and the Supreme Council of the Kingdom was divided as to the evidences of his guilt. Nearly a hundred witnesses were examined, but proof was not easily to be secured. Besides, Carranza had appealed to the Supreme Pontiff. Year after year was spent in tiresome litigation and a fierce contest ensued between Rome and the Spanish court which backed up the Inquisition. At length, after eight years' confinement, the primate was sent to Cartagena to take ship for Rome, accompanied by several inquisitors and the Duke of Alva, that most notorious nobleman, the scourge and oppressor of the Netherlands. All landed at Civita Vecchia and the party proceeded to the Holy City, when Carranza was at once lodged in the Castle of St. Angelo, the well known State prison. He was detained there nine years, until released by Pope Gregory XIII. He was censured for his errors, and required to abjure the Lutheran principles found in his writings, and was relieved from his functions as archbishop, to which, however, his strength, impaired by age and suffering, was no longer equal. While visiting the seven churches as a penance, he was taken ill, April 23d, 1576, and soon died. Before his death, however, the pope gave him full indulgence.

Those who saw him in his last days record that he bore his trials with dignity and patience. But this learned priest who had been called to the highest rank of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, only to be himself assailed and thrown down, was the same who had sat in cruel judgment upon Thomas Cranmer and compassed his martyrdom.

CHAPTER IV

THE INQUISITION ABROAD

Fresh field for the Inquisition in Spanish America—Operations begun by Ximenes and more firmly established by Charles V—Spanish Viceroys' complaints—Zeal of the Inquisitors checked for a while—Revived under Philip II—Royal Edict forbidding heretics to emigrate to Spanish America—Inquisition extended to the Low Countries—Dutch rebellion proceedings—The Inquisition of the Galleys instituted by Philip—Growing dislike of the Inquisition—Experiences of Carcel, a goldsmith—His account of an auto da fé—Decline of the powers of the Inquisition.

The acquisition of Spanish America opened a fresh field for the activity of the Inquisition. Besides the natives there were the New Christians who had fled across the seas seeking refuge from intolerance in the old country. Although the emigration of heretics was forbidden after a time, lest they should spread the hateful doctrines, Cardinal Ximenes, when inquisitor-general, resolved that the New World should have its own Holy Office, and appointed Fray Juan de Quevedo, then Bishop of Cuba, as inquisitor-general of the "Tierra Firma" as the Spanish mainland was commonly called. The Inquisition was more broadly established by Charles V, who empowered Cardinal Adrian to organise it and appoint new chiefs. The Dominicans were supreme, as in the old country, and proceeded with their usual fiery vigour, wandering at large through the new territories and spreading dismay among the native population. The Indians retreated in crowds into the interior, abandoned the Christianity they had never really embraced, and joined the other native tribes still unsubdued. The Spanish viceroys alarmed at the general desertion complained to the king at home and the excessive zeal of the inquisitors was checked for a time. But when Philip II came into power he would not agree with this milder policy, and although the inquisitors were no longer permitted to perambulate the country districts hunting up heretics, the Holy Office was established with its palaces and prisons in the principal cities and acted with great vigour. Three great central tribunals were created at Panama, Lima, and at Cartagena de las Indias, and persecution raged unceasingly, chiefly directed against Jews and Moors. In the city of Mexico also there was an inquisitor-general. A royal edict proclaimed that "no one newly converted to our Holy Faith from being Moor or Jew nor his child shall pass over into our Indies without our express license." At the same time the prohibition was extended to any who had been "reconciled," and to the child or grandchild of anyone who had worn the sanbenito or of any person burnt or condemned as a heretic ... "all, under penalty of loss of goods and peril of his person, shall be perpetually banished from the Indies, and if he have no property let them give him a hundred lashes, publicly."

The emperor, Charles V, is responsible for the extension of the Inquisition from Spain to the Low Countries, by which he repaid the loyal service and devotion the Dutch people had long rendered him. This Inquisition was headed at first however by a layman, and then four inquisitors chosen from the secular clergy were named. The Netherlanders resisted stoutly its establishment and its operation, and in 1646 it was provided that no sentence should go into effect unless approved by some member of the provincial council. Heretics were condemned of course, but the number was not large, though in some way grossly exaggerated reports of the numbers of victims have gained credence. Finally, on the application of the people of Brabant, who declared that the name would injure commercial prosperity in their district, the name was dropped altogether. At best it was a faint and feeble copy of the Spanish institution, and during the reign of Charles was little feared. In proof we may cite the fact that eleven successive edicts were necessary to keep the Inquisition at work between 1620 and 1650.

Philip II, on his accession, attempted to increase the power of the institution, with the hope of uprooting the reformed doctrines. The assertion, often made, however, that the Inquisition is responsible for the revolt of the Netherlands is entirely too broad. Other factors than religious differences entered into the complex situation. The terrible war which finally resulted in the independence of the Protestant Netherlands, falls outside the plan of this volume.

Philip wished to extend the sway of the Inquisition and planned a naval tribunal to take cognisance of heresy afloat. He created the Inquisition of the Galleys, or, as it was afterwards styled, of the Army and Navy. In every sea port a commissary general visited the shipping to search for prohibited books and make sure of the orthodoxy of crews and passengers. Even cargoes and bales of merchandise were examined, lest the taint of heresy should infect them. This marine inspection was most active in Cadiz, at that time the great centre of traffic with the far West. A visitor from the Holy Office with a staff of assistants and familiars boarded every ship on arrival and departure and claimed that their authority should be respected, so that nothing might be landed or embarked without their certificate. The merchants resented this system which brought substantial commercial disadvantages, and the ships' captains disliked priestly interference with their crews, whose regular duties were neglected. The men were kept below under examination, when they were wanted on deck to make or shorten sail or take advantage of a change in the wind or a turn in the tide. By degrees the marine Inquisition was thought to impede business on the High Seas and fell into disuse.

Under succeeding sovereigns the Holy Office was still favoured and supported, but the reign of Philip III witnessed loud and frequent remonstrances against its operation. The Cortes of Castile implored the king to put some restraint upon the too zealous inquisitors, but they still wielded their arbitrary powers unchecked, and Philip sought further encouragement for them from Rome. The accession of Philip IV to the throne was celebrated by an auto da fé, but no victim was put to death, and the only corporal punishment inflicted was the flogging of an immoral nun who professed to have made a compact with the devil. She was led out gagged, and, wearing the sanbenito, received two hundred lashes followed by perpetual imprisonment. Philip IV strove for a time to check the activity of the Inquisition, but he was too weak and wavering to make permanent headway against an institution, the leaders of which knew precisely what they were striving for, and pertinaciously pursued it.

A graphic account of what purport to have been the painful experiences of a poor soul who fell at a later date into the clutches of the inquisitors is related by himself in a curious pamphlet printed in Seville, by one Carcel, who was a goldsmith in that city. Evidently there is the work of another hand in it, however, as it is written with too much regard for the dramatic to have been his own composition. The description of the auto is also unusual, and not according to the usual procedure.

He says that he was arrested on the 2nd of April, 1680, at ten o'clock in the evening, as he was finishing a gold necklace for one of the queen's maids of honour. A week after his first arrest Carcel was examined. We will quote his own words:—

"In an ante-room," he says, "a smith frees me of my irons and I pass from the ante-chamber to the 'Inquisitor's table,' as the small inner room is called. It is hung with blue and citron-coloured taffety. At one end, between the two grated windows, is a gigantic crucifix and on the central estrade (a table fifteen feet long surrounded by arm-chairs), with his back to the crucifix, sits the secretary, and on my right, Francisco Delgado Ganados, the Grand Inquisitor, who is a secular priest. The other inquisitors had just left, but the ink was still wet in their quills, and I saw on papers before their chairs some names marked with red ink. I am seated on a low stool opposite the secretary. The inquisitor asks my name and profession and why I come there, exhorting me to confess as the only means of quickly regaining my liberty. He hears me, but when I fling myself weeping at his knees, he says coolly there is no hurry about my case; that he has more pressing business than mine waiting, (the secretary smiles), and he rings a little silver bell which stands beside him on the black cloth, for the alcaide who leads me off down a long gallery, where my chest is brought in and an inventory taken by the secretary. They cut my hair off and strip me of everything, even to my ring and gold buttons; but they leave me my beads, my handkerchief and some money I had fortunately sewn in my garters. I am then led bareheaded into a cell, and left to think and despair till evening when they bring me supper.

"The prisoners are seldom put together. Silence perpetual and strict is maintained in all the cells. If any prisoner should moan, complain or even pray too loud, the gaolers who watch the corridors night and day warn them through the grating. If the offence is repeated, they storm in and load you with blows to intimidate the other prisoners, who, in the deep grave-like silence, hear your every cry and every blow.

"Once every two months the inquisitor, accompanied by his secretary and interpreter, visits the prisoners and asks them if their food is brought them at regular hours, or if they have any complaint to make against the gaolers. But this is only a parade of justice, for if a prisoner dares to utter a complaint, it is treated as mere fanciful ravings and never attended to.

"After two months' imprisonment," goes on Carcel, "one Saturday, when, after my meagre prison dinner, I give my linen, as usual, to the gaolers to send to the wash, they will not take it and a great cold breath whispers at my heart—to-morrow is the auto da fé. When, immediately after the vespers at the cathedral, they ring for matins, which they never do but when rejoicing on the eve of a great feast, I know that my horrid suspicions are right. Was I glad at my escape from this living tomb, or was I paralysed by fear, at the pile perhaps already hewn and stacked for my wretched body? I know not. I was torn in pieces by the devils that rack the brains of unhappy men. I refused my next meal, but, contrary to their wont, they pressed it more than usual. Was it to give me strength to bear my torture? Do God's eyes not reach to the prisons of the Inquisition?

"I am just falling into a sickly, fitful sleep, worn out with conjecturing, when, about eleven o'clock at night, the great bolts of my cell grind and jolt back and a party of gaolers in black, in a flood of light, so that they looked like demons on the borders of heaven, come in.

"The alcaide throws down by my pallet a heap of clothes, tells me to put them on and hold myself ready for a second summons. I have no tongue to answer, as they light my lamp, leave me and lock the door behind them. Such a trembling seizes me for half an hour, that I cannot rise and look at the clothes which seem to me shrouds and winding sheets. I rise at last, throw myself down before the black cross I had smeared with charcoal on the wall, and commit myself, as a miserable sinner, into God's hands. I then put on the dress, which consists of a tunic with long, loose sleeves and hose drawers, all of black serge, striped with white.

"At two o'clock in the morning the wretches came and led me into a long gallery where nearly two hundred men, brought from their various cells, all dressed in black, stood in a long silent line against the wall of the long, plain vaulted, cold corridor where, over every two dozen heads, swung a high brass lamp. We stood silent as a funeral train. The women, also in black, were in a neighbouring gallery, far out of our sight. By sad glimpses down a neighbouring dormitory I could see more men dressed in black, who, from time to time, paced backwards and forwards. These I afterwards found were men doomed also to be burnt, not for murder—no, but for having a creed unlike that of the Jesuits. Whether I was to be burnt or not I did not know, but I took courage, because my dress was like that of the rest and the monsters could not dare to put two hundred men at once into one fire, though they did hate all who love doll-idols and lying miracles.

"Presently, as we waited sad and silent, gaolers came round and handed us each a long yellow taper and a yellow scapular, or tabard, crossed behind and before with red crosses of Saint Andrew. These are the sanbenitos that Jews, Turks, sorcerers, witches, heathen or perverts from the Roman Catholic Church are compelled to wear. Now came the gradation of our ranks—those who have relapsed, or who were obstinate during their accusations, wear the zamarra, which is gray, with a man's head burning on red faggots painted at the bottom and all round reversed flames and winged and armed black devils horrible to behold. I, and seventy others, wear these, and I lose all hope. My blood turns to ice; I can scarcely keep myself from swooning. After this distribution they bring us, with hard, mechanical regularity, pasteboard conical mitres (corozas) painted with flames and devils with the words 'sorcerer' and 'heretic' written round the rim. Our feet are all bare. The condemned men, pale as death, now begin to weep and keep their faces covered with their hands, round which the beads are twisted. God only—by speaking from heaven—could save them. A rough, hard voice now tells us we may sit on the ground till our next orders come. The old men and boys smile as they eagerly sit down, for this small relief comes to them with the refreshment of a pleasure.

"At four o'clock they bring us bread and figs, which some drop by their sides and others languidly eat. I refuse mine, but a guard prays me to put it in my pocket for I may yet need it. It is as if an angel had comforted me. At five o'clock, at daybreak, it was a ghastly sight to see shame, fear, grief, despair, written on our pale livid faces. Yet not one but felt an undercurrent of joy at the prospect of any release, even by death.

"Suddenly, as we look at each other with ghastly eyes, the great bell of the Giralda begins to boom with a funeral knell, long and slow. It was the signal of the gala day of the Holy Office, it was the signal for the people to come to the show. We are filed out one by one. As I pass the gallery in the great hall, I see the inquisitor, solemn and stern, in his black robes, throned at the gate. Beneath him is his secretary, with a list of the citizens of Seville in his wiry twitching hands. The room is full of the anxious frightened burghers, who, as their names are called and a prisoner passes through, move to his trembling side to serve as his godfather in the Act of Faith. The honest men shudder as they take their place in the horrible death procession. The time-serving smile at the inquisitor, and bustle forward. This is thought an honourable office and is sought after by hypocrites and suspected men afraid of the Church's sword.

"The procession commences with the Dominicans. Before them flaunts the banner of the order in glistening embroidery that burns in the sun and shines like a mirror, the frocked saint, holding a threatening sword in one hand, and in the other, an olive branch with the motto, 'Justitia et misericordia' (Justice and mercy). Behind the banner come the prisoners in their yellow scapulars, holding their lighted torches, their feet bleeding with the stones and their less frightened godfathers, gay in cloak and sword and ruff tripping along by their side, holding their plumed hats in their hands. The street and windows are crowded with careless eyes, and children are held up to execrate us as we pass to our torturing death. The auto da fé was always a holiday sight to the craftsmen and apprentices; it drew more than even a bull fight, because of the touch of tragedy about it. Our procession, like a long black snake, winds on, with its banners and crosses, its shaven monks and mitred bare-footed prisoners, through street after street, heralded by soldiers who run before to clear a way for us—to stop mules and clear away fruit-stalls, street-performers and their laughing audiences. We at last reach the Church of All the Saints, where, tired, dusty, bleeding and faint we are to hear mass.

"The church has a grave-vault aspect and is dreadfully like a charnel house. The great altar is veiled in black, and is lit with six silver candlesticks, whose flames shine like yellow stars with clear twinkle and a soft halo round each black, fire-tipped wick. On each side of the altar, that seems to bar out God and his mercy from us and to wrap the very sun in a grave cloak, are two thrones, one for the grand-inquisitor and his counsel, another for the king and his court. The one is filled with sexton-like lawyers, the other with jewelled and feathered men.

"In front of the great altar and near the door where the blessed daylight shines with hope and joy, but not for us, is another altar, on which six gilded and illuminated missals lie open; those books of the Gospels, too, in which I had once read such texts as—God is love; Forgive as ye would be forgiven; Faith, hope, charity: these three, but the greatest of these is charity. Near this lesser altar the monks had raised a balustraded gallery, with bare benches, on which sat the criminals in their yellow and flame-striped tabards with their godfathers. The doomed ones came last, the more innocent first. Those who entered the black-hung church first, passing up nearest to the altar sat there, either praying or in a frightened trance of horrid expectancy. The trembling living corpses wearing the mitres, yellow and red, came last, preceded by a gigantic crucifix, the face turned from them.

"Immediately following these poor mitred men came servitors of the Inquisition, carrying four human effigies fastened to long staves, and four chests containing the bones of those men who had died before the fire could be got ready. The coffers were painted with flames and demons and the effigies wore the dreadful mitre and the crimson and yellow shirt all a-flame with paint. The effigies sometimes represented men tried for heresy since their death and whose estates had since been confiscated and their effigies doomed to be burnt as a warning; for no one within their reach may escape if they differ in opinion with the Inquisition.

"Every prisoner being now in his place—godfathers, torchmen, pikemen, musketeers, inquisitors, and flaunting court—the Provincial of the Augustins mounted the pulpit, followed by his ministrant and preached a stormy, denouncing, exulting sermon, half an hour long (it seemed a month of anguish), in which he compared the Church with burning eloquence to Noah's ark; but with this difference, that those animals who entered it before the deluge came out of it unaltered, but the blessed Inquisition had, by God's blessing, the power of changing those whom its walls once enclosed, turning them out meek as the lambs he saw around him so tranquil and devout, all of whom had once been cruel as wolves and savage and daring as lions.

"This sermon over, two readers mounted the pulpit to shout the list of names of the condemned, their crimes (now, for the first time, known to them) and their sentences. We grew all ears and trembled as each name was read.

"As each name was called the alcaide led out the prisoner from his pen to the middle of the gallery opposite the pulpit, where he remained standing, taper in hand. After the sentence he was led to the altar where he had to put his hand on one of the missals and to remain there on his knees.

"At the end of each sentence, the reader stopped to pronounce in a loud, angry voice, a full confession of faith, which he exhorted us, the guilty, to join with heart and voice. Then we all returned to our places. My offence, I found, was having spoken bitterly of the Inquisition, and having called a crucifix a mere bit of cut ivory. I was therefore declared excommunicated, my goods confiscated to the king, I was banished Spain and condemned to the Havana galleys for five years with the following penances: I must renounce all friendship with heretics and suspected persons; I must, for three years, confess and communicate three times a month; I must recite five times a day, for three years, the Pater and Ave Maria in honour of the Five Wounds; I must hear mass and sermon every Sunday and feast day; and above all, I must guard carefully the secret of all I had said, heard, or seen in the Holy Office (which oath, as the reader will observe, I have carefully kept).

"The inquisitor then quitted his seat, resumed his robes and followed by twenty priests, each with a staff in his hand, passed into the middle of the church and with divers prayers some of us were relieved from excommunication, each of us receiving a blow from a priest. Once, such an insult would have sent the blood in a rush to my head, and I had died but I had given a return buffet; now, so weak and broken-spirited was I, I burst into tears.

"Now, one by one, those condemned to the stake, faint and staggering, were brought in to hear their sentences, which they did with a frightened vacancy, inconceivably touching, but the inquisitors were gossiping among themselves and scarcely looked at them. Every sentence ended with the same cold mechanical formula: That the Holy Office being unhappily unable to pardon the prisoners present, on account of their relapse and impenitence, found itself obliged to punish them with all the rigour of earthly law, and therefore delivered them with regret to the hands of secular justice, praying it to use clemency and mercy towards the wretched men, saving their souls by the punishment of their bodies and recommending death, but not effusion of blood. Cruel hypocrites!

"At the word blood the hangmen stepped forward and took possession of the bodies, the alcaide first striking each of them on the chest to show that they were now abandoned to the rope and fire." Then he goes on to describe the scene at the quemadero, which, however, included nothing of importance not already mentioned elsewhere.

After the death of Philip IV, and during the minority of his son, Charles II, Father Nithard, a Jesuit, who combined the two forces long in opposition, the disciples of Loyola and the descendants of Torquemada, was for a time inquisitor-general. The Holy Office was hotly opposed by Don John of Austria, a natural son of Philip IV, who rose to political power and would have fallen a victim to the Inquisition had not popular indignation sided with him against Nithard, who fled from Spain to Rome. He was stripped of all his offices but still kept the favour of the queen-mother who finally secured for him from Pope Clement X the coveted cardinal's hat. Don John was unequal to the task of curbing the power of the Inquisition, however, and the institution claimed wider and wider jurisdiction.

Growing dissatisfaction prevailed, and in 1696, the king, Charles II, summoned a conference or Grand Junta to enquire into the complaints that poured in from all quarters against the Inquisition. It was composed of two councillors of state from Castile, Aragon, the Indies, and the Spanish provinces in Italy, with two members of the religious orders. It reported that the Holy Office exercised illegal powers, still arrogated the right to throw persons of rank into prison and cover their families with disgrace. It punished with merciless severity the slightest opposition or disrespect shown to dependents or familiars who had come to enjoy extensive and exorbitant privileges. They claimed secular jurisdiction in matters nowise appertaining to religion, and set aside restrictions contained in their own canon law. The Junta strongly recommended that these restrictions should be rigidly enforced, and that no one should be thrown into the prisons of the Inquisition, save on charges of an heretical nature. It urged the right of appeal to the throne, and the removal of all causes to the royal courts for trial. It detailed the privileges granted to the servants of the Holy Office. Even a coachman or a lackey demanded reverence and might conduct himself with unbounded insolence. If a servant girl were not treated obsequiously in a shop she might complain and the offender was liable to be cast into the dungeons of the Inquisition. So great was the discontent, so many tumults arose, that the Junta would have all such unrighteous privileges curtailed, and would authorise the civil courts to keep the encroachments of the Holy Office in check.

With the eighteenth century the authority of the Holy Office visibly waned. Philip V, a French prince, and a grandson of Louis XIV, whose succession produced the long protracted war of the Spanish Succession, declined to be honoured with an auto da fé at his coronation, but he maintained the Inquisition as an instrument of despotic government, and actually used it to punish as heretics those who had any doubt concerning his title to the crown. Yet he rather used the Inquisition than supported it; for he deprived of his office an inquisitor-general who had presumed to proceed for heresy against a high officer. The Cortes of Castile again, (1714), recorded their condemnation, but without any further benefit than that which must eventually result from the disclosure of a truth. The same body reiterated their disapproval a few years afterwards, (1720). But while Philip V used the Inquisition for his own service, and the heretical doctrine which had prevailed two centuries before no longer left a trace behind, there were multitudes of persons accused of attempting to revive Judaism and others gave offence by their efforts to promote Freemasonry. This gave the inquisitors abundant pretext for the discharge of their political mission.

During the reigns of Charles III and Charles IV, a revival of literature and an advance in political science guided the attention of the clergy and the government to the position of the court of Rome, as well as to the proceedings of the inquisitors. The former of these monarchs nearly yielded to the advice of his councillors to suppress the Inquisition, as well as to expel the Jesuits. He banished the Society, but, in regard to the Inquisition, said: "The Spaniards want it and it gives me no trouble."

Meanwhile death sentences nearly ceased, and once when a good man was sentenced to be delivered to the secular arm, in compliance with the letter of the law, the inquisitors let him go free. By this contrivance Don Miguel Solano, priest of Esco, a town in Aragon, walked out of the prison of the Inquisition in Saragossa, as a maniac, forgiven his heresy, and lived on as a maniac, exempted from priestly ministrations, while every one knew him to be a reasonable man and treated him accordingly. In the end he died, refusing Extreme Unction, and was buried in unconsecrated ground within the walls of the Inquisition on the banks of the Ebro.

CHAPTER V

THE INQUISITION IN PORTUGAL AND INDIA

The Inquisition in Spain abolished by Napoleon's invasion—Its revival—Persecution of the Freemasons—The "Tribunal of Faith" established—Inquisition in Portugal—The case of an Englishman who is arrested, tortured and burnt alive—Difference between the Inquisitions of Spain and Portugal—The supreme power of the Holy Office in Portugal in the eighteenth century—The terrible earthquake at Lisbon—Establishment of the Holy Office in India at Goa—Description of the Inquisition prison at Goa by M. Dellon—Case of Father Ephrem—His arrest and rescue by the English from the hands of the inquisitors.

Napoleon's invasion of Spain and the removal of the young king, Ferdinand VII, to France, put an end to the Inquisition. When the Emperor took possession of Madrid, he called upon all public bodies to submit to his authority, but the Holy Office refused. Whereupon he issued an order to arrest the inquisitors, abolish the Inquisition, and sequestrate its revenues. All Spain did not readily yield to the French conqueror, and when the Cortes met in Cadiz they empowered one of the inquisitors, who had escaped, to reconstitute the tribunal, but it was never really restored. At the same time, the governing powers appointed a special commission to enquire into the legal status of the ancient body, and to decide whether the Inquisition had any legal right to exist. A report was published in 1812, reviewing its whole history and condemning it as incompatible with the liberties of the country. The indictment against it was couched in very vigorous language. It was held to have been guilty of the most harsh and oppressive measures; to have inflicted the most cruel and illegal punishments; "in the darkness of the night it had dragged the husband from the side of his wife, the father from the children, the children from their parents, and none may see the other again until they are absolved or condemned without having had the means of contributing to their defence or knowing whether they had been fairly tried." The result was a law passed by the Cortes to suppress the Inquisition in Spain.

The restoration of Ferdinand VII, at the termination of the war in 1814, gave the Inquisition fresh life. He resented the action taken by the Cortes, arrested its members, and cast them into prison, declaring them to be infidels and rebels, and forthwith issued a decree reviving the tribunal of the Holy Office. Its supreme council met in Seville and persecution was renewed under the new inquisitor-general, Xavier Mier y Campillo, who put out a fresh list of prohibited books, tried to raise revenues and issued a new Edict of Faith. There might have been another auto da fé even in the nineteenth century, but informers would not come forward and latter-day victims could not be found. Dread, nevertheless, prevailed, and numbers fled for refuge into foreign lands. Fierce energy was directed against the Freemasons, for during the French occupation, the palace of the Inquisition at Seville had been used, partly as a common gaol and partly as a Freemasons' lodge. The members of the craft who were found in Spain were dealt with as heretics, and all Freemasons were excommunicated.

For a time the Inquisition languished, although favoured by the arbitrary régime introduced by Ferdinand VII, who sought to reinstate it on its former lines. It was destroyed or at least suspended by the Revolution of 1820, and on his restoration, the king did not reëstablish it, though the officials still hoped for a better day and continued to draw their salaries. Some of the bishops established juntas de fé, which took up much the same work, and July 26th, 1826, a poor schoolmaster Cayetano Ripoll, was hanged for heresy—the last execution for this crime in Spain. Finally, January 4th, 1834, the Inquisition was definitely abolished, and the juntas de fé were abolished the next year.

The Inquisition extended its influence into the neighbouring country of Portugal, which was an independent kingdom until conquered by Philip II in 1580. Here persecution prevailed from the fifteenth century, chiefly of the Jews and new Christians, who flocked into the country from Spain, and were treated with great severity. The Holy Office was set up in Lisbon under an inquisitor-general, Diego de Silva, and Portugal was divided into inquisitional districts. Autos da fé were frequent, and on a scale hardly known in Spain, though the records are fragmentary.

From among the cases reported, we may quote that of an Englishman, a native of Bristol, engaged in commerce in Lisbon, who boldly assaulted the cardinal archbishop in the act of performing mass. Gardiner, as fiercely intolerant as those of the dominant religion who were worshipping according to their own rites, attacked the priest when he elevated the host, "snatched away the cake with one hand, trod it under his feet, and with the other overthrew the chalice." The congregation, at first utterly astounded, raised one great cry and fell bodily upon the sacrilegious wretch, who was promptly stabbed in the shoulder and haled before the king, who was present in the cathedral, and forthwith interrogated. It was thought that he had been instigated by the English Protestants to this outrageous insult, but he declared that he had been solely moved by his abhorrence of the idolatry he had witnessed. He was imprisoned and with him all the English in Lisbon. So soon as his wound was healed, he was examined by the Holy Office, tortured and condemned. Then he was carried to the market place on an ass and his left hand was cut off; thence he was taken to the river side and by a rope and pulley hoisted over a pile of wood which was set on fire. "In spite of the great torment he continued in a constant spirit and the more terribly he burned the more vehemently he prayed." He was in the act of reciting a psalm, when by the use of exceeding violence, the burning rope broke and he was precipitated into the devouring flames.

A fellow lodger of Gardiner was detained in the Inquisition for two years, and was frequently tortured to elicit evidence against other Englishmen, but without avail. A Scotch professor of Greek in the university of Coimbra was charged with Lutheranism, and imprisoned for a year and a half, after which he was committed to a monastery so that he might be instructed by the monks in the true religion. They did not change his views and he was presently set free. Another, an English shipmaster, was less fortunate and was burned alive as a heretic at Lisbon.

It has been observed that, on comparison of the Inquisitions of Spain and Portugal, a certain marked difference was disclosed between them. The same precise rigour of the Spanish inquisitors was not exhibited by the Portuguese. In Portugal the discipline was more savage yet more feeble. Yet in the latter country there was a brutal and more wanton excess in inflicting pain at the autos da fé. When convicts were about to suffer they were taken before the Lord Chief Justice to answer the enquiry as to what religion they intended to die in. If the answer was "in the Roman Catholic Apostolic," the order was given that they should be strangled before burning. If in the Protestant, or in any other religion, death in the flames was decreed. At Lisbon the place of execution, as has been said, was at the waterside. A thick stake was erected for each person condemned, with a wide crosspiece at the top against which a crosspiece was nailed to receive the tops of two ladders. In the centre the victim was secured by a chain, with a Jesuit priest on either side, seated on a ladder, who proceeded to exhort him to repentance. If they failed they declared they left him to the devil and the mob roared, "Let the dog's beard be trimmed," in other words, "his face scorched." This was effected by applying an ignited furze bush at the end of a long pole till his face was burned and blackened. The record of the Portuguese Inquisition to 1794 shows a total of one thousand, one hundred and seventy-five relaxed in person, i. e. executed, six hundred and thirty-three relaxed in effigy, and twenty-nine thousand, five hundred and ninety penanced.

The Portuguese were the first Europeans to trade with the Far East and, after Vasco de Gama had discovered India, Albuquerque annexed and occupied Goa, which might have become the seat and centre of the great empire which fell at length into British hands.

Portugal sacrificed all power and prosperity to the extirpation of heresy in its new possessions and was chiefly concerned in the establishment of the Holy Office in India. The early Portuguese settlers in the East clamoured loudly for the Inquisition; the Jesuit fathers who were zealous in their propaganda in India declared that the tribunal was most necessary in Goa, owing to the prevailing licentiousness and the medley of all nations and superstitions. It was accordingly established in 1560, and soon commenced its active operations with terrific vigour. General baptisms were frequent in this the ecclesiastical metropolis of India, and so were autos da fé conducted with great pomp with many victims.

A light upon the proceedings of the Holy Office in Goa is afforded by the story told by a French traveller, M. Dellon, who was arrested at the instance of the Portuguese governor at Damaum, and imprisoned at Goa in the private prison of the archbishop. "The most filthy," says Dellon, "the darkest and most horrible of any I had ever seen.... It is a kind of cave wherein there is no day seen but by a very little hole. The most subtle rays of the sun cannot enter it and there is never any true light in it. The stench is extreme...." M. Dellon was dragged before the Board of the Holy Office, seated in the Holy House, which is described as a great and magnificent building, "one side of a great space before the church of St. Catherine." There were three gates. The prisoners entered by the central or largest, and ascending a stately flight of steps, reached the great hall. Behind the principal building was another very spacious, two stories high and consisting of a double row of cells. Those on the ground floor were the smallest, due to the greater thickness of the walls, and had no apertures for light or air. The upper cells were vaulted and whitewashed, and each had a small strongly grated window without glass. The cells had double doors, the outer of which was kept constantly open, an indispensable plan in this climate or the occupant must have died of suffocation.

Peint par D. F. Laugée Photogravure Goupil & C^ie.

The Question

One of the forms of torture before a tribunal of the Inquisition, used in the examination of the accused. Lighted charcoal was placed under the victim's feet, which were greased over with lard, so that the heat of the fire might more quickly become effective.

The régime was, to some extent, humane. Water for ablutions was provided and for drinking purposes, food was given sparingly in three daily meals, but was wholesome in quality. Physicians were at hand to attend the sick and confessors to wait on the dying, but they administered no unction, gave no viaticum, said no mass. If any died, as many did, his death was unknown to all without. He was buried within the walls with no sacred ceremony, and if it was decided that he had died in heresy, his bones were exhumed to be burnt at the next act of Faith. While alive he lived apart in all the strictness of the modern solitary cell. Alone and silent, for the prisoner was forbidden to speak, he was not allowed even to groan or sob or sigh aloud.

The Holy Office in Goa was worked on the same lines as that of Spain as already described and by the same officers. There was the Inquisidor Mor or grand-inquisitor, a secular priest, a second or assistant inquisitor, a Dominican monk, with many deputies; "qualifiers," to examine books and writings; a fiscal and a procurator; notaries and familiars. The authority of the tribunal was absolute in Goa except that the great officials, archbishop and his grand-vicar, the viceroy and the governor, could not be arrested without the sanction of the supreme council in Lisbon. The procedure, the examination and use of torture was exactly as in other places.

M. Dellon was taxed with having spoken ill of the Inquisition, and was called upon to confess his sins, being constantly brought out and again relegated to his cell and continually harassed to make him accuse himself, until in a frenzy of despair he resolved to commit suicide by refusing food. The physician bled him and treated him for fever, but he tore off the bandages hoping to bleed to death. He was taken up insensible, restored by cordials, and carried before the inquisitor, where he lay on the floor and was assailed with bitter reproaches, heavily ironed and sent back to languish in his cell in a wild access of fury approaching madness.

At last the great day of the Act of Faith approached, and Dellon heard on every side the agonised cries of both men and women. During the night the alcaide and warders came into his cell with lights bringing a suit of clothes, linen, best trousers, black striped with white. He was marched to join a couple of hundred other penitents squatted on the floor along the sides of a spacious gallery, all motionless but in an agony of apprehension, for none knew his doom. A large company of women were collected in a neighbouring chamber and a third lot in sanbenitos, among whom the priests moved seeking confessions and if made the boon of strangulation was conceded before "tasting the fire."

Shortly before sunrise the great bell of the Cathedral tolled and roused the city into life. People filled the chief streets, lined the thoroughfares and crowded into places whence they might best see the procession. With daylight Dellon saw from the faces of his companions that they were mostly Indians with but a dozen white men among them. M. Dellon went barefoot with the rest over the loose flints of the badly paved streets, and, at length, cut and bleeding, entered the church of St. Francisco, for the ceremony could not be performed under the fierce sky of this torrid climate. Dellon's punishment was confiscation of all his property, and banishment from India, with five years' service in the galleys of Portugal.

The rest of his sad adventures may be told briefly. He was brought back to Lisbon and worked at the oar with other convicts for some years, when at the intercession of friends in France the Portuguese government consented to release him. There is no record that the French authorities made any claim or reclamation for the ill-usage of a French subject.

It was otherwise with their neighbours, the English, who even before their power in India was established, would not suffer the Portuguese authorities in Goa to ill-treat a person who could claim British protection. A French Capuchin, named Father Ephrem, had visited Madras when on his way to join the Catholic mission in Pegu. He was invited to remain in Madras and was promised entire liberty with respect to his religion, and permitted to minister to the Catholics already settled in the factory. In the course of his preaching he laid down a dogma offensive, as it was asserted, to the Mother of God, and information thereof was laid with the inquisitors at Goa, who made their plans to kidnap Father Ephrem and carry him off to Goa, some six hundred miles distant from Madras. The plot succeeded and the French Capuchin was lodged in the prison of the Holy Office at Goa. This was not to be brooked by the English in Madras. An English ship forthwith proceeded to Goa and a party of ten determined men, well-armed, landed and appeared at the gates of the Inquisition and demanded admittance. Leaving a couple of men on guard at the gate, the rest entered the gaol and insisted at the point of the sword that Father Ephrem should be forthwith surrendered to them. An order thus enforced was irresistible, and the prisoner was released, taken down to the ship's boat, reëmbarked and carried back in safety to Madras.

The aims of the Inquisition are no longer those of modern communities. So widely has the idea of toleration extended, that we often forget how recent it is. The relations of Church and State are so changed in the last two centuries, that it is difficult to understand the times of the Spanish Inquisition. Then it was universally believed that orthodoxy in faith was intimately connected with loyalty to the state. As a matter of fact, nearly all the earlier heretical movements were also social or political revolts. It is, therefore, easy to see how heresy and high treason came to appear identical.

Some of the inquisitors were corrupt, others were naturally cruel, others, drunk with power, were more zealous in exerting that power than they were in deciding between guilt and innocence. On the other hand many were zealous because of their honesty. If a man believes that he knows the only hope of salvation, it is perfectly logical to compel another by force, if necessary, to follow that hope. Any physical punishment is slight compared with the great reward which reconciliation brings. On the other hand, if he is firm in his heresy, he is as dangerous as a wild beast. We are more tolerant now, less certain, perhaps, of our ground, but three or four hundred years ago these points were a stern reality.

That many inquisitors were more concerned with the Church as an institution than as a means of salvation is also true. They punished disrespect to an officer or to a law more severely than they did a doctrinal error, but that was, perhaps, inevitable. The Spanish Inquisition, which, as has been said, was to some extent a state affair, punished many for what we might call trifling offences, or, indeed, no offence at all, but it was an intolerant age, in and out of Spain.

The number punished has been grossly exaggerated, but it was enough to injure Spain permanently, to crush out freedom of thought and action to an unwarrantable extent. The historian must attribute much of Spain's decadence to the work of the mistaken advocate of absolute uniformity.

CHAPTER VI

EARLY PRISONS AND PRISONERS

Slow development of Prison Reform in Spain—Description of the old Saladero—George Borrow's account of his arrest and imprisonment there—Balseiro's escape and subsequent escapades—He seizes the two sons of a wealthy Basque and holds them for ransom—His capture and execution—The valientes or bullies—The cruelties they practised upon their weaker fellow prisoners—Don Rafael Salillas' description of the Seville prison.

The prisons in Spain have been generally divided into three categories: First, the depositos correcionales, the cárceles or common gaols, one in the capital of each province, to which were sent accused persons and all sentenced to two years or less; second, the presidios of the Peninsula for convicts between two years and eight years; and third, the African penal settlements for terms beyond eight years. The character and condition of the bulk of these places of durance long continued most unsatisfactory. In 1888 in an official report, the Minister of Grace and Justice said, "The present state of the Spanish prisons is not enchanting. They are neither safe nor wholesome, nor adapted to the ends in view." This criticism was fully borne out by the result of a general inquiry instituted. It was found that of a total of four hundred and fifty-six of the correctional prisons only one hundred and sixty-six were really fit for the purpose intended and the remainder were installed in any buildings available. Some were very ancient, dating back to the 16th century; and had once been palaces, religious houses, castles or fortresses.

Many of these buildings were ancient monuments which suffered much injury from the ignoble rôle to which they were put. A protest was published by a learned society of Madrid against the misuse of the superb ex-convents of San Gregorio in Valladolid and San Isidro del Campo near Seville, and the mutilation by its convict lodgers of the very beautiful gateway of the Templo de la Piedad in Guadalajara. The installation of the prison at Palma de Mallorca all but hopelessly impaired the magnificent cloisters of the convent of San Francisco, a thirteenth century architectural masterpiece, and a perfect specimen of the ogival form, like nothing else in Spain. Within a short period of ten years several of these interesting old buildings were ruined. The entire convent prison at Coruña sank, causing many casualties, loss of life and serious wounds.

Sometimes the authorities hired private dwellings to serve as prisons, or laid hands on whatever they could find. At Granada a slice of the Court House was used, a dark triangle to which air came only from the interior yard. The prison of Allariz at Orense was on the ground floor of a house in the street, having two windows looking directly on to it, guarded by a grating with bars so far apart that a reasonably thin man could slip through. One of the worst features of many of these ancient prisons was their location in the very heart of the towns with communication to the street. Friends gathered at the rejas outside, and the well known picture of flirtation at the prison window was drawn from life. A common sight also was the outstretched hand of the starving prisoner imploring alms from the charitable, for there was no regular or sufficient supply of provisions within. Free access was also possible when the domestic needs of the interior took the prisoners to the public well in the street.

The Carmona gaol in Seville was for years half in ruins; no sunlight reached any part of it with the exception of two of the yards; the dungeons had no ventilation except by a hole in their doors; an open sewer ran through the gaol, the floors were always wet, fleas abounded, as also rats, beetles and cockroaches; cooking was done in one corner of the exercising yard and clothes were washed in the other. The removal of the gaol was ordered and plans for a new building prepared in 1864, but they were pigeon-holed until 1883, then sent back to be revised, and the project is still delayed. The Colmenar prison of Malaga was always under water in heavy rain, and although simple repairs would have rectified this, nothing was done. The prison of Leon was condemned in 1878 as unfit for human habitation, and its alcalde (governor) stated that it had been reported for a century or more that it wanted light, air and sanitary arrangements; typhoid was endemic and three alcaldes had died of zymotic disease in a few years. It was generally denounced as "a poisonous pesthouse, a judicial burial ground." The Totana prison of Murcia was not properly a prison, but only a range of warehouses and shops fit for the storage of grain and herbs, but wholly unsuitable to lodge human beings. The district governor speaking of the Infiesto prison at Oviedo in 1853 wrote: "Humanity shudders at the horrible aspect of this detestable place."

At Cartagena the common gaol was on the ground floor of the presidio or convict prison. Here the innocent, still untried prisoners occupied a dark, damp den, enduring torments of discomfort, speedily losing health and strength, and exposed by its ruinous condition to the extremes of heat and cold in the varying seasons. Females were lodged on a lower floor, darker and closer and even exposed to the worst temptations. The convicts of the presidio had free access to their prison and immorality could not be prevented; no amount of supervision (and there was really none) could have checked the moral contamination more easily conveyed than the physical. These painful facts may be read in an official report dated October, 1877, and are practically the same as those detailed in the famous indictment of John Howard just a century earlier.[9]

Many of the makeshift prisons mentioned above were located in the very heart of towns and were without boundary walls or means of separation from the public, and two hundred and sixty-four had windows giving upon the streets. It was impossible to ensure safe custody so limited was the supervision, so insecure and ruinous the state of these imperfect prisons. Escapes had been of very frequent occurrence, but the total number could not be stated owing to the absence of accurate records from year to year. One authority gave the annual average of escapes as thirty-four, ranging over five successive years. They were greatly facilitated by the slack, slipshod system of discipline and the careless guard kept at the gates through which crowds constantly passed in and out. Friends admitted wholesale to visit prisoners brought in disguises and easily helped them to evade the vigilance of warders and keepers. Escapes were most numerous in the small gaols,—about three to one when compared to those from the presidios,—and were often effected on the way to gaol through the neglect or connivance of the escort, especially when the journey was made on foot and officers in charge willingly consented to linger on the road in order to enjoy themselves in the taverns and drinking shops. They even allowed their prisoners to pay lengthened visits to their own homes if situated anywhere near.

A famous escape took place, en masse, in one of the prisons on the occasion of a theatrical performance given by the prisoners in honour of the governor's birthday. Permission had been duly accorded and the function was organised on an imposing scale. The stage was erected in an open space, scenery provided and a fine curtain or act drop behind which the usual preparations were made. These had not gone beyond rehearsal, however. All was ready to "ring up," the prison audience all seated, enduring with increased impatience and dissatisfaction the long wait which seemed and was actually endless. At last the authorities interposed and the governor sent a messenger behind the curtain with a peremptory order to begin. There was no company. Every single soul, manager and actors had disappeared under cover of the curtain. A great hole or gap had been made in the outer wall, through which all of the performers had passed out to freedom.

Numerous as are the escapes, recaptures are also frequent. That fine corps, the guardias civiles, which constitutes the rural police of Spain, always so active in the prevention and suppression of crime, has been highly successful in the pursuit of fugitives, few of whom remain at large for any length of time. Travellers in Spain, especially in the country districts, must have been struck with the fine appearance of these stalwart champions of the law. They are all old soldiers, well trained and disciplined, ever on the side of order, never mixing in politics, and conspicuous for their loyalty to the existing régime.

The most disgraceful of the old prisons were in Madrid. The Saladero which survived until very recently had been once an abattoir and salting place of pigs. But it replaced one more ancient and even worse in every aspect. The earlier construction is described by a Spanish writer, Don Francisco Lastres, as the most meagre, the darkest, dirtiest place imaginable. It had yet a deeper depth, an underground dungeon, commonly called "el Infierno," hell itself, in which light was so scarce that when new comers arrived, the old occupants could only make out their faces by striking matches, manufactured from scraps of linen steeped in grease saved from their soup or salad oil. When the gaol was emptied it was so encrusted with abominable filth that to clean it was out of the question and the whole place was swept bodily out of existence.

This must have been the prison in which George Borrow was confined when that enterprising Englishman was arrested for endeavouring to circulate the Bible in Spain, as the agent and representative of the British Bible Society in 1835 and the following years. His experiences as told by himself constitute one of the most thrilling books of adventure in the English language, and his strangely interesting personality will long be remembered and admired. He had led a very varied life, had wandered the world over as the friend and associate of those curious people, the gipsies, whose "crabbed" language he spoke with fluency and to whose ways and customs he readily conformed. Readers whom his "Lavengro" and "The Romany Rye" have delighted will bear witness to the daring and intrepid character which carried him safely through many difficult and dangerous situations. He was a man of great stature, well trained in the art of self defence, as he proved by his successful contest with the "Flaming Tinker" described in "Lavengro." The bigoted Spanish authorities caught a Tartar in Borrow. It was easy to arrest him as he was nothing loth to go to gaol; he had long been thinking, as he tells us, "of paying a visit to the prison, partly in the hope of being able to say a few words of Christian instruction to the criminals and partly with a view to making certain investigations in the robber language of Spain." But, once in, he refused to come out. He took high ground; his arrest had been unlawful; he had never been tried or condemned and nothing would satisfy him but a full and complete apology from the Spanish government. He was strongly backed up by the British Ambassador and he was gratified in the end by the almost abject surrender of the authorities. But he spent three weeks within the walls and we have to thank his indomitable spirit for a glimpse into the gloomy recesses of the Carcel de la Corte, the chief prison, at that time, of the capital of Spain.

The arrest was made openly in one of the principal streets of Madrid by a couple of alguazils who carried their prisoner to the office of the corregidor, or chief magistrate, where he was abruptly informed that he was to be forthwith committed to gaol. He was led across the Plaza Mayor, the great square so often the scene in times past of the autos da fé. Borrow, as he went, cast his eyes at the balcony of the city hall where, on one occasion, "the last of the Austrian line in Spain (Philip II) sat, and, after some thirty heretics of both sexes had been burnt by fours and fives, wiped his face perspiring with heat and black with smoke and calmly inquired, 'No hay mas?'" (No more to come?) for which exemplary proof of patience he was much applauded by his priests and confessors, who subsequently poisoned him.

"We arrived at the prison," Borrow goes on, "which stands in a narrow street not far from the great square. We entered a dusty passage at the end of which was a wicket. There was an exchange of words and in a few moments I found myself within the prison of Madrid, in a kind of corridor which overlooked at a considerable altitude what appeared to be a court from which arose a hubbub of voices and occasional wild shouts and cries...." Several people sat here, one of whom received the warrant of committal, perused it with attention and, rising, advanced towards Borrow.

"What a figure! He was about forty years of age and ... in height might have been some six feet two inches had his body not been curved much after the fashion of the letter S. No weasel ever appeared lanker; his face might have been called handsome, had it not been for his extraordinary and portentous meagreness; his nose was like an eagle's bill, his teeth white as ivory, his eyes black (oh, how black!) and fraught with a strange expression; his skin was dark and the hair of his head like the plumage of a raven. A deep quiet smile dwelt continually on his features, but with all the quiet it was a cruel smile, such a one as would have graced the countenance of a Nero.

"'Caballero,' he said, 'allow me to introduce myself as the alcaide of this prison.... I am to have the honour of your company for a time, a short time doubtless, beneath this roof; I hope you will banish every apprehension from your mind. I am charged to treat you with all respect, a needless charge and Caballero, you will rather consider yourself here as a guest than as a prisoner. Pray issue whatever commands you may think fit to the turnkeys and officials as if they were your own servants. I will now conduct you to your apartment. We invariably reserve it for cavaliers of distinction. No charge will be made for it although the daily hire is not unfrequently an ounce of gold.'

"This speech was delivered in pure sonorous Castilian with calmness, gravity and almost dignity and would have done honour to a gentleman of high birth. Now, who in the name of wonder, was this alcaide? One of the greatest rascals in all Spain. A fellow who more than once by his grasping cupidity and his curtailment of the miserable rations of the prisoners caused an insurrection in the court below only to be repressed by bloodshed and the summoning of military aid; a fellow of low birth who five years previously had been a drummer to a band of Royalist volunteers."

The room allotted to Borrow was large and lofty, but totally destitute of any kind of furniture except a huge wooden pitcher containing the day's allowance of water. But no objection was made to Borrow's providing for himself and a messenger was forthwith despatched to his lodgings to fetch bed and bedding and all necessaries, with which came a supply of food, and the new prisoner soon made himself fairly comfortable. He ate heartily, slept soundly and rejoiced next day to hear that this illegal arrest and confinement of a British subject was already causing the high-handed minister who had ordered it, much uneasiness and embarrassment. Borrow steadfastly refused to go free without full and ample reparation for the violence and injustice done to him. "Take notice," he declared, "that I will not quit this prison till I have received full satisfaction for having been sent hither uncondemned. You may expel me if you please, but any attempt to do so shall be resisted with all the bodily strength of which I am possessed." In the end the amende was made in an official document admitting that he had been imprisoned on insufficient grounds, and Borrow went out after three weeks' incarceration, during which he learned much concerning the prison and the people it contained.

He refrains from a particular description of the place. "It would be impossible," he says, "to describe so irregular and rambling an edifice. Its principal features consisted of two courts, the one behind the other, in which the great body of the prisoners took air and recreation. Three large vaulted dungeons or calabozos occupied the three sides of the (first) court ... roomy enough to contain respectively from one hundred to one hundred and fifty prisoners who were at night secured with lock and bar, but during the day were permitted to roam about the courts as they thought fit. The second court was considerably larger than the first, though it contained but two dungeons, horribly filthy and disgusting, used for the reception of the lower grades of thieves. Of the two dungeons one was if possible yet more horrible than the other. It was called the gallinería or 'chicken coop' because within it every night were pent up the young fry of the prison, wretched boys from seven to fifteen years of age, the greater part almost in a state of nudity. The common bed of all the inmates of these dungeons was the ground, between which and their bodies nothing intervened save occasionally a manta or horse cloth or perhaps a small mattress; this latter luxury was however of exceedingly rare occurrence.

"Besides the calabozos connected with the courts were other dungeons in various parts of the prison, some of them quite dark, intended for the reception of those whom it might be deemed expedient to treat with peculiar severity. There was likewise a ward set apart for females. Connected with the principal corridor were many small apartments where resided prisoners confined for debt or for political offences, and, lastly, there was a small capilla or chapel in which prisoners cast for death passed the last three days of their existence in the company of their ghostly advisers.

"I shall not forget my first Sunday in prison. Sunday is the gala day ... and whatever robber finery is to be found in it is sure to be exhibited on that day of holiness. There is not a set of people in the world more vain than robbers in general, more fond of cutting a figure whenever they have an opportunity. The famous Jack Sheppard delighted in sporting a suit of Genoese velvet and when he appeared in public generally wore a silver hilted sword by his side.... Many of the Italian bandits go splendidly decorated, the cap alone of the Haram Pacha, the head of the cannibal gipsy band which infested Hungary at the conclusion of the 18th century, was adorned with gold and jewels to the value of several thousand guilders.... The Spanish robbers are as fond of display as their brethren of other lands, and whether in prison or out are never so happy as when decked out in a profusion of white linen in which they can loll in the sun or walk jauntily up and down."

To this day, snow-white linen is an especial mark of foppery in the Spanish peasant. To put on a clean shirt is considered a sufficient and satisfactory substitute for a bath and in the humblest house a white table cloth is provided for meals and clean sheets for the beds. Borrow gives a graphic picture of the "tip-top thieves" he came across. "Neither coat nor jacket was worn over the shirt, the sleeves of which were wide and flowing, only a waistcoat of green or blue silk with an abundance of silver buttons which are intended more for show than use, as the waistcoat is seldom buttoned. Then there are wide trousers something after the Turkish fashion; around the waist is a crimson faja or girdle and about the head is tied a gaudily coloured handkerchief from the loom of Barcelona. Light pumps and silk stockings complete the robber's array.

"Amongst those who particularly attracted my attention were a father and son; the former a tall athletic figure, of about thirty, by profession a housebreaker and celebrated through Madrid for the peculiar dexterity he exhibited in his calling. He was in prison for an atrocious murder committed in the dead of night in a house in Carabanchel (a suburb of Madrid), in which his only accomplice was his son, a child under seven years of age. The imp was in every respect the counterpart of his father though in miniature. He too wore the robber shirt sleeves, the robber waistcoat with the silver buttons, the robber kerchief round his brow and, ridiculously enough, a long Manchegan knife in the crimson faja. He was evidently the pride of the ruffian father who took all imaginable care of him, would dandle him on his knee, and would occasionally take the cigar from his own mustachioed lips and insert it in the urchin's mouth. The boy was the pet of the court, for the father was one of the 'bullies' of the prison and those who feared his prowess and wished to pay their court to him were always fondling the child."

Borrow when in the "Carcel de la Corte" renewed his acquaintance with one, Balseiro, whom he had met in a low tavern frequented by thieves and bull fighters on a previous visit to Madrid. One of these, Sevilla by name, professed deep admiration for the Englishman and backed him to know more than most people of the "crabbed" Gitano language. A match was made with this Balseiro who claimed to have been in prison half his life and to be on most intimate terms with the gipsies. When Borrow came across him for the second time he was confined in an upper story of the prison in a strong room with other malefactors. There was no mistaking this champion criminal with his small, slight, active figure and his handsome features, "but they were those of a demon." He had recently been found guilty of aiding and abetting a celebrated thief, Pepe Candelas, in a desperate robbery perpetrated in open daylight on no less a person than the Queen's milliner, a Frenchwoman, whom they bound in her own shop, from which they took goods to the amount of five or six thousand dollars. Candelas had already suffered for his crime, but Balseiro, whose reputation was the worse of the two, had saved his life by the plentiful use of money, and the capital sentence had in his case been commuted to twenty years' hard labour in the presidio of Malaga.

When Borrow condoled with him, Balseiro laughed it off, saying that within a few weeks he would be transferred and could at any time escape by bribing his guards. But he was not content to wait and joined with several fellow convicts who succeeded in breaking through the roof of the prison and getting away. He returned forthwith to his evil courses and soon committed a number of fresh and very daring robberies in and around Madrid. At length dissatisfied with the meagre results and the smallness of the plunder he secured, Balseiro planned a great stroke to provide himself with sufficient funds to leave the country and live elsewhere in luxurious idleness.

A Basque named Gabira, a man of great wealth, held the post of comptroller of the Queen's household. He had two sons, handsome boys of twelve and fourteen years of age respectively, who were being educated at a school in Madrid. Balseiro, well aware of the father's strong affection for his children, resolved to make it subservient to his rapacity. He planned to carry off the boys and hold them for ransom at an enormous price. Two of his confederates, well-dressed and of respectable appearance, drove up to the school and presenting a forged letter, purporting to be written by the father, persuaded the schoolmaster to let them go out for a jaunt in the country. They were carried off to a hiding place of Balseiro's in a cave some five miles from Madrid in a wild unfrequented spot between the Escorial and the village of Torre Lodones. Here the two children were sequestered in the safekeeping of their captors, while Balseiro remained in Madrid to conduct negotiations with the bereaved father. But Gabira was a man of great energy and determination and altogether declined to agree to the terms proposed. He invoked the power of the authorities instead, and, at his request, parties of horse and foot soldiers were sent to scour the country and the cave was soon discovered, with the children, who had been deserted by their guards in terror at the news of the rigorous search instituted. Further search secured the capture of the accomplices and they were identified by their young victims. Balseiro, when his part in the plot became known, fled from the capital but was speedily caught, tried, and with his associates suffered death on the scaffold. Gabira with his two children was present at the execution.

A brief description of the old Saladero, which has at last disappeared off the face of the earth, may be of interest. It stood at the top of the Santa Barbara hill on the left hand side, in external aspect a half-ruined edifice tottering to its fall, propped and buttressed, at one corner quite past mending, at another showing rotten cement and plaster with its aged weather-worn walls stained with great black patches of moisture and decay. A poor and wretched place outside with no architectural pretensions, its interior was infinitely worse. It was entered by a wide entrance not unlike that of an ancient country inn or hostelry with a broken-down wooden staircase, leading to a battered doorway of rotten timbers. The portals passed, the prison itself was reached, a series of underground cellars with vaulted roofs purposely constructed, as it seemed, to exclude light and prevent ventilation, permeated constantly with fetid odours and abominable foul exhalations from the perpetual want of change of atmosphere or circulation of fresh air. Yet human beings were left to rot in these nauseous and pestiferous holes for two or three years continuously. At times the detention lasted five years on account of the disgracefully slow procedure in the law courts and this although trials often ended in acquittal or a verdict of non-responsibility for the criminal act charged. Many of the unfortunate wretches subjected to these interminable delays and waiting judgment, therefore still innocent in the eyes of the law, were yet herded with those already convicted of the most heinous offences.

This neglect of the rules, generally accepted as binding upon civilised governments in the treatment of those whom the law lays by the heels, produced deplorable results. The gaol fever, that ancient scourge which once ravaged ill-kept prisons and swept away thousands, but long ago eliminated from proper places of durance, survived in the Saladero of Madrid until quite a recent date. Forty cases occurred as late as 1876 and zymotic disease was endemic in the prison. It was also a hotbed of vice, where indiscriminate association of all categories, good, bad and indifferent—the worst always in the ascendent, fostered and developed criminal instincts and multiplied criminals of the most daring and accomplished kind. When, with a storm of indignant eloquence, an eminent Spanish deputy, Don Manuel Silvela, denounced the Saladero in the Cortes and took the lead in insisting upon its demolition, he pointed out its many shortcomings. It was in the last degree unhealthy; it was nearly useless as a place of detention, for the bold or ingenious prisoner laughed at its restraints and escapes took place daily to the number of fourteen and sixteen at a time. If, however, with increased precautions it was possible to keep prisoners secure within the walls, nothing could save them from one another. Contamination was widespread and unceasing in a mass of men left entirely to themselves without regular occupation, without industrial labour or improving education and with no outlet for their energies but demoralising talk and vicious practices. Not strangely the Saladero became a great criminal centre, a workshop and manufactory of false money, where strange frauds were devised, such as the entierro[10] or suggested revelation of hidden treasure, the well known Spanish swindle which has had ramifications almost all over the world.

An independent witness, nevertheless, speaking from experience, the same George Borrow already quoted, has a good word to say for the inmates of Spanish gaols. He was greatly surprised at their orderly conduct and quiet demeanour. "They had their occasional bursts of wild gaiety; their occasional quarrels which they were in the habit of settling in a corner of the interior court with their long knives, the result not infrequently being death or a dreadful gash in the face or abdomen; but upon the whole their conduct was infinitely superior to what might have been expected from the inmates of such a place. Yet this was not the result of coercion or any particular care which was exercised over them; for perhaps in no part of the world are prisoners so left to themselves and so utterly neglected as in Spain, the authorities having no further anxiety about them than to prevent their escape, not the slightest attention being paid to their moral conduct,—not a thought bestowed on their health, comfort or mental improvement whilst within the walls. Yet in this prison of Madrid, and I may say in Spanish prisons in general (for I have been an inmate of more than one), the ears of the visitor are never shocked with horrid blasphemy and obscenity as in those of some other countries and more particularly in civilised France, nor are his eyes outraged or himself insulted as he would assuredly be were he to look down upon the courts from the galleries of the Bicêtre (in Paris)." And yet in this prison of Madrid were some of the most desperate characters in Spain; ruffians who had committed acts of cruelty and atrocity sufficient to make one shudder with horror. Gravity and sedateness are the leading characteristics of the Spaniards, and the worst robber, except in those moments when he is engaged in his occupation, (and then no one is more sanguinary, pitiless and wolfishly eager for booty), is a being who can be courteous and affable and who takes pleasure in conducting himself with sobriety and decorum. Borrow thought so well of these fellow-prisoners that he was willing to entertain them at dinner in his own private apartment in the gaol, and the governor made no objection to knocking off their irons temporarily so that they might enjoy the meal in comfort and convenience.