[183] The condemnation of a human being to a death by fire, as the penalty of spiritual error, is so abhorrent to the moral sense and so oppugnant to the teachings of Christ, that modern apologists have naturally sought to relieve the Church from responsibility for such atrocity. On the surface a tolerably plausible argument can be made. The ministers of religion, the spiritual courts, the Inquisition itself rendered no judgements of blood. Any ecclesiastic who might be concerned in them incurred "irregularity" requiring a dispensation before he could validly perform his functions or obtain preferment. The execution of heretics was a matter purely of secular law and burning them alive is not prescribed in canon or decretal. The earliest recorded example of concremation is that administered by Robert the Pious of France to the Cathari of Orleans in 1017, and its embodiment in positive law has not been found earlier than in the decrees against Waldenses by Pedro II of Aragon in the Council of Gerona in 1197. In 1231 Frederic II included it in the Sicilian Constitutions and, in 1238, by his Cremona decree, extended it throughout the empire, while Alfonso the Wise of Castile, in 1255, adopted it for Christians who turned Jews or Moors. (1) It thus became part of the public law of Christendom, not so much from the initiative of rulers, as from a recognition of what had become a custom through the spontaneous ferocity of popular fanaticism.
The Inquisition, through whose agency heretics were consigned to the stake, did not itself condemn them to it, but merely pronounced them to be heretics of whose conversion no hope was entertained; it cut them off from the Church, which had nothing further to do with them, and abandoned or "relaxed" them to the secular arm for due punishment. It assumed that it condemned [184] the crime and the civil judge the criminal and, in relaxing him, it adjured the judge to spare his life and not to spill his blood. This latter was a device invented by Innocent III, before the Inquisition existed, to preserve from irregularity the spiritual courts in degrading clerics guilty of forgery and handing them over to the secular authorities for execution. (2)
This shifting of responsibility to the civil power was not through any sense that the laws punishing heresy with burning were cruel or unjust, for the Church taught this to be an act so eminently pious that it accorded an indulgence to any one who would contribute wood to the pile, thus assuming the responsibility and expending the Treasure of the Merits of Christ in stimulating popular ferocity. That this indulgence was well known in Spain appears in the evidence in the trial of Jan of Antwerp for Lutheranism at Toledo in 1561. (3) In fact, when Luther argued that the burning of heretics was contrary to the will of the Spirit, Leo X included this among his heresies condemned in the bull Exsurge [185] Domine. (4) Consequently the secular power had no choice as to what it should do with heretics delivered to it; its act was purely ministerial, and if it listened to the hypocritical plea for mercy, it was liable to prosecution as a fautor of heresy and to deprivation of its functions. (5) The Church enforced this by embodying in the canon law a provision that princes and their officials must punish duly and promptly all heretics delivered to them by inquisitors, under pain of excommunication, which became heresy if endured for a year; and inquisitors were required to proceed against them, but were cautioned to speak only of executing the laws, without alluding to the death-penalty, in order to escape irregularity. (6)
As elsewhere, so in Spain. The Inquisition abandoned the unrepentant or relapsed heretic to the secular arm, which was bound to sentence and execute him. In the hurried informality of the early period, it seems to have been indifferent whether the magistrate pronounced a sentence or not. A contemporary account of the Toledo auto of August 14, 1486, describes the reading of the sentences of the inquisitors and the condemned being carried at once to the Vega for execution, where they were burnt till not a bone remained, without any allusion to the formality of intervention by the secular power. (7) When, however, the form of a condemnation by the alcalde was observed, as at Córdova in 1484, he uttered it by virtue of the sentence of the inquisitors, which rendered unnecessary anything more than condemning the culprit to be burnt alive, wherefore he ordered the alguazil mayor to carry it into effect. (8) In the inquisitorial sentences of the period the adjuration for mercy is generally lacking. In that of Mencia Alonso, condemned at Guadalupe, November 21, 1485, not only is it absent but the duties of the secular officials are treated as purely ministerial, for it ends " As a limb of the devil and accursed and excommunicate, she shall be taken to the place of burning so that by the secular justice of this town, or by other laymen, justice shall be executed upon her according to the custom of these kingdoms." (9)
[186] That the function of the magistrate was not judicial is manifested in the refusal to communicate the trial to him. When those of Brescia, in 1486, refused to execute the sentences of the inquisitor without seeing the trials, Innocent VIII ordered the inquisitor to excommunicate them if they delayed more than six days, no matter what the local laws might be, for heresy was a purely ecclesiastical crime. (10) In accordance with this is the assertion of the Repertorium de Pravitate Hoereticorum, printed at Valencia in 1494, that the magistrate has no right to have the process shown to him that he may judge as to the justice of the sentence; inquisitors are not to concede any such right, for his sole duty is to execute it without delay, and if he hesitates he is subject to deprivation of office and condemnation as a heretic. (11) This principle was fully admitted by secular jurists themselves. Torreblanca, who was attached to the royal Chancellery of Granada, states that the duty of the civil magistrate is purely executive and he has no right to examine into the merits of a case or to act in a judicial capacity. (12)
In fact, the secular power could be dispensed with altogether. The Venetian Signory was not always as prompt as it should be in suppressing heresy so, to avoid delays and embarrassing questions, the papal nuncio there, with his fiscal, auditor and other officials, had faculties to condemn to mutilation and death all heretics without incurring irregularity or other ecclesiastical penalties, notwithstanding all canons and decretals to the contrary. Such provisions were issued in 1547 by Paul III and in 1550 by Julius III and were doubtless customary. (13) Peña reduces this to a general principle for, without referring to special papal faculties, he asserts [187] that the intervention of the secular judge is unessential and that, if he is not accessible, the tribunal can condemn the heretic to death; if accessible he must execute the sentence if he wishes to escape the heavy penalties of fautorship and impeding the Inquisition. (14)
There was little danger of such reluctance on the part of secular officials in Spain, where the oath exacted of them by the Inquisition obliged them to execute whatever sentences the tribunal might require. (15) In fact, the only indication I have met with, of possible hesitation involving punishment, occurs in a mandate, September 5, 1725, to the Toledo tribunal, directing that, in autos de fe, the first sentences read should be those of relaxation--thus reversing the usual order--so that the convicts might be delivered at once to the royal judge, without permitting delay in the execution of the sentences, under any pretext, since the tribunal had complete jurisdiction to compel him, by censures and other penalties, to its exact performance. (16)
The Inquisition regarded the sentence of the magistrate as a mere perfunctory formality. The doctors had pointed out conclusively that heresy was a crime over which he had no jurisdiction, and if he were to assert it he would render illusory the sentence of the bishop or inquisitor. (17) Consequently, in preparation for an auto de fe, the tribunal, in advance, gave to the secular authorities a list of the condemnations so that the sentences might be drawn up and the wood, the stake and the garrotes be prepared for immediate execution. (18) It is true that thrift induced a certain amount of equivocation when, in 1579, the royal alguaziles of Saragossa claimed payment from the confiscations for their services and for the cost of the wood, and Philip II emphatically rejected the demand as unexampled, adding that the inquisitors could not [188] order such payment without irregularity, and that the executions were in virtue of the sentences of the secular judges and not of the inquisitors. (19) This, however, was the merest quibble. In autos generales, the magistrates were asked to be present to receive the convicts and " execute on them the penalties imposed by the canon law of the kingdom." In autos particulares, held in churches which must not be polluted by judgements of blood, the Suprema pointed out, in a consulta of April 7, 1690, that the secular judges could wait at a designated place, when it sufficed that a notary informed them in writing that "N. has been declared a heretic by sentence of the Holy Office," simultaneously "delivering the convict, when they must accept this assertion, and without delay execute the sentence, unless they wish the Holy Office to prosecute them as fautors of heretics and impeders of its free jurisdiction. At the same time the judges are to continue as usual to pronounce the formal sentence. (20)
Still, the estilo of the Inquisition required the ghastly comedy of asking mercy. In the official formula of the sentence the clause announcing relaxation to the civil magistrate proceeds "whom we ask and charge most affectionately to treat him benignantly and mercifully." In sentences of the absent and dead, where the effigy alone was abandoned to the secular arm, there is no prayer for mercy, as there was no effusion of blood to create irregularity. (21) In the rigid formalism of inquisitorial procedure, after the Suprema had established its minute control, it is safe to assume that this official formula was universally followed.
All this affords ample proof that the avoidance of irregularity was the only motive that actuated the Inquisition in this matter, but if further evidence is required it is furnished by the fact that still greater scruple existed in the exercise of the temporal jurisdiction acquired by the Spanish Holy Office over all matters concerning its officials, because such cases were not provided for in the commissions of the inquisitors-general, from which were delegated the powers of the tribunals. In 1514 the question arose when Micer Castillo, assessor in the Saragossa tribunal, was murdered, and two of his assassins, Joan Uguet and Pere Gaseo, were tried and convicted. The inquisitors dared not deliver them to the secular arm for execution, and various devices were [189] discussed, but the matter was settled by procuring from Leo X his motu proprio Cum sicut accepimus, January 28, 1515, in which he granted faculties to the inquisitors to arrest, try and deliver for punishment to the secular authorities, any one who had struck, mutilated or slain an official of the Inquisition, even if it entailed effusion of blood or mutilation or death, without incurring any note of irregularity. (22) Under this the tribunals acted when such cases arose, notably in Granada, about 1545, when seven persons were thus relaxed--six Moriscos and an Old Christian-- who, while in prison, killed the alcaide and his assistant and who were hanged before burning. (23)
In time the cardinals of the Roman Inquisition were beset with similar scruples and, to relieve their consciences, Pius V, October 9, 1567, granted a decree empowering them to participate in sentences of blood without incurring irregularity. (24) This applied only to Italy, but it was otherwise with the terrible bull Si de protegeríais, April 1, 1569, commanding the delivery to the secular arm, for the punishment due to high treason, of any one maltreating or even threatening an official of the Inquisition or destroying or altering its records. This was ordered to be published throughout the world; the Spanish Inquisition claimed the benefit of it, and had a Castilian version of it published every year. It made no illusion to irregularity, tacitly assuming that none was incurred and it was often cited in Spain to that effect. (25) Still, when in 1579, the Toledo tribunal desired the death-penalty for Francisco de la Bastida, for personating an official of the Inquisition, and there was no secular law to that effect, a special brief was obtained from Gregory XIII empowering it to find him guilty of death and deliver him to the secular arm for execution without incurring irregularity. (26)
There seems to have arisen
a fresh sense of insecurity about 1605. The brief of Leo X was well-nigh
forgotten; some tribunals had copies of it, but most of them had not, and
the bull Si de protegendis did not specifically meet cases that
arose. Application was therefore made to Paul V to extend to Spain the
1567 decree [190] of Pius V, which he granted by a brief of November
29, 1605, repeated in 1607. In this he bestowed the fullest powers, not
only on inquisitors but on all their officials, in all cases whether of
faith or not, coming within their competence, to participate in sentences
of torture, mutilation, or death without incurring irregularity.
(27) This would
appear ample enough to remove all possible scruples and yet subsequently
contingencies occasionally arose which excited debate, or called for papal
intervention to quiet sensitive consciences. (28)
In the work of exterminating heresy, the rules which governed the Spanish Inquisition were more merciless than those framed by its predecessor. At first, in the medieval tribunals, it was only the pertinacious and impenitent heretic who was consigned to the stake; he who recanted and professed conversion, even at the last moment, was admitted to reconciliation. Then gradually, as it was found that these enforced conversions were frequently insincere, relapse was regarded as proof of impenitence and pertinacity and was subjected irremissibly to the death-penalty, and this included those who had abjured for vehement suspicion. The treatment is exemplified in the case of Fray Bonato, the head of a little body of Spiritual Franciscans in Catalonia. He was pertinacious until the flames had roasted him one side, when his resolution gave way; he professed conversion and was rescued, but some years later he was found to be still cherishing his heresies and, in 1335, he was burnt alive. (29)
The number of burnings in the Spanish Inquisition, during its first half century, could never have occurred under the old rules. Indeed, in the first rush and fury, the case of Juan Chinchilla in 1483 (Vol. II, p. 468) indicates that even frank confession failed to save from the stake those who had sought reconciliation in a Term of Grace, but had been prevented by causes beyond their control. Even when rules began to be framed, the Instructions of 1484 placed the lives of those on trial at the discretion of the tribunal, for they required that repentance and asking for reconciliation must be expressed prior to rendering the final sentence, [191] to entitle the culprit to mercy; while even then, if the inquisitors considered that the repentance was feigned, and they had not fair hope of genuine conversion, they were empowered to declare him an impenitent and relax him to the secular arm--all of which was left to their consciences. (30)
The rule thus expressed presents two points, the development of which requires separate consideration. As regards the time of confessing and begging mercy, which the Instructions limit to the period prior to the rendering of the sentence, this was extended to the time of reading of the sentence at the auto de fe. Yet this was grudgingly admitted by the Instructions of 1561, which say that often when convicts on the staging profess conversion the inquisitors receive them to reconciliation, but this ought rarely to be done, for it is a very perilous thing which should be suspected to come from dread of death rather than from true repentance. (31) Yet, in spite of this warning, it was customary to suspend proceedings with those who, at the auto de fe, before the reading of their sentences, claimed to be penitent. They were remanded to the Inquisition and, if they confessed fully as to themselves and others, they were reconciled with appropriate punishment. Such cases were of constant occurrence; in the Córdova auto of April 12, 1722, there were four. Even while the sentence was being read, the doubt was thrown in favor of the culprit, as in the Murcia auto of May 17, 1722, when Inez Alvárez Pereira, convicted as an impenitent Judaizer, begged mercy during the reading of her sentence, professed that she wished to confess and be converted, and was sent back to prison, where she was reconciled. (32) In fact, in public autos, where there were convicts to be relaxed, there was always a room arranged under the staging to which the repentant culprit was at once transferred and one of the inquisitors descended to take his confession before he should have time to change his good resolutions. In such cases reconciliation was accompanied with confiscation, irremissible prison and sanbenito and usually one or two hundred lashes for tardy confession. (33)
The Instructions of 1561 were justified in claiming that little reliance was to be placed on conversions thus obtained. For the most part the awful experience led penitents, who thus escaped, [192] to cherish their beliefs in secret, but occasionally there was one whose conscience could not pardon the weakness that led to a betrayal of faith. Diego López Duro, an humble retailer of tobacco, condemned for Judaism, recanted while on the staging and was reconciled with imprisonment. In 1700, one day, when hearing mass, he stood apart from his fellow-prisoners and, in a loud voice, told the priest that he lied for the Law of Moses was the only true one. He would have been slain on the spot had he not been hurried out to save him from popular wrath, but for him there could be no mercy. The inquisitors labored long to save his soul by inducing him to recant without success; he was pertinacious to the last and was burnt alive in the Seville auto of October 28, 1703--one of those martyrs whose constancy explains why Judaism has been indestructible. (34)
After the reading of the sentence was concluded, recantation did not avert the death-penalty, as in the elder Inquisition, but it was modified to garrotting or strangling before burning, for it was received as a principle that a Christian was not to be burnt alive. This was recognized at least as early as 1484, when in a Saragossa auto a culprit is recorded as strangled before burning "porque murió reducido." (35) In addition to this, the traditions of the Old Inquisition introduced at first a certain irregularity in practice, and it did not follow that delivery to the secular arm inevitably inferred execution. In a list of quemados y relaxados at Ciudad Real, there are several cases, up to 1523, of those who were "relaxed" and yet had penances of various kinds, showing that they had recanted after delivery to the magistrate and yet were spared the death-penalty. (36) In fact, it continued for some time to be a matter of debate, in which opinions were divided, whether a man who had been returned by the secular judge to the inquisitors, because he recanted and promised full confession, could be again relaxed for execution. The older doctors inclined to the merciful view and Simancas tells us of such a case in Cuenca, which was referred to the Suprema, when many experts held that the culprit could not be again relaxed, for he had made a true confession, and the secular arm had renounced its rights. Even as late as 1640 an inquisitor says that the rigor of executing a man [193] who repents after delivery to the magistrate is not customary in Spain. (37)
In this he would seem to be mistaken. I have never met with a case, later than those alluded to, in which conversion professed after sentence secured reconciliation. The tendency to rigor was too strong. The Instructions of 1561 make no allusion to such a possibility, as they grudgingly allow mercy for earlier confession. Peña forbids it; he admits that it was the ancient custom, but such conversions are not to be trusted and experience shows that such penitents are only rendered worse. (38) It was the universal practice to garrote those who professed repentance after sentence, and the dreadful alternative of death by fire, when thus impending so imminently, wrought so many conversions on the way to the brasero, even among those whose resolve had held out thus far, that burning alive became comparatively infrequent. In the first, three autos held at Barcelona in 1488 and 1489, all the converts professed a desire to die in the Christian faith and all were strangled before burning. (39) At the great auto of May 21,1559, at Valladolid where Dr. Cazalla and other Protestants suffered, there were fourteen relaxed in person, of whom only one, the Bachiller Herrezuelo, is characterized as a pertinacious heretic and consequently burnt alive, the rest being garrotted as repentant converts. (40) In 1571 there were hanging, in the parish church of Logroño, 157 sanbenitos, of which 101 were of those reconciled and 56 of those relaxed. Of the latter nine were in effigy and 47 in person, of whom only four are specified as burnt alive. (41) The weakness of human nature afforded but rare examples of those who could stand the final test of fiery martyrdom.
Notwithstanding the practice of executing all who delayed conversion until after hearing their sentences, there still were those who argued that they should be admitted to reconciliation, basing their contention on the ancient rule and on the silence of the [194] Instructions of 1561 on this point. In 1674 the Suprema felt called upon to quiet the doubts of the Granada tribunal, by insisting that this rigor had been the invariable custom of the Holy Office. Still the question was debated until a carta acordada of May 24, 1699, disposed of it authoritatively. This declared that, in consequence of existing doubts, the Suprema had examined the matter carefully, reaching the conclusion that technically the delivery to the secular arm was coincident with the reading of the sentence; the Inquisition thus remained without jurisdiction which had passed to the royal justice for the execution of the sentence. Therefore, if the convict was not converted before the reading of the sentence, he was not to have mercy or to be admitted to reconciliation, even if he begged for it, but the royal justice was to execute and fulfil the sentence. If the conversion was real and not feigned--the latter being presumable at such a time--any of the confessors who assisted the culprit could reconcile him to the church and confess him sacramentally. (42) Thus his body was irrevocably forfeited, although his soul might be saved.
After so formal a definition, no arguments in favor of mercy could be urged. In the sixty-four autos de fe, between 1721 and 1727, there was a total of seventy-seven cases of relaxation in person. In the relations it is not always stated distinctly whether the victim was burned alive or garrotted but, from the details given, the estimate cannot be far wrong that not over thirteen, or about one in six, endured the severer punishment. In the Granada auto of January 21, 1722, there were eleven relaxed, all of whom professed conversion after their sentences were read, and all were garrotted before burning. So rigid was the interpretation of the rule that it could not be dispensed with even to gratify the intense longing for expiation which sometimes possessed the eleventh hour convert. In the Córdova auto of April 12, 1722, Antonio Gabriel de Torre Zavallos, relaxed for Judaism, was converted after the reading of his sentence. At the brasero, with copious tears and signs of repentance, he loudly proclaimed his Christian faith, praising the mercy of God and of the Holy Office and demanding to be burnt alive, in order to offer to God satisfaction for his sins, but this was refused; he was duly garrotted and "he gave his soul to God to the great consolation and edification of all the people." (43)
[195] An unpleasant
doubt obtrudes itself whether in "all cases the preliminary strangling
really relieved the sufferer from death by fire. Spanish executioners are
said to possess such dexterity in manipulating the garrote that they can
prolong the death-agony for hours when they are not bribed to give a speedy
release. In the universal venality of the period, it is possible that those,
whose friends failed to earn the good-will of the minister of justice,
were by no means insensible when the torch was applied to the faggots.
There may have been more than mere lack of skill in the incident at the
Cuenca auto of June 29,1654, which gave Bartolomé López the
opportunity of displaying his nerve. He had delayed professing conversion
until after the reading of his sentence and was consequently relaxed for
strangulation and burning. At the brasero, seeing that the executioner,
Pedro de Alcalá, bungled in garrotting Violante Rodríguez
and Ana de Guevara, he said to him "Pedro, if you do not treat me better,
you had better burn me alive." (44)
According to inquisitorial jurisprudence, there were several causes which entailed relaxation. The first of these was pertinacity--the obstinacy which led the heretic or apostate to avow and defend his errors, and to resist the well-meant effort of his judges to save his soul by inducing conversion. This heroic temper, which preferred martyrdom to denying what it believed to be the truth, was not common, but the annals of the Inquisition are illustrated by cases of unknown and forgotten victims, whose persistence through torment and persuasion, to the fiery death at the brasero, ennobles human nature, whether they were Moslems or Jews, Protestants or Mystics. It was a blind perversity that refused to see in this aught but hardness of Heart, inspired by Satan, and with empty rhetoric sought to draw a distinction between this and true martyrdom. Thus Simancas tells us that we should not be surprised to see heretics sometimes carried rejoicing to the stake. This is not true alacrity but madness, not patience but fierceness, and there is wide difference between barbarous fierceness and the modest constancy of the true martyr. Then there are those who, by certain arts, so benumb the body that it does not feel torments; there are also those who deprive the mind of sense, so that they meet death without fear, but that gentleness and placidity, that sublime humility and humble sublimity, we see only in the martyrs of Christ. (45)
[196] Yet, to do it justice, the Inquisition--at least after the first fury of its career was spent--earnestly sought the salvation of its victims, rather than to send them through temporal to eternal flame. We have seen that, in the case of those sentenced to relaxation, it advanced the notification of their fate, in order to enlarge the opportunity of the ghostly counsellors, whom it deputed to labor with them. Even before this extension, the Instructions of 1561 order inquisitors to do everything in their power to induce conversion, so that, if nothing else can be accomplished, the culprit may not die without the knowledge of God. (46) During the fortnight previous to an auto de fe those sentenced to relaxation were to be summoned to repeated audiences, when they were to be earnestly entreated to confess and recant, with promises of mercy, and learned theologians were required to be present to aid in the exhortations. (47) Even prior to the consulta de fe, pious inquisitors spared no effort to convince the erring of their errors. One relates how, in 1630, he had to deal with two Protestants, an Englishman and a Frenchman, who were pertinacious, saying that they had been brought up in their pretended reformed religion and knew nothing of Catholicism. Their simplicity went so far as to ask to be allowed to return to their native lands, or that persons learned in both religions should dispute before them, so that they might learn which was best for, as they were illiterate, they could not themselves dispute. The inquisitor set theologians to work upon them when, after considerable labor, they were converted; devotional books were given to them, which they eagerly devoured; the trial was delayed and, by the time the witnesses were ratified, the heretics were good Catholics. (48)
When three days' notice of impending relaxation was given, the time was utilized to the utmost. There was a pertinacious heretic to suffer in the Seville auto of December 10, 1719--a Moorish slave, baptized under the name of Francisco Andrés, who had renegaded and was persistent when his sentence was made known to him. Then twelve calificadores--two each from the Orders of Mercenarians, Minims, Franciscans, Dominicans, Augustinians and Jesuits--with eight familiars were assigned to his conversion. They were successful and he escaped with prison [197] and sanbenito for four years. (49) A remarkable case, at the Seville auto of July 5, 1722, shows however that, after delivery to the secular arm, the Inquisition considered that its functions were ended. There were four pertinacious Jews, two men and two women. Nine calificadores and eleven familiars labored with them in vain during the three days; they persisted through the reading of the sentences and were delivered to the secular magistrate. The two men and the elder of the women succumbed at the last, professed conversion and were garrotted and burnt. The younger woman, known as La Almiranta, at the brasero begged audience of the deputy assistente, told him that she desired to confess and give evidence as to other Jews and was remanded to the royal prison. Word was sent to the tribunal, which replied that it had nothing further to do with her. She was kept until the 7th and, when taken to the brasero was more pertinacious, than ever, saying that, as her companions had died as Catholics, they were accursed and that she had pretended to yield in order that her ashes, which were holy, should not be mingled with theirs. Of course she had the martyrdom which she craved. (50)
In exceptional cases pertinacity seems to have been allowed the privilege of preliminary strangulation. At a Valladolid auto of May 29, 1691, there were five pertinacious women condemned for Judaism, described as being from 24 to 27 years of age and very handsome, who excited general compassion. On being delivered to the magistrate two of them weakened, while three persisted in their faith, yet they were all garrotted before burning. (51)
A large portion of the cases
of pertinacity arose from the death in prison, during trial, of those who
did not ask on the death-bed for the consolations of religion, and who
had no opportunity of obtaining mercy by conversion. Thus in the Granada
auto of May 13, 1725, out of seven burnings in effigy, six were of those
who had died in prison. (52)
Suicide in prison was treated harshly, for Simancas tells us that the suicide
is to be condemned as fully convicted and impenitent, even though he had
previously confessed and professed repentance, to which Rojas adds that,
[198] although his effigy is to be burnt, his heirs are allowed
to prove insanity, difficult as that is. (53)
The negativo--the
man who denied his heresy in the face of what was deemed competent testimony
of guilt--was classed as an impenitent heretic and doomed to relaxation.
This was the inevitable logic of the Inquisition, although it led to the
most tragic of all situations--that of being tortured to death in honor
of the faith which the sufferer held. It was impossible, under the inquisitorial
system, to allow a possible heretic to escape merely because he unflinchingly
affirmed his orthodoxy, and yet when a man asserted it up to the brasero,
knowing that it would not avail him, it was impossible not to recognize
in him a true believer who would not save his body at the expense of falsely
confessing apostasy. Three such there were in the Granada auto of May 27,
1593, burnt as negativos and consequently burnt alive.
(54) Such men were
true martyrs, especially as rigid constructionists denied them the consolations
of religion in their last moments. At the Toledo auto of October 28, 1723,
Diego de Quiros was in this position, and a Jesuit who heard him in sacramental
confession was severely censured for doing so while he persisted in maintaining
his innocence. Again the question came up in the Toledo auto of July 1,
1725. Fernando de Castro was relaxed as an impenitent negativo and was
sentenced to burning alive. On account of the heat the execution was postponed
until the afternoon, and the convict was meanwhile placed in the public
prison. With cries he earnestly begged for sacramental confession, but
the frailes in attendance declined unless he should admit his heresy, which
he steadfastly refused to do, asserting the witnesses to be perjured, and
the judgement unjust. At this juncture there came a Jesuit father who yielded
to the despairing appeals of the poor wretch and heard him in confession,
whereupon the judge took the responsibility of modifying the sentence to
preliminary strangulation. The frailes loudly rebuked the Jesuit, and were
joined by the public, disappointed of the promised spectacle of the burning
alive of a fellow-creature. Considerable debate followed and a priest named
Candido Muñoz wrote an argument justifying the Jesuit, but his labor
was superfluous for, while his [199] tract was in the press, the
Suprema issued a carta acordada, October llth, ordering that in such cases
the priest should hear the confession and confer absolution or not, according
to the disposition manifested, but in future no one but the appointed theologians
were to attend the convict to the last. (55)
Thus it was left to this
late date to admit the dying victim to the sacraments, probably, we may
assume, on the doctrine that the blood of martyrdom is the most efficacious
of all sacraments. Such cases could not have been common, but those must
have been numerous in which the unjustly convicted negativo found his resolution
give way at the approach to the brasero and, in order to escape burning
alive and to obtain the sacraments, falsely confessed to having entertained
heresies which his soul abhorred.
There was also the diminuto,
who made a confession that did not "satisfy the evidence" and thus was
held to be imperfect. A confession that was not full was regarded as fictitious;
it inferred impenitence and therefore entailed relaxation. We have seen
how, under the early Edicts of Grace, any omissions in the hurried confessions
was construed as rendering them imperfect and subjecting the penitent to
prosecution and relaxation. Especially was imperfect denunciation of accomplices
regarded as diminucio; if the accused confessed all that was in
evidence against himself and omitted the acts of accomplices who were proved
to have been with him, or if he named only those who were absent or dead
or already convicted, it was proof of malice and impenitence; he was not
truly converted and was subject to relaxation after torture in caput
alienum. (56)
The denial of heretical intention in acts confessed, which was frequent
in those against whom Judaic or Moorish customs were proved, constituted
the accused a negativo in the substantial part of heresy, which is intention,
or a diminuto, implying, according to the common opinion, impenitence and
pertinacity involving relaxation. (57)
Thus Hernando de Palma, a Morisco, accused of teaching and conducting Moorish
ceremonies, denied and overcame severe torture, whereupon the consulta
de fe [200] voted for appearance in an auto and abjuration de
levi. Ignorant of this, he asked for an audience and confessed that,
for seven or eight years, he had practised some Moorish rites, without
regarding them as contrary to the faith. In this he persisted and was burnt
in the Toledo auto of 1606. Revocation of confession was similarly impenitence
and pertinacity, as in the case of Manuel Thomas, who confessed to Judaism
after the accusation was presented, then revoked the confession and persisted
in the revocation, for which he was relaxed in the Toledo auto of 1585.
(58)
When the Reformation plunged
the Church into a struggle for life, of which no man might foretell the
result, there arose a demand for sharper measures of repression. The dogmatizer
or heresiarch -- he who not only condemned his own soul to perdition but
sought to carry others along with him, by disseminating his pestiferous
doctrines -- might recant and make his peace with God, but not with God's
earthly ministers. Simancas well expresses the hatred intensified by fear,
which was aroused by the teachers of the new doctrines. The heresiarch,
he says, the master of errors, is to be relaxed and, under no circumstances,
is to be received back into the Church. He is unworthy of pardon who has
led others into error, like a murderer who has slain many. He is a crafty
homicide, who daily sheds the blood of souls. He who teaches heresy slays,
not with the sword, but with the poison of his doctrine; he kills not the
body but the soul, not with temporary but with eternal death, wherefore
he is worthy of the severest punishment. And, of all others, the teachers
of the Lutheran heresies are in no way to be pardoned.
(59)
Yet the Church had always
professed to welcome to reconciliation its erring children, who renounced
their errors and begged for mercy, provided they were not relapsed, and
the Inquisition from its inception had acted on this principle. On this
were based the powers deputized to it and when, in 1558 the discovery of
the Protestants of Valladolid was so exploited as to throw Spain into agitation,
and it was desired to make an example of Doctor Agustín Cazalla,
some further grant of faculties was felt to be necessary. Paul IV was nothing
loath. In 1555 he had apparently desired to show that Rome was not to be
outdone by [201] Geneva in persecuting rigor and that, if Calvin
in 1553 had burnt Servet for denying the Trinity, he could be equally zealous
for the faith. By the bull Cum quorundam he decreed that all who
denied the Trinity, the divinity of Christ, his conception through the
Holy Ghost, his death for human salvation, or the perpetual virginity of
the Virgin, and who did not confess to inquisitors and abjure their errors
within three months, and all who in future should maintain those heresies,
should be treated as though they were relapsed and as such should be forthwith
relaxed to the secular arm. (60)
Having thus extended the catalogue of unpardonable heresies, he was quite
ready to grant the additional powers sought by the Spanish Inquisition.
By a brief of January 4, 1559, he bestowed on the inquisitor-general and
Suprema a faculty to relax all heresiarchs and other heretics, even though
they were not relapsed, and though they desired to abjure their heresies,
when it was believed with verisimilitude that the abjuration was not sincere
but was only to escape punishment. (61)
This was, in fact, no more than the power assumed in the Instructions of
1484, but under it, as we shall see hereafter, were relaxed some conspicuous
heretics, such as Doctor Cazalla at Valladolid and Juan Ponce de Leon at
Seville, although they had renounced their errors and sought reconciliation
in advance of the autos de fe.
It thus became a principle
in inquisitorial jurisprudence that the inquisitor-general and Suprema
could relax dogmatizers, irrespective of pertinacity or relapse.
(62) This was not
confined to Protestants. About 1600, the Suprema had to decide the case
of a Morisco alfaqui, accused of being a teacher of Islam, who confessed
to teaching his wife but denied other proselytism. A consulta presented
to the Suprema argued that, although by law a [202] dogmatizer must
be relaxed yet, if he spontaneously denounces himself and is sincerely
repentant, he can be reconciled, for his conversion and humility serve
as an example to those whom he has misled. In the present case, however,
the alfaqui has only confessed partially and to save himself, wherefore
he should be relaxed--and to this the Suprema assented.
(63) Yet this severity
had exceptions. In the Seville auto of July 5, 1722, Pedro de Alpuin, reconciled
with perpetual prison and sanbenito, had five years of galleys added for
being a teacher of the Law of Moses, and even these were remitted in consideration
of his infirmities. (64)
Relapse was the most fruitful
source of relaxation, at least after the first rage of the Inquisition
had exhausted itself. It has been already stated that, after reconciliation
or abjuration de vehementi, any backsliding was held to indicate
that the conversion had been fictitious, that the culprit was impenitent
and pertinacious, and that he was to be abandoned to the secular arm without
hope of mercy. This was an unvarying principle of the canon law. The Suprema,
in a case brought before it, in 1536, declared that it could not dispense
for that which the law enjoined, and therefore it was powerless to relieve
the relapsed from his punishment. (65)
Simancas is equally emphatic--the relapsed is to be condemned without hope
of pardon. (66) In the first audience of
the accused, the inquisitor was required to tell him that, if he would
discharge his conscience, his case would be despatched with speed and mercy
but, if the charge was relapse, the word mercy was to be omitted because
no mercy could be shown. (67)
Even prompt and full confession was of no avail; the law was absolute and
implacable. (68)
This severity was greatly
enhanced by the elastic definition given to relapse. The reconciled penitent
had to walk warily, for any unconscious return to ancestral habits was
sufficient to convict him. About 1500 the Suprema decreed that penitents
communicating with unreconciled heretics were to be held as relapsed, and
all evidence coming before the tribunals was to [203] be scrutinized
for proof that would justify prosecution--evidently of those who might
chance to be incidentally named in it--and then, if this proved insufficient
for conviction, any admission of the accused, not contained in his former
confession, could be used to condemn him as a fictitious convert.
(69) How this was
construed in practice, we learn from Simancas, who says that he is considered
a relapsed who, after abjuring heresy, talks with heretics, or visits them,
or makes presents to them, or favors and communicates with them, so that
he cannot but be held to do it as a consequence of his heresy.
(70) The man who had been reconciled thus lived in unceasing
danger that, at any moment, some acquaintance might be tried and convicted
and his name might occur in the evidence as being on good terms with him.
Safety, indeed, could only be secured by resolutely isolating himself from
his family and his race.
It was the same with those
who had only abjured for vehement suspicion. The Instructions of 1561 declare
absolutely that, if they confess or are convicted, they must be relaxed,
for the inquisitors have no power to reconcile them, although they are
not truly but only fictitiously relapsed. (71)
Still, there were some exceptions.
Self-denunciation for relapse, it was admitted, required relaxation under
the law, but it was argued that such second confession was not really a
conviction, for it showed that the penitent was not incorrigible and should
be admitted to mercy. (72)
Such cases must have been exceedingly rare, but we have seen one in that
of Ursule de la Croix (Vol. II, p. 572) where, it will be remembered, a
third self-denunciation was visited with the stake.
Moriscos enjoyed a special
exception. The wholesale enforced conversion of the Moors of Castile in
1502 and of the kingdoms of Aragon in 1525, filled the land with nominal
Christians, whose baptism served no other purpose than subjecting them
to the Inquisition. They were largely vassals of nobles, to whom their
services were indispensable, and to subject whole populations to the penalties
of a relapse which was inevitable was a prospect [204] that might
well stagger the statesman if not the churchman. In the unsparing rigor
of the canon law, escape from this was to be sought only in Rome and, in
March, 1510, Ferdinand asked for a bull enabling the converts to avoid
the penalties of relapse. (73)
The request was doubtless granted and was followed by numerous papal briefs,
issued during the remainder of the century, which bore the shape of empowering
the inquisitors-general to appoint confessors with power to absolve Morisco
penitents with secret absolution and penance, even if they had relapsed
repeatedly, or to proclaim terms of grace, during which absolution could
be had irrespective of relapse, together with other devices, the futility
of all which we shall see hereafter. (74)
This was but one of the many
attempts to solve the increasing difficulties of the Morisco problem, and
its only relation to the general policy of the Inquisition is to prove
how easily, when sufficient motive existed, the unsparing cruelty of the
canon law could be set aside. Under that law, we cari readily conceive
how large a portion of the executions were due to relapse. Details are
lacking as to the earlier period of activity, but the later records are
sufficient to indicate how efficient an agent it was in procuring victims.
In the great Madrid auto of 1680, there were eighteen Judaizers relaxed
in person, of whom ten were for relapse, six for pertinacity and two for
denial or imperfect confession. (75)
In the terrible Mallorquín autos of 1691, all the relaxed--thirty-eight
in person and seven in effigy--were condemned for relapse, having been
reconciled in 1679, and of these only three were burnt alive as pertinacious.
(76) At the Granada
auto of January 31, 1723, of the eleven Judaizers relaxed, all were relapsed;
at that of Cordova, April 23, 1724, seven out of eight were relapsed, and
the same was the case with all of the six relaxed in the Cuenca auto of
July 23, 1724. (77) In these last three
autos only one person was pertinacious; the rest all professed contrition
and conversion and would have escaped with reconciliation instead of strangulation
had it not been for the rigor in the treatment of relapse.
A case already alluded to
exemplifies this and is worth relating [205] in some detail, if
only for its psychological interest. Fray Joseph Díaz Pimiento was
born in Cuba, of Old Christian parents, in 1687. He was bred to the Church
and his life was an example of the licence pervading the colonies. He drifted
around the shores of the Caribbean, involved in all kinds of disreputable
adventures. In Mexico, he forged a certificate of baptism in order to obtain
ordination under age. In the Dutch colony of Curagoa, he professed conversion
to Judaism and was circumcised, in the hope of getting a few hundred dollars
from the Jews. After incredible hardships he fell into the hands of the
Inquisition of Cartagena de las Indias, where he recanted, was reconciled
and was sent to Spain for reclusion in a convent. While confined in the
episcopal prison he broke gaol, but was captured at Xeres, and was put
in a convent, heavily fettered, where he endeavored to get assistance from
some New Christians who were under suspicion, but in this he failed, although
to excite their compassion, he wrote to the commissioner of the Inquisition
that he was a Jew. Then again he escaped and fled to Lisbon, where he worked
for a Dutch ship-master, who promised to carry him to Holland, whence he
could sail for Jamaica. Then a sudden impulse took possession of him, which
carried him to Seville, where he presented himself to the Inquisition.
At first he professed to be a Christian but, after a few days, he told
the alcaide that he was a Jew, and in this he persisted, stubbornly refusing
to make defence. Necessarily, as a relapsed, he was condemned to relaxation
in the auto of July 25, 1720, and, during the three days prior to the auto,
all the learning and piety of Seville were enlisted in his conversion,
while prayers for his soul were put up in all the churches. Then came another
revulsion and, after two days, he announced that the grace of God had touched
him, and that he was a Christian. But for his relapse, this would have
saved him; as it was, it only obtained for him preliminary strangulation
and this he sought to reject for, at the stake, he begged to be burnt alive
in order to prove that his conversion was the result of conviction and
not of fear. This could not be permitted, and the deputy assistente sentenced
him to be garrotted and burnt, and his ashes scattered as usual. The pile
was fired at 5 P.M; it took until day-break to reduce the body to ashes,
and it was observed that the customary stench was absent. Then the Hermandad
de la Caridad asked to have the ashes to give them Christian burial, as
he had died a Christian, but the assistente refused and ordered them to
be [206] scattered over the fields, in obedience to the royal pragmáticas
and apostolical constitutions--all of which, we are told, was done, to
the great honor of the holy Catholic faith. (78)
Yet, notwithstanding the
canons that prohibited mercy to the relapsed and withheld, even from the
inquisitor-general, the power to pardon, cases, as has been stated above
(p. 148), are not infrequent, in which the relapsed were admitted to a
second reconciliation. Even as early as 1486, we hear of Micer Gonzalo
de Santa María, of the great converso family of Burgos, who was
thrice penanced by the Inquisition and who finally died, not at the stake,
but in gaol, under a sentence of perpetual prison.
(79) Some scattering
cases of penances subsequent to reconciliation occur at Barcelona between
1491 and 1502, mingled with others in which the full penalty of relaxation
was inflicted, though no reasons are alleged for the distinction.
(80) In 1511, at Cuenca,
Leonor and Juana Rodríguez who had been reconciled in time of Grace,
were reconciled again for fresh delinquencies. (81)
In the later period, instances of the same benignity occur more frequently,
although accompanied with punishment severe enough to show that the trivial
evidence required to prove persistency was far exceeded. Thus, in the Toledo
auto of December 27, 1654, Gaspar de los Reyes was sentenced, as a relapsed
observer of the Law of Moses, to abjure de vehementi, to six years
of galleys and a fine of a thousand ducats, while his wife, Isabel Rodríguez,
and his mother, María López, both relapsed, had the same
sentence, save that exile replaced the galleys and the fine was six hundred
ducats each. A more unusual case was that of Manuel Rodríguez Moreira,
who was relaxed for relapse in the Toledo auto of September 8, 1704, after
rejecting an offer of mercy. There is even an instance, December 8, 1681,
of a sentence of reconciliation, citra paenam relapsi--without the
punishment of relapse--but this is explained by the tender age of the culprit,
Diego de Castro, who was but ten years old. (82)
Remembering the prudent intimation
given to inquisitors that sometimes fines were more productive than confiscation,
the heavy [207] mulcts inflicted on the relapsed who were admitted
to mercy, suggest that possibly there may have been financial reasons,
in special cases, for benignity. We have seen the number of executions
for relapse in the Mallorquín autos of 1691. Besides these there
were twenty-two cases of those who had been reconciled in 1679 who were
not relaxed but penanced in various ways, including fines ranging from
one to five hundred libras, and aggregating in all sixty-five hundred libras.
(83) It is difficult
not to recognize in this a speculative exercise of rigor or mercy.
As the eighteenth century
wore on, it would seem that the canonical penalty of relaxation came to
be enforced only on the relapsed who were pertinacious, or refused to confess
and beg for mercy. In the Valladolid auto of June 13, 1745, there are three
illustrative cases. Luis de la Vega, who had been reconciled in 1701, was
relaxed as an impenitent relapsed, who persisted in denying his guilt.
Miguel Gutiérrez, reconciled in 1699, and Franciso García,
reconciled in 1706, were admitted again to reconciliation, with irremissible
prison and sanbenito, ten years of galleys and two hundred lashes--a somewhat
doubtful mercy but, if the sentence was justifiable, the offence unquestionably
under the canons, called for relaxation. (84)
It was only in formal heresy
that relapse entailed relaxation for, as we have seen, the stake was reserved
for heretics. Where heresy was merely inferential, as in bigamy, blasphemy,
solicitation in the confessional, reading prohibited books, and other offences
reserved to the Inquisition, relapse was treated only as an aggravation,
to be punished with such additional severity as the circumstances might
indicate. Even relapse in the crime of administering the sacraments without
being in orders, which the Roman Inquisition treated as the equivalent
of heresy, was visited in Spain only with the ordinary penalties in somewhat
rigorous measure. Thus Juan Vicente Esquirel y Morales--a man with a number
of aliases who had been a foot-soldier--was penanced for this offence at
Granada in 1727. He persisted in his evil courses and, in the Córdova
auto of March 4, 1731, he was forbidden to wear clerical garments and was
sentenced to two hundred lashes and ten years of galleys.
(85)
[208] The latter half
of the eighteenth century witnessed the gradual disappearance of relaxation.
Llorente tells us that during the reign of Carlos III (1759-1788) he has
found accounts of only ten autos de fe, in which there were but four cases.
(86) Probably the
latest instance was that of Isabel Maria Herraiz, an impostor known as
the Beata de Cuenca, who died in prison without confession and,
being thus unable to recant and beg mercy, was burnt in effigy in 1802.
(87) When it came to relaxing a living fellow-creature, however,
the Inquisition by this time was honestly desirous of escaping the necessity.
Padre Miguel Sorano, cura of Esco in Aragon, was an unmanageable heretic,
who discarded tradition and the fathers and held that Scripture was the
sole authority; purgatory and limbo were human inventions; fees for masses
were simony; tithes were a fraud; the pope was not the vicar of Christ
and his decretals were mere devices to raise money. All this he embodied
in a book which he audaciously submitted to his bishop and other theologians.
Tried by the Saragossa tribunal, he was pertinaciously impenitent, impervious
alike to argument and threats, and there was no alternative but to vote
for relaxation. Then the Suprema ordered fresh testimony to be sought and
renewed efforts at conversion, but all proved fruitless and again relaxation
was voted. As a last resource the Suprema ordered an investigation into
his sanity. All the population of the vicinage was examined, and one doctor
was found to say that some years before he had been dangerously sick, which
might have affected his brain, and since then he had talked freely of these
heretical doctrines. Taking advantage of this, renewed efforts were made
to convert him without coming to a vote. While this was in progress he
was attacked with mortal illness and, at the end of twenty days, he was
told that the end was near. He merely said that he was in the hands of
God; he refused all the consolations of religion and passed away unrepentant
in 1805, to be buried in unconsecrated ground, when the Suprema ordered
the case to be closed, without proceeding to conviction and burning in
effigy. (88) We shall see that twenty years
later the episcopal Inquisition was less merciful.
1. C.
Gerundens. ann. 1197 (Aguirre, V, 102-3).--Constitt. Sicular. Lib I, Tit.
1.--Huillard-Bréholles, Hist. Diplom. Frid. II, Tom. V, p. 201.--Fuero
Real de Espafia, Lib. iv, Tit. 1, ley 1.
Gloss.
Hostiensis in Cap. ad abolendam n. 14 (Eymerici Director. P. II).--
Cap. 27, Tit. 40, Extra, Lib. v.
"A cleric shall not sentence
to death or mutilation, under pain of deprivation of honor and benefice."--Cap.
5, Tit. 50, Extra, Lib. iii (Alex. III).
" No cleric shall utter or
dictate a sentence of blood, or exercise capital jurisdiction, or be present
where it is exercised. Nor shall a cleric write or dictate letters concerning
judgements of blood. Nor shall a subdeacon, deacon or priest practise surgery
involving cutting or cautery."--Ibid. Cap. 9 (Concil. Lateran. IV).
The German prince-bishops,
who had haute et basse justice, did not invest their judges with
power to pronounce sentences of blood, but procured commissions for them
from the emperor, as otherwise they were deemed blood-guilty and were deprived
of their office. The secular princes were under no such obligation.-- Schwabenspiegel
Cap. cxi (Senckenberg, Corp. Jur. German, II, 140).--See also Schwäbisches
Lehenrecht cap. xvii (Ibid. II, 17, 18).
A cleric uttering a sentence
of blood, causing mutilation or death, becomes irregular and, on this account,
although he does not ipso jure forfeit his benefices, yet he is
to be deprived of them by the Ordinary or forced to resign them.--Thesaurus,
De Poenis ecclesiasticis, s. v. Judicis laici munus, cap. 2.-- Cf.
Ferraris, Prompta Bibliotheca, s. v. Irregularitas, Art. I, n. 11;
Art. II. Although the Spanish Inquisition preserved these decrees in its collections
it does not seem to have acted on them. In 1568 there were two cases in
Valencia of heretics who, among other errors, denied the virginity of the
Virgin. One of these was a Gascon, Bernat de Vidosa, who was reconciled
with only reclusion in a monastery; the other was Pedro Sobrino, a fisherman
of Naples, more severely treated with ten years of galleys.--Archivo hist.
nacional, Inq. de Valencia, Leg. 31.
The attitude of the Church
is defined in these canons:
Formulary
of the Papal Penitentiary, Rubr. XLII (Philadelphia, 1892).-- Archivo hist.
nacional, Inquisicion de Toledo, Leg. 110, n. 31, fol. 4.--A commentator
of the seventeenth century argues that clerics who seek to gain this indulgence
become irregular if the wood they bring actually aids in burning the heretic.--Jac.
a Graffiis Decis. aureae Casuum Conscientiae P II, Lib. II, Cap. 19, n.
3.
Bullar.
Roman. I, 611.
Astesani
Summae de Casibus Conscientiae, Lib. i, Tit. lviii. Art. 4.
Cap.
18, Tit. ii in Sexto, Lib. v.
Relacion
de la Inquisicion Toledana (Boletín, XI, 300).
Boletín,
V, 404.
Archivo
hist. nacional, Inquisicion de Toledo, Leg. 132, n. 31.
Innocent,
PP. VIII, Bull. Dilectus filius, 30 Sept. 1486 (Pegnae Append, ad
Eymerici Direct, p. 84).
Mich.
Alberti Repertorium, s. vv. Communicare § Sed an quando;
Executio § Qualiter.
Torreblanca,
Epitome Delictorum, sive de Magia, Lib. Ill, cap. xxix, n. 15-17. "Et eo
jure utimur quia potestates saeculares in tali casu sunt meri executores."
See also Vol. I, p. 603, in the proclamation of the civil power, on the
arrival of an inquisitor, the clauses requiring secular officials to inflict
"las debidas penas cada y quando por el dicho venerable inquisidor sera
declarado."
Fontana,
Documenta Vaticana, pp. 137, 145 (Rome, 1892). The Roman Inquisition made
no pretence that its judgements were not final; it assumed that it sentenced
to mutilation and death, and in this it claimed that those concerned were
immune from the canonical irregularity.--Collectio Decretor S. Congr. Sti
Officii, p. 219 (MS. penes me).
Pegnae
Comment. 48 in Eymerici Director. P. II. In view of the unvarying practice
of the Church for nearly six hundred years, it requires hardihood for a
writer, in 1902, to argue that the civil magistrate and not the Inquisition
was responsible for the burning of heretics.--Razón y Fe, T. IV,
p. 358 (Madrid, 1902)
Pablo
García, Orden de Processar, fol. 74.
MSS.
of Royal Library of Copenhagen, 213 fol., p. 126.--" En ellos las primeras
causas que deben leerse son las de relaxados, para que incontinenti puedan
entregarse al juez real sin permitirle dilación con pretexto alguno
en la execuzion de la sentencia; pues siempre queda al tribunal juri dicción
segura para obligarle por censuras y otras penas & su puntual cumplimiento."
Arn.
Albertini de Agnoscendis Assertionibus Q. xxv, n. 44-5.
Archivo
de Alcalá, Hacienda, Leg. 473.--Olmo, Relacion del Auto, p. 287.
Archivo
de Simancas, Inq., Lib. 926, fol. 257.
Ibidem,
Lib. 42, fol. 291, 293, 308.
Pablo
García, Orden de Processar, fol. 32, 54, 59, 68.
Bularlo
de la Orden de Santiago, Lib. I de Copias, fol. 139.--Archivo de Simancas,
Inq., Lib. 3, fol. 323, 456; Lib. 927, fol. 349.
Ibidem,
Lib. 922, fol. 682.
Bularlo
de la Orden de Santiago, Lib. IV, fol. 169.
Bullar.
Roman. II, 298.--Bibl. nacional, MSS., D, 118, p. 82.--Archivo de Alcalá,
Hacienda, Leg. 1049.--Archivo de Simancas, Inq. Lib. 939, fol. 63.
Bulario
de la Orden de Santiago, Libro III, fol. 156.
Archivo
de Simancas, Inq., Lib. 922, foí. 685.--Bulario de la Orden de Santiago,
Lib. IV, fol. 169-70.
Archivo
de Simancas, Inq., Lib. 42, fol. 246,255-7; Lib. 17, fol. 70; Lib 25 fol.
156.
Eymerici
Director. P. II, Q. xi.
Instrucciones
de 1484, § 12 (Arguello, fol. 5).
Instrucciones
de 1561, § 44 (Arguello, fol. 33).
Royal
Library of Berlin, Qt, 9548.
Archivo
de Simancas, Inq., Leg. 552, fol. 3.
MSS.
del Archivo municipal de Sevilla, Sección especial, Siglo XVIII,
Letra A., T. 4, n. 53.
See
Vol. I, Appendix, p. 593.
Archivo
hist. nacional, Inq. de Toledo, Leg. 262.
Simancas
de Cath. Instt. Tit XLVII, n. 73.--Archivo de Simancas, Patronato Real,
Inq., Leg. único, fol. 13.--Bibl. nacional, MSS., V, 377, Cap. iii,
§ 5.
Pegnae
Commentt. 36, 46, in Eymerici Direct. P. II.
Carbonell
op. cit. (Col. de Doc. de la C. de Aragon, XXVIII, 13, 15, 29).
Bibl.
nacional, MSS., D, 153, fol. 95. This was the rule also in the Roman Inquisition.
Del Bene tells us that strictly according to law the convicted heretic
is to be burnt alive, but that "among Christians this is not followed,
unless he is pertinacious, in which case there is no reason why he should
not be burnt alive."--De Officio S. Inquisitionis, II, 113 (Romae, 1666).
D.
N. Herqueta (Boletin, XLV, 424-33).
Archivo
hist. nacional, Inq. de Valencia, Leg. 10 n. 2, fol 136.
Royal
Library of Berlin, Qt. 9548.
Bibl.
nacional, MSS., S, 294, fol. 375.
Simancas
Enchirid. Tit. xxxi, n. 3.
Instrucciones
de 1561, § 43 (Arguello, fol. 33).
Archivo
de Simancas, Inq., Lib. 979, fol. 40; Lib. 876, fol. 105b.
Bibl.
nacional, MSS., V, 377, Cap. 10.
Bibl.
nacional, MSS., R, 128.
Ibidem,
R, 118, p. 35.
Ibidem,
Pp, 67-10, fol. 101.
Royal
Library of Berlin, Qt. 9548.
Simancas Enchirid. Tit. LXII, n.
10.--Rojas de Haeret. P II, n. 183-4.
64. Royal Library of Berlin, Qt. 9548. Archivo de Simancas, Inq., Lib. 939, fol. 121.
66. Simancae de Cath. Instt. Tit. LVII, n. 3. Pablo García, Orden de Processar, fol. 11.
68. Miguel Calvo (Archivo de Alcalá, Hacienda, Leg. 544 2, Lib. 4).
69. Archivo de Simancas, Inq., Lib. 933.
70. Simancae loc. cit., n. 4. Instrucciones de 1561, § 41 (Arguello, fol. 33).
72. Elucidationes S. Officii, § 23 (Archivo de Alcalá, Hacienda, Leg. 544 2, Lib. 4).-- Alphonsi de Castro de justa Haeret. Punitione Lib. II, cap. 2.--Bibl. nacional, MSS. V, 377, Cap. ix, § 1.
73. Archivo de Simancas, Inq., Lib. 3, fol. 72.
74. Ibidem, Lib. 926, fol. 49, 53, 57, 63, 67.--Bulario de la Orden de Santiago, Lib. II, fol. 79; Lib. III, fol. 88, 109.--Archivo de Alcalá, Hacienda, Leg. 1049.
75. Olmo, Relacion del Auto, pp. 252-62.
76. Garau, La Fee triunfante, pp. 65-112.
77. Royal Library of Berlin, Qt. 9548. MSS. del Archivo Municipal de Sevilla, Sección especial, Siglo XVIII, Letra A, Tom. 4, n. 54.--Bibl. nacional, MSS., R, 128.
79. Libro Verde de Aragon (Revista de España, CVI, 254).
80. Carbonell, op. cit. (Col. de Doc. de la C. de Aragon, XXVIII, 62, 141, 152).
81. Proceso contra Fray Luis de Leon (Col. de Doc. inéd, X, 158-61).
82. Archivo hist. nacional, Inq. de Toledo, Leg. 1.
83. Garau, La Fee Triunfante, pp. 39-42, 114-22.
84. Royal Library of Berlin, Qt., 9548.
85. Elucidationcs S. Officii, § 19 (Archivo de Alcalá, Hacienda, Leg. 544 2 Lib. 4). --Matute y Luquin, Autos de Fe de Córdova, p. 270.
86. Llorente, Hist. crít., Cap. XLII, Art. i. n. 14.
87. Ibidem, Cap. XLIII, Art. iv, n. 1. Ibidem, Cap. XLIII, Art. iv, n. 4.