[75] When lawmen caught crooks in Seville, they usually took them to the Royal Prison, an institution colorfully described in Spanish literature of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Picaresque novelists emphasized its bizarre and ribald aspects. ⁽¹⁾ Miguel Cervantes, who was imprisoned there twice at the end of the sixteenth century, described it poignantly as a place "where every discomfort has its seat and every dismal sound its habitation." ⁽²⁾ In contrast, a chronicler of late sixteenth-century Seville, Alonso Morgado, described the Royal Prison as evidence of the grandeur and power of the city oligarchy, a symbol of authority to be admired and preserved. ⁽³⁾ Cristóbal de Chaves, a lawyer for the royal court in late sixteenth-century Seville, reported its extraordinary characteristics - the exotic, the horrible, and the unbelievable. ⁽⁴⁾

The most complete description was written by Pedro de Leon, a Jesuit who worked with the poor people of Seville and acted as prison chaplain during most of the years between 1578 and 1616. ⁽⁵⁾ His Compendio contains a detailed account of Sevillian [76] society, the Royal Prison in Seville, and a list of the condemned criminals whom he attended just before their executions. Where Chaves reported the scandalous behavior in the prisons with ill-concealed delight, Pedro de León recorded prison life with the resignation of a man wise to human weakness.

The composite picture of the Royal Prison which emerged from these different sources shows much more than a large building for confining criminals. It reveals, first, that the prison was a flourishing business, profiting both inmates and authorities. Second, it presents a picture of a great central meeting place in which the underworld mingled with other groups of the city and nurtured its own culture. Finally, the prison emerges as an institution that supported but also resisted political authority.

THE PRISON AS A BUSINESS

The three doors of Seville's Royal Prison were popularly called the golden door, the copper door, and the silver door-a sardonic reference to the power of money. A new prisoner first entered the golden door, where an assistant warden recorded his name, his offense, the names of the lawmen involved in his case, and, especially, whether he had any money. If he had little or was not well known, he was sent upstairs to the copper door, to enter the section which took the left-overs from the golden door. If he was to be held in maximum security, he was sent to the silver door, which led to the three strongest cells of the prison. Only those able to raise a considerable amount of silver would be able to escape from these cells. ⁽⁶⁾

The place of money in the prison was also recognized by members of the city council, who believed that the prison should be as self-supporting as possible. They did not look upon it as an institution to rehabilitate citizens or confine them permanently in order to protect society. They used it to hold criminals while [77] they were being examined, processed by the machinery of justice, and sentenced to punishments far more effective as moral retribution than long-term confinement. They used city income to pay for the building and to pay some officials, but they would not pay to feed social misfits. People who could not pay their own room and board in the prison literally starved to death. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the problem became so acute that monks went through the streets begging alms for poor prisoners. The city council appointed special administrators to provide funds for the prisoners in "extreme necessity." ⁽⁷⁾

For some, prison was a money-making business. The assistant warden had up to 400 special cells that he could rent for fourteen or fifteen reales a month. He rented beds curtained off by blankets in the large cells, into which 300 or 400 men were crowded; they were dens of disease and bad smells. He also collected three reales each day from each of the taverns and little stores that were leased out in the prison. Prisoners had few ways to get food and drink except to buy it for very high prices from the prison stores and taverns. When city officials came to inspect the wines sold to prisoners, the storekeepers showed them special containers of very good wine, much better than the "pure bile" that they sold to the prisoners. ⁽⁸⁾ Prisoners who saw the parallel between this exploitative commerce and that on the outside called the prison a bank and the warden a banker. ⁽⁹⁾

City-paid salaries provided only a small part of the income of prison officials and lawyers, most of whom bought their offices or obtained them as special favors for services they had performed. Appointed by the chief constable of Seville, the warden of the Royal Prison held the right to name subordinate officers and sold offices to the highest bidders in a process similar to [78] a public auction. ⁽¹⁰⁾ The city council appointed notaries and lawyers to represent poor prisoners, as well as a chaplain, pharmacist, and doctor. These offices were granted as privileges, and their salaries were not expected to be much more than an honorarium.

Lawyers and notaries were especially notorious for finding ways to get money from the prisoners. Some promised quick releases to those who could raise 500 reales. Others continued to take money from prisoners, explaining that just one more legal plea had to be presented. Prisoners literally sold the shirts off their backs in order to pay these officials, and they often failed to hear from them again after the last maravedí had been extracted. Not surprisingly, the lawyers and notaries were called "rats of the prison." ⁽¹¹⁾ One administrator of poor prisoners suggested that city-provided lawyers would work more diligently for the poor if they received a larger salary, but the problem remained. By the last decade of the sixteenth century one chronicler had reported more than seventy criminal lawyers, each with his office on the Plaza de San Francisco and each depending for a part of his livelihood on the needs of criminals. ⁽¹²⁾ Lawyers and notaries continued to regard the prison as a commercial enterprise, and complained that the Jesuits were taking away their means of livelihood by interceding with judges on behalf of poor prisoners. ⁽¹³⁾

Although the city council regarded the prison as a business lucrative enough to support most of its officials, it did not expect the prisoners to labor productively. During epidemics or military crises, prisoners sometimes received commutations to serve in the army or to help care for the sick and the dead. As a general rule, however, prisoners were rigidly separated from the laborers of the city. This undoubtedly pleased some guilds that wanted to protect wages by limiting the numbers of people providing their form of labor or service, but it also served the interests of [79] the city government, which wanted full employment of all able-bodied men. This practice reflected the prevailing attitude that criminals were not to be "saved" or channeled into useful lives, but were to be punished in such a way that the entire community would recognize their immorality. Idleness was regarded as an evil for which a person was to be confined and punished in prison. ⁽¹⁴⁾

Although prisoners were often exploited in the business of the prison, they also acted as the exploiters. Demonstrating an underworld pragmatism, these people accepted their situation and turned it to advantage. Some became prison trusties and received special privileges for acting as night guards or internal police. Porteros were prisoners entrusted with the keys so they could lock up the newly arrived prisoners. They carefully distributed new prisoners among the cells, charging each four reales, keeping half for themselves and giving the other half to the prisoners already living in the cells. Some prisoners charged visitors a small sum for running to find the prisoner to be visited. ⁽¹⁵⁾

Pawnbrokers and moneylenders thrived because prisoners needed money to buy food and legal help. Some prison officials played these roles, but prisoners did too. Pregoneros sold or auctioned items pawned by other prisoners. Frequently they passed these things to friends on the outside, who resold the pawned or stolen items. Prisoners who had some money would loan it at a high interest rate, rarely letting a fraternal feeling for fellow prisoners interfere with sound business practice. ⁽¹⁶⁾

Some enterprising prisoners stood guard at an entrance to the prison latrine and charged prisoners a small amount to use the stepping stones they had placed there to pass through the filth. Others charged a fee for providing a support that helped make more bearable the punishment of suspension by wrist shackles high above the ground. Prisoners who could write and draw charged other prisoners for writing letters and decorating notes. Sometimes they used their talents for forgeries and counterfeiting. [80] A few even made money through honest skills. Somehow they got the materials they needed, such as wood or wool or esparto grass, and then paid a portero to sell their crafts for them. Chaves reported that one man had earned 1300 ducats by the time he was transferred from prison to the galleys. ⁽¹⁷⁾

Even the beggars who begged alms for poor prisoners found a way to profit. They brought three-pound loaves of bread to the prison to distribute among the prisoners, but instead of dividing each loaf into three one-pound portions for the prisoners, the beggars kept a quarter of each loaf for themselves. These beggars were popularly known as animeros, beggars who got alms in return for praying for the souls of the dead. An anonymous poem about the Royal Prison of Seville described their enterprise:

One loaf for three,
And the one who divides it,
In payment for his work
Takes a piece from the middle.
To this they call the spirit,
And some animero has such an
Evil spirit that he wants to take
Half the bread for himself from the middle. ⁽¹⁸⁾

The Royal Prison was a successful social institution in the sense that it provided and supported its own functionaries. Here were money-making opportunities for wardens, assistant wardens, guards, barbers, surgeons, pharmacists, torturers, lawyers, clerks, storekeepers, wine-sellers, and the prisoners themselves, who needed money to buy food and legal assistance. Here also were the victims, confined and forced to serve the moneymaking purposes of the exploiters.

A CULTURAL MEETING PLACE

At one point in his report, Pedro de León called the Royal Prison a "great Babylon that is one of the marvels of the world." ⁽¹⁹⁾ More than 18,000 people passed through this building as prisoners each year, and many more thousands came as visitors, lawyers, priests, or hawkers. Their amazing variety in dress and manner, their shouts and babble and shrieks and groans, must indeed have filled the prison with all the sights and sounds of Babylon. If the prison was a flourishing business, it was also a great market, a central meeting place for cultural exchange and development.

Consider first the influence of outsiders coming into contact with prisoners. Prison doors were not locked until 10:00 P.M., and a steady procession of men and women entered and left the prison during the day. Friends and relatives brought the prisoners food, clothing, bedding, money, and even weapons. Often part of the underworld culture of the outside, these visitors maintained underworld links between those inside and outside. In many cases they were the difference between life and death for the prisoners. ⁽²⁰⁾

Lawyers, notaries, and other judicial officers also linked prisoners and the outside world. Some took advantage, but others helped these often illiterate and penniless people to understand and respond to the language of the judge. Their [82] helpless dependence reinforced the prisoners' feelings that corrupt and merciless lawyers were the rats of the prison, but helpful lawyers were amparos (sanctuaries) or alivios (relievers). ⁽²¹⁾

Clergymen and charitable lay people helped. One pious woman provided meat and bread for all poor prisoners twice a week. She also gave money so that converted women could leave prison for an "honest life," and she provided clothing for naked prisoners. Another wealthy noble woman, whom one chronicler called "the true mother of the poor," gave money so that debtors could pay off their debts and be released. ⁽²²⁾ Chaplains interceded on behalf of imprisoned debtors and complained to the city council that prisoners were not getting medicines because the pharmacist assigned to distribute medicine to prisoners was neglecting his job. A beata (holy woman) assigned to the Royal Prison asked the city council to repair the walls - not to prevent escapes, but because their crumbling conditions endangered the prisoners. ⁽²³⁾

Most of those who engaged in pious works of charity were helpful but provided only temporary relief. They held no promise for a better world or a more just social order. In fact, they were as supportive of the established order as of the prisoners. A beata was assigned to women prisoners to provide spiritual help, but she was also required to police them, particularly in preventing them from meeting male friends at the prison door. If chaplains provided music and special food for religious festivals in the prison, they also prepared prisoners to die as victims of the social order. ⁽²⁴⁾ Since religious people aligned themselves with the authorities who had taken the prisoners by force, it is not surprising that prisoners ridiculed their spiritual "supporters." Chaves described a mock church ceremony in which [83] one prisoner played the priest with a whip in his hand to control his unruly congregation. ⁽²⁵⁾

As a meeting place for prisoners and outside groups, the prison emphasized the subordination of prisoners to the larger society and their dependence on outside support, but it also provided a meeting place for the variety of people who came together as prisoners. They were from Portugal, Italy, and most parts of Spain. They were between fourteen and eighty years of age. Many were penniless, a few were wealthy - although the wealthy prisoners often kept to their own better quarters. Some, as Lope Ponce, came from well-known noble families. ⁽²⁶⁾ In no other place in Spain could so many varieties of people meet together to enrich and reinforce an underworld culture.

This was no great melting-pot democracy, however. When a prisoner first entered the prison, the prisoner-porteros ran to receive him, giving him two blows if he was wounded or penitent, three blows if he resisted, and four blows if he was a thief. The lucky portero to whom he was entrusted took him "as though his spirit were possessed by the devil," happily leading him to pay homage to prisoner chieftains. ⁽²⁷⁾ New prisoners had to meet these leaders, acknowledge their positions, and give them presents. Chaves told of one prisoner chieftain, Gomez de Faran, who had such a comfortable fiefdom in the prison that he refused to leave it when the judges decided he should be returned to the church where he had sought asylum when he was arrested four years earlier. ⁽²⁸⁾

Violent fights settled many questions of hierarchy among prisoners. In addition to the weapons smuggled into prison, prisoners used sharpened sticks they called pastorcillos (little shepherds). Some died after being stabbed with them. Others recovered from wounds and swore revenge, or simply accepted an inferior position among the prisoners. ⁽²⁹⁾ The flock of prisoners [84] must have recognized pastorcillos as staffs of authority as well as the useful tools of herdsmen. Daring, speed, and cunning separated the sheep from the shepherds in the prison.

Authorities isolated prisoners convicted of sodomy, prohibiting them from leaving their cells or sleeping with other prisoners. ⁽³⁰⁾ Segregation did not solve the problem of homosexuality in the prison, however. In 1567 one prisoner accused of sodomy was found committing the same act with a young man who was imprisoned with him. ⁽³¹⁾ Some homosexual offenders became legends of the prison, discussed with as much delight as revulsion. Chaves, for example, described a merchant who was imprisoned because he had fashioned himself an artificial organ with which he sodomized himself. ⁽³²⁾ He died from a whipping in prison, punished for what he had done to himself. Sexual crimes were considered not physical offenses against other people as much as moral offenses against a social order enforced by prison authorities.

Lesbians were also severely punished in the prison. According to Chaves, the women in prison spoke the same tough language as underworld men. Many of them appeared to want to be men, strutting about and crowing like roosters. Some made artificial male genitalia; those who were discovered were given 200 lashes and permanently exiled from Seville. ⁽³³⁾

Despite the variety of inmates, the prison emphasized many things they had in common. As in most European countries, prison fostered a solidarity among prisoners because it separated them from the rest of society. It provided enforced leisure time and opportunities to play rough games. La mariposa, the game of placing a lighted stick between the toes of a sleeping prisoner, was a collective sport; it was only fun because many other prisoners would gather around to roar in delight when the sleeping victim awakened with a shriek. ⁽³⁴⁾

[85] Prisoners were rarely alone. They gambled together, fought together, drank together, and told stories together. They developed a ritual greeting in which each touched his own sword or knife arm and then his own face. ⁽³⁵⁾ Countless social contacts facilitated the development of a prisoners' language. Based on word substitution, their jargon enabled them to express shared attitudes and fostered a collective identity distinct from the rest of society. Chaves told of women in the prison singing germanesca songs that celebrated underworld heroes or lamented the human tragedies of this imperfect world. Pedro de León described the women prisoners as communicating through another common language - the rites of black magic. Witches and "famous procuresses" in prison used black and white beans to tell fortunes and call on devils. ⁽³⁶⁾

Prisoners felt an intense collective identity because so many of them faced death. Sometimes prisoners made a burlesque of accompanying their companions to the gallows, but many times they drew together to move seriously through the rites preparing a prisoner for execution. Chaves described how the women of the prison would gather around a prostitute condemned to death. Some cried out as if they were her lovers; a few fainted in the arms of companions. They listened tearfully as a condemned woman asked that they not take away her clothing, and they agreed when she asked them to wash her quickly after she was dead so that she wouldn't remain as other dead paupers. "Even in death there is cleanliness," she cried, "Polish me well." ⁽³⁷⁾

Here in the Royal Prison of Seville an underworld culture thrived, as it did in most other contemporary prisons. If a prisoner had known little of the underworld on the outside, prison quickly initiated him. Prison surrounded him with underworld language and customs. It forced him to identify with this culture and depend on it. A prisoner was not only confined within the four walls of his prison; he was confined within a flourishing underworld culture.

[86] POLITICAL SIGNIFICANCE

When the Royal Prison was rebuilt by the city in the 1560's, the inscription over the entrance of the building piously suggested that the purpose of this magnificent project was to preserve the "holy quiet of the republic." ⁽³⁸⁾ A figure of justice over. the door held a sword in its right hand and a scale in its left. These symbols suggest that holy quiet would be the result of not only a particular kind of justice, but also of the enforcement of this justice by an arms-bearing dominant culture. The prison was an agency of coercion, forcing people to obey the laws or suffer the penalties. It was a tool of cultural domination, a symbol of authority that permitted a ruling oligarchy to pose as the legitimate source and guardian of justice. Finally, the prison provided a carefully controlled arena for playing out rituals of conflict. Though Crown, nobles, and churchmen could never abolish all opposition to their rule in early modern Seville, they could channel these conflicts into the regulated rituals of imprisonment, torture, and execution.

Because city council members recognized the political utility of the prison, they were willing to spend thousands of reales for it. In 1563 the city government undertook a major rebuilding of the Royal Prison, its money well spent according to the inscription on the reconstructed building: "The illustrious senate and people of Seville, with the inspiration of Jesus Christ, attending with great providence to the holy quiet of the republic, which is often disturbed by the boldness of evil people, cared to raise from the foundations and magnificently restore and expand at public expense this prison..." ⁽³⁹⁾ Although the city government did not buy food for inmates, it did pay salaries for a doctor, surgeon, pharmacist, barber, and several lawyers who represented the poor prisoners. It also paid to maintain the building, some 900 ducats every three years to clean it, and varying amounts for repairs. Between May 1644 and November 1648, a list of expenses for the city included 10,000 reales to repair the Royal [87] Prison. ⁽⁴⁰⁾ When the city council lacked public funds, its members believed the prison was so crucial to their social order that they were willing to support it with their own salaries and meat-tax rebates. ⁽⁴¹⁾

The prison provided a defensive strategy against the violators of the laws that royal and city officials believed were most essential. It held prisoners until justice could be executed, but debtors posed a particular problem because imprisonment prevented many from raising money to pay off debts for which they had been sent to prison. The city council in 1534 had ordered that all prisoners judged to be poor should not be kept in prison to pay costs for which they had no money. Nevertheless, Pedro de León found that the problem still existed some sixty years later, and he often tried to intercede with creditors on behalf of debtors in prison. One debtor, desperate for a way to get out of prison to raise nine reales, wangled his release by leaving his infant in the prison as a security. Evidently he was successful, but not before baby kept most of the prisoners awake for a night and a day with his hungry wails. ⁽⁴²⁾ Prison inmates must have longed for the "holy quiet of the republic" that was promised in the inscription over the prison entrance.

Prison supported the attempts of political authority to monopolize violence, for prison authorities had license to commit violence against prisoners and hold them defenseless while they took away their very lives. At the end of the sixteenth century, six or eight people were whipped and hanged each week, and many died from the whippings. Prisoners were sent by the fifties to the galleys, a cruel service that usually ended in death. ⁽⁴³⁾ The violence of the prison system was institutionalized, a routine matter accepted without question by most people of the community.

[88] Torture was a standard method for examining prisoners to extract confessions and information from them. The systematic practice of torture by prison authorities reinforced their appearance of power and filled some prisoners with terror. Some were so broken physically that they required medical attention. Chaves described them crawling painfully "like ants" to the prison doctor, unable to pull themselves up when the doctor told them to get up. The doctor had to get down on the floor beside them to examine their wounds and administer a poultice. One doctor at the end of the sixteenth century developed a cure for flesh that had been torn off the sinews of the arm. Before this treatment was developed, Chaves wrote, there were many maimed left arms in prison. ⁽⁴⁴⁾ Pedro de León, noting that women were less likely to confess under torture than men, estimated that for every twenty women tortured, eighteen did not confess. Moreover, when women were stripped, they still did not confess - did not have anything to confess, he believed, because they would rather confess than be stripped. ⁽⁴⁵⁾

Prison authorities fell short of monopolizing all the violence in prison, however. Fights with weapons were common. According to Pedro de León, prisoners fought continually "like animals" with knives, daggers, and swords that they hid under their beds after their female friends had smuggled them into the prison. ⁽⁴⁶⁾ Generally prisoners used these weapons only among themselves, but one enraged prisoner wounded the warden with a knife and seized a sword after his appeal had been denied. Officials who heard the commotion came running, but had to take refuge under chairs as the prisoner turned on them. Their shouts that they were being killed brought more help, and they hanged the attacking prisoner within thirty minutes of getting his sword away from him. They also cut off his hand, and put it, still encircled by a manacle, above the entrance to the prison. ⁽⁴⁷⁾

The officials' authority and opportunity to beat, torture, [89] imprison, and execute were potent weapons. It is even more remarkable, then, that underworld people were able to laugh at the prison. Chaves reported an episode in which the prisoners taunted a judge who was determined to stop them from keeping women in their cells. Hearing that more than 500 women were spending the night with the prisoners in one of the largest rooms, he ran to the prison and threw open the cell door, only to find no women. After poking and inspecting, he left in disappointment. Some prisoners ran after him and assured him that his information was correct. Once more he dashed to the room, threw open the door, and again found no women. Finally, after returning a third time, he made the prisoners get out of bed and remove their bed clothes - and he found the women. ⁽⁴⁸⁾

Another sport of the prisoners was to tease the judges and scribes who came to question them. In vain the assistant warden tried to get the prisoners to show the proper respect and attention. Some prisoners pretended to be insane or half-witted in order to win compassion, but many were less concerned with compassion than with the fun of twitting authority. They pretended to leave the room or not to understand where they were ordered to stand. They rolled their eyes to disconcert the judicial officers, or they kept trembling or slightly raising one foot in the air. According to Chaves, the prisoners called this sport their "task" (faena), and they cheered happily when they succeeded in ridiculing the officials. ⁽⁴⁹⁾

Ingenious prisoners fooled the authorities who could pronounce sentence on them. Some men condemned to the galleys pleaded physical inability, and the warden had to call in doctors to examine them. The sentence of those whom the doctors designated physically unfit was commuted to a whipping and exile. Many left the prison so designated, only to recover with amazing speed. A thief who faked a crippled left hand fooled the examiners and quickly returned to his former occupation, stealing with his left hand as well as his right. ⁽⁵⁰⁾

Many prisoners feigned insanity so that authorities would send [90] them to a hospital rather than the galleys or gallows. One counterfeiter who had been condemned to death went into a trance after saying he wanted to prepare for execution by confessing to a priest. The priest asked the judge to delay execution until the prisoner was able to confess. For two months the prisoner remained immobile in prison while doctors examined him. Finally after studying him for thirty days, a doctor pronounced him insane with an "incurable mania." The prisoner maintained the trance for another nine months in prison, and then was moved to the Casa de Locos, an institution for the mentally ill. Nineteen months later he broke a window, tied together the strips of a blanket, and escaped. Not all prisoners were able to feign insanity for such a long period, but prisoners knew the ruse well and called it "the sanest insanity in the world." ⁽⁵¹⁾

Inmates used a variety of tricks to escape. Many dressed themselves as women or priests in clothing smuggled into the prison by friends. Although some were caught and whipped, many escaped in successful masquerades. Escapes often depended on team work. Women prisoners got the key to their door and pretended to play catch with it while actually getting an impression of it in a roll. They asked outside friends to make a key from the impression, and then easily escaped over the roof at night with the cooperation of a trusty guard. An even larger group of prisoners escaped on the day of Saint John. Days before the festival prisoners dug a hole in the lower cells, removing the dirt in their hats and depositing it in the prison latrine. Faking piety, they got permission from the warden on the day of the festival to decorate some staffs and make a presentation for the other prisoners. Under this pretext, they gathered in the lower cells and more than forty slipped through the hole, two by two. Although people outside the prison saw them, they did not report them to authorities. It is not surprising that city council records frequently mention the repairing of holes in the prison's walls. ⁽⁵²⁾

Sometimes prisoners seemed less interested in actually escaping [91] than in confounding the authorities. While they were being transported to the galleys in the nearby Port of Santa Maria, thirty-six prisoners removed their shackles and escaped from the two constables guarding them. The constables were able to capture twenty-four of the fugitives, but then decided that it would be worse for them to appear with only twenty-four prisoners than not to appear at all. The constables fled, and the twenty-four prisoners made their way back to the Royal Prison. Chaves suggested that they returned to prison because they enjoyed very comfortable lives there, but we can also imagine the prisoners' delight in reporting to the warden the escape of their constables. ⁽⁵³⁾

A very different kind of team work was involved in escaping prison through the palabrilla (little word). According to Pedro de León, thousands of prisoners were able to leave prison after a small word on their behalf was spoken to a scribe, judge, or lawyer. An exchange of money or other arguments for the respectability of the prisoner convinced judicial officers to release him. ⁽⁵⁴⁾

Some groups were exempt from the power of the prison. Clergy accused of crimes were usually turned over to ecclesiastical authorities. Children younger than fourteen were not considered legally responsible and were rarely turned over to the Royal Prison. The traditional code of law protected nobles from imprisonment with common prisoners. Usually they were placed under house arrest, built occasionally they were held in the Royal Prison, where the warden rented out special quarters to them. One famous noble, Lope Ponce, literally held court in the Royal Prison for more than four years. His high connections prompted prison officials to let him come and go freely, to keep his woman with him, and to live as a minor despot in the prison. ⁽⁵⁵⁾

Prison authority over women visitors was also limited. Chaves reported that more than one hundred prostitutes slept each [92] night in the prison, welcomed by the prisoners and tolerated by the prison authorities. ⁽⁵⁶⁾ In the prison the poorest women found shelter at no cost and an occasional paying customer. Sometimes wealthier women came, attracted by a few dashing prisoners who promised adventure. Chaves described one woman who came each feast day and Sunday to the prison. Using the pretext of going to church, she would leave her house well dressed, accompanied by servants and a page. At church she excused herself quickly and went to a friend's house, where she changed clothing and slipped away to meet a lover in prison. ⁽⁵⁷⁾

Women were imprisoned for abortion, prostitution, theft or adultery, but not for debt or civil crimes. Although they did manage estates and run businesses in Seville at this time, male relatives or husbands were customarily considered responsible for their indebtedness and civil agreements. In addition, women could escape imprisonment for prostitution by declaring that they were married, for married women were subject to their husband's authority, and their sexual misbehavior was prosecuted as adultery. ⁽⁵⁸⁾

Finally, the indomitable spirit of some prisoners limited the power of the prison. Two highwaymen, Diego Mesa and Juan de la Cruz, became legends because they maintained their swaggering bravado up to the moment they were hanged and quartered. Juan de la Cruz entertained the entire prison with stories of his amazing exploits, and he even managed to divert his torturers. Twirling their mustaches and tossing off jokes, these two men never crawled like ants. If the power of the prison was sufficient to hand them over to the hangman, it was never able to kill off the legends of their exploits and bravado in the face of authority. ⁽⁵⁹⁾

Some local officials treated the Royal Prison as a private fiefdom rather than an agency of the Crown and city government. [93] The warden wielded considerable political influence. He appointed many officials of the prison, and he administered a lucrative business. Empowered to receive donations for poor prisoners and to disperse letters of payment, he was detained from "robbing the world" only by his own conscience. ⁽⁶⁰⁾ Evidently Chaves did not believe that a personal conscience was much restraint, for he reported that the warden demanded more than all other justices and used his authority to a greater degree than the king. ⁽⁶¹⁾

Despite his powerful position, the warden was not permitted to administer the prison free from outside interference. The Crown had long insisted that city officials should visit the prison regularly to ensure its proper administration, and it specifically ordered the asistente and his assistants to visit the prison each Saturday. ⁽⁶²⁾ According to Morgado, two judges of the royal court and the chief constable were also required to visit the prison one day a week. ⁽⁶³⁾ These visits protected the lives and welfare of poor prisoners, and also checked the power of prison officials. A report to the city council in 1615, for example, reiterated the need for jurados to visit the prison regularly, and it also suggested that all donations for poor prisoners should be kept in a special iron box with three keys, one key for each of three administering jurados. ⁽⁶⁴⁾

As a political tool, the prison was not wholly successful. Rather than molding criminals into useful citizens, as nineteenth-century reformers would later propose, the prison was a primary breeding ground for the underworld. Rituals of violence inside controlled conflicts and emphasized the strength and unity of officials, but even the most systematic terror could not cow some prisoners. Inmates taunted judicial officials and made sport of [94] escaping from them. They quarreled and fought despite efforts of prison officials to monopolize the use of violence. The prison was not much more successful as a smaller sphere of political power, for both Crown and city government restrained the warden from ruling it as his own fief.

The variety of efforts to prevent the prison from being a successful political tool suggests the complexity of developing political power in Seville. The underworld was not alone in resisting an all-powerful Royal Prison. The Crown and most city fathers were also concerned to control it and curb its potential power. While prisoners used mockery and dirty tricks to resist the power of the prison, city officials used careful visiting committees and reports - very different tactics for a similar objective.

1. For example, Alemán, Part II, pp. 394-397.

2. Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, The Adventures of Don Quixote, trans. J. M. Cohen (Middlesex, 1970), p. 25. Francisco Rodriguez Manmn, La cárcel en que se engendró el "Quijote" por... (Madrid, 1916), p. 21.

3. Morgado, pp. 191-202.

4. C. Chaves.

5. Pedro de León. One copy of the manuscript is in the Biblioteca Universitaria, Granada, and the other is in the Biblioteca de la Universidad de Salamanca. Most names have been inked out in the appendix of both copies.

6. C. Chaves, Part I.

7. AMS, Siglo XVI, Sección 3, Escribanías de Cabildo, Tomo 5, No. 19. AMS, Ordenanzas, "Titulo: De los presos, y carceleros," folios 70-72. Most people in Europe in this period believed that prisoners should pay for their room and board in prison.

8. C. Chaves, Part II. Carlos Caro Petit, "La Cárcel Real de Sevilla," Archivo Hispalense, Series 2, 11-12 (1949), 342-344. Pedro de León, Part II, chapter 3, folio 113.

9. Salillas, p. 272.

10. Caro Petit, p. 40.

11. Pedro de León, Part II, chapter 5, folio 120.

12. AMS, Siglo XVI, Sección 3, Escribanías de Cabildo, Tomo 5, No. 18. Mongado, pp. 188-189.

13. Pedro de León, Part II, chapter 6, folio 123.

14. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punishment; The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York, 1977), develops this theory.

15. C. Chaves, Part I. Caro Petit, pp. 41-42.

16. C. Chaves, Part I.

17. Ibid., Parts I, II, III.

18. Quoted in Rodriguez Manmn, La cárcel, p. 25. The Spanish text is: "Entre tres una hogaza,/y hay uno que va partiendo,/y en pago de su trabajo/saca vn pedaco de un media./A éste el ánima le llaman,/y tiene algiin animero/tan mal ánima, que quiera/llevarse del pan ci medio."

19. Pedro de León, Part II, chapter 29, folio 2O8^V.

20. C. Chaves, Part I.

21. Salillas, p. 268.

22. Morgado, pp. 195-196. Pedro de León, Part II, chapter 5, folios 117^V-118.

23. AMS, Siglo XVII, Sección 4, Escribanías de Cabildo, Tomo 10, Nos. 30, 26.

24. Pedro de León, Part II, Chapter 12, folio l42^V, and chapter 8, folios 128-128^V.

25. C. Chaves, Part II.

26. Pedro de León, Part II, chapter 29, folio 208^V.

27. C. Chaves, Part I.

28. Ibid. Part III.

29. Ibid., Part I.

30. Ibid., Part II.

31. AMS, Efemérides, "Noticias y casos."

32. C. Chaves, Part I.

33. Ibid.

34. Pedro de León, Part II, chapter 3.

35. C. Chaves, Part I.

36. Ibid. Pedro de León, Part II, chapter 12, folio 143.

37. C. Chaves, Part I.

38. Guichot y Parody, 2:59-60.

39. Ibid., p. 335. Morgado, pp. 191-195.

40. Guichot y Parody, 2:334-335.

41. AMS, Siglo XVI, Sección 3, Escribanías de Cabildo, Tomo 5, No. 17.

42. The council's directive is in AMS, Archivo General, Sección 1, Carpeta 25, No. 221. Pedro de León, Part II, chapter 5, folios 118-120, discussed imprisoned debtors. His description of the infant pledged by the debtor is ibid., Part II, chapter 22, folios 177-178.

43. C. Chaves, Part I.

44. Ibid., Part II.

45. Pedro de León, appendix 1 to Part II, folio 367^V.

46. Ibid., Part II, chapter 3, folio 112.

47. AMS, Efemérides, "Noticias y casos," No. 1. This same case is reported in "Desde 1616 asta el de 1634," Papeles varios, BC, 85-4-11.

48. C. Chaves, Part I.

49. Ibid., Part II.

50. Ibid., Part III.

51. Ibid., Part I.

52. Pedro de León, Part II, chapter 30, folios 211 ff. C. Chaves, Parts I, II. An example of a request to repair prison walls after an escape attempt is in AMS, Siglo XVII, Sección 4, Escribanías de Cabildo, Tomo 10, No. 33.

53. C. Chaves, Part III.

54. Pedro de León, Part II, chapter 24, folios 189ff.

55. Samuel Parsons Scott, trans., Las Siete Partidas (Chicago, New York, and Washington, 1931), Seventh Partida, Title XXIX, Law IV, p. 1453. Pedro de León, appendix 1 to Part II, Case 200.

56. C. Chaves, Part I.

57. Ibid., Part III.

58. Pedro de León, Part II, chapter 2, folio 111^V; chapter 12, folio 142^V. The death penalty was provided for a woman who aborted herself; see Scott, Seventh Partida, Title VIII, Law VIII, pp. 1346-47.

59. Pedro de León, appendix 1 to Part II, Cases 213, 214.

60. Ibid., Part II, chapter 4, folio 116^V.

61. C. Chaves, Part I.

62. AMS, Ordenanzas, "Titulo: Del cabildo y regimiento de Sevilla;" "De los jurados," and "Del asistente y de sus tenientes." Guichot y Parody, discussed a royal decree on the prison of Seville in 1337, 1:221.

63. Morgado, p. 194.

64. Concern for poor prisoners is in the ordinances approved by the city council in 1549, AMS, Archivo General, Sección 1, Carpeta 15, No. 18. The proposal for the iron box to be held by jurados is in AMS, Siglo XVII, Sección 4, Escribanías de Cabildo, Tomo 10, No. 24.