 Book 6, Chapter 3, Part 2 of the History of the Inquisition of Spain, Volume 2. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The History of the Inquisition of Spain, Volume 2 by Henry Charles Lee. Book 6, Practice. Chapter 3, Part 2, Arrest and Sequestration. Another feature of extreme severity, which, however, was common to secular and episcopal, as well as to inquisitorial practice, was the sequestration which accompanied arrest in all cases involving confiscation. The losses and hardships incident to this were fully recognized in secular proceedings and, in 1646, the Cortes of Aragon endeavored to mitigate them and also to prevent the frauds which were admitted to be frequent. On the other hand, to have the property of the accused in the power of his family was to risk its dissipation before the conclusion of the trial. It had to be preserved at all hazards, and the only way to do this was to make sure of it by seizure at the moment of arrest. The importance attributed to this by the Holy Office is seen in the details which form so prominent a portion of the instructions. It is true that the canon law strictly prohibited the seizure of property before a sentence of condemnation had been duly rendered. But this had been framed at a time when the temporal lords enjoyed the confiscations, and was disregarded when they enured to the benefit of those who decreed them. The Algoazil executing a warrant of arrest was accompanied by a Notorio de Secrestas or Notary of Sequestrations, who at once seized all visible property and compiled a minute inventory. It was then placed in the hands of a sequestrador or despitario who held it until the case was decided, when, if confiscation was decreed, he handed it over to the receiver. If not, it was returned, or what was left of it, to the owner. In the earliest instructions, the receiver and his scrivener accompanied the Notary of Sequestrations, and two copies of the inventory were made. Much conflicting legislation followed, directed to finding means for preventing the receiver from appropriating portions of the sequestrations. But the trouble was perennial, and, in interrogatories drawn up for inspectors on their visitations, there was one which required all officials to declare whether the receiver had taken any sequestrated property before the case of the owner was determined. Irregularities continued, and, in 1633, some respect was paid to the interest of the accused by a rule that a representative appointed by him should be present with the receiver and Notary when seizing the property and making the inventory. In 1635, this was followed by requiring the senior inquisitor to report promptly to the Suprema all details as to kind and amount of property sequestrated, and whether any collusion or secreting of goods had occurred, a mandate of which the frequent repetition shows the difficulty of its enforcement. Finally, in 1654, Philip IV assembled a junta to formulate regulations by which, when farmers of the revenue were arrested, the interests of the royal fisk of all creditors and of the owner, if acquitted, might be protected. These provided that the first duty on making an arrest was to search the prisoner for papers and keys. He was then told to name a representative to be present at the sequestration and inventory. If the hour suited, this followed at once, otherwise it was postponed until the next day, padlocks being meanwhile placed on everything, and one or two guards being stationed. The inventory was made in the minutest detail, room by room, specifying the contents of all desks, trunks, chests, and other receptacles. The keys were then delivered to the depository selected, who receded for the property and became responsible for it. Then followed immediately the Audiencia de Hacienda, in which the prisoner was made to give an account of all of his possessions. If among the effects seized were some of a nature requiring them to be sold, or if it was necessary to provide for the food of the prisoner, they were disposed of at auction, after appraisement made in the presence of his representative. As the inventory was the basis of all further proceedings, from a very early period rigid instructions were issued that it should be complete to the minutest detail. Every paper found in the prisoner's possession was to be enumerated. In 1607 the Suprema complained of negligence in this respect and ordered that, in future, not only must every paper be set down, but also its nature and contents. Such inventories, as I have had an opportunity of examining, show the laborious trifling entailed by these instructions. In the case, for instance, of Margarita Altamira in 1681, the list covers four closely written pages, consisting of entries such as an old pair of scissors, a worn toe towel, an old broom, an earthen pot, etc. She was the wife of an agricultural laborer, apparently separated from her husband, and owning nothing save her little household planishing and clothes. Official zeal sometimes out-trained discretion, gravely affecting the interests of others. As when, in 1597, the Suprema was obliged to issue instructions that, when heretic shipmasters were arrested in the seaports, only their own effects were to be seized and not the ships and cargoes. It was unavoidable that the property of third parties, in the hands of the accused, should be included in the sequestration. And, as we have seen, from an early period the orders were that such goods should be surrendered as soon as owners should prove their rights. Such cases were of perpetual occurrence, causing much damage or inconvenience, and were attended with exasperating delays. The daughters of Brianda Royce, reconciled with confiscation, presented, March 19, 1530, a claim for some 70 articles of household furnishing, which were not abjudged to them until July 7, 1531. The list included a pair of chickens, which had doubtless long before disappeared in the olla. The case of Magarita Altanara affords some quaint illustrations of the annoyances inflicted on those who chanced to have had dealings with the accused. She was arrested in November 1681, and, on April 8, 1682, the priest Francisco Juan Sons presented a petition representing that, among the effects sequestrated, was a lot of shirts and undergarments of which he furnished a list. Magarita, apparently having been his washerwoman, the paper was endorsed to be filed away, and it's proof to be received in proper time. The proper time was slow in coming, for, in August, a good padre again petitioned for his shirts, but whether he eventually recovered them, the documents failed to show. A year later, August 3, 1683, Magarita Batle made application for a cradle, which she said that she had lent to Altanara. The case was referred to the receiver, who reported that there was in the sequestration an old cradle, which, if sold, might fetch two or three reales. Then, on August 25, the inquisitors resolved that, as it was of so little value, it might be surrendered to her on her proving ownership under oath. And, on October 6, she was duly sworn and examined. She described the cradle, told from whom it was bought at the price of two reales. Explained why she had lent it, and why she had not reclaimed it prior to Altamira's arrest. Whereupon it was ordered to be restored to her. Evidently, there was no haste in relieving the necessities of those who were caught in the sweep of sequestration. It was very properly a cardinal principle, frequently reiterated, that sequestrated property was sacred and was not to be diverted, however great might be the necessity. It was easier, however, to enunciate such a self-denying ordinance than to observe it, in an institution practically secure from supervision. Ferdinand set the example by selling or granting as favors numerous houses in Perpignan, abandoned by fugitives before the Inquisition was in operation in Roussillon, and he had no scruple in assuming the condemnation of the owners before their prosecution had commenced. We have seen how, in 1644, the Supremma admitted to Philip IV that, to satisfy his exigencies, it had sold sequestrated property, for which the owners, who had been acquitted, were clamoring. In fact, the use of such property became habitual, for, towards the end of the century, we find an official depositario of the Supremma in charge of the sequestrations, who was accustomed to meet, from the funds in his hands, the expenses of the Madrid Tribunal, subject, of course, to repayment. In one transaction of the kind, the advance made, July 3rd, 1680, was not refunded until November 17th, 1681. The Tribunal was thus exposed to the risk that its decisions might be influenced by the condition of its account with the depositario. At first, there would seem to have been no provision for the family of a prisoner whose property was thus suddenly seized. They were cast adrift and deprived of subsistence, regardless of the fact that confiscation might not be decreed. In the early instructions, there is no arrangement for their support during the trial, and any exceptions to this were matters of favor, as when Ferdinand, July 11th, 1486, wrote to the receiver of Saragossa that, as the lands and property of Juan Navarro had been sequestrated, as his children had no other support, and as one of them had rendered him good service, all the rents and profits of the estate should be paid to them during the pendency of the case. Common humanity demanded that some attention be paid to the necessities of the innocent and helpless, while confiscation was as yet uncertain. And in time, this severity was relaxed, though it cannot be positively stated when this commenced. The earliest allusion to it that I have met occurs in the memorial of Yarena in 1506, which, while denouncing the cruelty of turning the family into the streets at night, admits that some allowance was made to them from the sequestrations. It complains, however, that this was miserably insufficient, and so irregularly paid that sometimes months elapsed without anything being received. In one case, two little daughters of a rich prisoner perished of hunger, and their elder sisters subsisted by beggary at night. A woman thus left with ten souls dependent upon her was allowed 25 Maravedis a day when 250 were requisite, and even of this pittance she had received nothing for three months. The matter was one which called for regulation, and various experimental instructions were issued from time to time. Absolute arrangements were not easy to provide, and between 1538 and 1558, a number of utterances show the difficulty of reaching a satisfactory result. The general features of these are that the inquisitors are to consult with the receiver and notary of sequestrations and assign an allowance proportioned to the amount of the property and station of the recipients. While consideration is to be given to the ability of individuals to earn a living, provided it is not derogatory to their rank. A definite policy was finally reached in the instructions of 1561, which remained the standard. These provide that, if the wife or children of a prisoner apply for support, he is to be consulted, and, if he so wishes, an allowance out of the sequestration is to be made to them, proportioned to their station. But if there are some of an age to work, they must provide for themselves. This was a matter of grace and not of right. For a subsequent regulation restricts the grant to a limited time because the trial may be prolonged, and it may be advisable to discontinue the payments. In 1567 it was added that common clothes and bedding could be given, but every article must be specified, as the depositaries were apt to be too liberal and less restricted. It thus became a settled principle that the family of a prisoner was to be cared for out of the sequestration of its head, if he had property, and in the printed form of a warrant of arrest in 1696. This is specified as the object of placing it in the hands of a depositary selected by the prisoner. While recognizing the humanity of these provisions, it may be questioned how far they relieved the hardships of dependence, especially in the latter period, when the deletory methods of the inquisition prolonged the trials inordinately. Unless an estate was unusually large, it was apt to be speedily consumed by wasteful methods and an accumulation of expenses. As we shall see hereafter, unless the accused was penniless, the cost of his maintenance in prison was a first lien on his sequestrated property, and if there was not ready money, his effects were auctioned off to supply it. The strictness of the rule to pay all expenses out of the sequestration is illustrated in the case of two children of Antonio Enriquez Barrios, confined with their father in the prison of the Tribunal of Madrid. When they were discharged, 1423 Reales, the cost of their clothing and food, were collected from the sequestrated estate of their father, whose trial was unfinished. It may be assumed under such a system that, when the accused escaped without confiscation, only a remnant of his property was restored to him, especially as he had to accept on account from the depositario whatever the Tribunal had ordered to be paid out of the sequestration and be content with the balance, while whatever he might owe for his prison maintenance had to be paid before an order was issued to lift the embargo. In this respect, a suspension of the case was equivalent to an acquittal and entitled him to resume possession of what remained of his property. Of course, nothing could compensate a man engaged in trade for thus locking up during years all his business concerns. To such a one, arrest with sequestration meant ruin, however clearly his innocence might be demonstrated after the prolonged proceedings of the Tribunal. A curious inventory of a printing office thus seized shows the breaking up of a business and the destruction of the means of livelihood. One item is, quote, a hundred and twenty reams of the third volume of Rodríguez, the book at present in hand, close quote, which is highly suggestive of the loss inflicted without redress on other parties concerned as author or publisher, as also of the sacrifice incurred by preemptory auction sales of such material. The office of Secrestador, or Depository, would seem, in the earlier period, to have been regarded as desirable, and it certainly offered opportunities for the dishonest. That these were sometimes improved is apparent from the case, in 1510, of Fernando de Mesa, a jurado of Córdoba, who was Secrestador of the estate of a certain Célamín. By the time the latter was condemned, Mesa had died, and the sequestrated property was not forthcoming. He had placed four daughters as nuns in the convent of Santa Inés, and their share of the defalcation was 30,000 modervedes, but the convent pleaded inability to pay through poverty, and Ferdinand kindly forgave it the debt. To the honest, however, the office was in every way undesirable. It involved labor, anxiety, and responsibility without payment, but when selected and approved, the appointee was obliged to serve under penalty of excommunication and a fine of 10,000 or 20,000 modervedes. It was recommended that, if possible, he should not be a kinsman of the prisoner or a converso, and he was always to be of good repute and standing. If the accused was a householder, the house was locked and the keys were given to the depository. Otherwise, he was put to the expense of storage. He was obliged to sign a paper subjecting himself to the penalties imposed on him by the Alguazil, and pledging his person and property to make good any deficiencies occurring through error or negligence, for which he renounced his fuero and submitted himself wholly to the inquisition. The perplexities and tribulations to which he was exposed are illustrated by those of Juanme Tajes, who served as depositario in the case of Magrita Altamira. He appealed, April 26, 1682, to the inquisitors, representing that, when the sequestration was made, he was given the key of the house, but he is now required to surrender it to the owner and to have the goods stored safely. He has no room for them in his own house and petitions to have them delivered to someone else. No attention was paid to this, and, on May 14, the owner of the house, a priest named Francisco Canudes, came forward with a complaint. On March 26th, he had obtained an order for the key. But Tajes refused to surrender it, wherefor he desires that he be forced to do so and to pay him six months' rent. The documents fail to inform us what was the solution of the complication which the tribunal had thus created. But the affair illustrates the manner in which the inquisition was want to call for gratuitous services and to pay little regard to the convenience or interest of those on whom it imposed onerous duties. There were some limitations on the power of sequestration. It was confined to property found in possession of the accused. Whatever he owned that was in the hands of third parties could not be sequestrated and had to await sentence of confiscation before it could be seized. An application of this principle led to the somewhat remarkable rule that there could be no sequestration in prosecutions of the dead, however convincing the proofs of guilt, because the possessions of the offender had passed into the hands of third parties. As early as 1537 this was prescribed by the Suprema in a letter to the tribunal of Barcelona and it was embodied in the instructions of 1561. A more important limitation confined sequestration to arrest on charges of formal heresy and the fiscal was required in his clamosa to specify whether or not he asked for it. Though as late as 1575 the Suprema was obliged to notify the tribunal of Valencia that heresy was a prerequisite of sequestration. The definition of heresy however was somewhat elastic and when in 1573 a determined effort was made to eradicate the general popular belief that fornication between the unmarried was not a mortal sin it was ordered to be prosecuted as heresy with sequestration. When formal heresy was involved, sequestration was to be decreed whether the accused had property or not and in 1665 the Suprema rebuked the tribunal of Barcelona for omitting it in the case of a galley slave. The inquisition at length grew restive under the limitation of sequestration to formal heresy. For as heretics grew fewer it exempted a vast proportion of the cases which formed the current business of the tribunals consisting of blasphemy, sorcery, bigamy, solicitation, marriage of clerics, propositions scandalous, audacious or ill sounding, the possession of prohibited books, and in fact as we are told all offenses which did not in law import confiscation. In these cases the warrant of arrest during the 16th century instructed the Alguazil to arrange so that the prisoner could leave his property in the hands of anyone whom he should select to be used for the maintenance of himself and his family and an inventory was to be made to prevent misappropriation. In time the inquisition outgrew this consideration for innocent sufferers which reduced it to sharing with them in the use of what was apt to disappear in the course of the protracted trials. To remedy this and without so far as appears any warrant of law the expedient was devised of substituting for the word sequestration the euphemistic term of embargo and ordering the property of all prisoners not liable to confiscation to be embargoed. The words had the same meaning and in the earlier time were used as identical often copulatively as embargo e sequeresto a mere pleonasm of legal phraseology the context showing that sequestration was meant. The slight shade of difference was that in embargo the prisoner selected the depository who was to hold the property and pay from it the expenses of his maintenance in prison during his trial. Thus sequestration under the flimsy veil of calling it embargo became a matter of course in all arrests and the fiscal was instructed when the calificacion was of formal heresy to ask for sequestration in other cases for embargo and when freales were the culprits for embargo of their peculium and papers. So universal was this that in 1665 the Suprema required the Barcelona tribunal to furnish reasons for not embargoing the property in any case of arrest for minor offenses. So it continued to the end In 1815 we find numerous cases of embargo in arrests on charges of bigamy, solicitation, irreverence, propositions, and the like while the dominican Frey Tomas Garcia for celebrating mass without priest's orders had his peculium embargoed. In this illegal extension of sequestration there is something peculiarly heartless. When the offense charged inferred confiscation there was some excuse for making sure that the property would not be secreted or dissipated but in minor cases to subject the offender and his family to the hardship and perhaps ruin caused by seizing his property and holding it during the leisurely progress of his trial. Merely in order to secure to the tribunal the reimbursement of his maintenance in prison shows how thoroughly hardened the holy office had become to human suffering and how its selfish greed stifled all the promptings of humanity. A practical illustration of the process of arrest and sequestration is furnished by the case of Ana de Torres a woman of 22 recently married to Gaspar Agustín a confectioner of Ciudad Real. Testimony of Judaism had been gathered against her and on May 9th 1680 the Toledo Tribunal ordered its familiar Don Alvaro Munoz de Figueroa a knight of Santiago to arrest her, sequestrate her property and send her to Toledo with bed and clothing and one hundred ducats. On May 17th Munoz reported that after ascertaining her address he had gone to her house at nine o'clock that night with a notary, familiar and servants had carried her off to his own turning out the husband and placing two guards so that the sequestration could be made the next day. From what he could see all the contents of the house was not worth one hundred ducats and he was told that they belonged to the husband for she had come to Ciudad Real in September with nothing but her person. Moreover she was five or six months gone with child. He asked for instructions which were given in apparent disregard of the husband's rights for he was told to make the sequestration and send her with her bed and clothes and whatever he could get for her things. On May 24th he reported that he had started her on her journey with four hundred reales about thirty-six ducats which was all that he had realized on the sale of the effects. Successive relays of familiars carried her gratuitously and the next day the receiver of Toledo acknowledged the receipt of the four hundred reales to pay for her food. Then on July 6th the Alcaide reported that she was suffering from an inflammation of the throat which in her condition threatened serious complications. The medico was called in who prescribed bleeding and gargles and removal from the confined air of the prison. She was taken to the house of the Alcaide where she was duly bled and on July 18th was sufficiently recovered to ask for an audience. In due time on September 13th the Alcaide reported her confinement and that he had provided a midwife when he was ordered to take care that she had everything necessary for her recovery and comfort. On July 29th the child was baptized and the mother brought back to the prison when she was placed in a cell with two other women and in October orders were drawn for one hundred forty-six reales to pay for the clothes and swaddling bands of the infant and for fourteen reales to the chapel of the cathedral for its baptism. The redeeming features of these latter details afford a welcome relief to the sordid eagerness of the inquisition in grasping everything within its reach in order to escape the costs of persecution regardless of the misery which it inflicted. In the present case we learn nothing as to the husband who was innocent, thus turned out of his house and stripped of his furniture. This was no concern of the Holy Office. Volume 2 by Henry Charles Lea Book 6, Practice, Chapter 4 Part 1, The Secret Prison The Carcele Secretas, or Secret Prison, was the official designation of the place of confinement during trial of those accused of heresy. It formed part of the building of the inquisition so that the prisoner could at any moment be brought into the audience chamber without being exposed to public view. Such a case as Caranzas where confinement was in a different place and the inquisitors went there being wholly exceptional. The Secret Prison was exclusively one of detention. The Casa de Penitencia, or Punitive Prison being wholly different, and the contrast between the two, the laxity of the imprisonment as a punishment of the guilty and its rigor toward those whose guilt was yet uncertain, is not the least of the anomalies of the Holy Office. As a general rule it may be said that imprisonment followed arrest and that admission to bail was an exceptional favor of the early time virtually withdrawn afterwards. In 1530 we have an example in the case of Antonio de Parejo a priest whose offenses did not amount to formal heresy who was released by the Toledo Tribunal from the Secret Prison and given the city as a prison on bail in a hundred thousand maravides furnished by his brother Viscanio who renounced his fuero. Parejo Morovo took a solemn oath not to leave Toledo on his own feet or those of others and that a certain Mateo Perez could always tell where he was to be found. Various regulations in 1535 and 1537 allow bail in cases where arrest had been made on slender evidence but in 1560 Valdez ordered that no exception should be made when the charge was of heresy. For those held in less serious charges there was less rigorous treatment. The inquisitorial jurisdiction extended over a wide range of offenses more or less trivial and the tribunals did not care to be burdened with the expense of prisoners who were not likely to have the safety in flight or to warn their accomplices. For these there were various grades of confinement under the practice known as a placeria of assigning the city as a prison or the offender's house or the less rigorous prison for officials under trial known as the carcel de familiares. Thus about 1640 a writer says that in cases of blasphemy accused may be assigned the city as a prison or if the offense has been especially shameless and scandalous and re-interrated it may be proper to confine him in the carcel de familiares or if flight is anticipated even in the secret prison although this is a rigor not now in practice. He adds that when astrologers spontaneously denounce themselves they are not thrown into a secret prison but into the carcel de familiares or are given their own houses or the city as a prison. Friars often, unless the charges were particularly grave, were assigned for detention to the convent of their order in accordance with the general policy of guarding the honor of the church. When the prisons of the tribunals were crowded, convents were also sometimes used as subsidiary prisons where they were provided with cells for detention. In some tribunals we also hear of carcelas medias, carcelas comunes, carcelas públicas, for offenses not of faith. These appear to be similar to the carcel de familiares and in all of them confinement was held not to inflict the indelible stain of the secret prison. As a rule the prisoner in these tribunals may be confined to the carcelas medias although he might be confined seen comunicación. In fact the whole matter lay at the discretion of the tribunal. We have seen how in the passionate conflicts of jurisdiction inquisitors sometimes wrecked vengeance on their opponents by inflicting on them the infamy of confinement in the secret prison. So on the other hand culprits charged with heresy in the carcelas medias and then as the trial advanced and the evidence grew more compromising were transferred to the secret prison. Thus in 1678 Angela Perez on trial for Judaism by the tribunal of Toledo was moved, June 22nd from the medias to the secretas. The same occurred at Valladolid in 1697 in several cases of Judaism and in the late as 1818 there is an example at Seville where Anna Maria Barbero tried for superstitions and blasphemies was similarly shifted when the case reached the stage of formal accusation. In compassionating the hardships of the secret prisons the horrors of the jails of the period must not be lost to sight and in the comparison we shall see that those of the inquisition were less than those of other jurisdictions. It is true that the ancient laws of Castile proclaimed that prisons were meant not for punishment but for detention while awaiting trial and that Ferdinand and Isabella in 1489 ordered a weekly inspection by the judges who should listen to all complaints made by prisoners, a provision repeated by Charles V in 1525 yet the petition of the dread in 1534 shows how little attention these enlightened enactments received and the condition of the jails can be conjectured from that of Valencia where about 1630 Pedro Bonet secretary of the inquisition was confined while a competencia was fought over him and when he was surrendered to the tribunal he was in such a state that he died within three days. It is certain that the inquisition regarded its secret prison as more humane than the royal jails even in modern times for in 1816 when Don Agostin Perala was tried by both jurisdictions for certain irreligious and anti-political propositions. The tribunal of Madrid in procuring his transfer to its cells asserted that this was to relieve him from the inevitable hardships of the royal jails in which he was confined. This may well be true for the secret prison had the reputation of being less harsh than those of the spiritual jurisdictions. In 1629 Fr. Diego de Medina when brought before the tribunal of Valladolid for uttering some radical heresies explained that in his convent de la Victoria he was kept in the stocks of the convent prison and he had made the heretical assertions in order to be transferred to the milder treatment of the inquisition whereupon he was dismissed with a reprimand. We might regard this as an isolated case were it not for a similar one about 1675 where a cleric confined in the Episcopal prison pretended Judaism with the object of being removed to the inquisition. In this instance the tribunal rebuked and remanded him to the tender mercies of his bishop. Whether the secret prisons were better or worse than the royal and ecclesiastical jails they were dismal and unwholesome places of confinement. Of course as structures they varied greatly. Few if any of the buildings of the inquisition were constructed for its use. In Saragossa the royal Castile of Alaphéria in Barcelona the royal palace in Valencia the Archepiscopal palace in Seville the castle of Triana in Cordoba the Alcazar were occupied and utilised and elsewhere such buildings as seem suitable were taken. Those which had served as castles had dungeons already provided. In the others cells were constructed. Under the circumstances there could be no common plan in no general standard of convenience and completeness. It is to be hoped that not many were like that of Palermo where there were great subterranean caverns which the inquisitors constructed cells for their prisoners but probably not much better was part of the secret prison of Toledo of which we get a glimpse in 1592. Marie Rodriguez after lying there for nine months with a year old baby for it was entirely dark and she and her companions suffered greatly and they were sick to which the inquisitors coldly replied that what she needed was to discharge her conscience and save her soul and for the rest she should have justice. That the prisons should be unsanitary was a matter of course at the period and the death rate must have been large especially during the pestilences which are of constant recurrence in the annals of time. Statistics are of course unattainable but the records frequently refer to the death of prisoners during trial. In Valladolid the report of 1630 to the Suprema includes the names of twelve deceased prisoners. With the existing state of their cases and in the great Madrid Autodefe of 1680 all the dead who were burnt to the number of eight had died in the prisons. Confinement in the secret prison was regarded as one of the gravest misfortunes that could befall a man in consequence of the indelible stain that it inflicted on him and his descendants. The consulta magna of 1696 dwells eloquently on the horror inspired by such imprisonment and the injustice of subjecting to it at the whim of an inquisitor, those whose offenses had no relation to the faith. In support of this it adduces the case of a woman of Seville in 1682 who had some words with the wife of a secretary of the tribunal. The Alguenzil was sent to arrest her and in her frenzy desire to avoid imprisonment she threw herself from an upper window and broke both her legs. The consulta adds that those who were guilty only of an insult to a familiar were not infrequently thrust into the deepest dungeons of the secret prisons. The terror thus caused was rated as one of the most efficient powers possessed by the Inquisition. When in 1622 Gregory the 15th granted to the bishop's concurrent jurisdiction over the crime of solicitation of charges addressed to him from Spain represented this dread as a deterrent much more powerful than anything that the bishops could bring to bear. In the royal instructions to the Duke of Albuquerque, then ambassador at Rome it is argued that the fear of the infamy wrought by the prisons of the Inquisition restrains the hardest culprits. Power such as this was liable to constant abuse even after the supreme had deprived the tribunals of initiative and when the attention of Carlos IV was called to it in 1798 by the case of Ramón de Salas, a professor at Salamanca, he proposed to require special royal permission before consignment to a secret prison. But Lorente tells us that court intrigues prevented the enactment of this wholesome reform. The cruelty which kept all prisoners in chains was not peculiar to the Inquisition, for we have seen that it was a common practice in the secular jails, and Italian visiting Madrid in 1592 describes three prisons there, that of the court of the city and of the priest, and says that all prisoners no matter how slight their offenses were fettered. It was evidently a novelty to him which he sought to explain by the quality of the buildings. None of the instructions refer to chains, but a chance illusion of Pablo García shows that their use was assumed as a matter of course, and this occasionally presents itself in the trials as when in 1565 Fierre de Bonavilla asked their removal to enable him to change his drawers, and in 1647 Alonzo Velasquez who escaped and was recaptured describes how he rid himself of them. While thus the Inquisition is not to be taxed with special cruelty in following the universal custom, it had its methods of inflicting intolerable hardships in special cases, when a heretic proved to be impenet, a mortaza or gag was applied to him. What was the exact form of this instrument of torture it would say, but the illusions to it show that it was regarded as a severe inflection. When thus worn in prison it was not a mere precaution against the prisoner spreading his heresies, for in order of the supreme it prescribes that no one be allowed to speak with him except the confessor sent to him in the night before his execution, while even then the mortaza was not to be removed. There was another device of pure humility, the pie de amigo, an iron fork or crotch fitted to the chin and secured by a band around the neck or the waist to keep the head up and rigidly fixed. The customary use of this was on culprits scourged through the streets or paraded in vergüenza, but it was sometimes employed to heighten the sufferings of prisoners, either through mere magnitignity or to induce confession. When the celebrated doctor Agustin Casaya was burnt in Valadoyed in 1559, envoys from the tribunal sent to him the afternoon before the Autodéphée found him in a dark cell loaded with chains and wearing a pie de amigo, although he had freely confessed, recanted and begged for mercy. In 1599 in the case of Jacques Pinzon, a French Calvinist in Toledo who made a disturbance in the prison, fifty lashes were administered and a pie de amigo was ordered, April 20th. At an audience granted him six months later, October 19th, he is described as still wearing it as well as two pairs of fetters and, in this case, the pie de amigo extended from the neck to the right hand. In spite of commissioners, escape from the secret prison was by no means rare, but it was not often finally successful, for the organization of the inquisition generally enabled it to recapture the fugitive. A description of the culprit was at once distributed with a mandate ordering the civil authorities to summon everyone to assist with the familiars and commissioners to scour the roads under control. Thus an army was promptly on foot. Every suspicious stranger was scrutinized and the fugitive was usually soon arrested and returned. In the jurisprudence of the period, breaking gaol was held to be a confession of guilt, and some authorities held that this applied to the prisoners of the inquisition. But Simancas and Rojas agree in regarding this as excessive if the fugitive was recaptured the ordinary practice was to give him one or two hundred lashes. His trial was resumed and carried forward to the end. If he was not recaptured, he was prosecuted for contuminency and abstincy. Numerous cases attest to the accuracy of this, although when the culprit was a person of condition, the scourging was replaced by stricter and increased severity in the sentence. For those who eluded recapture, the prosecution for contuminency had but one ending. The absentee was held to be a self-confessed and impotent heretic fit only for the stake. Thus in 1586 Jean de Salinas, a Frenchman on trial for Lutheranism in Valencia, succeeded in escaping with his life. He was not recaptured, the necessary edicts of summons were issued in due order and as a contemptuous heretic he was burnt in effigy January 23, 1590. Although at the time of his evasion his case had already been voted on, with the insignificant sentence of arbutiation de Levi and six months seclusion. In the secular jails, the state always had the right of imprisoning seen communication, where there were special reasons for such rigor. But in the secret prisons of the Holy Office, this was the universal rule enforced with the utmost solitude as an essential part of its highly prized secrecy. We have seen that from the arrest until delivery to the jailer, the prisoner was not allowed to exchange a word with anyone but the officials, and this was continued with the same strictness when he was within the walls, so far as concerned the outer world, to which he was as one already in the tomb. He could learn nothing of those whom he held dear, nor could they conjure his fate until, after perhaps the lapse of time in Autolefe as one destined to the stake, or to the galleys, or to perpetual prison. It would be impossible to communicate the sum of human misery thus wantonly inflicted by the inquisition during its centuries of existence. Misery for which the only excuse was that communication with friends might aid in his defense. According to inquisitional theory, the absolute that all measures were justified which would hinder fraudulent defense. This strictness was not observed at first. The instructions of 1488 call attention to the evils arriving from communication with prisoners, and order inquisitors to see in future that it is not permitted, except by the admittance of religious persons for their spiritual benefit. This received scant attention for the instructions of 1598, order Algualsis and jailers not to permit the entrance of wives or kindred, and whatever is sent to prisoners must be examined to ensure that no letters or messages reach them. Even inquisitors and other officials were forbidden to speak with prisoners except in the presence of another official. This rigor was relaxed for an order of the 1814, provided that no one from the outside should speak with a prisoner, except by special license of the inquisitor, and then only in his presence and that of a notary, and a further concession in 1536 was that if a prisoner desired an interview with his wife, the inquisitor, if he saw fit, could grant permission. These slender concessions, however, were soon withdrawn, and in 1546 officials were reminded that only those permitted by the instructions could be admitted and that any contraventions would be severely punished. Seraptitious communications were difficult to prevent, and so little were the officials trusted that two locks were required on each cell door, so that the alcalade or jailer could not enter without his success with which all this was enforced is boastingly alluded to in a report of the Valladolid Autodefe of May 21, 1559, where it is declared that the inquisitorial process was so secret that no one knew what was the offence of any prisoner till he appeared on the scaffold. The increasing importance attached to this is revealed in the instructions of 1561, which take for granted that all access from outside is forbidden and which regulate the interior life of the prison with the same object. Everything brought to a prisoner, whether provisions or other matters, was reported to the inquisitors, who decided as to its delivery, if allowed, it was minutely examined to see that it transmitted no message. If it were found that prisoners had communicated with each other, no pains were spared to find out how it was done and what had passed between them. When prisoners were confined together, if their cell was changed, they were kept together and not scattered among others. The segregation from the world was maintained to the end. At the Autodefe, no one was allowed to speak with penitence, except the confessors assigned to them, and those who were burnt were allowed to do their last reckoning without being allowed to learn what was the fate of those whom they held dear. When penitence left the prison after the Auto, they were subjected to the Avisos de Carcelles, in which they were examined under oath as to all that they had seen or heard while confined, and were ordered under heavy penalties to reveal nothing of their own experiences. In the cold-blooded cruelty, it was merely the pitiless enforcement of a rule which was superior to all the promptings of humanity. In the fulfillment of the rule, the most minute regulations were multiplied and re-interrated. The alcalade was warned to be especially careful about his wife and children who were never to be allowed to see the prisoners. No one was to be admitted to the cells except the sworn attendant who served the food, and when, as in some tribunals, it was served uncooked for the prisoners to cook, it was not to be wrapped in paper, but was to be brought in earthen pots. In serving food and in cleaning cells the door of one was always to be securely locked before opening another. No windows which looked upon those of the cells were allowed to be filled. In Mercia the water carrier who served the inquisition was not allowed to enter the courtyard to fill the jars, but to do so from a window opening upon the court, or to have the water in a room where the jars could be filled. No precaution was too minute, no watchfulness too careful when the supreme object was concerned of isolating the prisoners from their friends and from each other. End of Book 6, Chapter 3, Part 2, recorded by herehis.com Chapter 4, Part 2, The Secret Prison Yet there were ways of eluding the vigilance of the tribunals of which bribery of the underlings was the most frequent. Even the Alcides were not insensible to such seductions, and a writer advises them to take warning by the example of those who enter office in honor and leave it in ignominy. The kindred and friends of prisoners were frequently people of means, and there could be no hesitation in outlays to circumvent the cruel rules which forbade to them and to the captives all knowledge of each other's fate. The Inquisition was by no means consistent in its treatment of those who thus violated its regulations. In 1635, Miguel de Maradillo, a bricklayer working on the roof of the prison of Valladolid, carried a message from one prisoner to another informing him that his wife and son had been arrested. On another occasion he told the same prisoner that his daughter had been relieved of the San Benito and he conveyed a paper from him to them. In this he seems to have been actuated merely by compassion and his punishment was light. A reprimand, six months exile from Valladolid and prohibition of future employment on the building of the Inquisition. In 1655 Francisco López Cappadocia on trial by the tribunal of Valladolid was subjected to a second prosecution for communicating with other prisoners and was sentenced only to reprimand and exile. The greater severity seems to have been shown when employees of the tribunals were the guilty parties. In 1591 when Don Alonso de Mendoza was confined in Toledo on a charge of heresy, his friends outside established correspondence by means of the cook Francisco de Saavedra who conveyed the letters in the dishes. She admitted having received bribes to the amount of 8,160 moderate 80s and was punished with a fine of 6,000, besides 100 lashes and 4 years exile. Still harsher was the treatment about 1650 in Mexico of Esteban Domingo a negro slave employed as an assistant in the crowded inquisitorial prison. He was detected in carrying for money communications between the prisoners and their friends for which he was condemned to 200 lashes and 6 years in the galleys. Towards the close of its career the inquisition seems to manifest a disposition to relax somewhat in its rigidity. In 1815 the Madrid Tribunal referred to the Suprema a petition from Donia Manuela Osorno to be permitted to see her husband Don Vicente Lema then in its prison. The answer was that after he had completed his declarations she might be allowed to see him once or twice a week in the presence of an inquisitor but only to confer on their domestic affairs. To this tendency may also be attributed the leniency shown to Alfonso Gonzalez barber of the Tribunal of Murcia who made use of his position to convey letters and paper to Francisco Villascusa a prisoner and who was vinaigriantly treated with a reprimand and disability to hold office under the inquisition. A necessary feature of the prohibition of communication was that prisoners were debarred from the use of writing materials except under the strictest supervision. Some use of them was unavoidable when drawing up a defense or a petition to the tribunal opportunity for which was never refused. But they were required to apply to the inquisitors for paper stating the number of sheets wanted when these were carefully numbered and rubricated by the secretary at the upper right hand corner and were required to be scrupulously returned so that there could be no withholding of any for another purpose. This device was prescribed by the Suprema in 1534 and remained the invariable rule. Thus when Frae Vicente Seyes in Valencia, at an audience of June 27th, 1692 asked for two sheets of paper and on June 30th returned one and a half in blank saying that what he had written on the other half-sheet was false and he had thrown it into the filth. He was made to fetch it filthy as it was. Whatever quantity a prisoner asked was given to him and some consumed paper by the choir. Indeed Frae Luis de León relieved the tedium and anxiety of his four years imprisonment at Valladolid by writing his classical devotional work The Nombres de Cristo. While, as we have seen great care was taken to prevent prisoners from communicating with each other it by no means follows that confinement was solitary. As a general rule it was regarded as preferable that male prisoners should be alone and that women should have companionship. But there could be no hard and fast line of policy followed except that accomplices and negativos those who denied the accusation should not be placed together. Husband and wife were thus always separated but when occasion required there was no hesitation in crowding four or five persons together and in the careless confidence of common misfortune this often opened a valuable source of information for there never seems to have been any scruple in betraying that confidence in the hope of winning favor by reporting to the communal the comprising utterances of cell companions. The object in keeping apart those who are accomplices was to prevent their encouraging each other in denial and agreeing on a common line of defense. Men who were confined by themselves asked for a companion and women more frequently did so. It was impossible that discipline should be uniform at all times and places and we sometimes find it exceedingly lax. It infers great looseness when in 1546 the Suprema felt it necessary to enjoin care in permitting prisoners freely to visit each other and in the trial of Isabel Reiner at Toledo in 1570 we find her stating in an audience that in passing through the prison she saw a fellow prisoner who informed her that her husband and Estefan Carrière were also prisoners and who asked her why she was imprisoned. In fact as we gather from chance illusions in the trials there must have been a certain freedom of movement. In the case of Benito Ferrer in 1621 at Toledo there was an investigation as to his sanity in which the al-Qaedae spoke of his going regularly to the prison for water and cooking his food like the rest while the assistant described taking him to the latrines when desired. From the trial of Jacques Pinzon in Granada in 1599 we learn that in the morning the al-Qaedae brought the prisoner's water and returned after mass with their food. The mention of a pan to hold dishes shows that they had fire and we hear shots, spoons, and other utensils. There was evidently a diversity of routine in the different tribunals and when Valdez in 1562 was obliged to order that prisoners were not to go for their rations because they met the servants of the purveyor and that the al-Qaedae must receive the food and carry it to the cells it argues that in some tribunals at least a considerable freedom of movement had existed. In 1652 a minute code of instructions for the al-Qaedae shows us what at that time were the regulations. On rising in the morning he is to visit all the cells and see how the prisoners are. He is to examine carefully for openings through which they may communicate with each other. Doors are to be carefully closed and he is not to leave with the prisoners knives cords or scissors. If scissors are needed he is to stay while they are used and take them away. He is not to give them books to read without permission of the inquisitors. Rations are served twice a week on Sundays and Thursdays. And on the afternoon previous he is to see each prisoner ascertain what he wants and set it down in a book that the al-Qaedaeer may provide it. Every nightfall he is to examine the cells to guard against attempts to escape searching under the pillows for articles that would assist flight or for writing materials. Prisoners able to cook their food will do so in a bracero. For those who cannot the cooking is done by an appointee of the tribunal. All this shows a commendable desire to avoid very harshness. Yet the regulations enforce one hardship which appears to have been universal at all periods after the earliest. The prohibition of lights a severe inflection for in the obscurity of their cells the hours of darkness must have seemed interminable. It is probable that at first this was not the rule. For in 1497 in Valencia there is an item of seven sueldos for dineros for lights in the account of the expenses of Alonso de Roman who had lain in the secret prison for nine months and nine days. Of course in the general venality of the period prison officials were not always inaccessible to bribery and money could procure relaxation of the rules and detectives it was visited with a severity not often shown to delinquent officials. This is illustrated by a case in Toledo in 1591 when judicious liberality procured unlawful privileges such as having cell doors open allowing communications and other similar indulgences. Francisco Mendez de Lema the al-Qaeda attempted flight and sentenced to a hundred lashes galley service exile and deprivation of office. His cousin and assistant Miguel de Jaya confessed partially and was tortured without extracting more. He escaped with dismissal, disability for office and four years of exile. There was one regulation which bore with a special severity on the innocent was a matter of indifference to the heretic. This was the deprivation of all religious consolation during the period often prolonged for years of incarceration. It is difficult to understand this in the professors of a theology which teaches the infinite importance of the sacraments as aids to spiritual development as well as to salvation. Especially when so large a portion of the prisoners were good Catholics tried on charges which did not infer formal heresy. Possibly it may be explained by the customary assumption of the guilt of the accused who had thus incurred ipso facto excommunication and the Spanish inquisition had the example of the Roman whose prisoners were similarly not allowed to receive the sacraments or to hear mass. Yet the great canonist whose attention was probably drawn to the matter by the case of his client Caranza thus deprived of the sacraments for 18 years tells us that there is no law justifying the Spanish inquisition in this. Though perhaps it may have special authority and also good reasons. To him however it appeared that the sacraments would soften the heart of prisoners and lead them to confess. While it was cruel to leave them exposed without defense to the assaults of the demon during the many years of their captivity. Yet the refusal was absolute. Frai Luis de Leon whose three years of imprisonment pleaded earnestly for the sacraments but the only reply of the Suprema to his petition was to tell the biodolid tribunal to finish the case as soon as convenient. While the sacraments were denied, sacramental confession was allowed though of course the priest could not grant absolution. The earliest allusion I have met to this is an order by Cardinal Manrique in 1529 and in 1540 formal instructions were issued when a prisoner asks for a confessor if the case admits of it a proper person should be given to him. This privilege was somewhat abridged by the elaborate provisions of the instructions of 1561 which are framed to turn it to advantage. If a prisoner in good health asks for a confessor it is safer not to grant the request unless he has confessed judiciously and has satisfied the evidence. But as he cannot be absolved for heresy until reconciled to the church such confession is not of full effect unless he is in the article of death or a woman in the peril of childbirth in which case the canon laws are to be observed. If a sick man asks for a confessor he shall have one who shall be sworn to secrecy and to reveal to the tribunal any commission entrusted to him if it is outside of confession and to refuse it if within confession. The inquisitors shall instruct him to tell the prisoner that he cannot be absolved if guilty unless he confesses judiciously. If his judicial confession satisfies the evidence he is to be formally reconciled before he dies when judiciously absolved the confessor shall absolve him sacramentally when if there is nothing to prevent it he may receive Christian burial as secretly as possible. If a sick man does not ask for a confessor and the physician is apprehensive of the result he must urge him in every way to confess. The advantage thus afforded by the confessional in the trial for Judaism of Ana Lopez at Valladolid in 1637. She had denied but was taken sick and declared by the physician to be in danger. To the confessor she admitted that at the age of 17 she was taught Judaism that she subsequently returned to the true faith until on coming to Valladolid a woman perverted her. She warned her that she must confess judiciously. She authorized him to report her confession and he absolved her sacramentally. An inquisitor with a notary went to her cell when she repeated her confession and gave the name of the woman who had perverted her and on her recovery her trial was resumed when she confirmed her confession. It is the kindly rule that absolution is never to be refused to the dying. He is to be saved from hell and can settle the account of his sins in purgatory or by an indulgence or a mass on a privileged altar. With this the inquisition did not interfere as its professed object was the saving of souls and it even by a Carta Accordada of 1632 permitted communion to dying heretics who had confessed judiciously and satisfied the evidence. It required however the wafer to be consecrated in the tribunal if there was time. If the haste was extreme it could be brought from the parish church but without pop or procession. Even the veneration due to the Godhead had to yield to the secrecy which forbade it to be known that a prisoner was dying in the holy office. In the same spirit when a prisoner died without reconciliation the al-Qaeda reported it to the inquisitors who ordered the secretary to identify the body and bury it secretly. It was thrust into a hole without his family knowing his fate until if his trial was unfinished his heirs would be summoned to defend his fame and memory. Or if it had reached a point where sentence could not be pronounced they saw his effigy reconciled or burnt in an auto-defe. Even when he had confessed and been reconciled on the deathbed we have just seen that his Christian burial was to be as secret as possible. When the trial ended in acquittal or suspension the lifting of the sequestration would announce it to the heirs. Otherwise it does not seem that there was any provision for their notification. Suicide in prison which was not infrequent was regarded as conclusive proof of impenitence even if the prisoner had confessed and professed repentance. But his heirs were allowed to defend him on the score of insanity failing which he was burnt in effigy. Sickness was of frequent occurrence and was treated with creditable humanity. The instructions of 1561 require that the sick shall have every care and that whatever the physician deems necessary for them shall be provided. Of course the fulfillment of this command must have varied with the temper of the tribunals but nevertheless the spirit dictating it is in marked contrast with the conduct of the jails of the period. When cases transcended the resources of the inquisition the ordinary course was to transfer the patient to a hospital in disregard of the cherished secrecy of the prison. Instances of this are common enough in the records and a single case will suffice for its illustration. November 6th, 1641 Juan de Valdez on trial for bigamy in Valdolide asked an audience to beg for despatch as he was very sick. This was confirmed by the al-Qaedae and by the physician who said that for nineteen days he had had a tercian and was too weak to be bled and moreover he was suffering from stone and strangury that he could not be cured in the prison and should be removed to a hospital. This was done the hospital authorities being notified not to allow him to escape and to keep the tribunal advised of his condition. In January 1642 he was reported as being still in mortal danger but he recovered was returned to the secret prison and was sentenced on August 21st. The care of female prisoners was naturally a subject of some perplexity especially as the refinement of matrons and women assistants were unknown to the inquisition. When the instructions of 1498 order that the prison for men and for women shall be separate it does not infer that previously they had been herded promiscuously together but that in future distinct quarters should be provided for the sexes a provision which was not observed as it was deemed sufficient that women should be confined separately so that there could not be communication between them and the men. The condition of helpless women virtually at the mercy of their male attendants in the secrecy which shrouded everything within the prison walls can readily be imagined and there must have been outrages coming to the knowledge of Jimenez in 1512 that aroused him to a sense of the dangerous opportunities existing for in that year an order was issued threatening death to any attendant who should have intercourse with a female prisoner. The severity of the penalty measured the gravity of the necessity calling for it but like so many other salutary provisions the tribunals were too merciful to enforce it on their subordinates. In 1590 Andrés de Castro, al-Qaeda of the Valencia prison was tried for seducing a female prisoner kissing and soliciting others allowing communications between prisoners and accepting bribes from their kindred. There were 29 accusing witnesses. He denied the charges but virtually admitted their truth by breaking jail. On his recapture for this complicated series of offenses he escaped with a hundred lashes three years in the galleys perpetual exile from Valencia and disability for office in the Inquisition. A sentence which, when compared with the habitual severity of the tribunals, shows how lightly his sexual crime was regarded by his judges. It was not that the death penalty had been abrogated for we find it repeated in 1652 in the logronio instructions to al-Qaeda's. Doubtless the rule mentioned above that women should be gathered together in their cells was designed to afford them protection against their jailers. In the not unusual case of the arrest of pregnant women consideration was given to their condition and suitable temporary accommodation was found for them during confinement outside of the prison. Thus in the case of Maria Rodriguez in the tribunal of Vial do Lid who was sentenced June 3rd 1641 the delay in presenting the accusation until September 16th is explained on the record by her being pregnant and removed from the prison until she recovered. This was an improvement on the earlier practice if we may believe the Yarena Memorial of 1506 which states that women in the throes of childbirth were denied all assistance even that of a midwife. They were abandoned to nature and many had perished in consequence. It was not only in the general prescriptions of the instructions that regard for the welfare of the prisoners is manifested. Several orders issued from time to time as to details are animated by the same spirit. Thus in 1517 Cardinal Adrian told the Sicilian inquisitors in a letter probably addressed to all the tribunals that they must pay particular attention to the qualities requisite in the jailer. They must seduously bear in mind that the prison is for detention and not for punishment. The prisoners are to be well treated and not be defrauded in their food. For which ample provision must be made. The prison must be inspected every Saturday by one of the inquisitors and not fortnightly as provided in the instructions. Those of the prisoners who have trades are to work and thus contribute to their support. And if the officials give the women sowing to do they must be paid. An extract made in 1645 from a book of instructions which was read annually in the tribunals shows that this praiseworthy care for the welfare of the prisoners was the permanent policy of the inquisition. It prescribes the utmost punctuality in inspecting the cells every fortnight and learning what the inmates desire, reporting this to the tribunal, which decided what each one should have and if there was a surplus in the allowance for rations from which it could be procured the al-Qaeda was at once to be ordered to see that the purveyor bought it. If he neglected anything he was to be reproved for the wrong committed in his lack of punctuality. Special attention was called to serving the rations in the morning so that prisoners could prepare their midday meal. Meat was to be given daily and only one day's rations at a time in hot weather lest it should spoil. In cool weather two days supply and this was so important for the health of the prisoner that it should be the special charge of someone while an inquisitor ought occasionally to look to it. All this was admirable in tone and spirit. Unfortunately its execution depended on its enforcement by the inquisitors on their regular performance of inspection and on holding the jailers responsible by rigorous punishment for derelections. The duty of inspection by inquisitors had been prescribed as indispensable by the instructions of 1488 but it was impossible to make them obey and complaints of their negligence are frequent. In 1644 we have the testimony of a contemporary bat in some places at least it was regularly, if perfunctorily, performed and the logronio instructions of 1652 make it the duty of the al-qaeda to remind the inquisitors of it every fortnight because it is customarily forgotten. The other requisite severity of punishment for derelections was also lacking through the customary tenderness shown to delinquent officials. End of book 6 chapter 4 part 2 Book 6 chapter 4 part 3 of the history of the inquisition of Spain, volume 2 by Henry Charles Leia Book 6 Practice chapter 4 part 3 the secret prison it would be manifestly unjust to condemn as a whole the management of the secret prison. It would be manifestly unjust to condemn as a whole the management of the secret prison the secret prison the secret prison to condemn as a whole the management of the prisons it would be equally unwarranted to praise them indiscriminately everything dependent on the conscientious discharge of duty by the inquisitors and no general judgment can be formed as to the conditions of so many prisons during three centuries except that their average standard was considerably higher than that in other jurisdictions and that if there were abolds of horror such as have been described by imaginative writers they were wholly exceptional they were good and they were bad the memorials of Derina and Hayen in 1506 described them as horrible dens overrun with rats, snakes and other vermin where the wretched captives sickened and despair and were starved by the embezzlement of a large portion of the monies allowed for their support while no physician was permitted to attend the sick and the attendants maltreated them like dogs making allowance for rhetorical saturation we can imagine that this description was applicable to Cordova under Lucero matters seemed to have been not much better at Seville in 1560 where the oppression of the Al-Qaeda Gaspar de Benavidez provoked a despairing revolt in which his assistant was mortally wounded vengeance was wreaked on the participators in the fray of whom one avus burnt alive and another a boy of 14 had 400 lashes and was sent to the galleys for life while Gaspar, who had provoked it was let off with appearing in an auto-defei forfeiture of wages and perpetual banishment from Seville when malfeasance in office escaped with such ill-judged leniency it was impossible to maintain discipline and the prisoners suffered accordingly as a result of an inspection of Barcelona by Dr. Alonso Perez the Al-Qaeda Mansura Pastor is scolded in 1544 for keeping a mistress in his house for placing a kinsman in charge of the prison and absending himself for receiving presents from discharged prisoners for frequent absence leaving the prison unguarded for combining the incompatible positions of jailer and dispensing and of making the women prisoners work and taking their earnings the pastor was only reprimanded in order to restore the presence virtual immunity invited continuance of abuses and in 1550 after another inspection we find the Suprema again averting to the evil result of combining the functions of jailer and dispensero and ordering the inquisitors to fill the latter position the prison of the Canary Tribunal at times seems to have been equally mismanaged an English man named John Hill was brought there from Ferrell June 23rd 1574 with nothing but his clothes and no money for nine months his complaints were loud and frequent a day's duration was insufficient for a single meal he begged for more bread and water also for a mat to lie on as he had to sleep on the ground and he could not rest for the lice and fleas for more than two months he prayed for a shirt to cover his nakedness and though an order was issued January 22nd to give him one it had to be repeated February 18th even as late as 1792 Don Juan Perdomo complained that for 14 months the alchai had kept him on a diet of saltfish that he would allow him to change his linen but once a fortnight and that he caused him to suffer such torment from thirst that he would go into the courtyard and cry aloud hoping that some passerby would summon the alchai yet other passages in the Canary record show a praise worthy desire to alleviate the rigors of confinement and in general it may be said that the conditions of the prisoners depended wholly on the temper and character of the officials in charge when these were kindly the prisoners were spared unnecessary hardships Francisco Ortiz in 1529 at Toledo for willing testimony to good treatment which he had not anticipated in 1563 Fernando Diaz peasant after a month's detention in Toledo speaks of improved health here he says he has mutton to eat while at home he had only sardines in 1567 a member of the Suprema visiting the prison of Valdolid was told by Leonor de Cisnelles that she had nothing to complain of she had mutton and bread and wine and fruit and was well treated as she was all relaxed whose husband had been burnt eight years before she probably had no property and the expense was defrayed by the tribunal these are by no means isolated instances in 1541 at Toledo Juan Garcia a day laborer on trial after six weeks in prison asked that nightclothes be given to him as to the other prisoners as he was obliged to sleep in the garments worn during the day when the inquisitor at once ordered him to be supplied in 1657 the accounts of the tribunal of Madrid show 447 half riales spent on clothing for a poor prisoner and those of the Suprema in 1690 have an item of 688 riales devoted to the same purpose we have seen that warrants for arrest ordered beds to be brought with the prison as the inquisition did not furnish them in accordance with an order of 1525 which assumes that this was to relieve the hardships of those brought from a distance yet even in the financial pressure of the 17th century we find in the accounts of the Madrid tribunal in 1659 an order July 11 to the receiver to pay 230 riales for the hire of beds for poor prisoners up to July 15 even more noteworthy are some entries arising from a trial in Madrid of Francisco de Metis in 1680-81 he seems to have had 5 children for whose support was spent in about a year from September 1680 3519 riales of which 1284 would pay to the Ospecio Rial de Pobres for its care of three of them during sickness the tribunal evidently felt itself obliged to take care of the helpless children and such incidents served to show that when the inquisitors had humanitarian instincts there was nothing in the policy of the Holy Office to prevent their full manifestation it is remarkable that in the period of most active work there seems to have been no general settled system of defraining the maintenance of prisoners there is no provision for it in the instructions of 1484 but in Torquemata's supplementary orders of December the receivers required to pay the expenses yet we have seen that immediately after this the Alguazil was in receipt of a salary equal to or more than that of the inquisitors because as Ferdinand said he had to meet the great charge of the prisoners Tien Tan Gran Costa con los presos and as we find this in the salary lists of Saragosa, Burgos, Medina del Campo and Seville it would seem to be a general rule while the instructions of 1498 appear to show it still in force yet the accounts of the Valencia Tribunal in 1497 to 98 indicate that the maintenance of those who had property was drawn from the sequestrations while the pobres miserables presos en las carceles were supported by outside friends or kindred who were subsequently reimbursed by the receiver the Per Diem was 9 diner holes for men and 8 for women while Ali Divit a more and presumably decimious was reckoned at 5 a letter of Ferdinand in 1501 authorizing the receiver of Sardinia to include among his disbursements the cost of maintaining prisoners would indicate that this was becoming the rule but another letter of the same date calling for reimbursement to Anton Lopez a yeoman of his guard who had been ordered by an inquisitor to support certain prisoners shows that no definite system was established these are regular methods afforded opportunity for embezzlement and extortion resulting doubtless and much suffering among the captives the memorials of Yerina and Hyen in 1506 complained of a conspiracy among the officials to cut down the rations and that only 10 maravidis a day were allowed from which two were deducted for shaving, linen and cooking and 5 or 30 were required at current prices for bread alone at length the alkyde or jailer appears as the official handling the funds when in 1510 Ferdinand ordered Valeses the receiver of Seville to pay him 5000 maravidis because he had fed the prisoners during a time of pestilence this was evidently an exceptional case arising from an emergency but it was adopted in 1516 and 1517 in some instructions of the suprema to the tribunal of Sicily where there were sequestrations the amount was to be drawn from them in cases of extreme poverty the cost of a moderate diet could be defrayed from the receiver from the confiscations nearly 40 years had passed since the founding of the Inquisition years of intense activity and as yet no regular system had been adopted in a matter so important the city was felt and in 1518 an order was issued in the name of Charles V which shows that kindred or friends of the prisoner had been expected to bring his food to the prison the order recites that as they come from all parts of the district and are far from their families in property they suffer greatly therefore in the case of non-residents of the city the receiver is to pay for food and necessities under instructions from the Inquisitor the account is to be kept with each prisoner and if he is discharged he shall repay the receiver before his sequestration is lifted if he is poor he shall not be asked for it and the auditor shall pass the item in the receiver's accounts the liberality of this clause seems to have been a novelty and it took some time to establish the duty of the Inquisition to prevent its poor prisoners from starving for if we find the Queen Regent in 1531 authorizing their maintenance at Barcelona at the expense of the Fisk yet this was not held as relieving the family from supporting as far as possible an imprisoned member the account of the dispensary or steward of the Valencia prison from October 8th 1540 to May 5th 1541 shows that during that period there were 25 prisoners thus supported at least partially husbands paying for wives wives for husbands sons for fathers etc the sons received were small and suggest the struggle endured by families to contribute to the necessities of those in jail they were paid in trifle amounts of from 5 suedeos 5 dineros to 8 suedeos 8 dineros representing probably a monthly assessment and this was by no means continuous for in 8 cases only one payment is recorded and in only one case is there more than 2 payments for the whole period the aggregate is only 15 libras 19 suedeos 4 dineros while during this time the steward obtained from the receiver 120 libras 2 suedeos which probably included what the Fisk had to pay and what was drawn from the sequestrations of the wealthier prisoners with regard to the latter was to sell the personal property first and then the real estate and inquisitors were urged in 1547 to be prompt in collecting from the proceeds as the sequestrations were apt to be consumed and supporting the family leaving nothing to repay the Fisk for its advances it was the duty of the inquisitor when a prisoner was brought in to a certain from the receiver and notary of sequestrations his station in life in his wealth depicts the amount of his allowance in accordance with the current prices of provisions but a wealthy man could spend more if he chose and if a person of quality wished to have one or two servants incarcerated with him as in the case of Karanza this was permitted what might be left over from their table was to be given to the poor and not to be made a source of profit to the al-Qaeda and distance zero there was liberality in this as in case of confiscation the estate was diminished by the extra expenditure even the ordinary allowance was at the disposition of the prisoner who could economize on it and spend it in any manner that he chose thus there was never at any time a fixed and absolute ration although of course there was a general minimum standard for the poor who had to be supported whatever it was it was liable to alteration as circumstances might dictate after Jacques Pinzon was imprisoned in Granada February 25th 1599 on March 9th the al-Qaeda reported that he consumed in one day the ration of two and was dying of hunger where upon the inquisitors kindly increased his allowance to a reale per day this kept him quiet for three months when there was a fresh complaint and five Merovedes were added in 1616 Padre Iromino de la Madre de Dios tried for mysticism sought his first audience to complain that his ration was insufficient he wished it increased by a reale a day which could be charged to a sequestrated property evidently prisoners did not hesitate to make their once known and there was a readiness to listen to them with the gradual concentration of power in the Suprema it came to regulate this in all the tribunals in 1635 Valencia reported that in consequence of the dearness of bread the prisoners were suffering from hunger and it asked authority to increase the ration the Suprema deliberated for five weeks and then ordered an increase to be made with great compassion the close supervision exercise is indicated in 1695 an accreditism on a monthly report from the same tribunal in which one of the omissions noted is that the ration assigned to each prisoner is not stated the fall in the purchasing power of money especially of the debase Vissan coinage necessitated an increase in the ration in 1641 at Toledo the ordinary daily allowance was one and a half reales which by 1677 had doubled to three reales in Valencia the ordinary ration had increased to 22 dineros in 1688 and in 1756 to two suedels when the prisons were full and the trials after the first hurried rush grew more and more protracted the expense of maintenance was not small as can be gathered from occasional indications thus in 1566 we find the Suprema ordering its Aguazil mayor to remit the tribunal of Calahora 400 Ducas to defray the food of prisoners in 1586 Benito Sanguino the receiver of Valencia in settling his accounts claimed credit for 1856 suedels pay to this dispensero for the maintenance of poor prisoners in addition to what he had dispersed for the purpose on the orders of inquisitors an irregularity for which the Suprema demanded an explanation some light is thrown on the way in which these costs accumulated by the case of Frey Lucas the Allende guardian of the Franciscan convent of Madrid and one of the dupes of Lucrecia de Leon Abieta Cuevalandera when arrested in 1590 his brother Alonso de Allende asked permission to give him an allowance of a real a day a request which proved costly as the trial lasted for six years and two months in 1659 the orders given by the tribunal of Madrid for the food and incidentals of its poor prisoners who seem to have averaged about 10 in number reached an aggregate of 12,874 royals and in 1681 the amount was 25,748 as the activity of inquisition diminished and perhaps also as its resources fell short this drain on its finances was greatly reduced in a statement of the expenses of the Valencia Tribunal from 1784 to 1790 inclusive the charge for maintenance of poor prisoners becomes trifling the total expenditure during these seven years was 501 libras, 18 suedeos of which 300 libras, 8 suedeos were recovered from the parties leaving a net outlay of 201 libras 10 suedeos or less than 30 libras per annum the tribunals were unrelenting in the collection of these expenses from all who could be held responsible in the case of frails who could own no property their communities were liable thus in 1649 the Tribunal of Valencia issues an order to collect from the provincial of the Augustinians 600 royals for certain members of his order who were in its prison when the trial of Frey Estevan Rimonida was concluded September 12th 1696 the Barcelona Tribunal rendered to his order of Merced a bill of 730 royals for his expenses the provincial assessed it on all the mercenarian converts of Catalonia and on November 15th the inquisitors scolded the prior of the Barcelona convent for delay when he replied that his convent had paid its share but that others were dilatory in 1709 the Suprema issued an order that there must be no exceptions even to the barefooted Franciscans they had been endeavoring to procure exemption the inquisition was not likely to be more lenient with the laity its determination to secure reimbursement is seen in an order of the Valencia Tribunal in 1636 that when Francisco Morales completes the term of galley service to which he had been condemned he has to be sold to his neighbors to repay what he had cost to the Fisk these costs were not simply in prison but for expenses attending arrest and trial including the fees of advocates and procurator and all postage incurred the whole of this was a first lien on the property of the prisoner and if he was a filios familias his father was liable and could be forced to pay before an auto defay the dispensary and notary of sequestrations carefully made up the account of every penitent escaped confiscation and it was the duty of the fiscal to see that if he had property he settled or gave an obligation to settle and if he was poor that he took an oath to pay whenever he should be able how these accounts were swelled as visible in that rendered by the Barcelona Tribunal in 1756 to Don Antonio Adorno a soldier of gentle blood in the regiment of Asturias he was only 58 days in prison which at two suedeos a day amounted to a little less than six libras but the aggregate of the bill was 26 he subscribed his name to this as accurate stating that he had no property with which to meet it but that if God should grant him better fortune he obligated himself to pay it to the receiver or his duly authorized representative as the sentence was banishment to the Spanish dominions this was a pure formality but it could not be omitted a few months later we have a piteous letter from Dr. Agustin Tamard a physician of the town of Salas whose enemies had involved him with the Inquisition resulting in a charge against him of five libras 16 suedeos and replied to a demand for payment he protested that he is miserably poor during this enforced absence his colleague Dr. Ruber had collected from the town the conducta or stated salary due to both and refuses to pay over his share if the tribunal will compel Ruber to settle he will endeavor to sell some wheat and satisfy the account on the whole we may conclude that the secret prisons of the Inquisition were less intolerable places of abode than the Episcopal and public jails the general policy respecting them was more humane and enlightened than that of other jurisdictions although negligent supervision allowed of abuses and there were ample resources of rigor and reserve when the obstinacy of impenitent was to be broken down the one unpardonable feature was the seclusion which kept the unhappy captive ignorant of all that occurred outside of its prison walls and deprived him of facilities for defense and of communication with family and friends this rendered doubly bitter the prolonged detention which often held him for years in suspense as to their fate and deprived them of all knowledge as to him end of book 6 chapter 4 part 3 recording by Angie Liu