PART IV.

Of the Inquisitors and their Practices.

In the time of King Ferdinand the fifth, and Queen Isabella, the mixture of Jews, Moors, and Christians was so great, the relapses of the new converts so frequent, and the corruptions in matters of religion so bare-faced in all sorts and conditions of people, that the cardinal of Spain thought the introducing the inquisition could be the only way of stopping the course of wickedness and vice; so as the sole remedy to cure the irreligious practices of those times, the inquisition was established in the year 1471, in the court, and many other dominions of Spain.

The cardinal's design in giving birth to this tribunal, was only to suppress heresies, and chastise many horrible crimes committed against religion, viz; Blasphemy, sodomy, polygamy, sorcery, sacrilege, and many others, which are also punished in these kingdoms by the prerogative court, but not by making use of so barbarous means as the inquisition doth. The design of the cardinal was not blamable, being in itself good, and approved by all the serious and devout people of that time, but the performance of it was not so, as will appear by and by.

I can only speak of the inquisition of Saragossa, for as I am treating of matters of fact, I may tell with confidence what I knew of it, as an eye-witness of several things done there. This tribunal is composed of three inquisitors, who are absolute judges; for, from their judgment there is no appeal, not even to the pope himself, nor to a general council; as doth appear from what happened in the time of king Philip the second, when the inquisitors having censured the cardinal of Toleda, the pope sent for the process and sentence, but the inquisitors did not obey him, and though the council of Trent discharged the cardinal, notwithstanding, they insisted on the erformance and execution of their sentence.

The first inquisitor is a divine, the second, a casuist, and the third, a civilian; the first and second are always priests

and promoted from prebends to the high dignity of being holy Inquisitors. The third sometimes is not a priest, though he is dressed in a clerical habit. The three inquisitors of my time were, first, Don Pedro Guerrero; second, Don Francisco Torrejon; third, Don Antonio Aliaga. This tribunal hath a high sheriff, and God knows how many constables and under officers, besides the officers that belong to the house, and that live in it; they have likewise an executioner; or we may say, there are as many executioners, as officers and judges, &c.; besides these, there are many qualificators and familiares, of which I will give an account by themselves.

The inquisitors have a despotic power to command every living soul; and no excuse is to be given, nor contradiction to be made, to their orders; nay, the people have not liberty to speak nor complain in their misfortunes, and therefore there is a proverb which says, Con la inquisition chiton. Do not meddle with the inquisition; or, as to the inquisition say nothing. This will be better understood by the following account of the method they make use of for the taking up and arresting the people: which is thus:

When the inquisitors receive an information against any body, which is always in private, and with such secrecy that none can know who the informer is (for all the informations are given in at night) they send their officers to the house of the accused, most commonly at midnight, and in a coach,— they knock at the door, (and then all the family are in bed) and when some body asks from the windows who is there; the officers say, the holy inquisition. At this word, he that answered, without any delay, or noise, or even the liberty of giving timely notice to the master of the house, comes down to open the door. I say, without the liberty of giving timely notice, for when the inquisitors send the officers, they are sure, by the spies, that the person is within, and if they do not find the accused, they take up the whole family, and carry them to the inquisition: so the answerer is with good reason afraid of making any delay in opening the street door. Then they go up stairs and arrest the accused without telling a word, or hearing a word from any of the family, and with great silence putting him into the coach, they drive to the holy prison. If the neighbors by chance hear the noise of the coach, they dare not go to the window, for it is well known that no other coach but that of the inquisition is abroad at hat time of the night; nay, they are so much afraid, that they dare not even to ask the next morning their neighbors any

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thing about it, for those that talk of any thing that the inquisition does, are liable to undergo the same punishment, and this, may be, the night following. So if the accused be the daughter, son, or father, &c., and some friends or relations go in the morning to see the family, and ask the occasion of their tears and grief, they answer that their daughter was stolen away the night before, or the son, or father or mother, (whoever the prisoner be) did not come home the night before, and that they suspect he was murdered, &c. This answer they give, because they cannot tell the truth without exposing themselves to the same misfortune; and not only this, but they cannot go to the inquisition to inquire for the prisoner, for they would be confined for that alone. So all the comfort the family can have in such a case, is to imagine that the prisoner is in China, or in the remotest part of the world, or in hell, where in nullus ordo sed sempiternus horror inhabitat. This is the reason why nobody knows the persons that are in the inquisition till the sentence is published and executed, except those priests and friars summoned to hear the trial.

The qualificators and familiares which are in the city and country, upon necessity, have full power to secure any person suspected with the same secrecy, and commit him to the nearest commissary of the holy office of the inquisition, and he is to take care to send them safely to prison; which is all done by night, and without any fear that the people should deliver the prisoner, nay, or even talk of it.

Qualificators,

Are those, who, by order from the inquisitors, examine the crimes committed by the prisoners against the catholic faith, and give their opinions or censures about it: they are obliged to secrecy as well as other people; but as the number of them is great, the inquisitors must commonly make use of ten or twelve of the most learned that are in the city, in difficult cases; but this is only a formality, for their opinions and censures are not regarded, the inquisitors themselves being the absolute decisive judges. The distinguishing mark of a qualificator is the cross of the holy office, which is a medal of pure gold as big as a thirteen, with a cross in the middle, half white and half black, which they wear before their breast; but in public functions or processions, the priests and friars wear another bigger cross of embroidery on their cloak o habits. To be qualificator is a great honor to his whole fami

ly and relations, for this is a public testimony of the old christianity and pure blood (as they call it) of the family.

No nobleman covets the honor of being qualificator, for they are all ambitious of the cross of St. James, of Alcantara, of Calatravia, of Malta, and the golden fleece, which are the five orders of the nobility; so the honor of a qualificator is for those people, who, though their families being not well known, are desirous to boast of their antiquity and christianism, though to obtain such honor, they pay a great sum of money: for, in the first place, he that desireth to be a qualificator, is to appear before the holy tribunal, to make a public profession of the catholic faith, and to acknowledge the holy tribunal for the supreme of all others, and the inquisitors for his own judges. This is the first step. After, he is to lay down on the table the certificate of his baptism, and the names of his parents for four generations; the towns and places of their former habitations; and two hundred pistoles for the expenses in taking informations.

This done, he goes home till the inquisitors send for him, and if they do not send for him in six months time he loseth the money and all hopes of getting the cross of qualificator; and this happens very often for the reasons I shall give by and by.

The inquisitors send their commissaries into all the places of the new proponent's ancestors, where they may get some account of their lives and conversations, and of the purity of their blood, and that they never were mixed with Jewish families, nor heretics, and that they were old Christians. These examinations are performed in the most rigorous and severe manner that can be; for if some of the informers and witnesses are in a falsity, they are put into the inquisition; so every body gives the report concerning the family in question, with great caution, to the best of his knowledge and memory. When the commissaries have taken the necessary informations with witnesses of a good name, they examine the parish book, and take a copy of the ancestors' names, the year and day of their marriages, and the year, day, and place of their burials. The commissaries then return to the inquisitors with all the examinations, witnesses, proofs, and convictions of the purity and ancient christianity of the proponent's families, for four gener ations; and being again examined by the three inquisitors, if they find them real and faithful, then they send the same commissaries to inquire into the character, life, and conversa tion of the postulant, or demanding person, but in this point

the commissaries pass by many personal failings, so when the report is given to the holy inquisitors, they send for the postulant and examine him concerning matters of faith, the holy scriptures, the knowledge of the ancient fathers of the church, moral cases, all which is but mere formality, for the generality of the holy fathers themselves do not take much pains in the study of those things, and therefore the postulant is not afraid of their nice questions, nor very solicitous how to resolve them.

When the examination is over, they order the secretary to draw the patent of the grant of the holy cross to such an one in regard to his families' old purity of blood and christianity, and to his personal parts and religious conversation, certifying in the patent, that for four generations past, none of his father's or mother's relations were at all suspected in points concerning the holy Roman catholic faith, or mixed with Jewish or heretical blood.

The day following, the postulant appears before the assembly of qualificators in the hall of the inquisition, and the first inquisitor celebrates the mass, assisted by the two qualificators, as deacon and subdeacon. One of the oldest brethren preacheth a sermon on that occasion, and when the mass is over, they make a sort of procession in the same hall, and after it, the inquisitor gives the book of the gospel to the postulant, and makes him swear the usual oaths; which done, the postulant, on his knees, receiveth the cross or medal, from the hands of the inquisitor, who, with a black ribbon, puts it on the postulant's neck, and begins to sing te deum, and the collect of thanks, which is the end of the ceremonies. Then all the assistant qualificators congratulate the new brother, and all go up to the inquisitor's apartment to drink chocolate, and after that, every one to his own dwelling place.

The new qualificator dineth with the inquisitors that day, and after dinner the secretary brings in a bill of all the fees and expenses of the informations; which he must clear before he leaves the inquisition. Most commonly the whole comes to four hundred pistoles, including the two hundred he gave in the beginning; but sometimes it comes to a thousand pistoles, to those whose ancestors families were out of the kingdom, for then the commissaries expend a great deal more: and if it happen they find the least spot of Jewdaism, or Here. sy, in some relation of the family, the commissaries do not proceed any further in the examinations, but come back again to the inquisition immediately, and then the postulant is never