Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini

by Rafael Sabatini

  It is very clear, from the records we have, that the Holy Office must have been content to depend upon the engines already in existence, or, rather, upon a limited number of the most efficacious. There were exceptions, of course. The torture of fire — which consisted in toasting the feet of the patient after anointing them with fat — appears upon rare occasions to have been employed; and a barbarous piece of supererogative cruelty was practised at a great Auto de Fé held at Valladolid in 1636: ten Jews convicted of having whipped a crucifix were made to stand with one hand nailed to an arm of a St. Andrew’s cross whilst sentence of death was being read to them.

  As a rule, however, both in torturing and in punishing the inquisitors avoided novelties. For the question they usually resorted to one of three methods: the rack; the garrucha, which is the torture of the hoist, the tratta di corda of the Italians; and the escalera, or potro, or ladder, or water torture.

  The inquisitors attended in person — as prescribed by Torquemada — to question the patient, accompanied by their notary, who wrote down in fullest detail an account of the proceedings.

  The hoist was the simplest of all engines; it consisted of no more than a rope running through a pulleyattached to the ceiling of the torture-chamber.

  The patient’s wrists were pinioned behind him, and one end of the rope was attached to them. Slowlythen the executioners drew upon the other end, gradually raising the patient’s arms behind him as far as they would go, backwards and upwards, and continuing until they brought him to tip-toe and then slowly off the ground altogether, so that the whole weight of his body was thrown upon his straining arms.

  At this point he was again questioned and desired to confess the truth.

  If he refused to speak, or if he spoke to no such purpose as his questioners desired, he was hoisted towards the ceiling, then allowed to drop a few feet, his fall being suddenly arrested by a jerk that almost threw his arms out of their sockets. Again was the question put, and if he continued stubborn he was given a further drop, and so on until he had come to the ground once more, or until he had confessed. If he reached the ground without confessing, weights were now attached to his feet, thus increasing the severity of the torture, which was resumed. And so it continued. The weights were increased, the drops were lengthened — or else he might be left hanging — until confession was extracted, or until with dislocated shoulders the patient had reached the limit of his endurance.*

  [* See, inter alia, Melgares Marin, “Procedimientos de la Inquisicion,” i. . This author says that sometimes the patient would be left hanging for as long as three hours.]

  In the latter case the torture might be suspended, as we have seen, to be continued two or three days later, when the prisoner should sufficiently have recovered.

  The notary made a scrupulous record of the audiencia — the weights attached, the number of hoists endured, the questions asked and the answers delivered.

  The potro, or water-torture, was more complex, far more cruel, and appears to have been greatly favoured by the Holy Office.

  The patient was placed upon a short narrow engine, in the shape of a ladder, and this was slanted a little so that his head was below the level of his feet, for reasons that will soon be apparent. His head was now secured by a metal or leather band which held it rigidly in position, whilst his arms and legs were lashed to the sides of the ladder so tightly that any movement on his part must cause the whipcord to cut into his flesh.

  In addition to these bindings garrotes were applied to his thighs and legs and arms. This was a length of cord tied firmly about a limb — upon occasion round the whole torso over the arms; a stick was thrust between the cord and the flesh, and by twisting this stick a tourniquet was formed; first strangury, then the most agonizing pain was thus occasioned, whilst if the twisting was carried far enough the cords would sink through nerve and sinew until they reached the bone.

  The mouth of the patient was now distended and held so by a prong of iron — called a bostezo. His nostrils were plugged, and a long strip of linen was placed across his jaws, and carried deep into his throat by the weight of water poured into his gaping mouth. Down this toca — as the strip was called — water continued to be slowly poured. As this water filtered through the cloth, the patient was subjected to all the torments of suffocation, the more cruel because he was driven by his instincts to make futile efforts to ease his condition. He would constantly exert himself to swallow the water, hoping thus to clear the way for a little air to pass into his bursting lungs. A little would and did pass in — just enough to keep him alive and conscious, but not enough to mitigate the horrible sufferings of asphyxiation, for the cloth was always wet and constantly charged with water.

  From time to time the toca was brought up, and the gasping wretch would be invited to confess. Further to combat stubbornness on his part, and also, it would seem, to revive him when he was failing, the executioners would give an agonizing turn or two to the garrotes upon his — or her — limbs; for the Holy Office did not discriminate between the sexes in these matters.

  To prevent the vomiting which any form of torture might produce, and the potro in particular, the inquisitors, with their never-failing attention to detail, provided that no patient should be given food for eight hours before the question was applied. The notary present at this audiencia de tormento was required to set down, in addition to questions asked and answers returned, the fullest details of the torture applied, and particularly how many jars of water were administered, these being the measure of the severity of the ordeal.*

  [* See Melgares Marin, “Procedimientos,” i. .]

  The rack is too well-known to need describing here, having in its time been used in all European countries. Cruel as it was, it was perhaps one of the least cruel engines of torture that have been employed.

  It was required by law that any confession extracted under torture should afterwards be ratified by the prisoner. This was one of the prescriptions of Alfonso XI in the Partidas code. It recognizes that a man might be driven by pain to say that which is not true, and therefore it forbids the courts to accept as evidence what might be declared under torture.

  Therefore on one of the three days after the question had been applied — as soon, presumably, as the prisoner was sufficiently recovered to attend — the prisoner was brought once more into the audience-chamber.

  His confession, reduced to writing by the notary, was placed before him, and he was invited to sign it — the act being necessary to convert that confession into admissible evidence. If he signed, the proceedings now ran swiftly and uninterruptedly to their end. If he refused to sign, repudiating the statements made, the inquisitors proceeded upon the lines laid down by Torquemada in Article XV of his “Instructions” to meet the case.

  Pegna warns inquisitors against delinquents who feign madness to avoid the torture. They should not, he says, delay on that account, for the torture may be the best means of ascertaining whether the madness is real or simulated.*

  [* Schol. cxviii. lib. iii.]

  Finally let it be added upon this gruesome subject that it was not only the accused who was liable to be put to the question. A witness suspected of falsehood, or one who had lapsed into contradictions in the course of his evidence, might be put to torture in caput alienum?

  [* “Directorium,” pars iii. quaest. lxxiii.]

  CHAPTER XIII. THE JURISPRUDENCE OF THE HOLY OFFICE — THE SECULAR ARM

  The comparatively light sentences imposed upon those who came forward to abjure heresies which they were suspected of harbouring, and upon those who submitted to canonical purgation to cleanse them of “evil reputation,” have already been considered.

  It remains to be seen how the Holy Office dealt with negativos — i.e. those who persisted in refusal to confess a first offence of heresy or apostasy after their guilt had been established to the satisfaction of the court — and with relapsos — i.e. those who were convicted of having relapsed into error after once having b
een penanced and pardoned.

  Offenders in either of these two classes were to be abandoned to the secular arm — the ecclesiastical euphemism for death by fire. The same fate also awaited impenitent heretics and contumacious heretics.

  He who after having been convicted by sufficient witnesses persisted in denying his guilt should, says Eymeric, be abandoned to the secular arm upon the ground that he who denies a crime which has been proved against him is obviously impenitent.*

  [* “Directorium,” pars ii. quaest. xxxiv.]

  The impenitence is by no means obvious. It is possible, after all, that the accused might deny because he was innocent and a good Catholic. And whilst, as we shall see, this possibility is not altogether ignored, yet it is given very secondary consideration. It was the inquisitor’s business to assume the guilt of any one brought before him.

  It is true, however, that Eymeric urges the inquisitors to proceed very carefully in the examination of the witnesses against such a man; he recommends them to give the accused time in which to resolve himself to confess, and to employ every possible means to obtain such confession.

  He counsels them to confine the prisoner in an uncomfortable dungeon, fettered hand and foot; there to visit him frequently and exhort him to confess. Should he ultimately do so, he is to be treated as a penitent heretic* — in other words he is to escape the fire but suffer perpetual imprisonment.

  [* “Directorium,” iii. .]

  The term perpetual imprisonment, or perpetual immuration, is not to be accepted too literally. It lay at the discretion of the inquisitors to modify and commute part of such sentences, and this discretion they exercised so far as the imprisonment was concerned. But the confiscation of the prisoner’s property and the infamy attaching to himself, his children, and his grandchildren — by far the heavier part of the punishment — could not in any way be commuted.

  However tardily confession might come from the negativo, the inquisitors must accept and recognize it. Even if he were already bound to the stake, and, at last, being taken with the fear of death, he turned to the friar who never left him until the faggots were blazing, admitted his guilt and offered to abjure his heresy, his life would be spared. And this for all that they recognized that a confession in such extremes was wrung from him by “the fear of death rather than any love of truth.”

  It must naturally occur to any one that, conducted in secret as were the examinations of the witnesses, and no opportunity being afforded the accused of demolishing the evidence offered against him, since he was rarely informed of its extent, many a good Catholic, or, at least, many a man innocent of all heretical practices, must have gone to his death as a negativo. For the methods of the Holy Office opened the door extraordinarily wide to malevolence; and human nature being such as it is — and such as it was in the fifteenth century — it is not to be supposed that malevolence never seized the chance, that it never slunk in through that gaping door to vent itself in such close and sheltered secrecy — to strike in the back, in the dark, with almost perfect immunity to itself, at the man who was hated, or envied, or whom it was desired to supplant.

  It was not sufficient for the prisoner to protest his innocence. He must prove it categorically. An innocent man might be unable to furnish categorical proof; witnesses for the defence were extremely difficult to obtain by one who was charged with heresy; it was a dangerous thing to testify in favour of such a man; should his conviction none the less follow, the witness for the defence might find himself prosecuted as a befriender, or fautor, of heretics. Yet, even when testimony for the defence was obtained, the judges leaned upon principle to the side of the accusers; and since they considered it their mission to convict rather than to judge, they would always assume that the accusers were better informed than the defenders.

  Therefore this danger of death to the innocent existed. The inquisitors themselves did not lose sight of it, for they lost sight of nothing. But how did they provide for it? Pegna has a great deal to say upon the subject. He tells us that some authorities pretend that when a negativus protests that he staunchly believes all that is taught by the Roman Catholic Church such a man should not be abandoned to the secular arm.

  But this is an argument mentioned by the scholiast merely that he may demolish it. It is indefensible, he says with confidence; and, as indefensible, it is almost universally rejected.

  Torquemada most certainly did not favour it. He lays it down clearly in Art. XXIV of his first “Instrucciones” that a negativo must be deemed an impenitent heretic, however much he may protest his Catholicism. The accused will not satisfy the Church, which demands confession of his fault solely that she may pardon it; and she cannot pardon it until it is confessed. That is the inquisitorial view of the matter.

  It is evident that the danger of occasionally burning an innocent man did not perturb the inquisitorial mind. In fact, Pegna reveals to the full the equanimity with which it could contemplate such an accident.

  “After all,” says he, “should an innocent person be unjustly condemned, he should not complain of the sentence of the Church, which was founded upon sufficient proof, and which cannot judge of what is hidden. If false witnesses condemned him, he should receive the sentence with resignation, and rejoice in dying for the truth.”*

  [* “Sed si fortassis per iniquos testis est convictus, ferat id aequo animo ac Isetatur quod pro veritatem patiatur.” “Directorium,” pars iii. Schol. lxvi.]

  He is also, we are to suppose, to rejoice with the same lightheartedness at the prospect of his children’s destitution and infamy.

  Anything, it seems, is possible to argument, and the craziest argument may be convincing to him who employs it. Pegna makes this abundantly clear.

  An innocent man might be tempted to save his life by a falsehood, by making the desired confession; and many a man may so have escaped burning. This also the scholiast duly weighs. He propounds the question whether a man convicted by false witnesses is justified in saving his life by a confession of crimes which he has not committed.*

  [* Schol. lxviii. pars iii.]

  He contends that, reputation being an external good, each is at liberty to sacrifice it to avoid torments that are hurtful, or to save his life, which is the most precious of all possessions.

  In this contention the scholiast lacks his usual speciousness. He has entirely overlooked that whether an innocent man confesses or not, whether he is burnt or sent to perpetual imprisonment, his reputation is equally blasted. The inquisitors see to that. His silence is interpreted as impenitence.

  But it is evident that Pegna himself is not quite satisfied with what he urges. He vacillates a little. Strong swimmer though he is, these swirling waters of casuistry begin to give him trouble. He seems here to turn in an attempt to regain the shore. “Who thus accuses himself,” he concludes, “commits a venial sin against the love which he owes himself and a falsehood in confessing a crime which he has not committed. This falsehood is particularly criminal when uttered to a judge who examines juridically, for it then becomes a mortal sin. And even though it were no more than venial, it would not be permitted to commit it for the sake of avoiding death or torture.”

  “Therefore,” he sums up, “however hard it may seem for an innocent man condemned as a negativus to die under such circumstances, his confessor must exhort him not to accuse himself falsely, reminding him that if he suffers death with resignation he will obtain the martyr’s immortal crown.”

  In short, to burn at the stake for crimes never committed is a boon, a privilege, a glory to be enjoyed with a profound gratitude towards the inquisitors who vouchsafed it. One cannot help a pang of regret at the thought that the scholiast himself should have been denied that glory.

  A person was considered relapsus — relapsed into heresy — not only if, as in the case of the self-delator who availed himself of the edict of grace, he had once been pardoned an avowed heresy, but if he had once abjured a heresy of which he had been suspected either vehemently o
r violently. And it was of no account whether the heresy of which he was now convicted was that particular one of which formerly he had been suspected, or an entirely fresh one. Moreover, to convict as a relapsed heretic one who had already abjured, it was sufficient to show that he held intercourse with heretics.

  Further, a person would be dealt with as relapsus in the event of formal proof appearing that he had actually committed the heresy which he had abjured as suspect, although his conduct since abjuration might have been entirely blameless. For it was argued that these fresh proofs, although acquired after abjuration, revealed the person’s real guilt, and showed that he had been judged too leniently in being allowed to abjure merely upon suspicion.*

  [* Eymeric, lib. ii.; qusest. lviii. and Pegna, lib. ii.; Schol. lxiv.]

  In fact, it was held that he had acted in bad faith towards the inquisitors; that he had neglected to confess his sin when he was given the opportunity; that he had attempted to defraud the treasury of his property, which was due to it by confiscation. Since he had not made an open and complete confession, it was argued that he was clearly an impenitent heretic, for whom there could be no mercy — or only a very slight one, as we shall see.

  Canonical purgation entailed the same sequel as abjuration for one against whom proofs of heresy were afterwards forthcoming. Thus, to quote an instance given by Pegna: if a man should be suspected of thinking that heretics should be tolerated, and if after being canonically purged of the offence against the Faith contained in that sentiment of which he was suspected, it should be proved against him that his acts or words had actually expressed that sentiment, he must be considered a relapsed heretic.

  Torquemada further decreed that any who after reconciliation should fail to fulfil the penance imposed upon him, or any part of it, must be deemed relapsed. The argument, obviously, was that a neglect of this penance showed a want of proper contrition, which could only be explained in one way.