In spite of fetters, 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 every one to assist and the familiars and commissioners to scour the roads, under pain of excommunication and five hundred ducats.1 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 severity. 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 contumacy in absentia. Numerous cases attest the accuracy of this although, when the culprit was a person of condition, the scourging was replaced by stricter imprisonment and increased severity in the sentence. For those who eluded recapture, the prosecution for contumacy had but one ending-the absentee was held to be a self-confessed and impenitent heretic, fit only for the stake. Thus, in 1586, Jean de Salines, a Frenchman, on trial for Lutheranism in Valencia, succeeded in escaping with a number of fellowprisoners. He was not recaptured; the necessary edicts of summons were issued in due order and, as a contumacious 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 abjuration de levi and six months' seclusion. The cruellest feature of inquisitorial prison discipline was the rigid denial of all intercourse with the outer world. In the secular gaols, the state always had the right of imprisoning sin comunicacion, 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 solicitude as an essential part of its 1 Modo de Proceder, fol. 74 (Bibl. nacional, MSS., D, 122). 2 Simancæ de Cath. Institt. Tit. xvi, n. 23; Ejusd. Adnotat. in Zanchinum, cap. 9.-Rojas de Hæret., P. п, n. 185–7. 'Alberghini, Manuale Qualificator., cap. xxxiii, n. 9. • Archivo hist. nacional, Inquisicion de Valencia, Leg. 31. highly prized secrecy. We have seen that, from the moment of arrest until delivery to the gaoler, the prisoner was not allowed to exchange a word with any one 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 conjecture his fate until, after perhaps the lapse of years, he appeared in an auto de fe as one destined to the stake or to the galleys or to perpetual prison. It would be impossible to compute 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 defence. According to inquisitorial theory, the presumption of guilt was so absolute that all measures were justified which would hinder fraudulent defence. This strictness was not observed at first. The Instructions of 1488 call attention to the evils arising 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 1498 order alguazils and gaolers 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 Suprema, in 1514, provided that no one from the outside should speak with a prisoner, except by special licence of the inquisitor, and then only in his presence or 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 any contraventions would be severely punished.* Surreptitious communications were difficult to prevent, and so little were the officials trusted that two locks were required on each cell-door, so that the alcaide or gaoler could not enter 3 1 Instrucciones de 1488, 5 (Arguello, fol. 10). 2 Instrucciones de 1498 (Ibidem, fol. 16, 21). 3 Archivo de Simancas, Inquisicion, Lib. 939, fol. 91, 96. without his assistant. The success with which all this was enforced is boastingly alluded to in a report of the Valladolid auto de fe 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 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 auto de fe no one was allowed to speak with penitents, except the confessors assigned to them, and those who were burnt were sent to their last reckoning without being allowed to learn what was the fate of those whom they held dear. When penitents left the prison, after the auto, they were subjected to the avisos de cárceles, 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.3 All this was not wanton and cold-blooded cruelty; it was merely the pitiless enforcement of a rule which was superior to all the promptings of humanity. In the fulfilment of the rule the most minute regulations were multiplied and reiterated. The alcaide 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 1 Archivo de Simancas, Inquisiciion, Lib. 949, fol. 96.-Archivo de Alcalá, Hacienda, Leg. 5441 (Lib. 6). 2 Bibl. nacional, MSS., S, 121. 3 Instrucciones de 1561, ?? 11, 12, 58, 62, 70, 78 (Arguello, fol. 29, 35, 36, 37). -Pablo García, Orden de Processar, fol. 36 one was always to be securely locked before opening another; no windows which looked upon those of the cells were allowed to be opened; in Murcia, the water-carrier who served the Inquisition was not allowed to enter the court-yard 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. Yet there were ways of eluding the vigilance of the tribunals, of which bribery of the underlings was the most frequent. Even the alcaides 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 sanbenito 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 Capadocia, 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.3 Greater severity seems to have been shown when employees of the tribunals were the guilty parties. In 1591, when Don Alonzo de Mendoza was confined in Toledo on a charge of heresy, his friends outside established correspondence by means of the cook, Francisca de Saavedra, who conveyed the letters in the dishes. She admitted having received bribes to the amount of 8160 maravedís 1 Archivo de Simancas, Inquisicion, Lib. 979, fol. 22-26.—Bibl. nacional, MSS., D, 118, fol. 84, n. 40. Archivo de Alcalá, Hacienda, Leg. 5441 (Lib. 6). Archivo de Simancas, Inquisicion, Leg. 552, fol. 17, 40. and was punished with a fine of 6000, besides a hundred lashes and four 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 two hundred lashes and six years in the galleys.2 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 Doña 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 González, barber of the tribunal of Murcia, who made use of his position to convey letters and paper to Francisco Villaescusa, a prisoner, and who was benignantly treated with a reprimand and disability to hold office under the Inquisition.3 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 defence 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 Fray Vicente Selles, in Valencia, at an audience of June 27, 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 1 MS. of Library of Univ. of Halle, Yc, 20, T. I. 5 Ibidem, Lib. 939, fol. 91. 2 El Museo Mexicano, T. I, p. 362 (Mexico, 1843). |