Daughters of the Inquisition

by Christina Crawford

  The great spectacles of the auto de fe were also imported from Spain. Dozens of slaves were condemned and punished for blasphemy in the autos de fe of 1596, 1601 and 1605, which were always intended to show the general population that the Catholic Church did, indeed, control the mind and body of the people, if not by persuasion then by terror. “In the chambers of the Inquisition, the church sought ideological control over these rebellious ‘children,’ rooting them out and punishing heretical blasphemy.… As the king frankly stated on more than one occasion, slaves in Mexico and Spanish Indies in general were subject to ‘scandalous abuses’ and mistreated to “such an extreme that some die without confession.”582

  Then there is the story of Rosa de Escalante who was called before the office of the Inquisition Mexico City in 1691. She was a single woman of seventeen who was the epitome of the pious Iberian Catholic. So why had she been summoned? Because Rosa organized and led private religious rituals and ceremonies in her own home which were identified as being oratorios prohibited by the Inquisition. Edicts against conducting these oratorios were issued in 1643, 1684, and 1704 but with little or no effect on a practice that was popular and widespread. These edicts “attacked common and ordinary people to make private oratories … putting superstitious numbers of candles on altars and the painting of persons who had died … considered to be virtuous (holy). Additionally, the edicts questioned the use of scapulars in the context of dancing and feasting.”583 It seems that these oratorios were a sort of match-women played the hostess and men came to dance and drink, not far from the ideas contained in the European love magic, which the Inquisition had previously condemned. But “organized without the consultation, approval, or participation of the clergy and officiated by laywomen who brought together the devotees, these rituals challenged the authority of the church to prescribe and ordain religious event.”584 These oratorios were combinations of folk tradition and Catholic devotion, but because they were seen as independent, presided over by women who played a role very close to the priestesses of old, and because they were such popular occurrences attracting so many of the Novohispanics, they came under attack by the Inquisition in Mexico.

  Rosa quite cleverly camouflaged her rituals with the overlay of devotion to saints, while seeking to enlist the power of those saints to the purposes of the oratorio under her direction. Not only did she use the saints but also employed the scapular, a tradition that had its origins long before the thirteenth century in the old country. “Scapulars were long pieces of cloth that fitted over the head and hung down front and back of the wearer; they were tied in place with shorter pieces of cloth which crossed horizontally across the chest and back forming the sign of the cross.”585 These were the same that clergy bestowed on devout laity who wished to follow a holy life. In the sixteenth century small versions were introduced which were worn as a necklace, usually embroidered with an image of the Virgin Mary or a saint of special significance to the wearer. Later still, the scapulars were believed to hold the power of magic, functioning as a protection. And then, the oratorio became associated with another practice known as hechiceria which included “fortunetelling, using potions, powders, effigies, and talismans to affect the lives of individuals in a positive or negative way, and, most important … love magic. Individuals, usually females, resorted to magic in an effort to secure a man and, on some occasions, to dominate, tame, or eliminate a spouse.”586 Prosecution for love magic accounts for about eight percent of the cases before the Inquisition between 1571 and 1700. Because there were only two approved roles for women in colonial Mexico, either wife-mother or nun, love magic had its appeal here as it had elsewhere where the options for women are narrowly defined. Rosa denounced herself before the tribunal and repented for what she had done. She was neither jailed nor punished further, and there is ample reason to believe that she and her female relatives continued the oratorio practices perhaps with less gusto than before. “The oratorio tradition may have reflected a form of empowerment and prestige for women in which they controlled a type of knowledge and a ritual system that were considered efficacious, effective and legitimate by the general (female) population of the capital even though they were heterodox according to the Fathers of the Church … that power the women were unwilling to relinquish, even in the face of possible inquisitional action.”587

  And in case there is any question about whether or not this New World Spanish Inquisition ever made it onto North American soil, the answer is yes. “By 1600 the Holy Office was firmly rooted in American soil, where, like its peninsular counterpart, it fought daily to maintain the religious and social status quo by controlling people, books, and ideas.” In fact, “the restriction of reading materials and of the circulation of ideas among New Spanish inhabitants occupied a major portion of the Inquisition’s effort-indeed, it is in this area that the Holy Office was most successful until the eighteenth century.”588 In 1573 the Inquisition published its official Index of Prohibited Book to people in New Spain, then created systems whereby book dealers and publishers were under scrutiny in all major cities, and ships were searched for offending material.

  On January 5, 1688, people living in New Spain’s second largest city, Puebla de los Angeles, heard bells toll for the death of a visionary woman named Catarina de San Juan who arrived in the New World as a slave woman from Dehli, India and had managed to be free of masters for nearly fifty years by the time she died as a venerated holy woman visionary. Almost immediately there were written accounts of her life, portraits of her were circulated, as though she were already sainted, and the small room in which she had spent many years of her life praying was converted into an altar-shrine dedicated to Catarina herself. However,

  within three years of her death, the New Spanish Inquisition had prohibited the display of her portrait; by 1692, the Spanish Inquisition had banned one of the biographies on the grounds that it was blasphemous; and by 1696, eight years after Catarina’s death, the Mexican Holy Office had followed suit, demanding that the biography be confiscated throughout the viceroyalty and ordering the altar dedicated to her to be boarded up.589

  It was undoubtedly the calls from both Jesuit clergy and Puebla townspeople to canonize the holy woman as a saint that led to overreaction by the Inquisitions. During her lifetime, Catarina was prohibited from becoming a nun because she was not a white woman with money for a dower paid to the Church, and those canonized between 1588 and 1767 represented only the white elite, mostly from Italy and Spain, living the traditional religious life. Catarina epitomized the racial and cultural diversity that actually existed in New Spain, in Puebla de los Angeles, which made her the object of devotion by the ordinary people who surrounded her. But, “Catarina’s opportunity for sainthood was lost in the crossfire of rules about holiness, hagiography, and blasphemy.”590

  Soon there would be war between the United States and New Spain, after which vast territories previously held under Mexican control would be won over by the North. The Inquisition would come to an end in all the Americas, when Queen Isabella II in 1834 consented to sign the abolishment of the office in Spain and her territories.

  And, after seven hundred years of instigating death and destruction across both the Old World and the New World, the unholy Inquisition was over.

  PART FOUR

  Aftermath

  WomanSpirit – Rising

  The Inquisition left in its wake a radically different legal system than had previously existed, a total redistribution of wealth and property ownership across the European continent, extending only briefly to the Massachusetts colony in the New World, and a shattered, shamed, broken-hearted legacy for women who had survived the vicious onslaught for centuries. For them it had broken ancient bonds of mutual trust, woman-to-woman. It had betrayed the deepest secrets of WomanSpirit; it had shamed the inner core of dignity and wounded her life, her very soul. The Inquisition and the men who were hired to be the inquisitors intentionally carried out this propaganda to break the power of wom
an they could not otherwise touch. They did it by sinking themselves deep into the pit of shamelessness, avarice, corruption and greed, wallowing all the while in vile self-righteousness and hiding behind the hollow image of god, with the devil as mascot.

  In what would become America, on July 4, 1776, the Declaration of Independence was adopted by the Continental Congress of the thirteen British Colonies. That declaration opens with the phrase “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” In this case, the founders meant “men” because women were still not considered self-sovereign persons, but it was a step forward nevertheless. A new idea was being born, stating that all men, not just those born into privilege, are entitled to freedom and happiness which is an emotion resulting presumably from the state of being entitled to the enjoyment of both life and liberty. This is a major shift in political consciousness resulting directly from opposition to the oppression fostered by the legacy of the European Inquisition, which was still in force across the ocean which all immigrants had crossed to land in the new world of promised religious and personal freedom.

  In September, 1787, the Constitution of the United States was signed. It was two years before the Constitution would take effect, and in that time the French Revolution began. In 1806 Napoleon dissolved the un-Holy Roman Empire as overlord of Europe which had been orchestrated by the Pope of the Catholic Church in Rome and had been in effect since 800 CE, the time of Charlemagne. Without this overarching structure, the Inquisition could no longer function because it was stripped of its ability to require total complicity from secular officials who had previously been compelled through coercion and threats to accede to the wishes and mandates issued by the Church of Rome.

  In 1791 the Bill of Rights with ten Amendments passed. It is these amendments which bring this new government into complete philosophical and practical opposition to all that had been experienced under the influence of the Inquisition in Europe. The new founders determined that none of the legacy of the Inquisition would be passed along to the new United States of America and that there would be nothing left over from the legal, moral or social systems which people fled Europe to escape. Generations of Inquisitional dominance were wiped out by this Bill of Rights. Nothing exists in a vacuum, neither did the Constitution nor the Bill of Rights.

  The very first article, the one the founders thought important enough to begin with, states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for redress of grievances.”

  The very fact that this article was placed first among ten indicates the importance given to it by the men writing the new laws of the new land. Variously known as the “freedom of speech” or “separation of state and church” article, it is one of vital importance today. The founders were living contemporaneously with the last vestiges of the European and Spanish Inquisitions. It was, after all, less than one hundred years since women were hung in Massachusetts during a sorry mess engendered by the Inquisition, for which the colonial legislature and the jurists later apologized. The founders knew first-hand and had witnessed what happens when a theocratic conspiracy is formed which mandates that secular government be coerced and controlled by church policy. They knew that this conspiracy cannot live side-by-side with democracy. When politicians become the mouthpiece or henchmen of the preachers, democracy dies and people suffer. This was exactly what Europe had become, and that system is precisely what the immigrants to America had fled.

  Freedom of the press did not exist under the Inquisition because the church did not want people to learn any ideas not under the control of ecclesiastical censors. The inquisitors instituted the Index of prohibited books to ensure this goal. The Index was in effect on the continent, in Spain, New Spain and Mexico with serious punishments for infractions by publishers, booksellers and book readers. The Index, constantly updated to prohibit new publications, continued into the twentieth century used by Catholic schools and church communities.

  The following Articles all have one common concern: the tactics of the Inquisition. Each is set out to counteract prevailing practices in the Old World and to ensure freedom from them for citizens of the New World in the United States. Put in their proper historical context, they are bold measures consciously designed to produce an entirely new concept of what living under democracy means, including a sense of equity, safety, dignity and personal freedom from institutionalized governmental and religious oppression.

  Article IV “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

  During the centuries of Inquisition, confiscation of goods and property was rampant, fueling the continuance of the inquisitional process and providing lavish compensation for all involved. Entire local populations were accused, and without either trial or confession everything they owned was appropriated. These persecutors required no sworn oath of testimony against the accused, accepted no arguments in favor of the accused, and permitted no witnesses or legal counsel on behalf of the accused. It was sufficient to proceed under the rule of guilt by accusation. Upon secret accusation only the dissident or magic worker or female healer was jailed and financially ruined.

  Article V “No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.”

  This is the double jeopardy and self-incrimination article. During the Inquisition individuals were followed for an entire lifetime, brought to the court on multiple occasions for the same offense: heresy. Once there, they were forced through the use of torture, to confess crimes whether or not they were actually guilty as accused. Not only did the inquisitors take private property without the owner’s permission for hundreds of years, there was never a thought to compensation then nor is there today any outrage that entire family lines were stripped of inheritance.

  Article VI “In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusations; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for the defense.”

  The prisons of the Inquisition were filled with wretched folk who awaited trial for untold years. In fact the inquisitors believed that being stuck in prison was one of the best means of exhorting confessions and cooperation from those imprisoned and, therefore, had no hesitation about prolonging the waiting period. The accused was not informed of the charges, nor who brought them. The names of witnesses against the accused were kept secret by the Inquisition courts, and they were never required to appear at the same time as the accused. Counsel for the defense was a rare occurrence because attorneys were liable to be suspected of aiding dissent/heresy and endangered their own future as a result. The accused was not permitted to have favorable character witness called for the same reason. Mostly it became a mute point because friends and relatives were afraid of being
accused themselves and having the inquisitors condemn them also by virtue of association.

  Article VIII “Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.”

  It was standard practice for inquisitors and their henchmen to accept enormous bribes in the form of “fines” which became nothing more than sheer extortion and racketeering through payment of protection money. The cruel and unusual punishments were various methods of torture used by the Inquisition in every jurisdiction to coerce confessions. Torture was such standard practice that it was assumed to be included when moving the accused to the position of being condemned, either to life imprisonment or the death penalty of being burned alive at the stake in a public spectacle. But bribery and torture were also used by the corrupt secular courts of Europe.

  After the Articles in the Bill of Rights had passed, there were further amendments to the Constitution which eventually included both blacks and women as full citizens. Amendment XIII abolished slavery in 1865 and XV gave the African American men the right to vote. In 1920 Amendment XIX finally gave American women the right to vote.

  But those rights did not come without an enormous struggle engaging women from both continents. One of the most influential and vocal was the British pioneering feminist, Mary Wollstonecraft who was born in 1759 and in her short life of only thirty-eight years managed to write and publish works which would become a new and powerful voice for all women.

  As a young woman of nineteen, Mary left home to become the paid companion of a wealthy widow. A middle-class woman had only limited opportunity for respectable employment, and at this time Mary did not choose to be a seamstress, teacher or governess to children. “Wollstonecraft’s first hand experience of patriarchal oppression caused her to view marriage as a questionable source of security … and according to English law, a married woman had no legal identity because she had become one with her husband. She and her children were virtually the property of her husband, and only under extraordinary circumstances was it possible for a woman to resist her husband, no matter how brutal or dissolute he might be.”1