The Spanish Inquisition

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by Henry Kamen


  In Barcelona in 1599 a client warned a prostitute that what she did was a sin, to which she replied that “it is no sin since we are both unmarried.” He then inexplicably denounced her to the inquisitors, who dismissed the matter but warned her “to learn the catechism and come to the Inquisition every two weeks until she has learnt it.” The problem, evidently, arose from the existence of brothels, which operated with public license in most parts of Spain.42 Isabella the Catholic accepted the practice of prostitution, and even turned brothels into a state monopoly so that she could tax them. It is interesting to see a respected theologian, Francisco Farfán, who in 1585 published a massive volume of one thousand pages attacking the idea of “simple fornication,”43 arguing that the prohibition of prostitution was a greater evil than prostitution itself, because a society without brothels encouraged homosexuality, incest, the propositioning of innocent women, and an increased number of people living together in sin. Since the city authorities continued to permit brothels, which did their best business during religious festivals, all that the clergy could do was to try to convince both prostitutes and their customers of the sinfulness of their actions. It did not help when priests with ulterior motives told attractive women in the parish that “fornication is no sin.”44 In short, the Holy Office never sought out or punished female prostitution, limiting its intervention only to related offenses. The state seems to have attempted to close municipal brothels in 1623, but inevitably without success.

  The problem was evidently part of the human condition. A report in Castile in 1620 ruefully observed that “many here believe that simple fornication is permitted.”45 In Barcelona in 1627 the Inquisition was inquiring into the cases of two nuns who managed to convince their confessor that sex with them was not wrong, and of a priest who formed a small group dedicated to the practice of free love.46 The Counter-Reformation Church had many and varied ways of dealing with the troubling problem of carnal desire, but at the heart of it the core concern seems to have been that of clerical celibacy. A long Christian tradition, expressed in the confessor’s manuals of late medieval Europe,47 treated as shameful and sinful all functions of the sexual organs, castigated all sensual pleasure as diabolic, and looked with horror on all bodily fluids. Many Spanish clergy published in the same tradition. The Jesuit Francisco Arias in his Spiritual Progress (Madrid, 1603) warned clergy that “they must guard their eyes not only from too much looking at women, but should also take care not to look with liberty at the beauty of boys of a tender age.”48 Inevitably the Inquisition had to concern itself with clergy who strayed.

  There was therefore a rich field for the inquisitors once they began inquiring into any heresy that might be detected in moral offenses. Other authorities—the community, the parish priest—might be concerned about the sexual content of offenses, but the Holy Office limited its concern to the presumed heresy. This was the case in the matter of bigamy. Because the offense was normally punishable in civil and Church courts, there were constant protests against the Inquisition’s interference. The Catalan accord of 1512, for example, stipulated that bishops alone should try bigamy cases unless heresy was involved. The Inquisition, however, argued that bigamy implied a measure of heresy, since it questioned the sacredness of matrimony; it therefore continued its activity despite repeated protests from the Cortes of Aragon. Nor was the Holy Office wasting its time on an offense of negligible importance. In a society that did not permit divorce, bigamy was surprisingly frequent as one alternative to an unsatisfactory marriage, and in most tribunals it represented about 5 percent of cases tried.

  Women no less than men resorted to bigamy. First marriages in pre-industrial Spain were usually within the local community, but when men and women left in search of employment, or when men disappeared in far-off wars, the option of remarriage presented itself. In a sample of eleven women in Galicia accused of bigamy by the Inquisition, the first husband had on average been absent over fifteen years,49 and the women remarried on the presumption—incorrect, as it turned out—that their first spouse was dead. From the mid-sixteenth century a public lashing and three to five years in the galleys became the standard punishment decreed by the Inquisition for men, a much lighter penalty than that meted out by secular courts. Women were normally banished from the locality. Many of the accused did not feel they were committing wrong. When Francisco Cossio was arrested by the tribunal of Toledo in 1694, the evidence against him included a fascinating private letter to his parish priest in which he said that “it is true that marriage, in the opinion of those with whom I have discussed it, is valid; but in my case it was necessary to revalidate it in order to continue it.”50 The revalidation was, of course, with another woman, and in another area.

  There were contexts in which the Inquisition could be seen as indirectly defending the civil status of women. The moral behavior of clergy had preoccupied Church reformers through the centuries, and bishops were happy to obtain the cooperation of the Inquisition. Trent had placed clerical reform at the forefront of its program, and bishops attempted to define the duties of priests more strictly by cutting back their public role (they could no longer, for example, go to taverns or wedding feasts). It was inevitably easier to pass decrees than to enforce them, and clergy continued to use their privileged social position to disport themselves, break the laws and seduce parishioners.51 They also continued the long-standing custom of keeping women, who fulfilled a role as housekeepers but were also bed partners. Celibacy of the clergy was a rule that had been very laxly enforced in Europe. The problem, attended to by both Church courts and Inquisition, was insoluble (see chapter 13). In the two years 1561–62 the vicar general of Barcelona had to issue fifty-seven warnings to clergy of the diocese over their concubines. In what appear to be the figures for a single year, 1613, the Inquisition of Catalonia disciplined seventy-seven of its familiars and comisarios for various offenses. All the thirty-eight comisarios (who were parish clergy) had one offense in common, “matters to do with women.”52

  Among the many cases of marginal sexuality in which the Inquisition intervened the most significant was sodomy. The tribunal occasionally brushed with cases of lesbians and transsexuals, conditions that have attracted the attention of modern researchers but that the inquisitors found it difficult to deal with.53 Homosexuality in the Middle Ages was treated as the ultimate crime against morality: the standard definitions of it refer to the “abominable” or the “unspeakable” crime. The usual punishment was burning alive or, in Spain, castration and stoning to death. Under Ferdinand and Isabella the punishment was changed to burning alive and confiscation of property. Since the old Inquisition had exercised jurisdiction over sodomy, the Spanish tribunal seems to have begun to do so, but in 1509 the Suprema ordered that no action was to be taken against homosexuals except when heresy was involved. Here a curious split in policy seems to have occurred, because although the tribunals of Castile never again exercised jurisdiction over sodomy, the Inquisition in Aragon now officially adopted powers over the offense. On 24 February 1524 the pope, Clement VII, issued a brief granting the Inquisition of the realms of Aragon jurisdiction over sodomy, irrespective of the presence of heresy. From this time onwards the Aragonese inquisitors kept their new authority,54 which they never gave up, despite the typical complaints raised by the Cortes of Monzón in 1533. Aragon was unique in this matter, for not even the Roman Inquisition exercised jurisdiction over the offense. The inquisitors of Catalonia accepted jurisdiction in principle, but normally put cases in the hands of the royal Audiencia for judgment.55 The punishment laid down by the law, and rigorously enforced by the state, was death by burning.

  The Inquisition was harsh to sodomizers (both men and women participants), but tended to restrict death by burning only to those aged over twenty-five. Minors, inevitably a high proportion of those arrested, were normally whipped and sent to the galleys. A certain liberality on the part of the Suprema can be seen in the fact that some death sentences were commuted, and mildness
was also shown to clergy, who were always a high proportion of offenders. The treatment of bestiality, usually placed in the same category as homosexuality, altered this picture somewhat, for it was almost invariably punished ruthlessly. The accused were normally marginalized people of poor intelligence, but this appears not to have helped them. By contrast, some highly placed homosexual offenders were more favorably treated. The most famous case was that of the Valencian grandee Pedro Galcerán de Borja, grand master of the chivalric Order of Montesa.56 In 1572 he was arrested by the Inquisition of Valencia on charges of sodomy. The case dragged on for some three years; he was heavily fined, but subsequently returned to active political life.

  In general, the crown of Aragon had a record of great severity in the matter. The tribunal of Saragossa in the late sixteenth century stands out as exceptional. Between 1571 and 1579 over 100 men were tried by it on bestiality or homosexuality charges, and at least 36 of them were executed. In total, between 1570 and 1630 the inquisitors here handled 543 cases, and executed 102 persons.57 The tribunals of Barcelona and Valencia were considerably less rigorous. In overall perspective, punishment of sodomy may be seen as a preoccupation of both secular and ecclesiastical courts. In Seville and Madrid, where the Inquisition had no jurisdiction over the offense, secular courts were equally merciless with those it decided to castigate.58

  Modern researchers who use the papers of the Holy Office in order to peep into the lives and problems of the persons in its archives have stumbled across several cases concerning sexual abnormality.59 The cases, however, do not fit into any pattern of alleged sexual repression by the tribunal. Community norms and individual initiative, rather than religious belief, had always governed sexual conduct, and this continued to be the rule everywhere in Europe. The Inquisition did not intrude into the private lives of citizens or spy on them, and it is consequently important to understand how private sexual practices came to its attention. Almost without exception, cases of sodomy were revealed in the way that all other offenses were: through private denunciations (see chapter 9).60 With few exceptions, familiars did not report them. The inquisitors were doing no more than enforcing community standards, but their activity in this as in other sexual matters had no identifiable impact on transgressors.61 It is doubtful if the intrusion of religious authorities into the sphere of public morality had much effect in any European country,62 except where the community gave full support. A recent scholar concludes: “Spaniards did not cower before the Church or the Inquisition. Even at the height of the Catholic Reformation in Spain, non-marital sex flourished. Prostitutes walked the streets, aristocrats had mistresses, adulterers had secret rendezvous, and men had sex with men. As in all times and places, some people got into trouble with ecclesiastical and secular authorities, while others flaunted their relationships to the chagrin of those same powers.”63

  One of the areas in which the Inquisition had a part to play was in the effort to reform the religion of the people (chapter 13), concerning aspects of it that were looked upon as superstition. Popular culture, especially in the rural areas, had always sought unorthodox cures to daily afflictions. Villages had their wise men or women (curanderos) who could offer medicinal ointments, find lost objects, heal wounded animals, or help a girl to win the affections of her loved one. Cures might take the form of potions, charms, spells or simply advice. It was a subculture that coexisted with and did not try to subvert official Catholicism, though in certain New Christian regions the Christian content of the spells was doubtful.64 In rural areas the world of magic even entered the Church, with many clergy incorporating folk practices—rites, prayers, offerings, dances—into the normal liturgy. All this, as we shall see, was stamped on firmly by reforming bishops, post-Tridentine clergy and the Inquisition. In the process of contrasting the dark world of primitive superstition with the illuminated world of the gospel, unfortunately, preachers and learned men unduly simplified the forces at work and helped to create fears of “witchcraft.”

  The identification and persecution of sorcery and witchcraft was a continent-wide phenomenon with an incidence stretching from the Atlantic to the Urals, and has been extensively studied.65 In numerical terms, women made up the greater number of accused, more than three-fourths in most regions of Europe and over 90 percent in certain areas such as Essex in England.66 However, the fact that they made up the overwhelming majority of those prosecuted was due less to the prejudice of the law than to the nature of the local societies within which the accusations originated. Witchcraft and other related forms of magical practice had a broad social basis67 and were by no means gender specific, so that there is no basis for presenting witchcraft accusations primarily in terms of misogyny.68 As several scholars have emphasized, witches were persecuted not because they were women but because they were witches. The writings of those who attacked witchcraft at the time show no identifiable prejudice against women as women.69 There were, certainly, cultural and sexual considerations that put women more at risk. A woman’s role as creator, as midwife, as healer (the “wise woman” of the village), as visionary, provided points at which an anguished male-dominated society might choose to victimize her for sudden disasters caused by crop failures or epidemics. In practice, women as healers came rather low in the list of the categories of women who appeared before the Holy Office.70 Any analysis of the phenomenon of women in witchcraft persecution must look equally at the problems of the accusing society and the vulnerable position of the female accused. The Inquisition intruded into this complex world because it had no option other than to respond to complaints from people in the villages.71

  Men were also commonly accused of sorcery. In northern France and in Aragon, during the sixteenth century more men than women were prosecuted for the offense. Normally, however, females predominated, and though males might feature as accused, all the treatises of the time have no hesitation in picking out women as the principal players. Witchcraft “was a sex-related but not a sex-specific crime.”72 One of the most adamant opponents of the witch persecution in seventeenth-century Catalonia, the Jesuit Pere Gil, identified the accused in 1619 as “simple-minded women of little intelligence, feeble and timid, most of them poor, untaught in Christian doctrine and easily deceived.” “There is little opposition,” he wrote, “when the villages and people say of the witches that they do infinite ills and deserve a thousand deaths. For since they are poor, exposed, simple-minded and ignorant in the Christian religion, no one takes their side.”73 Gil’s analysis, it should be noted, refers to such women because they were a disadvantaged population in the villages, not because they were women. The majority of female accused were old, often marginalized by their communities. But a few were young, victims of village or family tensions. We may cite by way of comparison some witchcraft cases in Augsburg, Germany, where accusations reflected deep antagonisms among women themselves, and often the operating motive was simply envy.74 In Catalonia, Gil reports that members of the same family were frequently those who pointed the finger.

  A variety of courts had jurisdiction over the offense. In 1370 and 1387 the laws of Castile declared that sorcery was a crime involving heresy, for which laymen would be punished by the state and clergy by the Church. Well after the foundation of the Inquisition, jurisdiction over sorcery and witchcraft remained in secular hands: this is demonstrated by a royal decree of 1500 which ordered an investigation into sorcery but put the matter into the hands of the civil courts.75 The medieval Inquisition had likewise left such questions largely in secular hands, so that no change of policy was involved. By the early sixteenth century, when the Holy Office began inquiries into the offense, verdicts were still normally in the hands of the state courts. The Inquisition’s reluctance to interfere was motivated by doubts whether any heresy was involved. Certain types of popular superstition, “sorcery,” and the whole range of astrology were ill-defined areas in which many learned men and clergy themselves dabbled. Astrology, for example, was on the university syllabus at Salaman
ca, but not until the late sixteenth century did the Inquisition, encouraged by the papacy, attempt to suppress it as a science. Quiroga’s Index of 1583 followed Rome in banning occult arts and divination. Shortly after, in 1585, Pope Sixtus V issued a bull denouncing magic.

  There were precedents for these moves. In 1484 Pope Innocent VIII issued the bull Summis desiderantes which first recognized witchcraft as a problem. Two German Dominicans, Kramer and Sprenger, were sent to deal with the superstition in north and central Germany. Two years later they issued their handbook, the Malleus maleficarum (Hammer of Witches). In this impressive compilation of case histories the Dominicans argued that, far from witchcraft being a delusion, it was a practice based on actual commerce with Satan and the powers of darkness, and that witches did in fact eat and devour human children, copulate with devils, fly through the air to their meetings, or “sabbats,” injure cattle, raise up storms and conjure down lightning. The view of the Malleus was supported by subsequent decrees of popes and bishops. The witch craze gained momentum in Europe, but there was always an important number of clergy who considered that talk of flying through the air and copulation with the devil was a delusion to be pitied rather than punished.

 

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