Against the Inquisition

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Against the Inquisition Page 26

by Marcos Aguinis


  One of the monks reunited the doctor with his hat and cape, and he walked through the swarm of onlookers, more poised than when he’d arrived. He resembled a Roman general after a victory. The monks smiled happily and repeated their thanks to the Lord. They asked no questions, as that would convey insolence. Instead, they chanted the hopeful phrase, “He will heal, he will heal.” With a doctor like this one, the devil must be twisting like a cockroach in a campfire.

  Francisco also felt relieved. Cuevas was skilled at calming a patient’s surroundings, even when the patient’s actual health showed no signs of change. Soon after this, Cuevas would order the heroic measures to be taken, and Francisco would have access to the ferocity of a surgical act in the City of Kings, in the shadow of the University of San Marcos, in this same monastery of Lima.

  67

  I will not forget the arm-wrestling match I had with the inquisitors Verdugo and Gaitán regarding the last Act of Faith.

  The resources of the tribunal and its prisoners were scarce, and insufficient to unfurl the pomp they so enjoy. Among the prisoners were wretched people of varying backgrounds and some of few assets. I recall a Portuguese doctor who had been arrested in faraway Córdoba, who used crutches and who, at my request, was sent after his reconciliation to work in the hospital of Callao to help alleviate our chronic lack of physicians.

  The inquisitors had decided to carry out the Act of Faith in the cathedral. I knew that, in this manner, they were trying to gain something else, this time at the expense of Bishop Lobo Guerrero. I decided not to give them the pleasure. They, with their hypocritical mindset, wanted to twist my will. Those vile men suggested that if I felt uncomfortable in the cathedral I didn’t have to bother coming, me, the viceroy. My red-hot stare ended our interview. Then they called on my confessor and urged him to persuade me. They’re too much!

  The Acts of Faith involve a combination of fear and entertainment. The people are summoned through proclamations and special invitations. But before it begins, civil authorities and ecclesiastics are supposed to go in search of the inquisitors—here begins the public genuflection they so adore—to then walk in a procession to the main plaza. The viceroy is supposed to walk with them, because it suggests that their power is equal to mine. In front, the standard of the faith is carried by the prosecutor of the Holy Office. These are followed by the Royal Court, the town council, and the university. Once we arrive in the plaza, we all go onstage, and there, too, a rigorous protocol is observed. The viceroy and the inquisitors sit together in the highest seats, under a canopy, once again as if equals. To our sides, and in front of us, the other authorities are arranged, in the same order they had in the procession. In the lower areas, the clergymen of the various orders sit, that is to say, far below the inquisitors and other officers of the Holy Office. Finally, in front of the official stage, the penitents are placed, as they are the morsels. The surrounding area is ringed with bleachers for the rest of the multitudinous crowd.

  When this ceremony was first explained to me, and I attended one in Spain, I could not have imagined the number of conflicts of preference and etiquette plaguing each official, like welts; they were desperate to gain an inch of power. This occurs in Madrid, Mexico, Lima, and any other part of the world that celebrates Acts of Faith. Some pretentions are ridiculously over the top.

  All of my predecessors suffered from the impudence of inquisitors, who have always complained that viceroys want to undermine their authority. What are the stupid issues being contested? Whether the inquisitors should be to the viceroy’s left or right . . . whether their pillows should be different or the same . . . and other similar nonsense, because these things are, at their hidden root, symbols of power.

  Well, since I opposed the idea of carrying out the Act of Faith in the cathedral, where it would be less expensive, those good-for-nothings asked me for monetary support. I told them that I was poorer than they were. Then, in their fury, they threatened to suspend the Act. That’s fine, I said, suspend it. As if they would!

  Finally, they agreed to put on a more modest Act of Faith. There were proclamations and invitations. The people poured into the streets. The prisoners were duly prepared with their shameful sanbenitos and green candles. But their officials went back and forth between my palace and the one belonging to the Inquisition, because those scoundrels feared another of my dirty tricks. They were obviously being crushed by the insolence. Finally, at midday, the procession began to make its way toward the tribunal. Before that, the prisoners had already been paraded before the palace doors so that my wife could see them through the lattice of her window. The ceremony would be carried out according to my wishes, no matter that Gaitán and Verdugo would grind their teeth. They had even accepted that only I, the viceroy, should enjoy pillows beneath my boots.

  But they were false, and did not give in. My spies read the letter they wrote to His Majesty in Spain. In it, they said that they could no longer delay the Act of Faith, as some of its subjects were in poor health and could die before the celebration was carried out, which would rob the process of its exemplary powers. They wrote that I was angry and tenacious. How I would have liked to thank them for the compliment! They wrote that our confrontation was threatening to devolve into a disturbance and a scandal. They said that things were going poorly in the Viceroyalty, and that it was my fault, that remedies were urgently needed because my reach here was powerful, and the Supreme of Seville, though more powerful than me, was far away.

  68

  Brother Manuel announced that Francisco had been accepted to the University of San Marcos. His monotonous voice relayed no further details. It was the same voice that, in the confessional, with sporadic stabs, pulled the marrow out from sins and succeeded in making him express a desperate loyalty to the true faith. The priest added that, during Francisco’s studies, he would alternate between Lima and Callao; pursuing his coursework in Lima, and training in Callao’s hospital, with his father. Moved at the generosity hidden behind the monk’s cadaverous appearance, Francisco imitated Martín—he fell to his knees and took Brother Manuel’s hand to kiss it. His skin was cold and white, like that of a reptile. Brother Manuel pulled back in fright.

  “Don’t touch me!”

  “I want to express my happiness.”

  “Then pray.”

  Brother Manuel wiped his nervous hand against his habit, as if to rub off the touch.

  Francisco began at the university with great excitement. A dazzling world was opening. There was a library with all the books he’d read in Ibatín and Córdoba, and many he didn’t know existed. Respected scholars walked the halls—experts in natural science, philosophy, algebra, drawing, history, theology, grammar. The spirits of Aristotle, Guy de Chauliac, Thomas Aquinas, and Avenzoar floated around them. And there was a reverent nostalgia of the old universities of Bologna, Padua, and Montpellier. Scattered references connected these houses of study with the famous medical schools of Salerno, Salamanca, Córdoba, Valladolid, Alcalá de Henares, and Toledo. From the podium, for an hour and a half at a time, texts were read that the professors expounded on elegantly. Some names sounded familiar, and Francisco was elated: Pliny, Dioscorides, Galen, Avicenna, Maimonides, Albucasis, Herophilus.

  He learned that Albucasis, Spain’s greatest surgeon, was also Cordoban and gathered his experiences in an encyclopedia of thirty volumes that was translated from Arabic to Greek, and from Greek to Latin. He got goose bumps at being reunited with Pliny, of whose work he had only known the fantastic stories. There was so much more than that; Pliny was a fount of wisdom and his ideas had leapt over barriers; the illustrious fathers and saints of the church were intermixed with the bold ideas of Moors, Jews, and Pagans.

  It wasn’t only students who attended classes, but also doctors, lawyers, graduates, clerics, and noblemen. The reading of great texts was a solemn event. In silence, the students listened to sentences that dripped with the gold of truth.

  69

  “It’s odiou
s to admit it,” huffed the irascible inquisitor Gaitán, “but to deny it would be a lie.” The bishops of the Viceroyalty have no liking for the Holy Office. Since the beginning, our relations have been strained. And not through any fault of the Holy Office, which came to these savage lands to bring order to debauched customs and to defend the faith.

  The Lord, who reads the depths of people’s souls, knows that I was justified in my indignation with the first archbishop of Lima, Jerónimo de Loaysa, as he did not lovingly embrace us. He published an edict declaring inquisitors to be ordinary, without power. He wanted to take the war for faith back to primitive times in which the High Tribunal of the Holy Office had not yet been created and it was they, the prelates, who prosecuted heresies. With this gesture, he demonstrated that he was competing with us and wanted to push us to the margins.

  I was also justified in refusing to forgive another bishop, this one in Cuzco, Sebastián de Lartaún, who publicly proclaimed the affairs of the Holy Office were under his charge—I would have liked to take a torch to his tongue. He was such a troublemaker that he called for the arrest of one of our commissioners, going so far as to lock him up in a dungeon. Can there be anything more damaging? The Holy Office needs efficient collaborators to fulfill its sacred mission. The commissioners, scattered throughout the territory, must work mercilessly to catch those demons’ excrements known as heretics. But because they are clergymen, bishops claim that obedience is also owed to them, not only to the Holy Office.

  As if this were not enough calamity, we must suffer hidden antipathy from the religious orders. We often assign them tasks. And what do their superiors say? That we did not consult with them, and, therefore, sowed confusion. But how can we consult them when our missions must be secret to remain efficient?

  The affronts are endless. That is why we often proceed with violence. It’s the only language they understand. The Holy Office is Our Lord Jesus Christ’s best weapon, and we will not allow it to be ignored, marginalized, or destroyed.

  70

  “Is my father a sincere Christian again?” Francisco wondered. “Has he permanently abandoned his Jewish practice? Does he accept the wearing of the sanbenito as a deserved punishment?” In his prayers, he asked that it might be so. His father had suffered too much and deserved peace of mind.

  Diego fasted before Mass in order to receive communion in the best possible state. At church, he kneeled, made the sign of the cross, and remained alone. His sanbenito contributed to his isolation; the faithful stayed away from him, as if he reeked. It was a wickedness born from his past offenses. Perhaps, in the heights, his pain was received with sweet smiles, but on Earth the disdain of his neighbors only grew. The Roman soldiers had laughed loudly when Jesus Christ fell under the weight of His cross, and the parishioners of Callao would have laughed in the middle of the offertory if a rafter fell on Diego’s neck.

  He also attended processions. He was forbidden to carry effigies and did not go near the sacred images. He stayed at the edge of the multitude, always alone, lips moving. The familiars of the Holy Office, who spied on him from hidden corners, could not have found any reason to criticize his behavior.

  On any given day he spent almost all of his time at the hospital. He never tired of examining patients, adjusting their medications, changing bandages, consoling the desperate, and writing down clinical observations. The sick were the only people who received him warmly. The sanbenito did not turn them against him; it was a doctor’s robe. His presence gave them hope. He often sat beside a gravely ill patient to accompany his prayers.

  Later, Francisco would recognize that he owed a great deal of his medical training to his father. He accompanied him, assisting in his constant rounds. Diego liked to repeat a maxim of Hippocrates that nobody obeyed: use your own eyes. And he gave a humorous example. Aristotle maintained that women had fewer teeth than men. The Bible, for its part, tells that Adam lost a rib when the Lord created Eve. By this logic, women had fewer teeth, according to Aristotle, and men had fewer ribs, according to the Bible. From this pseudo-dogma, elegant speeches had arisen on the sublime compensation of teeth by ribs—and yet, no one thought to count the ribs and teeth of healthy men and women. If they had done so they would know that Adam’s defect was not hereditary, and that the mouth Aristotle examined had not belonged to an intact woman.

  On the same theme, Diego told his son that sorcerers never think a wound can heal on its own. They assume that treatments must intervene and, when things go poorly, the enemy responsible for it must be found—a spirit, or another sorcerer. Those who correctly read Hippocrates and observe attentively, on the other hand, learn that for many wounds to heal in the swiftest way possible they only need to be left in peace.

  Much later, Diego spoke to Francisco of the Hippocratic oath. It is the oldest oath, he said, the one that gives dignity to the profession. But it is not the most correct one. There was another one, preferred by Diego, that he recited intermittently. He assured his son that it moved him, stirred his awakening, and helped him tackle his daily tasks with strength and lucidity. He was silent for a long time. He needed to prepare his son. Francisco wondered what vow he meant. Finally, Diego raised his deep, wide eyes and solemnly said, “Maimonides.”

  If he was trying to make Francisco shudder, it worked. Although they were talking about medicine, he had elliptically invoked the name of a Jew.

  That night, Francisco searched through a manuscript in Latin. It was the famous oath, which began, “The eternal providence has appointed me to watch over the life and health of Thy creatures.” In place of the name Maimonides, which could cause problems, it said Doctor Fidelis, Gloria Orientalis et Lux Occidentalis.

  As Francisco read, his father stared at him without breaking his gaze.

  71

  Diego and Francisco walked on the shore, far from Callao and its busy port. They both wanted to shake off the constant surveillance that hounded them day and night. At the hospital, they could not speak because a barber, pharmacist, monk, or servant might misinterpret them and the machine leading to a familiar of the Holy Office would be set in motion. Denunciation was a virtue, and Diego was an Inquisition prisoner, a lifelong suspect. The tribunal would appreciate anyone who came to report his having said this or that. His home was not secure, either; in the homes of prisoners of the Inquisition there lurked the invisible ears of power.

  Francisco knew the southern beach; he had come here before being reunited with his father; he’d wanted to pay his respects to the ocean and suffuse himself with the infinite before testing his strength.

  The waves unfolded like rugs. Their boundary was a wavy, unstable line. Another alphabet of God? Perhaps that moving line was the marvelous story of life in the watery depths. Might the vast blue slate of the sea’s surface be the sky for another humanity, one that breathed water and received sunken ships like softly falling meteorites?

  Diego walked with great effort. His feet were permanently damaged.

  They arrived at the cliffs—a wall of cinnamon rocks carved by the tides over millennia. He removed his sanbenito and rolled it into a thin cylinder. He seemed taller without that humiliating garment. The port had become a distant crest that sometimes disappeared behind the crags. They were truly alone, and free. They heard only the roll of waves and the cries of seagulls. The eternally cloudy sky was a thick sheet of zinc. The wind opened Diego’s shirt and he enjoyed its gentle caress around his neck. With this distance between them and the city, Diego was able to speak openly of his fear of physical pain. Nobody was listening except God, Francisco, and nature.

  “Ever since I was a boy, I’ve been terrified of pain, did you know? I grew up hiding in basements and on roofs when the Jewish quarter of Lisbon was being attacked. I suffered beatings at the university, attended an Act of Faith, wrapped my head in blankets so as not to hear the clamor of those being burned alive.”

  They slowed their walk, as the memories were agitating his breath. He opened his mouth wide and,
then, barely smiling at Francisco, forced himself to finish his story.

  “I could barely comfort my friend López de Lisboa when his parents were executed. What solace was there? I had studied medicine to kill pain in others, with the secret hope that I would thereby eliminate my own, which was so intense.”

  He suddenly recalled the instant when the inquisitors had ordered for him to be sent to the torture chamber. It was his first direct reference to it. Francisco became tense, but Diego, as if he had succeeded in breaking the wall that had kept him from speaking, continued.

  “Until that moment, life in prison had been relatively calm. But when I heard about the torture I imagined beatings, burns, cramps, and stitches. I broke into a sweat and my vision clouded over. I felt helpless and defenseless. The inquisitors demanded names, denunciations. It wasn’t enough to repent, to be a good Christian again and carry forever the stigma of sin. I had to bring, as an unavoidable offering, the names of other Jews. The Inquisition does not fulfill its sacred mission by limiting itself to reforming the lost. It has to take advantage of each lost soul to trap many more. That’s how it purifies the faith.”

  The majestic landscape stood in contrast to the gloomy tale. It was too beautiful a frame for such an oppressive painting. Nonetheless, he recounted an atrocious night.

  “I tossed and turned in the cell, like a child. I moaned and trembled. Never had I descended to such indignity. I was waiting for them to come for me. Every sound made me jump. I broke these fingernails scratching the walls. I shivered from the cold. It was awful! In the morning, the bolts slid back, a sound I’d been waiting for in every passing minute. The henchmen felt my clothing, as if they’d seen when I urinated and vomited on myself. They brought me new clothes. I didn’t have the strength to ask them anything. I allowed them to drag me through the sinister halls all the way to a vast room, bright with torches. The light gleamed on strange contraptions. Beside each one stood a table and a chair. There were desks, where a notary of the Inquisition would write down every word that was spoken. The cruel act was sheathed in meticulous legality and adherence to a specific protocol. Everything organized to perfection. The officials were proceeding in accordance with rules.”

 

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