He can tell when the suffocating routine is going to change by the subtle variations in how the jailors open the door. Or the amount of food they bring. Then come the shackles, the long chain, and orders to put on the habit worn for hearings. Once again they move through tunnels, stairs, doors, halls, and into the dim courtroom with its unvarying décor. The four learned men are present. One of them, the Jesuit Andrés Hernández, doesn’t take his eyes off Francisco; they are tender eyes. The three judges also march onto the platform, make the sign of the cross, pray, and sit down. The theologians pass Francisco’s writings around among themselves—writings they’ve already reread to the point of nausea—and ask questions in turn, rising to their feet. They do it with friendly voices and appeal constantly to supporting excerpts from the sacred text. The audacity of many paragraphs has convulsed their intellects, and the four of them have invested more hours than expected into building the arsenal needed for victory. The pages of parchment emit a fearful glow; the ideas expressed there must be demolished like the bricks of an enchanted fortress.
The notary writes down everything, for hours, dripping with sweat. Francisco listens, thinks, and skillfully responds.
Soon thereafter, at another hearing, they let out an avalanche of arguments. On that occasion, the prisoner is forbidden to respond. The four theologians cite the Bible abundantly, leaving even the judges astonished.
At the end, when Francisco seems to be collapsing from exhaustion, the tribunal thanks the learned men for the light they have so plentifully poured out. Not even rocks could fail to soften before such a prodigious accumulation of proof. Then Mañozca asks the prisoner whether his doubts have been addressed.
Francisco pulls at the folds of his habit and, raising his gaze, says no.
They send him back to the dungeon, wishing they could just send him right to the flames. The room bristles with rage. On the gloomy path back, the warden also scolds him, pulling at his chain and shaking his arm.
“You’re an idiot! All those arguments aren’t enough for you? The most illustrious men of the Viceroyalty have worked—for you!”
Francisco keeps his eyes on the clean bricks of the ground so he doesn’t trip over his long chain.
“It’s time to ask for mercy!” the warden continues. “Do you want to be burned alive?”
Francisco doesn’t answer.
“I assure you”—the warden’s voice breaks—“I assure you that you have made quite an impression on me. That’s why, for your own good, I advise you—stop being so stubborn, my dear man! Ask for mercy, weep, repent. There’s still time.”
Francisco stops and turns to the burly warden. His swollen eyes blink; it’s been a long time since he’s received a show of high esteem.
He murmurs, “Thank you.”
123
The inquisitors are so disturbed that they dispute the best course of action to take after this fiasco. Gaitán rebukes his colleagues for the grave error into which they forced the tribunal. For some prisoners, he insists, benevolence is counterproductive; haughty men like Francisco only reason when their joints are torn or their feet are burned.
The theologians, for their part, wonder whether their polemics failed, whether perhaps they hadn’t shaped their arguments well enough, whether perhaps they’d confused the man by speaking to him in a cacophony of four voices. The Jesuit Andrés Hernández, who devotes many hours a day to his interminable Treatise of Theology, suggests holding another personal conversation with the prisoner, but in the intimacy of his cell.
“He is visited by the sin of pride,” he explains, “and it’s hard for him to repent in public. A more informal conversation would break his stubbornness.”
The inquisitors take weeks to grant this request, which smacks of an excess of piety. They allow it, but only on the condition that Hernández takes with him another father from the Society, who should act as witness and, if needed, come to his aid to counter any unexpected sophisms.
The servants illuminate the cell, refresh all the candles, and fill mugs with water. They remove the chamber pot and ask Francisco to sit up. The priests enter.
“I am Andrés Hernández.”
“I am Diego Santisteban,” the second priest says.
Francisco smiles sadly and says, “I suppose that I need no introduction.”
Hernández invites Francisco to take a chair beside the rickety table. His kind gaze initiates a less harsh conversation.
“I haven’t come to argue,” he declares, “but rather to bring you relief. Perhaps you saw me in Córdoba, decades ago, because I went to that city to help Bishop Trejo y Sanabria in his great endeavors.”
A chill runs through Francisco. “What happened to that selfless bishop?”
Hernández tells him that the tireless Trejo y Sanabria was already feeling old back then. At the age of fifty, he launched his final pastoral journey and returned with his health definitively broken. But he managed to lay the foundations of the University of Córdoba. He would never be forgotten. Hernández knows that this saintly prelate had administered the sacrament of confirmation to Francisco.
“You gave that good bishop reason to rejoice,” he says.
Hernández pours water into the mugs and offers one to the prisoner. Little by little, he goes over the solid education that Francisco has received.
“Your wealth of knowledge and the grace of the sacraments must have formed a rich inner garden. A garden”—the Jesuit gestures with his hands—“enclosed by impassable rivers, like those that surround Eden.”
He insists that, in Francisco’s soul, there flourishes a garden that pleases the Lord. It is necessary to return to it, to inhale its perfume, to caress its fruits. And, for this, the rivers must be crossed, painful as such an endeavor might be. “When you do this, the walls of this cell will also fall. Light, liberty, and joy will flood around you.” His impassioned face glistens.
Francisco thanks him for all the praise and considers his response.
“Inside me, in truth, there exists a garden that pleases the Eternal One, but it is nourished by other sources. It would be useless to open and reveal it, because, despite your goodwill, Father, blindness can exist for the understanding as well as for the eyes. Only God knows my garden, and He will care for it until I die.”
Hernández does not give in. He wants to help. He has been impressed by the prisoner’s culture, as well as by his courage.
“This is not false praise,” he says, eyes misty, “but your serene firmness, Doctor, reminds me of the martyrs.”
“Why not recognize me as a martyr of Israel?” Francisco says, his face lighting up.
Diego Santisteban grazes Hernández’s shoulder and whispers that he has strayed from the right path. Hernández realizes his own bewilderment, and tries to correct his own words. “Sometimes, the devil creates confusion. How can I call you a martyr if you reject the cross? How can he who commits crimes be a martyr?”
“All the Christian martyrs were criminals in the eyes of pagans,” Francisco remarks.
“They were pagans,” the Jesuit replies. “They couldn’t see the truth.”
“Protestants are heretics, and therefore criminals to Catholics, while the converse is also true. All the heretics persecuted by the Inquisition believe in Christ and swear by the cross, and yet—”
“Heresy was born to undermine the church, and the church was created by Our Lord, through the work of Peter. And so, the converse has no meaning.”
“That is what Catholics say. But religious wars demonstrate that this argument doesn’t work the same way across the border. Why do some wish to impose themselves on others? Don’t they trust the power of the truth? Must they always resort to the act of murder? Does light need the shadows to support it?”
Hernández rises to his feet, perturbed. He isn’t angered by Francisco’s response, but rather by his own incapacity to keep the dialogue focused in a way that will allow him to get under his interlocutor’s skin. The thing he’d been
trying to avoid from the beginning is unfolding: a confrontation. The confrontation will be futile. It will only replicate the useless arguments from before.
He sits, sips some more water, dries his mouth with the back of his hand, and says that he senses in Francisco a very sensitive nature. Therefore, he would like to reflect together on the marvelous sacrifice Our Lord Jesus Christ made to save humanity, as well as on the marvelous Eucharist, which renews this sacrifice in all times and places. This incomparable sacrifice has definitively eliminated the sacrifice of human beings, which, for example, was practiced by the indigenous people of this continent. Also, that of animals, which took place under the Law of Moses. How could such a delicate spirit fail to recognize and appreciate this extraordinary advance? Hernández demonstrates that, as a fruit is first green and then ripe, or as the day breaks with tepid rays and only later reveals its fullest light, so the revelation has occurred in two phases: the Old Testament announced and prepared for the New, as dawn prepares for midday.
Francisco meditates. The man speaks well and deserves a cordial response. But he should not be deprived of his rebuttal. So he responds that, in effect, he has listened on other occasions—including sermons—to descriptions of these differences with the old Hebrew people and with savages. Christ no longer allows human sacrifice because he sacrificed himself on everyone’s behalf. Francisco is silent for two seconds then conjures a brutally ironic earful.
“But even though Christians wouldn’t eat a man, like cannibals do,” he says, staring hard at Hernández, “they tear him to shreds with torture while he’s still full of life. In many cases, they char him slowly at the stake, throwing his mortal remains to the dogs. This horror is committed and repeated in the name of piety, truth, and divine love—not so? There is a great difference between Christians and savages because the latter kill their victims first and only eat them afterward. You Christians, on the other hand, devour men alive, just as you’re doing with me now—”
Diego Santisteban crosses himself and moves toward the door. Hernández watches him, mouth wide open.
“I want to help him!” he mutters impotently.
Francisco’s brow furrows, and the vein in his forehead swells, as if he were writing.
“Excuse me,” he says, “I know you want to help me, that you are sincere. But I need other services.”
Santisteban addresses the ceiling beams. “On top of everything, he wants to teach us how to help him rectify his soul!”
“I need news of my family,” Francisco implores.
The Jesuit lowers his head and clasps his hands in prayer. “I am forbidden to give information to prisoners.”
“I need someone to tell my wife that I am alive, that I’m still fighting.”
“It’s forbidden,” he repeats, face clouded. “Doctor,” he begins, making his final attempt, “if nothing else, for your wife, for your family.”
Francisco waits for the end of this sentence.
The clergyman’s eyes fill with tears. He suffers, prays. His voice rises from deep in his chest. “Repent!”
Francisco’s eyes fill with tears, too. He would like to avoid mortifying this man. He would like to embrace him.
124
The pages labeled with Francisco Maldonado da Silva’s name proliferate like weeds. The notary of the Holy Office oversees this venomous documentation. Five years have passed since the prisoner was brought to the secret jails. From the first day of his arrest in faraway Concepción de Chile, he has stood by his Jewish identity. Despite the overabundance of proof, the inquisitors haven’t yet sentenced him and put an end to this enraging case, because the man will not yield, or so much as hang his head.
The course of events has been unprecedented. Captives usually deny all accusations and build an edifice of lies. To demolish these tricks, the Holy Office has its own more efficient ones at the ready. If Francisco had denied his guilt, he would have been promised freedom in exchange for a confession. If they had not achieved a confession, an official would have pretended to be Jewish or to have committed some other heresy to trap him. But Francisco has neither lied nor has he denied the veracity of accusations made against him. He has, in fact, confirmed them, and expanded on them, as if he wished to simplify proceedings. It was therefore not necessary to employ the tools of promises or pretense. He has expressed himself with astonishing frankness and, as such, has broken the tribunal’s routine. He has endured five years in a dungeon, isolated, deprived of books, and the tribunal has not been able to make him renounce what he refers to, with demented daring, as the rights and duties of his conscience.
The inquisitors allow several months to pass, so that time, that great persuader, might soften what the theologians could not, but they decide to summon him to read out accusations brought against him by five new witnesses. They must keep beating him down. He has physically deteriorated: the skin of his cheeks is taut across sharp bone, his nose is more pronounced, and his temples have turned to ash. He is not told who the witnesses are, as the Inquisition never does such a thing, and because the captive should only be concerned with recognizing his own guilt. The notary reads the charges as if they were blows from a stone; at the end of each sentence, he raises round glasses to see whether the impact has broken that obstinate skull once and for all. Francisco listens, disappointed, as he hears nothing different from what was already known.
The defense attorney who visited him before in the dungeon, and who had used judicial, theological, rhetorical, and emotional strategies to try to make him abjure, tells the tribunal that he refuses to keep helping such a stubborn man. The quill scratches parchment nervously, as a captive’s circumstances change dramatically when even his defense attorney abandons him. At that point, Gaitán’s approach gains traction: isolate him further, send less food, no reading, a great deal of darkness, and the suspension of interviews and hearings until clear signs of reformation appear. The tribunal is tired of this maniac who cannot see his own miserable situation, his absolute helplessness.
After seven more horrific months in jail, Francisco decides to launch a new skirmish: he asks the servants to call the warden, and tells him that he desires salvation, for which he requests a copy of the New Testament, Christian devotional volumes, and paper on which he might write down his difficulties. The warden transmits the request with joy. Gaitán smells a ruse and denies the request. The other two inquisitors agree to satisfy it, as perhaps the Lord has decided to rescue his soul. They vote, and Gaitán is left mute with rage.
Francisco receives the requested books, parchment, quill, ink, and many candles—gifts fit for a prince. He strokes the volumes as if they were warm animals, pages through them, and rejoices in the vibrancy of letters that speak. A scent rises from the pages, of open fields, wildflowers, and copses. For days and nights on end he rereads the Gospels, the Acts, and the Epistles. He frequents beautiful spaces that spark ideas and make his heart race. Then he reads the devotional Christian texts, and a text that reflects, in a forced manner, on the seventy weeks of Daniel. When he tires of reading, he starts to write. But he doesn’t compose prudently, but rather like a gladiator leaping into the arena with a ready sword. He fills all the pages, concentrating his argument on two themes.
He expresses the first theme at the outset. He notes that Saint Paul said, “Has God abandoned His people, Israel? Not at all! For I too am a Jew, descended from Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin. God did not reject his people, whom he recognized before.” And so, is the Holy Office more powerful than the Eternal One? Can the Holy Office hate and exterminate the people who were so loved by the Lord?”
The second axis of his writings regards the seventy weeks of Daniel, and stabs right at the chest. “When it is convenient to you,” he writes, “you take a few verses out of context and interpret them literally, but when this same method does not favor you, then you claim it is a matter of symbolism, allegory, or dark metaphors. If the seventy weeks are to be interpreted in such a rigorous and unilat
eral manner, then the same must be done with the words of Jesus about the imminent end of the world.” He goes on to cite that, in Matthew 10:13, 23, 39, 42, and 49, Jesus announces that it will be at the end of his own century; in Matthew 16:28, Mark 9:1, and Luke 9:27, he assures that some of his disciples “will not die until they have seen the son of man arrive in his kingdom.” Has the end of the world occurred? Nevertheless, Francisco accepts that the words of Jesus can be interpreted in many ways, as his message is very rich, but, in that case, the seventy weeks of Daniel are also open to diverse interpretation. This proves that interpretations of the sacred text are made according to one’s conviction, and not the other way around. “More clearly put, the objective is to twist my convictions, by any means necessary.”
The books and writing materials are taken from his cell. The tribunal gives the writings to the learned men and allows three months to pass before summoning them for another session.
The prisoner appears in an even more physically deteriorated state. He listens silently to the detailed counterargument. The four theologians dismantle his sentences, refute them, crush them, and cast them aside like garbage. Francisco stands up with difficulty, raises his forehead, and responds that he remains loyal to the faith of his elders. In less than a minute, the august room is emptied. The inquisitors, in their secret office, gnaw at their own anger and rebuke each other.
Three months later, Francisco tries to repeat the skirmish. He is granted another hearing, but without books or pages to fill with his false thoughts. For two hours, the learned men show him the dominance of theology, oratory, and their impatience. They bathe him in a cascade of light. But the prisoner is not moved by their sonorous speeches. When they finish, he stands up, swears on the one and only God, and declares his continued loyalty to his roots.
Against the Inquisition Page 47