The Plaza of the Inquisition.--The two Modes of human Sacrifice, the
Aztec and the Spanish.--Threefold Power of the Inquisition.--Visit to
the House of the Inquisition.--The Prison and Place of Torture.--The
Story of William Lamport.--The little and the big _Auto da Fe_.--The
Inquisition the real Government--Ruin of Spanish Nationality.--The
political Uses of the Inquisition.--Political Causes of the Bigotry of
Philip II.--His eldest Son dies mysteriously.--The Dominion of Priests
continues till the French Invasion.
AN AUTO DA FE.
The _Plazuelo_ or _Plazuelito_, the "Little Plaza" of the Inquisition,
is now, as it ever has been, a market-place--the Smithfield of Mexico.
On Sundays and all other market-days, there is here an abundant supply
of flowers, meats, and vegetables. On great holidays, in the times of
the vice-kings, the scene was changed. Fruits and vegetables were, for
the time, placed in the background, and an act of "faith" (_auto da
fe_), or burning of heretics, was offered as a public spectacle. The
grandest of all the bull-fights of Mexico was nothing in comparison
with this vice-regal exhibition. As among the Aztecs and the pagan
Romans, the sacrificial victims were kept in reserve for important
occasions, and for occasions when a bull-fight would have been a most
inadequate exhibition. The consecration of a new archbishop, or the
arrival of a new Vice-king from Spain, or the marriage of a member of
the royal family, or some similar important political or religious
event, could only call forth this extraordinary show of roasting men
alive.
If we are to believe the statements of Cortez and Bernal Diaz,[57] the
Aztecs were accustomed to offer human sacrifices on festival days upon
a large circular stone still preserved. With an obsidian knife, life
was instantly extinguished by opening the heart-case and taking out the
heart, which was offered to their god of war. This horrid worship, if
indeed it ever existed, was suppressed, and one more horrid and
cold-blooded in its atrocities substituted. There was seldom wanting a
victim on those great occasions, for prisoners who would otherwise have
been let off with confiscation of estates and a long imprisonment were
now doomed to the flames, to accomplish the double purpose of a
spectacle and strike terror into the ranks of the higher classes, who
too often furnished the victims. But the higher classes were all
present. Suspicion might attach to their absence. And he that dared not
breathe aloud in his own bed-chamber, or tell the whole truth at the
confessional, from apprehension of an inquisitorial spy, took good heed
that no act or look of his on the day of the great fiesta should betray
him to this secret, but every where present tribunal, lest he himself
should be the sacrificial victim at the next entertainment.
The roasting of a human victim at the _auto da fe_ was a purely
democratic institution. The _leperos_, who were beneath the
jurisdiction of the Inquisition, felt none of the terrors that haunted
the rich even in night visions. Without the least apprehension, they
enjoyed the magnificence of the spectacle, and their hatred toward the
high-born was gratified by the sight of one, and sometimes many,
respectable persons burned in the fire for their entertainment. They
were always ready to manifest their gratitude to the holy office by
assailing and perhaps murdering any one who had incurred the
displeasure of the priests, but whom it was not politic to arrest.
Thus, by a threefold power, did the Inquisition enforce the discipline
of the Church: by the authority of the king and the law, the dread
which it inspired; the sympathies of a rabble, whom it was their
interest to keep brutalized; and the religious sentiment of the nation,
so far as there was any. But this last was a very uncertain reliance,
for the same law which makes heresy a crime, legalizes hypocrisy, and
the inquisitor cared very little for the thoughts of men so long as
they remain unuttered; and as no two men think alike, the crime of
heresy appears to consist in expressing too frankly the logical
deductions of the understanding upon the all-important subject of
religion. To speak disrespectfully of the holy office, the Inquisition,
was the worst of heresy.
THE HALLS OF THE INQUISITION.
The north front of the Plazuelo of the Inquisition, now generally
called the Plaza of the Dominicans, is occupied by the great yard of
the Dominican convent, which is separated by a high wall from the
Plaza, and by a street from the buildings of the Inquisition. Within
this yard there is a large flagstone, with a hole in its centre, which
stone, on days of the _auto da fe_, used to be brought out into the
Plaza, and, with iron post, neck-ring, and chain attached, constituted
the simple apparatus for the human sacrifice. The Dominican fathers
have carefully laid aside the iron post, with its ring and chain, and
perhaps, with them, the most valuable of the instruments of torture,
which were removed from the Inquisition building. As there are two
classes of bull-fights, the ordinary and the grand bull-fight, so there
was the ordinary _auto da fe_, performed in this Little Plaza, and the
grand act of faith, _auto da fe general_, which ordinarily ought to
come off in the Grand Plaza of the city, in front of the vice-regal
palace.
Seeing the great door open as I was passing, I ventured to enter the
central court of the Inquisition, from which the halls of the different
tribunals and the chambers of the inquisitors and officials were
entered and lighted. All had now been thoroughly whitewashed and
renovated, and bore no marks of the fearful scenes that had been here
enacted. When I stood in the hall where its judgments used to be
delivered, I had to tax my memory of books to draw a picture of events
that here daily transpired in times past. I saw no Bridge of Sighs, yet
the whole institution was founded upon the sighs, and groans, and riven
hearts of its victims, of many of whom the world was not worthy. The
rich were the most profitable game, but a beautiful woman was the most
acceptable spectacle to a populace debased from infancy by attendance
on bull-fights. A foreigner that had been by special grace licensed to
visit Mexico, was considered a fortunate prize, for to offer a
foreigner as a human sacrifice was in accordance with the ancient
custom of the Aztecs. There was only one foreigner who amassed great
wealth, and that was Laborde the miner, who bought his peace by
building the Cathedral of Toluca.
There was nothing to interest a stranger in the empty halls where once
these legalized murderers had held their nightly meetings, and I
wandered away toward the prison and the place of torture, where, inch
by inch, the life had been torn from the victims of priestly vengeance.
I shuddered as I entered the prison door-way, though fifty years had
passed since the last and most distinguished of its victims had entered
here, the Vice-king Iturrigaray. Here, too, the hand of the
white-washer had been busy, and the cells were now made comfortable
rooms for the soldiery. The instruments of torture were all carefully
removed from the place of torture, and the room bore no marks of the
shocking scenes which had here so often transpired. Here poor Rame, the
Frenchman, had dragged out his long imprisonment, and here William
Lamport, the unfortunate Irish victim, prepared himself for death. But
Lamport's story is worth giving in full, to illustrate the scenes.
STORY OF WILLIAM LAMPORT.
William Lamport was an Irishman by birth, and must have been a Roman
Catholic, or he could not have obtained a license to visit Mexico. He
was probably one of that large class of Irish Catholics who emigrated
to Spain in order to enjoy their religion more freely than they could
at home, under English oppression. It was probably two intercepted
letters that cost this Irishman his life. His accusation sets forth
that he was the author of two writings, in one of which "things were
said against the Holy Office, its erection, style, mode of process,
&c., in such a manner that, in the whole of it, not a word was to be
found that was not deserving of reprehension, not only as being
injurious, but also insulting to our holy Catholic faith." The
Prosecuting Attorney (_fiscal_) says of the other writing "that it
contained detestable bitterness of language, and contumelies so filled
with poison as to manifest the heretical spirit of the author, and his
bitter hatred against the Holy Office." Let his fate be a warning to
all traveling letter-writers who are disposed to criticise too severely
"the erection and style" of a very awkward-looking building, and the
mode of process therein used in condemning men to the flames. Probably,
before he got through with his intercourse with the Inquisition, he
many times wished himself back under the liberal government of the
Anglo-Saxon oppressors of his country!
It was a delightful day in the year 1569, when the most splendid _auto
da fe_ that ever took place in Mexico was celebrated upon the occasion
of the burning of Lamport. A throne had been placed for the Vice-king,
and conspicuous seats were prepared for the _audiencia_. All the
officials of the city and of the department were present to add
importance to the grand performance ("_funcion_"). Not less brilliant
was the display which the whole body of the priesthood made upon the
occasion. The Archbishop, as spiritual Vice-king, displayed a bearing
that dazzled the populace, while his attendant clergy, with the whole
body of the monastic orders, added immensely to the grand spectacle.
The procession, headed by the Grand Inquisitor and his subordinates,
was followed by the officials and familiars, while the poor Irishman
walked with his eyes raised to Heaven, for the purpose, said the
priests, "of seeing if the devil, his familiar, would come to his
assistance."[58] The sermon and the ordinary exercises, including the
oath administered to all the dignitaries present to support the Holy
Office, were spun out to an unusual length, so that it proved to be a
protracted meeting, as well as the greatest festival the Mexicans ever
witnessed since the time that Montezuma offered human sacrifices. But
in the midst of the preliminary exercises Lamport escaped burning
alive, for when his neck had been placed in the ring, he let himself
fall and broke his neck, so that the crowd were compelled indignantly
to put up with burning of the dead body of a heretic. The unbeliever
cheated them out of half their expected sport.
THE INQUISITION IN SPAIN.
It may look like wandering from the main topic of discussion to devote
a chapter to an institution which has ceased to exist for forty years.
But no one can fully comprehend the social and political character of
the diverse and conflicting nationalities and discordant elements that
for three hundred years constituted the Spanish empire without fully
understanding the character and workings of the Inquisition, which,
from "the Council of the Supreme" in Spain, extended, with its
complicated ramifications, through all the provinces, and penetrated
every social organization in Europe and America,[59] and even to the
most distant East India possessions, binding all the several parts
together as the nervous system does the parts of the human body; or
rather by external folds, as the anaconda does its victim. The
Inquisition was emphatically the nervous system of the Spanish
monarchy. From the time of Philip II. to the last of her kings, Spain
had but one monarch that could have escaped a lunatic asylum on a
commission _ad inquirendo_, and not a single royal family in all that
time that had not at least one judicially declared idiot in the
household; and more than once it was the regular successor to the
throne. And yet this ingeniously contrived craft of priests held all
most firmly together, and made it capable of resisting every outside
pressure until the French imperial armies entered Madrid.
When French gunpowder was applied to the Holy Office, the Spanish
empire lost its nationality, and its different parts fell to pieces
like a rope of sand, and revealed to the world the sad truth that the
Spanish race, whether in the Peninsula or in the colonies, was now
incapable of self-government. The Inquisition had consumed its powers
of vitality. So long accustomed to submit to and lean upon despotic
authority, its various nationalities had lost the power of
self-support. Spain, from the earliest historical periods, had ever
been the victim of foreign colonial despotisms or imported tyrants
until Philip II., under whom the Inquisition becoming firmly
established, it thenceforward continued a Catholic province of the
Roman Church, until Rome and the Papal Spanish empire fell together by
the hands of Napoleon. From that time onward, Spain and all her former
provinces have continued the sport of military insurgents--a melancholy
evidence of the mental, physical, and moral ruin that overtakes a
country abandoned to the despotism of priests.
Though the origin of the Inquisition of Spain is familiar to all, yet
few are accustomed to look upon it in its political bearings. The
"pious" Isabella, or, as she is called by the descendants of the
Moriscoes, "Isabella the Accursed," is conceded to have been the
founder of the modern Inquisition, and yet her great piety did not
prevent her from giving a death-blow to the _Fuero_ of Castile, the
most liberal government of Europe except that of Aragon. The popularity
which she acquired by the conquest of Granada, the religious furor
excited by that successful war, and the union with Aragon, enabled her
to establish the Inquisition. By means of her priests associated in its
gloomy tribunals she was able to suppress popular rights. A shadow of
the _Fueros_ of Catalonia, Valencia, and Aragon still remained, but
she had sapped the foundation on which they rested by the establishment
of the Holy Office. Charles V. was sufficiently powerful to disregard
such humble instrumentalities in carrying out any purpose he deemed to
be of advantage to his states. He was not a bigot by education, and we
have to look to disappointed ambition as the cause of the virulence
with which he persecuted the least indication of heresy. He had been
thwarted in his ambitious schemes; this he attributed to the
Reformation, which he himself had fostered at its beginning, in order
to sow discord among the princes of Germany. He had hoped that upon
their mutual jealousy he might establish despotic authority; but the
treason of Maurice of Saxony had subverted his darling scheme at the
moment of its apparent success, and in disgust he retired from public
life to spend the remainder of his days in recruiting his health and
cursing the heretics.
PHILIP II. AND THE INQUISITION.
The Inquisition burned with renewed flames under Philip II. from
precisely the same cause that had made it tolerable to his father. To
the troubles caused by the Reformation he attributed the election of
his uncle Maximilian "King of the Romans," and his own consequent loss
of the Germanic empire. But, as a compensation for this loss, he had
substantially acquired England by his marriage with Queen Mary, and had
the satisfaction of having his soldiers mingled with those of England
in his war against France, and of seeing his own Archbishop of Toledo
preside in the tribunal that condemned to the flames the Protestant
bishops of England. The _autos da fe_ of Smithfield were weeding out
heresy and liberty from England, which he already began to look upon as
a province of his empire, when his wife died, and the avowed heresy of
Elizabeth blasted his hopes in that quarter. The heretic Prince of
Nassau had raised insurrection in the Netherlands, which deprived him
of Holland. When the French Catholic League, which he had so long
subsidized, was about to declare him, or at least his daughter,
sovereign of France, the relapsed heretic, Henry IV., blasted this hope
by laying siege to Paris. On the side of the Catholic states of Europe
his affairs went on most prosperously. He had acquired Portugal, with
all her American and East India provinces. But in these new
acquisitions he was not safe from the assaults of the heretics. The
Dutch robbed him of Brazil, and of the Cape of Good Hope, and of the
islands of Ceylon and Java in the East Indies. When his missionary
emissaries had excited an insurrection by which he might have acquired
Japan in a religious war, the Dutch were there with their ships, and,
laying them alongside the rebel camp, they cannonaded it, while the
imperial army on the land side utterly destroyed together emissary
priests and rebels, and forever excluded Spain and her emissaries from
the islands, and even England after the negotiation of a Spanish
marriage. Nor were his treasure-ships safe from these audacious Dutch,
who prowled about the West Indies and seized his galleons. The ships
from Goa, laden with the treasures of the East, had to take a
circuitous route to avoid the Dutch, who were continually on the
look-out at the Cape of Good Hope. As if this was not enough, the
failure of his great armada sent against England, and the ravaging of
his own coasts by Essex, increased his hatred against the heretics to
something like a mania.
These are sufficient reasons for accounting for the zeal of Philip II.
on the subject of religion, and his blindness to the consequences of
thus abandoning his empire and his people as common plunder to a
merciless horde of plunderers, who bound his empire most firmly
together, but it was in the bands of national ruin. This, too, may
account for his often-repeated remark that he would not shield his own
son if he should incur the censure of the Inquisition. When his eldest
son and heir openly avowed his hatred to the Inquisition, we find him
dying a mysterious death. It has already been remarked that there can
be no such thing as reliance upon historical truth in a country where
the Inquisition is in full authority. But it does not follow from this
that we ought to adopt the popular surmise that Philip was privy to the
murder of his son, or even that he was actually murdered. It may have
been a murder, as the inquisitorial assassins were numerous, or it may
have been a natural death, as represented in books that have been
published by permission of the censors. All that we know is, that his
death happened advantageously for the continuance of the Holy Office.
FATE OF THE INQUISITION.
Philip III. can hardly be considered an accountable being. The same may
be said of his son and of his son's sons, to say nothing of those heirs
to the Spanish crown that were legally adjudged idiots. The nominal
father of Charles III., though he was King of Spain, must be considered
as not merely bordering on idiocy, but as actually a man of unsound
mind. Charles III., though he had courage to drive from his dominions
the Jesuits, dared not undertake a reform of the clergy. We may
conclude this chapter by saying that the Inquisition had its origin in
political considerations, or in the revengeful feelings of really great
sovereigns of Spain, and that its continuance was owing to the weakness
or impotency of their successors; and though it was the terror of all
classes above the street rabble, it was too powerful to be suppressed
before the emancipation of the people which followed the French
invasion. Such is the fate of a race over whom priests have once
acquired dominion.
[57] The defense of the invasion of Mexico by Cortez in time of
peace, and reducing the Aztecs to slavery, rests on the ground
that the Aztecs were monsters.
[58] Though I do not entirely follow Pinblanch, yet I give him as
authority for this incident.
[59] Mr. Gayarre, who, under a commission from the State of
Louisiana, is examining the colonial records at Madrid, has
discovered the evidence of an attempt made to introduce the
Inquisition into New Orleans even after our people had begun to
settle there. This is his statement:
"It appears," says Gayarre, "that soon after the death of
Charles III., an attempt was made to introduce the much-dreaded
tribunal of the Inquisition into the colony. The reverend
Capuchin, Antonio de Sedella, who had lately arrived in the
province, wrote to the Governor to inform him that he, the holy
father, had been appointed Commissary of the Inquisition; that
in a letter of the 5th of December last, from the proper
authority, this intelligence had been communicated to him, and
that he had been requested to discharge his functions with the
most exact fidelity and zeal, and in conformity with the royal
will. Wherefore, after having made his investigations with the
utmost secrecy and precaution, he notified Miro that, in order
to carry, as he was commanded, his instructions into perfect
execution in all their parts, he might soon, at some late hour
of the night, deem it necessary to require some guards to
assist him in his operations.
"Not many hours had elapsed since the reception of this
communication by the Governor, when night came, and the
representative of the holy Inquisition was quietly reposing in
bed, when he was roused from his sleep by a heavy knocking. He
started up, and, opening his door, saw standing before him an
officer and a file of grenadiers. Thinking that they had come
to obey his commands, in consequence of his letter to the
Governor, he said, 'My friends, I thank you and his Excellency
for the readiness of this compliance with my request. But I
have now no use for your services, and you shall be warned in
time when you are wanted. Retire, then, with the blessing of
God.' Great was the stupefaction of the friar when he was told
that he was under arrest. 'What!' exclaimed he, 'will you dare
lay your hands on a Commissary of the holy Inquisition?' 'I
dare obey orders,' replied the undaunted officer, and the
reverend Father Antonio de Sedella was instantly carried on
board of a vessel, which sailed the next day for Cadiz.
"Rendering an account of this incident to one of the members of
the cabinet of Madrid, Governor Miro said, in a dispatch, 'the
mere name of the Inquisition uttered in New Orleans would be
sufficient not only to check immigration, which is successfully
progressing, but would also be capable of driving away those
who have recently come, and I even fear that in spite of my
having sent out of the country Father Sedella, the most fatal
consequences may ensue from the mere suspicion of the cause of
his dismissal.'"