legally proved.' Such a definition, however, threw too many obstacles in the way of the prosecution not to be eluded and, in fact, there were classes of cases, such as solicitation in the confessional, in which it was impossible to have more than one witness to each individual act. So, in prosecutions for Judaism, in which the evidence frequently covered a long series of years and turned on infinitesimal incidents in daily life, concurrent witnesses to any single one could scarce be had. Yet the claims of the Inquisition to extreme benignity required this to be understood as Escobar expresses it, while in practice it was disregarded. It was discovered that witnesses could be contestes in genere when they testified to different acts of heresy, and thus make full proof. It is true that Rojas, after citing authorities on both sides, concludes that the rule requiring two concurrent witnesses to a fact must be observed, but one of his authorities asserts that the contrary is the rule in practice, and the Suprema affirmed this, July 27, 1590, by ordering that, where formal heresy is concerned, depositions as to different ceremonies and points of faith are to be held as contestes. This was inevitable and it was only sanctioning what had long been the custom in the tribunals.

There was much laxity in the character of the evidence accepted. In the secular courts, hearsay testimony was not admitted as proof unless a witness had heard a matter from so many persons as to constitute public fame, in which case it was allowed a certain weight. In the Inquisition the same rule was nominally followed, but in practice hearsay evidence was welcomed and was utilized. All the gossip and tattle of a village was eagerly accepted and recorded, to be reproduced in the publication of evidence furnished to the accused, and it unquestionably had its weight when laid before the consulta de fe which voted the sentence. Witnesses were often brought in to swear that they had heard the direct witness assert that the accused was guilty of the heresy charged,

1 Escobar de Nobil. et Purit. probanda, P. 1, Q. ix, ? 3, n. 18.

2 Simancæ Enchirid. Tit. xxxvii, n. 8.-Páramo, pp. 871-2.-Rojas de Hæret. P. II, n. 139-45.-Archivo de Simancas, Lib. 939, fol. 87.

Archivo hist. nacional, Inquisicion de Valencia, Leg. 1, n. 1, fol. 401.

In the ancient fuero of Teruel, in force from 1176 to 1597, evidence to be legal required to be of both sight and hearing-"Quia nullus pro solo visu vel pro solo auditu debet recipi in testimonio, juxta forum."-Forum Turolii, regnante in Aragonia Adefonso rege, Anno Dominice nativitatis mclxxvi, Art. 245 (Zaragoza, 1905).

and this was regarded as cumulative evidence. Sometimes it happened that these secondary witnesses made a much stronger statement than their principal and, in such case, the fiscal was directed to insert both in the accusation, with the reserve that the direct testimony would be considered when sentencing, the object being to terrify and mislead the prisoner. The kind of evidence that was gravely accepted and recorded is seen in the trial of the Licentiate Luis de Guevara, who was reconciled in the Toledo auto de fe of 1594. In an abstract of the more important testimony it is stated that the fourth witness had heard a man say that a certain Morisca was a great bitch, for she coupled with other dogs, meaning the said Luis de Guevara. Such hearsay gossip was laboriously accumulated to an incredible degree, and it is easy to appreciate its effect on the defendant, when cunningly mingled with the direct evidence in the publication of witnesses, which he was required to answer on the spot, item by item, tending to confuse him and leading him to entrap himself. In the trial at Valladolid, in 1641, of Sebastian de los Rios, cura of Tombrio, there were fourteen witnesses de visu, or direct, and twenty de oidas, or hearsay, and, in 1659, Guiomar Antunes was thrown into the secret prison, with sequestration on the testimony of one witness de visu and eleven de oidas. Latitudinarianism as to evidence could scarce go further than in the case of Fray Alonso Capera, tried in 1643, as a curandero for treating disease by conjurations, against whom there testified twenty witnesses, "men and women, minors and adults, some direct, others hearsay and others on suspicion." When it is remembered that no witness, however infamous or unfit, was rejected, we can conceive the quality of the evidence on which depended the fate of the accused.

While the Inquisition claimed jurisdiction over all heresy, internal and mental, as well as external and formal, it could only prosecute when heresy was manifested or inferable by externa acts or words, and these had to be investigated with the utmost minuteness. The land was filled with those whose external conformity might be but the cloak for secret dissidence. The New Christian was regarded with suspicion, as a possible or even a

1 Praxis Procedendi, cap. 10, n. 4 (Archivo hist. nacional, Inquisicion de Valencia).

2 MS. of the Library of Univ. of Halle, Yc, 20, T. I.

Archivo de Simancas, Inquisicion, Leg. 552, fol. 28, 42, 33.

probable apostate, whose baptism only served to render him guilty and to subject him to the jurisdiction of the Inquisition. He might be regular in religious observance, be liberal to church and friar, be a constant purchaser of the Cruzada indulgences, and yet be secretly a believer in the Law of Moses or of Mahomet. It was the business of the Inquisition to detect and punish these apostates; it was rarely that they betrayed their infidelity by imprudent avowals or hasty speeches, except to so-called accomplices or to cell-companions, and, in the absence of such witnesses, for the most part, the only proof against them arose from their adherence, in the privacy of their homes, to the rites and usages which, through long succession of generations, had become a second nature. It was on this, then, that prosecutions largely depended, and the simplest acts that savored of Judaism or of Islam were regarded as incontrovertible proofs of apostasy, requiring reconciliation to the Church, with all that it implied and, if subsequently persisted in, proving relapse with its penalty of the stake.

Familiarity with the practices of the condemned religions was therefore part of the necessary training of the inquisitor, and long descriptive catalogues were compiled for their information. In order also that the people might be duly instructed, and be on the watch to denounce their neighbors, these were incorporated in the Edicts of Faith annually published in all the churches. Much of the evidence recorded in the trials and, for the most part, accepted as conclusive, consists of acts in themselves perfectly innocent and appearing to us wholly indifferent and unworthy of consideration. Observing the Ramadan or the fast of Queen Esther of course would admit of no extenuation, but there were a host of trivial observances which seem to the modern mind altogether inadequate to the prominence accorded to them in the trials. This extreme minuteness with which such observances were held to prove apostasy was an innovation. Of old, the Church recognized the impossibility of changing abruptly customs so imbedded in the routine of daily life, and, while such practices were to be repressed, they were not treated as heresy. The great council of Lateran, in 1215, alludes to their frequency, but contents itself with ordering prelates to force converts to abandon all remnants of their old faith.' It was otherwise in Spain and the evidence on which prosecutions were based and

1 Concil. Lateran. IV, ann. 1215, cap. lxx.

punishments inflicted would often appear to us to be of the flimsiest character.

Changing the body-linen or table-linen on Saturday, lighting candles on Friday and similar observances were proofs of a most damaging character; even eating amin—a broth liked by Jews— is enumerated among the offences entailing appearance in an auto de fe. When Brianda de Bardaxí was on trial at Saragossa, in 1491, she admitted that, when a child, she had eaten a few mouthfuls of Passover bread given to her by a playmate, and this was gravely detailed in her sentence as one of the proofs of "vehement suspicion" for which she was severely punished. Circumcision, in the later period, was an evidence almost decisive and, with male defendants, an inspection by the surgeon of the tribunal was customary but, in the earlier time, before the expulsion and forced conversion of the Jews, it was merely an indication that a man was a New and not an Old Christian, yet in an auto de fe at Saragossa, in 1486, Pedro and Luis de Almazan, on this evidence alone, were sentenced to perform penance with lighted candles and to ten years of exile. Among the Moriscos, staining the nails with henna was held to justify suspicion; refusing to eat the flesh of animals that had died of natural causes was highly damaging; a propensity to cleanliness by washing one's self was an indication of apostasy and, in the trial of Mari Gómez at Toledo, in 1550, as a relapsed impenitent, one of the charges was that, in her former trial, she had not confessed that, some fifteen years before, a kid had been killed in her house by cutting its throat."

How slender was the evidence requisite for prosecution is manifested in the trials of a whole family, in Valladolid, from 1622 to 1624. When Dr. Jorje Enrriquez, physician to the Duke of Alva, died, the body was soiled, requiring washing, followed by a clean shirt. A number of witnesses thereupon deposed that it was prepared for sepulture according to Jewish rites. The consulta de fe on the arrest was not unanimous, and it was referred to the Suprema, which ordered the arrest of all concerned, with sequestration. The whole family, widow, children and servants, with some cousins, were thrown into the secret prison and the

1 Memoria de diversos Autos (Appendix to Vol. I, pp. 593, 594). 2 Chapters from the Religious History of Spain, pp. 473, 478.

MSS. of Royal Library of Copenhagen, 213 fol., p. 148.-Archivo hist. nacional, Inquisicion de Toledo, Leg. 498.-Memoria de diversos Autos (ubi sup. p. 600).

See "Moriscos of Spain," pp. 116, 129-30.

eldest son, a youth of twenty, died from the effects of torture. After nearly two years of this, the evidence was so weak that the consulta de fe voted in discordia and the Suprema ordered the prisoners to be acquitted. So, in 1625, Manuel de Azevedo, a shoemaker of Salamanca, was denounced because he had removed the lump of fat from a leg of mutton which he took to a baker to be roasted. The consulta voted to dismiss the case but the fiscal appealed to the Suprema, which ordered arrest with sequestration. The trial went on through all the forms and when at length Azevedo learned from the accusation what was the charge, he said that he was ignorant of this being a Jewish custom, but had been told that a leg of mutton roasted better when the fat was cut out. When the defence was reached he proved that he was an Old Christian on all sides; he was not acquitted but the case was suspended. Had he been a New Christian he would have been tortured and penanced, whether he overcame the torture or not. In another case, in 1646, one of the charges was that the accused, in slicing bread, held the knife with the edge turned away and not towards his breast, as was customary with Christians. Trivial as all this may seem, one occasionally meets a case showing that the Inquisition did not always spend its energies in vain in following up the slenderest evidence, however great were the sufferings frequently inflicted on the innocent. In several Jewish cases in Valladolid, in 1642, the chief evidence was that the meat before cooking was soaked in water to remove the blood and grease. This led to the discovery and punishment as Judaizers of a group of some fifteen or twenty in Benavente, who appeared in the auto de fe of 1644. As soon as one was brought to confess, he implicated others, and the net was spread which captured them all. The fact, however, that torture was freely used casts an unpleasant doubt over the justice of the result.1

Suspicion might be aroused by negative as well as by positive indications and, in the Spain of the Inquisition, it behooved every man to be scrupulously exact in the performance of what were regarded as evidences of orthodoxy, as well as in the avoidance of what created doubt, for everywhere around him were zealous spies, eager to serve the faith. In 1635, Manuel Mardes, travelling with his wife and two other women, passed two men laboring in a field without saluting them. One of them asked him why he did not say "Praised be Jesus Christ" or "Praised be the most

1 Archivo de Simancas, Inquisicion, Leg. 552, fol. 3, 6, 31, 33.