tent and a fine of ten ducats. Juan Gomez, an Algerine Moor, was a voluntary convert who on the road-side was bitten by some dogs. He beat them off, when their master came and abused him, beat him, and denounced him for saying that the Moorish law wag better than the Christian and that he would live and die in it. On his trial he defended himself by asserting that he was a good Christian but his Spanish was imperfect and that in his passion he had meant to say that the Moors observed their law better than the Christians for they welcomed converts and treated them well. The inquisitors humanely took his recent conversion into consideration and agreed to regard his imprisonment during trial as sufficient punishment, so he escaped with a reprimand and two months' seclusion in a convent for instruction. The very triviality of these cases is their chief importance as they show how the Moriscos lived on a lava-crust which might at any moment give way and how ready a means the Inquisition furnished for enmity to satisfy a grudge in safety, protected by its suppression of the names of witnesses. A simple trial for heresy was in itself, as we have seen, no slight infliction and besides. there was the ready resort to torture which, in the jurisprudence of the period, was the universal solvent of judicial doubts. In the 190 cases contained in the record before us, it was employed in 55—in four of them twice—and in a considerable portion of those which were suspended or discontinued the accused had been tortured without extracting a confession.1

But these trivial accusations were by no means all that the Moriscos had to dread. At any moment the treachery or trial of one might involve a whole community. In

1 MSS. of Library of University of Halle, Yc. 20, Tom. I.

1606, a girl of nineteen named Maria Paez, daughter of Diego Paez Limpati, brought desolation on the Moriscos of Almagro by accusing her parents, sisters, uncles, cousins, kindred and friends. Incriminations of course spread. The girl's father was burnt as an impenitent because he would not confess; her mother, who confessed, was reconciled and condemned to imprisonment for life and in all twenty-five Moriscos of Almagro suffered, of whom four were relaxed to the secular arm. As confiscation accompanied the sentence in every case the Inquisition probably gathered a fairly abundant harvest.1 The Moorish com

A summary of the sentences passed on Moriscos in the MS. cited above shows

Sanbenito and prison perpetual, irremissible

Scourging (mostly 100 lashes, but sometimes 200)
Galleys (for terms of from 3 to 10 years)

Relaxed to secular arm for burning.

5

14

5

30

24

15

32

8

6

78

5

5

2

5

27

32

3

15

14

11

In the Seville auto de fe of September 24, 1559, there were three Moriscos burned and eight reconciled with sanbenito and prison; of these six were also scourged, including three women. --Archivo de Simancas, Hacienda, Legajo 25, fol. 2.

munities were constantly subject to devastation of this kind. In 1585, at an auto de fe in Cuenca, there were twenty-one of them-one relaxed, seventeen reconciled and three required to abjure de vehementi-of whom thirteen were from the village of Soquellamos and seven from Villaescusa de Haro.1 In 1589 the Inquisition of Valencia penanced eighty-three Moriscos of Mislata and in 1590 it added seventeen more.2

Such were the conditions of existence of the Moriscos of Castile—of the old Mudejares who for generations had been loyal and faithful subjects and industrious citizens contributing to the prosperity of the land. Such was the gentleness with which Fonseca says the Inquisition sought to induce them to obedience without frightening them and such were the benignant methods which a recent writer assures us were employed by the Inquisition to win them over.3 The learned Juan Bautista Perez, Bishop of Scgorbe, knew better when, in 1595, in enumerating fifteen impediments to their conversion he included their fear of the Inquisition and its punishments which make them hate religion4—that is, the religion of their persecutors. If it were not so tragic there would be food for grim mirth in the rhetorical amplification with which the clerical writers of the period dilate on the devilish and inexpugnable obstinacy with which the Moriscos clung to their false faith and resisted the kindly efforts made for their salvation.

1 Archivo de Simancas, Inquisition, Leg. 1157, fol. 155.

2 Archivo Hist. Nacional, Inqn de Valencia, Leg. 98.

3 Fonseca, Giusto Scacciamento, p. 346.—Menendez y Pelayo, Heterodoxos espanoles II. 628.--“La Inquisicion apuraba todos los medios benignos y conciliatorios."

Archivo de Simancas, Inqn de Valencia, Leg. 205, fol. 3.

CHAPTER V.

THE INQUISITION.

In order properly to understand the influence exerted by the Inquisition a brief summary of its processes and methods is necessary. The impenetrable secrecy which shrouded all its operations invested it with a terror possessed by no other tribunal. When a prisoner was arrested he disappeared from human view as though the earth had opened to swallow him; his trial might last two, three, or four years, during which his family knew not whether he were dead or alive, until in some public auto de fe he reappeared and sentence was read, condemning him to relaxation, or the galleys, or perpetual imprisonment, or perhaps discharging him with some trivial penalty. Geronimo Moraga, a Morisco, when on trial in Saragossa in 1577, explained how he met certain persons in December, 1576, while on his way to the city to be present at an auto de fe announced for that time, in order to see whether his father and brother, who had been arrested some time previously, would appear in it.1 It was the only way in which he could learn their fate and put an end to agonizing suspense. The prisoner at his first audience was sworn not to reveal anything that should occur while he was in prison, and after the auto de fe, if he was not burnt, a similar but more solemn oath was

1 Archivo de Simancas, Inqn de Valencia, Leg. 205, fol. 4.

administered to him before he was discharged to undergo his penance. All officials and witnesses were likewise bound to inviolable secrecy. The tribunal was thus shielded from all criticism and released from all responsibility save to the Suprema. No one could call in question its justice and no one could complain of its acts for every mouth was sealed. Human nature is not fitted to wield wholly irresponsible power over the lives and fortunes of men, and such a system, while it gave free rein to the evil-disposed, could not but affect injuriously even the well-intentioned judge.

A corollary to this system of secrecy was the careful suppression of the names and identity of the witnesses, who thus were likewise released from all personal responsibility, save in the exceedingly rare cases of prosecution for perjury. Their evidence was taken in secret by the inquisitor, there was no cross-examination or endeavor to test its accuracy, and when, at a subsequent stage of the trial, it was "published" or read to the accused, it was in a garbled form, drawn up so as to prevent, as far as possible, any identification of the witnesses by him. All this, of course, threw almost insuperable difficulties in the way of the defence, nor were they much diminished by the simulacrum of allowing him counsel. He was offered a choice between two or three advocates who formed part of the official staff of the tribunal, and with the one. selected he was permitted to communicate only in presence of the inquisitors. In the majority of cases the main duty of the advocate consisted in urging his client to confess and throw himself on the mercy of the court, and in case a serious defence was undertaken he was forbidden to communicate with the friends and kindred of the ac