A History of the Inquisition of Spain; vol. 3Lea, Henry Charles
History
A History of the Inquisition of Spain; vol. 3
Lea, Henry Charles
Inquisition -- Spain
How slender was the evidence required when a Portuguese was concerned is
seen in another case at Valladolid. When the inquisitor Pedro Múñoz made
a visitation of Oviedo in 1619-20, two women testified that Lucía Núñez,
a Portuguese settled in Benavente, put on clean chemises on Saturdays.
When, March 5, 1620, the tribunal voted on the cases brought in by
Múñoz, this was suspended, but the Suprema ordered the papers to be
sent to it and, on August 17, 1621, it instructed the tribunal to arrest
Lucía and sequestrate her property. She was accordingly brought to
Valladolid, October 30, 1621, and thrown into the secret prison. On her
first audience, in reply to the ordinary question whether she knew the
cause of her arrest, she said that it was because she changed her linen
on Fridays and Saturdays, as she did every day, for the sake of
cleanliness, especially when she was suckling her children, and she did
not know that she was committing any offence. It was true that she was
born in Portugal, but both her parents were Castilians and Old
Christians. The trial went through its regular course; nothing else
could be found against her and, on March 15, 1622, the consulta de fe
voted to acquit her and lift the sequestration, which was done
accordingly the next day, after nearly five months of
incarceration.[809]
When this kind of work was on foot throughout Spain, it is easy to
realize how the unfortunate Portuguese were tracked, from one refuge to
another, by the implacable vigilance of the Inquisition, with its
net-work of tribunals, in constant correspondence, and its commissioners
and familiars everywhere on the watch. That vigilance was kept alive by
the frequent discovery of communities of Judaizers, more or less
numerous, whose trials revealed the names of abundant accomplices. The
tribunal of Llerena was busy, from 1635 to 1638, with the "complicidad
de Badajoz," a group of Portuguese, whom it had unearthed at Badajoz
and, when the Suprema called for a list of those inculpated by the
prisoners, whom it had not been able to arrest, they amounted to a
hundred and fifty.[810]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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