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
At Valencia, in 1604, there was quite a group of cases showing
successful disabling of witnesses among Moriscos. Gaspar Alcadi, accused
by two women of saying that he did not believe in Christianity,
identified them and proved enmity, so that his case was suspended. One
woman accused two men, Vicente Sabdon and Fay Vicente and three women,
Angela Bastant, Angela Barday and Gerónima Alamin, but they all
succeeded in fastening it upon her and showing her hostility, with the
result of a suspension of prosecutions. In 1607 there were several more
cases of the same kind.[178] A still more striking instance occurred in
1658, at Valladolid, when a dissolute woman accused three men and
thirteen women of Sanabria as Judaizers. They seem to have found little
difficulty in identifying and disabling her and were all acquitted,
February 1, 1659.[179] In general, however, the records show that the
main recourse of the accused, in seeking to identify and disable
witnesses for enmity, was rarely successful.
* * * * *
After the wholesale forcible conversions of Jews and Moors a defence was
sometimes advanced by the accused that he was not baptized and
consequently not a Christian nor subject to the jurisdiction of the
Inquisition. There were subtile questions involved in this, on which
theologians were not wholly in accord, but in practice the main point
turned on whether the fiscal was obliged to prove the baptism. Against
this was urged a decree of Paul IV, in 1556, when some Portuguese in
Italy defended themselves with this plea, and he ordered the
prosecutions to proceed on the ground that, if they had not been
baptized, they would not have been tolerated in Portugal. An old
inquisitor, about 1640 says that in Saragossa he had a case of a Morisco
who advanced such a plea and, on examination of his parish registers, no
record of his baptism could be found, although there were those of his
elder and younger brother. In spite of this, on the strength of the
papal decision, the prosecution went on and his sentence of
reconciliation was confirmed by the Suprema.[180]
* * * * *
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