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
The sentence pronounced on the dead was even more impressive than that
on the living. It declared him to have lived and died a heretic, his
memory and fame were condemned and his property was confiscated. "And we
order that, on the day of the auto, an effigy representing his person
shall be placed on the scaffold, with a mitre of condemnation and a
sanbenito bearing on one side the insignia of the condemned and on the
other a placard with his name, which effigy, after the reading of this
our sentence, shall be delivered to the secular arm and justice, and his
bones shall be disinterred, if they can be distinguished from those of
faithful Christians, and be delivered to the said justice to be publicly
burnt, in detestation of such great and grievous crimes. And, if there
is any inscription on his tomb, or if his arms are anywhere displayed,
they shall be erased, so that no memory of him shall remain on the face
of the earth, except of our sentence and of the execution which we order
in it. And, that it may the more remain in the memory of the living, we
order that the said sanbenito or one like it, with the said insignia and
name of the condemned, shall be placed in the cathedral or parochial
church of ----, of which he was parishioner, in a prominent place where
it shall remain for ever. Moreover we order that the children and the
grandchildren by the male line, be deprived of all dignities and
benefices and public positions that they possess, and be incapacitated
for others, as well as to ride on horseback and carry arms and wear
silk, camlet and fine cloth, gold, silver and corals and other things
forbidden by the laws."[231]
* * * * *
We have already seen how numerous, in the opening years of the
Inquisition, were the trials of absentees, as shown by the burning of
their effigies in the autos de fe. This arose not only from the flight
of those alarmed by the activity of persecution, but also from the
investigation of the records of all who, for years before, had changed
their places of residence or had betaken themselves to the Moors of
Granada or beyond seas. This proportion of the early period was not
maintained after the first hurried rush of expatriation was past, but
still there continued to be many cases. When a Judaizer or Morisco was
arrested, all who had been associated with him recognized the impending
danger and, if there was possibility of concealment or of leaving the
country, prudence counselled absence. The Inquisition sought
energetically to trace those against whom evidence was obtained and, if
it failed, it prosecuted them _in absentia_. In some respects this
procedure differed from that in prosecution of the dead.
[Sidenote: _PROSECUTION OF THE ABSENT_]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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