Chapter V: The Canaries.258 (1)

In 1402 Jean de Bethencourt, an adventurer from Normandy, discovered or rediscovered the Canaries and made himself master of the islands of Lanzarote, Fuerteventura, Gomera and Hierro. After various changes of ownership, they fell to the crown of Castile, and Isabella undertook the conquest of the remainder of the group, the Grand Canary, Tenerife and la Palma. The sturdy resistance of the native Guanches rendered the enterprise an arduous one, consuming eighteen years, and it was not until 1496 that it was finally accomplished. That Columbus, on his first voyage, took his departure from Gomera indicates the importance assumed by the Canaries in the development of trade with the New World and this, conjoined with their productiveness, as they became settled and cultivated, rendered them a centre of commerce frequented by the ships of all maritime nations, as well as an object of buccaneering raids, in an age when trade and piracy were sometimes indistinguishable. Their proximity to Morocco and the Guinea coast moreover exposed them to attacks from the Moors and gave them an opportunity of accumulating Moorish and negro slaves, whom the piety of the age sought to convert into Christians by the water of baptism. In various ways, therefore, there came to be abundant material for inquisitorial activity, although the Judaizing New Christians, who furnished the Spanish tribunals with their principal business, appear to have been singularly few.

There was no haste in extending the Spanish Inquisition to the Canaries. As early as 1406 a bishopric had been founded in Lanzarote, subsequently transferred to Las Palmas in the Grand Canary, which was regarded as the capital of the group. If the successive bishops, who, with more or less regularity, filled the see, exercised their episcopal jurisdiction over heresy, their labors have left no trace. It is not until the time of Diego de Muros, who was consecrated in 1496, that we have any evidence of such action. That stirring prelate, who held a diocesan synod in 1497, announced, April 25, 1499, that, as inquisitor by his ordinary authority, he would have inquest made in some of the islands into heresy and Judaism and other crimes against the faith. What was the result, we have no means of knowing except a confession made, on May 22d, by Isabel Ramírez, of having taught a superstitious prayer which was regarded as sorcery. It is probable that Bishop Muros was warned that he was invading the jurisdiction of the Holy Office, for he sent the papers in the case to the tribunal of Seville.[259] It is noteworthy that, after the establishment of the Canary tribunal, the bishops and their provisors long continued to use the title of “ordinary” inquisitor, to which no exception seems to have been taken, although elsewhere it was contested and forbidden. The latest occasion of its employment with which I have met occurs in 1672.[260]

It was not until 1505 that the Suprema bethought itself of establishing a tribunal in the Canaries, when Inquisitor-general Deza appointed as inquisitor Bartolomé López Tribaldos. The first entry in his register is dated Tuesday, October 28, 1505, and the earliest record that we have of his activity is in 1507, when there were two reconciliations, one of Juan de Ler, a Portuguese, for Judaism, and the other of Ana Rodríguez, a native, for sorceries, whose sanbenitos were duly hung in the cathedral.[261] What were the exact powers conferred on Tribaldos we have no means of knowing, but they must have been exceedingly limited, and for a long time the tribunal continued to be in close dependence on that of Seville. When, about 1520, Martin Ximenes, fiscal of the Seville tribunal, came to Las Palmas in the combined capacity of precentor of the Cathedral, provisor and inquisitor, he left as his deputy fiscal in Seville Doctor Fernando de Zamora, thus not abandoning that office. Even as late as 1548 we chance to have the record of a _consulta de fe_ held by the Seville tribunal, January 13th, to decide on certain informations and cases sent to it by the Canary inquisitor Padilla. In the affair of Juan Alonso, a Morisco, it was ordered that he should be arrested and tried, when the result was to be reported for action. In that of Juan Fernández, he was to be summoned and examined as to his blasphemy and then be penanced at the discretion of Padilla and the Ordinary. Leonor de Lera was to be arrested and tried and the result be submitted. The case of Diego Martínez had apparently been concluded under Padilla, for the Seville consulta sentenced him to twelve years of galley service.[262] Thus every act, from the preliminary arrest to the final decision, was regulated from Seville. To render the position still more anomalous we hear of an _inquisidor ordinario_, Alonso Vivas, Prior of the cathedral, commissioned, in October, 1523, to try cases of faith throughout the Grand Canary as he had already done in Telde and Agüimes.[263]

Irregular and imperfect as may have been the organization of the tribunal, it yet managed to accomplish some convictions. In 1510 there was held an auto de fe in which there were three reconciliations for Judaism and one, of a Moorish slave, for reincidence in Mahometan error, while a fifth culprit was penanced for Judaism.[264] Then in 1513 occurred the first relaxation, that of Alonso Fátima, a native Morisco, who had fled to Barbary. This was always deemed sufficient evidence of relapse to former errors, and he was duly burned in effigy. It was probably also to 1516 that may be attributed the first relaxation in person--that of Juan de Xeres of Seville, for Judaism. It shows that the tribunal was indifferently equipped that, when he was sentenced to torture, the physician whose presence was obligatory on such occasions, Doctor Juan Meneses de Gallegas, was required personally to administer it. It was exceedingly severe, extending to eleven jars of water; the accused was unable to endure it; he confessed his faith, was sentenced to relaxation as a relapsed and for fictitious confession, and was executed on Wednesday, June 4th.[265]

Martin Ximenes seems to have performed his duties with commendable energy. He commenced by making an alphabetical register of all the parties denounced under his predecessor, comprising 139 individuals, besides various groups, such as “the Confesos and Moriscos of Lanzarote,” “other Confesos, their kindred,” “certain persons of Hierro” etc., which indicate how slovenly had been the procedure.[266] He made a visitation of Tenerife and la Palma, from which he returned with ample store of fresh denunciations.[267] May 29, 1524, all the dignitaries, civil and ecclesiastical, and all the people were assembled in the church of Santa Ana, where an edict was read commanding them to render aid and favor to the Inquisition, and an oath to that effect was administered. There was also an Edict of Grace, promising relief from confiscation to all who would come forward and confess as to themselves and others; also an Edict of Faith requiring denunciation of errors and specifying the various kinds of blasphemies and sorceries and the distinctive Jewish and Moorish rites; and finally an edict reciting that the Conversos were emigrating and forbidding their leaving the islands and all ship-masters from carrying away suspected persons without licence from him, under the penalties of fautorship and of forfeiting their vessels.[268]

The terror inspired by the activity of Ximenes may be estimated from a single instance. On May 21st, Ynes de Tarifa came before him to confess that when, a couple of months before, she had heard of the burning in Seville of her son-in-law Alonso Hernández and of his brother Francisco, she recalled that after meals Alonso used to read to Francisco out of a book in an unknown tongue and, if she had erred in not denouncing this to the Seville tribunal, she begged to be treated mercifully.[269] The publication of the edicts throughout the islands brought in an abundant store of denunciations, the record for eight months, from September 13, 1524, to May 15, 1526, amounting to 167. They were nearly all of petty sorceries by women, in sickness or love affairs, but with an occasional blasphemy or suspicion of Judaism, and persons of station were not exempted, for the list comprises the Adelantado Don Pedro de Lugo and his wife Elvira Diaz, the Dean Juan de Alarcon, the Prior Alonso Bivas and others of position. The adelantado, in fact, was dead, but the accusation against his memory is sufficiently significant of the prevailing temper to be worth relating. The Bachiller Diego de Funes came forward, by command of his confessor, to state that when Diego de San Martin was holding for ransom a _Judío de señal_ (one obliged to wear a distinctive mark) who had been caught on his way to Portugal, the captive was starving to death because he could not eat meat slaughtered by Christians: de Lugo charitably gave him a sheep to kill according to his rites and even himself ate some of the mutton. These petty cases kept Ximenes busy and he despatched them with promptness; the punishments as a rule were not severe--in one or two cases scourging or vergüenza, but mostly small fines, exile and occasionally spiritual penances.[270]

There were, however, cases in which the faith demanded more exemplary vindication. The island of Grand Canary, from 1523 to 1532, was ravaged with pestilence creating great misery. Among other causes of divine wrath the people included the secret apostasy of the Portuguese New Christians and of the Moorish slaves, and demanded severe measures for its repression. It may have been with an idea of placating God that Ximenes, on February 24, 1526, celebrated the first _auto publico general de fe_ with great solemnity, in which all the nobles of the island assisted as familiars. The occasion was impressive, for there were seven Judaizers relaxed in person and burnt, there were ten reconciliations, of which five were of Moorish baptized slaves, four were for Judaism and one of a Genoese heretic, in addition to which there were two blasphemers penanced.[271]

This is the last that we hear of Ximenes, whose place, in 1527, was filled by Luis de Padilla, treasurer of the cathedral. For awhile he imitated his predecessor’s activity and, on June 4, 1530, another oblation was offered to God, in an auto celebrated with the same ostentation as the previous one. This time there were no relaxations in person, but there were six effigies burnt of as many Moorish slaves, who had escaped and were drowned in their infidelity while on their way to Africa and liberty. There were also the effigy and bones of Juan de Tarifa, the husband of the Ynes de Tarifa who had denounced herself in 1524; he was of Converso descent and had committed suicide in prison, which was equivalent to self-condemnation. There were three reconciliations, of which two were for Judaism and one for Islam and five penitents for minor offences.[272] The next auto was held on May 23, 1534, in which there were two relaxations of effigies for Judaism and twenty-five reconciliations--twenty-four of Moriscos and one of a Judaizer. One of the relaxations carries with it a warning, for it was of Costanza Garza, who had died in 1533 during her trial. When too late her innocence was discovered and the Suprema humanely rehabilitated her memory and her children, and ordered the restoration of her confiscated estate.[273]

Whether this aggressive vindication of the faith put an end to heresy or whether Padilla had exhausted his energies, it would be impossible now to say, but after this auto the tribunal sank into lethargy so complete that on February 8, 1538, the chapter notified Padilla and the secretary, Canon Alonso de San Juan, that the revenues of their prebends were stopped, for they did not assist in the choir and it was notorious that the Holy Office had nothing to do.[274] Possibly this may have stimulated action, but we have seen that in 1548 the tribunal was merely collecting evidence and obeying the instructions of the Seville Inquisition. Under this there was an accumulation of culprits for an auto held in 1557, where there were seventeen effigies burnt of fugitives--all Moriscos, except a Fleming, Julian Cornelis Vandyk. There were also four Moriscos reconciled, one of them, curiously enough, for so-called Calvinism.[275] This seems to have exhausted whatever remains of energy Padilla possessed for we hear of no further action by him, except a quarrel with the royal Audiencia in 1562, but nevertheless the tribunal shared in the suppression of prebends, and a papal brief assigning one to it was presented to the chapter, August 27, 1563, thus adding another efficient cause of dissension between them.[276] Soon after this the tribunal virtually ceased to exist. In 1565 there was a curious case, of which more hereafter, of John Sanders, an English sailor. It was carried on wholly by the episcopal provisor, during the absence of the bishop Diego Deza. There were arrest, sequestration and the collection of voluminous testimony, which was carefully sealed and despatched to Bishop Deza, to be handed to the Seville tribunal. Throughout it all, there is no trace of participation by the local Inquisition, which, in the consuming jealousy of episcopal encroachments, could not possibly have been the case had there been a tribunal in the Canaries.[277]

The policy followed thus far had evidently proved a failure, and Inquisitor-general Espinosa resolved to reorganize the tribunal and render it independent of Seville. The fiscal of Toledo, Diego Ortiz de Fúnez, was selected and was sent out as a full inquisitor, with the unusual powers of selecting and removing his subordinates, while subjected only to the requirement of reporting his acts to the Suprema. The royal letters commanding obedience to him are dated October 10, 1567, and he left Madrid in the Spring of 1568, landing at Las Isletas on April 17th. Four days later he started for Las Palmas, accompanied in procession by all the dignitaries, secular and ecclesiastical, of the island. On May 1st all the population was summoned, under pain of fine and excommunication, to assemble the next day in the cathedral, at the reading of the Edict of Faith and to take the oath to obey and favor the Holy Office, all of which was performed with due solemnity.[278]

Fúnez carried instructions to appoint twenty familiars and no more in Las Palmas, and such as were found necessary in the other cities and islands. This was his first care, and he soon had a formidable body, recruited from the old nobility, to support his authority. Thus far the Inquisition had had no special habitation, not even a prison, and those under trial on the most serious charges were confined in their own houses or in the public gaol, where there was no provision for their segregation. Fúnez demanded a competent building, with the necessary conveniences, a demand not easily complied with in so small a place, and he finally was installed in the episcopal palace, then vacant through the absence of the bishop.[279] This of course could be but temporary and some other provision must have been made, for we are told that, when the Dutch under Pieter Vandervoez, in 1599, took possession of Las Palmas, they burnt both the episcopal palace and the building of the Inquisition. The former was not rebuilt until thirty years later by Bishop Murga and the latter, as we shall see, was reconstructed in due time on a large scale by the tribunal.[280]

A matter not easily understood is the bestowal, May 25, 1568, on Fúnez, by the dean and chapter, _sede vacante_, of cognizance of superstitions and sorcery, because these crimes should not remain unpunished and his powers as inquisitor were deficient in this respect.[281] These offences in Spain were recognized as subject to inquisitorial jurisdiction when savoring, as they always were assumed to do, of heresy and pact with the demon; they formed by far the larger part of the cases coming before the Canary tribunal and the previous inquisitors had not hesitated to deal with them. They formed however a kind of debatable ground, claimed by both the secular and spiritual as well as the inquisitorial jurisdiction and Fúnez may have taken advantage of the impression produced by his reception to obtain from the chapter, in the absence of a bishop, a transfer of its powers.

Fúnez was zealous and energetic in restoring the tribunal to usefulness and, in about eighteen months, he had accumulated material for an auto de fe, celebrated November 5, 1569. For this he sent out his proclamation through all the islands so that, as he boasted to the Suprema, although the Grand Canary had only fifteen hundred inhabitants, there were fully three thousand spectators assembled. The new bishop, Juan de Azólares, took so warm an interest in the affairs of the Inquisition that he voted personally in all the cases, he walked in the procession and he preached the sermon. There were twenty-seven penitents for minor offences, involving fines, scourging, galleys and other penalties, and there were three effigies of Moriscos relaxed. One of these represented Juan Felipe, a rich merchant of Lanzarote who, on learning that a warrant had been issued for his arrest, chartered a vessel under pretext of going to Tenerife, on which he embarked with his wife and children and some thirty of his compatriots, finding a safe refuge in Morocco and furnishing material for heightening the interest of several more autos.[282]

The activity of Fúnez was not confined to the Gran Canaria for he made repeated visitations to the several islands, gathering in denunciations from all quarters, so that, between May 2, 1568, and January 4, 1571, the list of accused amounts to 544 besides a number of collective entries, such as “_bruxas_,” “the Frenchmen who took the caravel of the Espinosas,” “renegades,” “Moriscos of Lanzarote,” “fugitive negroes” etc. The names of Englishmen and of an occasional Fleming also begin to appear. Yet the denunciations consist largely of the veriest trifles of careless speech, indicating how acute was the watchfulness excited to observe and report whatever might seem to savor of heresy. There was no safety in lapse of time, for matters were treasured up to be brought out long afterwards, when there was no possibility of disproving them. In Gomera, October 23, 1570, María Machin denounced Catalina Rodríguez for telling her of a love-charm some thirty years before; in Garachico, December 21, 1570, Marina Ferrera informs on Vicente Martin, a cleric who had gone to the Indies, who told her more than twenty-seven years before of an unnamed woman who had tried on him a conjuration to stop nose-bleeding. More serious was the accusation brought in Laguna, January 14, 1571, by Barbolagusta, wife of the Regidor Francisco de Coronado, against the physician Reynaldos, because, twelve or thirteen years before, when the husband of a patient told her to seek the intercession of the saints, he said that God alone was to be prayed to and there was no need of saints.[283]

Complaints of Fúnez must have reached the Suprema for, after a short interval, probably in 1570, Doctor Bravo de Zayas was sent out as visitador or inspector. He seems to have associated himself companionably with Fúnez as a colleague and, in August, 1571, he made a visitation of the islands, bringing back an abundant store of denunciations. The two held together an auto on December 12, 1574, in which there was but one relaxation--the effigy of a fugitive Morisco. Four slaves were reconciled, including a case which is suggestive--that of a negro of whom it is recorded that he was tortured for an hour, when the infliction was stopped because he was so ignorant and stupid. Pious zeal for the salvation of these poor savages led to their baptism after capture; they could not be intelligent converts or throw off their native superstitions, and no one seemed able to realize the grim absurdity of adding the terrors of the Inquisition to the horrors of their enslaved existence. When a negro slave-girl was bemoaning her condition, she was kindly consoled with the assurance that baptism preserved her and her children from hell, to which she innocently replied that doing evil and not lack of baptism led to hell. This was heresy, for which she was duly prosecuted.[284]

Under the inquisitorial code the attempt to escape from slavery thus was apostasy, punishable as such if unsuccessful, and expiated if successful by concremation in effigy. This is illustrated in an auto, held by Zayas and Fúnez, June 24, 1576, in which among sixteen effigies of absentees were those of eight slaves, seven negroes and one Moor. They had undergone baptism, had been bought by Doña Catalina de la Cuevas and were worked on her sugar plantation. They seized a boat at Orotava and escaped to Morocco, for which they were duly prosecuted as apostates and their effigies were delivered to the flames--a ghastly mockery which does not seem to have produced the desired impression in preventing other misguided beings from flying from their salvation.[285]

While Zayas thus coöperated with Fúnez, he did not neglect the special mission entrusted to him. Charges piled up against Fúnez, which he condensed into a series of thirty articles, embracing all manner of misdeeds--favoritism, injustice, improper financial transactions, illicit trading with the Moors of Barbary, ill-treatment of prisoners, lack of discipline in the tribunal, etc. Zayas and Fúnez seem to have returned to Spain towards the close of 1576, for the latter’s defence against the charges is dated at Madrid, February 12, 1577. In this he answered all the points in full detail, with citation of documents; the people of the islands, he asserts, are given to perjury and, when offended, bring false accusations to revenge themselves--a habit which, it may be hoped, he bore in mind when sitting as a judge. Doubtless he had given them provocation enough to induce them to exercise their talents in this line against him and the numerous charges indicate a wide-spread feeling of hostility towards the tribunal. His defence was skilfully drawn and, on its face, seems to be sufficient.[286]

The Canary tribunal was thus placed upon the same footing as those of Spain, though perhaps it was subjected to a somewhat closer supervision by the Suprema than was as yet exercised at home, for we happen to have a letter of October 11, 1572, ordering that Antonio Lorenzo be released from the secret prison and be given his house as a prison. Perhaps it felt that assertion of its authority was necessary, in view of the delay and uncertainty of communication, for commercial intercourse was not frequent; as Fúnez says, about this time, it was notorious that there were no vessels sailing for two or three or even more months.[287] Be this as it may, there was another visitor sent to the Canaries in 1582, and a third about 1590. The latter was Claudio de la Cueva, whose visitation lasted until 1597 and was useful in exposing the iniquities of Joseph de Armas, who had served as fiscal for more than twenty years. A quarrel between him and the secretary, Francisco Ibañez, led to mutual accusations and the unveiling of secrets which show how the terror inspired by the Inquisition and the immunity of its officials enabled them to abuse their positions. There was a rich and respected Fleming named Jan Aventrot, married to a native widow, who was accused by a stepdaughter of eating meat on Fridays and saying that meat left no stain on the soul; also of eating meat in Lent and speaking Flemish. Aventrot was secretly a Protestant, which could readily have been developed by the ordinary inquisitorial methods, but he escaped with a reprimand and a fine of 200 ducats.[288] How this happened finds its explanation in the fact that, while he was in prison, Armas obtained from him, without payment, a bill of exchange on Seville.[289] He also defrauded the revenue by receiving goods imported by an Englishman named John Gache (Gatchell?) and selling them through his brother Baltasar. Hernan Peraza, alguazil of the tribunal, complained that Armas would not pay his debts and so did Daniel Vandama, a Flemish merchant. A harder case was that of a chaplaincy in the Inquisition founded by Andrés de Moron for the benefit of Juan de Cervantes, son of Gaspar Fullana, auditor of accounts in the cathedral. Armas induced Inquisitor Francisco Madaleno to take the chaplaincy from Cervantes and give it to him. When Claudio de la Cueva came, Fullana complained to him and he ordered the chaplaincy restored and the income accrued during four years, amounting to 190 doblas, to be refunded. Armas delayed payment for some months and then insisted on compromising it for 120 doblas, which Fullana agreed to, fearing that Armas, who was a canon, would induce the chapter to deprive him of his auditorship, but in place of getting money he received orders on parties at a distance. In stating this under examination by la Cueva, May 4, 1596, Fullana begged him not to insist on the restitution of the remaining 70 doblas, for Armas was a dangerous man.[290]

He proved so to the convent of la Concepcion, founded by Doña Isabel de Garfias, a Cistercian nun, whom Cardinal Rodrigo de Castro, Archbishop of Seville, had sent to Las Palmas for the purpose. Armas persuaded the bishop, Fernando de Figueroa, to appoint him as visitor of the convent and used his authority to cultivate a suspicious intimacy with some of the younger inmates, to the destruction of discipline and rules of the Order. When the abbess endeavored to enforce them, he deposed her and replaced her with Francisca Ramírez, a Dominican, who had accompanied her from Spain, and who was of near kin to Doña Laura Ramírez, his mistress, by whom he was said to have a child. The abbess appealed to the archbishop, who addressed, December 19, 1595, a forcible letter to the bishop, recapitulating the misdeeds of Armas and ordering him to investigate and apply the appropriate remedies, but to no purpose, and the abbess turned to la Cueva, February 28, 1596, with an earnest memorial, imploring his interposition. Armas, she said, desired her death, for when she was sick he would not allow the physician to visit her, so that she nearly died.[291] A more prominent ecclesiastic who experienced the risk of provoking him was the prior of the cathedral, Doctor Luis Rúiz de Salazar, who was also a consultor of the tribunal. They had a quarrel in the chapter; Salazar called him the son of a clockmaker and, when Armas gave him the lie, Salazar seized his cap and beat him with it. Inquisitor Madaleno promptly threw Salazar into prison and prosecuted him, but, as the affair concerned a church dignitary, he was obliged to submit the papers to the Suprema for the sentence. With unexpected moderation the latter replied, April 2, 1591 that, as the affair took place in the chapter and in the capacity of canons, the tribunal must abandon the case and allow it to be decided by whatever judges had jurisdiction--but it did not prescribe any satisfaction to Salazar for the infamy inflicted by his imprisonment.[292]

Meanwhile the tribunal had been actively performing such duties as came in its way, strengthened by the addition of another inquisitor, for, in 1581, we find Fúnez replaced with Diego Osorio de Seijas and Juan Lorenzo, who celebrated a public auto on March 12th of that year. It will be remembered that, in the auto of 1569, there appeared the effigy of Juan Felipe, who had escaped from Lanzarote, carrying with him some thirty other fugitives. The tribunal had not forgotten them and now, after duly trying them it burnt their effigies, to the number of thirty-one, including Felipe’s wife and sister and three children, fifteen slaves, mostly negroes and a miscellaneous group of others. In addition there were fifteen reconciled penitents, with the usual penalties.[293]

Six years elapsed before there was another auto, celebrated July 22, 1587, in which there were burnt three effigies of a remnant of the Lanzarote fugitives. There was also the more impressive relaxation of a living man--the first since that of the Judaizers in 1526. This was an Englishman named George Gaspar who, in the royal prison of Tenerife, had been seen praying with his back to a crucifix and, on being questioned, had said that prayer was to be addressed to God and not to images. He was transferred to the tribunal, where he freely confessed to having been brought up as a Protestant. Torture did not shake his faith and he was condemned, a confessor as usual being sent to his cell the night before the auto to effect his conversion. He asked to be alone for awhile and the confessor, on his return, found him lying on the floor, having thrust into his stomach a knife which he had picked up in the prison and concealed for the purpose. The official account piously tells us that it pleased God that the wound was not immediately mortal and that he survived until evening, so that the sentence could be executed; the dying man was carted to the _quemadero_ and ended his misery in the flames. Another Englishman was Edward Francis, who had been found wounded and abandoned on the shore of Tenerife. He saved his life, while under torture, by professing himself a fervent Catholic, who had been obliged to dissemble his religion, a fault which he expiated with two hundred lashes and six years of galley service. Still another Englishman was John Reman (Raymond?) a sailor of the ship Falcon; he had asked for penance and, as there was nothing on which to support him in the prison, he was transferred to the public gaol. The governor released him and, in wandering around he fell into conversation with some women, in which he expressed Protestant opinions. A second trial ensued in which, under torture, he professed contrition and begged for mercy, which he obtained in the disguise of two hundred lashes and ten years of galleys. In addition there were the crew of the bark Prima Rosa, twelve in number, all English but one Fleming. One of them, John Smith, had died in prison, and was reconciled in effigy; the rest, with or without torture, had professed conversion and were sent to the galleys, some of them with a hundred lashes in addition. Besides these, this notable auto presented twenty-two penitents, penanced or reconciled, for the ordinary offences and with the usual penalties.[294]

Another auto was celebrated December 21, 1597, with a large number of penitents, but no relaxations either in person or in effigy. It was the last of these solemnities held in public, for the next one, December 20, 1608, was an _auto particular_, in the cathedral, when three effigies were relaxed.[295] In fact, while the Inquisition in Spain was consolidating its power and threatening to dominate the monarchy, in the Canaries there seems to have been an unconscious combination of opposing forces which crippled its energies and gradually rendered it inert. Yet during the early years of the seventeenth century it had vigor enough to burn two unfortunates alive. Gaspar Nicholas Claysen (Claessens?) a Hollander, had been condemned to a year of prison, in the auto of 1597, when he must have professed conversion. He seems to have imagined that he would escape recognition and, in 1611, he tempted his fate again and sought the Canaries as the captain of a merchant vessel. He was arrested April 19th and tried again. In spite of torture he maintained his faith to the last and, on January 27, 1612, he was sentenced to relaxation, as an impenitent, by the inquisitors Juan Francisco de Monroy and Pedro Espino de Brito. Then a delay of two years occurred, possibly occupied with efforts for his salvation, and it was not until February 22, 1614, that the governor, Francisco de la Rua, was summoned to hear his sentence and receive him for execution. There was a Dutch ship in the harbor and many of his compatriots in the town, so that his rescue seems to have been feared, for such is the reason given for loading him with chains and guarding him with four soldiers carrying arquebuses with lighted matches. At the appointed hour he was paraded through the streets, under a guard of soldiers, to the plaza de Santo Domingo, where he was duly burnt alive. The next year, on June 2, 1615, Tobias Lorenzo, a Hollander settled in Garachico (Tenerife), who had been arrested in 1611, was burnt as a relapsed Protestant.[296]

This was the last relaxation in person, making, according to Millares, a total of only eleven since the foundation of the tribunal, but, as he omits the earliest one, Juan de Xeres, the count amounts to twelve.[297] After this a long interval occurs before there was even an effigy burnt. Duarte Henríquez Alvarez was a Portuguese New Christian, who was a collector of the royal revenues and a rich merchant in Tenerife. In his frequent voyages to Europe he fell in love with the daughter of an Amsterdam correspondent and resolved to marry her and return to the faith of his ancestors. He remitted to Holland as much money as he could without exciting suspicion, he abandoned to the Inquisition the rest of his considerable property and departed, never to return. He was duly prosecuted _in absentia_ and condemned to relaxation in effigy. Permission to execute the sentence in an auto particular was asked of the Suprema and its assent was received, May 29, 1659. No time was lost; on June 1st the auto was held in the cathedral; the effigy was delivered to the corregidor and was solemnly burnt in the quemadero, being the last execution in the Canaries.[298] From this time to the end of the century the work of the tribunal was almost nothing, the records of the prison showing that there were rarely more than one or two prisoners.[299]

* * * * *

Before following the history of the tribunal to its decadence and extinction, we may pause to consider its condition and the various directions in which its activity was developed.

Its financial resources presumably were limited. During the earlier term of its career, when it had no buildings of its own and no prison to maintain, when its officials for the most part were drawn from the chapter and other beneficed incumbents, an occasional confiscation and levying of fines probably met the moderate necessary expenses. In 1563 it had the benefit of a suppressed prebend and when, in 1568, Fúnez was sent to organize it, the energy of his administration doubtless supplied the funds necessary for the establishment which he founded. Imposing fines, however, probably was easier than collecting them, for when, in 1570, he was about to depart on a visitation of the islands he impressed upon the fiscal, Juan de Cervantes, that there were many persons who owed the fines to which they had been condemned and he was especially empowered to use all the rigor of law in compelling payment.[300] This seems to have been the only source thus far of funds, for when one of the charges against Fúnez, in the visitation, was that he kept no book for recording confiscations, his reply, in 1577, was that there had been none since that of the Felipes (in 1569) and this was so involved that he waited till he could visit Lanzarote and straighten it out.[301]

A more promising field, however, as we shall see, was now developing in the prosecution of heretic merchants and shipmasters who were seeking the trade of the Canaries, when a latitudinarian construction of the law permitted the seizure of vessels and cargoes, on which the grip of the Inquisition was not easily relaxed. Either from this or some other source the tribunal was emerging from its poverty, for a stray document shows us that, in 1602, it was investing 5000 ducats in a ground-rent, from which it was still receiving the income in 1755.[302] We also catch a glimpse of its affairs in 1654, when the Seville Contratacion sent its fiscal to the Canaries to put a stop to the exportation of wine to the Indies, the commerce of which was confined to Seville. On June 15th the tribunal addressed to Philip IV a memorial, arguing that to cut off this trade would be the total destruction of the islands, which now pay the king 60,000 ducats a year over the expenses of the garrison and judiciary, for the English took only the malmsey of Tenerife and the rest of the vintage, amounting to 16,000 pipes per annum, went to the Indies. The bishopric, now worth 30,000, would not be worth 10,000; as for the Inquisition, it held ground-rents on the vineyards paying 22,232 reales and 28 maravedís, which it would lose, and, as its only other source, the prebend, was worth only 300 ducats a year, its support would fall on the king.[303] The only relief obtained from the king was permission to ship 1000 tuns a year to various American ports. Whether the tribunal suffered or not we have no means of knowing, but in 1660 we find it gathering in the estate of Duarte Henríquez, burnt in effigy in 1658, and applying 1942 reales from it to the renewal of 212 sanbenitos, hung in the churches, which had become worm-eaten and indistinct with age.[304]

This does not look as if the tribunal were oppressed with poverty; in fact it must have enjoyed abundant means for about this time it completed what is described as an imposing palace for its habitation. This had a spacious patio, covered with an awning in hot weather, which led into a handsome garden, opening upon a street in the rear. To these the public was freely admitted and they formed a thoroughfare from one street to another, the object of which was to enable witnesses and informers to come without attracting attention. In the building were lodged the senior inquisitor, the gaoler and the subordinate officials, the prison and the torture-chamber being in the rear.[305] Later financial data are missing, but the tribunal probably managed to meet its expenses to the end, with no greater difficulty than those of the Peninsula. From first to last it was not burdened with a punitive prison or _casa de la misericordia_, and its sentences to confinement are always to convents or to the houses of the culprits or to hold the city as a prison. The detentive or secret prison was economically administered, the ration, as we learn in 1577, being only 24 maravedís a day. The visitor, Bravo y Zayas, was assailed with many complaints by the inmates of insufficient food, which they ascribed to the knavery of the officials, but Fúnez explained it by saying that, while in the Canaries there were usually one or two months of scarcity in a year, there had been a famine lasting through 1571, 1572 and 1573, when the price of bread went up to a cuarto of six maravedís for two or three ounces and the people were reduced to eating chestnuts; meat was correspondingly scarce and the supply of fish was very uncertain. Rich and poor suffered alike and, as the prisoners’ allowance was in money, their food was unavoidably diminished.[306]

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Judaizing New Christians, who furnished, in the Peninsula, so abundant a source of exploitation, formed a comparatively insignificant feature in the activity of the Canary tribunal. At first there was better promise, as we have seen in the statistics of the earlier autos, but these energetic proceedings seem either to have driven them away or to have thoroughly converted them and, in the subsequent period, the cases of Judaism are singularly few, in so far as we can learn from existing documents. In 1635 there is a denunciation of a Dutchman named Rojel, who had been in Tenerife and who subsequently was seen in Holland, dressed and living as a Jew. In 1636, a man named Mardocheo, aged 80, resident of La Laguna in Tenerife, was accused of talking Judaism by a man who had been a fellow-prisoner with him in the public gaol. In 1638 the Licenciado Diego de Arteaga was suspected of being _de casta de Judío_, in consequence of irregular conduct in a procession. In 1653, Francisco Vicente, a West Indian, who had accompanied his master Diego Rodrigo Arias from Havana to London and thence to Tenerife, denounced him for taking a crucifix every night from his chest and flogging it for half an hour. In 1659 we have seen the relaxation in effigy of Duarte Henríquez Alvarez. In 1660 Fray Matias Pinto accused Antonio Fernández Carvajal of saying that he was a Jew since Protector Cromwell had broken peace with Spain. In 1662 Gaspar Pereyra, alias de Vitoria, was convicted of Judaism and sent to Seville to serve out his term of imprisonment. His grandmother had been burnt and his business as a merchant had carried him to Brazil, Angola, Lisbon, Madrid, Antwerp, Amsterdam, Middelburg and many other places, so that he had a comprehensive acquaintance with the communities of Jewish refugees everywhere, and the care with which the minute evidence that he gave concerning them was collected and ratified, although they were all out of reach, shows that the paucity of cases in the records is not the result of any lack of desire to persecute. It was natural however that the inquisitors should enquire about Gerónimo Gómez Pesoa, a rich Lisbon merchant who disappeared just in time to avoid arrest and, as an English vessel sailed that night without a licence, he was supposed to have escaped in it--a supposition fortified by learning that he had joined the colony of Conversos in Rouen and had thence gone to Amsterdam.[307] Doubtless there were more cases than these, but the records available do not furnish them.

* * * * *

During the sixteenth century baptized Moorish and negro slaves furnished a certain amount of business, especially when they escaped and added to the impressiveness of the autos with their effigies, but subsequently we hear little of them. When prosecuted in person it would seem that the owner was obliged to pay for their maintenance, for a warrant of arrest, in 1575, of Pedro Morisco manco, slave of Pedro d’Escalona, requires eight ducats to be brought with him, to be furnished by his master.[308] There is one case of a free Morisco which is not easy to understand. About 1590, Sancho de Herrera Leon, with his wife and children, was carried off in a Moorish raid. After a short time he returned and, although he asserted that he had come back to preserve his faith, he was made to abjure _de levi_, was fined in forty doblas and was exiled perpetually from Lanzarote and Fuerteventura, under pain of scourging and galleys.[309] In the seventeenth century we hear little of such cases, but in 1619 there occurs one which throws some light on the fate of the Moriscos expelled from Spain in 1610. Juan de Soto, born in Valladolid and brought up as a Christian, was seven years old at the time of the expulsion. The family passed into France; at Toulouse his parents and brothers died, but a kinsman took charge of him and carried him to Barbary, where he was circumcised and made to utter certain words in Arabic. For seven years he served various masters, who carried him twice to Constantinople, Alexandria and other places. In 1618 a fleet sailed from Algiers to the Canaries, in which he served a Turkish captain named Hamet. Sent ashore on Lanzarote with a foraging party and attacked by the natives, three were killed and he was wounded and captured. The Inquisition claimed him, which was probably fortunate for him, for, as a renegade he escaped with reconciliation and four years of sanbenito and reclusion in a convent.[310]

Renegades, in fact, were quite numerous, and the facility is noteworthy with which Christians when captured abandoned their faith. The tribunal kept a close watch on them and all who escaped from Barbary were closely questioned as to fellow-prisoners who had renegaded, when these could be prosecuted _in absentia_, or record be kept to confront them in case of their return.[311]

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The vast number of denunciations which kept pouring in upon the tribunal shows how sedulously the population was trained as spies and informers upon their neighbors. Many of the alleged offences were of the most trivial character, yet they have their interest as an index of the hypersensitiveness of orthodoxy with which the Spanish mind was imbued. Among the cases which Doctor Bravo y Zayas brought home with him for trial, from his visitation of the islands in 1571, was that of a man who, while dressing himself, was annoyed by the glare of the sun and pettishly exclaimed “Devil take the sun,” which was gravely qualified as blasphemy. Another who, in a procession, had aided in carrying the frame on which was seated an image of the Virgin, remarked that it was a load for a camel, which was decided to be ill-sounding and offensive to pious ears. Even absence of intention did not excuse. In 1591, Gaspar López of Tenerife, when on guard one night, went through the exercise of arms with his partizan, in the course of which he happened to strike a wooden cross that was behind him, and for this he was sentenced to the indelible disgrace of appearing in an auto, followed by vergüenza--parading on an ass through the streets, naked from the waist up, while the town-crier proclaimed his misdeed.[312] This hyperæsthesia did not diminish with time. In 1665 the tribunal entertained and investigated an accusation that a certain person when praying allowed his rosary to hang down his back, which was regarded as irreverence.[313]

How readily such a system could be abused to gratify malevolence is indicated in the case of the Dominican Fray Alonso de las Roelas. In March, 1568, he made an utterance about purgatory which excited remark, and some of his brother frailes discussed it with him, when Fray Blas Merino, a prominent member of the Order, said that Roelas was simple and did not know what he said and that it was not for them to denounce him. Some years later, however, Blas Merino, in the hope of being made Provincial, was engaged in a sort of plot to get the Canaries separated from the Province of Andalusia and erected into a province of the Order. The Dominican authorities heard of this and Roelas was commissioned to seize all the papers connected with it and to notify Merino to abandon the project. To revenge himself Merino hunted up all the witnesses to Roela’s utterance and persuaded them to denounce him in 1572. Bishop Azólares, whose zeal for the Inquisition we have seen, said that the matter was not worth prosecuting, because Roelas did not deny purgatory, which was a matter of faith, while its place and the character of its torment were matters of debate with theologians. Nevertheless Roelas was arrested and tried, and, as usual during trial, he was recluded in the convent of his Order in Las Palmas. One midnight he came knocking at the door of the Inquisition; Fúnez was awakened and sent him word that it was no time for him to call and that he could come the next day. He did so and stated that his brethren so maltreated him, because he had once served as inspector of the house, that he asked to be placed in the secret prisons, a request which was granted, and he stayed there until sentenced. The sentence punished him with reclusion and he was delivered to the prior of the convent, when they at once commenced snarling and growling at each other like quarrelsome dogs. Fúnez rebuked the prior, telling him to avoid such public scandals and that he would send Roelas to the convent in Tenerife until the Provincial should decide as to his place of reclusion. Fúnez probably spoke from experience when he said that among frailes there was no restraint nor truth, but only envy.[314]

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The Canaries enjoyed an ample supply of _beatas revelanderas_, but, as a rule, the tribunal did not follow the example of the Peninsula in molesting them. One of the most renowned of these was Catalina de San Mateo, a nun of the house of Santa Clara in Las Palmas, who had ecstasies and revelations and was reverenced as a saint. God spoke with her familiarly through the medium of a painted Ecce Homo, which hung in her cell, giving her counsels and spiritual comfort and prophecies. On her death, May 26, 1695, the body lay for three days emitting the odor of sanctity and was viewed by a vast concourse, eager to touch it with rosaries and other objects, and all her clothes and effects were treasured as relics. All this is described in a letter of July 5th, to the Suprema, by the inquisitors Lugo and Romero, who express no doubts as to her holiness. Commencement was made to collect testimony for her canonization, but enthusiasm evaporated and the effort was abandoned. She was succeeded in popular veneration by Sor Petronila de San Esteban, of the convent of San Bernardo in Las Palmas, which she had entered in 1680, at the age of four. She was a bride of God; the child Jesus came to nestle in her arms; the man Christ came to soothe her with sweet words; legions of angels, headed by David, came to rejoice her with the music of heaven. She had terrible conflicts with demons, whom she overcame, and a little wooden image of St. John, with which she held discourse, was the medium through which she enjoyed revelations and prophecies. The Inquisition took no action to interfere with her and almost the only case in which it instituted proceedings, in such matters, was one, in 1695, against Don Miguel de Araus, confessor of two beatas in La Laguna, Francisca Machado de San José and Margarita de Santa Teresa, the former of whom boasted of the stigmata.[315]

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In the later period a very considerable share of the labors of the tribunal was devoted to cases of “solicitation”--the seduction of women by their confessors. It was not until 1561 that this crime was subjected to inquisitorial jurisdiction, under the pretext that it implied erroneous belief as to the sacrament of penitence, and some time was required to settle the question of including it in the Edict of Faith calling for denunciations. The earliest case I have met occurs in 1574, when María Ramos accused her confessor, Fray Pedro Gallego.[316] After this they occur with increasing frequency and offenders appear to be treated with even more sympathetic leniency than in Spain. There was moderate rigor in the sentence of Fray Pedro de Hinojosa, denounced in 1579 by numerous maids, wives and widows, for he was deprived of the faculty of hearing confessions, he received a circular discipline in his convent and he was recluded for three years in a convent with the customary disabilities.[317] Much less severity was shown, in 1584, to Manuel Gómez Pacheco, priest of Garachico, accused by a number of women, for he was only sentenced to abjuration _de levi_, deprivation of administering the sacrament of penitence, two months reclusion in a convent and some spiritual exercises.[318] The penalties varied with the discretion of the tribunal. About 1590 Fray Antonio Pacheco Sampayo, against whom there were many accusers, was deprived of confessing, had three years of reclusion and fifty lashes in his convent, while Andrés de Ortega, parish priest of Telde, likewise accused by several women, was deprived merely of confessing women, fined in twenty ducats and severely reprimanded.[319]