Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 10.djvu/306

MEXICO prayers and psalms to be recitced on certain days of the year, carrying green candles, confiscation of property, etc.

The ordinary penitents were those whose faults did not merit the death sentence. They wore the plain San Benito, that is, similar in form to the other, but decorated with the cross of St. Andrew, and they wore no coroza. Various puniishments were imposed on them, always less than those of the reconciliados, and at times almost grotesque, e. g., the case of the criminal condemned on 7 December, 1654, of whom it is recorded, "The sentence having been read, he was taken out into the court of the convent, placed on a scaffold, and stripped to the waist. Indians then smeared him with honey, feathered him, and left him in the sun for four hours. " From the list made by D. José Pichardo of the Oratory of St. Philip Neri, who copied every tablet in the transept of Mexico cathedral, we see "that the crimes usually condemned by the Inquisition were heresy and Judaism. Many were condemned for blasphemy, bigamy, perjury, forgery, and witchcraft, as idolaters, Illuminati, Freemasons, and apostates; for having heard confessions and said Mass without Holy orders, for having, with intent to deceive, received Holy orders before attaining the prescribed canonical age, for rebaptizing, abetting polygamy, and feigning revelations (autos de fe 21 June, 1789 and 8 August, 1795).

A réeumé of the autos de fe from the figures of Fr. Pichardo, supplemented by others, gives the following result:—

The list published by J. Garcia Icazbalceta, including only the autos providing for capital punishinent, is somewhat different: — •

This number can be increased, as the autos from 1703 to 1728 (except 1715) are not included, although during this period cases were rarely turned over to the secular arm. And even allowing for this it is evident that the number of victims commonly attributed to the Inquisition of New Spain Is greatly exaggerated.

From this it maybe seen how erroneous it is to denounce the Inqusition as one of the greatest blots of the Spanish domination in Mexico. The Inquisition existed in Spain, and it was natural that it should be established in the new colonies. As the Indians were exempt from its jurisdiction, the full measure of its severity fell upon the Spaniards and heretics, pirates or otherwise, of other nations who infested the coasts of New Spain. In fact, in the autos de fe the greater number of the condemned were Portuguese, for Judiaizing, and then, in order. Englishmen, Frenchmen, Germans, Spaniards, Mexican Creoles, and Swedes. To say that the victims of the Inquisition in New Spain exceeded the number sacrificed by the Aztecs is a gross perversion of the facts. The Aztecs sacrificed thousands of victims in one festival alone; the Inquisition, covering a period of three hundred years, and extending its jurisdiction far beyond the confines of the Aztec empire, barely reached fifty victims. The Inquisition pardoned readily, and those who recognized their errors and repented it easily reconciled. When it found or thought it found (for this tribunal like every other human tribunal made its mistakes) a criminal, he was turned over to the secular courts of justice, which passed and executed the sentence. In fact the Inquisition did no more nor less than the jury of to-day. It is true that it made use of the torture, but this was a practice common to all tribunals of that time. It also made use of the secret process — a method not unlikely to be productive of error — but it was easy to set aside the punishment or at least to mitigate it by repenting if one were guilty, or by frankly professing the Catholic Faith if one were not.

Nor can the Inquisition be blamed for judging heresy a crime punishable by death; it was so held by all the civil courts of the times, and not without reason, because the heretics of those days were the initiators of rebellion in Catholic countries. At that time in England to be a Catholic was a crime punishable by death (see Penal Laws). Judged impartially, the Inquisition in New Spain appears as a tribunal which shares, it is true, the defects of contemporary methods, subject to mistakes like all other human institutions, more merciful than any other court under similar circumstances, above all if the relatively small number of death sentences and the large number of reconciled be taken into consideration, as well as the glory of having accomplished at the cost of a small number of lives, what the nations of Europe could not achieve even through the medium of long, bloody, fratricidal wars, the unity of religion and the preservation of the faith. As regards the auto de fe of 27 November, 1815, which condemned D. José Maria Morelos, the principal leader of the war of independence, see Morelos.

(7) The Spanish Government and the Colony. — Mexico having been conquered, Cortés, in virtue of the famous election of Vera Cruz and through force of circumstances, became the ruler. When, however, Charles V realized the importance of the conquest, without deposing Cortés, he began sending over other officials who, it may be said, were not very wisely chosen. Cortés, though outwardly complying, did not receive them well, doubtless because he foresaw that they would be a disturbing element in the recently conquered territories. When, however, he started on his famous expedition of the Hibueras, he showed equally little tact in selecting the men he left to fill his place. In the selection of the first Audiencia (152S-.31), composed of Nuño de Guzmán, Juan Ortiz Matienzo, and Diego Degadillo, the emperor was even more tactless. The excesses and injustices of these judges were innumerable, and the ent ire colony suffered. Everything changed under the government of the second Audiencia (1531-3,5), composed of Bishop Sebastian Ramirez de Fuen Leal, D. Vasco de Quiroga, D. Francisco Ceinos, and D. Juan Salmeron. Beginning the work of reconstruction with zeal and perfect integrity, they met at the very outset with an obstacle that greatly hampered them. The ancient legislation destroyed by the conquest had not been replaced by any other, while the Spanish code was entirely inadequate for the new dominions. To meet this situation, Spanish kings began formulating and