When cells were insecure, the prisoners were kept in chains, thus increasing their misery. In some cases torture was made perpetual by the use of a gag, removed only to allow the prisoner to eat; or by a device called the "pie de amigo," which is described as an iron fork or crotch, fitted to the chin and fastened to the neck, to prevent any movement of the head. The agony caused by the rigidity of the appliance must have been unspeakable; it was inflicted in pure malignity, as the device served no purpose but that of torture, being affixed to prisoners already condemned. Escape from prison was regarded as confession of guilt, the inquisitors holding, hypocritically, that prisoners had been assured of receiving only justice. If recaptured, the fugitive was treated with greater cruelty; if not, he was burned in effigy and held to be an impenitent heretic, and all his possessions were forfeited.
        "From the moment of arrest until delivery to the jailer, the prisoner was not allowed to exchange a word with any one but the officials, and this was continued with the same strictness when he was within the walls, so far as concerned the outer world, to which he was as one already in the tomb. He could learn nothing of those whom he held dear, nor could they conjecture his fate until, after perhaps the lapse of years, he appeared in the auto-da-fe as one destined to the stake or to the galleys or to perpetual prison. It would be impossible to compute the sum of human misery thus wantonly inflicted by the Inquisition during its centuries of existence - misery for which the only excuse was that communication with friends might aid in his defense. According to inquisitorial theory, the presumption of guilt was so absolute that all measures were justified which would hinder fraudulent defense" (Lea, ii., 514).
        And yet for the Inquisition to plead this excuse for secrecy was to couple mendacity with cruelty, since no defense, fraudulent or genuine, could save the accused, when conviction would further the ends of the Holy Office.
The tribunals of the Inquisition were of three kinds - sedentary, ambulatory, and temporary. The sedentary ones were permanent. Those of Spain were located at Toledo, Seville, Valladolid, Madrid (technically known as Corte), Granada, Cordova, Murcia (the same as Cartagena), Llerena, Cuenca, Santiago (also known as Galicia), Logrono, and Canaries, all belonging to Castile; and Sargasso, Valencia, Barcelona, and Majorca, under the crown of Aragon. Other permanent tribunals tributary to the Central Committee, or Suprema, of the Spanish Inquisition were those of Sicily, Sardinia, Mexico, Lima, and Cartagena de las Indias. After drawing their salaries, voting themselves gratuities, allowing for embezzlements by those who handled the funds, deducting expenses for maintenance and for the amusements and gratifications of the inquisitors, the officials of these tributary tribunals sent the proceeds of their fines and confiscations to the Suprema in Spain. Ambulatory tribunals sent the proceeds of their fines and confiscations to the Suprema in Spain. Ambulatory tribunals consisted of inquisitors, usually hunting in pairs, sent out form the permanent tribunals, who went wherever game promised to be plenty. The two harpies took into their counsels a third, he being a resident of the place. They then published their proclamation, calling for confessions and accusations, pronouncing a curse on the disobedient, and proceeded to business. If they had come only to try a special case, they moved on when they had disposed of it. If sufficient business was developed to justify a temporary tribunal, they established one and remained until its officials had been appointed and installed. They quartered themselves on the habitants, transformed a local convent, church, or monastery into a court room, and made use of the ecclesiastical or civil prisons. When the tribunal was to become temporary or permanent, they fixed upon the building best suited to its purposes, turned the occupants into the streets, and took possession in the name of Jesus Christ and the Holy Office.
        As many heretics were sentenced to the galleys, these being war vessels propelled by oars, there had to be an "Inquisidor de las galeras" to preserve the rowers from heresy. All arrested by him were delivered to the nearest tribunal when the galleys came into port. The first inquisitor of the galleys was appointed in 1571 to serve with the fleet of Papal, Venetian, and Spanish galleys, organized by the Catholic League, which in October of that year defeated the Turks in the battle of Lepanto, in Greece. In 1622 the office had become "inquisitor del mar," inquisitor of the sea. The inquisitor-general appointed sub-delegates to accompany the army, with the powers of an inquisitor.
        Temporary tribunals existed at Alcaraz, Avila, Balaguer, Barbastro, Barcelona, Burgos, Cadiz, Calahorra, Calatayud, Ciudad Real, Daroca, Durango, Guadalupe, Lerida, Jaca, Jaen, Leon, Medina del Campo, Navarre, Oran, Orihuela, Osuna, Pampeluna, Plascenia, Segovia, Siguenza, Taragona, Tarazona, Teruel, Tortosa, and Xeres. (See list made by Lea). Suspects arrested at places where there was no tribunal were imprisoned in some local or improvised jail, to be carried to the nearest seat at the convenience of their captors.
In all fifty-six ecclesiastics held the office of inquisitor-general. The first was Thomas de Torquemada, royal confessor, appointed in 1483, and the last was Geronimo, bishop of Tarazona, who took office in 1818 and died in 1835, the year that the property of the Inquisition was confiscated and applied to the public debt.
        An abuse which the Suprema (the Supreme Council of the Holy Office) was obliged to appear to correct in order to save the reputation of the Inquisition was the crimes of officials and subordinates against women. It furnished the temptations and opportunities, but professed to expect that they would not be yielded to or seized upon. It sent inspectors to the seats of the tribunals, instructing them to make interrogatories as to whether the inquisitors lived decently without publicly keeping concubines and without corrupting female prisoners or the wives and daughters of any who fell into their hands. The inhabitants of Granada, in 1526, complained to the king of exactly these abuses, but received no assurance that anything would be done to reform them. If the criminals were ever adequately punished, the records of such cases have been overlooked. There was nothing that the spiritual judges could so easily forgive, when done by a fellow-inquisitor, as a violation of the seventh commandment, unless it might be murder, which they viewed more leniently than, for example, habitual abstention from pork as a food.
        The alacide or warden of the Barcelona Inquisition, one Monserrat Pastor (significant name!) was scolded by a reverend inspector for scandalous conduct. He was not accused of intimacy with female prisoners, but he kept a mistress and had the women working for him and took their earnings. He also accepted "presents" from discharged prisoners. In addition to being reprimanded, he was ordered to hand back the presents and to give up the women's earnings.
Among the powers possessed by the inquisitors was that of turning outdoors the occupants of any house or building they needed for the uses of a tribunal. They could even expropriate the residence of a bishop, evicting the episcopal dignitary, and making such alterations, in the way of constructing prisons, as the business required. Sometimes the owner of the building was rewarded with an office, as happened to the Count-duke of San Lucar, who had an interest in the castle of Triana, at Seville, which the Inquisition occupied. The count was appointed one of its chief officials, and the position made hereditary with a good salary attached. The ambulatory tribunals, which went from town to town, reaping a harvest of confiscations and leaving behind them a trail of blood and ruin, could choose their own quarters and impose a penalty on any proprietor who resisted their invasion of his premises.
        Only the baptized were subject to the jurisdiction of the Inquisition of Spain, baptism being a condition precedent to heresy. Sometimes a victim escaped by pleading and proving that he had never been baptized. But the Inquisition recognized the validity of baptism by a heretic, that is by a Protestant minister; and although the rite was invalid, unless a proper "intention" on the part of the minister could be proved, the Holy Office was liberal in assuming the existence and sincerity of such intention. If the baptism was probable, the accused was a proper subject for its discipline. With regard to the admission of the testimony of misbelievers, the Inquisition was as inconsistent as our Christian courts which accept the unsupported word of an Atheist as to his belief, but will not accept it under affirmation as to the facts in the case on trial. The holy tribunal would take and profess to believe the testimony of an accused heretic as to the heresy of another accused or suspected person, but rejected it as without weight when offered a as statement of his own faith. Thus while exactly reversing the rule of civil courts, it managed to be just as stupidly and iniquitously wrong.
The subject who confessed his "error," expressed his repentance, and received absolution from his spiritual confessor, the priest, was still liable before the temporal tribunal for the "crime" of heresy (for an error in theology was a crime at law),, and might suffer any penalty from a fine, called a penance, to burning at the stake.
        Infancy was no protection against prosecution by the Inquisition for heresy, which children were considered capable of committing as soon as they were susceptible of being taught any thing. It is true that Torquemada had fixed the age of responsibility as coincident with that of discretion - twelve for girls and fourteen for boys - but infringement of the rule by the inquisitors was overlooked when due to zeal. In 1501 two little girls, Inesita Garcia, aged nine, and Isabel Ortalano, aged ten, were sentenced to appear at an auto-da-fe. One had confessed to fasting on a Jewish holiday and the other to abstaining from pork by the advice of her father, who deemed it unwholesome food. The case of Joseph Rodriquez, aged eight, who was accused of Judaism, occupied the attention of the tribunal at Valladolid, Spain, for a whole year. He was made to give evidence against his father and mother, and then committed to the penitential prison.
        Age proved no protection. After Maria Diaz had passed the century mark, she was thrown into the secret prison at Valladolid in 1638, and put on trial for Judaism.
        Care was taken that the definition of heresy elaborated by the inquisitors would be sufficiently exhaustive to include every phase of doubt. The accused was caught in a multitude of nets with diminishing meshes, so that if he passed through one the next would hold him. All that might be spoken or written against any of the articles of the creed of the Catholic church was heresy. To renounce the errors of popery for those of Protestantism made out a plain case. To believe that adherents of any other religion may be saved; to "advance an offensive proposition"; to fail to accuse others who may do so; to speak disrespectfully of church services; to deface Catholic images; to read books condemned by the Inquisition; to lend such books to others; to deviate from the accepted practices of the Catholic church; to let a year pass without going to confession; to eat meat on fast days; to absent oneself from mass; to be present at a sermon preached by anyone guilty of the foregoing; lodging in the house of a heretic as above, or contracting a friendship with him, or making him a present; to either visit a heretic in prison or assist him to escape; not to appear when summoned by the Inquisition; to disapprove anything done by the Inquisition; or to deny any assertion made by an inquisitor. A person was amenable to the Inquisition, even a public official in the discharge of his sworn duty, if he resisted any demand made upon him by a familiar, though to grant it would be a violation of the civil law and of his oath of office. If the accused admitted the charge of heresy, the minimum sentence was imprisonment for life. If he denied it he was put to the torture. He got it coming and going.
        It took no evidence whatever to convict a converted Jew. The lamb that was accused by a wolf further up stream of roiling the water of the brook for him, had no better proof of a determination to make out a case and destroy him than had a Converso when brought before the Inquisition. The flesh of the lamb appealed to the appetite of the wolf, and the wealth of the Converso excited the rapacity of the inquisitors. The accusation and trial only served to work them into the right state for committing murder and robbery. They always assumed the at the accused was guilty, and demanded that he clear himself. To that end they shut him up incommunicado, and allowed him neither counsel nor witnesses. What they could not prove they imputed. Reversing the attitude of civilized law, which presumes innocence, they viewed the prisoner as the plan of salvation views each member of the human race - as a lost soul which must work out its own salvation or be condemned.