Can Lima Ever Forget?
By “Awake!” correspondent in Peru
JANUARY 9, 1570! That was a date that brought terror into the life of colonial Peru, the memory of which still produces a chill sensation of fear. Oddly enough, it was under warm sunny skies that a vessel flying the colors of Philip II, King of Spain, entered the harbor at Callao and dropped anchor amid barks and brigantines from many faraway lands. The crew busied themselves making fast the rigging, while passengers put off for shore in a small boat.
One of those passengers, a Spanish man, Serván de Cerezuela, carried under his arm an official portfolio, the contents of which would very quickly cause a sensation among the colonists. It was a royal document, signed and sealed almost a year earlier, one that would let loose upon the inhabitants a three-hundred-year campaign of intimidation and continuous apprehension. The authority of the dreaded “Holy Office,” better known as the Spanish Inquisition, had now been extended to Peru.
Not without reason did Peru’s European inhabitants view this development with great uneasiness. Had they not witnessed the operations of the “Holy Office” in their homelands? All the memories and rumors of horrible, maiming tortures and painful deaths doubtless crowded into their minds.
The Inquisition
This awesome weapon of fear, the Inquisition, was forged first in the early part of the thirteenth century. Its purpose: the searching out and punishing of heretics and unbelievers. It began to take definite form when, in 1232, Pope Gregory IX appointed permanent judges, to be later known as “inquisitors.” Everyone living in so-called “Christian” lands was to be coerced into loyalty to the one Church. No dissent, no exercise of private judgment, no questioning of the doctrines of the Church was to be permitted.
Church representatives insisted that their investigations, including torture, were conducted out of love for the victims. And as to the responsibility for burning countless persons at the stake, they declared that such executions were performed, not by the Church, but by the secular authority.
But as to the real responsibility for a multitude of horrible deaths, we may best determine the matter by reference to the Catholic Encyclopedia, where this admission appears: “The predominant ecclesiastical nature of the [“Holy Office”] can hardly be doubted. . . . The civil authorities, therefore, were enjoined by the popes, under pain of excommunication to execute the legal sentences that condemned impenitent heretics to the stake.” (Vol. 8, pp. 34, 37) Later, the torture itself, authorized in 1252 by Pope Innocent IV, was, for reasons of secrecy, entrusted to the inquisitors themselves.
The lengths to which those supposedly Christian inquisitors went in order to extract confessions or incriminating evidence from their victims chills the blood. Often they were monks chosen from the ranks of the Dominican Order, men whose unnatural family-less life and fanaticism had hardened them to the point where they had no sympathy for the suffering, no hesitation in inflicting the most excruciating tortures.
Lima Under the Scourge
No wonder, then, that Lima’s inhabitants were in consternation. No secret would now be sacred. One’s every utterance could become grounds for accusation. One might be denounced by one’s own wife, husband, child or parent. Indeed, such was the aim of the “Edict of Accusation,” a document that was read each third Sunday of Lent after “solemn mass and sermon.” The following excerpts translated from Annals of the Lima Inquisition speak for themselves:
“We, the Inquisitors against the heretical iniquities and apostasy in the kingdoms of Peru, to all the neighbors and inhabitants of the city of Kings, of whatever state, condition, preeminence and dignity they may be, greetings in Christ.
“Inasmuch as we make known to you that, for the greater advancement of the faith, it is fitting to separate the bad seed from the good, and to avoid all disservice to Our Lord, we command each and every one of you that, if you should know of, or should see or hear tell of, any person alive, present, absent or deceased, that has said or believed any heretical words or opinions, suspicious, erroneous, rash, bad-sounding, scandalous or blasphemous, you should tell or manifest it to us.
“We command you to denounce before us if you know of, or have heard tell of, any persons having kept the sabbaths in observance of the law of Moses. . . . or have affirmed that Jesus Christ is not God, . . . or that he was not born of Our Lady, virgin before the birth, in the birth, and after the birth. . . . or that the Pope or the ministers of the altar do not have the power to absolve sins . . . or that there is no purgatory and that in the churches there should be no images of saints, or that there is no need to pray for the dead. . . .
“We command you to notify us if you have heard it said, or know of, any person having Bibles in [Spanish]. . . .
“Therefore, by the tenor of this admonition, we exhort and require, under penalty of major excommunication, . . . we command each and every one of those who have known of or who has done any of the above declared things, that you come and appear before us, personally, to tell and manifest it within six days of the publication of this edict, or of its having come to your knowledge.”
Is it not evident how that Edict was calculated to set every man’s hand against his brother, to encourage people to spy on one another?
The “Calesa Verde” (“Green Carriage”) might appear anytime of the day or night on Lima’s streets. Sent forth by the inquisitors to bring in the accused, it was a sight to strike mortal fear into the beholder. As it slowly progressed down the street even the ordinary citizen would panic. What had he done now? What indiscretion had he committed? Who had informed on him? And when, in the middle of the night, a rap came on the door, it was enough to transfix the occupants with sheer terror. Could it be the Green Carriage?
Victims of All Kinds
During the colonial period alone it is reported that fifty-nine persons were burned at the stake in Peru. Charges included blasphemy, witchcraft, bigamy, possessing a Bible in the common language of the people, apostasy, professing a non-Catholic faith. Even high-ranking members of the clergy were not exempt. On April 13, 1578, Fray Francisco de la Cruz was burned at the stake for teaching that the Church was guilty of the practice of buying and selling official positions in the Church; that auricular confession should be abolished; that monks and clergymen should marry, and that the Holy Scriptures should be in the common tongue.
On October 29, 1581, English pirate Captain John Oxnem and two members of his crew were burned, no, not for piracy on the high seas, but for being Lutherans. On November 17, 1595, Portuguese Juan Fernando de las Heras and three of his fellow nationals were burned, having been accused as “Judaizing Jews.” They had observed the seventh-day sabbath.
The punishment of those convicted was made a public event, conducted with solemnity and pomp. Begun in the early hours of the morning, the auto-da-fé (literally, act of the faith) would last late into the night. Clergy and prominent citizens would seek “ringside” seats, the better to contemplate the condemned in their final moments of agony in the fire. Shouts and cheers of the fanatical rabble would often drown out the cries of the victims.
Lima Headquarters of the “Holy Office”
Few visitors to Lima are aware of the history of that gabled, six-columned building of Greek-Roman style that overlooks the Plaza Bolívar just off one of the city’s busiest avenues. One can enter its quiet confines and view the Library of the Chamber of Deputies; scan the yellowing documents signed by prominent men of the early Republic, Simón Bolívar, José de la Mar and others; one can marvel at the intricately carved mahogany ceiling; and yet not have the slightest inkling as to the original use of the building.
But back in September 1813 Lima’s citizenry knew all about that headquarters the Inquisition in Peru. That was when Viceroy Abascal made public the official court decree signed in Cadiz on February 22 of the same year, abolishing the “Holy Office.” Venting their hatred and their pent-up frustrations, they invaded and sacked the building. Thereby, too, they obtained solid evidence of the rumored horrors that took place within it. Some of the items discovered were:
A life-size crucifix with a movable head that could be manipulated by strings from behind a green velvet curtain. Many a credulous victim must have imagined that Christ himself had intervened against him.
A table, eight by seven feet, with a large wheel-driven winch. Victims were placed on it and literally stretched until joints and ligaments could no longer resist.
Against one wall, stocks in which the head and hands were placed as the victim was flogged from behind without ever seeing his tormentor. On the wall, whips of knotted cord and wire.
A torture tunic made of braided wire with hundreds of tiny pincers to torment the flesh at every slightest muscle movement of the wearer.
Other deadly instruments included pincers for use on the tongue, screws mangling the fingers, and so forth.
One may still see the place where the bewildered, terror-stricken accused would stand before the inquisitors; the thick wooden door with its tiny peephole that disclosed only the eye of the anonymous accuser; the original wall of the detention chamber, where the neat script of the educated man and the almost illegible scribblings of the poor man record their claims of innocence, their soundless cries for justice.
Reason to Remember
But is all that past history, a bad dream, better to be forgotten? Though four centuries have passed since the “Holy Office” came officially to Peru, Lima does not forget. Indeed, La Prensa, one of Lima’s leading newspapers, published an article about the Inquisition quite recently, an article that once again jolted the memory of that “city of Kings.”
As we now look back on the Inquisition’s terrible record, we can note that inattention to the Bible’s teaching was a major cause. It is impossible for people to be coerced or pressured into having faith in God. One must be taught the commandments of Christ as set forth in the Bible. (Rom. 10:17) Even when a person professing to be Christian violates what is right, he is to be examined, according to the Bible, and his guilt determined by the testimony of two credible witnesses. (Matt. 18:16; John 8:17) Then, if guilty and unrepentant, the wrongdoer may be expelled from the association of true believers. (1 Cor. 5:11, 13) Nowhere does the Bible sanction the attempt to extort self-incriminating or any other kind of testimony by use of torture.
The Bible record shows that when many fell away from the faith in the first century (John 6:66) the apostles of Christ Jesus did not resort to intimidation, force and violence. Why? Because they could do no more than they were commanded, namely, “make disciples of people of all the nations, . . . teaching them” in the same mild manner that was exemplified by Christ himself.—Matt. 28:19, 20.
Since neglect of the Bible and Bible study resulted in the horrors of the Inquisition, what of the situation today? This same neglect of the Bible has led to Catholics fighting and killing Catholics in wars and revolutions. The New York Times of December 29, 1966, observed: “In the past local Catholic hierarchies almost always supported the wars of their nations, blessing troops and offering prayers for victory, while another group of bishops on the other side publicly prayed for the opposite outcome.”
Neglect of the Bible is general throughout all Christendom. The fruitage of that neglect has been the current upsurge of violence. Honest-hearted persons must ask themselves: Will I continue to be a part of any religious organization that fails to inculcate the truths of the Bible by word and example? As long as there is failure to pay proper attention to the Bible teachings, such honest-hearted ones dare not forget the lesson of the Inquisition. And for the same reason, Lima cannot forget!
[Picture on page 21]
An auto-da-fé, according to an engraving of the time