Sentence from an Inquisition: February 13 1484; Innocent VIII; Nahua voices

"HOLDING GOD BEFORE OUR EYES:

We find the chief prosecutor did not prove the accusation against Pedro de Villegas, according to what he had to prove by law; and conversely, Pedro de Villegas proved himself to have lived as a good and faithful Christian .... Whereby we absolve Pedro de Villegas; he shall be freed and released from the accusation, and we order that he may receive as penance the time he has been a prisoner in our jail, because he did not know and inquire with greater diligence as to what things were done in his house against the Holy Faith, so that such things could have been fought against and punished, as they must be by law. We reserve the right to impose additional penances upon Pedro de Villegas beyond what is imposed upon him in the sentence. He must perform and complete those penances when he is commanded to do so by us, in satisfaction and emendation of his negligence and remission. Thus we declare our sentence through these writings.

In Ciudad Real, February 13, 1484 ... [the] cleric and chaplain of the Queen, apostolic and public notaries of the Office of this Holy Inquisition; and before the witnesses ... gave this sentence in the presence of Pedro de Villegas. After the sentence was read by one of us, the notaries ordered Juan de Alfaro, the warden of the Inquisition, to release Villegas from the chains and the shackles on his feet. They sent him away in peace to his house." [pp 25-6]

Pedro de Villegas had been accused the year before of heresy and 'judaizing', observing the Law of Moses by eating meat during Lent on account of Jewish ceremony, eating unleavened bread during Passover, and observing the Sabbath on Saturday. Witnesses were called, the accused was interrogated and testimony given and after a couple months sentence was handed down as quoted above. A rarity in that they let him go and with 'penance served.' But this of course occurred in the early years of the Spanish Inquisition. There was a war in Spain in the latter half of the 1400's. Castile and Aragon were working at driving out Muslims and converting Jews. Also, a different kind of war was happening in consolidating the different states within the peninsula. King Ferdinand of Aragón, "... negotiated with pope Sixtus IV for three years, -- from 1481 to 1483 -- before that pope heeded royal petitions and stipulated that Castilian Tomás de Torquemada, Inquisitor-General of Castile, should act in the same capacity for Aragón." [p 9]

from The Spanish Inquisition 1478-1614: An Anthology of Sources, edited and translated by Lu Ann Homza, Hackett Publishing Company, 2006

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It was pope Sixtus IV who suggested Torquemada as inquisitor for Aragón but that pope, Francesco della Rovere - the pope that did not like the de'Medici - died in August, 1484. It was his successor Innocent VIII who almost immediately, by the end of the year issued a bull condemning witchcraft, magic and other heresies. Torquemada was confirmed by the new pope in 1487, but he had gotten right to work already in Spain. Innocent VIII also sought to wipe out the Waldensians another group considered heretical, promising indulgences to those who would crusade against them. A friend to the de' Medici he married his eldest son to a daughter of Lorenzo and bestowed a cardinal's hat on his thirteen year-old son Giovanni who would later become pope Leo X. During the reign of Innocent he would also negotiate what was for then a master-stroke of strategy against the Turkish sultan, by accepting to hold the sultan's brother Djem in his paternal protection, in Rome. Innocent also excommunicated the King of Naples, Don Ferrante when he would not pay the pope for his investiture - essentially his title of King. But then pope Innocent invited the young French King Charles VIII to come and take the Kingdom of Italy which disastrously became the spark that led to the splintering of Italy all over again. This time it was the conflict dividing up Italy, between the French and the Spanish for the next forty years. Innocent would also have a preference for Christianizing slaves rather than setting them free. His gift of a hundred of these from King Ferdinand of Aragon to a number of Catholic Cardinals can show what this institution meant to him. Chronically in debt, Innocent reinstituted the practice of selling offices for money - what today is simply called simony. Confer hic.

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Another story of another omen, before the Europeans arrived in central america was recorded. Many more, actually. These were set down long after the events described. They were collected by one Bernardino de Sahagún a missionary-ethnographer c. 1555 who put these into Book 12 of what is now called the Florentine Codex *. As he wrote in the forward to that, "this history ... was written at a time when those who took part in the very Conquest were still alive.... And those who gave this account [were] principal persons of sound judgment, and it is believed they all told the truth." Elsewhere,  our missionary says,"... everything was written in the Mexican language and was afterwards put into Spanish. Those who helped me write it were prominent elders, well versed in all manners ... who were present in the war when this city was conquered." [p. xviii of The Broken Spears, quoted as from †].

Our twentieth-century editor and translator, Miguel León-Portilla (henceforward, M L-P) chose several of these omens as examples to show some "...human interest of the accounts, which reveal how the Nahuas interpreted the downfall of their civilization." [page four]

"...The temple of Huitzilopochtli burst into flames. It is thought that no one set it afire, that it burned down on its own accord. The name of its divine site was Tlacateccan [House of Authority].And now it is burning, the wooden columns are burning! The flames, the tongues of fire shoot out, the bursts of fire shoot up into the sky!The flames swiftly destroyed all the woodwork of the temple. When the fire was first seen, the people shouted: "Mexicanos, come running! We can put it out! Bring your water jars...!" But when they threw water on the blaze it only flamed higher. They could not put it out, and the temple burned to the ground." [page four - five]

from The Broken Spears: the Aztec account of the conquest of Mexico, translated, edited with an introduction by Miguel León-Portilla, expanded and with a postscript, Beacon Press, 2006.

* Bernardino de Sahagún, Florentine Codex , Introductory Volume, trans. and ed. A.J.O. Anderson and C. E. Dibble, no 14, pt 1 (Santa Fe and Salt Lake City: School of American Research and University of Utah Press, 1982), p. 101

† Bernardino de Sahagún, Conquest of New Spain: 1585 revision , trans. Howard F Cline, ed S.L. Cline (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1989, pp 2, 25).

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