14 - The eclipse of Aragon, 1630–1730

Summary

Tres dias ha prendieron también por la Inquisición a siete u ocho portugeses por lo que suelen.

Jesuit letters, 1646 (quoted by Caro Baroja, Judios en la España, I, 341 n. 13)

Je n'ai pas eu le courage d'assister à cet horrible execution des juifs … mais pour la semaine du jugement, il fallut bien y être, car autrement on eût passé pour hérétique.

Wife of French ambassador, 1680 (Caro Barojo, Judios en la España, III, p. 20n).

The two most important autos de fe held in Spain in 1625 took place less than a month apart. On November 6 in Valencia an era ended when a record total of twelve homosexuals were sentenced to death, along with the effigy of the last French Huguenot ritually executed by the Inquisition in Spain. Apart from the cluster of death sentences, only seven men were condemned. The audience was treated to the unprecedented spectacle of a dozen men dressed in purple shirts, wearing the usual white miters on their heads, but with reddish collars and a sign labeled with the single word sodomita. An eyewitness reported that it took 128 quintals of wood to burn them and seven hours to finish the job, “something never seen or heard of in Valencia.” One slave decided to convert during his execution and was therefore baptized before being burned.