3 - The Aragonese Secretariat: public and private faces

Summary

Vingueren a aquest spectacle casi la mitat de la gent de tot lo reyne.

Valencian priest, describing public auto of 1621 (Castañeda, Diario de Juan Porcar, II, p. 52).

Procedono con tanta taciturnità e segretezzà, che degl'inquisiti e della cause loro non s'intende mai nulla, se non quanto è pubblicata la loro sentenza … Ma con tutto ciò si dice che le sentenze sono nei condannati sempre giustissime e giustificatissime.

Venetian relazione, 1573 (Firpo, Relazione, VIII, p. 577).

Como en el secreto del Santo Oficio consista todo su poder y autoridad, y la reputación de las personas que en el sirven … pues quanto mas secretas son las materias que se traten, tanto mas son tenidos por sagrados y estimadas de los que no tienen noticia de ellos.

Preamble to 1607 carta acordada (Lea, 11, p. 607).

On June 21, 1627, the Barcelona Inquisition staged a public auto de fe in the Born, the largest public square of the city. Only ten prisoners were punished: five bigamists, a witch, a Catalan merchant who had compromised himself with Huguenots in France, and three Moslem pirates from France and Scotland. Five were whipped and sent to the galleys, four were banished, and one pirate was condemned to be burned as a pertinacious heretic. This was Barcelona's first full-dress or “general” auto in twenty-five years, and we possess five different descriptions of it: three official accounts, including a printed pamphlet, and two private diaries.