The Spanish Inquisition’s Treatment of Women: The Devices, The Accusations, The Reality
PART 2:
Spanish inquisitors took this literally and creatively. The simplest and most universal. A woman’s hands were tied tightly behind her back. A rope was looped through her bound wrists, thrown over a ceiling beam, and pulled. Slowly, she rose until her feet left the ground, and the entire weight of her body hung from dislocating shoulders.
The inquisitor sat at a small desk, calmly writing. The notary recorded every scream, every plea, every forced confession. Sometimes weights were tied to the ankles, 20, 50, 100 lb, until joints tore like wet cloth. When the woman fainted, she was lowered, revived with vinegar under her nose and hoisted again.
“Tell us about the Sabbath,” they asked. “Tell us the names of your accompllices.” “Most women after the third or fourth lift would say anything, anything to make the rope stop.” In Toledo, Viodolid, and Cordoba, the rack was a daily ritual. The woman was stretched naked on the wooden frame. Ropes circled wrists and ankles. Each turn of the winch stretched her a finger’s breadth further. One click, agony.
Two clicks, the popping of tendons. Three clicks, vertebrae separating like beads on a string. A physician stood by, feeling the pulse, ensuring the victim did not die before confessing. Catalina Delo’s Rays, a Morrisa silkwaver from Granada, endured seven turns of the rack in 1572. She confessed to being a Muslim in secret.
She was relaxed to the secular arm and burned alive 3 weeks later. Though used on both sexes, it was particularly feared by women because it could be repeated endlessly without leaving marks. The victim was strapped to a sloping bench, head lower than feet. A linen cloth, the toa was forced into her mouth. Jars of cold water were poured slowly, relentlessly.
She could not breathe, could not swallow, could only drown while still alive. Between jars, the questions continued. Did you Judaize? Did you bewitch your neighbor’s cow? Did you sleep with the devil in the form of a black goat? When the eighth jar was emptied, even the strongest broke. Reserved almost exclusively for women accused of abortion, adultery, or lascivious witchcraft.
The iron claws were heated red-hot in a brazier. Then slowly, deliberately, they were clamped onto the breasts and torn away. Survivors, if the inquisitors were feeling merciful, were left mutilated for life, their shame visible to every neighbor for the rest of their days. Less common in Spain than in the German lands, but documented in Sicily and Naples under Spanish rule, the naked woman was forced down onto iron spikes protruding from seat, back, and armrests, then strapped so tightly that every breath drove the points deeper.
Coals were sometimes placed beneath the chair. The smell of burning flesh mingled with incense. Those who confessed were reconciled, stripped of property, forced to wear the yellow san bonito of shame, and sometimes sentenced to life imprisonment. Those who maintained their innocence to the end were relaxed to the secular arm, a hypocritical phrase meaning handed over to be burned alive.
On the great days of the auto defay, entire cities turned out to watch. Women in particular were paraded through the streets in shameful procession, barefoot, heads shaved, carrying lit candles that burned their hands. At the quadro outside the city walls, the condemned were tied to stakes.
Priests offered the crucifix one last time. Most turned their faces away. The flames rose, the crowd cheered, and the Inquisition recorded another soul saved. The Spanish Inquisition officially ended in 1834, but its archives, millions of pages, still exist. In them, you will not find lurid illustrations of pairs of anguish or fantastical spider devices.
You will find something far worse. Cold, meticulous records written in neat clerical handwriting. Maria Lopez, age 28, widow, endured the strapedo three times, confessed to invoking the devil, relaxed to the secular arm. 12 May 1591. Row after row, name after name, mostly women. They had no tombs, no eulogies, no descendants who dared speak their names aloud.
But if you walk at night through the old Jewish quarters of Toledo or along the ruined walls of Triana Castle in Seville, sometimes very faintly, you can still hear it. The creek of a rope through an iron pulley, the slow turn of a rack’s winch and a woman’s voice, centuries old, refusing to be forgotten. This was not the work of monsters.
It was the work of a system that believed the torture of a woman’s body could purify a nation’s soul. And that in the end is the most terrifying truth of all.
