CHAPTER XXIV EPILOGUE TO THE AFFAIR OF THE SANTO NIÑO

The evidence given by Yucé Franco as to whence the consecrated wafers had been obtained is hearsay evidence, and very vague even then. But it would appear that from Benito Garcia or Alfonso Franco the inquisitors have been able to obtain something more definite, for whilst the trial of the eight accused has been drawing to a close, the familiars of the Holy Office have been about the apprehension of the sacristan of the church of La Guardia.

On November 18, 1491—two days after the Auto—this sacristan is brought before the court at Avila, and admonished to tell the truth of this matter, being promised mercy if he will do so.

He states that about two years ago his uncle, Alonso Franco, besought him on two separate occasions to let him have two consecrated wafers, promising him a cloak and money and much else if he would so. Ultimately, in response to these requests, and in accordance with the instructions he received from Alonso, he delivered a consecrated wafer to Benito Garcia, who came for it on the other’s behalf.

He remembers that it was winter-time, but he cannot recall the day or even the month. He explains that he took the Host from the pyx in the sanctuary of the Church of Santa Maria, having obtained the keys from the earthenware pot in which they were kept. He says that he begged Benito to tell him what it was wanted for, but that he could not induce him to say. He was assured, however, that no harm was intended.

He is able to fix the date more closely by remembering that the Francos were arrested about five months later.

Under further examination he declares that he believes in the True Presence, and always did, and that when he urged this upon Alfonso Franco and Benito Garcia they admitted that his act was a sin, but they assured him that it was not a heresy, and that no heresy was involved, and that for the sin his confessor would absolve him.219

One man who is alleged to have had a share in the affair of La Guardia escaped all mention at the time in the depositions of the accused, and was, consequently, entirely overlooked. This was one Hernando de Ribera, a man of a station in life very much above that of the others, and it is said that in consequence of this to him had been assigned the aristocratic role of Pilate in that parody of the Passion.

Not until nearly thirty years later was he arrested, self-betrayed, it is said, the man having boasted of his share in that affair. He was convicted of that crime, and also of flagrant Judaizing, for in the meanwhile he had accepted baptism to avoid expulsion from Spain when the decree of banishment of all Jews was published.

Now, whilst the publication by M. Fidel Fita of the records of the trial of Yucé Franco has shed a good deal of light upon the affair, it is not to be denied that much still remains to be explained, and that until such explanations are forthcoming—until the records of the proceedings against Yucé’s co-accused are brought to light and we are able to compare them one with another—the affair of the Holy Infant of La Guardia must to a certain extent continue in the category of historic mysteries.

Meanwhile, however, in spite of the glaring contradictions contained in the evidence at present available, in spite of the incongruities which refuse to fit into the general scheme, we cannot hold that M. Loeb is justified of his conclusion that the Holy Infant of La Guardia—and consequently the crime with which we have dealt—never had any real existence.220

M. Loeb makes a twofold contention:

(a) If the crime of La Guardia ever did take place, then upon the evidence itself, it was not ritual murder at all, but a case of sorcery in which Christians were concerned as well as Jews.

(b) No such crime ever did take place.

He bases his somewhat daring final conclusion upon three premises:

(a) The depositions of the witnesses, obtained under torture or the threat of it, are full of contradictions, of improbabilities, and of facts materially impossible.

(b) The judges made no inquest to discover the truth.

(c) The Inquisition is unable to fix the date of the crime; it did not verify the disappearance or discover the remains of any child.

The first of these premises is the most worthy of attention. The other two appear to us to overlook the fact that our present knowledge is confined to the record of the trial of one of the accused, and this one a youth who was guilty of participating in the crime in a comparatively minor degree.

No one is in a position to say that the judges made no inquest to discover the truth. All that we know is that it does not transpire from Yucé’s trial that any such efforts were made. But then such efforts may not so much concern Yucé’s trial as the trials of some of the ringleaders, and it is very possible that the records of the latter may divulge some such inquest. It is more than possible. The compiler of the résumé of seven of the trials distinctly shows that this was done.221 He cites the fact that when Juan Franco had confessed that he and his brother Alonso buried the boy, the inquisitors took him to the place where he stated that the body had been inhumed, and made him point out the exact spot, “and they discovered the truth and demonstration of all this.”222

This, of course, does not mean that the body was found. It simply means—as we are told—that the place indicated by Juan Franco presented the appearance of having lately served the purpose of a grave. The failure to find the body is undoubtedly one of the unexplained mysteries of this affair. But it does not justify the statement that no inquest was made—a statement which in itself implies that the inquisitors knew the whole story to be false, and therefore deliberately avoided inquiries which should expose that falseness.

The vagueness and confusion that appear to exist on the subject of the date when the crime was committed certainly call for comment.

The contradictions on this score appear to be flagrant, and it is impossible to reconcile the date of the crucifixion with that of Benito Garcia’s arrest in Astorga. It seems to be established by Yucé that the crucifixion took place at the end of Lent 1488; and he and others tell us that about six months later they all assembled again to dispatch the Host to Zamora by the hand of Benito. Yet Benito is arrested in Astorga in May or June of 1490—more than eighteen months after setting out for Zamora—and the wafer is still in his possession, undelivered. That is what seems to be established. But it is possible that a very simple explanation may dispose of this discrepancy. We are not justified by our present knowledge in saying that the inquisitors were unable to dispose of it. We may not assume that there is not, in the records of the trials of the other accused, matter that will clear up this question.

The date supplied by the sacristan, for instance, does not seem to be so very inconsistent with that of the event in the inn at Astorga. He said, it will be remembered, that he had delivered the wafer to Benito some five months before the arrest of the Francos. This tends strongly to confirm the impression we have already formed that the wafer discovered upon Benito at the time of his arrest was not the one that he had set out to take to Zamora some two years earlier. The Host, together with the letter for Abenamias, may very well have reached its destination. If this is admitted—and there is nothing in the evidence to forbid its admittance—much that is irreconcilable in the depositions at once disappears.

M. Loeb, of course, has proceeded upon the assumption that it is pretended that the Host dispatched from La Guardia in 1488 and the Host found upon Benito at Astorga in 1490 are one and the same. It may appear to be the obvious thing to assume. Yet it is a hasty assumption, which nothing in the evidence before us will justify.

As for the other discrepancies which M. Loeb points out, when all is said, they refer to matters of detail, upon which mistakes are not impossible.

Benito states that the child’s hands and feet were nailed to the cross in addition to being tied, whilst Yucé makes no mention of nails.

According to the statements of Yucé and of Juan Franco, it is the latter’s brother who opened the veins in the boy’s arms, whereas Ocaña said that this was done by Yucé. We have already drawn attention to the circumstances under which Ocaña so accused Yucé, and we have suggested the vindictiveness that may have inspired him.

Juan Franco confessed that he himself cut open the boy’s side and drew out the heart, whilst Yucé’s statement was to the effect that Juan had opened the wound and Garcia Franco had torn out the heart.

Mainly the evidence seems to say that the child bled to death. Yet Benito states that he was strangled(?), and Yucé in one of his statements says that they gagged him because he was crying. We have already suggested that by the expression “lo ahogaron” so much as “strangling” may not necessarily have been meant.

These are, after all, the principal discrepancies; and it is to be remembered that these men were referring to things done at least two years before; that confusion on the score of particulars is not only possible but more or less inevitable; and that, despite contradictions in these details, the main facts stated are always the same in the depositions of each. M. Loeb more than suggests that this unanimity was contrived by the inquisitors. He puts it forward as more than probable that the prisoners were left alone together on the occasions of the confrontations, to the end that they might agree upon the same tale.

There is not the slightest warrant for such an assumption. In the records the notary very clearly states that the inquisitors were present throughout those confrontations, and it is of importance to remember that these records were not prepared for publication, but were to be consigned to the secret archives of the Inquisition—so that any notion of a fraud having been deliberately perpetrated may once for all be dismissed as entirely idle.

But even were it not the recorded fact that the inquisitors were present at the confrontations, and that the prisoners were afforded no opportunity of coming to any understanding, it would still be extremely difficult to believe that they should have come to an understanding to get themselves all burnt.

M. Loeb’s attempt to make this appear reasonable is the least convincing thing in a very able but quite unconvincing article. It certainly seems to display his own want of confidence in the general acceptance of such a situation.

“We could understand,” he says, “that guilty men should come to an understanding to deny the crime committed, or to attenuate the fault, or to cast it upon others. But what should be the meaning of an understanding whose object, as would be the case here, is to make truthful avowals of a real crime? The accused would be taking unnecessary trouble. But all is explained if, on the contrary, they prepared confessions of a crime that was never committed.”

M. Loeb has vitiated his argument by the absolute assumption that an understanding did take place. This we cannot admit upon the evidence before us. But if we do, is the position materially altered? M. Loeb says that “all is explained if they prepared confessions of a crime that was never committed.” To our mind, nothing is explained by such a procedure. What possible object could have induced them to come to an understanding to make an uncommitted crime the subject of a unanimous confession that must infallibly send them to the stake? What possible advantage could they hope to derive from a falsehood of that description?

One of the chief obstacles to the rejection of the story as a fabrication is Yucé’s confession to “the Rabbi Abraham” in the prison of Segovia. M. Loeb recognizes it, and although he makes a determined attempt to overcome it, his arguments are too arbitrary and do not materially affect the point even if they are admitted.

But if M. Loeb is entirely unconvincing in his attempts to prove that the crucifixion of the boy is a fable, nothing could be more convincing than his first contention: that even if we account the story true as contained in Yucé’s dossier, the deed is not to be looked upon as ritual murder, but purely as an operation in magic.

It is a conclusion with which you must come to agree, although at first glance you may be tempted to form the opinion that the crucifixion of the child served both purposes. Some such opinion had been formed by the inquisitors when they asked why the boy had been crucified rather than put to death in some other fashion, since his heart was all that was required for the enchantment.

The answer was that crucifixion was chosen in derision and vituperation of the Passion of Jesus Christ. But this is a very different thing from ritual murder or “the hanging of Haman.” If we turn to the actual vituperative phrases employed,223 we find the expression of a desire to wound the Redeemer Himself, through that form of magic, common in all ages, known as envoûtement. Instead of the waxen or wooden effigy usually employed, a living body is used in this case. For the rest the immolation of a child plays its part in the magic ritual of other than Jews. We need mention but the notorious instance of the Black Masses celebrated by the infamous Abbé Gribourg in the eighteenth century.

There seems, indeed, no doubt at all that we are justified in rejecting the theory that the crucifixion of the Holy Child of La Guardia is to be accepted as an instance of Jewish ritual murder. So far we can accompany M. Loeb, but no farther. We cannot say with him that no such crime was ever committed. To convince us of that it would be necessary to show that the whole of the dossier we have considered is a forgery to serve the purposes of Torquemada. And this we have proof that it is not. Had it been that, had it been manufactured for popular consumption, it would not have lain concealed for four centuries in the secret archives of the Inquisition.

That Torquemada exploited the matter and turned it to the fullest account is admitted. But this merely shows him to be an opportunist; it is very far from proving him a forger. The very sentence was couched in terms calculated to excite—as it did—popular indignation against the Jews. Nor did the publication of the sentence end in La Guardia, whither copies were sent. We may infer that Torquemada scattered those copies broadcast through Spain, since we actually find a Catalan translation which was specially prepared for publication in Barcelona.

The cult of the Holy Child of La Guardia sprang up at once, and developed rapidly. Numerous shrines were set up in his honour, the first and chief of these being on the site of the house of Juan Franco, which had been razed to the ground. Here an altar was erected in the cellar of the house, on the spot where it was believed that the child’s sufferings had begun; it was surmounted by a figure of a child pinioned to a column.

Over this subterranean shrine a church sprang rapidly into existence.

Another hermitage was erected near Santa Maria de Pera, on the spot where the child was alleged to have been buried, and yet another in the cave where he was believed to have suffered crucifixion. “In all times since,” says Moreno,224 “the three sanctuaries have been frequented by those who come to pray to the Niño as to a saint.”

The first of these sanctuaries was erected by 1501—at which date records of it are to be found. It was called the Sanctuary of the Holy Innocent, and Moreno adds that this has always received the approval of Popes and Bishops, and that plenary and partial indulgences have been granted to the faithful visiting these shrines.

The people of La Guardia elected him their patron saint, and a fast was appointed for the eve of his feast-day, which at first was March 25, but was afterwards changed to September 25. Moreno includes in his book the prayers prescribed and a litany to the Niño.225

But it is not without a certain significance that Rome—ever cautious, as we have already had occasion to say, in the matter of canonization—has not yet recognized the Holy Child of La Guardia as one of the saints of the Church.

Yepes chronicles four miracles performed by the child after his death, beginning with his mother’s obtaining sight. All these, with other very interesting and purely romantic details, are to be found in that piously fraudulent work—the “Life of the Holy Child,” by Martinez Moreno.