Who was the last deadly victim of the Spanish Inquisition?
Technically, the last victim sentenced to death by the Spanish Inquisition was María de los Dolores López, a Sevillian nun killed in 1781 for heresy. However, things didn't stop there.
The Spanish government of the Three Liberal Years (1820-1823) technically abolished the Inquisition, but the Inquisition continued the same now under the name of "Faith Tribunals". The same men who were inquisitors continued to do the same job as members of the Faith Tribunals, and the Inquisition's prisons simply became the Faith Tribunal's prisons. De facto, everything stayed the same until 1834.
Then, who was the last person killed by these fanatic tribunals?
It was this man: Gaietà Ripoll i Pla. A teacher sentenced to death in the city of València in the year 1826.
He was born in Solsona (Catalonia) in 1778. He fought in the Peninsula War against Napoleon's invasion, but in 1810 was captured as a prisoner of war and taken to France. There, he met Quakers and converted to Deism (belief in God that can be observed through empirical means, but not follower of one specific religion or Church). Four years later he came back and became a teacher.
He taught children in Russafa (nowadays, this town has been absorbed by the growing city of València and has become a neighbourhood of València), in a house built by the neighbours and also giving private lessons. Russafa was a very rural town, where most of its inhabitants worked in the fields and did not know how to read nor write.
Writings of the time show that Gaietà was very respected by the neighbours, who praised his integrity and goodness, but the fact that he did not go to mass caught people's attention. When a local woman asked him why he didn't go, he answered that he knew more than the priests. After some time, some neighbours told the Archbishop of València that this teacher was not following Catholicism's rules and wasn't making children pray in school.
He was arrested in October 1824 and jailed for two years in what used to be the Inquisition's prison in València, which was now the Valencian Faith Tribunal's prison. The inquisitor (now president of València's Faith Tribunal) Miguel Toranzo wrote that Gaietà refused to accept the truth of Catholicism and that he told children in his school that they should not say Ave María Purísima and that it's not necessary to hear mass in order to be saved.
To sentence him to death, the tribunal used the Medieval Partidas laws from Castile, which sentenced to death those Christians who had walked away from Catholicism to become heretics or Jewish. He was sentenced to be hanged and burned, but the sentence added that "nowadays no nation in Europe burns or materially sentences men to the flames", thus "the burning can be represented by painting flames on a bucket, which the executioner will place under the scaffold so that the prisoner's suffocated body will fall in it".
And that's how it went. He was hanged in València's Market Square, fell on the fake-flames bucket, and his body was thrown to the Túria river.
During all the centuries that it lasted for, the Inquisition/Faith Tribunals caused unimaginable amounts of suffering and death, not only to the people they were torturing and killing, also to their families, their friends, their neighbourhoods (consider the fear and trauma inflicted on everyone who saw it happen and knew it could happen to anyone), their whole communities (was the mostly-illiterate town of Russafa not better with the work of this kind-hearted teacher who gave its children a formal education?), and even the whole of Humanity (we have lost countless works of art, of science, philosophy, medicine, new ideas that could bring us all better times). Even after the end of the Inquisition/Faith Tribunals, even after the end of the Spanish national-Catholic dictatorship (1939-1978), there is so much that we can never get back that was taken by religious fanaticism / Christian extremism.
Translation of the plaque: València's City Council restores this plaque which was in this square between the years 1906 and 1940, in homage to Gaietà Ripoll i Pla, a freethinker teacher who had his school in Russafa and who was the Inquisition's last victim.
92 notes
·
View notes
okay releasing another short chapter because I think it’s funny, don’t be mean or I’ll actually cry:
Chapter 25
“And this is – COME ON, MOVE FASTER – this is where the train docks. Don’t EVER go inside the train, it’s nothing but rusted metal. Do you know what tetanus is? Do you know what a train is? A train is like a long car.”
I didn’t know what a car was, but lacked the heart to tell her.
Despite her crooked nose (obviously healed from past violence), her imposing frame, and those muscles, Hydna bounded about with the eager friendliness of an over-large puppy. I’d stopped trying to shape my replies to please her, as anything I said, no matter how foolish or petulant, seemed to bring her delight. Most likely I could thank Merulo for lowering her standards of conversation.
“Moving right along now, this is – CAREFUL!” Hydna lunged at me, and I flinched, closing my eyes in brief cowardice, but she only yanked me back from the sink hole I’d been about to step into. “You’re a delicate little thing, so use your eyes, eh?” was my rebuke, along with a shoulder-shattering clap on the back.
“I’m above the average height for men,” I said, pointlessly, for she’d already moved to the next attraction of Poseidon’s Family Fun Resort. This section of the resort looked a proper horror show, with its crumbling merry facades and sun-bleached pigments, bearing the ghostly afterimages of smiling aquatic creatures. When Merulo and I first arrived via portal, we’d evidentially emerged in the section of the resort used for housing visitors, with all the blocky, tall buildings forming a quasi-neighbourhood that radiated out from the newly designated library plaza.
I found it bewildering that this underwater city had been built solely for transient entertainment, though I didn’t doubt Hydna’s explanation. Mentioning this to the sorcerer proved a mistake, as he simply said “Yes, I can imagine thinking is a great effort for you,” and then banished me to spend time with his sister. Or rather to “provide that creature with whatever form of entertainment you see fit, so that I might be spared its company.”
“Are you and Merulo not close?” I asked, remembering the exchange, then winced. I’d interrupted her explanation of a terrifying plastic wheel that stretched many feet up above us, complete with intermittently spaced chairs into which victims might be locked.
“Close?” She sounded baffled – and thankfully unoffended that I hadn’t been listening. “Of course not!”
I squinted up at the dragon woman. She’d dressed herself in relics for the tour, having wasted God knows how much magic in their restoration: a wide-brimmed hat embroidered with water droplets, crammed onto her massive skull, and a shirt stretched painfully tight over what might be either breasts or prodigious pectorals, its smiling fish illustration distorted into a boggle-eyed monster. Her baggy “pants”, which ended mid-thigh, burned an intense yellow-green that didn’t exist in nature. It felt cruel to ask someone so playfully dressed this question.
“Well, you are family! Shouldn’t there be, you know, some underlying love?”
Rather hypocritical, given that my own father likely fell asleep each night thinking of creative ways to kill me, but she didn’t have to know that.
“He’s a walking knife,” came her growled reply.
“Well, yeah.” I kicked around at loose bits of pavement. Intervening in Glenda’s various moods had gone some way toward thickening my skin, but I still shuddered at the waves of displeasure radiating from Hydna. “He’s a lonely guy, I think.”
“Might be less lonely if he weren’t such a piece of shit.” She met my eyes without blinking, and for a sickening moment I found myself mesmerized by their reptilian scarlet.
“You have to. . .” I clenched my teeth and resumed my kicking, concentrating my attentions on a particularly large and rounded chunk. I reminded myself that I owed the sorcerer my life and then some. “I don’t know. Meet him more than half-way? I think he does want company.”
“But is too much of a bastard for company to want him back.”
“Exactly!” I said, delighted that she’d completed my thought. This faded as I saw her expression. “That’s neat that you can raise one eyebrow like that. Good control of . . . uh, of your facial muscles.”
Hydna pointed to a circle of unicorn-sized crabs, complete with saddles, welded to a roofed platform that looked vaguely capable of motion. No half-shouted explanation followed, though; I’d succeeded in puncturing her enthusiasm.
“Those are cool,” I said lamely. Then, “It’s only because he’s been kind to me, when he didn’t have to be. Merulo, I mean. Not that everything’s been perfect, I didn’t much like the whole ‘torture needle’ thing, but –”
“The what?”
“Hang on, I’m coming to a point. Merulo might make a lot of insulting, degrading remarks, and he is overly obsessed with killing God –”
“This is a defense?”
“Hydna, please! What I mean is that, brushing aside all those little details, he’s always been there when I needed him most. Like when Glenda shot me full of arrows, or slit my throat, or –”
“Who the fuck is Glenda?”
“Hydna, come on, I didn’t ask you what a car was!” I rubbed at my stubble, wishing I could reach into my own head to pull my thoughts into order. “Merulo will be there for you, too, if you ever need him,” – and I hoped that was the truth – “So, it’d be good if you could both . . . try.” At her contorted grimace, I added, “I’ll talk to him too, promise. Same speech!”
The dragon woman exhaled deeply. “You’re an annoying little man, Cameron.”
“Again, above average height.”
449 notes
·
View notes
A Night at the Opera, Part II
What to wear?
From The Art of Dressing Well: “The hair should be dressed as for a large evening party, and artificial flowers, jewels, feathers, ribbons, or any style of head-dress peculiar to the fashion may be worn.” “Jewelry must be worn according to the dress, but more is allowable than on most occasions, and the glittering gems are very effective in the brilliant light of a superb opera house.”
James Tissot (French, 1836-1902) • La Mondain (The Lady of Fashion) • 1883-85 • Private collection
There are myths about Victorian women's dress requirements that must be debunked. Firstly, only the ultra-rich could afford to have enough outfits to accommodate the many activities of a busy day. The reality was that women added and shed certain accessories for different activities, without changing their dress five times a day. If she was wearing an afternoon dress but going for a walk, she wouldn't necessarily run to change into a specific walking dress but instead find a hat and parasol and perhaps take off her shawl and replace it with a cape.
Likewise if she were to be invited to the opera. The dress she would choose wouldn't be one that could only be worn to the opera. Instead, the Victorian women would choose her most formal dress, add her best jewelry, and if she had them, wear an opera cape and bonnet. If she did not possess the latter, she could borrow them or make do with her best coat. That woman may not have been among the fashionistas in the audience, as described below, but maybe she enjoyed the opera and didn't care. I get a bit of pleasure imaging that at least a few women didn't give a toss about what others thought! This in spite of my interest in fashion history!
One source stated that it was typical for women (and perhaps men?) to dress according to where they sat but it was not elaborated upon. I assume the more expensive the seating, the fancier the dress.
“Well-dressed as well as handsome ladies are looked for in the audience of an opera, and it is out of harmony with the scene and surroundings to see sombre draperies, heavy bonnets, and dull faces. Ladies are supposed to be seen, as well as to see, and are often the most beautiful part of the display. They should not spoil the beauty of the auditorium by wrapping themselves in cloaks or shawls.” -The Art of Dressing Well
* Sorry, not all sources are cited, as I lost track by not keeping notes.
Part I is here.
32 notes
·
View notes