Story 28 · 1690Archive · AHN

Folio 264 verso

The Majorcan Inquisition's death votes were filed with a shelf mark, corrected with an errata list and sometimes added torture before the stake: torment «in caput alienum».

A cleric writing in a ledger by candlelight
Imagined illustration based on the sources. Not a real portrait.

When the tribunal decided on a death, the decision was filed like any other document. The copy of the vote against Moixina says so with a librarian's precision: it matches the original, which is «at folio 264 verso of the book of Final Votes», in the Secret Chamber.

At the foot of the vote on his son Joanot, the copyist added an errata list, folio by folio: here «void», here «valid». In a file that could end at the stake, someone took the trouble to correct the typos.

On 8 June 1690 the judges voted «in agreement» on Quiteria Martí: sentence to be read at a public auto-da-fé, handover to the secular authorities, confiscation of her property. But first, «that she be put to the question of torture in caput alienum». That torture was not meant to convict her, since she was already condemned, but to extract the names of others.

Among the consultants who signed those votes were Juan Bautista Danús and Bernardino Bauçà. In other files from the same years they appear as defense lawyers. The same names defended in one bundle and voted for death in the next.

«…y que primero sea puesta a question de tormento in caput alienum…»Original manuscript, in 17th-century Spanish spelling
SourceArchivo Histórico Nacional, Inquisition, bundle 1705, file 15 (PDF p. 700); bundle 1710, file 9, image 362; bundle 1705, file 26, image 176.

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