Spanish Inquisition: Preserving the dark chapter

The reputation is well deserved, says Fernando Ayllon, director of the Inquisition Museum in colonial downtown Lima. But he also contends that centuries of retelling have blurred the Inquisition8217;s realities and myths about its horrors.

They used to say the Spanish Inquisition had killed hundreds of thousands of people. Yet in 350 years, barely 1,000 people were condemned to death in Latin America and Europe, he said.

True, the Inquisition court shoved rags and water down victims8217; throats to create the sensation of drowning and tightened cords around arms and legs until they cut to the bone. But torture was legal and common in those days, Ayllon adds.

The view has its critics.

8220;You can defend anything,8221; said Juan Jose Vega, a history professor at the National University of Education in Lima. 8220;Even Hitler8217;s being defended these days.8221;

Nearly two centuries after it ended, the Inquisition has a strong hold on the public imagination. The exhibit that Ayllon oversees, the only Inquisition courtroom and torture chamber in Latin America preserved as a museum, is the most popular museum in Lima. It attracts an average of 20,000 people a month, about a fifth of them foreigners.

Now closed for a six-month renovation, the museum is scheduled to reopen in July with a multimedia presentation and other improvements that should give visitors a 8220;better, more objective idea8221; of the Inquisition, Ayllon said.

He thinks most people are drawn to the museum by the legends that surround the inquisition and by a bit of sadistic interest, a little pleasure in seeing how people were tortured.

The torture chamber was built with metre-thick stone walls so people outside wouldn8217;t hear victims8217; screams. It is lined with recreations of life-size victims and torturers, a torture rack, water torture devices and wooden chairs where condemned heretics were strapped in and strangled.

The building8217;s courtroom has a secret door that reputedly allowed witnesses to testify in secret about Christians suspected of holding heretical beliefs opposed to Catholic dogma. People could come under suspicion simply for criticizing the church.

A large painting in one room depicts a typical sentencing at which suspects dressed in yellow robes were placed in cages in public squares to hear their verdicts read, usually late at night.

Suspects found innocent were dressed in white gowns, handed a palm branch and paraded around Lima on a white horse to symbolically clear their names.

The court was one of three Spain established in the new world and was responsible for Peru, Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, Paraguay and Uruguay. The other courts in Mexico City and Cartagena, Colombia hold archives from the period, and Cartagena also has a modest museum.

In Latin America and Europe nearly 100,000 people were subjected to secret trials, 9,000 were tortured to make them confess their sins and 1,000 were killed, Ayllon said.

Most of that occurred in Europe. Just 32 people were executed in Peru, 30 in Mexico and 5 in Cartagena, he said.