Spanish Inquisition... the Quemadero at Madrid (Brock, Rome: pagan and papal, 1883)

Text: "I beheld, and the same horn made war with the saints, and prevailed against them;" "And he [the little horn] ... shall wear out the saints of the most High, ... and they shall be given into his hand until a time and times and the dividing of time." Daniel 7:21,25

Quote:

   But since we have been quoting examples of Spanish bigotry, my readers may, perhaps, be interested in the following extract from the Daily News of May 15th, 1869. It was given to me by Mr. A. Guinness, who has recently authenticated it at the office of the paper, and relates to the famous, or rather infamous, Quemadura di la Cross, or Burning Place of the Cross, at Madrid:—

   “While the Cortes were debating upon religion, the workmen of the corporation of Madrid were laying bare one of the most conclusive historical records of the awful deeds committed in its name by the fanatics of olden times, who sought to perpetuate Catholic unity by the destruction of all who opposed it. I allude to the time of the Inquisition, when the Church of Rome believed that the best way to put down error was to burn the heretics. In making some new streets it became necessary to cut through the spot where tradition recorded that the burnings of the Inquisition used to take place, and which has always gone by the name of the ‘Quemadura de la Cross,’ or ‘Burning-place of the Cross.’

   “These excavations have not only confirmed tradition as to the spot, but have revealed something of the sad and cruel deeds themselves. The remains of the fires have been exposed in regular layers of long black bands, some of them 150 feet in length, and of varying thicknesses, with the spaces between them, which are from one to two feet, filled in with earth. A new road had been cut right through the spot, at a level of some twenty or thirty feet, and the cutting thus effected having been neatly faced leaves the original sandstone and clay formation on each side like a wall. There the black bands I have alluded to are distinctly seen, and at first sight seem like geological strata. There is, however, nothing of the coal formation in the hills on which Madrid is built. It is 2,400 feet above the level of the sea, and the formation is exclusively sandy limestone. One must seek in other than geological causes the presence of these black bands or layers. They are the veritable remains of the Inquisition fires—pulverised and blackened earth and coal, greasy even yet with human grease. Pieces of burnt clothing, calcined bones, and partially burnt hair have been taken out. All Madrid has been to the spot, and thousands have carried away some of the black mass itself, or of the cruel records found in it.

   “To-day’s Imparcial, speaking of it, says:—‘It is the place where Catholics, pious and bewitched monarchs, permitted rational human creatures of all ages and conditions, and of both sexes, to be burnt alive, the victims of implacable Inquisitors, slippery monks, and impious defenders of the faith, as those executioners of human thought called themselves. It is where that unjust and dark Tribunal did its work, where they caused men and women, boys and girls, accused of sacrilege, heresy, compacts with Satan, and such like, to breathe their last in the midst of horrible torments. There the coal whose remains we now see, after being blessed by the Dominican fathers, burnt all who did not think or believe as the king and the monks thought or believed, or who would not serve the interests of tyranny, royal or clerical. There, in the bands one over another, in the manner of geological strata, we see, mixed up with fatty black earth, pulverised remains of muscles consumed by the live coal, calcined bones, remains of garments singed by the flames, halters stiff with coagulated blood, locks of hair imperfectly burnt—irresistible witnesses to the fact that brothers of ours expired amidst the flames, their hearts beating with energetic protests against men worse than hyænas, judges of perfidious heart and granite soul, who condemned them to die amidst agonies without number, and in the name of Christ delivered them to those fires.’”

Brock, Mourant, Rome: pagan and papal, London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1883, pp. 264-265.

Online Source: archive.org/details/b24886191

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