THE 



POPULAR SCIENCE 

 MONTHLY. 



JULY, 1893. 



THE SPANISH INQUISITION AS AN ALIENIST. 



BY HENRY CHARLES LEA. 



THE degree of responsibility attaching to insane criminals has 

 in all ages been a difficult problem for the dispenser of jus- 

 tice. I am not aware that the contributions made to its eluci- 

 dation by the Spanish Inquisition have ever received attention, 

 and the history of a few cases which throw light upon this phase 

 of the subject may not be without interest.* 



On September 20, 1621, Madrid was startled by the report of 

 a shocking sacrilege committed in the chapel of the archiepis- 

 copal prison. A vagrant Catalan, named Benito Ferrer, had been 

 arrested as an impostor for begging in clerical garments without 

 being in orders. The offense was not serious, and after a month's 

 detention he was about to be discharged, when, at the morning 

 mass, as the bell tinkled to announce the elevation of the Host, 

 Benito, who was praying with a rosary in an upper chamber, 

 rushed down like a madman to the chapel, seized the Host, which 

 had been deposited on the communion cloth, broke it, flung the 

 fragments on the floor and trampled on them, exclaiming, "O 

 traitor God of darkness, now you shall pay me!" He was 

 promptly seized and carried to the courtyard, where he was 

 stripped of his cassock, and when some fragments which had 

 lodged in it fell to the ground he endeavored to stamp on them 

 with similar ejaculations. The first care of those present was to 

 gather reverently the pieces of the body of the Lord ; the soles 

 of Benito's shoes were carefully scraped, and the dust and sand 



* I am indebted to the custodians of the Konigliche Bibliothek of the University of 

 Halle for the opportunity of consulting the records of these cases. 

 VOL. XLIII. 20 



