Sins Of The Inquisition

For years, I have carried the unwanted guilt of my liberation and its adverse circumstances. Although my name was finally cleared of any unlawful act, I was a witness to the brutality caused by one man, who was sent by the Spanish monarchs to impose punishment upon those deemed unbelievers of the Catholic faith.

His name was Diego Rodríguez Lucero, and he would forever be remembered and associated with a reign of terror, as the Dark One. He arrived in the city of Córdoba in 1482 and was appointed inquisitor in 1499. His ruthless tyranny of blood would abate on the 22nd of December, 1506. Ultimately, he tortured hundreds of hapless prisoners and sentenced more than 200 people to death at the indelible plaza known as La Corredera.

The narrative you are about to read is expressed for the sole purpose of recording my account and the cruelty inflicted upon me and others who were innocent of any recorded crimes. The year was 1500, and my name is Santiago Molina. I had been arrested on charges of heresy against the Catholic Church, which I oppugned. I was accused through the process of the Inquisition and denounced as a heretic.

Even though I was offered reconciliation with the Church through the Edict of Grace, I was against the principle of becoming a cowardly agent for the Inquisition. To acknowledge my participation would be to profess my compliant culpability.

Once I was detained, my case was to be examined by the calificadores, who would determine the degree of my heresy. My process lasted two years before my case was examined, and my detention entailed the sequestration of my property, which was used to pay for my procedural expenses and maintenance.

The inquisitorial process consisted of a series of hearings, in which I was not permitted to testify on my own behalf. Nor was I granted access to legal counsel. Thus, my options for the trial were originally acquittal, suspension, penance, or reconciliation. For a whole year, I languished in the drear isolation of my imprisonment at the Alcázar and was vanished into the realisation of my sober reality, which I had attempted to eschew unsuccessfully.

My cell was solitary in nature and the embodiment of my confinement. Every day, I was aghast at the methods of torture evident and gorgonising. The austerulous guards were constantly watchful, and the bells of the belfry rang every hour as a haunting reminder of the dread that pursued the condemned prisoners, whose hour of death was imminent. I often wondered if the church bells were not meant to terrorise us. The resonating sound was worse than the peal of thunder in the obnubilation.

The horrendous contrivances utilised by the inquisitors were imposing in their usage and effectiveness. The rack, where the limbs were slowly pulled apart; the water torture, where the victim was forced to ingest water poured from a large jar; the strappado, where the victim's hands were tied behind their back and the body suspended by the wrists.

All of these inhumane devices were enough to stir trepidation in my mind and soul. By revealing these methods to the reader, it is my intention to emphasise the malicious activities performed within the prison—a place where the cold winds reached the recesses of the sturdy walls that concealed the abominable acts done in the self-righteousness of religion.

I counted the days of my imprisonment so that the world outside the Alcázar would know of the unfathomable tragedies committed in this wretched place. I contemplated the course of my fate and its uncertainty deeply. I was immune to the madness that accompanied the revelries of the denizens, but death was becoming a normal occurrence. I could not be blind to the artifices used by the inquisitor, who was determined to please the audience in the plaza with unparalleled gore and terror.

I would be awakened during the night by the awful nightmares that consumed me, and I bore witness to the distressing image of the accused people, burnt at the stake as accursed victims of a zealous wrath. The things I discovered were of an evil portent. Nothing could have prepared me for the consequences that followed. To the judges of the Inquisition, there was no sympathy for those they condemned. To them, the prisoners were sentenced to the harrowing perils of their burdens. Hope constantly taunted my mind, but reality unmasked my dwindling aspirations.

During my time in prison, I learnt that there were countless things not to be taken for granted or forgotten. Prison was an ironic place that offered a great measure of reflection—at the cost of the freedom I had once known. I was living in a time corrupted by the imperant Inquisition of the Catholic Church.

The prisoners beside me were mostly condemned to a lingering duration of imprisonment or an immurement that led to agonising death. Either way, the injustices imposed upon them were brutal, but these were the conditions we, as prisoners, were forced to endure.

I was not married and had no children. Perhaps for that reason, my time in prison was not as unbearable as it was for those who left behind a spouse or child. The men and women imprisoned were separated by thick rows of adamantine walls. I commiserated with their appalling treatment, and I survived because my fortitude and conviction were unyielding, despite moments of incertitude and impotence.

I rarely knew the fresh light of the sun or a faint glimmer of the moon. It was easy to be lost in the darkness and distance of time. Each prisoner had a unique story and circumstance to explain. However, what linked us was the terrible truth that we were all prisoners, doomed to our ominous sentence passed by the inquisitor.

I wrote letters to my brothers, informing them of the situation I faced, urging them not to commit the same act of defiance that I had committed ignorantly. Though I was not the eldest, I knew what it meant to endure adversity.

Córdoba had become the next city to bear the intolerance of the Inquisition. Seville would follow in the succession of cities to suffer the draconian measures of merciless chastisement. The prison had been named La tormenta—'The Storm'. It had a disdainful reputation earned by the innumerable acts of torture performed there. The echoes of tortured souls sounded like a blustery storm on a rampage.

The fear of death was ingrained in the minds of all the prisoners who heard the horrible cries of those tortured. The putrid flesh of those who died in prison was fed to the dogs or crows that gathered outside, waiting for a barmecidal feast.

Suicide was rampant amongst those who became delusional or too susceptible to despair. They preferred to take their own lives than be reduced to scant ashes at the stake. The veil of secrecy was tightly held by those who succumbed to death’s eventuality. The Inquisition enabled the inquisitor to threaten us and our families should we resist or fail to repent.

It was wiser to believe that our destiny was controlled by the actions of the inquisitor than to think he would ever relinquish his immense power and avarice. Only the Spanish monarchs could strip him of all that he had been given.

He was a loathed man who revelled in the misery of others. His disparagement towards us was clear. At first, those who cheered for the Inquisition and its divine punishment for witchcraft or apostasy found themselves maliciously accused and imprisoned. Betrayed by those they had once called friends, acquaintances, or family.

The cruel methods the throng had cheered for would be used against them and often lead to their deaths. It was impossible not to be affected by the Inquisition in Córdoba. The city had embraced an insidious tyrant and forsaken the harmony once shared between Jews, Muslims, and Christians for centuries under Al-Andalus and even after its recapture.

Hitherto, there are vestiges of the abnormal shedding of blood smeared in the streets of Córdoba—a blood washed away by time, but never enough to cleanse the sins of the reconquest. No god could erase such sins, provoked under the banner of His divine name. The eerie drops of rain still remind me of the endless tears that once flooded the Guadalquivir River. The lightning and thunder remind me of the violent wrath of the Inquisition—its intolerance sparing few.

The imposition of the inquisitor was what had dictated the course of action to be taken. Diego Rodríguez Lucero was said to have gloated over his victories, upon the burnt ashes of his victims. It was a madness that was simply uncontrollable and unrelenting in its pursuit.

Córdoba would not escape his tyranny. It would be forced to bear witness to the calamities and abuse that this man would commit in the name of his religion. All those individuals who opposed him were considered his declared enemies. I had spent many of my days in solitude, reflecting on the serious nature of my imprisonment. I had endured the abhorrence of the tortures applied and survived.

Perhaps it was attributed to my will to live, or my conviction not to allow myself to die. Whatever the case, my life would no longer be the same as it was before. The breath of freedom was one that I had yearned for with passion, yet the reality of it was merely a transient aspiration that faded into the winds that blew across the breadth of the city.

As a non-believer in the Christian God, I was to serve as an example of heresy. Innumerable men and women had faltered before the act of contrition and atonement, but I—whose only crime was disbelief—was doomed to the punishment of the Inquisition. This was my supposed sin, that I had failed to adhere to their faith, despite the fact that I had done nothing to merit condemnation. Nor was I depraved in demeanour.

I had many questions for the men who served as judges of the Inquisition, but few answers were given, as if silence itself was a mark of their righteous clarity and wisdom. Many women and men who were murdered—yes, murdered—by the Inquisition were not punished for words spoken against the Church, but for their creed, exploited by the appointed leeches of religion.

The Jews were the first to be punished, then the Muslims. Others like me, who disbelieved due to our non-conformity with the Christian God, were punished for the crime of heresy. Witchcraft and paganism were used to blame those like me, who professed more in the teachings of philosophy than religion. The false morality that the inquisitor practised and preached to the citizens of Córdoba was exacted upon us, the prisoners, with a daunting vengeance.

As prisoners, we were only instructed to read the Bible and repent for our sins daily. However, I had managed to collect writing materials, such as parchment and ink, to record my thoughts and reflections. I had plucked one of the feathers of a pigeon that had once entered my cell, so that I could write.

My intention was to narrate the horrors I had witnessed and the disturbing nature of the Inquisition. I know that I was not the first to document these appalling events occurring within the prison and to others who had already been condemned to death.

I had accepted the notion that humanity itself was to be blamed for the Inquisition. I thought of Socrates, who was of no fault, save that imposed upon him by his enemies. How he was forced to drink the poison of the hemlock, and did so with stoic valour.

The mornings and nights progressed into unbearable moments of depravity, whereupon the torturers of the Inquisition—with their new contrivances—deliberately attempted to break the volition of the prisoners. Not only did these tormentors punish, but they also raped the women with merciless revelry. Many of these victims would remain anonymous to the annals of history, erased forever. I had seen street dogs treated better than these prisoners.

The century had begun with the sins of the previous one. The Córdoba of the Romans, the Visigoths, and the Moors was tainted by the heartless memories of the Inquisition. While the Catholic Church grew richer, many of the citizens of Córdoba grew poorer.

I was told that the city would eventually be purged of all its profaned heretics. It was difficult to know the hour of one's death. What was decreed was only the day. Mine remained uncertain. I strongly believed that since I had no followers and posed no viable threat to the Catholic Church, unlike the Jews and Muslims who had more influence than I, I was not a priority.

Still, my life was under the control of the vitiated inquisitor. I knew that he could change his mind at any moment. The little light afforded me was a lit torch that kept me warm at night and during the cold mornings. It was not uncommon to see the pale faces and horrified expressions of the prisoners who had endured the torment of the torture chamber as they passed by my cell.

The howling of the dogs signalled the procession that would accompany prisoners to their nightmare at La Plaza de La Corredera. One day, I would be stirred by one of the guards and escorted to the torture chamber. A device had been set up—a massive pendulum with a trenchant blade that could slice human flesh without difficulty.

The callous inquisitor himself was present, when he selected a few prisoners to be the infaust ones for his new method of torture. I counted five men before me who were chosen. At the end of the experiment, I was the only one to survive. My survival was not because I was spared, but because the blade became stuck and was rendered inoperable.

The recollection of this event would always remain with me—not for surviving, but for witnessing the horrid deaths of the others at the hand of the swaying pendulum. The spine-chilling experience convinced me of my fragile existence in the prison.

I had been strapped to a wooden table, helpless. I lay beneath the pendulum, which swayed above me like a menacing executioner. My heart beat fast, and sweat dripped from my face. The man in charge of the pendulum wore a black mask to hide his identity. I could not forget his dark and penetrating eyes of truculence, nor his Mephistophelian laughter. They were unforgettable. Gradually, the pendulum lowered and had nearly reached my flesh, until it became stuck.

I was released and returned to my cell. That night, the haunting images of the others' deaths would not leave my mind. The barbarity of that dreaded chamber was unmatched by anything I had seen in the entirety of my life.

The crimson bloodstains, the surreptitious secrets, the corroded walls draped in mould and rust, the grinding bolts, the rotating and tightening steel contraptions, the vile repression, the hollow bones and skulls of charcoal ashes, and the traces of human vestiges—all were signs of a horrible manifestation of death and torment.

I became inclined to believe that the evil men professed in religion was caused by mankind, who blindly imposed errant interpretations of their beliefs upon helpless victims. It was easier to select a scapegoat than to admit one’s faults. That fatal notion was evident in the actions committed by men of power, who wielded dominance over the disjointed voices of the oppressed, immersed in the misery of isolation.

I would be spared the agony of the pendulum—at least for now. I suspected my time would come again. But for the nonce, I was saved. It did not convince me of good fortune, but rather made me reflect on the gross indecency of the Inquisition.

The hardship of my daily life was not surviving the hellish tortures of the prison, but witnessing, in its totality, the grave effects of its inhumanity. In private, I had moments when I contemplated suicide. Perhaps it was the better option, for any possibility of release seemed remote. My admission was not founded on the rejection of hope, nor on bitterness. It was more a sober recognition of the inescapable circumstance of my detention.

Verily, no man knows what prison is until he has walked in the footsteps of a prisoner. A philosopher is wise, because he has reaped the knowledge that bestows wisdom. There are men with consciousness, and men without. Those who seek to destroy the ideology they fear are often inspired by the falsehood of religion.

The things that had initiated the Inquisition were based on the fallacy of a creed that considered itself more just than unjust. I was deemed a reprobate, and my heresy was fabricated by men of influence within the Catholic Church. My rights were negated, as was my voice of reason. Who amongst the crowd of onlookers would speak on my behalf? The judges of my condemnation were delighting in sins, whilst I was deemed the face of sin. The deafening cries of the prisoners were beginning to fall silent, muted by the terror of the torture chamber.

Each day, a victim was chosen to be taken either to the chamber or to the plaza to be burnt. It was enough to frighten or humble any soul. For some, suicide was indeed the only escape from the madness. Had I not been a survivor, a firm believer in life, I would already have crossed that road of no return, to be embraced by its unique darkness. It was said that to be an acquaintance of death was easier than to be a lasting companion to another prisoner.

The face of death was more memorable and ineffaceable. Prisoners came and went. When I was afforded candles, I would often stare into the flame. It reminded me of the delicate nature of my precarious situation.

The crow of the cock in the early morning was synonymous with the throes of death. The priests responsible for eliciting confessions from the prisoners wore dark robes and cowls covering their heads. To us, they were the harbingers of fate. Their holy water was far more perilous than the water we were forced to drink from the prison’s well.

The word iniquity, however foreign to the tongues of some, was the vice employed by the Inquisition. I was indeed a sinner, conceived as such in the eyes of the inquisitor—but his sins were deadlier in retribution and hostility. At first, the maddened populace had an uncontrollable thirst for the scent of bloodshed. In time, that thirst would turn into distrust of the inquisitor and a cry for justice for the imprisoned souls.

I understood that my predicament was no more dire than that of another prisoner. Nor was my determination more meritorious. To assume I held an advantage would be to ignore my disadvantage. To believe I was fortunate would be to blind myself to my misfortune.

The books of philosophy had taught me to endure suffering, yet I was human and susceptible, at times, to the unsettling episodes of human nature. I learnt quickly that I could not place my trust in any of the guards or priests who visited the prison. I could only confide in my conviction, but I could not reveal my fragility so candidly before them. They had homes to return to at the end of the day; I had none still bearing my name.

One day, I was visited by a priest who preached the Gospel—twisting every word to suit his whims. He came to convert me to Christianity. I allowed him to preach. As he did, I noticed the contradictions in his words. He spoke of his god, yet condemned me and the others—those who did not share his creed—without ever attempting to understand Judaism, Islam, or Philosophy.

He knew I was acquainted with the teachings of Socrates, Plato, Thales, Aristotle, and the Stoics. To the members of the Inquisition, these men were pagans, not worthy of reverence. Yet, as I mentioned to the priest, Aquinas had invoked the teachings of philosophy. I gave him other examples as well.

Our discussion lasted for an hour until his curiosity was sated and he departed. As the years passed, so did my dishevelled and haggard appearance. I lost weight, and my mental faculties began to wane. The only leisure I discovered was in writing. It kept me sane and reanimated my vitality during my darkest bouts of depression and murk.

Córdoba remained at the centre of the Inquisition. It would witness more deaths and betrayals. The expulsion of the Jews, then the Muslims, would forever tarnish the city's historical legacy. The fall of Granada occurred in 1492. The fervour of the Inquisition was a product of hysteria, fuelled by the Catholic Church. The betrayal of the Jews and Muslims exceeded the formerly established relations between the three major faiths.

The cruelties of torture persisted, as did the manacles of oppression. The foul stench of death became familiar to me, as was the hunger seen in the eyes of imprisoned men and women, who could not eschew their needs. I once heard it said: man is reduced to an animal when another man reduces himself to bestiality. How ironic that statement is. How little we learn from moral lessons.

The inquisitor was not a man to be reasoned with. He was both instigator and executioner. Every victim of his self-righteous crusade was to him mostly anonymous in name, but not in belief. He delighted more in destroying the so-called infidels of Christ than in saving their souls. To defy him was to defy authority itself. Countless prisoners detested his presence. I became familiar with his effective ploys. I had never before met such an implacable man in power.

He had the control to alter the fate of any prisoner he wished to destroy, including mine. His prestige was one of surquedry, built on lies and sheer duplicity. His stare was unmatched, as was his attitude toward the prisoners. 'Repent', he would say, 'and find the Lord'—but those were hallowed words with ominous meaning. All he truly wanted was to be glorified and reverenced like his god.

Power in life often extends only as far as the power one holds over the powerless. In the end, it cannot avert one's demise. The inquisitor’s present smirk would eventually become a grimace of agony. He would be betrayed by the same maddened populace he had incited like wildfire.

In the back of my mind lingered the thought: how had the world changed from civility to cruelty? Córdoba had once been a true place of tolerance. The city’s libraries were threatened by the Inquisition. Many books of philosophy and other religions were burnt. Ancient scholars were effaced or condemned for their writings.

The worst of this senseless crusade was the fact that the men who claimed to enact divine retribution were, in truth, unaccountable for their exposed sins. The Reconquista had altered the future’s perception, bringing vivid consequences for the defeated. Europe would become a place where the Inquisition’s doctrine reigned supreme.

Life had taught me the grievous burdens I was to confront. To understand them, I had to endure their lingering effects. The treatment I and others bore was indicative of the hatred stirred by those who opposed the Catholic Church.

The dastardly deeds enabled by the Inquisition’s edicts sparked the inquisitor’s inflammable ire. I had never experienced such a violent apprehension, such taunting mockery. If ever there was a man who epitomised terror, it was him. He alone emboldened others to act cruelly. Those who defied his authority faced dire consequences.

By the end of the month, I had faltered into a worrisome state of emaciation. I appeared wan and cadaverous. My food rations were reduced considerably due to the influx of new prisoners at the Alcázar.

That acceptance was difficult, and my situation was plagued by guilt—not because I lived, but because I had seen others perish at the Inquisition’s hands, and I was powerless to prevent it. The rats grew bolder in their behaviour towards me. I could sense they waited for me to die, to taste my flesh and bones. I had seen a dead prisoner’s body gnawed by these voracious rats.

It was impossible to erase the evocative images from my mind—ghastly and inhumane. The horrors unfolding in the prison affected my perception of life and death.

I felt the weight of weakness and suspected a malady consuming me from within. Was it a fever running rampant through the prison? A contagion I had never known?

I had seen and heard of many prisoners—men and women alike—succumbing to the irrepressible illnesses of the age. I was no exception. There was fear of a resurgence of the infamous Black Death. The very thought made people shiver in dread.

As my condition worsened, my faint hope for liberation rapidly faded. No doctor came to cure me. One day, a guard entered and told me I was 'lucky' my illness had spared me from the stake that very day—my appointed day of death, unbeknownst to me. But I would not die as they had planned. The inquisitor was informed of my condition and visited me unannounced.

He stood before me as I sat by the wall, watching him. Clad in dark robes, he removed his cowl to speak directly. He addressed me with contempt and morbidity. His incisive wit was clear in his gestures as he informed me I would share the fate of all his other victims.

I tried not to show weakness or fear. I would not give him the satisfaction that men of power enjoy when facing defeated foes. His ego was already saturated with vanity. My only remaining dignity was my genuine pride.

He offered leniency—if I repented and embraced Christianity, he would spare me. He offered wine and meat, knowing I was starving. But it was a test, a bribe veiled as generosity. I refused his cross and, looking him in the eye, asked, Would the Christ you worship be as brazen and corrupt as you are?

Enraged, he ordered the guards that I be burnt at the stake the following morning, regardless of my condition. Before leaving, he said one final thing: my ashes would be kept in a special urn in his private chamber, for his amusement.

If ever there were a devil in disguise, it was him.

That night, before my scheduled execution, I spent the hours writing in secrecy—my final pages. When finished, I hid them in a recess of the cell wall, hoping that one day someone would read the truth—not only of my imprisonment, but of the wretched brutality inflicted upon us all.

I had to unmask the horrors of the torture chamber. I knew the inquisitor would not change his mind. I was sentenced to die, with no recourse. Though I was born in Andalucía, I was treated with utter disdain. My rights and voice were dismissed.

It was not mere defiance, but belief in philosophy that stirred me. I, who had suffered the prison’s atrocious conditions and draconian punishments, had become the impassioned voice of the others—those imprisoned, those murdered by the Inquisition. I thought of Socrates, on the brink of death.

I do not know whether ghosts exist, but if they do, this hellish place would be the ideal haunt.

My entire imprisonment was a continual nightmare, beginning the first day I stepped inside the prison.

No man who knows his date of death can truly prepare. On the 9th of November 1506, I awoke to the vociferous cries of a mob. They had stormed the Alcázar without warning.

They freed more than 400 prisoners. I would later learn the mob had grown tired of the bloodshed, the corruption of the vile inquisitor who embodied the city’s depravity.

He fled like a coward through the back door. The mob found the guards and hanged their lifeless bodies from the towers.

I was discovered and taken to an infirmary, where I recovered. I was among the fortunate few who walked free. In time, I regained my status and property—others were not so lucky.

I vowed never to leave Córdoba, nor forget the indelible faces of those who perished in the cimmerian shade amidst the sanguinolent puddles. Every breath I took was sacred. I did not take my freedom for granted, knowing I could again be in danger.

Before I left the prison, I recovered the pages I had written. I could not forsake my fellow prisoners. Nor would I allow their stories to fade into the ill-starred pages of history.

The days following my liberation were unlike any I had ever known—not in joy, but in their overwhelming silence. I was no longer within the walls of the Alcázar, but the memory of its stone enclosure had imprinted itself on my psyche so thoroughly that even the open skies of Córdoba felt like ceilings I could not reach. The sun, once forbidden to me, now poured over my body with an unfamiliar warmth that I struggled to welcome. I remember lifting my hand to the light and watching it tremble, unsure if it was the sun or my soul that I feared had changed most.

I stayed in the infirmary for three weeks. I did not speak much during those days. There was a nurse who came often—a young woman, her eyes kind and unsullied by the inquisition’s shadow. She fed me gently and wiped my brow during my fevers. I had asked for her name once, and she had simply smiled and told me names were less important than deeds. That simple answer, so unlike the artifice of titles and clerical prestige, moved me deeply.

As my strength returned, I began to walk again, slowly and carefully. Each step reminded me that I was alive and that I had been left with a task too sacred to ignore. I was a bearer of the truth, a witness to the cruelty that had been shrouded by robes and crosses. Every night I returned to the pile of pages I had kept hidden in my cell. I reread them with solemnity, correcting nothing, for they were written in the fire of immediacy. They were my soul at its rawest—flawed, fevered, but never false.

I could not sleep properly. Even when the bed was soft and the chamber warm, my dreams still returned to the screams that pierced the dark corridors of the Alcázar. I would wake, drenched in sweat, often gasping for air, convinced for a moment that I had returned to that nightmarish purgatory. I was told that I was suffering from what physicians now call a sickness of the nerves. They had no word for trauma, but they knew its expression well.

The city itself was wounded. Córdoba had been the cradle of tolerance once, but now she bore the scars of betrayal. Where once Jews, Muslims, and Christians had lived in relative harmony, there were now empty homes and shuttered shops. Streets once filled with scholars and merchants were now haunted by absences. The scent of burning parchment and flesh had been replaced by an eerie quiet. I walked through the Judería, and I could still hear the children playing in my memory—speaking in Ladino and Arabic—but only the echo remained.

I found my family’s house intact, though abandoned. Dust clung to every surface like ash, and the rooms seemed smaller than I remembered. I stood in my study and felt the weight of the books that were no longer on the shelves. Most had been confiscated or burned. But in a secret recess behind the fireplace, I found a leather-bound copy of Plato’s Phaedo, still preserved. I held it in my hands as if I had found an old friend who had survived the same war.

I resumed my writing. This time not as a prisoner, but as a chronicler. My goal was not only to condemn the inquisitor and his accomplices, but to give names and dignity to those whose lives had been taken. I wrote down everything I remembered—the faces, the cries, the confessions extracted under torment, the prayers whispered in Hebrew and Arabic, the dreams shattered before they could be spoken. I refused to let them become numbers in a ledger of martyrs. They were people, philosophers, mothers, tailors, poets, lovers of knowledge. They had lived.

Some people advised me to leave Spain—to flee to Naples, or to the Ottoman Empire, where Jews and Muslims found refuge. But I could not go. My homeland was diseased, but it was still my birthplace. If all those who could speak the truth left, then who would remain to challenge the lie? I resolved to stay, even if I was watched, even if the eyes of the new clergy followed me through the streets. My survival was already a rebellion. My words would be my resistance.

Years passed. The inquisition continued in other provinces, but its presence in Córdoba waned. The city began a slow, painful healing. I taught children to read once again. I spoke of Aristotle in whispered gatherings, reciting his Nicomachean Ethics by candlelight. I had no formal post, no ecclesiastical sanction, but people came nonetheless. The thirst for knowledge had not died—it had only been silenced. Now it murmured again.

I learnt of the inquisitor’s fate years later. He had been imprisoned not far from where I had once been kept. He was tried, not for the murders he committed in the name of Christ, but for embezzlement and misconduct. The irony did not escape me. He who had condemned so many to fire for doctrinal impurity was punished, not for his cruelty, but for mishandling gold. A hollow justice, but justice all the same. He died in obscurity—no monument, no requiem. I heard his ashes were scattered to the wind, lost and unmourned. His infamous acts would seal his ignoble legacy. His imprudence brought about his apparent downfall.

One evening, whilst walking along the Guadalquivir River, I passed an olive tree that had grown near the bank. Beneath its branches, I sat and watched the slow, rippling current. I had aged. My beard was white, my hands slower to move across the page, but I had endured. Not by strength, but by stubborn memory. That tree reminded me of Córdoba’s ancient soul—rooted deep, still standing, even after so much fire.

In my final years, I compiled my manuscripts into a singular codex—a personal account of the inquisition, from the viewpoint of the condemned. I titled it The Voice Beneath the Ashes. It was copied in secret, distributed across borders, smuggled in satchels by merchants and pilgrims. I was told that even in the distant libraries of Florence and Constantinople, my words were read. That was enough.

For I had not survived merely to live. I had survived to remember. And to remind others that the light of reason, however faint, can never be fully extinguished—not even in the darkest of prisons, nor by the cruellest of inquisitors.

I often wonder what became of the nurse who fed me, or the boy in the next cell who hummed prayers in Arabic, or the priest who once doubted his own sermon. I carry them with me, each name a syllable in my memory’s prayer.

And now, as I write these final lines under the fading twilight of Córdoba, I offer this thought: no cruelty, no pyre, no tyranny lasts forever. The truth, though buried in ash, will rise again.

Like the olive tree by the river, it will grow—slowly, quietly, but always toward the light.

Even now, in the stillness of dawn, I hear their voices—soft, persistent, like the wind through old stone. They do not ask for vengeance, only remembrance. In their memory, I live deliberately, bearing their stories as reminders of their lives. Innocent lives that were taken from their breath of existence.

If silence was once my prison, then testimony is now my freedom. And in that truth, I endure with wisdom.

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