The Woman Condemned For Clean Clothes

In 1567, Elvira del Campo — wife of a notary named Alonso de Moya — was arrested by the Spanish Inquisition in Toledo. Her neighbours had reported two suspicious behaviours: she did not eat pork, and she put on clean clothes on Saturdays.

Both were treated as signs of secretly practising Judaism. Elvira was of converso ancestry — her family had converted from Judaism to Christianity generations earlier. In the eyes of the Inquisition, a converso who avoided pork was not a woman with a delicate stomach. She was a heretic.

Elvira admitted the acts. She said pork made her sick. She denied any heretical intention.

The inquisitors were not satisfied.

The Horror

When her sentence to torture was read, Elvira fell to her knees and begged to know what they wanted her to say. They did not tell her. They proceeded.

She was taken to the torture chamber, stripped to her shift, and bound to the apparatus. A notary sat beside her with pen and paper, recording every question, every turn of the cords, every word that left her mouth. That transcript survives and was published centuries later by historian Henry Charles Lea.

What follows is taken directly from that record, in translation.

The cord was tightened around her arms and twisted. She was ordered to tell the truth.

“I have told the truth and have nothing to tell.”

Another turn.

“Tell me what you want, for I don’t know what to say.”

She was told she was being tortured because she had not confessed. Another turn.

“Loosen me, señores, and tell me what I have to say. I do not know what I have done. O Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner!”

Another turn.

“Loosen me a little that I may remember what I have to tell. I don’t know what I have done. I did not eat pork, for it made me sick. I have done everything. Loosen me and I will tell the truth.”

Another turn.

“Loosen me and I will tell the truth. I don’t know what I have to tell — loosen me for the sake of God — tell me what I have to say — I did it, I did it — they hurt me, señor — loosen me, loosen me and I will tell it.”

Earlier in the proceedings, before the torture began, when she was first stripped and urged to confess, she had said something else the notary wrote down:

“I bear false witness against myself, for I do not want to see myself in such trouble.”

She told them she was lying. She told them the confession was false. She said it clearly. They wrote it down. They continued.

The Modern Relic

The Inquisition records are preserved in Madrid. The transcript of Elvira del Campo’s torture session — every question, every tightening of the cords, every scream, every plea — is written in the same precise hand and filed in the same way as thousands of other sessions.

The inquisitors did not conceal what they did. They catalogued it. They believed they were doing God’s work, and God’s work required paperwork.

Elvira’s case has been in print since the 19th century. You can read her words in translation: a woman begging to be told what to say, promising to confess anything if they will just loosen the cords, explicitly declaring “I bear false witness against myself” — and then the cold notation that the cords were tightened again.

She asked them to tell her what to say. They never did. They wrote down that she asked. Then they turned the cord again.

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