REMINDER OF INQUISITION

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LXIV, Issue 11867, 6 November 1935, Page 4

REMINDER OF INQUISITION

GRUESOME FIND. IN. WALL.

Visitors to ths 402-year-old “heroic city” of the Spanish Main ate* seeing for the first time this season a gap* ing hole in an inner wall of the House of the Inquisition which tells a grim story, says the New York Times Cartagena correspondent, . -"■ Like the weathered, fortresses, the buff-domed Metropolitan Cathedral and the Museum of Historic'Objects, the Inquisition. Building has become a regular stop for tourists on cruises to Colombia.'

A yellowish-white edifice; with fine arches, scalloping the shadows in a cool patio, it was built in 1170, when the Tribunal of the Inquisition had already passed the peak of its power. The house came into the hands of an influential family whose descendants now own it and use part of the property as their business headquarters. Several months ago,, to improve storeroom facilities,- the firm decided to connect two ground-floor units by cutting a passage-way through a sixfoot wall. Workmen attacked the partition. Crumbly ‘plaster and brick flew in chips and' flakes. The hole deepened. Suddenly one labourer cried out, dropped his pick, and ran through the adjacent central' courtyard to the front office. The others followed.

Officials investigated and found x human skeleton, in standing position, coming into, view like a fixed spectre in the chalky recesses of the wall. It was recalled that the records of the two centuries of the Inquisition in Cartagena (beginning in 1610) included mention of persons sentenced to be plastered alive into the building. Geronimo Martinez, a member of the family that owns the records as well as the property, was convinced that the remains were of someone so condemned.

The skeleton was removed carefully from the wall and the partlycrushed bones were taken to the tunnel connecting the torture chamber with the cathedral. Prisoners had beep led through the tunnel after final prayers for their souls. The present Archbishop,- Pedro Adan Briosche, gayp permission for the digging of a pitlike grave in the dim passage. There was no burial ceremony.

The Inquisition‘records, written in Spanish and including names of victims, have been assembled and bound in leather. Several cases of death by suffocation in plaster , are listed, but only this skeleton has come to light. After the discovery work on the prospective passage-way stopped and the jagged-edge aperture remains as a reminder of one of the 667 torture sensixty burnings at the'.stake, recorded in Cartagena.. The spot in the wall where * the skeleton was, found is almost exactly above the torture entrance to the tunnel. The'entrance to the cathedral, covered with a grey board with black metal handles, is just to the right of the altar. -

Those who doubt the story have little to back up their insistence that there is probably a catch to it. Certainly there is no commercial connection; there is not even a postcard stand on the premises. The Martinez partners keep , busy in their office when visitors arrive,, and even if they should try to profit by the tourist they would very likely try in vain. They, are wholesale hardware merchants..