Buried Alive: Gothic Reading and Medievalist Subjectivity

Abstract

A young woman attracts the eye of Francisco Torrejon, a deputy Inquisitor. He has her arrested and placed in a comfortable chamber where she is offered costly clothes and gifts. The young woman is understandably suspicious, asking herself, “must I sacrifice my honour to my fears, and give up my virtue to his despotic powers?” (Christian Martyrdom 139). The Inquisitor’s servant Mary now shows her the Inquisition’s methods of execution: a “dry pan” in which naked heretics are burned alive; a “wheel set with sharp razors” that cuts opponents of the Pope to pieces; and a pit where those who do not respect the clergy appropriately are eaten by “poisonous animals.” On learning that her fate is to be the “dry pan,” the young woman surrenders her virtue to the Inquisitor, “so entirely were the ideas of delicacy obliterated by the force of terror! ” She is then introduced to a company of well-dressed ladies; only a few days later is she placed in a prison-cell, where her cell-mate informs her that the ladies are only putting on an act of being well-treated, and that they are all sex-slaves of the Inquisitors. Shortly afterward, the French army storms the prison; the young woman gains her release and marries a French officer, which is how her story becomes known to history.