While ample documentation exists in some Inquisition Tribunals related to lesbians, comparatively little exists in relation to Madrid. The reasons for this are a bit unclear, with María Jesús Torquemada, a professor in the Departamento de Historia del Derecho y las Instituciones at Universidad Complutense de Madrid, offering a few explanations related to her work on the Inquisition in Madrid. These include that the topic is relatively under researched compared to other aspects of the Inquisition, with interest only beginning to develop recently, to the lack of records available that may shed insight on the topic, to the idea that this topic tended to be of less interest to the Inquisition in Madrid except as it connected to other issues like contradicting Catholic morality of the period.[1] Some of this may also be because of the nature of the Inquisition in Madrid, home to the Consejo de la Suprema, with the geographic jurisdiction for prosecution in the city being Toledo until a tribunal specific to the city was created in 1650.[2]

One thing that is known is that lesbians of interest or who were eventually prosecuted by various Inquisition Tribunals did make their way through Madrid, either before or after their experiences. The four best documented cases involve Elena de Céspedes who lived in Madrid for a brief time before her experiences with the Inquisition, Francisca García who was first tried by the Inquisition in Valencia and then twenty-years later in Madrid, Catalina Ledesma who fled punishment from the Inquisition in Valladolid but was discovered in Madrid and forcibly returned for trial, and Santa Teresa de Ávila, who was investigated multiple times and whose writings were subjected to censorship and banning.

The story of lesbians and the Inquisition in Madrid appears to start in 1509 when the Consejo de la Suprema ordered in 1509 that no action was to be taken against homosexual activity unless there was heresy involved. It picked up again in 1560, when the Inquisition in Madrid when the Consejo de la Suprema women could not be found guilty of sodomy unless an object was used for penetration, even in cases where women were found in bed together fondling each other. The Consejo de la Suprema also told the Inquisition in Aragon that year to stop prosecuting women for female sodomy.[3]

And then the story stops for a while, with available documentary evidence about Madrid focusing on men. What is known about male sodomy in the city is that between 1575 and 1640, secular courts in Madrid sentenced to death on average two individuals a year for the crime of sodomy, with the secular courts treating male sodomy much more harshly than the Inquisition courts. This was despite the fact that the Consejo de la Suprema was based in the city and was often reluctant to give the death sentence to convicted sodomites. None of the discussion around these death sentence cases suggest they involve female sodomites. Based on historical patterns discussed in previous sections, these cases were probably, though not necessarily, Morisco men.[4] Some of these cases include one on 27 January 1637 where two men were burned to death after being found guilty of sodomy. Two and a half years later, on 14 October 1639, two more men found guilty of sodomy were burned to death in Madrid, with a third man narrowly escaping that fate. At the time, nine others were in a Madrid prison for the same offense. A year after those two executions by fire, on 10 October 1640, a man and a boy were also burnt to death for sodomy.^[5] Civil courts being harsher may have been because the Inquisition in Madrid and Sevilla lacked jurisdiction over sodomy as an offense. The Consejo de la Suprema sometimes commuted death sentences for sodomites in the 1500s and 1600s.[6]

Female homosexuality finally appeared again as part of the discussion around female sexuality in the 1600s. At that time, contemporary sources discussed how they believed female on female sexual activity proliferated in Madrid hand-in-hand with witchcraft and prostitution. This practice was documented extensively as happening both in the city of Madrid and within the royal court in the 1600s.[7]

              Lesbians then disappear again from the Inquisition in Madrid narrative, reappearing in the next century at the start of the Spanish Enlightenment in 1700, during the reign of Carlos III. At that point, the Inquisition often associated female homosexual practices with sorcery and pimping. To a certain degree, this was because people in the rural countryside may know of one practice but lack of contact with other large populations meant less information was shared. Madrid, a decent sized city at that time, had a large number of people where they could be more anonymous and have greater sharing of knowledge between different groups. This meant those learning about practices not approved by the state were likely to congregate and share information about other unapproved practices. [8]

              By the mid-1700s, Madrid was in the middle of the Enlightenment period and the city was rapidly growing with a population of around 150,000 residents.[9] It is in this period when the first Madrid Tribunal case related to female homosexuality was tried. It involved a woman named Francisca García who had previously been tried by the Inquisition in Valencia in 1725 and again in 1745. In 1750, Francisca García appeared before the Tribunal Inquisitorial de la Corte, the Inquisition court in Madrid. A woman named Ángela Montero gave formal testimony against her, saying that García and her had had a relationship for the past four years. She also said García and ten other women, most of whom were prostitutes, mutually kissed and fingered each other while laying on top of each other. García declared that these were not sins. It was these declarations, that her activities were not sinful, which led to her eventually being sentenced by the Inquisition. [10]

              Despite Francisca García being known for having lesbian relationships, that is laying with women as if she were a man, as of 1725 and 1745 in Valencia and continuing through with her case in 1750 in Madrid, she was ultimately prosecuted for witchcraft and proposiciones, that is having an opinion about a topic that was prohibited, and not sodomy. To a large degree, this makes her case less exceptional as it fits into broader trends of rooting out heresy, blasphemy, superstition and quackery that were viewed as inconsistent with Catholic morality of the era. These types of cases constituted the bulk of the cases during the period of her prosecution. Downplaying the nature of the sin of having sex with other women was a bigger problem as it created a proposicion, through the denial of teachings around moral sexual behavior. While these issues were both of consideration for the Inquisition in Madrid and Valencia, Francisca García did not face parallel persecution for her sexual behavior by the civil courts.[11] Once again, the historical record ends. The Inquisition in Madrid did not begin to end until 1808 and did not officially, formally and finally conclude until 1834, when the story of lesbians and the Inquisition goes silent. If more lesbians were tried, those cases have yet to be discovered in the historical record.

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[1] (Torquemada, Homosexualidad femenina y masculina en relación con el delito delito desortilegios, 2014; Torquemada, Fuera de la ley: Prostitución y homosexualidad femenina en el Madrid del siglo xviii, 2018)

[2] (Kamen, The Spanish Inquisition, A Historical Revision, 1998; de la Fuente del Moral & Fernández Envid, 2013; Henry Charles Lea, 2020; de la Fuente del Moral & Fernández Envid, 2013; Sarmiento-Pérez, 2016)

[3] (Crompton, 2003; Kamen, <La> Inquisición española : una revisión histórica, 2011; AHN: Inquisición, libro 962, Aragón Inquisition inquiry to the Suprema, May 1560)

[4] (Torquemada, Homosexualidad femenina y masculina en relación con el delito delito desortilegios, 2014)

^[5] (Lea, 1907)

[6] (Kamen, The Spanish Inquisition, A Historical Revision, 1998)

[7] (Blázquez, 1990; Torquemada, Fuera de la ley: Prostitución y homosexualidad femenina en el Madrid del siglo xviii, 2018)

[8] (Torquemada, Homosexualidad femenina y masculina en relación con el delito delito desortilegios, 2014)

[9] (Torquemada, Homosexualidad femenina y masculina en relación con el delito delito desortilegios, 2014)

[10] (Torquemada, Homosexualidad femenina y masculina en relación con el delito delito desortilegios, 2014)

[11] (Torquemada, Homosexualidad femenina y masculina en relación con el delito delito desortilegios, 2014)