Nota sobre Hernando Cabrera, carceller de la Inquisició de València (1515–1541)

We use the case of Hernando – or Fernando – Cabrera, carceller of the secret prisons of the court of the Inquisition of Valencia between the years 1515 and 1541, to illustrate both the institutional language of the time and the current historiography on the Inquisition and its secret prisons, innovative institutions in their time and considered modern, in relation to “medieval” prisons, take us at the deception: at the reality, accessible thanks to the internal documentation of the Santo Oficio, we find a dark world where there it is widespread inefficiency and negligence at the work, corruption and economic extortion of prisoners, as well as abuses of the privileges of the staff of the Inquisition. Hernando Cabrera has been receiving continuous and useless warnings from the inquisitors since 1526, but he is incorrigible and does not change his behavior, until he is degraded by the Council of the Supreme Inquisition in 1541.