Juan Antonio Llorente (b. in Aragon, 1756; d. in Madrid, 1823) served for several years as principal secretary to the Inquisition in Spain. In 1817 Llorente published his work in Paris under the title: A Critical History of the Spanish Inquisition. Paris, Treuttel and Wurz.

For an analytical study of Poe's knowledge of British periodical literature, particularly of Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, see Margaret Alterton, Origins of Poe's Critical Theory, Iowa Humanistic Studies (1925), pp 7-45.

Abridged and translated. Printed for G. B. Whittaker, London (1826).

The title of this American edition reads: History of the Spanish Inquisition abridged from the original work of M. Llorente, late secretary of that Institution; by Leonard Gallois. Translated by an American. New York, G. E. Morgan (1826). This is a rare volume. It bears this interesting dedication: To Col. Juan Van Halen, late chief of the staff of one of the divisions of the army of Gen. Mina, in Catalonia, formerly a prisoner and sufferer in the Inquisition at Madrid. This volume is inscribed by His Friend, the Translator.

Abridged and translated. Philadelphia, J. M. Campbell and Co. (1843).

Blackwood's Magazine, XX, 81. "The Inquisition in Spain with Anecdotes of some of its More Illustrious Victims."

Llorente, A Critical History of the Spanish Inquisition, I, 129.

Llorente, A Critical History of the Spanish Inquisition, III, 328. One may add to the foregoing display of interest that regarding the book and author evinced by such early American scholars in the field of Spanish literature as George Ticknor. Ticknor, writing from Paris, spoke of Llorente as "my Friend" and said that he was grateful to Llorente for having given him introductions to distinguished Spanish men of letters and for having directed him to rare and important books in French libraries. George Ticknor's Travels in Spain, ed. G. T. Northrup, Univ. of Toronto (1913), 37 and 50.

Blackwood's Magazine, vol. XX, p. 81. The Blackwood critic says that he took the above passage from Limborch, a writer on the Inquisition, but that Llorente bears testimony to its general accuracy.

Llorente, A Critical History of the Spanish Inquisition (1826), 565.

The events that follow are said to have taken place in 1820 and thus followed the reinstatement of the Inquisition. They were not, therefore, contained in the first edition of Llorente's work. They do appear, however, in the preface to the English edition of 1826 and in the Museum review. Professor Killis Campbell says that a source for "The Pit and the Pendulum" appeared in a newspaper ("Poe's Reading," Studies in English, Univ. of Texas Bulletin, Oct., 1925, 168). He may have reference to this passage which would very likely have been reprinted from Llorente's work in any newspaper of the time. Professor Campbell does not give a direct reference.

Margaret Alterton, Origins of Poe's Critical Theory, Iowa Humanistic Studies (1925), op. cit., 77. In 1839, in "How to Write a Blackwood Story," Poe satirized a terrorizing experience with a pendulum. He may, at that time, have known of the pendulum, and was attempting, by his satire, to show more dependence on plot structure and less on terror of the incident.

Margaret Alterton, Origins of Poe's Critical Theory, Iowa Humanistic Studies (1925), 128.

Margaret Alterton, Origins of Poe's Critical Theory, Iowa Humanistic Studies (1925), cf. chapter entitled: Unity, a Scientific Law in the Physical World.

One might see in the experience of the Bishop of Mentz in the Rhine legend entitled "The Mouse Tower" a possible source for this element. See Knickerbocker (1837), X, 403.

Margaret Alterton, Origins of Poe's Critical Theory, Iowa Humanistic Studies (1925), op. cit., 27.

Margaret Alterton, Origins of Poe's Critical Theory, Iowa Humanistic Studies (1925), 28.

D. L. Clark, "The Sources of Poe's 'The Pit and the Pendulum,"' Modern Language Notes., xliv (1929), 351.

Professor Clark, in view of the Llorente material which this article has, I believe, established as a source, inadequately treats the pendulum incident. He in no way connects it with Inquisitorial torture. Instead, he sees the prototype of the pendulum in the swinging bell, following the account of "The Man in the Bell." It is unquestionably true that the raving of the victim under the bell resembles the raving of the prisoner under the pendulum, but the outline of horrors connected with the pendulum originated not in the Blackwood story, as Professor Clark supposes, but in the Llorente material as it was given either in Llorente's History or in the Museum review.

D. L. Clark, "The Sources of Poe's 'The Pit and the Pendulum,"' Modern Language Notes., xliv (1929), 351.

Professor Clark mentions as a probable source for the Inquisition elements in Poe's story chapter XIV of Edgar Huntly in which Weymouth tells of his ill treatment at the hands of the Spanish monks and of his final rescue by a French doctor (ibid., 352-3). Although this may have been suggestive to Poe, it lacks the description of the Inquisitorial chamber and the list of horrors accorded by the Llorente material and therefore could not have been the sole source. Professor Clark does not treat the Inquisition as basic in Poe's narrative.