CASTILE
How nugatory were these counsels of moderation, under the dominance of such a man as Pacheco, was soon afterwards manifested in a still more scandalous outbreak in Seville, under his direction, in 1625. The assistente or governor, Fernando RamírezFariñas, himself a member of the Council of Castile and a man of high consideration, was excommunicated and thus prevented from concluding a negotiation for a donation to the king of eighty thousand ducats; his alguazil, an honorable man, was wounded and was shut up in prison to keep him out of the hands of the tribunal, which declared that he was wanted on a matter of faith, thus covering him and his family with infamy. The king and Olivares were besieged by Pacheco on the one hand and the Council of Castile on the other. The king, as usual, sided with the Inquisition and the President of the Council tendered his resignation with the suggestion that his office had better be given to Pacheco who, by holding both positions, could cover up these scandals, while the royal jurisdiction could scarce be reduced to greater degradation. It is no wonder that Olivares, in a letter to the president, declared himself to be the most unfortunate of men, for he could satisfy nobody; his best course would be to ask the king to let him abandon the management of affairs; when the kingdom was in such straits that he could scarce take time to breathe in devising remedies, his efforts were wasted in competencias and he concluded with the despairing declaration that he lost his senses in thinking over it without knowing what to say.[1177]
The statesmen who were guiding the destinies of Spain in those perilous times might well groan under the superfluous burden of deciding these contests over trifles so ferociously waged, but they were not to be spared. Arce y Reynoso was not so violent as Pacheco but he was equally obstinate and was determined to emancipate the Inquisition wholly by relieving it from royal supervision. There was an instructive case at Cuenca, in 1645, where the corregidor, Don Alonso Muñoz de Castilblanque sent a band of assassins to murder a woman with whom he had illicit relations, together with a priest named Jacinto. The crime created great excitement, but Muñoz was a contador, or accountant of the tribunal, and as such a titular official. He presented himself before the inquisitors who assumed his case and promptly excommunicated the judge who attempted to prosecute him. Philip had the matter investigated and was told that both the woman and the priest had been killed. He sent to the Suprema a decree ordering the removal of the excommunication and the delivery of the criminal to the Council of Castile, to be tried bythe judge which it had appointed, for the inquisitors could not properly punish so atrocious a crime without incurring irregularity. This was clear and peremptory enough, but, in place of obeying it, Arce y Reynoso replied, May 4, 1645, that this would be a great and unheard of violation of the rights of the Holy Office. The woman was not dead but was in Valencia, where the tribunal was busily collecting evidence; to hand Muñoz over to the secular judges for trial and execution would incur the same irregularity as sentencing him; the case would be tried by the Suprema, which had a wide range of suitable penalties that did not infer irregularity; meanwhile Muñoz would be safely guarded and he trusted that the king would not set so pernicious an example.
When Philip rejected this appeal and repeated his order, a learned and elaborate argument was prepared to show that he had no power to interfere. It took the ground, to which we have already referred, that the temporal jurisdiction of the Inquisition over its officials was a grant from the papacy; it was exclusive and unlimited and no secular ruler could deprive the Holy Office of it; the pope had power to make this grant and the king had none to remove this or any other case from its cognizance, for he was not supreme over the ecclesiastical and papal jurisdiction—the truth being that the papal commissions to the inquisitor-general conferred power to remove and punish subordinates but said nothing as to its being exclusive, and equally fallacious was the citation of three authorities whose utterances had no bearing on the question at issue.[1178]This audacious reliance on the ignorance of Philip and his secular advisers was successful. Philip made one or two efforts more, but Arce y Reynoso held good. A memorial, in 1648, on the general subject, from a member of the Council of Castile, tells the king that his repeated commands in the case of Muñoz had been disobeyed and that, although the criminal had so long been in the hands of the inquisitors, he had not yet been sentenced, which he held to be clear proof that their aim was to defend their officials from the royal justice and not to punish them.[1179]
CASTILE
How liberal was the construction placed on this term of titular official was illustrated when, in 1622, at Toledo, the corregidor arrested the butcher of the tribunal for intolerable frauds on the public. The inquisitor demanded the prisoner and the papers, published the corregidor in all the churches as excommunicate, seized the alguazil and apparitor who had made the arrest, cast them into the secret prison, tried them as if for heresy, shaved their heads and beards and banished them and refused to their families any evidence that would preserve their posterity from infamy. There was danger of a rising in Toledo against the Inquisition, but it was averted; the Council of Castile protested and a junta was held which adopted measures to prevent a repetition of such outrages but, as usual, no attention was paid to them.[1180]
It would be superfluous to multiply examples of the perennial struggle which was distracting the energies of the government and weakening the respect for law in every quarter of Spain. Each tribunal contributed its share, and there was an unending stream of cases pouring into Madrid for settlement. Each side blamed the other for this anomalous condition. In 1632, the Suprema, in defending the tribunal of Valencia for its protection of criminal familiars, bitterly complained that the object of the Concordias was the relief of the tribunals, the punishment of offenders, the quick despatch of cases, and the diminished oppression of pleaders, but that this had been converted into perpetual strife, regardless of forms and rules of procedure.[1181]For this it was itself primarily to blame, for though there were doubtless faults on both sides, the cases recorded in the reports and the arguments of the Inquisition show that it was the chief offender. Its aggressive powers were too much greater than those of its adversaries, and its methods were too sharp, for the secular authorities often to risk the consequences of being in the wrong.
THE SPIRITUAL COURTS
There was another direction in which the Holy Office sought to interfere with the administration of justice. So complete is the independence of secular authority claimed by the Church for those in holy orders, that a licence from a bishop is held to be necessary before a cleric can obey a summons to appear as a witnessin a lay court, even in civil cases.[1182]The Inquisition included this among the exemptions of all connected with it, whether lay or clerical, and even extended it to familiars. The privilege seems generally to have been conceded, as respects the salaried officials but, as applied to familiars, it was too grotesque not to excite opposition. The Concordia of 1568, as we have seen, provided that familiars should testify before secular judges without requiring licence from inquisitors and that the latter should not prohibit them from so doing, which infers that it was an abuse requiring correction and also that officials were conceded to enjoy the exemption. The power to summon a witness necessarily includes that of coercing him to testify, and this was exercised by imprisoning recalcitrants, which came to be regarded as an infraction of privilege. In 1649, in the case of Claudio Bolano, a familiar imprisoned for refusing to give evidence, the tribunal of Valencia formed a competencia, pending which he was released under bail to both jurisdictions. The question was of difficult solution and the competencia dragged on for ten years without settlement. Then, in 1659, the same thing occurred and another competencia was formed, in which the most that the Inquisition would concede was that, when the evidence was indispensable, a notary should be sent to the familiar’s house to take it in secret, basing this upon the danger to which witnesses were exposed in the violent factions of the time.[1183]The question, however, was settled, in 1699, in the case of Felipe Bru. At Játiva, on August 14, 1698, Don Luis Salzedo, Lord of Pamis, was shot and killed when standing at a window of his house. Don Vicente Monserrat, judge of the Audiencia of Valencia, found Bru, who was a familiar, a contumacious witness. He was first given the town as a prison, then his house, and finally was confined in chains. He appealed to the tribunal, which ordered his release within three days, under pain of excommunication and five hundred ducats. A competencia was formed which, in November, 1699, was decided in favor of the royal jurisdiction. It was probably in consequence of this discussion that, on July 15th, a royal decree was issued compelling familiars to give evidence in secular courts. Even this did not abate the pretensions of the Inquisition for when, in 1702, Joseph Pérez of Montesa, a familiar, was ordered, under penalty of a thousand ducats, not to leave that town because adeposition was wanted from him, he appealed to the tribunal of Valencia which, with the usual threats, commanded the revocation of the order. On this being refused, Pérez went to Valencia and had himself incarcerated in the secret prison, where he was inaccessible. The Audiencia pursued the matter, there was considerable correspondence and preparations for a competencia, but finally the affair was settled by sending Pérez to the house of the regent of the Audiencia, where he made his deposition. To the end, however, the tribunal maintained the position that, if any constraint was used, it would resist and protect the familiar unless a competencia decided to the contrary.[1184]
It was not the secular courts alone that had these perpetual conflicts with the Inquisition. Like Ishmael, its hand was against every man and every man’s hand was against it—but, in fact, this was to a great extent the case between all the different jurisdictions among which the various classes of society were parcelled out by their several privileges and exemptions. Next to the royal courts ranked the spiritual courts in the number and complexity of debatable questions with the Inquisition. With these there were two sources of contention, for they not only claimed by prescriptive right exclusive jurisdiction in all temporal matters over all who wore the tonsure, but there was a broad field for discussion in the somewhat hazy delimitation of spiritual offences justiciable by one or the other. This latter subject will engage our attention hereafter; at present we are concerned only with the questions arising from the personnel of the Holy Office. Notoriously lax as were the episcopal courts with offenders of the cloth, the Inquisition had the reputation of still greater indulgence with those who were under its protection; clerics who were also officials therefore preferred its tribunals, giving rise to frequent quarrels in which the inquisitors treated their clerical opponents as remorselessly as they did the secular officials and judges. The episcopal Ordinaries, provisors and vicars-general contended that they had, except in cases of faith, exclusive jurisdiction over all clerics; that the temporal jurisdiction of the Inquisition was a royal grant which could not supersede the canon law and that the papal commissions only gave faculties for punishing official malfeasance. To this unanswerable argument the inquisitorspaid little heed and the prelates were worse off than the judges for these at least had the Councils of Castile or Aragon to struggle for them, but the Councils admitted that they had no standing in ecclesiastical quarrels. The natural recourse of the prelates for protection was to Rome, but this was a subject of intense jealousy, traditional in the Spanish monarchy, and Philip III, in a cédula of January 21, 1611, addressed to all the prelates of his dominions, told them that they must appeal only to the Suprema and forbade them to carry any case to the Holy See.[1185]
THE SPIRITUAL COURTS
There could thus be no competencia; the conflicts between the two jurisdictions were one-sided and were conducted by the tribunals with the same overbearing arrogance as that displayed towards secular magistrates. The first summons on the provisor or vicar-general inhibited him, under pain of excommunication and a heavy fine, from further action, ordering him, within twenty-four hours, to remit the case to the Inquisition and to discharge the prisoner under bail to present himself before the tribunal, while the notary was required to surrender all the papers. If this was not obeyed, it was followed by another, commanding obedience within six hours, in default of which all beneficed priests were required, under similar penalties, to publish the provisor and notary as excommunicates and to place their names on the lists as such. A circular letter was also addressed to all priests, chaplains and sacristans of the district, to admonish all persons, within six hours and under pain of excommunication, to avoid the provisor and notary, to make no pleadings before them, to hold no communication with them and not to furnish them with bread or wine, fish or flesh, while a public edict to the same effect was issued to all the people. In case of continued obduracy, these measures were promptly followed by an edict to all the clergy, ordering them to anathematize the provisor and notary with tolling bells and extinguished candles, proclaiming them accursed of God and his saints—“accursed be the bread that they eat and the bed on which they sleep and the beasts on which they ride, and may their souls perish in hell like the candles in the water: let them be comprehended in the sentence of Sodom and Gomorrha and of Dathan and Abiram, whom the earth swallowed for disobedience, and may all the curses of PsalmDeus laudem meam(Ps.CVIII, afearful commination) light on them!” If this did not suffice within twenty-four hours, an interdict followed, tolling bells and performing divine service in low tone with locked doors, until otherwise ordered. In case this failed, the last step was acessatio a divinis, or cessation of church services in the city where the offenders lived, in order to coerce them with popular clamor.[1186]It was difficult for either lay or clerical officials to contend with opponents who wielded such weapons as these.
The irresponsible exercise of such powers inevitably led to their abuse. In the Concordia of 1568 it is highly suggestive to find a clause forbidding inquisitors to issue, as they have been accustomed, to familiars and officials, general inhibitions protecting them from the ecclesiastical courts; such inhibitions are to be special and issued only in each case as it may occur. Equally significant is another which says that in no case belonging by law to the provisor shall the inquisitor intervene against his will.[1187]The strained relations resulting between the ecclesiastical body and the Holy Office are alluded to in the project of reform, presented to the Suprema in 1623, which says that the clerical commissioners and their notaries bring about many conflicts with the ecclesiastical judges and, as there are no Concordias, the inquisitors are wont to arrogate to themselves greater jurisdiction than belongs to them, which causes much murmuring and resentment of the prelates and clergy. The writer piously wishes that this could be avoided, but he evidently has no remedy to propose.[1188]
A conflict caused by one of these local notaries in 1609 amply justified the murmurs of the prelates. The priest of Cabra, who occupied the almost nominal position of local notary, was a notorious incestuous concubinarian, who had not for eight years celebrated mass or recited prayers. The provisor of Córdova commenced a prosecution and threw him into the episcopal gaol, when he claimed the fuero of the Inquisition. The provisor had been on friendly terms with the three inquisitors and sought an amicable settlement of the matter when, by a trick, they obtained possession of the papers and inhibited him from further proceedings. He appealed to the Suprema and was excommunicated.Four times the Suprema ordered the inquisitors to abandon the case and remove the censure, but they persistently disobeyed. All the officials of the episcopal court were ordered to hold no communication with him, which threw the whole business of the diocese into confusion, for the bishop was absent and the provisor was his representative. The culprit escaped from the episcopal gaol and was harbored by the tribunal. Passion was becoming acute; a band of familiars and officials broke into the episcopal palace and endeavored to carry off the provisor, but he was rescued by the canons in a dilapidated condition and took to his bed. Then the inquisitors pronounced the magic word—a matter of faith—which brought to their aid the corregidor and municipal authorities, who came with a troop of soldiers and carried him off on his bed, to the sound of drums and trumpets. He was taken to the Inquisition and confined for two months in a small cell, tried without opportunity for defence and sentenced to forfeit his office of provisor, to four years of banishment and other penalties, and copies of the sentence were circulated throughout the city. The bishop had sought to come to his rescue by excommunicating the inquisitors; they disregarded the censures, threatened to prosecute him if he did not remove them and did prosecute some of the canons as conspiring against the Inquisition, because they had been elected by the chapter to aid the bishop in defending the provisor.[1189]
THE SPIRITUAL COURTS
Such a sentence against a church dignitary of high rank required confirmation by the Suprema, which must have been given, for appeal was made to Philip III. He rendered some satisfaction by dismissing and banishing all secular officials who had been concerned in the arrest and wounding of the provisor, but the inquisitors, whose mere tools they had been, were left undisturbed.[1190]Yet it was impossible that an affair which had aroused the attention of all Spain should pass without an attempt to prevent the recurrence of such scandals. There had been a threat, and possibly more than a threat, to appeal to Rome in defence of the bishop and clergy of Córdova, which led to the cédula of January 21, 1611, alluded to above, restricting their recourse to the Suprema. In urging this the Suprema, in a consulta of November 15, 1610, admitted that these troubles arosefrom the aggressions of the tribunals and their unnecessary multiplication of nominal officials; it had recently issued threecartas acordadason the subject and had written to all the bishops asking reports of such excesses so as to remedy them. Philip in reply authorized the Suprema to draft such a cédula as it desired but ordered it to be so framed as not to encourage the inquisitors, who were every day intervening in matters beyond their competence for the purpose of extending their jurisdiction; it was this that gave rise to these troubles, nor would they cease till the cause was removed.[1191]
Thus it was admitted on all hands that the fault lay with the tribunals, yet the wrong committed by that of Córdova remained unredressed and unpunished. Philip permitted himself, in spite of his better judgement, to be persuaded to cut off all recourse to the court of last resort in Rome, and some nominal relief must be offered to the oppressed churches and prelates. The memorial from Córdova had concluded with a prayer for some law to prevent these discords and to maintain the episcopal jurisdiction over the clergy, as the king had promised in a letter transmitted through the Council of Castile. The promise was kept after a fashion, though not until after a delay which shows how prolonged was the resistance encountered. In a carta acordada of November 28, 1612, the tribunals were informed that in order that the ministers of the Inquisition may not sin through confidence of impunity, and to prevent the conflicts which disturb the peace, the Suprema has resolved that in the cases of unsalaried clerical officials, the episcopal ordinaries shall have exclusive jurisdiction over offences relating to clerical duties and offices, to simony and spiritual matters, while inquisitors shall have cumulative jurisdiction with the ordinaries, depending on priority of action, in public and scandalous offences, such as incontinence, usury, gambling and the like.[1192]This remained in force nominally at least, until the last, but the allusion to the perpetual troubles arising from this source, in the project presented to the Suprema in 1623, shows how futile it was in curbing the aggressions of the tribunals.
Throughout Peninsular Spain the episcopal jurisdiction was thus left defenceless to the encroachments of the Inquisition, but the Church of Majorca was fortunate in obtaining the protection of Rome, leading to a series of conflicts, waged on less unequal terms, which are worth consideration as revealing a peculiar phase in these affairs. There was a long-standing quarrel between the cathedral canons and the Inquisition. In 1600, one of the former, Pere Enseñat, assisted in the escape of a man who had wounded a familiar, whereupon the inquisitor, Francisco de Esquinel, threw him in prison and made him give bail in three hundred ducats. In 1605, another canon, Francisco Sanceloni, had a verbal altercation with Bernardo Luis Cotoner, advocate of prisoners, for which Esquinel imprisoned him, tried him and condemned him in the costs, with his past incarceration as a punishment. The indignant canons addressed a strong remonstrance to the Suprema. They had an old privilege, confirmed by the Council of Trent (Sess.XXV, De Reform. cap. 6) that they could be arrested only by the Ordinary sitting in judgement with two of their number; in matters of faith they admitted subjection to the Holy Office, but they claimed exemption in civil and criminal cases. The number of familiars and officials, and their petulance arising from the protection of the tribunal, rendered it impossible to be always incurring the expense and dangers of appeals to Rome for the preservation of their privileges. This was ineffective and, in the course of another outbreak in 1630, there was a correspondence between the Congregation of the Roman Inquisition and the nuncio at Madrid respecting an appeal from the canons. In this the nuncio reported that he had applied to Inquisitor-general Zapata, who promised to instruct the inquisitor not to molest the canons.[1193]
THE SPIRITUAL COURTS
If he did so, he was disobeyed as usual and, in 1636, a canon named Domenge was involved in a civil suit before the tribunal, resulting in a judgement against him of five thousand reales, the execution of which he resisted by force. This brought on him a prosecution, in spite of protests interjected by the bishop and chapter, which was carried on appeal to the Suprema, where he was condemned in seven hundred reales which he paid. Meanwhile, notwithstanding the cédula of 1611, the bishop and chapter had applied to Rome for a brief declaring that the canons weresubject to the Inquisition only in matters of faith. The question was exhaustively discussed, in the Congregation of the Holy Office, with Luis de los Infantes, the Roman agent of the Inquisition. The conclusion reached was that the Majorca tribunal had no jurisdiction over the canons save in matters of faith and this was duly embodied in the briefCum sicut dilecti, March 31, 1642, which is preserved in the Bullarium. It names the bishop and dean or treasurer as executors, with power to inflict censures and to invoke if necessary the aid of the secular arm. It was received in Majorca with general rejoicing; it was printed and circulated and a syndicate was formed by the clergy to obtain, without regard to expense, a similar one for the whole ecclesiastical body, an effort which was successful in the following September.
The brief was duly served on the inquisitor, who refused to recognize it as not having been transmitted through the Suprema; besides he asserted that it was surreptitious and obreptitious as having been granted without a hearing of the other side and moreover it was in derogation of the bullSi de protegendis. In a consulta of December 11th, the Suprema represented energetically to Philip IV the manner in which his predecessors had compelled the surrender of papal letters adverse to the Inquisition; it asked him to have the present one suppressed and to instruct the prelates that all cases of difference must be referred to it, that no recourse be had to Rome, under the penalties decreed by Ferdinand, that the Viceroy of Majorca be required to compel the chapter to desist and that the ambassador to Rome be instructed to obtain the revocation of the obnoxious letters.
Unluckily for the Suprema the times were unpropitious. Majorca was too near to rebellious Catalonia for the imperious methods of the Holy Office to be judicious. Philip replied that the revival of Ferdinand’s laws would cause trouble and the remedy sought must be practicable. The inquisitor of Majorca had been guilty of gross excesses and must be ordered to exercise moderation, and he suggested a junta of members of the Suprema and Council of Aragon to devise a Concordia. Whether such compromise was reached does not appear; if it was, subsequent events show that it was not observed by either side and no reference to it occurs. The papal briefs were maintained and ten years later, after the collapse of the Catalan rebellion, instructions of April 23, 1652, to an ambassador departing for Rome,order him to labor for their revocation; their evil example was contagious; the Knights of St. John in Majorca were seeking to obtain a similar favor through the Maltese ambassador, which must be resisted in every way, for it would be followed by all the other Orders.[1194]
The Suprema continued to treat the papal briefs as surreptitious and, in 1658, Arce y Reynoso enjoyed a momentary triumph in a contest by summoning the vicar-general to Madrid and forcing him to come.[1195]Under the feebler government of the queen-regent, his successor Nithard was not so fortunate, in a fierce quarrel which involved the whole island in confusion and embroiled the rival departments of the government. May 9, 1667, on a feast-day, in the church of San Francisco, Don Jorje Dameto struck his son-in-law, Don Joseph Vallejo, with a crutch, causing effusion of blood and thus polluting the church. Both gentlemen were familiars. The inquisitor, before noon-day, ordered the arrest of both; in the afternoon Bishop Manjarre cited Dameto to appear for sacrilege and violation of the church. The rival jurisdictions locked horns and proceeded to extremities. The viceroy and Audiencia, with the bulk of the community, sided with the bishop, but disturbances were commencing and they repeatedly urged postponement of action until the government could be heard from, but the inquisitor refused. The bishop published him as excommunicate, anathematized him and caused the psalm of malediction to be repeatedly sung against him, but the inquisitor continued to celebrate mass, exhibited himself conspicuously in public, forbade the bishop entrance into his own church and threatened to suspend his sacerdotal functions. On August 29th the bishop assembled a synod where arrangements were made to send an envoy to Rome to prosecute the case, with a printed statement of all the proceedings, a copy of which was furnished to the Council of Aragon.
THE SPIRITUAL COURTS
From Madrid, Nithard imperiously summoned the bishop to appear before him and plead his case. Under the canon law, the Inquisition had no jurisdiction over bishops, without a special delegation of papal faculties, and Manjarre was justified in declaring the summons null and void. Although, as an ecclesiastical question, the Council of Aragon had no direct competence, stillas the peace of Majorca was seriously threatened and the viceroy was involved, it took a hand in the matter and thus were presented the gravest questions with regard to the relations of the Inquisition with the episcopate, with the Holy See, and with the secular authorities.
Secure in the blind obedience of the queen, Nithard adopted the most aggressive attitude, and the queen submissively did whatever he required, for he assured her that the case was the most serious that had arisen since the foundation of the Inquisition and that, on its rightful decision, depended the preservation or extinction, not alone of the Majorca tribunal, but of all those under the crown of Aragon. To emphasize this he summoned the bishop to appear before him, personally or by procurator, within a term designated, in default of which he would be prosecutedin contumacia. To this the queen, in October, added her commands to the Council of Aragon; as the preservation of the Catholic faith required the maintenance of the authority of the Inquisition, the Council was ordered to write to the bishop to comply with the summons, and to the viceroy to assist the tribunal if necessary; the bishop must not appeal to Rome and if he had done so the letters must be intercepted and placed in her hands.
The Council of Aragon did not obey. It held the matter until January 21, 1668, when it presented a consulta warning the queen of the consequences of her action and pointing out that the pope was the sole judge of bishops in important cases, as were provincial synods in trivial matters. Nithard, however, was superior to the Council of Trent, and the Suprema commenced a criminal prosecution of Bishop Manjarre, while, on February 5th, an answer was prepared for the Council of Aragon, couched in a tone of bitterness and scarcely veiled contempt, which showed how fierce were the passions at work. The queen was assured that her action was in accordance with all previous royal provisions and she was asked to order the Council of Aragon to obey and not to interfere hereafter with ecclesiastical controversies. Before this missive was delivered, however, news came from Majorca that the culprit Dameto had withdrawn his appeal to the tribunal and had applied for absolution to the bishop, who considered the whole matter as settled. This was a staggering blow from which it took Nithard a month to recover, but finally he sent the consulta of February 5th with a postscript of March 12th, arguing that a subject cannot impair his judge’s jurisdictionby accepting another and consequently that the situation was unaltered.
The queen of course adopted this view and repeated her orders, but again the Council disobeyed her and presented, March 18th, a consulta adjuring her in solemn terms to reflect calmly, for she was making the inquisitor-general a judge of all the bishops in her dominions, not only as to conflicts of jurisdiction but also as to criminal accusations, without his holding faculties from the pope, while, at the same time, she was forbidding appeals to the Holy See which was the only proper judge. She was warned that it was impossible to exaggerate the importance of the questions at issue and she was implored, before making so momentous a decision, to consult the Councils of Castile, Italy and the Indies, for the interests of the whole monarchy were involved as well as the supreme power of the pope. To this her reply was merely a repetition of her former orders and a demand for a duplicate of the letters of the Council to the Viceroy. For the third time it disobeyed her and sent none and there are intimations that it was engaged in arousing the whole Spanish episcopate to a sense of the impending danger.
Then the affair suddenly assumed another phase. On March 7th the queen had written to her ambassador in Rome to procure the abstention of the pope from the matter, but, on that very day, the Congregation of the Inquisition, with the approval of the pope, had pronounced invalid the censures fulminated by the inquisitor. It was late in May before this was communicated to the queen by the nuncio, who said that the pope had recognized the gravity of the assault by an inquisitor on the episcopal dignity and the magnitude of the ensuing scandal, and had caused the whole subject to be carefully considered by the Congregation with the above result. The pope had felt deeply, not only the indignity offered to the episcopal office, but also that the fiscal of the Inquisition had applied to the queen to summon the bishop before it, solely on the ground of his having appealed to the Holy See. In the name of the pope the nuncio therefore asked the queen to order inquisitors not to proceed against bishops and to reject the application of the fiscal.
THE SPIRITUAL COURTS
Even this did not shake the determination of Nithard to reduce the episcopate to subjection. A long and argumentative consulta was presented to the queen, proving that the papal decision was surreptitious and therefore invalid, and that anyhow the decreesof the Roman Inquisition had no currency in Spain. The old prohibitions of appeals to Rome were invoked and the queen was told that one of the most precious jewels of the Spanish crown was at stake, for, unless the regalías were preserved, the Inquisition must disappear, delinquents would be unpunished, religion would suffer and, with the loss of its unity, there would no longer be obedience to the throne. The queen was therefore urged to stand firm; the prosecution of the bishop must not be suspended and the Council of Aragon must be forced to obey the royal commands.
Nithard was ready to risk an open breach with the Holy See in his audacious ambition to render the Inquisition supreme in the Spanish Church. How far the queen would have suffered herself to be carried in the execution of his plans cannot be told, as the documents fail us here. His career, however, was drawing to a close. In February, 1669, he was driven from Spain amid universal execration, yet the prosecution of Bishop Manjarre was not abandoned, for the Inquisition was not accustomed openly to admit defeat. It dragged until his death, December 26, 1670, when it was quietly dropped.[1196]
Practically the intervention of Rome gave the victory to the Mallorquins, of which they took advantage. In 1671 there arose another quarrel over a fine incurred by a canon who was also a consultor of the tribunal. Both sides exchanged excommunications and Inquisitor-general Valladares, profiting by his predecessor’s experience, showed moderation. On the plea that it was a matter of government rather than of jurisdiction, the Suprema ordered the tribunal to abandon the case and remove the censures imposed on the canons, but the latter were not content with this and procured from the Roman Holy Office a decree declaring invalid the censures of the inquisitors and valid those of the executors of the brief. The Council of Aragon communicated this to the queen who submissively signed a letter, January 25, 1672, to the chapter, expressing her confidence that in its use they would pay fitting attention to the peace and advantage of the Church.[1197]
The Inquisition was not accustomed to defeat and it chafed under this, as was shown when, in 1690, a quarrel arose becausea priest of Minorca, named Juan Bruells, used insulting words to the commissioner, Rafael Pons. For this he was prosecuted and the case threw all the islands into confusion. The viceroy, the Audiencia and the clergy all united against the Inquisition. The Ordinary of Minorca, as executor of the brief of 1642, forcibly released Bruells, forbade the inquisitor to proceed and, on his disobeying, excommunicated him. About this time the Mallorquin tribunal had claims to consideration arising from its vigorous proceedings against Judaizers and the large resultant confiscations. The Suprema espoused its cause with the usual energy and, in repeated consultas to Carlos III, denounced the papal briefs as surreptitious and invalid, full of defects and nullities. The feeble king issued repeated commands for the prosecution of Bruells and the surrender of the briefs, but no one paid attention to them. The Mallorquin clergy procured from the Congregation of the Inquisition a decree validating the censures pronounced by the Ordinary and annulling those of the inquisitor; the pope confirmed this but subsequently suspended it at the earnest solicitation of the Spanish ambassador, at the same time ordering his nuncio to make the king understand that the Congregation had supreme power to decide all questions of jurisdiction. The affair did not result to the satisfaction of the Inquisition for the last we hear of it is a bitter complaint by the Suprema, March 11, 1693, of the contumacious Mallorquins and the miserable condition to which they had reduced the Inquisition. In Minorca, the clergy and their dependents were so hostile that Pons could not find a church in which to celebrate mass, while the officials were shunned as excommunicated heretics.[1198]
MILITARY ORDERS
Another jurisdiction with which there were occasional quarrels was that of the army, for soldiers were exempt from the secular courts. In such competencias settlements were made by a junta of two members each of the Suprema and the Council of War, with final reference to the king in case of disagreement. I have happened to meet with but few cases of this and they seem never to have attained the importance of those with the secular and ecclesiastical courts. One occurred in 1629, arising from disputes with the garrison that had occupied the Aljafería since the troubles of 1591. A somewhat curious case was that of Don FernandoAntonio Herrera Calderon, of Santander, who was alguazil and familiar and who resigned, in 1641, from his military company, although warned that, by so doing during hostilities, he would be tried by the Council of War. It naturally claimed him and the Suprema endeavored to protect him.[1199]It would seem that, towards the end of the eighteenth century, the exemption of the military was causing special troubles, for a royal cédula of February 9, 1793, declares that, to put an end to them, in future the military judges shall have exclusive cognizance of all cases, civil and criminal, in which soldiers are defendants, except inheritances, and that no tribunal or judge of any kind shall form a competencia concerning them under any pretext.[1200]
There was yet another independent jurisdiction with which the Inquisition occasionally came into collision. In Spain the Military Orders formed so important a body that, among the State Councils, there was one of Orders, which had exclusive jurisdiction over their members. It will be recalled that one of Ferdinand’s most efficient measures to ensure the peace of the kingdom was to obtain the perpetual administration of those of Santiago, Calatrava and Alcántara, while the queen assumed that of Montesa. Yet he was not disposed to favor their claims of exemption in temporal matters from the jurisdiction of the Inquisition. A letter of September 15, 1515, to the tribunal of Jaen, says that certain confiscations involve property held by knights of the three Orders who may claim exemption and refuse to plead before the judge of confiscations; if so they are not to be listened to and, if necessary, are to be prosecuted with the full rigor of the law.[1201]
In civil and criminal matters the members of the Orders asserted exemption from the jurisdiction of the Inquisition, leading to disputes more or less acrimonious. In 1609, at Córdova, Don Diego de Argoté, a Knight of Santiago, with levelled pistol, prevented the arrest of one of his servants by officials of the tribunal. A competencia resulted which, when carried up to Philip III, was decided by him in favor of the Council of Orders. To this the Suprema replied in a consulta, fortelling the entire destruction of the Inquisition in case the decision was allowed to stand and so worked on Philip that he reversed his decree andallowed the Suprema to prosecute the culprit.[1202]The complication caused by these class privileges is illustrated in the case alluded to above, occurring in 1648, at Cuenca, of Muñoz de Castilblanque for the murder of the priest Jacinto. He was a Knight of Calatrava which led to an additional competencia, when the junta could not agree and the king had to decide.[1203]
In their contests with the Orders, the tribunals were apt to exhibit the same unscrupulous spirit as in those with other contestants. In Majorca Doctor Ramon Sureda, canon, chancellor and judge of competencias, was likewise conservator of the Military Orders. In 1657 he complained that, in conflicts of jurisdiction, the inquisitor would not form competencias with him in order that the papers might take the regular course of transmission for settlement by the Suprema and Council of Orders. The king and queen therefore, as administrators of the Orders, instructed him in such case to send to the inquisitor three successive messages and report them and their replies to the Council; if, in spite of this, the tribunal continued to prosecute the case, he was to proceed against the inquisitor and the viceroy was to render him all proper support. The inquisitor ingeniously evaded this in the case of Gaspar Puygdorfilio, a Knight of Santiago, in 1661, by refusing to receive any messages, saying that he received them only from the viceroy. Sureda’s report of this was left unnoticed and the inquisitor adopted the same device, in 1662, in the case of Francisco de Veri, a Knight of Montesa, prosecuted for wounding a familiar who had drawn a sword upon him. He refused to receive messages and proceeded to sequestrate Veri’s property, including his crops and cattle. To save them from destruction the viceroy interposed and the Council of Orders appealed to the queen, as administrator of the Order, to take some action that should enable such questions to be settled peaceably, but apparently without result.[1204]
MILITARY ORDERS
As though the exempted classes were not numerous and troublesome enough, there was a project, in 1574, of adding another which, if carried into effect, would have altered the destiny of Spain by subjecting it eventually to the Inquisition and reducing the nominal monarch to the position of aroi fainéantunder a Mayor of the Palace. It is a most impressive illustration of the spirit of the age that such a project should have been formulated, that it received enthusiastic support and that a sovereign so jealous of his prerogative as Philip II should have even allowed it to be debated, much less have let it assume a menacing shape and have given it serious consideration. A Military Order was to be established under the name ofSanta María de la Espada Blanca, with a white sword as a symbol, like the red sword of Santiago. At its head was to be the inquisitor-general, to whom all members were to swear allegiance and whose orders in peace and war all were to obey. To him likewise they were to assign their property, receiving back at his hands what was necessary for their support, and after death their widows were to be pensioned by him. They were to be exempt from all jurisdiction save his, which was to be delegated to priors appointed in all the provinces. The ostensible object was the defence of the faith and of Spain, for which they were at any time liable to be called to the field, or to serve in garrison, under the orders of the inquisitor-general. Thus the Inquisition was to be furnished with an organized force, sworn to blind obedience and released from all other obligations. The only requisite for membership waslimpieza, or purity of blood, free from all taint of Judaic or Moorish contamination, or descent from those who had been sentenced for heresy. At this period limpieza was becoming a popular mania; the cost of proving it through four generations was considerable, and there was strong temptation in the promise that the expenses of all applicants would be defrayed from the common fund.
The project may seem to us too wild to merit a thought, but it responded so perfectly to the temper of the time that it was enthusiastically adopted by the provinces of Castile, Leon, Biscay, Navarre, Aragon, Valencia, Catalonia, Asturias and Galicia. Procurators from these provinces submitted it to Philip for his approval and were supported by representatives of forty-eight noble houses and of the archiepiscopal sees of Toledo, Santiago, Seville, Saragossa, Valencia, Tarragona and Granada. It was debated earnestly and at much length, but the argument of Pedro Vinegas de Córdova decided its fate. He pointed out the troubles which were already arising on the subject of limpieza, causing jealousies, hatreds and contentions, to be increased enormously if the population was thus to be divided into two classes; also thefact that the royal courts would have left to their jurisdiction only the New Christians, while the Old Christians would have their special judges and, if the comparatively few existing familiars caused such all-pervading troubles, what the effect would be of increasing without limit the number of the exempt. On the one hand the ambitious and able men among the New Christians, being thus cast out, would foment disaffection and disturbance; on the other, if the old Military Orders had been a source of danger to the monarchy, what would be the effect of creating a new one, united and vastly more numerous and subject as vassals to an inquisitor-general, whose power was already so great, and who would control the property and have jurisdiction over all members, while in case of rebellion the frontiers and strongholds would be in his hands? This reasoning was unanswerable; Philip ordered all papers connected with the project to be surrendered; he imposed perpetual silence on its advocates and wrote to the ecclesiastical and secular bodies to abandon it, for justice and protection would never be lacking.[1205]
We shall probably do no injustice to the Inquisition in attributing to the profits accruing from the exercise of its temporal jurisdiction the ruthless vigor with which the tribunals sought to vindicate and extend it. The remarks of the Visitor Cervantes with regard to Barcelona, in 1561 (p. 468), indicate how lucrative it could be made and how welcome was the addition of fees and fines to the somewhat meagre salaries of the officials. This explains the reckless violence which became habitual in the conduct of quarrels, because this not only was an assurance to the parties concerned as to the vigor with which they were defended, but it also served to discourage the secular authorities from resisting encroachments. It also explains the multiplication of the unsalaried officials such as familiars, commissioners and their notaries, assessors, deputies etc., which no laws or Concordias or regulations could restrain, for each one was a possible source of profit to the tribunal and a probable cause of disturbance in his vicinage, through the comfortable assurance of immunity from the law.