RESPONSIBILITY
In Aragon, the introduction of the Inquisition in the thirteenth century rendered confiscation for heresy a matter of course. In Castile a more tolerant spirit, as expressed in the laws of Alfonso X, forbade it, so long as there were Catholic heirs or kindred; if there were none, the king inherited, subject to the right of the Church, if the culprit were a cleric, to claim it within a year.[917]This code however was not confirmed until 1348, by which time scruple had diminished, for Alfonso XI, followed by Henry III, confiscated to the royal treasury one-half of the possessions ofthe convicted heretic.[918]It was reserved for Ferdinand and Isabella tacitly to accept the canon law in all its rigor, while diverting to the royal treasury all the proceeds. A contemporary asserts that they divided it into thirds—one for the war with the Moors, one for the support of the Inquisition and the third for pious uses,[919]but there is no trace of such allotment and we shall see that the crown made such use as it pleased of its acquisitions.
Strictly speaking, the Inquisition did not confiscate but merely pronounced the culprit guilty of that which implied confiscation, and it seems to have felt some hesitation as to assuming the responsibility. In the earliest trials that have reached us, there is no settled formula, either in the demand of the fiscal for punishment or in the sentences, confiscation being sometimes expressed and sometimes inferred and left for the alcalde to pronounce.[920]The Instructions of 1484 are silent as to confiscation in cases of the living but, in treating of prosecution of the dead, they order the heirs to be heard, so that the property may be confiscated and applied to the fisc of the sovereigns, and it is noteworthy that in sentences on the dead, immediately after this, the Instructions are referred to as though to shield the inquisitor from responsibility.[921]
There evidently was popular repugnance to this spoliation and no one wished to be responsible for it. Ferdinand, in a proclamation of October 29, 1485, declared that the confiscations were made by order of the pope, in discharge of his conscience and by virtue of his obedience to holy Mother Church.[922]It was probably owing to his instructions that the tribunals finally assumed the responsibility, as is seen in a sentence of July 8, 1491, in Saragossa, on the deceased Juan de la Caballería, where the king is ordered, in virtue of holy obedience, to take the property and hold it as his own.[923]Apparently all did not acquiesce promptly for we findhim, in 1510, ordering the inquisitor of Majorca, when pronouncing any one to be a heretic, to add at the end of the sentence that he declares the property confiscated and applied to the royal fisc and orders the receiver to take it, when the receiver is to do so in virtue of the sentence.[924]In accordance with this the official formula adopted bore that the tribunal found the culprit guilty of heresy and as such to have incurred excommunication and the confiscation and loss of all his property, which it applied to the royal treasury and to the receiver in the name of the king, from the time when he commenced to commit the crime of heresy. Or, if the offender was an ecclesiastic, it was applied to whom it lawfully belonged. This rather evaded the question whether confiscation was self-acting, but theFe de confiscacion, given by the notary to the judge of confiscations, formally asserts that the inquisitors and Ordinary had confiscated the property to the king’s treasury and by the sentence had applied it to his receiver in his name.[925]If any uncertainty remained, it was removed by a carta acordada of 1626, which ordered that, in all cases of formal heresy, the sentence should include confiscation for, if there was to be any mitigation, the granting of such grace belonged to the inquisitor-general.[926]The anterior date to which the confiscation operated was determined, under the Instructions of 1561, by the consulta de fe when voting on the sentence.[927]
GRANTS TO FEUDAL LORDS
The phrase, in the case of ecclesiastics, of adjudging the property to whom it legally belonged, was a recognition of the claims of the Church. What these were seems to have been open to question. Under the Partidas the Church had the right, if it put forward the demand within a year, but Ferdinand, in a letter of March 11, 1498, says he is told that he has a right to a third in such cases. Whence this was derived we are not told, but he established the rule and it remained in force as late as 1559 when two-thirds of the estate of Dr. Agustin Cazalla passed to the Bishop of Palencia who, however, transferred it back to the Inquisition.[928]This was probably a compromise, for the Inquisition had asserted its right to the whole, and Bishop Simancas,in 1552, had said that many hold that the property of clerics goes to the bishop, but the truer opinion, which had always been followed in Spain, was that it belongs to the fisc, for the use of the Inquisition.[929]The question, however, was not definitely settled for, in 1568, the Suprema called upon all the tribunals to report without delay what was their practice and what was their formula of sentence.[930]It was inevitable that any doubts should eventually be construed in favor of the Holy Office and, in the seventeenth century, the authorities assume as a matter of course that the confiscations of clerics enure to the tribunals, although the sentence still attributed them to whom they lawfully pertained. Forfeited benefices of heretics, however, were a papal perquisite, by decree of Paul IV, June 18, 1556 and this is cited, about 1640, as still in force in Spain.[931]
For awhile the confiscations were subject to another diversion. The feudal lords, who saw the property of their vassals swept into the royal maelstrom, grew restless and, although they do not seem to have put forth any legal claim, Ferdinand, in many cases, deemed it wise to pacify them with a grant of one-third of the confiscations made in their estates. The earliest grant of the kind that I have happened to meet is to the Infante Enrique, Duke of Segorbe, April 20, 1491.[932]These grants were subject to a deduction for the expenses of the trials, which led to a good deal of friction, as none of the parties concerned were over-scrupulous. If the grantee quarrelled with the receiver over the question of expenses he had a fashion, when the customary auction of the property was held, of announcing that he desired to bid and that nobody should bid against him. By this device the Duke of Bejar enforced a settlement in 1514 and again in 1517.[933]The experience of the Duke del Infantado shows how skilful were the officials in neutralizing these grants. In 1515 he obtained a grant of one-half of confiscations up to that time and one-third for the future, subject to expenses. Disputes arose as a matter of course and, in 1519, he prevented auction sales till he should be paid and, in1520, he compromised for two hundred ducats in settlement of claims up to that time and ten per cent. for the future, free of expenses.[934]It is safe to say that Ximenes was exposed to no such trouble in his settlements but, with his enormous revenues and his position as inquisitor-general, it would have better comported with his dignity to have abstained from procuring, in 1515, a grant of one-third of the confiscations made in his estates and in the Cazorla lands assigned for the expenses of his table.[935]With the gradual weeding out of the wealthier Conversos and the increasing expenses of the tribunals, the share of the feudal lords doubtless diminished until it was not worth contesting, for shortly after this period we cease to hear of this division of the proceeds.
VERIFICATION OF PROPERTY
Confiscation, as we have seen, was one of the invariable penalties of heresy under the canon law. The heretic was outside of the Church; if persistent he was relaxed and burnt; if he repented and professed conversion he was “reconciled” to the Church, but though he thus escaped death the forfeiture of his property remained. Reconciliation, as a rule, inferred confiscation. An exception to this was when a Term of Grace was published, usually of thirty or forty days, during which those who made full confession of their sins and gave full information about others were received to reconciliation, under promise of release from imprisonment and confiscation, but subject to public penance and giving as “alms” such portion of their property as the inquisitors should designate.[936]This was an abandonment by the king of the property which had become forfeit through heresy and was confirmed by a formal grant by him to them of what was lawfully his, empowering them to sell and convey a good title, which otherwise they could not do.[937]This did not apply to what the penitent suffered from the crimes of others, and thus children so reconciled could not claim estates forfeited by their parents. Outside of the Term of Grace there was no escape.Espontaneados—those coming forward spontaneously—after its expiration, had already forfeited all their possessions and, as it was explained, it was not the intention of the sovereigns to remit the penalty to them, savewhen, in special cases, they might exercise clemency.[938]This covetous policy, which discouraged the repentant sinner, was continued until, in 1597, the Suprema ordered that espontaneados should be reconciled without confiscation.[939]Yet, in spite of this, when, in 1677, Alvaro Núñez de Velasco, came forward voluntarily to denounce himself and was reconciled, his sentence included confiscation.[940]
Occasional instances are met in which confiscation was spared on account of the extreme youth of the penitent, but I have been unable to find any formal rule to that effect and it seems to have been discretional with the tribunal. In 1501, at Barcelona, when Florencia, daughter of Manuel de Puigmija, was condemned to perpetual prison, it is said that her property was spared in view of her tender age. In the reconciliation, at Toledo, April 20, 1659, of Ana Pereira, aged ten, confiscation was included; in that of Beatriz Jorje of the same age, December 8, 1659, there is no allusion to confiscation and, in that of Diego de Castro, aged ten, December 8, 1681, it is stated that confiscation is omitted in view of his age.[941]
The enforcement of confiscation was a business matter, reduced to a thorough and pitiless system. The sufferers naturally sought to elude it and every possible means that experience could suggest were adopted to prevent the loss of the minutest fragment. When the accused was arrested, all his visible possessions were simultaneously sequestrated and inventoried. His papers and books of account were examined to ascertain what debts were owing to him, and he was at once subjected to anaudiencia de haciendain which he was interrogated under oath, in the most searching manner, as to all his property, his debts and credits, his marriage settlement, dowries or gifts to his children, their estates if they were dead, whether he had secreted anything in apprehension of arrest, and every detail that the circumstances suggested. Any failure to answer fully and truly was perjury, for which he could be punished, as occurred in the case of Louis dePerlas, tried in Valencia for Lutheranism in 1552.[942]The most repulsive incident in this perquisition was the advantage taken of the terrors of approaching death, when the confessors of those who were to be executed in an auto de fe were employed during the preceding night in exhorting them to reveal any portion of property that might have escaped previous investigations. Thus, June 29, 1526, Fray Castell reported that Pedro Pomar, whom he had confessed during the night of the auto de fe “estando en el suplicio de la muerte” had revealed where certain account books could be found and also some debts due to him. So, December 21, 1529, Anton Ruiz, under the same circumstances, confessed to debts due to him which had eluded previous search.[943]
EMPLOYMENT OF INFORMERS
This prostitution of religion to the service of greed was exploited to the utmost. Excommunication was so habitually abused for temporal purposes that it was naturally resorted to, and all who concealed or held any property of a convicted heretic were subjected to it. In 1486 Ferdinand writes that certain notaries refuse to give copies of contracts passed before them, relative to obligations due to heretics, to which they must be constrained by censures and the invocation, if necessary, of the secular arm, and the same course must be taken with debtors refusing to pay what they owe.[944]October 17, 1500, he scolds some inquisitors for their negligence; those who know that they are suspected commonly hide their property or place it in the hands of third parties and “in this way those who hold such property become excommunicated to the great damage of their souls, for they continue under the censure and my fisc suffers, for the property escapes confiscation.”[945]In 1645 a writer gives us the form adopted in such cases. If the fiscal thought that there was property of a confiscated estate concealed or debts due to it unrevealed, the tribunal issued an edict to be read from the pulpits, ordering under pain of excommunication every one holding such property, or cognizant of facts concerning it, to make it known to the commissinoneror to the parish priest within three days. On the expiration of this term the priests were required to denounce from their pulpits all such persons as excommunicated and to be avoided by all Christians. Then, after three days more, followed the anathema, in its awful solemnities of bell, book and candle, with the imprecatory psalm, and invoking the wrath of Almighty God and the glorious Virgin his Mother and of the Apostles Peter and Paul and all the saints of heaven and all the plagues of Egypt on the wicked ones who were withholding its own from the Holy Office.[946]
This spiritual punishment did not exclude temporal. In 1671, Manuel Fernández Chaves, tried in Toledo for the “occultation” of confiscated effects, was fined in five hundred ducats and was banished for two years from Toledo, Pastrana and Madrid. When the concealment was for the benefit of a culprit, there was the additional charge of fautorship, as in the case of Gabriel de la Sola and Joseph López de Sossa, who secreted property of the latter’s sister Beatriz and whose trial, in 1697, in Valladolid, lasted for two years.[947]
More effective, at least in the earlier period, when the press of business rendered minute investigation difficult, was the offer of heavy commissions to those who would furnish information as to confiscated property that had escaped the search of the receivers. This resulted in creating a gang of professional detectives and informers of whom a certain Pedro de Madrid, “delator,” may be taken as the type. Under a provision of 1490 he was entitled to one-third of all the hidden property that he might discover, whether alienated or conveyed under other names or otherwise concealed. In 1494 he complained that this was not enough, in view of his heavy expenses, travelling to France, sharing with other informers, etc., whereupon Ferdinand agreed to give him one-half, and moreover to those who should furnish information he pardoned the offence committed by their knowing without revealing; the inquisitors were to remove the excommunication and all receivers were to comply with these instructions under penalty of a thousand florins.[948]Ferdinand howeverdid not always play fair with these gentry. Under the stimulus of his fifty per cent., Pedro worked hard and successfully but, when in 1499 the account of a receiver who had settled with him came in for audit, Ferdinand ordered the payments to be disallowed for the present; Pedro ought not to have such large sums; his success was attributable to the negligence of the receiver rather than to his own activity and, in fact, it was a voluntary gift to him. A year later we find Ferdinand agreeing to let him have one-half of thirty libras that he had discovered and promising to determine what share he should have when other properties unearthed by him should be settled.[949]
The frequent allusions to these transactions in Ferdinand’s correspondence show what an active business it was, both with professionals and volunteers, and Ferdinand was sometimes liberal in rewarding the zeal of the latter as when, in 1501, he made a gift to Don Antonio Cortes, his sacristan mayor, of a house and an oil warehouse in Seville, which Cortes had discovered to be the property of Beatriz Fernández, condemned to perpetual imprisonment, which had escaped the receiver.[950]This indicates that men of standing did not disdain to engage in this disreputable business, and it would seem that Juan de Anchias, the secretary of the Saragossa tribunal, to whom we owe theLibro Verde, gave up his office to speculate in it for, in 1509, we find him complaining that the receiver refused to pay him the one-third which he had been promised on certain discoveries and Ferdinand ordering the bargain to be carried out. There was no settled rate of commissions. About this same time Clíment Roderes, of Barcelona, was only allowed one-seventh of the property recovered through his investigations, while the Majorca tribunal was authorized to offer twenty-five per cent. and, when the case seemed desperate, in 1514, Juan Martínez was encouraged by a promise of fifty per cent. to devote himself to looking up the concealments in Teruel and Albarracin, which were understood to be large.[951]
INVALIDATION OF CONTRACTS
While doubtless the fisc, by thus stimulating detectives, recovered property which might otherwise have escaped, the system was one which invited collusion between them and the officials. Frauds of this kind were probably not uncommon for, in 1525, theSuprema complained of the abuses that had sprung up through the disregard by the receivers of their instructions. These were to be strictly observed and, in future, commissions must be paid only on property of which nothing had been known to the officials, and the informer must not be an official whose knowledge had been acquired in the discharge of his duties. Moreover the compensation was strictly limited to twenty per cent. of the amount realized through the information furnished.[952]This is the latest allusion that I have met with to this phase of the business; it evidently diminished with the falling off in the confiscations, though doubtless special transactions continued to occur, for it was inevitable that the victims should exhaust their ingenuity in the effort to save for their children some fragments of their possessions.
Cruel as was confiscation in principle, its enforcement by the older papal Inquisition was iniquitous to a degree which multiplied to the utmost its cruelty and power of evil. The forfeiture of property from the time when the first act of heresy had been committed was construed to invalidate all subsequent acts of the heretic, for he had lost his dominion over all his possessions. All alienations thus were void, all debts contracted and all obligations given were invalid and the prescription of time against the Church had to be at least forty years’ possession by undoubted Catholics, ignorant of the former owner’s heresy. Prosecutions of the dead, moreover, for which there was no limit, carried back to previous generations the claim of the Inquisition to upset titles. Thus in practice, when a man was adjudged a heretic, all debts due to him were rigorously collected, while all due by him were cancelled, and all real estate that he had sold was reclaimed. The only mitigation of this was a declaration, by Innocent IV in 1247, giving to a Catholic wife, under certain conditions, a life-interest in her dowry, expiring at her death, for her children were incapable of inheritance.[953]
It is pleasant to be able to say that, in time, some of the worst features of this all-grasping rapacity were softened in the Spanish Inquisition. Its early operations were so extensive and the commerce of the land was so largely in the hands of the New Christians, that we can readily imagine the general consternationaroused by the strict enforcement of the canon laws which vitiated all alienations and stripped all creditors of their claims. It could lead only to wide-spread ruin and general paralysis of trade, and there doubtless arose a cry for relief which the sovereigns could not disregard. With a wise liberality, therefore, they consented to a partial abandonment of their claims, which is set forth in the Instructions of 1484, in a manner showing how fully they knew what were their rights. The clause recites that they could recover all alienations and refuse to pay all debts unless the proceeds could be identified among the effects of the confiscated estate, whether of those condemned or of those reconciled outside of the term of grace, but, out of clemency and to avoid oppression of vassals who had dealt with heretics, they ordered that all sales, donations, exchanges and contracts, prior to the year 1479, should be valid, if duly proved to be genuine. Attempts to take fraudulent advantage of this were declared punishable, in reconciled heretics, with a hundred lashes and branding in the face with a hot iron; in Christians, with confiscation, deprivation of office and penalties at the royal discretion.[954]
INVALIDATION OF CONTRACTS
While there was substantial relief in this abandonment of the right to upset all transactions prior to the introduction of the Inquisition, yet it was retained with regard to all subsequent dealings and no man could know whether the banker or merchant or tradesman with whom he dealt might not soon fall into the hands of the Holy Office. It thus can readily be conceived how fatally credit was affected and what risks were encountered in the daily transactions of business. That there was difficulty in making the tribunals respect even this concession is visible in its promulgation anew by the Suprema in 1491 and again in 1502.[955]Cases, in fact, occur which show that the officials paid slender attention to it. Thus in 1499, Costanza Ramirez appealed to Ferdinand for property comprised in the dowry given to her mother, in 1475, by her grandfather Juan López Beltran, whoseestate had been recently declared confiscated, and the king ordered its restoration if the statement was true. So, in 1509, the widow and wards of Johan Pérez de Oliva petitioned him for the release of certain houses which Oliva had bought in 1474 and which were now claimed as having been purchased from a condemned heretic.[956]Here was a perfectly legitimate transaction, thirty-five years old, which the Inquisition was endeavoring to set aside.
In the Instructions of 1484, prosecutions against the dead, including confiscation, were ordered, even if they had died forty or fifty years before. As it stands in the printed collections, this virtually postponed indefinitely the prescription against the Inquisition, as the transactions of the deceased might have extended anteriorly through forty or fifty years and, in fact, it was quoted, about 1640, as a proof that there was no prescription.[957]This however was a later additional severity for, in a MS. copy of the Instructions of 1484, there is a clause, omitted by the official compilers, to the effect that, if the heretic had died more than fifty years before the accusation was brought and, if the heirs or owners of the property had been good Catholics and had held it in good faith, they were not to be disturbed.[958]There is significance in this suppression and, under such a system, it is conceivable what a cloud hung over the titles of all property that had ever passed through the hands of a New Christian, and how poignant was the feeling of insecurity of its possessors.
In the struggle made by the kingdoms of Aragon against the oppression of the Inquisition the iniquities of confiscation were prominent. They were illustrated in the Córtes of Monzon, in 1512, by a special grievance which illustrates the working of the system. The local government had borrowed money and secured it by a censo or obligation given to Maestro Miro and Juan Bertran, who were condemned for heresy and the censo was demanded. The authorities showed that the censo had been paid off and the debt cancelled twenty-nine years before, but the receiver insisted on their paying it again because the heretical acts of Miro and Bertran were anterior and their release of the censo was therefore invalid. They petitioned Ferdinand for relief but he contented himself with ordering thatthey should not be unduly oppressed, which left the matter open.[959]Still, one of the concessions granted in 1512 was that prescription of time should be reduced to thirty years; this was confirmed in Mercader’s Instructions of 1514 and when, in 1515, the Catalans complained of its inobservance, Ferdinand ordered it to be maintained. Leo X went even further in his bull of 1516, confirming the Concordia of 1512 and, in that of 1520 this was defined as protecting from confiscation all property acquired in good faith from those not publicly noted for heresy even though they should subsequently be condemned and the prescription of thirty years had not expired. This was declared applicable to all pending cases and, to render it more emphatic, Charles V made a formal grant of all such property to the holders.[960]We have seen, however, how completely the Inquisition ignored this settlement, denying its authority and even its existence. Castile was no more successful for, when the Córtes of 1534 petitioned that possession for three years in the hands of Catholics should confer immunity from confiscation and that dowries of Catholic wives should be exempt, Charles flatly refused both requests.[961]Finally the question settled itself in the canonical prescription of forty years’ undisturbed possession by orthodox Catholics, for this is what Simancas informs us was the rule. The old Instructions requiring longer possession, he says, had been abrogated and, although some authorities argued that five years sufficed, or at most twenty, these were not recognized by the tribunals.[962]How business adjusted, itself to the risks attending all transactions with New Christians, we can only conjecture.
RECOGNITION OF CREDITORS
In one important respect the Inquisition mitigated the iniquitous harshness of the older institution by recognizing the claims of the creditors of the condemned heretic. This, however, was not the case at first and it would not be easy to exaggerate the general confusion and distress when it came to be understood that confiscation included the debits as well as the credits of the victims. The early extensive arrests were followed by the wholesale flight of those who felt themselves under suspicion;flight was regarded as confession and the fugitives were condemnedin absentiaas soon as the necessary formalities could be despatched. The losses of the consequent confiscation of debits fell not only on individuals connected with their extensive transactions but on the public bodies and ecclesiastical establishments, the collection of whose revenues was largely in their hands. The conditions thus created are impressively reflected in the records of Xeres de la Frontera, where the municipal taxes were largely farmed to Conversos who had fled; the public funds had been in their hands and they were naturally in debt to the town as well as to churches and private persons. It would appear that all these obligations were calmly ignored by the Inquisition and the municipality appealed to the sovereigns who replied, December 6, 1481, that the matter had been referred to the Licenciado Ferrand Yañez de Lobon—the very commissioner who, for about a year, had been busy in enforcing the collections of the confiscations. This boded ill for relief; the documents do not reveal the outcome but, as all the efforts of the authorities only brought them in contact with the officials engaged in gathering the spoils, it is evident that the sovereigns did not propose to abandon their rights.[963]
We have seen that the Instructions of 1484-5, when recognizing the validity of transactions anterior to 1479, asserted absolutely the right of the fisc to refuse payment of debts and made no concessions as to those contracted subsequently to that period. At the same time a clause concerning claims made by nobles, who had received fugitives in their lands, shows that the Inquisition felt the matter to be within its discretion.[964]The earliest positive admission that I have met of an obligation to pay debts due by a confiscated estate is an order by Ferdinand, May 12, 1486, to Alfonso de Mesa, receiver at Teruel, that wages due in good faith by heretics to their Moorish servants, are to be paid—but this may perhaps be attributable to the special preference allowed to servants’ wages by the laws of Aragon.[965]Various contradictory decisions illustrate the uncertainty hanging over the matter at this time, and it is clearly manifested by two letters of Ferdinand, evidently drawn up for him by his unscrupulous secretary Calcena. The first of these, March 6, 1498, relates to the Castillo deCalanya, which Calcena had obtained from the confiscated estate of Johan Benete and against which certain parties held censos (ground-rents) and other claims. The king is made to order the receiver to suspend action, because the debts had been contracted after Benete had committed acts of heresy. The other letter, March 11, 1498, reiterates an order of August 29, 1497, to a receiver to pay out of the sequestrated property of Antoni Cones a hundred ducats which Calcena had lent him and to pay him before any other creditors.[966]
By this time however the claims of creditors were beginning to be officially recognized. The Instructions of 1498 give detailed orders as to surrendering property belonging to others, and promptly paying debts clearly due out of sequestrated estates and, when confiscation was pronounced, a proclamation was to be made to all claimants to present their claims within a designated time, which in 1499 was fixed at thirty days, while no property was to be sold until the claims against it had been determined.[967]Yet, in spite of this, the rights of creditors were admitted with difficulty by the receivers and numerous instances occur in which they were obliged to appeal to Ferdinand. As late as 1515, Margarita Dartes, wife of Doctor Francisco Dartes, assessor of the Valencia tribunal, complained that in 1499 she had bought a censo secured on a house of Aldonza Cocarredes; Aldonza had now been relaxed and Aliaga, the receiver, refused to recognize the censo because it had been created after she had committed heresy. Ferdinand admitted the validity of this argument and said that, in the rigor of justice, she had lost her claim but, in view of the fact that her husband had been in the service of the Inquisition since its foundation, he ordered it paid as a favor.[968]
OBSTACLES OFFERED TO CREDITORS
An examination of the records of the Valencia court of confiscations, in 1531 and 1532, evinces on the whole an evident desire to administer the law rigidly, whether in favor of or against the fisc. Among the claimants were a number of serving women for wages, which were always allowed, although the court exercised somewhat arbitrary discretion in cutting down the amounts.[969]Gradually the honest policy prevailed and, in 1543, the Supremainstructed the tribunals that the first thing to be paid were the debts that were properly proved—a rule which apparently was difficult to enforce, for the order had to be repeated in 1546 and again in 1547.[970]Yet it was no easy matter for creditors to obtain payment against the resistance offered by receivers and their advocates. In 1565, after Pierre and Gilles de Bonneville were burnt for Protestantism in Toledo, the fiscal reported to the inquisitors that numerous creditors had come forward whose claims were pending before thejuez de los bienes, wherefore he asked for a certificate as to the date of the culprits’ heresies, in order to use it before the court. The inquisitors duly certified that the date was about 1550, the object being to plead the obsolete canonical rule that subsequent obligations were invalid.[971]That chicanery of all kinds was employed to exhaust the patience of creditors and accumulate costs is plainly admitted in the memorial of 1623 to the Suprema, which states that, in the suits of creditors, there is much that brings discredit on the Inquisition, for confiscations are managed solely for the benefit of those who administer them, the appointees of thejuez de los bienesand ordinarily his kinsmen or friends, for whose advantage the suits are prolonged until they become immortal.[972]Abuses such as these were inevitable in a system which confined everything within the circle of the Inquisition, permitting no outside interference or supervision, while dealing so tenderly with official malfeasance. It would be difficult to overestimate the wide-spread damage resulting when the accused were merchants with extensive and complicated transactions, as in the immense confiscations in Mexico and Peru from 1630 to 1650 and those of Majorca in 1678, when funds and merchandise of correspondents were tied up for an indefinite time to the destruction of their credit. The hazards to which business was thus exposed was a factor, and by no means the least important, in the decay of Spanish commerce, for no one could foresee at what moment the blow might fall. Sequestration accompanied arrest and, in 1635, it was ordered that, during the pending of a trial, no payments or delivery of property should be made to creditors, no matter what evidence they presented, without awaiting the decision of theSuprema, the only exception being claims of the king, which were to be paid without delay. In 1721 this prohibition to pay debts was made absolute, excepting a few trivial matters such as servants’ wages and house-rent.[973]That foreigners dealing with Spain had ample cause to dread the decisions of thejuez de los bienesis shown by a remarkable clause in the English treaty of 1665 which provided that, in case of sequestration of property by any tribunal of either nation, the effects or debts belonging to a subject of the other should not suffer confiscation but should be restored to the owner.[974]On the whole, however, the Spanish Inquisition is entitled to the credit of mitigating, in favor of creditors, the abhorrent harshness of the inquisitorial law of confiscation, although in practice its officials were guilty of minimising, as far as they could, the benefits of this moderation.
DOWRIES
In the matter of dowries there was also a partial mitigation of the old severity. The dowry was forfeited by the wife’s heresy but not by that of the husband and, in the latter case, it descended to her children. There was one provision, however, which worked infinite hardship for, if the parents of the wife had been guilty of heresy at the time of her marriage, it was forfeited on the ground that all their property then belonged to the fisc and they had no power of alienation. The cases are numerous in which the parties, after prolonged married life, thus suddenly found themselves despoiled by the condemnation of parents who had enjoyed the reputation of faithful Christians and, in the inter-marriages, so frequent in the earlier period, the blow thus often fell upon Old Christians. We hear of these cases through despairing appeals to Ferdinand for mercy—appeals to which he not infrequently responded by abandoning his claims or surrendering a part. A typical case, illustrative of many others, is that Juan Quirat, of Elche, whose petition to the king, in 1513, represents that, twenty-five years before, he had married Violante Propinan, receiving ten thousand sueldos as her dowry from her parents, Luis and Blanca. Eight years ago they were condemned, and now the receiver claims the dowry; he is a poorescuderoor squire and the enforcement of the claim would send him with his wife and children to the hospital, in view of all which Ferdinandcharitably waived his right.[975]More peculiar was the case of Juan Castellon of Majorca who, when trading in Tunis, was enslaved by a brother of Barbarossa; after forty-two months of captivity he was ransomed for four hundred ducats and returned home in 1520 to find that his wife’s mother, Isabel Luna, had been condemned and the dowry received from her was claimed by the receiver. He petitioned Cardinal Adrian; the matter was referred to Charles V, who humanely ordered that, if his story was true and he was unable to pay, the confiscation should be remitted.[976]The hardship was sometimes aggravated by an ostentatious custom of inserting in the marriage-contract a larger sum than was actually paid. Thus, in 1531, the magnifico Diego de Montemayor, Baile of the Grau of Valencia, swore that he received only three thousand sueldos of the six thousand specified in his marriage-contract with Beatriz Scrivana, in 1510, and that the larger sum had been insertedhonoris causa.[977]
The dowries of nuns were subject to the same merciless absorption. In 1510, the convent of Santa Inez of Córdova appealed to Ferdinand, stating that, some twenty years previous, Pedro Syllero had placed his niece there as a nun, giving as her dowry certain houses which it had peacefully enjoyed until her grandfather had recently been condemned for heresy and the property was seized as part of his confiscated estate. This was strictly legal and it was a pure act of grace when the king ordered the houses to be released.[978]
Still, the dowry of an orthodox wife was exempt from the confiscation of a heretic husband’s estate, but it was imperilled by the possibility that the estate might be exhausted in the maintenance of the husband in prison during a prolonged trial and by the sacrifice of values in the realization of assets at auction, which was imperative. In the proceedings of thejuzgado de bienesof Valencia in 1531 there are numerous cases which show that this claim of the wife was fully recognized and a fair adjudication made in the complicated questions which frequently arose.[979]
Correlative to this was the liability of the husband to pay to the fisc the dowry of a wife condemned or reconciled for heresy. How pitilessly in time this was exacted is manifested in 1549 by a petition to Valdés from Don Pedro Gascon, who represents himself as an hidalgo whose ancestors had served the king faithfully. The judge of confiscations at Cuenca had condemned him in a hundred and fifty ducats for the dowry of his wife and the receiver had cast him in prison to enforce payment. While there he had sold a large part of his property and had paid fifty ducats, but the rest of his estate would not produce the remaining hundred. Ferdinand would have forgiven him the balance, but Valdés only looked to obtaining assurance of ultimate payment when he empowered the receiver to grant him six years’ time on his furnishing good security.[980]