UNNATURAL CRIME
The case which called forth this explanation affords a very instructive example of the advantage to justice of an open trial, with opportunity of cross-examination. The accused was FrayManuel Sánchez del Castellar y Arbustan, a distinguished member of the Order of La Merced. The trial had lasted for nearly three years, when the papers were submitted to the Suprema, in August, 1684. There were two accomplice witnesses to consummated acts, others to solicitation, others to lascivious and filthy actions, and others to general foul reputation. Under the ordinary inquisitorial process, condemnation would have been inevitable, but repeated examinations and cross-examinations revealed discrepancies and contradictions and variations, and a knowledge of the witnesses enabled the accused to present evidence of enmities. The conclusion reached by the tribunal was that nearly the whole mass of evidence was the result of a conspiracy, embracing a number of frailes of the convent, incited by jealousy of the honors and position obtained by Sánchez. Still, there was some testimony as to indiscretions, which was not rebutted and, as there had been a great scandal requiring a victim, with customary inquisitorial logic, he was sentenced to four years’ exile from Valencia, Orihuela and Madrid, for the first two of which he was deprived of active and passive voice, of confessing and preaching and of all honors in his Order. In this, consideration was given to three years spent in prison, so that, if innocent, he had suffered severely and was sent forth branded with an ineffaceable stigma while, if guilty, he had a penalty far less than his deserts. When the Suprema asked why the two witnesses to complicity were not prosecuted, the tribunal replied that they were regarded as spontaneously confessing, and it was not customary to prosecute in such cases; besides, although their enmity and contradictions invalidated their testimony, these were insufficient to justify prosecution for false-witness.[810]Altogether it was an unpleasant business, which the tribunal evidently desired to despatch with as little damage as possible to the Church.
The tendency towards leniency increased with time, and was shown to laymen as well as to ecclesiastics. In 1717, the Barcelona tribunal sentenced Guillaume Amiel, a Frenchman, to four years of presidio and perpetual banishment from Spain. The Suprema commuted the presidio to a hundred lashes but, when the sentence was read, Amiel protested that his father was a gentleman and that he held a patent as “teniente del Rey Christianisimo,†thus claiming exemption from degrading corporal punishment.The proceedings were suspended, and the Suprema was consulted, which omitted the lashes and, on the same account, the boy Ramon Gils, who was the accomplice, was spared the vergüenza to which he had been condemned.[811]
USURY
The most conspicuous case of this nature in the annals of the Inquisition was that of Don Pedro Luis Galceran de Borja, Grand-master of the Order of Montesa. He was not only a grandee of Spain, but was allied to the royal house, he was half-brother to Francisco de Borja, Duke of GrandÃa and subsequently General of the Jesuits, and was of kin to nearly all the noblest lineages of the land. For his arrest, in 1571, the assent of Philip II was necessary; he was not confined in the secret prison, but had commodious apartments from which, during his trial, he conducted the affairs of the Order. He claimed exemption on the ground of the privileges of the Order, and more than two years were spent in debating the question, though it was pointed out that, while the Trinitarians had even greater privileges, two members professed of that Order had recently been relaxed for the same crime, and Borja was not even a cleric, but a married man with children. The claim was finally disallowed and the trial went slowly on. The evidence reduced itself to two “singular†witnesses, who testified to solicitation and attempt, and to one, Martin de Castro, who testified to consummation and then revoked. Powerful influence from all quarters was brought to bear to save the accused, and in the final consulta de fe there was discordia. Two inquisitors and the Ordinary voted for acquittal. The other inquisitor, who was Juan de Rojas, in a written opinion, called for four years of exile and a heavy fine. The Suprema, after prolonged correspondence with the tribunal, accepted this, but changed the exile to six years of reclusion in his convent of Montesa. Llorente intimates that the inquisitors expected to gain bishoprics, or at least places in the Suprema, and that a bargain was made through which, on Borja’s death, the Order of Montesa was incorporated with the crown, as the military Orders of Castile had been under Ferdinand; to this latter some color was lent by Philip’s appointment of Borja’s natural son to the grand commandership of the Order, from which he rose to the cardinalate. There is an evident allusion to this case in the remark of an Italian traveller in 1593, who, when speaking of the severity of the Inquisitionin these matters, illustrates it by the story of a grandee who, for merely throwing his arm around the neck of a page, spent ten years in prison and fifty thousand ducats.[812]
Cases were sufficiently frequent to give the Aragonese tribunals considerable occupation, especially after it was included in the Edict of Faith in 1574, as a crime to be denounced.[813]I have but a few scattering data, but they are suggestive. Thus, in Saragossa, at the auto of June 6, 1585, there were four culprits relaxed.[814]In Catalonia, in 1597, the report, by Inquisitor Heredia, of a visitation through the see of Tarragona and parts of those of Barcelona, Vich and Urgel, contains sixty-eight cases of all kinds and of these fifteen were for this class of offences, though most of them were subsequently suspended.[815]In Valencia, there appeared in the autos from January 1598 to December 1602, twenty-seven of these culprits, of whom seven were frailes.[816]As it was customary to read the sentencescon meritos, the populace had an edifying education. From 1780 to 1820, the total number of cases coming before the three tribunals was exactly one hundred.[817]
The ecclesiastical definition of usury is not, as we understand the term, an exorbitant charge for the use of money, beyond the legal rate, but any interest or other advantage, however small or indirect, derived from a loan of money or other article. Forbidden by the Old Law, between the Chosen People, and extended under the New to the brotherhood of man, it has been the subject of denunciation continuously from the primitive Church to the most recent times. Ingenuity has been exhausted in devising methods of repression and punishment, only to show how impossible has been the task of warring against human nature and human necessities.
From an early period, usury was regarded as an ecclesiastical sin and crime, subject to spiritual jurisdiction in both theforum internumandforum externum. In 1258 Alexander IV rendered it justiciable by the Inquisition and, at the Council of Vienne, in 1312, the assertion that the taking of interest is not a sin was defined to be a heresy, which the Inquisition was in duty required to prosecute.[818]During the later Middle Ages, when the greater heresies had been largely suppressed, the prosecution of usurers formed a considerable, and the most profitable, portion of inquisitorial activity. It is true that the heresy consisted in denying that usury is a sin, but, as the Repertorium of 1494 explains, the usurer or simonist, who does not affirm or deny but is silent and tacitly believes it not to be a sin to commit usury or simony, is a pertinacious heretic mentally.[819]
USURY
In Spain, the usurious practices of Jews and Conversos were the principal source of popular hostility, but Jews were not subject to the Inquisition and, in its earlier years, it appears not to have recognized its jurisdiction in this matter over the Conversos, for I have met with no trace, at this period, of action by it against usury, whether in Castile or in Aragon. As regards the latter, indeed, it was impeded by a fuero of the Córtes of Calatayud, in 1461, prohibiting the prosecution of usurers, by both the secular and spiritual courts, and the procuring of faculties for the purpose by the Inquisition. To ensure the observance of this, Juan II was required to swear that he would not obtain any papal rescript or commission authorizing inquisition into usury and that, if such rescript were had, it should not be used but be delivered within a month to the Diputados.[820]It may be assumed that the Inquisition sought relief from this restriction, for Julius II issuedamotu proprio, January 14, 1504, reciting the fuero of Calatayud and stating that theusuraria pravitashad so increased that a measure of wheat would be multiplied to twenty-five within three years, chiefly because the Inquisition, in consequence of this fuero, was precluded from the exercise of its lawful jurisdiction. He therefore ordered Inquisitor-general Deza to prosecute all Christian usurers and compel them to desist, by inflicting the penalties prescribed by the general council, while Ferdinand was summoned to aid the inquisitors, and he and his successors were released from any oaths to observe the fuero.[821]
As all commercial and financial transactions at the time were based on interest payment and, as the agriculturist habitually borrowed seed-corn before sowing, to be repaid with increase after harvest, the Inquisition thus had an ample field opened for its operations. That it did not neglect the opportunity is fairly inferable from the opposition excited. It was the subject of one of the most energetic remonstrances of the Córtes of Monzon in 1510, and the Concordia of 1512 bore an article in which Ferdinand promised to obtain from the pope the revocation of the faculties granted to the inquisitors; that he would allow no other grant to be obtained, and that meanwhile he would arrange that no prosecutions should be brought except for open assertion that usury was no sin. For this, as for the other articles, he swore to procure the papal confirmation. Inquisitors were likewise sworn to obey the Concordia and, when Ferdinand was released from his oath by Leo X, in the brief of April 30, 1513, amotu propriofollowed, September 2d, to the effect that, as heresy and usury are the most heinous of crimes, to be prosecuted with the sharpest rigor, the inquisitors were released from their oaths and directed to employ the faculties granted by Julius II for the suppression of usury.[822]This serves to explain why, in the compromise embodied in Inquisitor-general Mercader’s Instructions of 1514, there is no allusion to usury—the inquisitors were not to be disturbed in the exercise of their functions in this respect.[823]When, however, Leo, in 1516,confirmed the Concordia of 1512, he removed usury from inquisitorial jurisdiction and prohibited its prosecution unless the culprit should hold it not to be a sin.[824]
It has already been seen how completely the Inquisition ignored all these agreements, in spite of royal and papal confirmations. So, when Charles V was obliged, in 1518, at the Córtes of Saragossa, to take the specific and elaborate oath imposed on Juan II, it proved equally futile.[825]Inquisitors continued to exercise jurisdiction, but, in Aragon proper, they were impeded for a time by a brief of Clement VII, January 16, 1525, ordering them to confine themselves in future to heresy—a brief procured by Juan of Austria, Archbishop of Saragossa, who claimed jurisdiction over usury for his own court.[826]This afforded slender relief, for he employed the inquisitorial process and the Córtes of Saragossa, in 1528, adopted a fuero, confirmed by Charles V, reciting that the laws provide for the punishment of usurers by the secular courts, but that the ecclesiastical judges were prosecuting them, wherefore, at the desire of the four brazos, his majesty ordered the ancient laws of the kingdom to be enforced without exception.[827]
So long as the Inquisition was not involved, Charles was indifferent as to how usurers were treated, but, when the Catalans, at the Córtes of Monzon, in the same year, complained of the prosecution of usury by inquisitors and petitioned that it be prevented, he drily answered that the laws should be observed and justice should be done.[828]No greater satisfaction than this could be had when, a few years later, the Córtes of the three kingdoms reiterated the complaint of the prosecutions for usury by the Inquisition, inflicting an ineffaceable stain upon parties and their descendants, even though they were discharged without penance. The reply of the inquisitor-general to this was a simple denial, coupled with the demand that the names of injured parties should be produced.[829]
MORALS
In the absence of documents, it is not easy to understand why the Inquisition suddenly abandoned a jurisdiction for which it had contended so strenuously, but so it was. In 1552, Simancas asserts that inquisitors have no cognizance of questions arising from usury, but must leave them to the Ordinaries, for usurersare not moved by erroneous belief, but by the desire for sordid gains.[830]In this Simancas evidently spoke by authority, for the Suprema, in a carta acordada of March 17, 1554, forbade the tribunals to take cognizance of usury, and the subject disappears from inquisitorial records.[831]The secular and spiritual courts were left to fight the losing battle with industrial and commercial progress, which eventually compelled the recognition of the fact that payment for the usance of money is customarily profitable to both parties.
The object of the Inquisition was the preservation of the purity of faith and not the improvement of morals. The view taken of its duties as to the latter is set forth in the comments of the Suprema on the report by de Soto Salazar of his visitation, in 1566, of the Barcelona tribunal. Clement, Abbot of Ripoll, was prosecuted for saying that so great was the mercy of God that he would pardon a sinner who confessed, even though he had not a firm intention to abstain in future, and also for keeping a nun as a mistress. He was fined in four hundred ducats, and was ordered to break off relations with the nun under pain of a thousand ducats. The Suprema sharply reprimanded Inquisitor Padilla for inflicting so heavy a penalty and for exceeding his jurisdiction in prohibiting the unlawful connection. So, when the inquisitors fined Jaime Bocca, an unmarried familiar, in twelve ducats for keeping a married woman as mistress, the Suprema told them that it was none of their business. It is true that in two other cases of familiars, fined in twenty ducats each for keeping mistresses, the comment is simply that the rigor was excessive.[832]
The same principle, as we have seen, was observed in the treatment of solicitation. The question of morals was studiously excluded, as a matter entirely beyond the purview of the Inquisition, and the only point considered was the technical one whether cases came within papal definitions drawn up to safeguard the sacrament of penitence. The same remark applies to the vigorous prosecution of those who held simple fornication to be no sin.There was no attempt to repress the sin itself, for this was beyond the faculties conferred on the Inquisition, but merely to ascertain and punish the mental attitude of the accused.
As time passed on, however, and as the heretics who were the legitimate objects of the Holy Office grew scarce, there arose a tendency to enlarge its sphere of action and to assume the position of acustos morum. This has been seen in the censorship, which, during the later period, came to be applied not only to obscene books but to all manner of works of art that did not accord with the censor’s standard of decency.
From this it was an easy step to intervene in the private lives of individuals, in matters wholly apart from its legitimate jurisdiction, of which we find occasional examples in the later period of decadence. Thus, in 1784, Josef Mas was prosecuted in Valencia for singing an improper song at a dance, and in 1791, there is a prosecution of Manuel de Pino for “indecent and irreligious acts.†In 1792 the Barcelona tribunal takes the testimony of Ramon Seroles of Lloc, with respect to the scandalous life of the parish priest of that place and his abuse of the holy oils. In 1810 the Valencia tribunal is investigating Rosa Avinent, keeper of a tobacco-shop, for suspicion of maltreating some children in her house. In 1816 the Santiago tribunal sentences Don Miguel Quereyzaeta, a post-office official, to leave the city where he has led a disorderly and scandalous life, and charges him to reconcile himself to his wife and to live with her. In 1819, Don Antonio Clemente de Polar is prosecuted by the Madrid tribunal for propositions and for dressing in such wise as to satisfy the passions and for other excesses.[833]
THE SEAL OF CONFESSION
In these and similar cases, it may be assumed that the parties inculpated richly deserved correction, but this sporadic defence of virtue and punishment of vice was much more likely to encourage the gratification of malice than to elevate the standard of public morals, and the employment of the tremendous machinery of the Inquisition in such matters marks the depth of its fall from its former height. Had its object from the beginning been the purification of morals as well as of religion, possibly the awe which it inspired in all classes might have resulted in some ethical improvement but, during the time of its power, the impression that it produced was that morals were of slender account in comparisonwith faith and, in the day of its decline, these occasional attempts to extend its jurisdiction could only produce exasperation without amendment.
When, in 1216, the fourth Council of Lateran rendered auricular confession imperative, it was essential that the father confessor should be bound to preserve absolute silence as to the sins revealed to him. For a time there were some exceptions admitted, as heresy for instance, but eventually the obligation became universal and the schoolmen exhausted their ingenuity in devising the most extreme cases by which to illustrate the inviolability of what has become known as the seal of confession. Human nature being what it is, and priestly nature being subject to human infirmities, the violation of the seal has, at all times, been a source of anxiety and the object of rigorous punishment, administered to the secular clergy by the spiritual courts, and to the regulars by their superiors. The Roman Inquisition, in the first half-century of its existence, assumed exclusive cognizance of the offence, and demanded that all offenders, whether secular or regular, should be tried by its tribunals, but, in 1609, it abandoned its jurisdiction and left them to their bishops and prelates.[834]
As the heresy involved in betraying the confidence of the penitent was only an inferential error as to the sacrament—an artificial pretext like that devised with regard to solicitation—the Spanish Inquisition did not hold it to be comprised in the general delegation of faculties, but that a special papal commission was requisite. No attempt seems to have been made to obtain this until 1639, when, on October 11th, the Suprema addressed Philip IV a consulta setting forth that numerous denunciations were received by the tribunals against confessors who revealed confessions, and that inquisitors were asking urgently for permission to prosecute such cases as violations of divine, natural and political law, rendering culprits suspect in the faith, this being even more derisory of the sacrament than solicitation. It was notorious that the Ordinaries did not check it among the secular clergy, northeir prelates among the regulars, nor could, in such hands, any remedy be efficacious, because in public trials the witnesses would be bought off or frightened off, and there were no secret prisons to assure the necessary segregation of the accused. The king was therefore asked to procure from the pope, for the Inquisition, exclusive jurisdiction over the offence.[835]The Suprema probably did not exaggerate as to the denunciations received by the tribunals, for, in the minor one of the Canaries, we find it, in 1637, receiving testimony against Diego Artiaga, priest of Hierro, for this offence, in 1643, against Diego Salgado, priest of la Palma and, in 1644 against Fray MatÃas Pinto of Teneriffe.[836]
There can be no doubt that Philip, as usual, acceded to the request of the Suprema, but Urban VIII seems not to have been responsive. He had a plausible reason for declining, in the fact that the Roman Inquisition had abandoned its jurisdiction over the matter and, at the moment, he was at odds with the Spanish over the question of censorship and of the Plomos del Sacromonte. The offence was never included in the Edict of Faith, but occasionally it is enumerated among the charges against confessors on trial for solicitation, as in the cases of the Franciscan Fray Juan Pachon de Salas, in Mexico in 1712, of the Carmelite Ventura de San Joaquin in 1794, and of Fray Antonio Ortuño in 1807.[837]It was difficult to eradicate belief in the competence of the Inquisition and, as lately as 1808, José Antonio Alvárez, priest of Horcajo de los Montes, was denounced for this offence to the Toledo tribunal, but the trial was suspended, probably through doubt as to jurisdiction.[838]When the question was brought up squarely, in the case of Doctor Don Francisco Torneo, before the Valencia tribunal, after due discussion it decided, March 28, 1816, that it had no jurisdiction, and the case was accordingly dismissed.[839]
GENERAL UTILITY
The efficient organization of the Inquisition and the dread which it inspired caused it to be invoked in numberless contingencies, most diverse in character and wholly foreign to the objects of itsinstitution. A brief enumeration of a few of these will serve to complete our survey of its activity and, trivial as they may seem, to illustrate how powerful was the influence which it exercised over the social life of Spain.
The value of its services, arising from the indefinite extent of its powers, was recognized early. In 1499, a Benedictine monastery complained to Ferdinand that it had pledged a cross to a certain Pedro de Santa Cruz and could not recover it, as he had placed himself under protection of Dominicans, who claimed exemption from legal processes. Ferdinand thereupon ordered the inquisitors of the city to settle the matter; they neglected it and he wrote again peremptorily, instructing them to seize the cross and do justice between the parties. In April, 1500, the king instructs the Valencia tribunal to recover for Don Ramon López, of the royal guard, two runaway slaves and some plate which they had stolen.[840]Evidently there was no little variety of duties expected of the Holy Office.
In 1518 a nunnery of Clares, in Calatayud, complained that, within ten paces of their house, there had been built a Mercenarian convent of which the inmates were disorderly; the nuns could not walk in their garden without being seen and great scandals were apprehended. Charles V applied to Leo X to have the Mercenarians replaced by Benedictines or Gerónimites and the Inquisition was invoked to assist.[841]Parties sometimes obtained papal briefs to have their suits transferred to the tribunals. In 1548 Doña Aldonza Cerdan did this in a litigation with Don Hernando de la CaballerÃa and, in 1561, Doña Isabel de Francia in a suit with Don Juan de Heredia. In both cases the inquisitors of Saragossa refused to act until Inquisitor-general Valdés ordered them to do so.[842]All inquisitors were not thus self-restrained, for when, about this time, a general command was issued forbidding them to prosecute for perjury committed in other courts, it shows that they had been asked to do so and that some of them, at least, were ready to undertake such business.[843]In 1647, when the prevalence of duelling called for some effective means of repression, among the remedies proposed was that sending a challenge should be made a matter for the Inquisition, on the ground that the infamyaccruing to the offender and his descendants would be the most effective discouragement to punctilious gentlemen.[844]The suggestion apparently was not adopted, but it illustrates the readiness to have recourse to the elastic jurisdiction of the Holy Office.
The Jesuits found the Inquisition of much service when, through the favor of Olivares, they were enabled to invoke its intervention in one of their quarrels with the Dominicans. In 1634, Fray Francisco Roales issued a pamphlet against the Society and Dr. Espino, an ex-Carmelite, published two others. They were answered by Padre Salazar and there the matter might have ended, but the Jesuits appealed to Philip IV and to Olivares, who promised satisfaction and ordered the Inquisitor-general Sotomayor (himself a Dominican) to take action, with the significant hint that he would be watched. A royal decree of January 29, 1635, rebuked the Suprema for lack of zeal, and ordered it to act with all diligence and to inflict severe punishment. It responded promptly on February 1st with an edict suppressing the pamphlet of Roales under heavy penalties, but this did not suffice and, on June 30th, it prohibited every one, layman or ecclesiastic, from saying anything in private or in public, derogatory to any religious Order or the members thereof, under exemplary penalties, to be rigorously executed—a decree which had to be repeated in 1643.
On June 27, 1635 the three obnoxious pamphlets were burned with unprecedented ceremony. There was a solemn procession of the officials and familiars, with the standards of the Inquisition, while a mule with carmine velvet trappings bore a chest painted with flames in which were the condemned writings. It traversed the principal streets to the plaza, where a fire was lighted; a herald, with sound of trumpet, proclaimed that the Company of Jesus was relieved of all that had been said against it and that these papers were false, calumnious, impious and scandalous; they were cast by the executioner into the flames and then the box and the procession wended their way solemnly back to the Dominican College of San Tomas. The effect of the demonstration, however, was somewhat marred by the populace believing that the box contained the bones of a misbelieving Jew, and accompanying the procession with shouts of “Death to the dogs!†and other pious ejaculations.
General Utility
Espino was arrested and incarcerated—not for the last time for,in 1643, he boasted that he had been imprisoned fifteen times for his attacks on the Jesuits. Roales was more fortunate; he was a chaplain of Philibert of Savoy; his pamphlet had been printed in Milan and he was safe in Rome, but a printer who had issued an edition in Saragossa was arrested and presumably sent to the galleys, and a Dominican Fray Cañamero, who had circulated the three pamphlets, was ordered to be arrested but seems to have saved himself by flight. Still the irrepressible conflict continued and the Inquisition was kept busy in prosecuting offenders and suppressing obnoxious utterances. It even construed its duty so rigidly that it condemned a memorial of the unfortunate creditors who suffered by the bankruptcy, in 1645, of the Jesuit College of San Hermengildo in Seville, when some three hundred depositors lost four hundred and fifty thousand ducats, and were struggling to rescue the remaining assets from the hands of the Jesuits.[845]
The Granada tribunal did not pause to enquire as to its jurisdiction when, in May 1646, owing to the scarcity of wheat, there were bread-riots and the mob had control of the city. It summoned all the grain-measurers and porters, under pain of excommunication, to appear before it on a matter of importance. By examining them, considerable stores of hidden corn were revealed; the corregidores registered it and the price was fixed at forty-two reales.[846]This was volunteer action but, in 1648, when a pestilence was raging in Valencia, the tribunal was called upon to maintain the quarantine at one of the city gates. The king, on February 1, 1649, notified the Suprema that the pest had ceased in Valencia, but that it was violent at Cádiz, San Lucar and other places, and urged continued vigilance, to which the Suprema replied that it had, since April, done its full duty, but that the municipal officials were very negligent, and it asked him to order them to do their share.[847]Apparently the Inquisition was relied upon for quarantine work. As lately as July 2, 1818, the Suprema wrote to all the tribunals that the plague had appeared at Tangier and threatened Spain with the most terrible of calamities. The king had ordered energetic precautions, in which all branches ofthe Government must coöperate, and it was no time for hesitation or scruples. The tribunals were therefore instructed to keep watch on the officials of all departments and see that they did their duty and, if they could devise more effective measures, they were invited to make suggestions.[848]
The unlimited interference of the Inquisition with matters pertaining to episcopal supervision is seen in two or three cases tried by the Madrid tribunal. May 5, 1656, it sentenced the priest, Francisco Pérez Lozano, to exile for a year from various places for his share in founding a confraternity with what were called “statutos execrables.†February 6, 1688, Juan Moreno de Piedrola, a priest of the Congregation of San Salvador, who proposed to establish a congregation, in the rules of which the tribunal discovered censurable propositions, was ordered to surrender all the papers and not to discuss it in word or writing and was exiled until he should have permission to return, with warning that otherwise he would be prosecuted with the full rigor of the law. As he was not required to abjure evende levi, it shows that there was no suspicion of heresy involved. Then, in 1697, Fray Juan Maldonado, of the Order of San Juan de Dios, had three years of exile for preaching, in the church of his convent at Ciudad Real, a sermon characterized as burlesque and scandalous, though there is no hint of its being in any way heretical.[849]
General Utility
This perpetual intrusion into all manner of affairs, irrespective of heresy rather increased towards the last. In 1788, Antonio López was prosecuted in Valencia for selling rosaries with bones made of clay as relics. In 1789, Andrés Joáñez, a coachman, for a conversation on a superstitious subject. In 1791, the Carmelite Fray Bonifacio de San Pablo, for attempting to print a satirical paper; Josef de la Rosa, in Cordova, for carrying a consecrated wafer in a relic-bag; Vicente Felerit, in Valencia, for a “vain observance.†In 1795, Don Miguel Catalá, fiscal in Buñol and Josef Sánchez Masquifa, a scrivener, were prosecuted for using, in drafting testaments, the words “diversos atributos,†when alluding to the Trinity. In 1799, Juan RodrÃguez, a priest in Santiago, for assisting and performing ceremonies in a mock-marriage. In 1808, Josef Várquez de la Torre, a scrivener of Valencia, for drawing a deed of separation between spouses. In1818, in Valencia, Vicente Maicas, priest of Cedrillos, for not wanting his parishioners to die in the Franciscan habit.[850]As all these cases presuppose denunciation, they illustrate the popular estimate of the all-embracing powers of the Inquisition and the espionage under which every Spaniard lived.
In fact, there was scarce anything in which the Inquisition did not feel itself authorized to intervene. The latitude with which inquisitors construed their own powers is manifest in their assuming to issue licences to hunt in prohibited places, sometimes for their own benefit and sometimes for that of others. This was an abuse which the Suprema strove to correct by forbidding it in 1527, but it was so persistent that the prohibition had to be repeated in 1530 and again in 1566.[851]
As the Inquisition was supreme within its jurisdiction and claimed the right to define the extent of its powers, there was no one to call it to account for their arbitrary exercise. If any other body in the State felt that its rights were invaded, the only recourse was to the sovereign and we have seen how, under the Hapsburgs, the crown, with scarce an exception, decided in its favor.
THEInquisition may be said to have reached its apogee under Philip IV. We have had ample opportunity to see how that pious monarch yielded to its aggressiveness, until it became a virtually independent organization within the State, obeying the royal mandates or not, as best suited its convenience, and engaged in almost perpetual controversies with the other branches of the government, while the king, with rare exceptions, submitted to its exigencies. It is true that, in his financial distress, he compelled the restitution of a small part of the confiscations and that he asserted the royal prerogative of making and unmaking inquisitors-general and of appointing members of the Suprema but, when once he had exercised the power, his appointees acted in independence. It would not be easy to imagine a more complete assertion of irresponsible authority than the sudden arrest of Villanueva—of a leading minister in the absence of the sovereign, at a time of the utmost confusion, when nothing would have been risked by delay, save perhaps that the sovereign might have refused assent. Yet not only did Philip condone this but he threw himself into the persecution of his favorite with such ardor that he could scarce restrain himself from risking a rupture with the Holy See in defence of the Holy Office. Under the disastrous regency of Maria Ana of Austria and the reign of Carlos II, the royal authority almost disappeared and, although this gave such men as Nithard and Valladares opportunity to assert still further the independence of the Inquisition, it also enabled Don John of Austria to banishNithard and the other governmental departments to emulate its disregard of the royal authority. There was an omen of the future when they united, in 1696, in the Junta Magna, to protest against the encroachments of the Inquisition and to demand its withdrawal into its proper limits, although by dextrous management the attempt was baffled.
With the advent of the Bourbon dynasty a new element entered into the political organization of Spain. The absolutism of Louis XIV had embraced the Church as well as the State, and the Gallican theories as to the power of the Holy See were encouraged in order to assure the headship of the crown. It was inevitable that Philip V and his French advisers should entertain very different views as to the relations between the king and the Inquisition from those which had been current for a century. Even at the height of the War of Succession, we have seen how Philip, in the affair of Froilan DÃaz, intervened as master and regulated the relations between the inquisitor-general and the Suprema, how he undertook to reform the Inquisition and how, in many ways he curbed its audacity. But for a court intrigue, working through Philip’s uxoriousness, Macanaz might have succeeded in his project of rendering the Inquisition wholly subordinate to the crown, and though the vindictiveness of the Holy Office inflicted on him life-long punishment for the attempt, this did not prevent the continued assertion of the royal supremacy, as we have had occasion to see in repeated instances and in many different directions.
PHILIP V
Philip’s assertion of the royal prerogative, however, by no means implied any lack of zeal for the faith and, as long as the Inquisition confined itself to its duties of exterminating heresy, it had his cordial support. Frequent allusions have been made above to its renewed activity during the period following the close of the War of Succession. Full statistics are lacking, but in sixty-four autos, between 1721 and 1728, there appeared nine hundred and sixty-two culprits and effigies, of whom one hundred and fifty-one were relaxed.[852]That this met his hearty approbation ismanifested by the letter which he addressed, January 14, 1724, to his son Luis, when abdicating in his favor. In this the exhortations breathing a lofty morality are accompanied with earnest injunctions to maintain and protect the Inquisition, as the bulwark of the faith, for to it is attributable the preservation of religion in all its purity in the states of Spain, so that the heresies which have afflicted the other lands of Christendom, causing in them ravages so deplorable and horrible, have never gained a foothold there.[853]Small-pox cut short the reign of Luis to seven months, after which Philip was obliged to resume the weary burden, till death released him, July 9, 1746, and if, during this later portion of his government, the Inquisition was less busy, this may safely be attributed to flagging energies and lack of material and not to any restraint on the part of the sovereign. The punishment which he allowed it to inflict on Belando, for the history of his reign of which he and his queen, after careful scrutiny, had accepted the dedication, shows how untrammelled was its exercise of its recognized functions.
Yet Philip unwittingly started the movement that was ultimately to undermine the foundations on which the Inquisition rested. He brought with him from France the conviction that the king should be the patron of letters and learning, and he had the ambition to rule over a people of culture. He aroused the slumbering intellect of Spain by founding the Academies of Language and of History and of Medicine, the Seminary of the Nobles, and the National Library, and he replaced for Catalonia the University of Lérida by that of Cervera. Notwithstanding the vigilance of the censorship, it was impossible that the awakening intelligence of the nation, thus stimulated, should not eagerly grasp at the forbidden fruit of modern philosophism, all the more attractive in that it had to be enjoyed in secret. Fernando VI, from 1746 to 1759, followed his father’s example, in encouraging the spread of culture. Carlos III was even more energetic in urging the enlightenment of his subjects, and thus there was gradually formed a public, few in numbers, it is true, but including the statesmen in power, which had lost the old Spanish conception that purity of faith was the first essential, and regarded the Inquisition as an incumbrance, save in so far as it might be used for political ends. The Inquisition still inspired fear, and the case of Olavide shows thatthese opinions had to be cherished in secret, but the number who entertained them was indicated when the bonds of society were loosened and the national institutions crumbled in the earthquake of the Napoleonic invasion.
Possibly the diffusion of this modern rationalistic spirit, insensibly affecting even those opposed to it, may partly explain the rapidly diminishing activity of the Inquisition. The great tribunal of Toledo, in the fifty-five years, from 1740 to 1794 inclusive, despatched but fifty-seven cases, or an average of but one a year.[854]This cannot be attributed to a lack of culprits, for bigamy, blasphemy, solicitation, sorcery and similar offences, which furnished so large a portion of the penitents of old, were as rife as ever. The fact is, that the officials were becoming indifferent and careless, except in the matter of drawing their salaries. When, on May 22, 1753, the priest Miguel de Alonso GarcÃa was to be sentenced in the audience-chamber with closed doors and in the presence of the officials, it happened that there were no witnesses of the solemnity because none of the officials were to be found in the secreto.[855]