ANTONIO PEREZ
When, early in December, Philip at Tarazona held the solio in which he confirmed the acts of the Córtes, he followed it with a general pardon, liberating all those prosecuted by Dr. Lanz, except the jurists and lieutenants of the Justicia, who had counselled resistance and who were punished with exile. Cosme Pariente, an unlucky poet, was sent to the galleys as the author of the pasquinades which had stimulated revolt, and there was another significant exception. Philip’s inextinguishable hatred of his favorite still kept in prison Juana Coello and her seven children, the youngest of whom was born in captivity. Thus they languished for nine years until their gaoler had passed away. Philip III signalized the first year of his reign with pardoning those excepted in his father’s edicts and, in April 1599, Juana was setfree. She hesitated to leave her children, the eldest of whom was in her twentieth year, but she finally did so to labor for their release, which she accomplished in the following August. The friends of Pérez sought to have him included in the royal mercy, but were told that his offence was a matter of the Inquisition with which the king could not interfere.
Before relieving Aragon of his army, Philip caused the Aljafería to be fortified and lodged there a garrison of two hundred men to keep the turbulent city in check. To this the inquisitors objected strongly, and asked to be transferred to some other habitation, but he refused, as their protection served as an excuse for the garrison. They never grew reconciled to their unwelcome guests and, in 1617 and again in 1618, we find them complaining that the soldiers exercised control over the castle and that their audacious pretensions diminished greatly the popular respect due to the Holy Office.[551]Their remonstrances were unheeded until, in 1626, Philip IV, as a special favor transferred the garrison to Jaca.
Pérez and his friends had succeeded in reaching Béarn, where they were welcomed by the governess, Catherine, sister of Henry IV. Imagining that a small force would raise the Aragonese in defence of their liberties, they persuaded Henry to try the experiment, to be followed, in case of success, by an army of fifteen or twenty thousand men, to wrench from Spain Aragon, Catalonia and Valencia, and form a republic under French protection. In February, 1592, therefore, some fifteen hundred or two thousand Béarnese, under the leadership of Martin Lanuza, Gil de Mesa, Manuel Don Lope, and Diego de Heredia attempted an invasion, but the Aragonese rose against them. Embarrassed by the deep snows in the mountains, they attempted to retreat but were vigorously attacked and most of them were taken prisoners, including Dionisio Pérez, Francisco de Ayerbe and Diego de Heredia. Vargas liberated the Béarnese, but the refugees were sent to Saragossa, where they expiated their treason on the scaffold.
In spite of this misadventure, Pérez was warmly welcomed and was pensioned by Henry IV, as a personage of importance, a statesman versed in all the arts of Spanish diplomacy. The peace of Vervins, however, in 1598 reduced him to insignificance. Age and infirmities overtook him and his adventurous existence terminatedin misery, November 3, 1611, when he manifested every sign of fervent Catholicism. After his death, Juana Coello and his children undertook the vindication of his memory and solicited to be heard in his defence. It was not, however, until January 22, 1613 that the Suprema presented to Philip III a consulta recommending that the widow and children should be heard by the Saragossa tribunal. Sentences renderedin absentia, as we have seen, were never regarded as conclusive, but the tribunal was unforgiving. It interposed delays and then, on March 16, 1615, it rendered an adverse judgement. This the Suprema refused to confirm and, after an obstinate resistance, the tribunal, on June 19th was forced to utter a sentence absolving the memory and fame of Antonio Pérez, declaring the limpieza of his blood and pronouncing that his descendants were under no disabilities. Nothing, however, was said about removing the confiscation of his property, probably because this had been decreed both by the secular sentence of July 17, 1590 and by the inquisitorial one of October 20, 1592.[552]
OCCASIONAL CASES
Thus in this, the most prominent instance of inquisitorial political intervention, the Holy Office was invoked only as a last resort, when all other methods had failed, and, when it was called in, so far from being the obsequious instrument of the royal will, it resolutely sought to advance its own interests with little regard for the policy of the monarch.
Yet the impression made at the time is reflected in the report of the Venetian envoy, Agostino Nano, in 1598, when he says that the king can be termed the head of the Inquisition, for he appoints the inquisitors and officials. He uses it to hold in check his subjects and to punish them with the secrecy and severity of its procedure, when he cannot do so with the ordinary secular authority of the Royal Council. The Inquisition and the Royal Council mutually help each other in matters of state for the king’s service.[553]This was a not unnatural conclusion to draw from a case of this nature, but the royal power, by this time, was too securely intrenched to require such aid. It was only the peculiar features of the Aragonese fueros that called for the invention of a charge of heresy in a political matter. The Inquisition, as a rule, considered it no part of its duties to uphold the royal power for, in 1604, we find it sentencing Bartolomé Pérez to a severe reprimand, a fine of ten thousand maravedís and a year’s exile for saying that obedience to the king came before that due to the pope and to the Church.[554]Thus the mere denial of the superiority of the spiritual power over the temporal was a crime.
Sporadic cases occurred in which special considerations called for the aid of the Inquisition, but they were not numerous and were apt to be directed against ecclesiastics, whose privilege exempted them from the secular courts. Such was that of the Jesuit, Juan de Mariana, distinguished in many ways, but especially by his classical History of Spain. He had served the Inquisition well as a censor of books, but in hisTractatus septem, published anonymously at Cologne, in 1609, in an essay on the debased Spanish coinage, the freedom with which he reprobated its evils and spoke of the malfeasance of officials gave great offence to the royal favorite Lerma and his creatures. Had Mariana beena layman there would have been no trouble in punishing him severely, but to reach the Jesuit Philip invoked the papal nuncio Caraffa and the Toledo tribunal took a hand. The whole proceeding was irregular and the pope was asked to render sentence, but, after a year’s imprisonment, Mariana was liberated, without an imputation on his character, and he died, in 1624, full of years and honor, at the age of 87.[555]
It is true that, when the Barcelona tribunal was battling to maintain its pretensions against the Córtes of Catalonia, it represented, in 1632, in a memorial of Philip IV, among its other claims to consideration, the secret services often rendered in obtaining information and in the arrest of powerful persons, which could not otherwise be so well accomplished. Its thorough organization, no doubt, occasionally enabled it to be of use in this manner, and there was no scruple in calling upon it for such work, as in 1666, when Don Pedro de Sossa, the farmer of the tax of millones, in Seville, absconded with a large sum of money and was understood to be making his way to France, the Suprema wrote to Barcelona and doubtless to other tribunals at the ports and frontier districts, with a description of his person and an order to arrest him and embargo his property.[556]
The prosecutions of the two fallen favorites, Rodrigo Calderon, in 1621 and Olivares, in 1645, were not state affairs but intrigues, to prevent their return to favor and were rendered unnecessary, in the one case by the decapitation of Calderon and in the other by the death of Olivares.[557]The secrecy of the Inquisition and its methods of procedure rendered it a peculiarly favorable instrumentality for such manœuvres, as was seen in the Villanueva case, as well as for the gratification of private malice, and it was doubtless frequently so abused, but this has no bearing on its use as a political agency.
THE WAR OF SUCCESSION
With the advent of the Bourbon dynasty there was a change. In the governmental theory of Louis XIV the Church was part of the State and subject to the dictation of the monarch. In the desperate struggle of the War of Succession, the advisers of the young Philip V had no hesitation in employing all the resources within reach and the Inquisition was expected to play its part. At an early period of the conflict, the Suprema sent orders to the tribunals to enjoin earnestly, on all their officials, fidelity to the king, who thus had the benefit of a well-distributed army of missionaries in every quarter of the land.[558]It was easy, as we have seen, for inquisitorial logic to stretch the elastic definition of heresy in any desired direction, and lack of loyalty to Philip was made to come within its boundaries. In an edict of October 9, 1706, the Suprema pointed out that Clement XI had threatened punishment for all priests who faltered in their devotion to the king, yet notwithstanding this there were some who in the confessional urged penitents to disobedience and relieved them from the obligation of their oath of allegiance. This was a manifest abuse of the sacrament and, as it was the duty of the Inquisition to maintain the purity of the faith and prevent the evil resulting from a doctrine so pernicious, all penitents so solicited were ordered, within nine days, to denounce their confessors, under pain of excommunication and other discretional penalties.[559]
The Inquisition, during the war, was especially serviceable in dealing with ecclesiastics, who were beyond the reach of secular and military courts, and this in cases where there was no pretence of heresy. The events of 1706—the capture and loss of Madrid by the Allies and the revolutions in Valencia and Catalonia—occasioned a number of trials for high treason. The Suprema was still in Burgos when Philip V informed Inquisitor-general Vidal Marin that he had ordered the arrest of Juan Fernando Frias, a cleric, who was to be delivered to the Inquisition at Burgos, to be tried for high treason, with all speed. The Suprema replied, August 13th, that it had placed Frias in safe custody, incomunicado; the inquisitor-general had commissioned the Prior of Santa María de Palacio of Logroño to serve on the tribunal, and there should be the least possible delay in the verification and punishment of the offence. It assured the king that he couldrely on the promptest fulfilment of his wishes and of thevindicta publica, for the Apostolic jurisdiction of the Suprema extended to the infliction of the death-penalty.[560]In its loyal zeal it took no thought of irregularity. Indeed, the Suprema seems to have issued commissions to tribunals to act in such cases. In 1707, Isidro de Balmaseda, Inquisitor of Valencia, signs himself as “Inquisidor y Juez Apostólico contra los eclesiasticos difidentes,” in the case of Fray Peregrin Gueralt, lay-brother of the Servite convent of Quarto, whom the testimony showed to be an adherent of the Archduke Charles, industriously carrying intelligence to the Allies and, on his return, spreading false reports, to the disturbance of men’s minds. In this trial the formality of aclamosaby the fiscal was omitted; the inquisitors had the testimony taken and on receiving it ordered the arrest of Gueralt without submitting it to calificadores.[561]
From this time forward the Inquisition was at the service of the State whenever it was required to suppress opinions that were regarded as dangerous though, when its interests clashed with those of the crown, the cases of Macanaz and Belando show that it could still assert its aggressive independence. As the century wore on, however, it became more and more subservient. A writer about 1750, while regretting that it did not repress the Probabilism of the fashionable Moral Theology, gives it hearty praise for its political utility; it is not only, he says, engaged in preserving the purity of the faith, but, in an ingenious way, it maintains the peace of the State and the subordination due to the king and the magistracy. In his wars Philip V made use occasionally of its tribunals in difficult conjunctures with happy results and therefore he honored and distinguished it throughout his reign.[562]
UNDER THE RESTORATION
Thus, as its original functions declined, a new career was opened. We have seen how its censorship was utilized to prevent the incursion of modern liberalism, and its procedure was similarly employed against individuals. With the outbreak of the French Revolution, its vigilance was directed especially against the propagation of the dangerous doctrines of popular liberty, and any expression of sympathy with events beyond the Pyrenees was sufficient to justify prosecution. As early as 1790, JacquesJorda, a Frenchman, was tried by the Barcelona tribunal for propositions antagonistic to the spiritual and temporal authorities, and prosecutions for such offences continued to be frequent. In 1794, during the war with the French Republic, even so important a personage as Don Antonio Ricardo, general-in-chief of the army in Roussillon, was on trial by the tribunal of Madrid for utterances in sympathy with occurrences in France and, at the same time, his secretary, Don Josef del Borque, was undergoing a similar experience in the Logroño tribunal.[563]War carried on in such fashion could not fail to be disastrous.
This prostitution of an ecclesiastical tribunal to temporal purposes was one of the reasons given by the Córtes of Cádiz for its abolition. Even its chief defender, Fray Maestro Alvarado, could not deny the accusation, but, he turned the tables by ascribing the fault to the Jansenists, to whom the orthodox attributed all the evils of the time. It was they, he argued who mingled religion and politics, and set the State above the Church.[564]He did not live to see the refutation of his dialectics, when Ultramontanism triumphed in the Restoration, and the political functions of the Inquisition became still more prominent. In 1814, a copy of the treaty of July 30th with Louis XVIII was sent to the tribunals in order that they might enforce the clauses appertaining to them, and when, in 1815, the news of Napoleon’s return from Elba was received, King Fernando, by an order of April 8th, included the tribunals of the Inquisition in the instructions given to the military and ecclesiastical authorities to keep watch on the frontier against surprises, and to guard in the interior against the artifices and seductions of the disaffected.[565]In fact, we may say, the chief work expected of the Inquisition was that of thehaute police, for which its organization rendered it especially fitted. April 8, 1817 we find it notified that the refugees, General Renovales and Colonel Peon, accomplices in the attempted rising of Juan Diaz Porlier in Galicia, were hovering on the Portuguese border. The tribunal of Santiago (Galicia) was therefore to put itself in communication with that of Coimbra, it was to devise means for their capture and, through its commissioners and familiars, find out what was on foot, for the security of the throne and of the altar required of theHoly Office extreme vigilance under existing circumstances. The inquisitor-general forwarded this to Galicia with orders to execute it “at once, at once, at once” and, not content with this, instructions were sent to the tribunals of Murcia, Córdova, Saragossa and Barcelona, all of which responded with promises of the utmost activity and of watchfulness over reactionaries.[566]So, in 1818 the Logroño tribunal reported that its commissioner at Hernani (Guipúzcoa) reported that he had heard a person utter the proposition“La nacion es soberana.”To this the Suprema replied that this was a matter of high importance and might lead to great results. Llano must make a formal denunciation with all details; also he must declare why he suspected Don Joseph Joaquin de Mariategui, and how he knows of his journey to France and England and his relations with the refugees there—all of which must be done with the utmost caution and speed and the results be reported.[567]
It is scarce worth while to multiply trivial details like these to indicate how efficient a political agency the Inquisition had become under the Restoration. Its activity in this direction continued until the end and when, in the Revolution of 1820 at Seville, on March 10th, the doors of the secret prison were thrown open, the three prisoners liberated were political.[568]
Besides these direct political services, the Inquisition was sometimes called upon by the State to aid in enforcing secular laws, when the civil organization found itself unequal to the duty. The most conspicuous instance of this is found in the somewhat incongruous matter of preventing the export of horses.
EXPORTATION OF HORSES
From a very early period this was regarded with great jealousy. From the twelfth century onward, the Córtes of Leon and Castile, in their petitions, constantly asked that the prohibition should be enforced and, at those of Burgos in 1338, Alfonso XI decreed death and confiscation for it, even if the offenders were hidalgos, a ferocious provision which was renewed by Ferdinand and Isabella in 1499.[569]Aragon, which lay between Castile and France, suffered from this embargo. The Córtes of Monzon, in 1528, petitioned Charles V for the pardon of certain citizens who haddrawn horses from Castile and were condemned to death and other penalties, to which Charles replied that he would not pardon those who had carried horses to France; as for those who had merely taken them to Aragon, if they could be pointed out, he would grant them pardon. Another complaint of the Córtes indicates the rigid methods adopted to prevent evasions. If an Aragonese went to Castile on business, he was allowed to remain ninety days; if he exceeded the limit, on his return his horse was seized at the frontier, even though at the same place by which he had entered.[570]Severe as were these measures, they were ineffective. Contraband trade of all kinds flourished in the wild mountain districts along the French frontier, and the prohibition respecting a beast of burden, which transported itself, was notoriously difficult of enforcement.
In 1552, we find the Suprema ordering the Saragossa tribunal to prosecute and punish one of its commissioners in the mountains of Jaca, accused of passing horses to France, but this was evidently due to the fact that the offender was entitled to the fuero of the Inquisition.[571]There was as yet no ingenious attribution of suspicion of heresy to this contraband trade and, when in 1564, the Córtes of Monzon prohibited the exportation of horses and mares from Aragon, the only reason alleged was their scarcity in the kingdom.[572]The third Lateran Council, however, in 1179, had denounced excommunication and severe penalties on all who furnished the infidel with warlike material, and this had been carried into the Corpus Juris; Nicholas IV had specifically included horses and had sharpened the penalties; Boniface VIII, in 1299, had placed the offence under the jurisdiction of the Holy Office, and had ordered all inquisitors to make vigilant inquest in their districts, and the prohibition was repeated in the annual bullsIn cœna Domini.[573]The south of France, and especially the contiguous territory of Béarn, had become interpenetrated with heresy and a colorable pretext was afforded of invoking the aid of the Inquisition to suppress the contraband traffic.
EXPORTATION OF HORSES
This was first confided, in 1573, to the tribunal of Saragossa,by a commission empowering it to act in the premises. It accordingly inserted in the Edict of Faith a clause requiring the denunciation of all who sold arms or horses to infidels, heretics, or Lutherans, or who passed, or assisted to pass, them to Lutheran lands. This brought in numerous denunciations but, as there were no means of knowing what became of the horses after they passed the border, the tribunal was powerless to prosecute and so reported to the Suprema. It replied, August 25, 1573, that further provision was necessary; assuming that Béarn was inhabited by heretics under heretic rulers, the tribunal could proceed against and punish, as fautors of heretics, those who bought or sold or passed horses to Béarn, even when it did not appear that they had been sold to heretics, and it was urged to be active in the matter. The edict was therefore modified to include, as fautors of heretics, all concerned in passing horses to Béarn; it was sent, with a secretary, to all the principal fairs where horses were sold, to be published in the church, with notice that the commissioner would receive any one who desired to unburden his conscience. Exportation was forbidden, unless the owner was known and would give security that the horses were not to be taken to Béarn, or else would present himself with his horses before the inquisitors within a designated time, so that note could be taken of the animals and an account be required as to their destination. Another device, which proved effective, was to register all the horses at the fairs, with descriptions and the names of the owners, who were required to keep an account of all sales and purchasers. This however, applied only to natives; as for Frenchmen and Béarnais, any horses that they had were seized without ceremony; if the owner was a Frenchman, the horses would be kept, awaiting instructions from the Suprema; if a Béarnais, he was seized with his horses and prosecuted, as being included in the Edict. Spaniards found with horses going towards France or Béarn, were treated like Frenchmen—the horses were sold to pay expenses and, if any balance was left, it was handed to the receiver. Pains, moreover were taken to find who made a trade of passing horses to France; they were arrested on some pretext and thrown into prison; if evidence were found against them, they were prosecuted; if not, after detention they were released under bail, because, as the inquisitors said, there was no penalty expressed in the Edict or in the laws of the kingdom. In view of the risk that the parties might apply for a firma or manifestacion, the Supremawas asked for further instructions, when it replied, July 1, 1574, that the prosecutions were to be conducted as in cases of heresy, the accused be required to give their genealogies and then, if recourse was had to manifestacion, it was to be met with an assertion that the case was a matter of faith. Yet the fraudulent character of this assumption is revealed in the admission that the secular magistrates could prosecute for the offence.[574]
Thus the zeal and activity of the Inquisition, working through its disregard of all laws, and its methods of procedure, virtually placed under its control the whole trade of the kingdom in horse-flesh. Encouraged by this, the Saragossa tribunal sought a still further extension of jurisdiction and, in 1576, it reported to the Suprema great activity in the exportation to France, Béarn and Gascony of arquebuses, powder, sheet iron for cuirasses and other warlike material, and it suggested an edict concerning that trade similar to that respecting horses. To this the Suprema assented, with the caution that it must be understood that these arms and munitions were intended for heretics.[575]The difficulty inherent in this probably prevented action, for I have met with no case of its enforcement.
It will be observed that the Saragossa tribunal pointed out that there was no penalty defined by law for the offence. This omission was rectified in the Córtes of Tarazona, in 1592, which deprived of what was known as thevia privilegiataa long list of crimes, including that of passing horses and munitions of war to Béarn and France, with the addition that it could be punished with the death-penalty.[576]
A decision of the Suprema, rendered to the Barcelona tribunal in 1582, was to the effect that, if horses were taken to France, it must be ascertained whether they were for heretics in order to justify prosecution by the Inquisition, but, if to Béarn, that alone sufficed.[577]In time this nice distinction was abandoned, although the fiction was maintained that it was a matter of faith. About 1640, an inquisitor informs us that it was customary to punish those who exported horses or warlike material to France, even though there were no evidence that they were for heretics, for theact was very prejudicial. The accused was generally confined in the secret prison, the trial was conducted as one of faith, and was voted upon in a regular consulta de fe, including the episcopal Ordinary. Unless the case was light, the culprit appeared in a public auto. If he belonged to the lower classes, he was sometimes scourged; if of higher estate, he suffered exile and a fine, together with forfeiture of the horse or, if it had been passed successfully, he paid double its value. In the case of a Benedictine abbot, who had passed one or two horses to France, the Suprema fined him in six hundred ducats and suspended him from his functions for a year. Sometimes the sentence included disability for public office for both the culprit and his descendants.[578]
Oddly enough, in the case of Antonio Pérez this matter emerges for a moment in a manner significant of the uses to which it could be put. In the Spring of 1591, when it was desirable to suppress Diego de Heredia, Inquisitor-general Quiroga wrote, March 20th to the Saragossa tribunal, that he was suspected of passing horses to France. By April 4th, the tribunal was taking testimony to show that, a year or two before, he had sold two horses to a Frenchman for three hundred and sixty libras and that they were to be taken to France. There had been no secrecy in the transaction and further evidence was obtained that Heredia brought horses from Castile to Saragossa, whence they were taken to the mountains and were seen no more.[579]The events of May 24th, however, rendered further researches in this direction superfluous.
When this peculiar inquisitorial function was abandoned, does not clearly appear. In 1667 the Barcelona tribunal prosecuted Eudaldo Penstevan Bonguero for exporting horses to France. Already it would seem that the cognizance of the offence had become obsolete for, in 1664 the Suprema had called in question the competence of the tribunal to deal with it, when it replied, July 23d, that it held a papal brief conferring the faculty. The Suprema asked for an authentic copy of this or of the instructions empowering it to act, but neither was forthcoming and, on November 11, 1667, the Suprema again asked for them in order to decide the case of Bonguero.[580]We should probably not err in considering this to mark the last attempt to enforce a jurisdiction so foreign to the real objects of the Holy Office.
COINAGE
A still more eccentric invocation of the terror felt for the Inquisition, when the secular machinery failed to accomplish its purpose, occurred when the debasement of the coinage threw Spanish finance into inextricable confusion. The miserable vellon tokens were forced into circulation at rates enormously beyond their intrinsic value, and statesmen exhausted their ingenuity in devising clumsy expedients to arrest their inevitable depreciation—punishments of all kinds to keep down the premium on silver, and laws of maximum to regulate prices, from shirts to house-rent. The rude coinage, mostly battered and worn, was easily counterfeited, and there was large profit in manufacturing it abroad and flooding Spain with it at its fictitious valuation. Sanguinary laws were enacted to counteract this temptation, and the offence was punishable, like heresy, with burning, confiscation and the disabilities of descendants. To render this more effective, it was declared to be a case for the Inquisition and, like the exportation of horses, there was an attempt to disguise it as a matter of faith. A carta acordada of February 6, 1627, informed the tribunals that it fell within their jurisdiction if any heretic or fautor of heretics imported vellon money for the purpose of exporting gold or silver or other munitions of war, thus weakening the forces of the king, and all such offences belonged exclusively to the Inquisition. But when this was done by Catholics, for the sake of gain, the jurisdiction belonged exclusively to the king and as such he granted it cumulatively to the Inquisition, with the caution that, in competencias, censures were not to be employed. A papal brief confirming this was expected and meanwhile such prosecutions were to be conducted as matters of faith. It is not likely that Urban VIII condescended to authorize such misuse of the power delegated to the Inquisition for, in little more than a year, Philip IV revoked this action and confined the cognizance of the offence to the secular courts.[581]
If, as we have seen, the Inquisition was not a political machine of the importance that has been imagined, this was not through any lack of willingness on its part to be so employed. When its services were wanted, they were at the command of the State and if this rarely occurred under the Hapsburg princes, it was because they were not needed.
JANSENISMis a convenient term wherewith to stigmatize as heresy whatever is displeasing to Ultramontanism, whether in Church or State, and it served as a pretext for the continued existence of the Inquisition, after the older aberrations were exterminated. As a concrete heresy, however, it defies accurate theological definition. It took its rise in the interminable disputes over the insoluble questions of predestination, grace and free will, as settled by St. Augustin and the Second Council of Orange, and accepted by the Church, till the use made of predestination by Calvin forced a modification by the Council of Trent, and the daring Jesuit, Luis de Molina, revived the problem. Then the discussion became a trial of strength between the rising Company of Jesus and its elder rivals, the Augustinians and Dominicans, when Clement VIII vainly imposed silence on the disputants. Cornelis Jansen, Bishop of Ypres, sought to vindicate St. Augustin in his work entitled “Augustinus,” around which the controversy raged, until the Jesuits won a victory, in 1653, by procuring the condemnation of the famous Five Propositions, drawn from the work—a condemnation to which the followers of Jansen assented, while denying that he had taught them.[582]
NATURE OF THE HERESY
Another contest, of which we shall see the results, was waged over the writings of Cardinal Henry Noris, in which the Jesuits suffered defeat. He was also an Augustinian and professor of ecclesiastical history at Pisa, who busied himself in vindicating the doctrines of St. Augustin. Two of his works, theHistoria Pelagianaand theDissertatio de Quinta Synodo Œcumenica, were accused, before publication, of Baianism and Jansenism; the MSS.were ordered to Rome and were carefully examined by revisers, who pronounced them orthodox and licence to print was granted. When published, interpolations in the press were charged and disproved. Noris was called to Rome as chief of the Vatican Library by Innocent XI and, as this was regarded as a step to the cardinalate, fresh accusations of Jansenism were brought against him. His promotion was deferred; eight theologians were set to work upon his books; their favorable report was confirmed by the Congregation of the Inquisition, and Innocent appointed him one of its consultors. Attacks on him continued, which he answered in five dissertations, printed in 1685, when Innocent gave him a cardinal’s hat and made him member of several important congregations, including that of the Inquisition, in which he served with distinction, until his death in 1704.[583]
France, however, was the principal seat of Jansenism, where the impalpable doctrinal points involved, after the decision of 1653, were obscured by more living issues. The Jansenists represented the more austere and puritanical portion of the clergy, as opposed to the supporters of the relaxed morality of Probabilism, of which the Jesuits were the foremost advocates—an aspect of the controversy which has been immortalized by Pascal. Besides, as Rome had decided against Jansen, those who had defended him were naturally led to minimize the authority of the Holy See, to disregard its condemnatory utterances as subreptitious, to assert the supremacy of general councils, and to exalt the independence and privileges of the Gallican Church, which, since the time of St. Louis, in the thirteenth century, had steadily resisted the encroachments of the papacy. There was a reinfusion of theology in the quarrel, when the Jesuits procured the condemnation, in the BullUnigenitus, of Quesnel’s views on sufficing contrition and inchoate charity, but this was only another incident in the struggle between rigorism and laxism.
While Jansenism thus was denounced as a heresy, it really was concerned much less with faith than with discipline and morals, and every one hostile to Probabilism, Jesuitism and Ultramontanism was stigmatized as a Jansenist. Louis XIV and Madame de Maintenon, who had persecuted the original Jansenists, were of the sect, because of their enforcement of theroyal prerogative; Bossuet was suspected of Jansenism for his defence of the Declaration of the Gallican clergy, in 1682, against the Ultramontane doctrines of the papal power; Cardinal Aguirre was a Jansenist, because he opposed the laxity of Probabilism, and so was even the Jesuit General, Tirso González, because he wrote a book to prove that the Jesuits were not all laxists. When, under the protection of Leopold, Grand-duke of Tuscany, Bishop Scipione de’Ricci, in his Council of Pistoja, in 1786, sought, without papal authority, to effect an internal reformation of his Church, he was a Jansenist and, after his protector had been transferred to the imperial throne, Pius VI, in 1794, had the satisfaction of condemning, in the bullAuctorem fidei, no less than eighty-five errors of the Council, mostly Jansenistic. In France the clergy were, for the most part, attached to Gallicanism and were largely rigorist, so practically Jansenism flourished and made itself felt in such measures as the expulsion of the Jesuits. The ex-Jesuit Bolgeni took his revenge by writing a book to prove that the Jacobinism of the Revolution was merely Jansenism in action. In fact, the Civil Constitution of the Clergy of 1790 was clearly Jansenistic because, without meddling with dogma, it embodied the democratic development of Gallicanism.
STRUGGLE IN FLANDERS
Spain paid little attention to the theological controversy over Jansen, though his works and those of his followers were duly condemned by the Inquisition.[584]It is a curious illustration of this indifference that when the great bibliographer, Nicolás Antonio, in defending Prudentius against the attack of Hincmar of Reims, pronounced as good Catholic doctrine the assertion of Prudentius that the blood of Christ was shed only for believers and not for unbelievers, this, which is virtually the same as the fifth of the condemned propositions of Jansen, escaped attention. The book was printed in Rome at the expense of Cardinal Aguirre; the Spanish Inquisition took no note of it in the Indexes of 1707 and 1747 and the passage is retained in the edition of 1788, produced under the auspices of Carlos III.[585]Yet Spain could not keep wholly out of the quarrel, for its Flemish provinces were a hot-bed of Jansenism which could not be eradicated from the University of Louvain. In 1649 Doctor Rescht, as the representative of the University and of its great protector Engelbert Dubois,Archbishop of Malines, came to Madrid, where he printed and circulated a memorial against the bull of Urban VIII and the Archduke Leopold so insulting to both that the Inquisition suppressed it, by a decree of September 13, 1650.[586]This did not cool the ardor of the Flemish followers of Jansen and, in 1656, Alexander VII felt obliged to address Don John of Austria, then Governor of the Low Countries, with an urgent exhortation to suppress the propagation of the condemned errors.[587]
The struggle continued and, soon after 1690, Carlos II was induced to issue an order that all Jansenists and Rigorists and other innovators should be dismissed and excluded from all offices and preferment, secular and ecclesiastical. Under this decree some of the prominent Jansenists were deprived and exiled, among them five doctors of Louvain—Gummare Huygens, E. van Geet, G. Baerts, R. Backz and Willem van den Enden. The persecuted sect appealed to Rome and procured from Innocent XII a brief of February 6, 1694, addressed to the bishops, forbidding that any one should be defamed for Jansenism on vague charges, or be excluded from any spiritual function or office unless convicted, in the regular order of justice, of having merited a punishment so severe. This trammelled episcopal action, for it was represented that the bishops could not be expected to undergo the expense and the labor of regular trials requiring absolute proof and subject to legal cavils, but it did not affect the secular arm and the Elector of Bavaria, then Governor of Flanders, reiterated in October and November 1695, to the Councils of the Provinces and the University, the repeated royal orders to exclude from allecclesiastical dignities and secular employment those suspected of Jansenism and Rigorism. Then, on March 1, 1696, Carlos modified his decrees in a manner to embolden the schismatics, who seem to have had abundant popular and official support. We hear of a writing in defence of the Catholic party being publicly burnt by the executioner in Brussels, in front of the palace and, on January 29, 1698, the people of Brussels went tumultuously to the Archbishop of Malines, Ferdinand de Berlo de Brus, demanding that he should withdraw his opposition to N. van Eesbeke, who had been appointed by the chapter of the church of Sainte Gudule as their parish priest. This condition of affairs led the Jesuit General González to address a memorial to Carlos warning him that this spirit unless suppressed would lead to the ruin of religion and the destruction of his dominions, and supplicating, in terms much less respectful than Spanish custom required, that he should represent to the pope the dangerous consequences of the papal brief, that he should punish those who procured it as well as the authors of a memorial presented to Carlos in 1696 and that he should order the Flemish bishops to disregard the pretexts put forward as to vague accusations. The Jesuits overshot the mark in this insolent interference, and the memorial was suppressed by the Spanish Inquisition, in a decree of September 28, 1698, as insulting to the authorities, secular and ecclesiastical, of Flanders.[588]
QUARREL OVER CARDINAL NORIS
Spain, though with less success than France, had long been struggling to emancipate itself from papal control, and it is a curious paradox that its most resolute assertion of political Jansenism arose from an attempt to discredit doctrinal Jansenism. Jesuit influence had gradually dominated the Inquisition and, as we have seen, Cardinal Noris was the special object of Jesuit hatred. When, in 1721, the Augustinian Manso published at Valladolid his “S. Augustinus de Virtutibus Infidelium,” the work was condemned and suppressed in 1723, while virulent attacks on him by Jesuits, in both Latin and the vernacular, were allowed free circulation.[589]The culmination came when the Jesuit PadreRábago, confessor of Fernando VI, controlled the weak and irresolute inquisitor-general Pérez de Prado y Cuesta, bringing about an anomalous condition in which the Inquisition defied the Holy See, the so-called Jansenists became the warmest defenders of papal authority, and the Jesuits asserted the supremacy of the regalías.
When Prado y Cuesta assumed his office, in September, 1747, it was announced that the Suprema had a new Index Expurgatorius in an advanced state of preparation by the Jesuits Casani and Carrasco. The printing was nearly finished, when the 1744 edition of theBibliothèque Jansenisteof the Jesuit Dominique de Colonia reached Madrid. This was substantially a polemical work, a catalogue of writers and books opposed to Jesuitism, and the Jesuits conceived the brilliant idea of printing it as an appendix to the Index, and thus suppressing at one blow all antagonistic literature. Some trifling omissions were made but, when the Index appeared, it contained Noris’sHistoria PelagianaandDissertatio. There were many other equally orthodox books, but these became the storm-centre as they had been repeatedly and formally approved by the Holy See, after special examination. Appeal was made to Benedict XIV, who addressed, July 31, 1748, to Prado y Cuesta a brief in which he recited the investigations into Noris’s books and pointed out that all questions concerning them had been finally settled by the solemn judgement of Rome, so that it was not lawful for the Spanish Inquisition to reopen the question, and much less to condemn the books. He could not patiently endure the injury thus without reason inflicted on Noris and he admonished Prado y Cuesta to find means to avert discord between Spain and Rome.[590]
The inquisitor-general adopted the favorite inquisitorial device of evasion. He replied that he had found the Index nearly printed when he assumed office; he had endeavored to have it issued without his name, but this was impossible; he had not known that Noris’s name was in it until the Augustinians complained, and he dwelt on the difficulty of making a change, especially in view of the grave reasons for which the books had been included. This correspondence was strictly secret, but the brief had been shown in Rome to the Augustinian procurador-general, who sent a copy to Madrid, where it was busily transcribed and circulated throughoutthe land, creating a tremendous sensation. Prado y Cuesta, addressed, September 16, 1748, a bitter complaint to Benedict, dwelling on the indiscretion of allowing such matters to be gossiped on the streets, and of affording such comfort to the heretics. The Jesuit party openly proclaimed the independence of the Spanish Inquisition in such matters, and asserted that its honor was at stake. Padre Rábago undertook to manage the king and induced him to inform the pope that he would not permit any invasion of the privileges of the Inquisition.
The affair dragged on. Portocarrero, the ambassador to Rome, hurried to Spain and came to a compromise with Prado y Cuesta, but Rábago, who would agree to nothing but the submission of the Holy See, persuaded Fernando to hold firm and the affair became a struggle between the regalías and the papal supremacy, in which Noris was merely an incident. Fernando wrote, July 1, 1749, to Benedict, stating plainly that he would not permit his rights and those of the Inquisition to be impaired. It was of no importance whether the faithful in Spain could or could not read the works of Noris, but it was of supreme importance to him to remove the discord excited among his subjects. Benedict replied moderately and the king relented in so far as to offer a compromise, which would have closed the matter had it not become doubly embroiled by a papal decree of September 24th condemning Colonia’sBibliothèque Janseniste, thus putting on the Roman Index a considerable section of the Spanish. In a letter to the Spanish agent in Rome, Rábago threatened in retaliation that the king would not only prohibit the works of Noris but the Roman Index itself. Still more audacious were the instructions which he sent to Portocarrero. Of these there were two sets, one long and argumentative, the other briefer, to be used only in case of necessity. It insolently asserted that the papal eagerness in defence of Noris was a new argument against infallibility; that Popes Liberius and Honorius, for suspicions no graver, had been anathematized by a synod, and it would be humiliating to his Holiness if the same should happen to him. Portocarrero was a trained diplomatist but, in an audience of November 26, 1749, he handed to Benedict a copy of this portentous document, translated into choice Italian, and the next day he wrote cheerfully to Rábago that he thought it would end the affair; the pope was displeased but, knowing his character, this need cause no alarm.