DEMONIACAL POSSESSION
The intervention of the Inquisition might well be welcomed if it was always as rational and as effective as in an epidemic of the kind which troubled Querétaro (Mexico) in 1691. Two young girls who had suffered themselves to be seduced pretended to be possessed. The Franciscans andPadres Apostólicostook them inhand, exorcising them at night in the churches with the most impressive ceremonies, which spread the contagion, until there were fourteen patients, and the community was thoroughly excited. It would doubtless have extended much further, but fortunately the Dominicans, the Jesuits and the Carmelites, jealous of the rival Orders, pronounced the whole to be an imposture. The two factions denounced each other from the pulpits, the people took sides, and passions grew so hot that severe disturbances were impending. Both factions appealed to the Inquisition, which submitted the matter to calificadores. These decided that the demoniacal possession was fraudulent, and that the blasphemies and sacrilegious acts of the energumens and the violent sermons of the frailes were justiciable by the Inquisition. With great good sense the tribunal issued a decree, January 9, 1692, ordering the cessation of all exorcism and of all discussion, whether in the pulpit or in private. The excitement forthwith died away and the energumens, left to themselves, for the most part recovered their senses. Prosecutions were commenced against four of them and against the Franciscan Fray Mateo de Bonilla, which seem to have been suspended after a few years. One of the girls, however, who had caught the infection, had her nervous system too profoundly impressed for recovery; she continued under the inspection of the Inquisition, gradually sinking into a condition of confirmed hypochondria, until we lose sight of her in 1704.[755]
Cases of imposture were not infrequent. Whether this in itself rendered the impostor liable to prosecution by the Inquisition may be doubted but, in the deception, she was very apt to commit acts or to utter blasphemies which brought her under its jurisdiction. Thus, in 1796, we find the Valencia tribunal prosecuting Benita Gargori, a pretended demoniac, and Francisca Signes, an accomplice, for irreligious actions and utterances.[756]
The exorciser also occasionally laid himself open to inquisitorial animadversion. Thus, in 1749, Fray Jaime Sans, a lay-brother of the Order of San Francisco de Assis, used to visit the sick and pronounce them to be possessed, when he would make the sign of the cross and sprinkle them with holy water. He was denouncedto the Barcelona tribunal, which warned him to desist, for he had no power to exorcise, and threatened to proceed against him, whereupon he promised to obey[757]. Exorcists also sometimes abused their opportunities by committing indecencies upon their patients. I have not met with such cases in the Spanish Inquisition, but in this it would doubtless follow the example of the Roman Congregation, which, in 1639, ordered the prosecution of a most flagrant one, reported by the Inquisitor of Bergamo[758].
Considered as a whole, the influence of the Inquisition must have been decidedly beneficial in restraining the development of this disease, for experienced inquisitors recognized that the methods usually adopted only aggravated it. Cardinal Scaglia († 1639), in treating of these epidemics among nuns, remarks that the superiors, not content with exorcisms, commence prosecutions, examine witnesses and interrogate the pretended criminals suggestively and absurdly and threaten them with torture, thus extracting whatever confessions they desire and creating still greater disturbance in the convent and the city[759].
Allusion has already been made to the invasion of episcopal jurisdiction by the assumption of the Inquisition that outrages or insults offered to sacred images fell under its cognizance. For this there was more justification than for some other inferential heresies, for wilful irreverence to the objects of universal cult was reasonably regarded as causing suspicion of erroneous belief, and during the period of active persecution of crypto-Judaism and of Protestantism such offences were readily ascribable to heretical fanaticism.
INSULTS TO IMAGES
In one instance, at least, the secular magistrates exercised jurisdiction. In December, 1643, Madrid was much excited by a robbery committed on a miracle-working image of Nuestra Señora de la Gracia, when all its jewels, ornaments and vestments were taken, and worst of all, the image was left lying face downwardson the ground. Great efforts were made to detect the perpetrators of the sacrilege, and it was accounted miraculous when they were identified while investigating another robbery. They must have been tried by the criminal judges, for no mention is made of the Inquisition and all three were hanged in March, 1644, in presence of an immense crowd[760].
This was exceptional, and the jurisdiction of the Inquisition was generally admitted. We are told, by a writer of the period, that, when images of the saints are outraged by word or act, if the accused belongs to a nation infected with iconoclastic heresy, and the evidence is sufficient and he denies intention, he must be tortured. Overcoming the torture, without having sufficiently purged the evidence, he can be sentenced to an extraordinary penalty and to abjuration, eitherde leviorde vehementi: if he confesses both fact and intention and begs for mercy, he is to be reconciled, but if pertinacious he must be relaxed[761]. This however applies to cases of absolute heretics, in which the sacrilege was apt to be merely an aggravating incident, while the great majority of cases consisted of more or less reckless Catholics, whose punishment varied with the circumstances and was rarely vindictive. In the Toledo tribunal, from 1575 to 1610, there were but four cases, which illustrate the general principles of treatment and the extreme susceptibility felt with regard to any irreverence towards sacred objects. The first of these occurs in 1579, when Francisco del Espinar, a boy of 13, was tried for pulling up a way-side cross, playing with it until he broke it and cast the fragments into a vineyard, and then alleging that it was no sin because the cross was not a blessed one. He confessed freely and pleaded that it was not through irreverence, because he was drunk, but he was punished with sixty lashes and two years of exile. The second was in 1595, when Fernando Rodríguez was accused by three witnesses of throwing a stick at a paper image of the Virgin on an altar, tearing it and uttering a filthy jest, but he proved an alibi and the case was suspended. The next was in 1600, when Anton Ruiznieto was punished with abjuration de levi and three years’ exile, for maltreating a crucifix and using offensive words to it. The fourth, in 1606, illustrates the circumspection requisite to avoid even the appearance of irreverence, and the danger of denunciation whichconstantly impended over every one. Isabel de Espinosa was denounced by three witnesses because she had placed on a close-stool, which she kept in her living-room, a painted board on which were representations of Christ and some saints. A neighbor removed it and she replaced it, when the neighbor spoke to her and she changed its place. She was brought from Ocaña to Toledo and a house was assigned to her as a prison. In defence she explained that her mother-in-law had left her some old furniture, which her husband had just brought to the house; among it was this board, black and indistinguishable with age and, without examination, she had put it on the objectionable article, but when this was pointed out to her she had removed it. As she was a simple woman and there was no apparent malice, the case was suspended[762].
In contrast with the severity of the secular courts, as manifested by the Madrid case of 1644 above referred to, and the French case of the Chevalier de La Barre, the Inquisition was singularly merciful. In 1661, Francisco de Abiles, chief auditor of the Priors of St. John, for insults to an image of Christ, was only exiled for two years by the Toledo tribunal, which likewise, in 1689 merely exiled for one year Juan Martin Salvador for stabbing a cross[763]. Perhaps the instance of greatest rigor that I have met was that visited, in 1720, by the Madrid tribunal on a youth named Joseph de la Sarria. While confined in the royal prison he became enraged in gambling and, in his wrath, he threw in the dirt a picture of the Virgin and tore up another, for which he was sentenced to two hundred lashes, five years in the galleys and eight years of exile from Madrid and his native province of Galicia[764].
UNCANONIZED SAINTS
During the active period of the Inquisition, cases of this offence are singularly few. In all the sixty-four autos held in Spain, from 1721 to 1727, there is not a single specific instance serious enough to require appearance in an auto, indicating how universal and deep-seated was the popular reverence for sacred symbols. It is therefore significant of the spiritual and intellectual unrest characterizing the close of the century, that outrages on images became comparatively frequent. In the decade, 1780-1789 inclusive, there were sixteen cases; in that of 1790-1799, thirty-three and, from 1800 to 1810, nineteen, some of them, such as tramplingon the cross, indicative of iconoclastic zeal. Under the Restoration, there are but three cases on record.[765]
During this period the spirit of revolt manifested itself in other kindred ways. In 1797, 1798, 1799, 1800 and 1802 there were trials for throwing down and trampling on consecrated wafers. In 1797, in Valencia, Bernardo Amengayl, Ignacio Sánchez, Miguel Escribá and Valentin Duza were prosecuted for exhibitions burlesquing the saints and sacred objects. In 1799, at Seville, Manuel Mirasol was tried for a sacrilegious assault on a priest carrying the sacrament to a sick man. In 1807, Dr. Vicente Peña, priest of Cifuentes was prosecuted in Cuenca for celebrating a burlesque mass and Don Eusebio de la Mota for assisting him.[766]These were surface indications of the hidden currents which were bearing Spain to new destinies, and it is worthy of note that they almost ceased during the brief years of the Inquisition under the Restoration.
Akin to the function of preserving images from insult, was the reverent care with which the Inquisition sought to protect the cross from accidental pollution. A carta acordada of September 20, 1629, instructs the tribunals to suppress the custom of painting or placing crosses in recesses of streets or where two walls form an angle, or other unclean places, where they are exposed to filth, while all existing ones are to be removed or erased under discretional penalties. Another carta of April 19, 1689, recites that not only has this not been done, but that the custom of placing crosses in these objectionable places is extending, wherefore the previous orders are reissued, with notice that six days after publication will be allowed, subsequently to which the penalties will be enforced.[767]
In the exuberant cult offered to saints, there must be some central and absolute authority to determine claims to sainthood and to preserve the faithful from the superstition of wasting devotion on those who have no power of suffrage. St. Ulric of Augsburg is said to be the first saint whose sanctity was deliberately passedupon by Rome, in 993, and Alexander III, in 1181 definitely forbade the adoration of those who had not been canonized by the Holy See.[768]The assumption of such authority was essential, for the cult of a local saint was profitable to a shrine fortunate enough to possess his remains, and popular enthusiasm was ready at any moment to ascribe sainthood to any devotee who had earned the reputation of especial holiness.
How difficult it was for even the Inquisition to crush this eagerness for new intercessors between God and man, is seen in the disturbances which troubled Valencia for seven years, between 1612 and 1619. After the death of Mosen Francisco Simon, a priest of holy life, there developed a fixed belief that he was a saint in heaven. Chapels and altars were dedicated to him, books were printed filled with the miracles wrought by his intercession, his images were adorned with the nimbus of sanctity, processions and illuminations were organized in his honor, and the question of his right to a place in the calendar became a political as well as a religious one. It was in vain that the Holy See asserted its unquestioned right of decision and ordered the Inquisition to suppress the superstition. Popular excitement reached such height that an attempt was made to murder in the pulpit a secretary of the tribunal, when he endeavored to read the edict; a priest named Ozar was slain for opposing the popular frenzy, and Archbishop Aliaga, for six years after his election in 1612, was unable to perform the visitation of his see, because he would everywhere have met with the unauthorized cult which he could not sanction by partaking. The Suprema did its best by continual consultas to Philip III, asking the aid of the secular arm in suppressing this schismatic devotion, and enable it to publish its condemnatory edicts. Its efforts were neutralized by the Council of Aragon, backed by the all-powerful favorite Lerma, whose marquisate of Denia led him to favor the Valencians. It was doubtless his disgrace, in 1618, which enabled the Suprema to attain its purpose, when an energetic consulta of January 10, 1619, was returned with a decree in the royal autograph to the effect that, if certain five points that had been agreed upon were not executed within a month, the tribunal could be ordered to publish the edicts without further delay.[769]
UNCANONIZED SAINTS
In this case the Inquisition acted under special papal commands, but the growing abuse of the unauthorized cult of supposititious saints led Urban VIII, in 1634, to issue a general decree empowering bishops and inquisitors to repress, with penalties proportioned to the offence, all worship of saints and martyrs not pronounced as such by the Holy See, or relating their miracles in books, or representing them with the nimbus.[770]Under this the Index of Sotomayor, in 1640, and the subsequent ones, ordered the suppression of all images or portraits adorned with the insignia of sanctity, unless the persons represented had been duly beatified or canonized by Rome.[771]
Yet they did not condemn a work issued, in 1636, by a pious priest of Salamanca and Toledo, Francisco Miranda y Paz, urging the cult as a saint of Adam, the father of the human race, and audaciously asking whether this could not be done without the licence of the Roman pontiff.[772]In fact, what the Inquisition did in discharge of this duty is less significant than what it left undone. We have seen (Vol. I, p. 134) that the assumed martyrdom ofEl Santo Niño de la Guardiawas followed by a popular cult of the unknown victim. That cult proved exceedingly lucrative to those who exploited it and has continued to the present day, although Rome could never be induced to sanction it, yet the Inquisition prudently forbore to interfere with it in any way.[773]Similar abstention was observed in the celebrated case of the forgeries known as thePlomos del Sacromonte—inscribed leaden plates, accompanied by bones assumed to be those of the earliest Christian martyrs, exhumed in 1595, on a mountain near Granada. The forgeries were clumsy enough, but they favored the two points dearest to the Spanish heart—the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin and the Spanish apostolate of St. James. They were welcomed with the intensest fervor, a house of secular canons was erected on the spot, which grew wealthy through the offerings of pilgrims, and innumerable miracles attested the sanctity of therelics. Rome refused to admit the authenticity of theplomoswithout examining them; after a long struggle they were sent there in 1641, and after another protracted contest they were condemned as fabrications, May 6, 1682, by Innocent XI in a special brief. The bones of the so-called martyrs were not specifically condemned as spurious, but they were not accepted as genuine, yet the Index of Vidal Marin, while printing the condemnation of the plomos and of the books written in their defence, was careful to assert that the prohibition did not include the relics or the veneration paid to them; the Sacromonte is still a place of pilgrimage and, in the Plaza del Triunfo of Granada, there stands a pillar bearing the names and martyrdoms of the saints as recorded in the plomos.[774]Yet, so long as the claims of the martyrs were not allowed by Rome and the only evidence in their favor was condemned as fabricated, this was superstition, and its suppression was the duty of the Inquisition.
While it was empowered to do this by the decree of Urban VIII, it is not easy to see whence Inquisitor-general Arce y Reynoso obtained faculties to authorize the cult of supposititious saints not accepted by the Holy See. The success of the plomos led a learned Jesuit, Roman de la Higuera, and his imitators, to fabricate chronicles of early Christian times, principally designed to stimulate Mariolatry and belief in the Christianization of Spain by St. James. They were long accepted as genuine and, in 1650, Arce y Reynoso ordered the fictitious saints and martyrs who figure in them to be included in litanies as objects of veneration and worship.[775]
Still, the Inquisition asserted to the last its authority under the decree of Urban VIII. So recently as 1818, when Josef de Herrera, an apothecary of Xeres de la Frontera, desired to establish the cult of an engraving of the Trinity, copied from a picture venerated in the cathedral of Mexico, the tribunal of Seville prohibited the effort.[776]
THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION
The dogma of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin had a struggle for recognition through six centuries, before it was defined as an article of faith by Pius IX in 1854.[777]In Spain, where popular devotion to the Virgin was especially ardent, it had, in the seventeenth century, become almost universally accepted, except by the Dominicans, whose reverence for their great doctor, St. Thomas Aquinas, bound them to follow him in its denial. In this they had long been fighting a losing battle with their great rivals, the Franciscans, and of late with their still more bitter foes, the Jesuits. Successive popes—Sixtus IV, Paul IV, Paul V and Gregory XV—in vain sought to suppress the disputatious scandals by forbidding public discussion of the subject under severe penalties, and the two latter extended these penalties to those who should publicly assert the Virgin to have been conceived in original sin—but still the Holy See cautiously abstained from declaring the conception to have been immaculate. The enforcement of these penalties was confided to all bishops and inquisitors.
From 1617 to 1656, Philip III and Philip IV made the Immaculate Conception a matter of state policy, by long and earnest efforts with the papacy to decide it affirmatively, and negotiations for combined action were carried on with France, but the Gallican court responded only with pious phrases.[778]That in this the crown was but voicing the wishes of the people was manifested when, in 1636, a man who ventured, in Madrid, to assert that the Virgin was conceived in original sin, was promptly cut down by some passing soldiers, was arrested by the Inquisition, and as soon as his wounds were healed, was thrown into the secret prison for due prosecution under the papal decrees.[779]
The Dominicans and their followers found it hard to observe the discreet silence prescribed by the popes and, in 1661, the Spanish bishops united in earnest request to Alexander VII, representing that persons were still found who publicly denied theImmaculate Conception. Philip IV sent the Bishop of Plasencia to Rome, as a special envoy, to convey this memorial, resulting in the briefSollicitudo, of December 8, 1661, in which Alexander expressly abstained from defining it as a dogma, but forbade the teaching of the opposite, as well as stigmatizing the opposite as heresy, thus continuing the non-committal policy of his predecessors, to prevent discussions and quarrels without deciding the question. To this end he empowered all prelates and inquisitors to prosecute and punish transgressors severely, no matter what exemptions they might claim, and including even Jesuits. He also placed on the Index all books impugning the Immaculate Conception and likewise those which should tax unbelievers with heresy.[780]
This brief was received with great rejoicings by the upholders of the doctrine, who regarded it as a triumph. In Valencia it was made the occasion of a splendid festival, in which pasquinades on the opponents were plentiful. One, which was greatly applauded, represented a Dominican stretched on a sick-bed and watched by a Jesuit. A Franciscan opening the door enquires “How is the good brother?” to which the Jesuit replies “He is speechless, but he still lives.” It was doubtless to the temper thus evinced that we may attribute the suppression by the Suprema of the city’s official report of the celebration, the prohibition of one paper and the correction of another.[781]
UNNATURAL CRIME
The brief was promptly transmitted to the tribunals by the Suprema, with orders for its enforcement which show how delicately such explosive material had to be handled. They were cautioned that, when they or their commissioners were present at sermons preached by Dominicans, they must be careful that any action taken was such as not to create scandal. They were not trusted with prosecuting transgressors, but were ordered, beforehand, to transmit to the Suprema the sumarias with the opinions of the calificadores, and to await instructions. Apparently the customary jealousy arose between the episcopal and inquisitorial jurisdictions, for a carta acordada of 1667 calls for information as to whether the Ordinaries concurred in hearingcases, or whether they were treated as belonging exclusively to the Inquisition.[782]
It was impossible to make the angry disputants keep the peace, and the Suprema was busy in condemning and suppressing writings on both sides. In 1663 we find it ordering the seizure at the ports of two books printed in Italy. An edict of January 4, 1664, suppressed fifteen books and tracts, issued in 1662 and 1663, as indecent and irreverent to the Holy See, the Religion of St. Dominic and the Angelic Doctor Aquinas. Another decree, of December 7, 1671, suppressed two books indecently attacking the Dominicans and another of prayers and exercises for the devotion of the Immaculate Conception by the Franciscan Provincial Bonaqua. Books of devotion thus assumed a controversial character, and we can safely assume this to be the cause of an order, in 1679, to seize at Alicante and transmit to the Suprema a box of Dominican breviaries.[783]
I have chanced to meet with but few cases of prosecutions for impugning the Immaculate Conception, but they occurred occasionally. Thus, in 1782, Don Antonio Fornes, a pilot’s mate of a naval vessel, was tried in Seville for obstinately denying it and, in 1785, Don Isidro Moreno, a physician, and his son Joaquin, were brought before the Saragossa tribunal for the same offence.[784]
Inherited from classical antiquity, unnatural crime was persistent throughout the Middle Ages, in spite of the combined efforts of Church and State. It is true that, with the leniency shown to clerical offenders, the Council of Lateran, in 1179, prescribed for them only degradation or penitential confinement in a monastery, which was carried into the canon law, but secular legislation was more severe and the usual penalty was burning alive.[785]InSpain, in the thirteenth century, the punishment prescribed was castration and lapidation, but, in 1497, Ferdinand and Isabella decreed burning alive and confiscation, irrespective of the station of the culprit. The crime wasmixti fori—the law treated it as subject to the secular courts, but it was also ecclesiastical and, in 1451, Nicholas V empowered the Inquisition to deal with it.[786]When the institution was founded in Spain it seems to have assumed cognizance, for we are told that, in 1506, the Seville tribunal made it the subject of a special inquest; there were many arrests and many fugitives, and twelve convicts were duly burnt.[787]Possibly this may have called attention to the incongruity of diverting the Inquisition from its legitimate duties with the New Christians, for a decree of the Suprema, October 18, 1509, assumes that this had already been recognized, and it informs the tribunals that they are not to deal with the crime, as it was not within their jurisdiction.[788]This apparently settled the matter as far as the Castilian kingdoms were concerned.
UNNATURAL CRIME
In Aragon it does not appear that the early Inquisition took cognizance of the matter, as is shown by the curious connection of the crime with the rising of the Germanía. In 1519, the city of Valencia was suffering from a pestilence which had driven away most of the nobles and higher officials when, on St. Magdalen’s day (June 14th), Fray Luis Castelloli preached an eloquent sermon in which he attributed the pest to the wrath of God excited by the prevalence of the offence. The populace were excited and hunted up four culprits, who confessed and were duly burnt by the justiciary, Hieronimo Farragud, on July 29th. There was a fifth, a baker who wore the tonsure and was delivered to the episcopal court, which sentenced him to vergüenza. This dissatisfied the people who tore him from the spiritual authorities, garroted and burnt him. The governor was summoned, and the leaders of the mob feared punishment. There had been a scare concerning a rumored attack by the Moors, which had led thetrades to form military companies; these were further organized, elected a chief and swore confraternity, when, recognizing their strength, they utilized the opportunity of gratifying their hatred of the nobles and the rebellion broke out.[789]
In all this the Inquisition was evidently not thought of as having jurisdiction, but possibly it may have drawn attention to the crime and led to an application to Clement VII for a special brief placing it under inquisitorial jurisdiction. Bleda, however, tells us that, when the Duke of Sessa, ambassador at Rome, made request for such a brief, he gave as a reason that it had been introduced into Spain by the Moors.[790]Be this as it may, the brief of Clement, February 24, 1524, recites that Sessa had represented the increasing prevalence of the crime and had asked for an appropriate remedy, which the pope proceeded to grant. The form in which it is drawn shows that the matter was regarded as wholly foreign to the regular duties of the Holy Office, for it is addressed, not to the inquisitor-general as usual, but to the individual inquisitors of Aragon, Catalonia and Valencia, and it authorizes them to sub-delegate their powers to whom they please. They are empowered to proceed against all persons, lay or clerical, of whatever rank, either by accusation, denunciation, inquisition, or of their own motion, and to compel the testimony of unwilling witnesses. That the offence was not ecclesiastical or heretical was admitted by the limitation that the trial was to be conducted in accordance with local municipal law, but yet, with singular inconsistency, the episcopal Ordinary was to be called in when rendering sentence.[791]The Barcelona tribunal seems to have questioned, in 1537, whether the brief continued in force, for the Suprema wrote to it July 11th, that there had not been time to decide this positively, but that it might continue to act.[792]Whatever doubts existed were settled in favor of the Inquisition, and the Aragonese tribunals enjoyed the jurisdiction to the end. The Archbishop of Saragossa had complained of being thus deprived of cognizance of these cases, and it was restored to him by a brief of January 16, 1525, but, at the request of Charles V, Pope Clement, July 15, 1530,evoked all pending cases to himself and committed them to the inquisitors, with full power to decide them, in conjunction with the Ordinary.[793]
Castile was never included within the special grant. In answer to some inquiring tribunal, the Suprema replied, November 6, 1534, that the matter did not pertain to the Inquisition, nor was it deemed advisable to procure a brief conferring such power. This was adhered to. In 1575, the Logroño tribunal was informed that it could not prosecute such cases as it had no faculty and, about 1580, the tribunal of Peru was told not to meddle with it in any way, except in cases of solicitation.[794]The Consulta Magna of 1696 states that Philip II, towards the close of his reign, applied to Clement VIII for a brief conferring the power on the Castilian Inquisition, but the pope declined for the reason that the whole attention of the inquisitors should be concentrated on matters of faith.[795]
Majorca, although belonging to the crown of Aragon, was not specifically included in the brief of Clement VII, and never assumed the power. When, in 1644, the commissioner in Iviza reported to Inquisitor Francisco Gregorio about Jaime Gallestria, a cleric denounced for this offence, Gregorio replied that he had no jurisdiction; still the tribunal was accustomed to arrest offenders and hand them over for trial to the secular judges, so he sent a warrant for the arrest of Gallestria, even though he had taken asylum in a church.[796]It is symptomatic that arrest by the Inquisition, for a crime over which it had no jurisdiction, was considered a matter of course.
UNNATURAL CRIME
Sicily also belonged to Aragon, but was not included. In 1569 Philip II ordered the death-penalty to be rigidly enforced, without exceptions, and that the informer should receive twenty ounces from the estate of the convict, but this was slackly obeyed by the secular courts and, in the Concordia of 1597, he reserved the crime exclusively to the Inquisition, with the understanding that a papal brief should be applied for, relieving inquisitors from irregularity for relaxing culprits. Application was accordingly made to Clement VIII, but, after Philip’s death, the ViceroyDuke of Maqueda and the ambassador, the Duke of Sessa, at the instance of influential Sicilians, urged Clement to refuse, which he not only did but forbade the Inquisition to take cognizance of such cases. The tribunal complained that this deprived it of its jurisdiction over its own officials, to which the reply was that it was not the pope’s intention to exonerate them from it. The tribunal therefore continued to punish its own guilty ministers, and the number of cases cited would seem to indicate that the crime was by no means uncommon. The punishments inflicted were comparatively moderate—occasionally imprisonment for life or banishment, perpetual or temporary, from the place of offending, or deprivation of office with heavy fines.[797]
Dr. Martin Real, who tells us this, writing in 1638, further informs us that, throughout Italy, the crime was everywhere treated with a leniency wholly inadequate to its atrocity. The Roman Inquisition, moreover, took no cognizance of it. When, in 1644, some Conventual Franciscans rendered themselves conspicuous by sounding the praises of the practice, the Congregation contented itself with ordering their superiors to proceed against them with severity.[798]
In Portugal, João III had no sooner got his Inquisition into working order than he was seized with the desire to obtain for it jurisdiction over thepecado maao. This he pursued with characteristic obstinacy, while the papacy manifested its customary repugnance. It was not until after his death that Pius IV, in a brief of February 20, 1562, committed the decision to the conscience of Cardinal Henrique, confirming in advance what he might do—but trials were to be conducted according to municipal law. Henrique had no scruples, but, in 1574, he applied to Gregory XIII for confirmation and for using the process for heresy in these cases, when again the pope committed to him the decision and ratified it in advance.[799]In 1640, the Regulations prescribe that the offence is to be tried like heresy, and the punishment is to be either relaxation or scourging and the galleys. In a case occurringin the Lisbon auto of 1723, the sentence was scourging and ten years of galley-service.[800]
In their general hostility to the Inquisition, the Aragonese kingdoms objected to this extension of its jurisdiction. There were complaints by the Córtes and, in the various Concordias and settlements, there were concessions secured which gave to the secular judges some participation in the trials. Into the details of these more or less temporary arrangements it is scarce worth while to enter, except to mention that, in the struggle which resulted in the Concordia of 1646, Aragon gained the point that the crime was recognized asmixti fori, to be tried by either the secular court or the Inquisition, according to priority in commencing action, and that familiars were included in this.[801]
The current practice may be gathered from the answers of Valencia and Saragossa, in response to inquiries by the Suprema, in 1573. In Valencia arrest was accompanied by sequestration, but not in Aragon, where the crime did not entail confiscation. In Aragon, when a new inquisitor was inducted, the papal briefs were presented to him and he accepted them, and all sentences commenced by qualifying the inquisitors asjuezes comisarios apostolicos para conocer en el crimen de sodomia, showing that this was a special jurisdiction. The routine of procedure in the two tribunals did not vary much; the process was somewhat simpler than in heresy trials, the accused was allowed ample means of defence in counsel, advocates and procurators, witnesses’ names were not suppressed, except in Valencia when the accused was of high rank, in which case the Suprema was consulted. After the publication of evidence, the procurator had the right to examine the witnesses. The Concordia of 1568 had provided that convicts should not appear in autos, but in Aragon this was left to the discretion of the tribunal, which generally exhibited them there.[802]
UNNATURAL CRIME
These reports make no allusion to the concurrence of secular judges, but the practice may be gathered from a letter of Philip II, March 17, 1575, to the Captain-general of Catalonia, where itappears that, when a convict was relaxed, the royal court demanded to see the papers of the case before pronouncing sentence. This the king pronounced to be wholly wrong and ordered the custom of Valencia and Aragon to be followed—that, when a case was ready for decision, the inquisitors notified the captain-general, who delegated judges to take part in the consulta, after which the sentence was to be executed without further examination.[803]
Torture was freely employed, even on the testimony of a single accomplice. This raised a question in Aragon, where the use of torture was forbidden, as the trials were to be conducted in accordance with municipal law, but the Inquisition replied that the brief of Clement VII had been applied for at the request of the secular judges, who had found themselves unable to convict for lack of torture, and desired, for that reason, the Inquisition to have jurisdiction—the truth of which assertion may well be doubted. In 1636 there was raised a question as to torturing witnesses who revoked, but it was decided in the negative.[804]
Punishment varied with time and place. In Aragon, spontaneous confession was encouraged by simply reprimanding the culprit, warning him and ordering him to confess sacramentally, and this was confirmed by the Suprema, in a decree of August 6, 1600. In Valencia, however, self-denunciation was visited with scourging and galleys and, if testimony of accomplices supervened, with relaxation.[805]For those accused and regularly convicted, the statutory and ordinary punishment was burning. When, in 1577, the Captain-general of Valencia had some hesitation as to his duty, in the case of two culprits relaxed to him by the Inquisition, Philip II ordered him to execute them promptly and, as late as 1647, in an auto at Barcelona, one was garroted and burnt.[806]Yet, on the whole, there seems to have been a disinclination to relax these offenders, who could not escape, as heretics could, by confession and conversion. In 1616 we find the Suprema asking the Valencia tribunal why it had not confiscated the estate of Dr.Pérez, convicted of this crime and, in 1634, it enquires whether there is any fuero prohibiting thepena ordinaria, when guilt has been fully proved and the offender is of full age.[807]About 1640, an experienced inquisitor informs us that, in Saragossa, the penalty for those over 25 was relaxation; for minors, scourging and the galleys, but he adds that this is not observed; he had seen many thus convicted and condemned to relaxation, but the Suprema always commuted the penalty.[808]
Ecclesiastics seem to have been regarded as entitled to especial leniency. In 1684, the Suprema called to account the Valencia tribunal for its benignity, in a case of this kind, when it replied in much detail. Two decrees of Pius V in 1568, it said, had prescribed relaxation, with preliminary degradation, in the case of priests and, in 1574, the tribunal had so treated the case of a subdeacon. Many authorities, however, held that clerics were not to be subjected to the rigor of the law for this offence, and it was the common opinion that incorrigibility was required to justify the ordinary penalty. This had been the practice in Valencia, especially since 1615, when a priest was convicted of a single act and, by order of the Suprema, was sentenced to an extraordinary penalty. This had since been followed in various cases, so that clerics were not relaxed unless incorrigible, and this was defined to be when repeated punishment showed that the Church could not reform them. This argument, moreover, precluded the use of torture which, as the tribunal pointed out, could be used only when the penalty was worse than torture.[809]