There is nothing more connected with the Philippine commissionership that is worth relating, except to explain the disappearance of its records. When the British captured Manila, October 5, 1762, these were not removed from the city. No attention was paid to them at first but, on March 12, 1763, an English Catholic and Don César Fallet, who had been penanced by the Inquisition, informed the commissioner, Fray Pedro Luis de Serra, that he was about to be arrested and the archives to be seized, whereupon he burnt them all and when the English came they found nothing. He was taken before the authorities where he told what he had done; the tribunal approved of his action and sent him renewed instructions.[577]
Although not directly connected with our subject, there is interest in observing the zeal with which the purity of the faith was conserved in the Far East. The commissioner, Juan de Arechederra, in a letter of July 6, 1724, from Manila to Francisco de Garzeron, inquisitor and inspector of Mexico, encloses a sentence rendered in Canton by Fra Giovanni Bonaventura de Roma, as delegate judge and commissioner of Giovanni de Cazal, Bishop of Macao, on Antoine Guigue, a French missionary convicted ofJansenism. Guigue, it appears, had obeyed orders in publishing the appeal of his archbishop, Cardinal Noailles, to a future council against the bullUnigenitus, he had maintained that councils are superior to popes, that popes sometimes erred and other Jansenist heresies, besides receiving and circulating Jansenist books. Moreover it was asserted that he had been guilty of solicitation when on missions in the interior. He had not obeyed the citations and had allowed the trial to go by default, wherefore his sentence was publicly read, March 1, 1724, in the church Siaò Nân Muen of Canton. He was suspended from all priestly functions, he was ordered to leave the province and betake himself to a convent in which he was to remain, performing certain spiritual exercises, until he had satisfied the pope, and all this under penalty of perpetual imprisonment for disobedience.[578]The Emperor of China at the time was ordering all Christian missionaries to leave his dominions, but the common danger was insufficient to allay the strife arising from Pasquier Quesnel’s speculations on sufficing attrition.
When, on January 9, 1570, Servan de Cerezuela arrived at Lima to open a tribunal of the Inquisition, the condition of Spanish South America was such as to call for energetic action if the colony was to respond to the hopes of those who had so earnestly urged the Christianization of the New World. The establishment there of the Holy Office had been asked for by many who viewed with dismay the prevailing demoralization, and we shall see whether its influence proved to be for good or for evil. Peru had been conquered by adventurers inflamed with the thirst of gold, who in the eager search for wealth had thrown off the restraints of civilized life. The Church exercised little or no moral power for, as the existing Viceroy, Francisco de Toledo, reported, he found on his arrival that the clerics and frailes, bishops and prelates, were lords of the spiritual and acknowledged no superior in the temporal. The king was exposed to constant outlay in granting free passage by every fleet to great numbers of clerics and frailes who came under the pretext of converting and teaching the Indians, but, in reality, many devoted themselves to accumulating wealth, plucking the Indians in the endeavor to return to Spain with fortunes. These priests kept prisons, alguaziles and chains, seizing and punishing all who offended them and there was no one to call them to account. The bishops pretended to have royal licences to return to Spain, laden with the silver which they had not already gathered and despatched in advance, and it was the same with the frailes.[579]This deplorable statement is confirmed and strengthened by Toledo’s successor in the vice-royalty, the Count del Villar, in 1588. The secular clergy, he says, from the bishops to the lower grades, have come to Peru, not to save the souls of the Indians but to gain money in any manner and return to Spain, while those who are ordained in the country are mostly soldiers discharged for ill-conduct or men of bad character. The regular Orders are no better, except to some extent, the Franciscans and more especially the Jesuits. The royal officials use their positions to make money and oppress the people. Few immigrants seem to come with the intention of honest labor, but are mostly vagrants living on the hospitality of those who will receive them. The descendants of theconquistadoresclaim positions in virtue of the services of their ancestors and, as they increase in number with each generation, it is impossible to satisfy them or the impostors who pretend to be descendants. With all this the Christianization of the Indians makes little or no progress. Altogether he assumes that the immigration, both lay and clerical, is thoroughly vicious, while the creoles, or native whites, are no better.[580]It is a community living in idle self-indulgence on the Indians and the Government.
As regards matters of faith, in the absence of the Inquisition, the jurisdiction over heresy, inherent in the episcopal office, had reasserted itself and was exercised by the bishops. As early as May 15, 1539, the Dominican Provincial, Gaspar de Carvajal, is found acting as inquisitor for the Bishop Fray Vicente de Valverde and, on October 23 of the same year, the secular magistrates honored a demand from the bishop for the process against Captain Mercadillo, in order that, as inquisitor, he should take cognizance of certain ebullitions of blasphemy. This inquisitorial power was exercised to its highest expression, for, in 1548, the first Archbishop, Gerónimo de Loaisa, held an auto de fe in Lima, wherein Jan Millar, a Fleming, was burnt for Protestantism. In 1560 the episcopal Provisor of Cuzco held an auto in which were relaxed the Morisco Alvaro González and the mulatto Luis Solano as dogmatizing Mahometans; in 1564 he celebrated another in which Vasco Suárez, Antonio Hernández and Alonso de Cieza were penanced, while Lope de la Peña was reconciled for Islam. In 1565 the Dean of la Plata reconciled Juan Bautista for Protestantism and condemned him to confiscation and perpetual prison and sanbenito.[581]Evidently the episcopal Inquisition was active; in 1567 the synod of Lima adopted regulations to govern its functions and when, in 1583, the provincial council, under St. Toribio, confirmed the acts of that synod, it was obliged, doubtless on representation by the tribunal, to except those regulations as matters which had passed beyond its control.[582]The bishops, however, did not surrender their jurisdiction without impulsion,for, as we have seen (Mexico, p. 199), the Suprema was obliged to order them, in 1570, to transfer all cases to the tribunal and it was found necessary to repeat this in 1586.
When the transfer was made there were four cases pending in Lima and ninety-seven in Cuzco, concerning which the fiscal reported that the Ordinaries had prosecuted many that were not matters of faith and were habitually settled for a trivial payment in oil. Inquisitor Cerezuela set a good example by suspending three and ordering the rest to be filed for reference in case of relapse.[583]One of the cases thus inherited by the tribunal may be briefly sketched as affording a vivid picture of the methods in vogue and the use made of the Inquisition, whether episcopal or Spanish.
Francisco de Aguirre was one of the prominent conquistadores. He had come well equipped to Peru in 1533, he had borne an active share in the conquest of Chile and then in that of the extensive interior province known as Tucuman, of which he became governor. Of this he was deprived, but about 1566 he was reappointed on the occasion of an Indian revolt, in which the Spaniards were murdered and only a handful of soldiers held out in the town of Santiago del Estero. With his customary energy Aguirre collected a force, defeated the Indians in a battle, in which he lost one of his sons, and re-established the Spanish dominion. Then he headed an expedition in search of a port on the Atlantic to afford easier access to the territory, but when near his destination his troops mutinied and carried him back as a prisoner to Santiago del Estero. To justify this the mutineers claimed to have acted under orders of the Inquisition of the Bishop of la Plata, with whom Aguirre had quarrelled on the subject of tithes. There were witnesses in plenty to hasty and irreverent speeches by the veteran soldier; for two or three years he was kept in prison, at a cost to him, as he declared, of thirty thousand pesos, and on October 15, 1568, by judges acting under commission of Bishop Navarrete “inquisidor ordinario y general” he was sentenced.His imprisonment was accepted as a punishment; he was fined in fifteen hundred pesos and costs and was required to appear as a penitent in the church of Santiago del Estero and make formal abjuration of his objectionable speeches. This he performed, but on the pretext of informality he was obliged to undergo the humiliation a second time, April 1, 1569, in la Plata. Of this a notarial act was sent to the Council of Indies to show that he was unfitted to be Governor of Tucuman, but it was too late, for in August of that year he received the royal confirmation of his appointment with orders to proceed at once to his seat of government. On the march a cleric with an order from the bishop sought to stop him, but he disobeyed and paralyzed the unfortunate messenger by sternly asking him “If I should kill a cleric, what would be the penalty?”
So far he had had to deal with the episcopal Inquisition in the hands of an opposing faction; even severer experiences were in store for him from the Holy Office, used as an instrument by the Viceroy Toledo who desired to get rid of him. One of the earliest acts of the Lima tribunal was to entertain a denunciation of him, in which his intemperate utterances were again brought forward, together with the further accusation that he had banished from Tucuman all who had been concerned in his prosecution and that he had said that he had been forced to confess to what he had not done. March 14, 1570, Cerezuela ordered his arrest with sequestration of property; Toledo undertook to execute the mandate and in reporting to the king stated that Aguirre’s government was such that most of the inhabitants were leaving the province. To arrest such a man was not an easy matter, but it was effected and he was brought three hundred leagues to Lima. Delays were unavoidable in obtaining and ratifying testimony at such a distance, through a hostile Indian country which, as the tribunal stated, was entered only once a year. Aguirre offered to waive the formality of ratifying the testimony in order to expedite the process, but the fiscal insisted on regularity and the trial dragged wearily on, as new evidence came in, mostly as to his arbitrarygovernment and other matters with which the tribunal properly had no concern. Aguirre fell dangerously ill and was transferred, July 19, 1572, to the house of a familiar, where he was kept strictlyincomunicadoand from which he was brought back, April 24, 1574, to listen to the publication of evidence. It was not until late in 1575 or early in 1576 that sentence was rendered condemning him to hear mass as a penitent on a feast-day when no services were allowed in any other church; he abjuredde vehementi, was cast in all costs, was recluded for four months in a convent and was banished perpetually from Tucuman. The trivial character of the charges is seen in the special stress laid on his having used charms to cure wounds and toothache, which he was forbidden to do in future—innocent charms, as he explained, employed only because no physician was at hand and surely pardonable in the wild warfare in which he had worn out his life. He retired to the city of Serena which he had founded, old, sick and penniless. He had spent thirty-six years and some three hundred thousand pesos in the king’s service; three of his sons, his brother and three nephews had died in the same service, and he was too poor and oppressed with debts to make his way to court and ask reward for his labors. To complete the destruction of his influence his two remaining sons were prosecuted on frivolous charges, but the cases seem to have been suspended after the desired result had been attained. His son-in-law, Francisco de Matienzo, who had endeavored to prevent his arrest, was prosecuted and fined in three hundred pesos. There were also seven other prosecutions against his followers, resulting in the imposition of fines.[584]Had all viceroys, like Francisco de Toledo, known how to control the Inquisition it might have been made a useful political instrument but, as we shall see, succeeding inquisitorspreferred to follow their own ends and it became a perpetually disturbing influence.
The bishops did not willingly acquiesce in the surrender of a jurisdiction which could be so profitably employed. That Archbishop Loaiza showed a recalcitrating temper is manifested by a letter of the Suprema directing that he should not style himself “inquisidor ordinario” in his pastorals and edicts. Another letter permits him to inspect the commissions of the inquisitors and their instructions if he desires, but it must be in the audience-chamber as they are not to be removed from there, except the printed instructions, of which a copy may be given to him on condition of his allowing no one to see it. There was evident friction despite the injunctions of the Suprema that a good understanding should be maintained.[585]This was increased when, in 1574, a royal cédula addressed to the bishops ordered them to exercise special vigilance and make secret inquiry about disguised Lutheran preachers who were said to be on their way to Peru. The prelates assumed this to be a grant of renewed inquisitorial power and undertook to exercise it, giving rise to no little trouble. Sebastian de Lartaun, Bishop of Cuzco, not only published edicts trespassing on inquisitorial jurisdiction but boasted that, if the inquisitors came into his diocese, he could punish them, and he arrested and imprisoned in chains their commissioner Pedro de Quiroga, a canon of his cathedral, publicly and under circumstances creating great scandal. The tribunal retaliated by summoning to Lima the bishop’s provisor Albornoz and throwing him in the secret prison; furthermore it imprisoned the priest Luis de Arma, who had assisted in chaining Quiroga, as well as the episcopal fiscal Alonso Duran and a cleric named Bejerano for the same offence, to which the bishop responded by seizing Quiroga’s temporalities and forbidding him to enter the church. The tribunal, in 1581, reported the situation to the Suprema, which replied that nothing was to be conceded to the Ordinaries save what was allowed by the laws and the royalcédulas; from the Bishop of Cuzco’s edict the matter pertaining to the Inquisition was to be struck out and he was to be duly warned. A second notice was to be given to the Bishop of Panamá of the cédulas forbidding his interference in matters of faith and, if he continued to disobey, the Suprema was to be advised. The same was to be done with other bishops similarly offending, and special attention was directed to the acts of the Bishops of Popayan and Tucuman. If we may believe the reports made by the tribunal to the Suprema the episcopate was filled with most unworthy wearers of the mitre and the Archbishop of New Granada was the only one who had fully obeyed the orders to hand over all inquisitorial cases. The officials of the Inquisition, it said, were hated equally by the bishops and by the royal judges, who lost no opportunity of oppressing and humiliating them.[586]
Thus early commenced the antagonism between the Inquisition and the episcopate which continued during its whole career to be a disturbing element in the Spanish possessions. In 1584 we find Inquisitor Ulloa complaining to the Suprema of the action of the recent provincial council of Lima in secretly writing to the king about the evil character of the commissioners selected. This, he asserts, arose from his refusal of the request of the Bishops of Cuzco, la Plata and Tucuman to make them commissioners in their respective dioceses. The bishops, he adds, were opposed to the introduction of the Inquisition, because it limited their jurisdiction, and they and the royal courts were constantly causing trouble in spite of the extreme modesty and deference shown by his officials.[587]
Such was the soil in which the Inquisition was to be planted when Philip II resolved to confer upon the New World the blessing of the institution. Its inception bore a marked resemblance to that of Mexico. January 28, 1569, Inquisitor-general Espinosawrote to the Licentiate Servan de Cerezuela, in Oropesa, that the king proposed to establish a tribunal in Peru and that he was selected as an inquisitor, with a salary of three thousand pesos, each of four hundred maravedís, a part of which would be drawn from the fruits of a prebend in Lima. He was ordered to start without delay for Seville, whence he would sail with a colleague, a fiscal and a notary, in the fleet carrying the Viceroy Francisco de Toledo, who would deliver to him his commission and instructions. Similar orders were sent to the other inquisitor, Dr. Andrés de Bustamente, and five hundred ducats were given to each to defray their expenses. Commands were issued to the bishops to surrender all cases pertaining to the tribunal; to the courts not to interfere with the confiscations; to the viceroy to render it all favor and support and to provide a proper building for its occupancy and prisons; to all officials to take the oath of obedience and to lend whatever aid might be required.[588]
The fleet sailed March 19, 1569; Dominica was reached April 28th, Cartagena May 8th and Nombre de Dios, June 1st. There their funds ran out and no one would lend them a real without interest until Judge Barros of Panamá furnished them two thousand pesos out of moneys deposited in his court. While thus delayed they heard several cases and rendered sentences. Bustamente with the notary Arrieta left Nombre de Dios on June 23d, but he was so affected by the escape of two of his slaves, as we are told, that he fell sick and died on June 30th. Cerezuela and the fiscal Alcedo remained to attend to a case which developed itself on the day fixed for their departure. Six witnesses testified that a Portuguese named Salvador Méndez Hernández had been burnt in effigy in Seville; they arrested him and wrote to Seville for the process, but as they had no arrangements for detaining him, he was released under oath, which he naturally forfeited. Cerezuela reached Panamá on July 18th, when he summoned the viceroy and the judges of the Audiencia to take the oath of obedience to the Inquisition. On the 22d there was a solemn ceremony, with a procession to the church of San Francisco, where his commission was read, he issued a mandate and the viceroy and officials and the people all took the oath. Sail was made from Panamá, August 15th, and Lima was reached November 28th. A house was selected and the viceroy was called upon to give it to them; another adjoining was rented for the officials and, on January 29, 1570, there was a solemn function in the cathedral, such as we have seen in Mexico, when the tribunal was officially acknowledged, its authority asserted and the Edict of Faith was published, calling upon every one to denounce all offenders of whom he was cognizant, directly or indirectly.[589]
Although Cerezuela was accused to the Suprema, by his notary Arrieta, as wholly ignorant of inquisitorial practice, of allowing himself to be easily influenced, and of neglecting to appoint familiars, he speedily manifested an energy inspiring all classes with fear of a tribunal which was superior to all distinctions of station, and whose jurisdiction was limited only by its own definitions. Scarce had the edict been published when arrests began of bigamists, blasphemers and persons whose utterances were not cautiously restrained—Alcedo, the fiscal, reports three in one day. Two canons of the cathedral and their advocate were prosecuted for some false swearing before the ecclesiastical court, which the theologians managed to find heretical, and, in spite of the intervention of the archbishop, Cerezuela tried them and amerced them in eight hundred pesos for the benefit of the tribunal. Then he prosecuted two royal officials, for raising difficulties in supplying his demands for the maintenance of poor prisoners, and fined them in eighty ducats.[590]Presumably he desired to produce a profound impression upon the public and for this the solemnity of a public auto de fe was essential. This rendered inadvisable the customary prolonged delays of inquisitorial action and already, on November 15, 1573, it was held inthe principal plaza, with the usual oaths administered to all present and the preaching of a sermon. The different bodies of dignitaries of course quarreled as to the places assigned to them, but Cerezuela settled their conflicting pretensions and the awful ceremony was performed effectively. The penitents were not numerous. The Corsican, Joan Bautista, had been penanced for Protestantism by the archbishop and again had been sentenced to perpetual prison by the Bishop of los Charcas; now as an impenitent, he was condemned to two hundred lashes through the streets and to lifelong galley-service. The Frenchman, Jean de Lion, for the same heresy abjuredde vehementi, was confined for ten years to the city of Lima, and contributed a thousand pesos towards the cost of erecting the staging at the auto. Ynes de los Angeles received a hundred lashes for bigamy, and Andrés de Campos the same for violating the secrecy of the Inquisition. The crowning attraction of the spectacle, however, was another Frenchman, Mathieu Salado, who was generally reputed to be insane. He had been denounced for “Lutheranism” in May, 1570, but after arrest and examination had been discharged as irresponsible. New evidence was received however and, in November, 1571, he was again put on trial. He held that Erasmus and Luther were saints enlightened by God; he denounced the popes, the clergy and the whole establishment; he denied purgatory and indulgences, images and the mass. He was decided to be of sound mind and, as he was pertinacious, he was sentenced to relaxation after a preliminary torturein caput alienum, all of which was duly executed, but whether he was burnt alive or after strangulation we are not informed.[591]
The tribunal which had thus asserted its power was necessarily organized on the Castilian pattern, with normally two inquisitors, a fiscal (or, as he was termed in later times, an inquisitor-fiscal), a notary or secretary, a receiver of confiscations or treasurer, an ornamental alguazil mayor and another for work, an alcaideor gaoler with assistants, a nuncio, a portero or apparitor, an advocate of prisoners, a barber, a physician and a surgeon. These were the salaried officials and in addition there were commissioners at distant points, familiars, consultores and calificadores. There seems to have been an effort from the first to restrict the lists of unsalaried officials, whose overgrown numbers in Spain were the source of constant trouble, owing to their exemption from the secular courts and being justiciable only by the tribunal. Thus the consultores were limited to six and the familiars to twelve in the city of Lima, four in each cathedral city and one in each town inhabited by Spaniards, and theirfuerowas defined, as in Mexico, to be that of the Castilian concordia of 1553, which limited, to a considerable extent, their exemption in criminal cases.[592]
Distance and delay in communication necessarily rendered the tribunal more independent in action than was permitted in Spain at this time, but the Suprema endeavored to maintain supervision and subordination as far as it could. It was unavoidable that the tribunal should be allowed to appoint to the minor and unsalaried positions, but its appointments were reported to the Suprema, which thereupon issued the commissions and sometimes, at least, made appointments itself. In the original instructions of 1570 power was granted to create commissioners and familiars; in 1576 this was extended to notaries and other officials, while in 1589 it appears to be restricted to cases of necessity in the city of Lima.[593]Yet when the Suprema chose to exercise the appointing power it had no hesitation, as when, in 1615, it ordered Don Gil de Amoraga to be received as commissioner of Panamá and Don Fernando Francisco de Ribadeneira as commissioner of Tucuman, if the place was vacant, and if not, as soon as it should become so. As time went on, cases of this kind became more frequent. As regards commissions, a letterof May 26, 1620, orders that the physician, the barber and the surgeon are to furnish their proofs oflimpieza, or purity of blood, when their names can be forwarded and the inquisitor-general will issue their commissions. When, in 1584, the tribunal granted to a familiar of Panamá the title of alguazil, with avara alta de justicia, or the privilege of carrying a tall wand as the symbol of his office, the audiencia of Panamá complained to the king and the Suprema called upon the tribunal for an explanation, pending which thevarawas not to be carried.[594]
The provisions for cases which in Spain were referred to or appealed to the Suprema and inquisitor-general have already been detailed in the chapter on Mexico and need not be repeated here. It will be recalled that they conferred on the colonial tribunals almost complete independence, so that they escaped the encroachments which at home eventually rendered the provincial Inquisitions scarce more than bureaus for the collection of evidence and for the execution of the decrees of the Council. The Suprema, it is true, occasionally made its power felt by sending out avisitadoror inspector, with faculties more or less extensive and by removing or transferring an inquisitor against whom complaints were too vigorous to be disregarded, but the only regular supervision that could be exercised lay in the requirement of full semi-annual reports of the business of the tribunal and the condition of pending cases. It may be questioned, however, whether this could have been performed with regularity during the earlier periods for, as late as 1680, the tribunal was notified that an arrangement had been made with the king by the consulado of Seville whereby despatches could be sent twice a year.[595]
The Edict of Faith was ordered to be published regularly in all parish and conventual churches, a command which was doubtless obeyed with reasonable regularity, but there was a curious ignorance displayed of the vastness of South America and its lack ofmeans of intercommunication, when the inquisitors were required to perform an annual visitation of their district. Of course this instruction received no attention; indeed the only attempt recorded is that of Inquisitor Ulloa, who found it convenient, in 1594, to be absent from Lima and employed his time, until his death in 1597, in wandering over the land and harassing the people.[596]
As in Mexico, Indians were excepted from inquisitorial jurisdiction and, in matters of faith, were subject to the bishops. This was not relished. Fray Juan de Vivero wrote to Philip that the Inquisition should punish them, though not as severely as Spaniards. The notary Arrieta advised Cerezuela to disregard the instructions and to prosecute them, just as he had seen in Seville unbaptized slaves punished for perverting their Christian comrades. Cerezuela reported that baptized Indians publicly persuaded their fellows that what the missionaries told them was false, but the Suprema was firm and ordered him not to interfere even with dogmatizers who told their people not to believe the missionaries.[597]
Cerezuela’s zeal was also rebuked when he represented that foreigners who came to Peru usually sought at once to penetrate into the interior, wherefore he proposed that the commissioners at Cartagena and Panamá should turn them back and not permit them to enter, but the Suprema replied that their entrance was not to be impeded nor were they to be prosecuted unless they committed offences coming within the jurisdiction of the Holy Office, or were detected in bringing prohibited books. At the same time it ordered a careful inquest as to all strangers scattered through the land and, when this should be verified with due secrecy, the commissioners were to be instructed to admit to reconciliation those found transgressing and, if they refused conversion, they were to be prosecuted with the full severity of the canons.[598]Ifthe tribunal thus was prevented from regulating ingress, it assumed full control over egress, for in June, 1584, it issued a proclamation that no one should leave the kingdom without its licence, under pain of excommunication and fines, and shipmasters were ordered to take no passengers without it—an assumption of power which won the approbation of the Suprema, with the suggestive warning that the licences must be issued without charge. This arbitrary exercise of authority was even extended to prohibiting any vessel from leaving port without a licence, and the abuse became so intolerable that, as we have seen (Mexico, p. 252), its removal formed part of the Concordia of 1610. The tribunal chafed under this and, when it was busy in arresting nearly all the Portuguese merchants in 1636, it complained to the Suprema that its hands had been tied; to prevent the escape of those who might be guilty it had applied to the Viceroy Chinchon who, as a governmental act, ordered that for a year no one should be given passage without a licence from the Inquisition; he would willingly have done more, but he had to pay some regard to the Concordia. The Suprema was impressively asked to see that this matter should be corrected, as otherwise the faith and the fisc would suffer. It was probably on this occasion that occurred a detention of the fleet when ready to sail, to which I have met with an allusion, because licences had not been procured for the passengers.[599]
The chief obstacle to the thorough organization of the Inquisition was the immense extent of the territory subjected to a single tribunal. Until the kingdom of New Granada was cut off, in 1610, by the establishment of a tribunal at Cartagena, this comprised the West India Islands and the whole of South America, save the undefined limits of Portuguese Brazil.[600]The three centres of Lima, Santiago de Chile and Buenos Ayres were far apart indistance and still farther in the character of the intervening territory, much of as yet scarce explored, the Indians but partially subdued and the Spanish settlements few and far between. Chile, indeed, could be reached by sea, in a voyage usually of two or three weeks, but the difficulties of communication with the interior provinces and those of the River Plate were embarrassing. When the tribunal consulted the Suprema about them it could only reply that cases arising in Paraguay and la Plata must be dealt with as best they could; the accused at a distance should be ordered to present themselves to the tribunal and not be arrested unless there were manifest heresy or evidence justifying sequestration[601]—a suggestion dictated rather by thrift than mercy.
The device which was effective in Spain, of commissioners in all centres of population and familiars scattered everywhere, was only a partial remedy for the difficulty. The power of the commissioner, as we have seen, was jealously limited; he could execute orders, take testimony and report, but he was forbidden to arrest unless there was imminent danger that a culprit might fly; in no case could he conduct a trial; his functions were purely executive and in no sense judicial. A vast proportion of the cases tried by the Inquisition were for offences comparatively trivial—blasphemy, careless or irreverent remarks, or the more or less harmful superstitions classed as sorcery—and the transmission of denunciations for such matters, over hundreds of leagues of forest and mountain, and awaiting a reply with instructions, was manifestly too cumbrous a process to be practical; the half-breed crone, the vagrant soldier or the wandering pedlar, who were the usual culprits in such cases, would be dead or vanished before an order of arrest could be received.
Peru was no more exempt than Mexico from the troubles caused by these outlying officials who felt themselves virtually independent and became intolerable pests in their districts. The object of acquiring the position was to obtain exemption from justice. They were answerable only to the tribunal, hundreds of leaguesaway; if laymen, the secular courts, and if ecclesiastics, the spiritual judges, could not touch them. They were above all local law; they could indulge with impunity all evil passions, they could tyrannize at will over their neighbors, and even in civil matters they could set justice at defiance. It was idle for the Suprema to urge great care in their selection and strict investigation into their conduct when visitations were made, with rigorous punishment for their excesses. The material to select from was not abundant and was mostly evil; visitations never took place as planned, and punishment was rare. The repeated orders not to appoint frailes except in case of necessity and, when it was obligatory, to prefer Dominicans, is not to be regarded as a reflection on the regular Orders, but as arising from the desire to maintain discipline in the Orders, because, when a fraile obtained a position in the Inquisition, he threw off subjection to his prelate, and the injunction not to support them in disobedience was rarely observed.[602]
A memorial presented, in 1592, to the inquisitor-general, in the name of the clergy of Peru, complains of the appointment as commissioners of vicious, dishonest and turbulent persons, and confirms it by statements in detail concerning those of Cuzco, Potosí, Popayan, Camana, Arequipa, Guaymanga and Payta, while the familiars were no better. Successive inquisitors, from Cerezuela to Juan de Mañozca, admitted the fact but justified themselves by the argument that they had to take what they could get; the material to select from was too scarce to admit of selection, with the result that the officials abused their power in innumerable ways.[603]The only serious effort made to repress these evils was when Juan Ruiz de Prado was sent, in 1587, to Lima asvisitador, clothed with full power to correct the abuses which had excited general complaint. He reported that much of his time was occupied in prosecuting commissioners and their notaries, who hadcommitted the gravest excesses; the tribunal, while cognizant of their evil ways, had only taken action in so far as to deprive two of them of their commissions, giving as an excuse that if it punished them it could find no others to take their places. Among those whom Prado disciplined was the priest Martin Barco de Centinera, commissioner of Cochachamba, well known as the author ofLa Argentina. The charges against him were grave but Prado did not wish to bring him three hundred leagues to answer them, so they were sent to him with orders to return them with his defence. It was proved that he treated the people of his district like Jews and Moors, that he revenged himself on all who offended him, and that he usurped the royal jurisdiction. At public banquets he drank to intoxication, he talked openly of his successful amours, he kept a married woman as a mistress and was generally scandalous in conversation and mode of life. Prado fined him in two hundred and fifty pesos and incapacitated him from holding office in the Inquisition.[604]
A single spasmodic effort such as that of Prado could effect no permanent result and, if it was difficult for the people, oppressed by these petty local despots, to make their wrongs known, it was equally difficult for the Lima tribunal to exercise its authority over such vast distances. The cruelty and injustice to which this exposed the accused were also extreme. On a simple denunciation, possibly for a trivial offence, and without proper preliminary investigation, he might be sent, perhaps in chains, from Buenos Ayres to Lima, exhausting in expenses whatever fortune he possessed. A practical illustration is furnished by the case of Francisco de Benavente, denounced in 1582, to the Commissioner of Tucuman because, when some one remarked that the Church was permanent, he had replied that it was not well said. The commissioner commenced to take testimony which so alarmed Benavente that he travelled six hundred leagues to present himself to the tribunal in Lima, which suspended the case and hetravelled home again.[605]To a great extent this explains the inordinate procrastination in many of the trials, while the victim languished in his cell, for the evidence might have to be sent back for ratification, or fresh testimony might be sought and when, after years had been consumed in these preliminaries, he put in his defence, the interrogatories for his witnesses would be despatched over the same distance and their return would be awaited. These causes of delay were aggravated by the habitual negligence and indifference of all the officials concerned, so that a large portion of a man’s life was often consumed in prison for an offence which ultimately might only merit a reprimand, or for which he might be acquitted.
Some relief was afforded when, in 1611, the tribunal of Cartagena was founded for the northern coastal territory and the islands. This was probably intended as the commencement of a systematic subdivision of the vast district for, a few years later, in anticipation of the erection of the bishopric of Buenos Ayres in 1620, the Suprema presented to Philip III an elaborate consulta strongly urging the establishment there of a tribunal. It pointed out that the arrests made in Lima showed the country to be full of Portuguese Judaizers, who had every facility of entrance and departure at Buenos Ayres. From there to Lima there were seven hundred leagues; the roads were good, the country populous and the Portuguese drove a thriving trade, enriching themselves and perverting the Indian converts. A commissioner would not answer, for he had to send seven hundred leagues to Lima, with as many in return, before he could act, while a tribunal could take note of every passenger landing or departing, and not only defend the faith but avert the political dangers threatened by the correspondence of these foreigners with the enemy. Besides, it was a great hardship when a man, for a slight offence such as blasphemy, had to be taken under guard for seven hundred leagues, at great cost, to be sentenced perhaps to abjurede leviand to hear a mass. If the projected cathedral were founded a prebend could be takento diminish the expense and a single inquisitor would suffice, as in Majorca.[606]
Given the necessity for the Inquisition, the arguments were unanswerable, but they elicited no response for the crown was impoverished and shrank from having to support another tribunal. About 1620 another effort was made by the procurator of the Atlantic provinces, in a memorial repeating the same arguments and suggesting that a district be formed of Rio de la Plata, Paraguay and Tucuman up to the boundaries of los Charcas, thus extending some three hundred leagues and leaving four hundred for the Lima tribunal.[607]This was referred to the Suprema which presented a consulta urging favorable action February 1, 1621, but the illness and speedy death of Philip III intervened and on March 31, 1623, it applied again to Philip IV, supporting its arguments with letters from the tribunal of Lima and the commissioner at Buenos Ayres, but to no effect. The next move came from the king, who, on April 12, 1630, communicated to the Suprema a paper describing how the Dutch lost no opportunity of introducing heretical books and perverting the natives of those regions. He thought it would be well to found an Inquisition in Buenos Ayres and, if the expenses were too great, there might be an inquisitor and a fiscal, while the other offices could be filled by wealthy men who would gladly serve gratuitously. Or, if this were too costly, a Dominican fraile could fill the post of inquisitor as in Naples and other parts of Italy, and he ordered the Suprema to arrange the matter accordingly. We shall see that in Peru, as in Mexico, the tribunal and Suprema evaded all efforts to relieve the royal treasury of the burden and can scarce wonder that Philip, with all his fanaticism, was economically disposed, but this did not suit the ideas of the Suprema. It replied in a consulta of April 17th, insisting that an inquisitor, fiscal, notary, alcaide and portero, with salaries and expenses aggregating at least six thousand ducats a year, were indispensable.The other officials, whose time would not be exclusively occupied, might be selected from among opulent persons, and that by aiding to suppress the contraband trade of the Dutch the royal revenues could be correspondingly increased. The prospect of this outlay refrigerated Philip’s zeal, and he returned the consulta with the endorsement that the disadvantages prevented the execution of the project; the Lima tribunal must appoint a commissioner of special ability and the governor would be ordered to assist him.[608]
This rebuff silenced the Suprema for the time but, on September 19, 1630, it returned to the charge. The Lima tribunal, in a letter of June 28, 1629, had related how a soldier in the port of Buenos Ayres, on the look-out for a vessel, had picked up on the shore a sealed package addressed “A las justicias del Perú” and on opening found it full of attacks on the papal and monarchical authority. This showed, it said, the audacity with which the heretics were disseminating their doctrines in those regions. They were also circulating tracts which had been seized, one of which was enclosed to prove to the king the necessity of ordering efficacious support to the Inquisition by the royal officials, and how desirable ii would be to establish a tribunal at Buenos Ayres.[609]This appeal likewise fell on deaf ears and, on November 26, 1636, the Suprema forwarded to Lima the king’s reply with corresponding instructions.[610]
The suggestion was renewed, March 1, 1636, by the fiscal of the Audiencia of la Plata, but this time the proposed seat of the tribunal was in Tucuman. This led the king, November 2, 1638, to ask for information from the audiencia, the viceroy and other authorities. To this the President of Charcas replied, warmly approving of the project, but for a wholly different reason, saying that during his years of service he had observed the great oppression of the people by the commissioners, maltreating them ontrivial pretexts, ordering them to appear at Lima with excessive cost and irreparable disgrace and molesting them in many ways, for which they dared not seek redress, for it lay at such a distance and the remedy was to them so horrible. The audiencia answered, March 10, 1640, recommending Córdoba de Tucuman as the most desirable seat. Two inquisitors and a fiscal, with salaries of two thousand pesos and a secretary with one thousand would suffice and would be largely defrayed by the fines and confiscations. Viceroy Chinchon delayed responding until September 29, 1641, when he said that it would be advantageous but costly; the salaries would have to be large, for living was dear, and the confiscations would be insufficient; in the last auto, although the culprits were many and of much reputed wealth, the property had almost wholly disappeared. Chinchon’s successor, the Marquis of Mancera, had already written, June 8, 1641, that Chinchon had handed the matter over to him; he had referred it to the President of Chuquisaca, whose report he enclosed, and he dwelt upon the evil of the Portuguese who entered Paraguay by San Pablo and spread over the land.[611]
By this time the Portuguese and Catalan revolts gave Philip ample occupation, and the absolute exhaustion of the treasury forbade all thoughts of incurring avoidable expenses. When these pressing necessities diminished, the suggestion was renewed in 1662; the erection of an audiencia in the growing city of Buenos Ayres led the Lima tribunal to urge the establishment of an Inquisition there or in Córdoba de Tucuman. Communication with Spain was easy from there and two inquisitors would suffice, or one and a fiscal. The Suprema warmly advocated the measure, but favored Córdoba, which was only eight days’ journey, or even only five, from Buenos Ayres. The failure of this effort seems to have discouraged further official attempts and we hear nothing more of the matter for nearly a century. In 1754 the Jesuit Pedro de Arroyo wrote to the procurador of his province in Spain, calling attention to the necessities of an additionaltribunal. That of Lima was so far off—a thousand leagues, he said—that it was of no use to them. In the twenty years spent in those provinces, he had never heard of an arrest by the Inquisition except one in Buenos Ayres, and then the prisoner escaped before reaching Lima; there was, however, a case of a cleric of Paraguay who spontaneously obeyed a summons to Lima. A commissioner had told him that, in ten or eleven years, he had had ten or eleven cases, which he had investigated and reported to Lima, but had never had a reply, except in the first case and this was not until two years had elapsed, by which time the culprit had disappeared. A second tribunal was now more necessary than ever, as the Portuguese were inundating the land. In the jurisdiction of Buenos Ayres they were said to number six thousand, and there was the same proportion in other districts; in that of Córdoba, the audiencia banished them some years ago, but they merely moved their residence and their places were taken by other Portuguese. About the same time Pedro de Logu, a calificador in Buenos Ayres, called attention to the mischief to religion arising from the scum collected there and subjected to no supervision; the powers of the commissioner were limited, he had no profit from his work and the introduction of prohibited books was frequent. These unofficial representations seem to have elicited no attention, but more authoritative was the memorial, in 1765, of Pedro Miguel, Archbishop of la Plata, whose residence there for twenty years had shown to him the necessity of a tribunal in Buenos Ayres. To this the fiscal of the Council of Indies replied, December 13, 1766, with an indifference which forms the measure of inquisitorial decadence. The rarity, he says, of cases of faith, attributable to the care exercised in preventing the immigration of descendants of infected persons, rendered it unnecessary to burden the fisc with the expenses of another tribunal; besides, the difficulty of reaching Lima restored to the bishops their inherent jurisdiction in such matters and they could sufficiently protect the faith.[612]It maybe hoped, for the good archbishop’s peace of mind, that he did not avail himself of this unofficial authorization to set up an episcopal Inquisition.
It may be gathered from these ineffectual efforts to multiply tribunals that the financial question was as important in South America as we have seen it in Mexico. The experiences of the two Inquisitions were similar. When Cerezuela and his colleague went to Lima, they bore instructions to the royal officials to disburse to the receiver of confiscations ten thousand pesos a year for the salaries of the two inquisitors, the fiscal and the notary.[613]This made no provision for other inevitable expenses. The theory on which the Holy Office was based was that it should be self-sustaining—supported by the fines and confiscations which it inflicted—and that when these were in excess the surplus should enure to the royal fisc. In Lima, more clearly than in Mexico, Philip defined repeatedly that this royal subvention should continue only as long as there was deficiency from other sources of income. In the quarrels which speedily arose between the tribunal and the viceroy, Toledo kept it in some sort of subjection by making the inquisitors apply to him personally for their salaries. This was highly distasteful, and they seem to have endeavored to escape from it by excommunicating the royal officials who declined to honor their demands, for cédulas of July 17 and 27, 1572, addressed to the viceroy and inquisitors, prohibited them from drawing on the royal treasury and enforcing payment with censures; they were to hand in their accounts which were to be promptly paid, until the fines and penances and confiscations should suffice. If this meant that they should render accounts of these other sources of income, it received no attention. In Lima as in Mexico no effort on the part of the government couldobtain an insight into the finances of the tribunal and the royal subvention was indefinitely prolonged.[614]
Still this did not provide for the salaries of the minor officials and the other unavoidable expenses. For awhile doubtless the tribunal felt the pinch of poverty. We find the Suprema suggesting that, if the prisons are insufficient, they can be made good out of the fines and penances; the alguacil is to be dismissed and, if another is appointed, he must serve without salary; possibly the viceroy may be induced to grant pensions on some of the vacantrepartimientosof Indians. The tribunal astutely raised the question of theayuda de costa, or supplementary payment to meet the expenses of the visitations, which it had no intention of making, and it was told to consult the viceroy and report, after which the Suprema would consult the king. In this it doubtless failed, but we chance to hear of an ayuda de costa paid as a reward for the auto de fe of 1578. Philip was by no means disposed to be liberal. In 1593 a question arose as to the salary of a fiscalad interimand he rather grudgingly, by a cédula of February 7, 1594, ordered that one-half might be paid, until the confiscations should suffice.[615]
Meanwhile the activity of the tribunal was rapidly enabling it to emerge from its penury. Its correspondence with the Suprema between 1570 and 1594 shows that confiscations were continually decreed and were apparently profitable. Frequent references occur to the estate of a Dr. Quiñones, who owned a mine which was to be rented until sentence was pronounced and then was to be sold; he also had a library which seems to have been of value and was to be disposed of either in bulk or at retail. Up to 1583 the total receipts from confiscations amounted to thirty-eight thousand pesos, or an average of nearly three thousand per annum.[616]Fines were also lucrative. Between 1571 and 1573there were twenty-seven cases sentenced in the audience-chamber, yielding in all twenty-six hundred pesos of which a thousand were levied on Rodrigo de Arcas, parish priest of Ribera, for solicitation in the confessional. Between 1581 and 1585 fifty-seven cases, similarly sentenced in private, furnished eighty-three hundred pesos. In 1583 there came a piece of good fortune in a legacy of Pedro de la Peña, Bishop of Quito, who left to the tribunal twenty thousand pesos to build a chapel for his interment. The house and prison thus far occupied were unfitted for the growing activity of the tribunal; with the legacy and the proceeds of sale of the existing building, a much finer structure was erected, including a prison with twelve cells. With increasing business came increasing income and, while the pretext of poverty continued to be put forward to the king, the tribunal soon began to accumulate capital and place it at interest. In 1596, Inquisitor Ordoñez, while blaming the receiver Juan de Saracho, admitted that he had succeeded in amassing twenty thousand pesos, part of which sum was invested in censos or ground-rents. To this Ordoñez, by a happy stroke, added seven thousand more from the estate of Pedro González de Montalban, whose property had been sequestrated. He was very sick and obtained his liberation by making a will in favor of the tribunal.[617]The Portuguese Judaizers now began to occupy a constantly increasing share of the tribunal’s attention, opening up a most prosperous field of operations. The time had come when the temporary subvention should be withdrawn, but the tribunal continued quietly to demand and receive it.
It was impossible to keep wholly secret the absorption of large estates and the investments of accumulating capital. The attention of Philip III was called to the matter and, in a letter of June 4, 1614, to the viceroy, he recited the conditions on which the grant had been made; he had learned that the salaries continued to be paid by the treasury, in spite of the receipt from these sources of amounts sufficient to defray them in whole or in part,and he therefore ordered that, when the salaries were paid, the viceroy should inform himself of the receipts from other sources and deduct them from the charge on the treasury, making full reports to the king. This was evaded by the receiver giving a certificate such as he saw fit, of what moneys he had on hand, which naturally was found to be a worthless safe-guard, and the viceroy was ordered to require from the receiver a statement of all receipts every year. It was found impossible to procure this and Philip, in a letter to the Viceroy Squillace, April 26, 1618, after recalling all the previous attempts, ordered him to appoint from the treasury two experienced accountants to audit the receiver’s accounts and report the result to the king. The accountants were duly appointed, but the receiver refused absolutely to exhibit his accounts—he had sent them to the inquisitor-general as he was required to do by his instructions. This exhausted the royal patience and one of the first acts of Philip IV was a letter to the viceroy, June 11, 1621, ordering the suspension of payments until the inquisitors should furnish authentic evidence that the confiscations had not sufficed to meet them. This went on for two years, the inquisitors preferring to forego the subvention rather than to expose the flourishing condition of their finances. They brought incessant pressure to bear, however, and finally induced Viceroy Guadalsacar, under a resolution of the treasury officials, to resume payments on the presentation of certain certificates of the contador, the scrivener of sequestrations and the receiver. On learning this the Council of Indies made a thorough investigation of the whole matter and reported that, in view of the exhaustion of the royal treasury, and that since the foundation of the tribunal, up to 1625, it had consumed six hundred and sixty-two thousand ducats without having returned anything from the fines and confiscations, it was wholly wrong that the money should have been used by the officials in buying lands and censos which they were now enjoying. To put an end to this the king, April 20, 1629, issued a cédula ordering that the conditions expressed in 1621 should beinviolably observed, no matter what might be the exigency, under pain not only of the royal displeasure but that all such disbursements should be charged to the viceroy and be deducted from his salary. To insure observance this cédula was to be entered on the books of the treasury and all auditors were to be governed by it.[618]
These were brave words but it is probable that the Inquisition found means to render them nugatory, while an apparent compromise was sought at the expense of a third party—the Church. We have seen (Mexico, p. 216) how a prebend in each cathedral was suppressed at the first vacancy and the fruits were paid to the tribunal. The process was necessarily slow, commencing with the brief of Urban VIII, March 10, 1627, and delayed by waiting for the successive vacancies and also by resistance, in some cases, of the cathedral chapters.[619]It wasvirtually completed in 1635, when Philip wrote to the treasury officials, September 26th, that the senior Inquisitor, Juan de Mañozca, had advised him that the suppression of the prebends for the payment of salaries had been effected. The orders with regard to this are to be executed and, as he supposes that the arrearages of salaries have been paid, he writes to Mañozca that in future the prebends are to be applied to the salaries as the treasury is in urgent need of relief—which shows that up to that time the king had continued to pay them and even to make good the arrearages, in spite of the decisive provisions of 1629.[620]The prebends thus obtained were eight in number, in the cathedrals of Lima, Quito, Trugillo, Arequipa, Cuzco, Paz, Chuquisaca and Santiago de Chile. They produced, as we have seen, eleven thousand pesos a year, thus more than replacing the subvention. Further documents fail us here but, from the experience of Mexico and Cartagena, it is fairly to be assumed that, in spite of the prebends and of the large confiscations now coming in, the tribunal managed to continue drawing the subvention and, in 1677, there was still discussion of the subject.[621]
The time, in fact, had come when the finances of the tribunal were to be placed on an enduring foundation. We shall see hereafter the details of thecomplicidad grande, when nearly all the leading merchants in Lima, of Portuguese extraction, were arrested on charges of Judaism and their property was sequestrated. Arrests had commenced in 1634 and the tragedy culminated in the great auto of January 23, 1639. What was the amount acquired by the tribunal can never be known, but popular report estimated it as a million of pesos, and we have seen that Viceroy Chinchon reported that it virtually disappeared without any one knowing where it went. Philip IV, whose necessitieswere daily becoming greater, was led by the report of the enormous sequestrations to seek an explanation of the Suprema, which replied to him, December 19, 1636, that the sequestrations had been large but they shrank to almost nothing from the claims of creditors, some of which came from Spain.[622]Disappointed in this he wrote, March 30, 1637, congratulating the inquisitors on their zeal and suggesting that it appeared to him just that out of them the fisc should be reimbursed for its outlays on their salaries, and that enough should be set aside to provide for the future in case the prebends did not suffice. The inquisitors replied, with outward demonstrations of respect, that they would report to the Suprema to which the funds belonged; that as yet there had only been sequestrations, while innumerable claims on the property had been presented, and that many prisoners had been found innocent and their estates had been restored to them—to five of these, Pedro de Soria, Andrés Muñoz, Francisco Sotelo, Antonio de los Santos and Jorje Danila there had thus been returned a hundred and seventy-four thousand pesos. Philip made an attempt to investigate the matter by appointing, in 1643, with the assent of the Suprema, Dr. Martin Real as visitador to examine into the finances of the tribunals of Lima and Cartagena, but, as we shall see, he was baffled in Cartagena and, after stormy experiences, returned to Spain without reaching Lima.[623]Repulsed thus at every point, Philip resorted to somewhat arbitrary measures. In 1644 we find the Suprema complaining of the seizure at Seville of two or three large sequestrations sent there from Lima for settlement with creditors, and again of twenty thousand ducats’ worth of wool taken by him, of which Alfonso Cardosso & Co. were demanding the surrender as owners.[624]
What share of the spoils the Suprema obtained it would be impossible to say. We happen to hear, in 1640, of twelve thousand pesos brought to it from Lima by Juan de Arostegui, which is doubtless only a portion of the amount doled out to it by thetribunal.[625]The latter, in fact, in its reports habitually belittled the results obtained or anticipated; it treated the Suprema as the Suprema treated the king. In reporting the arrests, in 1636, it was careful to point out that, although the prisoners were reputed to be wealthy and lived with ostentation, it was a deception, for in reality they were trading on borrowed money and had little of their own. This was a repetition of what it had said in 1631, when persecution of the Portuguese had already been going on for some years—the sequestrations made much show but with slender results; the real estate of the accused was held in order to gain the reputation of wealth, while in reality it was so encumbered as to be valueless, and the personal property was so concealed as to be undiscoverable.[626]
There were other productive sources of income besides the confiscations. One of these which was especially profitable was the “quebrantamientos de escrituras de juego.” Gambling was almost universal and disgusted gamesters would frequently swear off under a penalty, attested by a notarial act; the pledge would inevitably be broken and the forfeit was usually contributed to the pious uses of the Inquisition. A statement of the deposits in thearca de tres llaves, or money-chest of the tribunal, from May 4, 1630, to August 31, 1634, shows 1449 pesos from fines, 4909 from donations and 35,829 from thequebrantamientos, or in all 42,187, representing an annual income of nearly nine thousand pesos from these sources alone.[627]When to this we add the confiscations, the prebends and the constantly increasing returns from accumulating investments, it will be seen that the tribunal was rapidly growing in wealth and how factitious were the pleas on which it maintained its grip on the royal subvention.
When, in 1631, the office of alguazil was made saleable considerable sums were collected from this source. In 1641 the position of alguazil mayor of Santiago de Chile—a purely ornamental office, unsalaried but with contingent privileges—was bid up to6500 pesos.[628]As these commissions, however, were issued by the inquisitor-general it is probable that they were duly accounted for. Indeed, we have seen (p. 224) that the Suprema endeavored in this way to explain the remittances which it could not conceal.
Increasing wealth naturally led to multiplication of offices and generally careless expenditure. In 1674 the receiver or treasurer lamented that he had striven in vain to reduce the affairs of the tribunal to order. The revenues had fallen to 35,951 pesos and the expenses exceeded them. Still, he held that, in spite of the considerable remittances to the Suprema and the overgrown payroll, the income could be made to suffice if it were not for the expenditures of the inquisitors on their houses and their frequent elevation to bishoprics, after which they persisted in drawing their salaries.[629]
The investments of the tribunal were principally in censos—rent-charges on real estate. When these fell into arrears the property was put up and sold at auction, apparently still subject to the rent, the arrearages being collected from the purchase-money, and the numerous references to these transactions show that they were by no means infrequent. Still, the Inquisition assumed that it was an indulgent creditor. When, about 1705, several successive bad harvests had rendered the farmers unable to pay their rents, they petitioned the viceroy for a reduction of the principal. In transmitting this request to the king, the viceroy asked the opinion of the various tribunals, to which the Inquisition replied that the principal should remain intact as the deficient harvests were temporary and the land retained its value: that it was different in Chile, where the censos on urban property were reduced in principal after the earthquake which ruined the buildings. The tribunal therefore recommended a postponement of arrears and reduction of interest until the bad season should pass; this was what it had done with its debtors; it had not thrown them in prison or put up the farms at auction, even though the arrears were large, proceeding with benignity and equity and treating each case on its merits.[630]
Under a succession of venal and unprincipled inquisitors, the finances of the tribunal became involved in confusion and the magnitude of the amounts at stake shows how successful it had been in accumulation. In 1733 the two inquisitors were Gaspar Ibañez de Peralta and Christóbal Sánchez Calderon. The former was old and failing and the latter was engaged, under the name of his chaplain, in mercantile operations with the funds of the tribunal with such success that, in 1739, he remitted eighty thousand pesos to Spain and had purchased a valuable property near Lima. He also spent five thousand in decorating his house, and when the security of the temporary receiver Juan Estéban Peña expired he opposed its renewal, resulting in heavy loss when Peña became bankrupt. The new receiver, Manuel de Ilarduyspeedily fell into default for more than two hundred and thirty thousand pesos and there were other deficiencies. In 1735 Diego de Unda was sent from Spain as fiscal with special orders to investigate the finances. In 1736 he reported that he found everything right except that when Calderon insisted that Ilarduy should render his accounts and deposit all funds in the chest and on the receiver’s refusal, had embargoed his property, Ibañez verbally suspended the embargo, so that when, on the next day, the embargo was renewed, it was found that large amounts of silver and merchandise had been removed and there only remained a little silver dish and some vessels in his oratory. Still Ilarduy was forced to pay fifty thousand pesos and furnish securities amounting to a hundred and ten thousand more.
It seemed impossible to secure honest officials. Unda had brought with him as secretary of the tribunal Ignacio de Irazábal, who was made auditor. He was detected in passing false accounts for Ilarduy and was dismissed, as likewise was another secretary, Gerónimo de la Torre. The struggle between Calderon and Ilarduy became mortal, and the amounts at stake must have been large for the latter sent emissaries to Spain with a hundred thousand pesos with which to bribe the Suprema to dismiss the inquisitor. He succeeded in having a visitador sent with full powers to investigate and punish, with results that we shall see hereafter. It is only necessary here to say that Calderon’s and Unda’s property was sequestrated, to be released in 1747 by orders of the Suprema. A new factor had appeared on the scene when, in 1737, Mateo de Amusquíbar came as fiscal, to be not long afterwards promoted to the inquisitorship. He formed an alliance with Ilarduy; they were both Biscayans and the Biscayan faction became supreme. Unda died, May 27, 1748, and Calderon was living in retirement on his plantation. The vacancy was filled, in 1751 by Diego Rodríguez Delgado who came with special orders to investigate the finances. He promptly reported that it was impossible to examine the accounts of the receiver, which were in a state too confused to admit of verification. Hehad learned that the cost of maintaining the prisoners did not amount to more than a thousand pesos per annum, while it was charged at four thousand. There were seventy thousand due on the rents of farms and fruits of prebends and, by the reduction of exorbitant salaries this amount when collected could readily be increased to a hundred thousand, more than enough to rebuild the inquisition and its chapel, which had lain in ruins since the earthquake of 1746. Under the preceding receiver, the confiscation of Pedro Uban, condemned in 1736, had amounted to more than sixty thousand pesos, but no trace could be found of the existence or the expenditure of this sum. No reform however was possible in view of the alliance between Amusquíbar and Ilarduy. No reform, in fact, followed, although after all the actors had passed away, Calderon’s property was seized to make good the deficit of Antonio Morante, an administrador whom he had appointed and kept in office without requiring security and, in 1773, a suit was in progress with the executor of his estate for over thirty thousand pesos, the outcome of which the records fail to inform us. Altogether, through these quarrels we obtain an inside view of venality and corruption which probably were not confined to this period. In 1751 we learn that Amusquíbar, on entering office in 1744, had remitted nineteen thousand pesos to the Suprema, since when nothing had been sent. The income had fallen to thirty thousand and there was little more than forty thousand in the chest.[631]