The inquisitors received the accusation and gravely ordered, according to form, that a copy be given to Hidalgo and, in view of his contumacious absence, that due notification be made in the halls, which was accordingly done and record made. Then, on February 19th, the fiscal accused the contumacy of the absent and fugitive Hidalgo in not answering and asked that the case be concluded and received to proof. The inquisitors assented and the proof was presented. May 20th, the fiscal demanded the publication of evidence, which was duly ordered to be made, with the ordinary suppression of their names. A large portion of this consisted of evidence taken during the insurrection, showing acts of sacrilege, contempt for the Inquisition and its edicts and the like, on the part of Hidalgo and his followers. A copy of this was ordered to be given to him and that he answer it in the next audience, of which announcement was made in the halls and duly recorded. It was not until June 14th that the next step was taken, in ordering a copy of both accusation and testimony to be given to him and that by the third day he put in his answer, with the assent of his advocate, an advocate being provided for him in the person of the Licenciado José MarÃa Rosas. Then another witness was found in the priest GarcÃa de Carrasquedo, a prisoner on trial, to whom allusion has been made above. His evidence was taken June 21st and, on the 27th, was submitted to calificadores who, on August 12th, presented a long and learnedly argumentative report, in which they characterized the several propositions with the customary choice selection of objurgatory epithets, asfalsa,impia,temeraria,blasfema,malsonante,sapiens hæresim,llena de escandalo,erronea,sapiens errorem Lutheranorum,Judaica y formalmente hæretica,injuriosa al espiritú de la S. M. Iglesia, and they concluded that, if he who uttered them didso with full knowledge of their import, he was a formal heretic. This was practically the last act of the long drawn-out comedy, although some additional testimony concerning Hidalgo was taken and recorded, February 10 and 20, 1812, in the trial of the habitual liar, Fray Manuel Estrada. Events had moved faster than the Inquisition. After the disastrous day of the Bridge of Calderon, Hidalgo in his flight had been captured, March 21, 1811, at Bajan, and carried two hundred leagues farther north to Chihuahua, where he was executed, July 31st, before the calificadores had finished their formulation of his heresies. No notice of this was given to the Inquisition, which was treated with a singular discourtesy, savoring of contempt. The explanation of this probably is that, if it had been apprised of the capture, it could rightly have claimed the prisoner as a heretic, primarily subject to its supreme and exclusive jurisdiction; there might have been danger in escorting him back through the recently disturbed provinces; the processes of the Inquisition were notoriously slow and, after it had tried the culprit and he had abjured and been penanced in an auto de fe, he would still have to be condemned in a military court. It was in every way wiser to try him and despatch him in far-off Chihuahua, and the local military and ecclesiastical authorities coöperated to this result, leaving the Inquisition to find out what it could, and not even forwarding a supplication which Hidalgo addressed to it, on June 10th.
The tribunal waited patiently for eleven months after the catastrophe and then, on June 25, 1812, it wrote, with much solemnity, to its two commissioners in Chihuahua, reminding them that the edict of October 13, 1810, rendered it their duty to keep it advised of the capture of Hidalgo and of all subsequent occurrences. They should have gone to him in prison and exhorted him to make a declaration on all points contained in the edict and whatever else weighed upon his conscience. All signs of repentance should have been observed and reported, and at least his confession to his judges, in so far as the Inquisition was concerned, should have been sent to it. The alcaide, the ecclesiastics andthe military officers must now be examined as to his state of mind during his imprisonment, so that the tribunal may be informed as to his repentance or impenitence and thus be enabled to render justice. The two commissioners are to work in harmony, with power of subdelegation, and they are made responsible, before God and the king, for the due discharge of their duties.
The Holy Office evidently took itself seriously and considered that judgement as to Hidalgo’s heresies still lay in its hands. There must have been a flush of indignation and wounded pride when, on January 2, 1813, the inquisitors received from Sánchez Alvarez, one of the commissioners, an answer dated October 27, 1812, reporting that he had applied to Nemesio Salcedo, the commandant-general, who had ordered him to suspend all action and that he, Salcedo, would explain the absolute necessity for this. The tribunal had to wait until February 27th before it received Salcedo’s explanation, dated October 22d, showing how its supreme jurisdiction had been overslaughed with as little ceremony as that of a pie-powder court. With profuse expressions of respect, Salcedo stated that the peace and prosperity of the provinces required that the matter should not be agitated. Hidalgo was not a heretic and would not have been permitted to receive the sacraments and ecclesiastical burial, had he not been duly absolved and reconciled to the Church. A royal order, he said, of May 12, 1810, had conveyed papal inquisitorial faculties to the bishops, and the Bishop of Durango had subdelegated Doctor Francisco Fernández Valetin, the doctoral canon of his church, thus constituting him a papal inquisitor.[539]To him, as such, were communicated the answers of Hidalgo on his trial, who ratified them in his presence; he also verified the manifesto of Hidalgo, which was published, and he absolved him. In addition he sawthe supplication of Hidalgo to the Inquisition, which would have been forwarded sooner but for the danger of its being intercepted and which was now enclosed, together with the other necessary papers. These were extracts from Hidalgo’s examination, his manifesto to the insurgents and the supplication in question.
It was somewhat brutal to have kept the tribunal so long in the dark on a matter touching its highest privilege and to have detained for sixteen months, on a frivolous pretext, a supplication addressed directly to it, but its position was becoming precarious and it dared not complain. Napoleon’s suppression of the Inquisition of Spain, in 1808, did not count for much, but the Córtes of Cádiz had enacted a liberal Constitution in 1812 and simultaneously the preliminary skirmishing for the abrogation of the Inquisition preoccupied all minds. It was enacted February 22, 1813, and, though the news had not as yet reached Mexico, the result could scarce have been doubted when the tribunal took action on March 13th. It evidently placed no faith in the story of a papal inquisitor, suddenly created in the wilds of Chihuahua, for it wholly ignored his action. The fiscal reported to the tribunal that, in spite of Hidalgo’s supplication for pardon and endeavors to satisfy the charges against him, there were not merits enough to absolve his memory and fame nor, at the same time, to condemn him, as it appeared that he had made a general confession and had been reconciled, whereupon the tribunal ordered the case to be suspended and the papers to be filed in their proper place—an expression of dissatisfaction and an admission of powerlessness. On March 29th it acknowledged Salcedo’s letter and drily thanked him.
Hidalgo’s supplication to the Inquisition, written in his prison on June 10, 1811, is a long and dignified declaration of submission, calmly and clearly reasoned and manifesting full command of his theological learning. But for his confinement, he said, he would hasten to throw himself at the feet of the tribunal, not only to seek pardon for his insubordination, but to vindicate himself from the charge of heresy and apostasy, which was insufferableto him. He answered the various accusations of the edict, denying that he had led an immoral life and exculpating himself with much dexterity from the heresies imputed to him, but if, he added, the Inquisition deemed his utterances heretical, although he had not hitherto so considered them, he now retracted, abjured and detested them. He concluded by begging to be relieved from the disgrace of heresy and apostasy; the tribunal could repose entire faith in his statements for, if he had committed those crimes, the circumstances in which he now found himself would impel him to confess them freely, in order to gain the pardon and absolution that would open to him the gates of heaven and would close them, if withheld, in consequence of his denial.
The frame of mind revealed in this document, which is unquestionably genuine, serves to refute the imputation of forgery so generally ascribed to Hidalgo’s manifesto of May 18th, addressed “A Todo el Mundo†and published in order to quiet the population. Its effusiveness and extravagance of repentance, and the earnestness of its exhortations to his followers to submit, have not unnaturally created suspicion, from their violent contrast to the deep convictions and reckless energy with which he precipitated and sustained the insurrection, but it can be accepted as authentic without impugning his good faith. He was impulsive and enthusiastic and was liable to the revulsions incident to his temperament. His cause had been disowned by God; he had been captured as a fugitive within a few months after he had been at the head of eighty thousand men. The grave was yawning for him, as the portal to the hereafter, in which there was, in his belief, no escape from eternal torment for one who died as a rebel to the Church. He was a fervent Catholic, whose excommunication cut him off from the sacraments essential to salvation, unless he could prove himself worthy of them by earnest repentance and by the amendment which could only be manifested through zeal in undoing that which had brought upon him the anathema. That under such pressure he should seek to avert the endless doom by heart-felt contrition was natural, howeverstrange it may seem to those brought up in a different faith, who can sympathize with his aspirations for liberty but cannot realize the emotions enkindled by his religious convictions.
The decree of the Córtes of Cádiz, February 22, 1813, suppressing the Inquisition was published in Mexico June 8th. Under it the property of the tribunal was applicable to the treasury for the reduction of the public debt and was forthwith sequestrated; there were no prisoners, the few political ones having been transferred to various convents some days in advance. We have an authentic account of the transaction, made December 20, 1814, after the Restoration, by the alcaide of the secret prison. He says that the decree had been eagerly expected; the tribunal and its ministers were regarded with contempt and its privileges were set at defiance. Immediately after the publication, Viceroy Calleja announced to the senior inquisitor the cessation of its functions; the next day the official commissioned for the purpose came to take possession and commenced an inventory. The building was thrown open to gaping crowds, who gave free vent to their detestation of the institution. On the 11th, the money in the chest was removed; the records concerning the faith were delivered to the Archbishop Bergosa y Jordan, while the papers connected with property were taken by the Intendente of the Government, who confided them to the writer and allotted to him offices in which to keep them. In the Inquisition building was established the lottery, and the adjacent houses of the inquisitors served to lodge its officials, while the main building was used as a barracks and the prisons were turned into shops for tailors, shoemakers and other workers for the army. The total amount sequestrated was 1,775,656 pesos, 5½ reales, consisting of—
The alcaide proceeds to give us details as to the organization and finances of the tribunal. Besides the inquisitors and fiscal there were seven secretaries, a messenger, a treasurer, a contador, a purveyor of the prison, an alcaide and his assistant, a notary of the sequestrations, two officials of thesecreto, an advocate of the fisc and an advocate of prisoners—a largely superfluous force for the trivial work to be performed. The pay-rolls amounted to 33,000 pesos per annum, the subvention to the Suprema was 10,000, and the expenditure for maintaining prisoners, repairs, church functions, etc., brought the annual outlay to 55,000 or 60,000, while the income was 85,000, to which was added 32,000 from the canonries, amounting in all to 117,000—about double the expenses, showing how profitable had proved the purification of the faith.[540]
On August 31st the archbishop reported to the Government that the decree of suppression had been read in the cathedral on the three Sundays following its receipt. The sanbenitos were at once removed from the places where they were hung; the Prior of the Hospital of San José asked for them to clothe the insane, but the viceroy took them for the troops. The Archbishop requested to have the prohibited books, which were stored in four rooms of his palace, and they were given to him. He was an old inquisitor and lost no time in assuming the jurisdiction over heresy restored to the episcopate by the decree of suppression. As early as June 10th, he issued a pastoral ordering denunciation to him of all persons suspect of heresy and, on September 27th, he published another calling for the surrender of all prohibited books by those who did not hold licences.[541]
The decree of suppression provided for the continued salaries of the officials and after this the two senior inquisitors disappear—Bernardo de Prado y Obejero and Isidoro Sainz de Alfaro y Beaumont—probably returning to Spain, where refugees from the American tribunals were taken care of. The junior, Manuel de Flores, remained and was ready to resume his functionswhenever the “suspension,†as he called it, was removed. His foresight was speedily rewarded, for one of the first acts of Fernando VII on his restoration was the decree of May 4, 1814, abrogating the Constitution of Cádiz, declaring invalid all laws enacted under it and even menacing with the death-penalty all who should keep copies of them. This of itself virtually revived the Inquisition, but legislation was required to reorganize it and this was effected by a decree of July 21.[542]Inquisitor Flores had not waited for this, as we find that he had already for some time been gathering evidence against Manuel Abad y Queipo, Bishop-elect of Mechoacan, which he transmitted, August 31st, to the Suprema for its action.[543]
It was not until December 23d that Viceroy Calleja notified him to re-establish the tribunal, in execution of the royal decree of July 21st; this he followed on January 4, 1815, with a proclamation embodying the decree and announcing that the tribunal had been restored to its jurisdiction and that its property had been returned to it. The archbishop also issued a pastoral requiring all denunciations to be made to it and Flores, on January 21st, published an Edict of Faith ordering the denunciation, within six days, of all heresies, prohibited books and all words of disrespect towards the Holy Office that might subsequently be uttered.[544]The tribunal however, was in a sadly dilapidated condition. The alcaide in a letter of December 30, 1814, reports that the restoration of property consisted in the written securities and the real estate, but only 773 pesos of the money had been returned. Notice had been given that the fruits of the canonries and interest on the censos were to be paid as formerly to the tribunal. The purchaser of the furniture, which had been sold at auction in July, was nominally a merchant but in reality the Count of la Cortina, from whom they were endeavoring to get it back at the price which it had brought, but much had been resold; thebuilding had to be refitted for their use and altogether they were in great distress.[545]To add to their troubles, the tribunal was so thoroughly discredited that its jurisdiction was invaded on all sides in a manner indicating the contempt in which it was held. Viceroy Calleja issued a proclamation condemning to the flames the Constitution adopted by the insurgents October 22, 1814, at Apatzingan, together with various of their sermons, addresses, etc., and ordering them to be denounced to him under pain of death. Then, on May 24, 1815, he sent a copy of this to the tribunal, inviting it to take action and use all rigor for their suppression. This provoked the liveliest resentment of Flores who complained bitterly to the Suprema, June 29th, of the intrusion on his jurisdiction and of the discourtesy manifested in not previously submitting to him the offending papers. He also enlarged on the harshness with which the decree of suppression had been enforced in 1813 and of the imperfect restitution of property which Calleja had publicly asserted to have been made. He had also endeavored to compel the officials to render military service, but this had been successfully resisted. In spite of all this indignation, however, the insurgent documents were duly censured by the calificadores and, on July 9th, Flores issued an edict condemning them and specifying their errors. The chapter of the cathedral (sede vacante) had also on May 26th published an edict requiring the surrender of these documents to it under pain of excommunication and threatening all priests and beneficiaries who should not exert themselves against the rebels. This was a palpable intrusion on inquisitorial jurisdiction which was deeply resented, and there was also a quarrel with the royal Audiencia which the tribunal accused of invading its jurisdiction and disregarding itsfuerosin the matter of a pasquinade of which the Audiencia had taken cognizance.[546]
Under these circumstances it is easy to understand how eagerly Flores seized the opportunity of asserting himself afforded by the capture, November 15, 1815, of the insurgent chief JoséMarÃa Morelos, who shares with Hidalgo the foremost place in the Mexican Valhalla.[547]
Born in 1764 of humble parents, he was an agricultural laborer up to the age of 25, when he returned to his native Mechoacan and applied himself to the study of grammar, philosophy and morals. Entering the Church, he took full orders and, after serving temporarily the cure of Choromuco, he obtained that of Caraguaro, which was under the rectorship of Hidalgo. It must have been a slender benefice for, in his examination, he explained his not having taken the indulgence of the Santa Cruzada by the plea that before the insurrection he was too poor to pay for it and afterwards the insurgents regarded it as invalid and as merely a device to raise money for the war against them. His morals were those of his class; he admitted to having three children, born of different mothers during his priesthood, but he added that his habits, though not edifying, had not been scandalous, and the tribunal seemed to think so, for little attention was paid to this during his trial and, in thecalificacionwhich preceded his sentence, it is not even alluded to. He joined Hidalgo, October 28, 1810, and must have quickly distinguished himself, for that chief gave him a commission to raise the Pacific coast provinces and, after the rout of the Bridge of Calderon, the burden of maintaining the unequal war fell mainly on Morelos, who was raised successively to the grades of lieutenant-general and captain-general, with the title of Most Serene Highness.
Unlike Hidalgo, who was hurried off to Chihuahua, Morelos when captured was brought to the city of Mexico for trial and execution, arriving there on November 21st. He was carried to the Inquisition, not as its prisoner, but for safe-keeping “on deposit†and Flores, to preserve the secrecy of the Holy Office, made it a condition that the guard accompanying him should not go up stairs or penetrate beyond the first court-yard. Itwas not until 1.30A.M.of the 22d that he was lodged in the secret prison, in a cell so dark that he could not read the breviary, which was given to him on his request. The 22d was occupied with an effort to get permission to try him—a competencia carried on in a spirit very different from the masterful audacity of old. Viceroy Calleja desired that Morelos should be degraded from the priesthood, within three days, by the episcopal jurisdiction, in order that his execution should be prompt, and testimony for that purpose was already being taken by the secular and spiritual courts acting in unison. Flores therefore had no time to lose in putting forward the claim of the tribunal, and the fiscal drew up an elaborate paper showing that there were points in the case which came within its jurisdiction. On the 23d aconsulta de fewas assembled, consisting of the episcopal Ordinary of Mechoacan, and the consultores of the Inquisition, which represented to the viceroy that, although Morelos was subject to both the secular and spiritual courts, it was persuaded that for other crimes he was justiciable by the Inquisition and that his trial by that tribunal would redound to the honor and glory of God as well as to the service of the State and the king and be efficacious in undeceiving the rebels. Moreover, it promised that the trial should be concluded within four days. Somewhat unwillingly, Calleja granted the request and no time was lost in commencing the most expeditious trial in the annals of the Holy Office—a grim enough comedy to gratify the vanity of the actors, for it could have no influence on the fate of the prisoner, save perhaps in removing the excommunication under which he inferentially lay. Flores, in boasting of this activity, adds that they were much embarrassed by Morelos being frequently taken from them for examination in the other courts, which indicates that the authorities regarded the Inquisition as merely a side-show.
Hurried as were the proceedings, there was due observance of all the formalities required by the cumbrous methods of the Holy Office. That same day, November 23d, the fiscal presented hisclamosa, basing it on Morelos having signed the constitutionaldecree of November 22, 1814, as well as various proclamations condemned as heretical by the Inquisition;[548]also on his celebrating mass while under excommunication, and his reply to the Bishop of Puebla, when reproached for so doing, that it would be easier to get a dispensation after the war than to survive the guillotine; also on an edict of Bishop Abad y Queipo of Mechoacan, July 22, 1814, declaring him to be an excommunicated heretic. There was still time for a morning audience and the prisoner was brought before the tribunal, where he was subjected to the customary examination as to his genealogy and whole career, and the first monition was given to save his soul by confessing the truth. In the afternoon he had his second audience and monition. On the morning of the 24th came the third audience and monition, during which he admitted that, at Teypan, he had captured a package of the edicts against Hidalgo and had utilized them to make cartridges. The pompous formulas, urging him to discharge his conscience so that the Inquisition might show him its customary mercy, must have seemed a ghastly jest to a man who knew that his captors would shortly have him shot, and they contrast grotesquely with the feverish anxiety of the tribunal to have a share in the performance.
That same afternoon the fiscal presented the accusation and, considering the haste in which it was prepared, its long accumulation of rhetoric is creditable to the industry of the draughtsman. He describes Morelos as abandoning the Church for the filthy and abominable heresies of Hobbes, Helvetius, Voltaire, Luther and other pestilent writers, rendering him a formal heretic, an apostate from the holy faith, an atheist, materialist, deist, libertine, seditious, guilty of divine and human high treason, an implacable enemy of Christianity and the state, a vile seducer, hypocrite, traitor to king and country, cunning, lascivious, pertinacious and rebellious to the Holy Office. He shows howrebellion is heresy and all rebellious acts are directly or indirectly heretical. To Morelos, in the bottom of his heart, Christ and Belial are equal; he is even suspect of toleration and, as usual, the accusation concludes by asking for confiscation and relaxation. The remainder of the afternoon and the morning audience of the 25th were occupied with the defendant’s answers to the twenty-four articles of the accusation. From what he said it appears that insurgents claimed to be opposing the French domination in Spain, and that Ferdinand’s restoration in 1814 was largely disbelieved or was assumed to be only another phase of Napoleon’s supremacy, showing that Ferdinand could not be a sincere Catholic.
That same morning the publication of evidence was made, consisting wholly of documents, such as the Constitution of October 22, 1814, sundry proclamations signed by Morelos and his printed letter to the Bishop of Puebla, together with the letter of the Bishop of Mechoacan declaring him to be an excommunicated heretic. He was ordered to answer with the advice of his counsel and the three advocates of prisoners were named to him, of whom he selected Don José MarÃa Gutiérrez de Rosas. He was sent to his cell to be brought back directly for an interview with his counsel, who was sworn in as customary. There was no time to make copies of the papers, so the unusual course was adopted of entrusting the originals to Rosas, with instructions to return them and present the defence within three hours. In the afternoon he did so and the result showed him to be a ready writer, but he was more occupied in justifying himself for undertaking the defence than in making a plea for Morelos. He savagely denounced the insurrection and the Córtes of Cádiz, whose principles it represented, and he concluded abruptly with a few lines, alleging the repentance of the defendant, from which he hoped for absolution. The inquisitor thereupon ordered the fiscal to be notified and the case to be concluded.
The next morning, November 26th, Flores assembled his calificadores and exhibited to them the proceedings and the condemnations of the insurgent Constitution and proclamations. Fray Domingo Barreda opined that the accused savored of heresy, but the rest were unanimous that he was a formal heretic, who denied his guilt and was not only suspect of atheism but an atheist outright. In the afternoon was held theconsulta de feto decide upon the sentence. Without a dissentient voice it agreed that a public auto should be held at 8 o’clock the next morning in the audience chamber, in the presence of a hundred prominent persons to be designated by Flores. That Morelos should there be declared guilty of malicious and pertinacious imperfect confession, a formal heretic who denied his guilt, a disturber and persecutor of the hierarchy and a profaner of the sacraments; that he was guilty of high treason, divine and human, pontifical and royal, and that he should be present at the mass in the guise of a penitent, in short cassock without collar or girdle and holding a green candle, which, as a heretic and fautor of heretics, he should offer to the priest. As a cruel persecutor of the Holy Office, his property should be confiscated to the king. Although deserving of degradation and relaxation, for the crimes subject to the Inquisition, yet, as he was ready to abjure he was, in the unlikely case of the viceroy sparing his life, condemned to perpetual banishment from America and from all royal residences and to imprisonment for life in the African presidios, with deprivation of all preferment and perpetual irregularity. His three children were declared subject to infamy and the legal disabilities of descendants of heretics. He was to abjure formally, and be absolved from the excommunications reserved to the Holy Office; he was to make a general confession and through life to recite the seven penitential psalms on Fridays and a part of the rosary on Saturdays. Moreover a tablet was to be hung in the cathedral, inscribed with his name and offences.[549]
The next morning, November 27th, as Flores reports, the auto was duly celebrated in the most imposing scene ever witnessed in the audience chamber, which was crowded with five hundredof the most important personages of the capital. The mass was followed by the impressive ceremony of degradation from the priesthood, performed by the Bishop of Oaxaca. Morelos was delivered to the royal judge and returned to the secret prison whence, at 1.30 of the following night, he was transferred to the citadel. Flores might proudly claim to have vindicated the jurisdiction of the Holy Office, at some sacrifice of its dignity, in the shortest trial of a formal heretic to be found in its records. The object of the indecent haste required by Calleja is scarce apparent, for Morelos was not executed until December 22d.
The tribunal continued to perform its functions. In 1817, the prosecution of Don José Xavier de Tribarren, for reading prohibited books, revealed that Don Cayetano Romero of Guetaria in Guipúzcoa was equally guilty, and the Suprema in Madrid forthwith ordered the tribunal of Logroño to take action against him.[550]The latest notable victim was Fray Servando Teresa de Mier Noriega y Guerra. After holding him for some time in prison, the tribunal, in anticipation of its extinction, sent him to the viceroy as an important offender against the State, with a paper describing him as hating, from the bottom of his heart, the king, the Córtes and all legitimate government, and even as lacking respect for the Holy See and the councils of the Church, his dominant passion being revolutionary independence, which he had vigorously promoted in both North and South America, by his writings full of passion and venom.[551]
This useless prolongation of existence was soon to end. One of the first measures of the revolution of 1820, which restored the Constitution of 1812, was the royal decree of March 9th, suppressing the Inquisition. Before this reached Mexico officially, the Viceroy Count of Venadita had seen it in theGaceta de Madridand had arranged for the extinction of the tribunal. The officials ceased their functions on May 31st; as before, they had transferred their political prisoners to the public prison and those for matters of faith to various convents, the archives were delivered to the custody of the archbishop and the officials hastened to find other homes. Then, on June 14th, the viceroy sent orders for compliance with the decree and, on the 16th, the Inquisitor Antonio de Pereda reported that the tribunal had ceased in all its functions and remained in a condition of absolute extinction. The papers of pending trials were distributed among the appropriate diocesans and the Intendente took possession of the property.[552]The officials straggled back to Spain, where they were provided for in common with those of the Peninsula. In the accounts of 1833 there still appear as in receipt of salaries the senior inquisitor, Antonio de Pereda, the secretaries Venancio de Pereda y Cassolla and José MarÃa Briergo, and thenuncio y portero, Tomás del Perojo.[553]
Thus forlorn and discredited passed away the tribunal which had in its prime cast terror over all the provinces between the two oceans, but the impression which it had produced did not disappear with it. In 1821 Don Celestino de la Torre reprinted a savage attack issued in Spain, under the title of “Memorial de la Santa Inquisicion,†which he says, in a prefatory note, is for the disillusionment of theservileswho sigh for the restoration of the Holy Office. It is still more significant that, in the agitation caused, in 1833, by the effort of the Government to reduce the Church to acquiescence in the new order of things, there appeared a little anonymous tract entitled “Mientras no haya Inquisicion se acaba la Religionâ€â€”“Without the Inquisition, Religion is destroyedâ€â€”arguing that heresy can never be suppressed without the use of force; excommunication, censures and argument are of no avail and the faith of Christ can only be preserved byarming the bishops with all the powers and methods of the Inquisition and enforcing their penal sentences by the State. The bishops, in fact, were quite ready to assume its functions as far as they could for, as late as 1850, on the appearance of a translation of Féréal’sMystères de l’Inquisition, with notes by Don Manuel de Cuendias, a diocesanjunta de censurawas held which, without hearing the accused, passed a sentence of excommunication on the editor and on all who should read the book, all of which was publicly proclaimed by edict. This was based on a consulta presented to the junta by Doctor Sollano, who lamented the abolition of the Inquisition and proved satisfactorily that heresy merits the death-penalty.[554]
When Spain, in 1566, undertook the conquest of the Philippines, they were not erected into a separate government but were placed under the vice-royalty of New Spain or Mexico, with a governor or captain-general in command. When, in 1581, the bishopric of Manila was founded, it was suffragan to the archbishopric of Mexico and was not erected into a metropolitan see until 1595. The islands therefore were included in the district of the Mexican Inquisition, but they were too sparsely occupied by Europeans for the tribunal to think it necessary to establish an organization there. When, however, the first bishop, the Dominican Domingo de Salazar, reached his see in 1572, his zeal led him at once to establish an episcopal Inquisition with a fiscal and other officials, and the regular inquisitorial procedure; he soon found culprits and held a formal auto de fe, exercising his assumed authority with excessive severity. Don Francisco de Zuñiga, a youth of 20, in a discussion, had thoughtlessly declared fornication to be no sin; then on reflection he denounced himself, but notwithstanding this he was obliged to appear in an auto with a gag, and was banished for ten years, with a threat of two hundred lashes if he returned. Canon Francisco de Pareja, suspected of being one of the Alumbrados of Llerena, when arrested for solicitation, hanged himself in prison. Some of Salazar’s penitents on reaching Mexico complained to the tribunal and thus aroused its attention to this invasion of its jurisdiction, when it lost no time in vindicating its rights. March 1, 1583, it sent a commission as commissioner to the Augustinian Fray Francisco Manrique, a man of prominence in his Order, which was the most influential in the islands, and at the same time it notified Salazar that it had done so in consequence of his having assumed to act as inquisitor.[555]
Bishop Salazar, who was on the point of celebrating an auto de fe, was by no means disposed to abandon the authority which he had assumed. He refused to recognize the commission of Manrique and threatened with excommunication all who should do so. The Licenciado Juan Convergel Maldonado, who supported Manrique, was thrown into prison so harsh that he became insane, when Salazar sent him to Mexico, and Benito de Mendiola, who had served as Maldonado’s messenger, was likewise imprisoned. The traditional rivalry between the seculars and regulars and between the different Orders brought to the bishop ample support from the clergy, the Franciscans and the Jesuits—a high authority among the latter, Padre Alonso Sánchez, even declared that those who recognized the commissioner committed mortal sin. For six months Fray Manrique kept up the struggle and then abandoned it, writing to the tribunal, April 1, 1584, that, to avoid scandal he would do nothing more until it should have provided a competent remedy. The tribunal took prompt and effective steps. It wrote to Manila revoking all the acts of the bishop and to the Suprema, January 17, 1585, reciting the circumstances and pointing out the grave consequences that would follow when Salazar’s success should lead other bishops to follow his example. Through the Suprema it also addressed a letter to Philip II, who responded, May 26th, with a cédula to the bishop, telling him that he had invaded the jurisdiction of the Inquisition and ordering him to abstain from interfering in any way in affairs pertaining to it or with the duties of its commissioners. This was decisive but it was uncalled for. Salazar had already seen his error, had recognized Manrique and had handed over to him the papers in all the cases—seven in number—then pending before him. Thus the jurisdiction of the Mexican tribunal was permanently established over the islands, although subsequently there were one or two attempts made to organize an independent Inquisition there.[556]
In this the tribunal regarded rather its own ambition to extend its jurisdiction than the interests of the faith, for the whole career of the Philippine commissionership manifests the impossibility of conducting such a business at the distance of a hundred and forty degrees of longitude, when perhaps a year or two might pass without a vessel reaching Acapulco from Manila. The duties and powers of a commissioner were strictly limited and defined. As a rule he could do nothing except in execution of orders from the inquisitors; without such orders he could not make arrests, unless there was immediate danger of the escape of the accused; he could only gather information, report it and await instructions, and it was the same with regard to sequestration; if involved in a competencia he could issue inhibitions on the rival judges, but he could not put into execution the censures and penalties threatened in the formulas unless authorized by the tribunal.[557]In the detailed instructions sent to Manrique along with his commission there is little concession made to the difficulties of distance and communication by enlarging his powers. Although he is not allowed to sequestrate property, he is to inventory it and see thatit is left in charge of a proper person, but this must be an arrangement between the accused and the depository in which the Inquisition assumes no responsibility. He is expressly told that he can make no arrests without orders, but an exception is made in the case of bigamy, on account of its frequency, when, if he obtains positive evidence against a culprit, he can arrest him and send him to Mexico, confining him in the royal gaol at the public expense, while awaiting a vessel. On the other hand, he is not to interfere with the secular or spiritual courts when they prosecute for bigamy and, if they offer to surrender an offender, he is to tell them to send him to Mexico, but not at the expense of the Inquisition.[558]Subsequently, in 1611, another exception was made, in the crime of solicitation in the confessional. The tribunal wrote to the Suprema that, in consequence of the number of denunciations, and in view of the need of the culprits’ presence in the Philippines, whither they had been sent at the royal expense, it had ordered that only two who seemed most guilty should be shipped to Mexico for trial and sentence. It further suggested that in future the commissioner should have power, in conjunction with a judge or other qualified person, to try the cases and send merely the papers to Mexico where the sentence should be rendered. To this the Suprema assented, adding that, in view of the distance and delay, the prisoner should meanwhile be discharged on bail—which indicates that in these cases the commissioner could arrest.[559]This does not seem to have been strictly carried out for, in 1613, we chance to hear of three culprits of this kind, sent from Manila to Mexico, with the papers, for sentence. One of these, Francisco Sánchez de Santa MarÃa, was accused by twenty-three native women, and another, Don Luis de Salinas, had been shipwrecked on the coast of Japan and the papers had been lost; he succeeded in getting back to Manila, where the commissioner tried him again and despatched him to Mexico.[560]
Another exception to the prohibition of arrest was made in the case of soldiers who deserted to the Dutch or to Moros and embraced their faith. What to do with these cases presented a problem concerning which the Mexican tribunal consulted the Suprema, as burning them in effigy might prevent their coming back. The Suprema thereupon submitted the matter to Philip III, representing that the soldiers were exposed to such privations that they were forced to fly and find refuge wherever they could, and meanwhile it advised the tribunal to await the action of the royal councils. To this the tribunal replied at much length, May 20, 1620, stating that no action had as yet been taken in such cases, but that the commissioner was ordered to proceed against the culprits and, on convicting them, to send them to Mexico for sentence. The whole discussion, however, was purely academical; there is no trace of such culprits being forwarded to the tribunal and this, possibly, for the very good reason that the military authorities punished the offence with death, when they could lay hands on the delinquents.[561]There was another class of cases in which the commissioners seem to have exercised the power of arrest. In 1666 we find the tribunal complaining tothe Suprema that soldiers, to escape the rigor of military law, sought prosecution by the Inquisition in order to be arrested and sent to Mexico and to this end would blaspheme or utter heretical propositions. Many of them died on the passage and the expense of this bore heavily on the tribunal. For this the Suprema had no remedy to suggest except the plan adopted with soliciting confessors.[562]With these exceptions and thevisitas de navios, or searching vessels for prohibited books, the duties of the commissioner were restricted to receiving denunciations, taking testimony, reporting to Mexico and executing such orders as he might receive from there. Still, they were personages of importance; although frailes living in their convent cells, they organized an imperfect kind of court; they had their assessors, notaries, treasurers, consultors and calificadores, their alguazil mayor and familiars and deputized their powers to sub-commissioners in the various parts of the islands.
Of real inquisitorial work for the purity of the faith we hear little. During the sixteenth century the only evidences of activity are three cases of Judaizers—Jorje and Domingo RodrÃguez of Manila, reconciled in the Mexican auto of March 28, 1593, and Diego Hernández, regidor of Vitoria, accused by his cook of ordering her to cut chickens’ throats instead of strangling them; his property was sequestrated and evidence against him was sought in Oporto from whence he came, but he died during these prolonged preliminaries.[563]The seventeenth century is similarly barren, affording few instances except the occasional bigamists and soliciting confessors, military culprits and sometimes a few Dutch prisoners of war. In the Mexican auto of 1648 there appeared Alejo de Castro, an octogenarian sent from Manila on suspicion of Mahometanism, sentenced to perpetual exile from the Philippines and to servitude for life in a convent for instruction in the faith.[564]A more noteworthy culprit was Padre Francisco Manuel Fernández, S. J., a devotee of Luisa de los Reyes,a Tagal beata who had ecstasies. He declared that she had died many times and that God had resuscitated her so that she should suffer for the souls in purgatory; he compared her for sanctity to St. Teresa, St. Catherine and St. Inez and insisted that when he kissed her, embraced her and handled her indecently, he had no sensual feeling. It was a clear case of Illuminism against which the Inquisition waged unsparing war, nor was Fernández the only culprit, for another Jesuit, Padre Javier Riquelme was also compromised. Luisa was prosecuted in 1665 and testimony was taken against the Jesuits, but the Mexican tribunal reported, July 17, 1770, to the Suprema that the case had been suspended owing to the activity of the Jesuits in the islands, who always made the cause of their members their own. It complained bitterly of the way in which they impeded the Inquisition and frustrated its labors, when any Jesuit was concerned, whether for solicitation or other offence. They were not to be believed, for there was the case of the French Father Pierre Peleprat, whose detention was ordered, when they asserted that he was dead, but subsequently it was reported that this was not so but that he had been sent to France.[565]
The eighteenth century offers a similarly eventless record. So great was the inertness that the Edict of Faith, which was the chief source of denunciations and which should be published yearly in all parish churches, became virtually obsolete. From the time of Commissioner Paternina, who published it in 1669, forty-nine years elapsed before it was again published, in 1718, by Commissioner Juan de Arechederra; and Fray Juan de la Concepcion, writing in 1790, tells us that it had never been published since then.[566]It was a somewhat remarkable and uncalled-for burst of energy on the part of Commissioner Bernardo de Ustáriz, in 1752, when a score of Moro sailors of an English ship performed some pagan rites with songs and incense and he applied to the archbishop and then to the governor for aid to punish the scandal.Both declined, when he got General Antonio Romero, who was a familiar, to undertake an investigation. Then force was needed to arrest the culprits and a prison to confine them, and Romero sought the Marquis of Ovando, the governor for this, but Ovando replied that the matter was under his exclusive jurisdiction, an assertion which he repeated to Ustáriz, adding that he intended to punish the guilty. Ustáriz complained of this to the tribunal, which declared, February 19, 1754, that the governor had failed in his duty; that his assertion of cognizance of such cases should be expunged from any instrument in which it appeared, and that the commissioner and notary should notify him of this in person. The Suprema, however, took a cooler view of the matter, pointing out that, by the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, English subjects could not be prosecuted for practising their religion in Spanish territory, but at the same time it approved of the action of the tribunal and promised to ask the king to make due provision for the future.[567]Seeing that baptism was necessary to give jurisdiction to the Inquisition and that natives, even when converted, were not subject to it, this sudden access of zeal on the part of Ustáriz would appear somewhat supererogatory.
Ustáriz also showed his energy, in 1750, by arresting Pierre Fallet, a Swiss of Neuchâtel and a convert from Calvinism. In 1742 Commissioner Arechederra had taken from him two indecent prints; in 1748 Commissioner Juan Alvárez had deprived him of another and denounced him to the Mexican tribunal as suspect of heresy. The tribunal, on March 14, 1748, ordered his arrest with sequestration, at the same time dismissing Alvárez for his indiscretions and replacing him with Ustáriz. The sequestration showed that Fallet’s property consisted of some uncollectable credits and many debts but, among his books on history, voyages and mathematics, in English, French, Flemish, Spanish, Latin and Greek, were found two prohibited ones—Rapin’s History of England and a “Historia publica y secreta de la corte de Madrid.†He was duly sent to Mexico, where he entered the secret prison,January 17, 1752, with broken health. An accusation of seventy-six articles was accumulated against him, but his sentence on August 8th consisted merely of abjuration for light suspicion, three months’ reclusion in the Jesuit College for instruction and some spiritual penances. This laborious trifling, so ruinous to the unfortunate subject, was crowned by the Suprema, which pondered over the case until March 7, 1772, when it ordered its suspension. Fallet, meanwhile, had been allowed to return to the Philippines, where his conduct was reported as exemplary.[568]
Censorship of a similarly futile kind was exercised in the denunciation of objectionable books or passages, which had to be forwarded to Mexico for action. Of this a single example will suffice. At the end of the sixteenth century, the Dominican Fray Francisco de San José was one of the most zealous and successful missionaries. He left a number of works in Tagal, some of which were printed, while others reposed in MS. Among the latter was a volume of sermons that had considerable repute, and in this the Augustinian Fray Juan Eusebio Polo, in 1772, discovered a passage conveying the Dominican view entertained at the period, as to the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin. Not daring to denounce it to the Dominican commissioner, he did so directly to the Mexican tribunal, adding that he could not send the MS., because it was borrowed, but he furnished certificates of two of his Augustinian brethren as to the accuracy of his translation. This was forwarded to the Suprema which, on January 27, 1774, ordered a copy of the book to be searched for in Mexico and Manila, the translation to be examined by experts, the matter to be voted on and then referred back to Madrid. Apparently this ended the case.[569]
If the natives were exempt from inquisitorial jurisdiction, they were subject to that of the missionary fathers and it may be questioned whether in this they were to be envied. About 1756 an obstinate revolt in the Island of Bonol throws some light on the relations between the converts and their spiritual guides. Adistrict belonging to the Jesuits was placed under the control of Padre Morales who, observing that one of his subjects did not attend mass or frequent the sacraments, ordered him to be arrested. The man was known to be a desperate character and it was not until Morales laid explicit commands on the alguazil mayor of the village that the attempt was made, which resulted in the killing of the alguazil and the flight of the culprit. Francisco Dagohoy, brother of the slain, brought the corpse to Morales for Christian burial, which the padre refused, unless the regular fees were paid, intimating moreover that the alguazil had died under excommunication as a duellist. Naturally exasperated, Dagohoy, who was a leader among his people, assembled them, set forth their wrongs eloquently and had little difficulty in persuading them to follow him to the mountains, to the number of some three thousand. Entrenching themselves, they kept up a predatory warfare, in which Morales was killed and also an Augustinian Fray Lamberti. The rigor with which the taxes were exacted by the Spaniards drove many to join them and the rebellion was still flourishing in 1792, in spite of repeated overtures and offers of pardon—indeed, it may be doubted whether it was ever completely pacified under Spanish domination.[570]
While this Philippine branch of the Inquisition accomplished so little for the faith, it was eminently successful in the function of contributing to the disorder and confusion which so disastrously affected Spanish colonial administration. As everywhere else, the immunity of the officials was a fruitful source of trouble. In 1601, Benito de Mendiola, a familiar, was prosecuted in the secular court for the murder of Roque Espina de Cáceres, secretary of the governor, but the commissioner interposed and a long competencia followed, at the end of which, after a delay of ten years, the papers in the case were ordered to be surrendered to him by a decree of the Suprema of November 28, 1611. Inconsideration of the distance and delay, Mendiola was liberated on bail; the widow of his victim desisted from the prosecution and finally, after further postponement caused by the difficulties of communication, the Mexican tribunal sentenced him to four months’ banishment, two months’ suspension from his office as notary and a fine of fifty pesos—a punishment sufficient to show his guilt and his escape from justice.[571]
The same question came up, in 1635, under Governor Sebastian Hurtado de Corcuera, whose stormy term of office was a continuous succession of broils with the several ecclesiastical jurisdictions. The Archbishop Hernando Guerrero was engaged in a mortal struggle, first with the governor and then with the Jesuits, in which his experience singularly resembled that of Bishop Palafox of Puebla. He was twice excommunicated, his temporalities were seized and he was relegated for a time to Corregidor Island. Compelled to a humiliating submission, he took the precaution of making a preliminary protest before the notary Diego de Rueda, whereupon the governor seized Rueda and threw him into the castle of Santiago. It chanced that he was a familiar; the commissioner, Fray Francisco de Herrera, claimed him and excommunicated thejuez conservadorof the Jesuits, who had excommunicated the archbishop. The juez yielded to the superior jurisdiction of the Inquisition and ordered Rueda released, but the Governor stood firm and when Herrera sent two frailes of his order with a demand for the prisoner, Corcuera seized them and sent them to Cavite with orders to confine them in their convent.[572]This was probably but a small part of Herrera’s contests with the civil power for, in 1636, Corcuera applied to the Mexican tribunal asking that frailes be no longer appointed as commissioners, on account of the disturbances which they excited; if clerics of prudence were selected, peace would be preserved and the scandals caused by the Dominicans would be averted. In 1638 the Council of Indies renewed the request to Philip IV, asking that prebendaries of the churches should be chosen; Philip sent corresponding instructions to the Suprema but, on its remonstrating, he referred the matter back to the Council and nothing was done.[573]
Corcuera’s successor, Diego Fajardo, had an opportunity of learning the extent to which the audacity of a commissioner could reach, and the utter disregard of all considerations of public policy. About 1650, an order came to the commissioner to seize, with the utmost secrecy, the governor of one of the provinces, who was also commandant of a fortified post. The commissioner quietly summoned his alguazil mayor and a sufficient number of familiars, sailed for the province, surprised the governor in his bed, carried him off and imprisoned him in a convent until there should be a vessel sailing for Acapulco. Fajardo was an irritable and passionate soldier, whose governorship was a continuous broil with the warring jurisdictions of the colony, and who could appreciate the risk of depriving a fortified place of its commander, at a time of perpetual warfare with the Dutch and the natives. His wrath was expected to be extreme at the contempt thus shown for his office and for the safety of the colony, but his reverential fear of the Inquisition overcame all other considerations and, when informed of the matter, he gently rebuked the commissioner for not having afforded him the opportunity of earning the graces and indulgences granted for participation in so pious a work, ashe would have eagerly served as an alguazil in making the arrest.[574]
Yet perhaps the most troublesome of the commissioners with whom the Inquisition afflicted the islands was the Augustinian Fray José de Paternina Samaniego. He was grossly ignorant and had led a disorderly life in both Spain and Mexico. His fellow Augustinian, Fray Cristóbal de Leon, told him that he was unworthy to occupy so high an office, for he was an apostate whom the General of the Order had condemned to the galleys when visiting the convents of Old Castile, whereupon he accused Cristóbal to the provincial as a Jew and a usurer, causing his imprisonment with such harshness that it cost him his life. Yet this was the man whom the inquisitor-general sent to the Philippines, in 1663, as commissioner. His unfitness soon manifested itself, and his prelates wrote to the Mexican tribunal recommending his replacement; other remonstrances were sent to the Suprema, which ordered the collection of material against him, and nothing further was done.[575]
On board the ship which carried Paternina to Manila there was another passenger, Don Diego Salcedo, a Fleming who, asmaese de campo, had rendered distinguished service in the Flemish wars, and who was coming to the Philippines as governor. The two men conceived a mutual dislike which was heightened when Salcedo dismissed from command of the fleet Don Andrés de Medina, who was a close friend of the commissioner, and refused employment to his nephew, González Samaniego. Still bitterer grew his hatred when Salcedo succeeded him in the favors of a married woman, whose paramour he had been, and he openly declared that he would be revenged.
Salcedo was arbitrary and covetous; he must have made full use of the opportunities afforded by his position, for at his death his fortune was reckoned at 700,000 pesos—much of which he had the prudence to remit to Mexico. He was not popular; he was speedily involved in the dissensions which seemed inevitable, with Archbishop Poblete, and a faction was formed against him at the head of which stood the commissioner. A conspiracy for his ruin was organized and in February, 1666, there came to the Mexican tribunal letters from Paternina, from the archiepiscopal notary and from the Castellan of Manila accusing him of indifference to the service of God and the king and of his communication with Dutch heretics. Then the archbishop, in a letter of June 20, 1666, to the inquisitor-general, represented that Salcedo surrounded himself with Flemings and Dutchmen, one of whom was a Calvinist; that he never attended mass on feast-days or heard sermons; it was not known that he confessed or took communion except at Easter; that he created scandal by his relations with a married woman and that his cupidity was insatiable. This brought from the queen-regent a letter of November 11, 1666, to Salcedo, reprimanding him for his disregard of church observances, but nothing more. Paternina sent fresh accusations to the tribunal, and the archbishop and the Bishop of Cebu wrote to the Viceroy of Mexico; then the tribunal ordered its commissioner at Acapulco to examine secretly the passengers and crews of vessels arriving from the Philippines and all the accumulation was sent to the Suprema which, on November 22, 1667, ordered the case to be suspended; Paternina must act with caution and, if he obtained further information, he was to forward it.
The failure of his plans thus far showed Paternina that he must assume the responsibility. Archbishop Poblete died December 8, 1667, and it was not until September, 1668, that the commissioner was ready to take vigorous action, assured of the support of two judges of the Audiencia who hoped to succeed to power, of high officials with whom Salcedo had quarrelled, and of individuals to whom promises were made of offices,encomiendasand other advantages, while there was the enticing prospect of plunder in the sequestration of the governor’s fortune. It was not difficult to obtain from his enemies evidence such as it was—evidence which the Mexican tribunal subsequently pronounced not only to be factitious on its face, but to amount at most only to a presumptionplusquam leve. This was submitted, September 28th, to nine frailes as calificadores, some of whom pronounced the accused to be vehemently suspect of the errors of Luther and Calvin. Then three consultors were called together—the Dean José Millan de Poblete, nephew of the archbishop, the archiepiscopal provisor, Francisco Pizarro de Orellano, and the Licenciado Manuel Suárez de Olivera, from whom Salcedo had taken 12,000 pesos and who was soon afterwards prosecuted for Judaism. These worthies on October 6th decided that the commissioner could proceed to arrest, seeing that the three prescribed conditions were more than fulfilled. Of these conditions the most important, in the present case, was the danger of immediate escape of the accused, for which, as an afterthought, there was subsequently collected testimony so transparently futile that the Mexican tribunal described the danger of flight as a mere baseless pretext.
The forms having thus been observed, Paternina, on October 8th, issued the warrant of arrest addressed to the Admiral Vizcarra y Leiva as alguazil mayor—Vizcarra having been one of the principal witnesses. It ordered him to seize Salcedo wherever he could be found, to sequestrate his property and deliver it to Fray Mateo Ballon, guardian of the Franciscan convent. Salcedo was aware of the machinations against him, but imagined himself in full security and took no precautions. The warrant was delivered to the admiral at 9P.M.on October 9th and between 12 and 1A.M.he entered the palace with a band of Franciscan frailes armed with pikes, swords and bucklers. They seized Salcedo in bed, fettered him and, without allowing him to dress, carried him as he was in a hammock to the Franciscan convent and threw him into a narrow cell. After a few days he was removed to the house of the Capitan Diego de Palencia, his declared enemy, and then to the Augustinian convent of San Pablo, where Paternina kept himincomunicadoand chained to the wall. The day of the arrest the judges ordered the bells of the cathedral to be rung as a sign of rejoicing that they had assumed the government. In fact, one of the judges, Juan Manuel de la Peña Bonifaz, an accomplice in the conspiracy, assumed the nominal government and there ensued a period of terror for all who were not of their faction. Paternina became the virtual ruler and he inspired general fear by banishing ten or twelve of the principal citizens, by forbidding any one to speak of the affair under heavy penalties and excommunication, and by bringing charges against a number of persons of being hostile to the Inquisition. The rich sequestration became an object of plunder. A nephew of Bonifaz profited largely from it, nor was Paternina neglectful of the chance, for we happen to hear of his entrusting 20,000 pesos to the Capitan Pedro Quintero, to be used for his benefit, and also of his extorting bribes from shipmasters for delivering to them goods embargoed with those of the governor. In short, as the Mexican tribunal reported to the Suprema, they committed a thousand iniquities.
How long Salcedo lay in his chains does not appear, but it must have been more than eighteen months, for he was probably shipped to Mexico during the summer of 1670. He died at sea November 24 of that year, making a most Christian end, for he confessed three times. A further proof of his orthodoxy may be found in the fact that he appointed as his executor the Mexican Inquisitor Ortega Montañes—a position which the Suprema forbade him to accept—and the estate was handed over, when the sequestration was lifted, October 31, 1671, to Don Gerónimo Pardo, Auditor of the Audiencia, who held powers from Salcedo’s sister and three brothers.
The vessel by which Salcedo was shipped did not reach Acapulco until January 7, 1671, being the first that had come for two years. It brought the earliest direct intelligence of the events at Manila and the report of Paternina, but the news had already arrived there by way of Batavia, Holland and Madrid. In Madrid it had naturally aroused the Council of Indies which presented to the queen-regent a consulta embracing three propositions: I. If the commissioner made the arrest without orders from the tribunal, he should be severely punished for exposing the colony torisks so great. II. If the arrest was by order of the tribunal, it should have notified the Viceroy of Mexico in order that he might make provision for simultaneously filling the vacancy. III. That precise instructions for the future should be given for the arrest of persons of that rank, in conformity with the royal cédulas and concordias providing for such cases. To this the Suprema, still completely in the dark as to the circumstances of the case, replied somewhat superciliously that, if the commissioner had exceeded his duty, he would be punished appropriately; that the arrest was not ordered by the tribunal but, if it had been, no notice was due to the viceroy in matters of faith; the cédula of April 2, 1664, provided for the government of the Philippines in cases of vacancy, which is all that human foresight can anticipate. No new instructions were necessary, as such cases were already provided for in the existing regulations; sentences on persons of the rank of Don Diego Salcedo were not executed without consulting the Suprema, except when irremediable injury might be anticipated from delay, and it was an accepted rule that, in important cases of faith, all such personages were subjected to the Inquisition. To this the Council of Indies rejoined by insisting that it should not be left to the discretion of a commissioner to determine whether the danger of delay justified arresting a governor and imperilling the safety of the colony; the tribunal should give notice to the viceroy, without violating the secrecy of the Inquisition, and it concluded by asking that definite instructions be given to the inquisitor-general and Suprema that in matters of such importance such action should be taken as would avoid the danger of a recurrence of similar proceedings. Even the Council of Indies did not venture to hint that the governor of an important colony, if suspected of heresy, could not be suddenly arrested, and it only objected to this being done without preliminary precautions.
In June, 1670, the news of Salcedo’s arrest filtered through Madrid to Mexico but it was not until January 7, 1671, that the official report from Paternina reached Acapulco. The tribunal,in forwarding, January 18th, an abstract of this to the Suprema, made haste to exculpate itself from all responsibility, pronouncing the whole affair to be the greatest abuse ever committed by an official, especially by one of the Inquisition, a trampling on justice, with grievous discredit to the prudence and equitable procedure of the Holy Office, arising from hatred of Salcedo and carried out by a conspiracy between Paternina and the judges who desired to seize the government. This rendered necessary exemplary punishment, so that all might understand that the tribunal did not undertake to punish crimes that did not pertain to it, nor serve as an instrument for the gratification of passion, and this demonstration should be made in Manila, in order that the honor and fame of Salcedo might be restored, although he had lost life and fortune. The tribunal therefore, while awaiting instructions, proposed to suspend Paternina and give his office to another, with orders to shut him up in a convent and also to raise the sequestration. This it did and appointed as his successor Fray Felipe Pardo, though when the Suprema, June 4, 1671, confirmed the suspension, with incredible blindness, it replaced him with the Dean José Millan de Poblete, who had been his active accomplice. Pardo however probably retained the office, as the dean had been promoted to the bishopric of Canaries, and one of the results of the affair was to transfer the commissionership from the Augustinians to the Dominicans.
Paternina escaped the punishment which he merited for he died, January 18, 1674, like his victim, on the voyage to Acapulco. The Suprema had ordered his imprisonment and trial, but the sentence was not to be executed without its confirmation. Despite its assurance to the Council of Indies that nothing more was necessary to regulate arrests of governors, it issued, under pressure from the queen-regent, June 30, 1671, a carta acordada prescribing special rules for such occasions. Meanwhile in Manila there had been a natural revulsion. The new governor, Manuel de Leon y Saravia, took full advantage of the opportunity to emancipate the secular power from the predominance of the ecclesiastical.He withdrew the sequestrated property out of the hands of the treasurer of the Inquisition; he released Juan de Berestain who had been imprisoned as an accomplice of Salcedo; he prosecuted and banished the Franciscan provincial and the guardian of the Franciscan convent, and the good frailes complained that they were persecuted as by an enemy; and we are assured that he reduced the power of the Holy Office until its officials were so despised that if they had to arrest the vilest individual no one would help them.[576]