Читать книгу A History of the Inquisition of Spain (Vol. 1-4) - Henry Charles Lea - Страница 10

Table of Contents

THE Crown of Aragon comprised the so-called kingdoms of Aragon and Valencia, the principality of Catalonia, the counties of Rosellon and Cerdana, and the Balearic Isles, with the outlying dependencies of Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica. Although marriage had united the sovereigns of Castile and Aragon, the particularism born of centuries of rivalry and frequent war kept the lands jealously apart as separate nations and Ferdinand ruled individually his ancestral dominions. What had been accomplished in Castile for the Inquisition had therefore no effect across the border and the extension of the Spanish organization there was complicated by the character of the local institutions and the fact that the papal Inquisition was already in existence there since its foundation in the middle of the thirteenth century.

Aragon had not undergone the dissolving process of Castilian anarchy which enabled Ferdinand and Isabella to build up an absolute monarchy on the ruins of feudalism. Its ancient rights and liberties had been somewhat curtailed during the tyrannical reigns of Ferdinand of Antequera and his successors, but enough remained to render the royal power nominal rather than real and the people were fiercely jealous of their independence. The Córtes were really representative bodies which insisted upon the redress of grievances before voting supplies and, if we may believe the Venetian envoy, Giovanni Soranzo, in 1565, the ancient formula of the oath of allegiance was still in use: “We, who are as good as you, swear to you who are no better than we, as to the prince and heir of our kingdom, on condition that you preserve our liberty and laws and if you do otherwise we do not swear to you.”[606]

In dealing with a people whose liberties were so extensive and whose jealousy as to their maintenance was so sensitive, Ferdinand was far too shrewd to provoke opposition by the abrupt introduction of the Inquisition such as he had forced upon Castile. His first endeavor naturally was to utilize the institution as it had so long existed. This, although founded as early as 1238, had sunk into a condition almost dormant in the spiritual lethargy of the century preceding the Reformation, and in Aragon, as in the rest of Europe, it appeared to be on the point of extinction. It is true that, in 1474, Sixtus IV had ordered Fra Leonardo, the Dominican General, to fill all the tribunals of the Holy Office and he had complied by appointing Fray Juan as Inquisitor of Aragon, Fray Jaime for Valencia, Fray Juan for Barcelona and Fray Francisco Vital for Catalonia, but we have no record of their activity.[607] So little importance, indeed, was attached to the functions of the Inquisition that in Valencia, where in 1480 the Dominicans Cristóbal de Gualbes and Juan Orts were inquisitors, they held faculties enabling them to act without the concurrence of the episcopal representative—an unexampled privilege, only explicable on the assumption that the archbishop declined to be troubled with matters so trivial. The archbishop at the time was Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia, papal vice-chancellor, better known as Alexander VI, who speedily woke up to the speculative value of his episcopal jurisdiction over heresy, when the fierce persecution, which arose in Andalusia in January, 1481, with its attendant harvest of fines and compositions, showed that a similar prospect might be anticipated in his own province. Accordingly a brief of Sixtus IV, December 4, 1481, addressed to the inquisitors, withdrew their faculties of independent action and went to the other extreme by directing them in future to do nothing without the concurrence of the vicar-general, Mateo Mercader, senior archdeacon of Valencia.[608]

REVIVAL OF OLD INQUISITION

In reviving and stimulating to activity this papal institution, Ferdinand was fully resolved to have it subjected to the crown as completely as in Castile. Hitherto it had been a Dominican province, with inquisitors holding office at the pleasure of the Dominican authorities and his first step therefore was to procure, in 1481, from the Dominican General, Salvo Caseta, a commission to Fray Gaspar Juglar to appoint and dismiss inquisitors at the royal will and pleasure.[609] This gave him control over the personnel of the Inquisition, but to render it completely dependent and at the same time efficient, it was necessary that the appointees should be well paid and that the pay should come from the royal treasury. A hundred years earlier, Eymerich, the Inquisitor of Aragon, had sorrowfully recorded that princes were unwilling to defray the expenses, because there were no rich heretics left whose confiscations excited their cupidity; the Church was equally disinclined, so that, in the absence of regular financial support, the good work languished.[610] Now, however, greed and fanaticism joined hands at the prospect of wealthy Conversos to be punished and Ferdinand, by a rescript of February 17, 1482, provided ample salaries for the manning of the tribunal of Valencia, with all the necessary officials.[611] We may reasonably assume that he commenced there in the anticipation of meeting less obstinate resistance than in the older and stronger provinces of Aragon and Catalonia. He was, however, not yet fully satisfied with his control over appointments and he applied to Sixtus IV for some larger liberty, but the pope, who was beginning to recognize that the Castilian Inquisition was more royal than papal, refused, by a brief of January 29, 1482, alleging that to do so would be to inflict disgrace on the Dominicans to whom it had always been confided.[612]

The reorganized tribunal speedily produced an impression by its activity. The Conversos became thoroughly alarmed; opposition began to manifest itself, while the more timid sought safety in flight. A certain Mossen Luis Masquo, one of the jurats of Valencia, made himself especially conspicuous in exciting the city against the inquisitors and in stimulating united action in opposition by the Estates of the kingdom. A letter to him from Ferdinand, February 8, 1482, censures him severely for this and vaguely threatens him with the royal wrath for persistence. Another letter of the same date to the Maestre Racional, or chief accounting officer of the kingdom, shows that the severity with which the property of those arrested was seized and sequestrated was arousing indignation, for it explains the necessity of this so that not a diner shall be lost; if the inquisitors have not power to do this, it shall be conferred on them.[613] The Maestre Racional had suggested that for those who should spontaneously come forward and confess a form of abjuration and reconciliation might be adopted which should spare them the humiliation of public penance while still keeping them subject to the penalties of relapse. To this, after consultation with learned canonists, Ferdinand assented and sent him the formula agreed upon, with instructions that it should appear to be the act of the local authorities and not his—doubtless to prevent his Castilian subjects from claiming the same exemption from the humiliating penitential processions in the autos de fe.[614]

PAPAL INTERFERENCE

Allusions in this correspondence to special cases of arrests and fugitives and sequestrations show that Ferdinand was succeeding in moulding the old Inquisition as he desired and that it was actively at work, when suddenly a halt was called. In the general terror it is presumable that the Conversos had recourse to the Holy See and furnished the necessary convincing arguments; it may also be conjectured that Sixtus was disposed, by throwing obstacles in the way, to secure the recognition of his profitable but disputed right to entertain appeals and that he was unwilling, without a struggle, to lose control of the Inquisition of Aragon as he had done with that of Castile. There are traces also of the hand of Cardinal Borgia seeking to recover his episcopal jurisdiction over heresy in Valencia. Whatever may have been the impelling cause, the first move of Sixtus was to cause the Dominican General, Salvo Caseta, to withdraw the commission given to Fray Gaspar Juglar to appoint inquisitors at Ferdinand’s dictation. At this the royal wrath exploded in a letter to the General, April 26, 1482, threatening the whole Order with the consequences of his displeasure; Gualbes and Orts had done their duty fearlessly and incorruptibly, while Fray Francisco Vital—appointed to Catalonia by the Dominican General—had been taking bribes and had been banished the kingdom; he will never allow inquisitors to act, except at his pleasure; even with the royal favor they can accomplish little in the face of popular opposition and without it they can do nothing; meanwhile Gualbes and Orts will continue to act. This heated epistle was followed, May 11th, by one in a calmer mood, asking that Juglar’s commission be renewed or another one be issued, failing which he would obtain papal authority and overslaugh the Dominican Order.[615]

PAPAL INTERFERENCE

The next move by Sixtus was the issue, April 18, 1482, of the most extraordinary bull in the history of the Inquisition—extraordinary because, for the first time, heresy was declared to be, like any other crime, entitled to a fair trial and simple justice. We shall have abundant opportunity to see hereafter how the inquisitorial system, observed since its foundation in the thirteenth century, presumed the guilt of the accused on any kind of so-called evidence and was solely framed to extort a confession by depriving him of the legitimate means of defence and by the free use of torture. It was also an invariable rule that sacramental confession of heresy was good only in the forum of conscience and was no bar to subsequent prosecution. There was brazen assurance therefore in Sixtus’s complaining that, for some time, the inquisitors of Aragon had been moved not by zeal for the faith but by cupidity; that many faithful Christians, on the evidence of slaves, enemies and unfit witnesses, without legitimate proofs, had been thrust into secular prisons, tortured and condemned as heretics their property confiscated and their persons relaxed to the secular arm for execution. In view of the numerous complaints reaching him of this, he ordered that in future the episcopal vicars should in all cases be called in to act with the inquisitors; that the names and evidence of accusers and witnesses should be communicated to the accused, who should be allowed counsel and that the evidence for the defence and all legitimate exceptions should be freely admitted; that imprisonment should be in the episcopal gaols; that for all oppression there should be free appeal to the Holy See, with suspension of proceedings, under pain of excommunication removable only by the pope. Moreover, all who had been guilty of heresy should be permitted to confess secretly to the inquisitors or episcopal officials, who were required to hear them promptly and confer absolution, good in both the forum of conscience and that of justice, without abjuration, on their accepting secret penance, after which they could no longer be prosecuted for any previous acts, a certificate being given to them in which the sins confessed were not to be mentioned, nor were they to be vexed or molested thereafter in any way—and all this under similar pain of excommunication. The bull was ordered to be read in all churches and the names of those incurring censure under it were to be published and the censures enforced if necessary by invocation of the secular arm; while finally all proceedings in contravention of these provisions were declared to be null and void, all exceptions from excommunication were withdrawn and all conflicting papal decrees were set aside.[616] It is evident that the Conversos had a hand in framing this measure and they could scarce have asked for anything more favorable. In fact Ferdinand in December, 1482, writes to Luis Cabanilles, Governor of Valencìa, that he learns that Gonsalvo de Gonsalvo Royz was concerned in procuring the bull for the Conversos: he is therefore to be arrested at once and is not to be released without a royal order, while Luis de Santangel, the royal escribano de racion, will convey orally the king’s intentions concerning him.[617]

In this elaborate and carefully planned decree Sixtus formally threw down the gage of battle to Ferdinand and announced that he must be placated in some way if the Inquisition of Aragon was to be allowed to perform its intended functions. That it was simply a tactical move—rendered doubly advantageous by liberal Converso payment—and that he is to be credited with no humanitarian motives, is sufficiently evident from his subsequent action and also from the fact that the bull was limited to Aragon and in no way interfered with the Castilian tribunals. Ferdinand promptly accepted the challenge. He did not await the publication of the bull but addressed, on May 13th, a haughty and imperative letter to Sixtus. He had heard, he said, that such concessions had been made, which he briefly condensed in a manner to show that his information was accurate, and further that the inquisitors Gualbes and Orts had been removed, at the instance of the New Christians who hoped for more pliable successors. He refused to believe that the pope could have made grants so at variance with his duty but, if he had thus yielded to the cunning persuasions of the New Christians, he, the king, did not intend ever to allow them to take effect. If anything had been conceded it must be revoked; the management of the Inquisition must be left to him; he must have the appointment of the inquisitors, as only through his favor could they adequately perform their functions; it was through lack of this royal power that they had hitherto been corrupted and had allowed heresy to spread. He therefore asked Sixtus to confirm Gualbes and Orts and the commission to Gaspar Juglar, or to give a similar commission to some other Dominican, for he would permit no one to exercise the office in his dominions except at his pleasure.[618]

Sixtus seems to have allowed five months to elapse before answering this defiance, but in the meanwhile the Inquisition went on as before. Ferdinand had formed in Valencia a special council for the Holy Office and this body ventured to remonstrate with him about the confiscations and especially the feature of sequestration, by which, as soon as an arrest was made, the whole property of the accused was seized and held; this was peculiarly oppressive and the council represented that it violated the fueros granted by King Jaime and King Alfonso, but Ferdinand replied, September 11th, that he was resolved that nothing belonging to him should be lost but should be rigidly collected, while what belonged to others should not be taken. Another letter of September 6th to the Governor Luis Cabanilles refers to an arrangement of a kind that became frequent, under which the Conversos agreed to pay a certain sum as a composition for the confiscations of those who might be proved to be heretics.[619]

CRISTOBAL GUALBES

At length, on October 9th, Sixtus replied to Ferdinand in a manner to show that he was open to accommodation. The new rules, he said, had been drawn up with the advice of the cardinals deputed for the purpose; they had scattered in fear of the impending pestilence but, when they should return to Rome, he would charge them to consider maturely whether the bull should be amended; meanwhile he suspended it in so far as it contravened the common law, only charging the inquisitors to observe strictly the rules of the common law—the “common law” here being an elastic expression, certain to be construed as the traditional inquisitorial system.[620] Thus the unfortunate Conversos of Aragon, as we shall see hereafter were those of Castile, were merely used as pawns in the pitiless game of king and pope over their despoilment and the merciful prescriptions of the bull of April 18th were only of service in showing that, in his subsequent policy, Sixtus sinned against light and knowledge. What negotiations followed, the documents at hand fail to reveal, but an understanding was inevitable as soon as the two powers could agree upon a division of the spoil. It required a twelvemonth to effect this and in the settlement Ferdinand secured more than he had at first demanded. It was no longer a question of commissioning a fraile to appoint inquisitors at his pleasure, but of including in the organization of the Castilian Inquisition the whole of the Spanish dominions. On October 17, 1483, the agreement was ratified by a bull appointing Torquemada as inquisitor of Aragon, Valencia and Catalonia, with power to appoint subordinates. In this, with characteristic shamelessness, Sixtus declares that he is only discharging his duty as pope, while his tender care for the reputation of the Dominicans is manifested by his omitting to prescribe that the local inquisitors should be members of that Order, the only qualification required being that they should be masters in theology.[621]

During the interval, prior to this extension of Torquemada’s jurisdiction, there was an incident showing that Sixtus had yielded the appointment of inquisitors, while endeavoring to retain the power of dismissing them. Cristóbal Gualbes, who was acting in Valencia to the entire satisfaction of Ferdinand, became involved in a bitter quarrel with the Archdeacon Mercader for whom, as we have seen, Cardinal Borgia had obtained a papal brief, virtually constituting him an indispensable member of the tribunal—a power which he doubtless used speculatively to the profit of Borgia and himself. It is to the interference of Gualbes with these worthies that we may reasonably attribute the action of Sixtus, who wrote, May 25, 1483, to Ferdinand and Isabella that the misdeeds of Gualbes merited heavy punishment, but he contented himself with removing him and asked them to fill his place with some fitting person on whom he in advance conferred the necessary powers. He evidently felt doubtful as to their acquiescence, for he wrote on the same day to Iñigo Archbishop of Seville, asking him to use his influence to induce the sovereigns to concur in this.[622] Ferdinand was not inclined to abandon Gualbes for, in a letter of August 8th, he orders the Maestre Racional of Valencia to pay to “lo devot religios maestre Gualbes” forty libras to defray his expenses in coming to the king at Córdova and in order that he might without delay return to work.[623] In the final settlement however Gualbes was sacrificed, for when Torquemada was made Inquisitor-general of Aragon, Sixtus expressly forbade him from appointing that son of iniquity Cristóbal Gualbes who, for his demerits, had been interdicted from serving as inquisitor.[624]

If Ferdinand imagined that he had overcome the resistance of his subjects by placing them under the Castilian Inquisition with Torquemada at its head, he showed less than his usual sagacity. They had been restive under the revived institution conducted by their own people and the intense particularism of the Aragonese could not fail to arouse still stronger opposition to the prospect of subjection to the domination of a foreigner such as Torquemada, whose sinister reputation for pitiless zeal gave assurance that the work would be conducted with greater energy than ever.

VALENCIA

In Castile the introduction of the Inquisition had been done by the arbitrary power of the crown; in Aragon the consent of the representatives of the people was felt to be necessary for the change from the old to the new and a meeting of the Córtes was convoked at Tarazona for January 15, 1484. Ferdinand and Isabella arrived there on the 19th and remained until May, when the opening of the campaign against Granada required their presence elsewhere. Torquemada was there ready to establish the tribunals; what negotiations were requisite we do not know, though we hear of his consulting with persons of influence, and an agreement was reached on April 14th. It was not until May 7th, however, that Ferdinand issued from Tarazona a cédula addressed to all the officials throughout his dominions, informing them that with his assent the pope had established the Inquisition to repress the Judaic and Mahometan heresies and ordering that the inquisitors and their ministers should be honored and assisted everywhere under pain of the royal wrath, of deprivation of office and of ten thousand florins.[625]

Under the plenary powers of Torquemada’s commission, steps were taken to reorganize the Inquisition and adapt it to the active discharge of its duties. Tribunals were to be established permanently in Valencia, Saragossa and Barcelona with new men to conduct them. Gualbes was disposed of by the enmity of Sixtus IV. Orts still figures in an order for the payment of salaries, April 24, 1484, and, on May 10th, Ferdinand, writing from Tarazona, says that he is there and will be sent to Saragossa, but he never appeared at the latter place, though he was not formally removed from office until February 8, 1486, by Innocent VIII, when he was styled Inquisitor of Valencia and Lérida.[626]