Читать книгу History of the Inquisition of Spain - Henry Charles Lea - Страница 17

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WHEN the Inquisition, as we have seen, arrogated to itself almost an equality with the sovereign, it necessarily assumed supremacy over all other bodies in the State. Spain had been won to the theory, assiduously taught by the medieval Church, that the highest duty of the civil power was the maintenance of the faith in its purity and the extermination of heresy and heretics. The institution to which this duty was confided therefore enjoyed pre-eminence over all other departments of the State and the latter were bound, whenever called upon, to lend it whatever aid was necessary. To refuse to assist it, to criticise it, or even to fail in demonstrations of due respect to those who performed its awful functions, were thus offences to be punished at its pleasure.

Allusion has already been made (p. 182) to the oath required of officials at the founding of the Inquisition, pledging obedience and assistance, whenever an inquisitor came to a place to set up his tribunal. This was not enough, for feudalism still disputed jurisdiction with the crown, and the inquisitor was directed to summon the barons before him and make them take not only the popular oath but one promising to allow the Inquisition free course in their lands, failing which they were to be prosecuted as rebels.[869] As the tribunals became fixed in their several seats, when a new inquisitor came he brought royal letters, addressed to all officials, from the viceroy down, commanding them, under penalty of five thousand florins, to lend him and his subordinates what aid was necessary and to obey his mandates in making arrests and executing his sentences, and this was published in a formal proclamation, with sound of trumpets, by the viceroy or other royal representative.[870] This was not an empty formality. When, in 1516, the Corregidor of Logroño, the Comendador Barrientos, a knight of Santiago, ventured to assert that the familiars were not to be assisted in making an arrest the inquisitors excommunicated him and ordered him to seek the inquisitor-general and beg for pardon, which was granted only on condition of his appearance in a public auto de fe, after hearing mass as a penitent, on his knees and holding a candle, after which he was to be absolved with stripes and the other humiliations inflicted on penitents.[871] This was not merely an indignity but a lasting mark of infamy, extending to the kindred and posterity.

OATHS OF OBEDIENCE

As though this were not sufficient, at a somewhat later period, the officials of all cities where tribunals were established were required to take an elaborate oath to the inquisitors, in which they swore to compel every one within their jurisdiction to hold the Catholic faith, to persecute all heretics and their adherents, to seize and bring them before the Inquisition and to denounce them, to commit no public office to such persons nor to any who were prohibited by the inquisitors, nor to receive them in their families; to guard all the pre-eminences, privileges, exemptions and immunities of the inquisitors, their officials and familiars; to execute all sentences pronounced by the inquisitors and to be obedient to God, to the Roman Church and to the inquisitors and their successors.[872] In this, the clause pledging observance of the privileges and exemptions of the officials was highly important for, as we shall see hereafter, the privileges claimed by the Inquisition were the source of perpetual and irritating quarrels with the royal and local magistrates. It was an innovation of the middle of the sixteenth century, for Prince Philip, in a letter of December 2, 1553, to the tribunal of Valencia, says that he hears it requires the royal officials to swear to maintain the privileges, usages and customs of the Inquisition; this he says is a novelty and, as he does not approve of innovations, he asks what authority it has for such requirement. To this the answer was that every year, when the municipal officials enter upon their duties, they come and take such an oath and the records showed that this had been observed for a hundred years without contradiction. This seems to have silenced his objections and the formula became general. The Valencia Concordia, or agreement of 1554, simply provides that the secular magistrates shall take the accustomed oath and what that was is doubtless shown by the one taken, in 1626, by the almotacen, or sealer of weights and measures, when he came to the Inquisition and swore on the cross and the gospels to observe the articles customarily read to the royal officials and to guard the privileges of the Holy Office and defend it with all his power.[873]

Even all this was insufficient to emphasize the universal subordination. At all autos de fe, which were attended by the highest in the land as well as by the lowest, and at the annual proclamation of the Edict of Faith, to which the whole population was summoned, a notary of the Inquisition held up a cross and addressed the people: “Raise your hands and let each one say that he swears by God and Santa Maria and this cross and the words of the holy gospels, that he will favor and defend and aid the holy Catholic faith and the holy Inquisition, its ministers and officials, and will manifest and make known each and every heretic, fautor, defender and receiver of heretics and all disturbers and impeders of the Holy Office, and that he will not favor, or help, or conceal them but, as soon as he knows of them, he will denounce them to the inquisitors; and if he does otherwise that God may treat him as those who knowingly perjure themselves: Let every one say Amen!”[874] When the sovereign was present at an auto this general oath did not suffice and he took a special one. Thus, at the Valladolid auto of May 21, 1559, the Inquisitor-general Valdés administered it to the Regent Juana and at that of Madrid, in 1632, Inquisitor-general Zapata went to the window at which Philip IV was seated, with a missal and a cross, on which the king swore to protect and defend the Catholic faith as long as he lived and to aid and support the Inquisition—an oath which was then duly read aloud to the people.[875] Thus the whole nation was bound, in the most solemn manner, to be obedient to the Inquisition and to submit to what it might assert to be its privileges.

How purely ministerial were the functions of the public officials in all that related to the Inquisition, even under Philip V, was illustrated when, at Barcelona, in an auto de fe, June 28, 1715, a bigamist named Medrano was sentenced to two hundred lashes to be inflicted on the 30th. On the 29th word was sent to the public executioner to be ready to administer them, but the Viceroy, the Marquis of Castel-Rodrigo, forbade the executioner to act until he should give permission, holding that no public punishment should be inflicted until he should be officially notified of the sentence. There were hasty conferences and debates, lasting to nearly midnight, and it was not until 7 A.M. of the 30th that the marquis gave way and the sentence was executed. The tribunal reported the affair to the Suprema, which replied in the name of the king, diplomatically thanking the marquis and rebuking his legal adviser, who was told that it was his duty and that of all officials to be obedient to the Inquisition.[876]

As a perpetual reminder of this subordination, there appears to have been kept in the royal chancellery the formula of a letter addressed to all viceroys and captains-general. This recited the invaluable services of the Inquisition in clearing the land of infinite heretics and preserving it from the convulsions afflicting other nations, thus rendering its efficiency one of the chief concerns of the crown. Therefore the king charges his representatives emphatically to honor and favor all inquisitors, officials and familiars, giving them all the necessary aid for which they may ask and enforcing the observance of all the privileges and exemptions conceded to them by law, concordias, royal cédulas, use and custom and in any other way, so that the Holy Office may have the full liberty and authority which it has always enjoyed and which the king desires it to retain. A copy of this was sent to all the viceroys in 1603 and, as I have chanced to find it again addressed, in 1652, to the Duke of Montalto, then Viceroy of Valencia, it was presumably part of the regular instructions furnished to all who were appointed to these responsible positions.[877]

POWER TO CRIPPLE OPPONENTS

In the interminable conflicts through which the Inquisition established its enjoyment of the powers thus conferred, the inquisitor was armed, offensively and defensively, in a manner to give him every advantage. He could, at any moment, when involved in a struggle with either the secular or ecclesiastical authorities, disable his opponent with a sentence of excommunication removable only by the Holy Office or the pope and, if this did not suffice, he could lay an interdict or even a cessatio a divinis on cities, until the people, deprived of the sacraments, would compel submission. It is true that, in 1533, the Suprema ordered that much discretion should be exercised in the use of this powerful weapon, on account of the indignation aroused by its abuse, but we shall have ample opportunity to see how recklessly it was employed habitually, without regard to the preliminary safeguards imposed by the canons.[878] On the other hand, the inquisitor was practically immune. His antagonists were mostly secular authorities who had no such weapon in their armories and, when he chanced to quarrel with a prelate, he usually took care to be the first to fulminate an excommunication, and then unconcernedly disregarded the counter censures as uttered by one disabled from the exercise of his functions, for the anathema deprived its subject of all official faculties. It had the contingent result, moreover, that he who remained under excommunication for a year could be prosecuted for suspicion of heresy.[879]

There was another provision which rendered it even more formidable as an antagonist. In matters of faith and all pertaining directly or indirectly thereto, its jurisdiction was exclusive. In the extensive field of civil and criminal business, of which it obtained cognizance through the immunities of its officials and, in the frequent quarrels arising from questions of ceremony and precedence, no court, whether secular or spiritual, had power to inhibit any action which it might see fit to take. By special papal favor, however, it had power to inhibit their action and thus to cripple them on the spot. This extraordinary privilege, with power to subdelegate, appears to have been first granted in the commissions issued, in 1507, to Ximenes and Enguera as inquisitors-general respectively of Castile and Aragon and was repeated in those of Luis Mercader and Pedro Juan Poul in 1513.[880] For a considerable time this clause disappears from the commissions, but, towards the close of the century, it again finds place, in a more detailed and absolute form in that granted to Manrique de Lara, after which it continued in those of his successors to the end. It confers the power of inhibiting all judges, even of archiepiscopal dignity, under pecuniary penalties and censures to be enforced by the invocation of the secular arm and of absolving them after they shall have submitted and obeyed.[881] This proclaimed to the world that the Inquisition outranked all other authorities in Church and State and the power was too often exercised for its existence to be ignored or forgotten. This superiority found practical expression in the rule that, in the innumerable conflicts of jurisdiction, all secular and ecclesiastical judges must answer communications from inquisitors in the form of petition and not by letter. If they replied to commands and comminations by letter they were to be fined and proceedings were to be commenced against them and their messengers, and they were required to withdraw and erase from their records all such letters which were held to be disrespectful to the superiority of the Holy Office.[882]

ASSERTION OF SUPERIORITY

It was an inevitable inference from this that there was no direct appeal from whatever a tribunal might do except to the Suprema, which, though it might in secret chide its subordinates for their excesses, customarily upheld them before the world. The sovereign, it is true, was the ultimate judge and, in occasional cases, he interposed his authority with more or less effect, but the ordinary process was through a competencia, a cumbrous procedure through which, as we shall see, the Inquisition could wrangle for years and virtually, in most cases, deny all practical relief to the sufferers.

Another weapon of tremendous efficacy was the power of arrest, possessed at will by inquisitors during the greater portion of the career of the Inquisition. Even to gratify mere vindictiveness, by simply asserting that there was a matter of faith, the inquisitor could throw any one into the secret prison. The civil magistrate might thus abuse his authority with little damage to the victim, but it was otherwise with the Inquisition. In the insane estimate placed on limpieza de sangre, or purity of blood, the career of a man and of his descendants was fatally narrowed by such a stain on his orthodoxy; it mattered little what was the outcome of the case, the fact of imprisonment was remembered and handed down through generations while the fact of its being causeless was forgotten. In the later period, when the Suprema supervised every act of the tribunals, the opportunities for this were greatly restricted, but during the more active times the ill-will of an inquisitor could at any moment inflict this most serious injury and the power was often recklessly abused in the perpetual conflicts with the secular authorities. The ability thus to destroy at a word the prospects in life of any man was a terrible weapon which goes far to explain the awe with which the inquisitor was regarded by the community.

That the inquisitor should assume to be superior to all other dignitaries was the natural result of the powers thus concentrated in him. Páramo asserts that he is the individual of highest authority in his district, as he represents both pope and king; and the Suprema, in a consulta addressed to Philip V, in 1713, boasted that its jurisdiction was so superior that there was not a person in the kingdom exempt from it.[883] The haughty supremacy which it affected is seen in instructions issued in 1578 that inquisitors, when the tribunal is sitting, are not to go forth to receive any one, save the king, the queen or a royal prince and are not, in an official capacity, to appear in receptions of prelates or other public assemblies, and this was virtually repeated in 1645, when they were told not to visit the viceroy or the archbishop or accept their invitations, for such demonstrations were due only to the person of the king.[884] Exception however, was probably taken to this for a carta acordada of March 17, 1648, lays down less stringent rules and specifies for each tribunal, according to the varying customs of different places, the high officials whom the inquisitor is permitted to visit on induction into office and on occasions of condolence or congratulation.[885]

In the social hierarchy the viceroys and captains-general stood next to the king as representing, in their respective governments, the royal person. To outrank these exalted personages was not beyond inquisitorial ambition. In 1588 there was great scandal in Lima, when the inquisitors claimed precedence over the Count of Villar, the Viceroy of Peru, and carried their point by excommunicating him, but Philip II, in a cédula of March 8, 1589, took them severely to task for their arrogance and added that the viceroy was equally to blame for yielding, as he represented the royal power. This lesson was ineffectual and some years later another method was tried of asserting superiority. In 1596, the Captain-general of Aragon complained to the king that, in the recent auto de fe, the inquisitors had refused to give him the title of Excellency. To this Philip replied, February 6, 1597, that it was unreasonable for them thus to affect equality with his personal representative; they must either concede to him the title of Excellency or themselves be treated as vuestra merced, in place of muy ilustres or señoria, and therefore he could attend the next auto.[886]

ASSERTION OF SUPERIORITY

This asserted superiority of the Inquisition was very galling to the bishops, who argued that the Holy Office had been founded only four hundred years before, as an aid to their jurisdiction, and they resented bitterly the efforts of the resolute upstarts to claim higher privileges and precedence. The Inquisition, however, was an organized whole, with sharp and unsparing methods of enforcing its claims and protected in every way from assault, while the episcopate was a scattered and unwieldy body, acting individually and, for the most part, powerless to defend the officials, through whom it acted, from those who claimed that everything concerning themselves was a matter of faith of which they had exclusive cognizance. The serious conflicts over jurisdiction will be considered in a subsequent chapter; here we are concerned merely with questions of etiquette and ceremonial. Seen through the perspective of the centuries, these quarrels, which were conducted with frantic eagerness, seem trivialities unworthy of record, but their significance was momentous to the parties concerned, as they involved superiority and inferiority. The hundred years’ quarrel over precedence in Rome, between the ambassadors of France and Spain, which was not settled until 1661 by the triumph of France, had a meaning beyond a mere question of ceremony. In Spain these debates often filled the land with confusion. All parties were tenacious of what they conceived to be their rights and were ready to explode in violence on the smallest provocation. The enormous mass of letters and papers concerning the seats and positions of the inquisitors and their officials at all public functions—whether seats should be chairs or benches and whether they were to have canopies, or cushions, or carpets, shows that these were regarded as matters of the highest moment, giving rise to envenomed quarrels with the ecclesiastical and secular dignitaries, requiring for their settlement the interposition of the royal authority. The inquisitors were constantly arrogating to themselves external marks of superiority and the others were disputing it with a vehemence that elevated the most trivial affairs into matters of national importance, and the attention of the king and the highest ministers was diverted from affairs of state to pacify obscure quarrels in every corner of the land.

It would be futile to enter into the details of these multitudinous squabbles, but one or two subjects in dispute may be mentioned to illustrate the ingenuity with which the Inquisition pushed its claims to superiority. Towards the middle of the seventeenth century it demanded that, when there was an episcopal letter or mandate to be published in the churches and also an edict or letter of the Inquisition, the latter should have precedence in the reading. This was naturally regarded as an effort to show that the inquisitorial jurisdiction was superior to the episcopal and it led to frequent scandals. In 1645, at Valencia, on Passion Sunday, a secretary of the tribunal endeavored to read letters of the inquisitors before one of the archbishop’s, but, by the latter’s order, the priest refused to give way, whereupon the inquisitors arrested him: the matter was carried up to the king, who ordered the priest to be discharged in such wise that there should be no record of his prosecution and that his good fame should be restored. Soon after this, in Saragossa on a feast-day in the cathedral, a priest commenced to read an archiepiscopal letter, but before he had finished more than a few lines, a secretary of the Inquisition mounted the other pulpit and began reading a letter of the Inquisition; the priest was so disturbed that he stopped, whereupon the archbishop, Juan Cebrian, ordered his arrest, but he pleaded his surprise and confusion and the archbishop relented. In 1649 a more determined effort was made by the Saragossa tribunal. August 15th the parish priest of the cathedral read certain archiepiscopal letters at the accustomed time and was followed by the secretary of the Inquisition with others of the inquisitors. Two days later the priest was summoned before the tribunal and was made to swear secrecy as to orders given to him. The result showed what were his instructions, for the next Sunday, having archiepiscopal letters to read, he waited until the secretary read those of the inquisitors. Some days later similar secret orders were given to the priest of Nuestra Señora del Pilar and when, on October 11th, he commenced reading an archiepiscopal letter, an officer of the Inquisition seized him by the arm and forced him to read first those of the tribunal. Archbishop Cebrian addressed memorials to the king, September 7th and 21st and October 12th asking his protection to preserve the archiepiscopal jurisdiction; the Council of Aragon presented a consulta supporting him, on which the wearied monarch made an endorsement, deploring the evil results of such conflicts and telling the Council to write to the archbishop not to proceed to extremities but to seek some adjustment similar to that by which, a short time before, Cardinal Moscoso in Toledo had caused an inquisitorial letter to be read on a different day, to which the tribunal must be made to conform.[887]

ASSERTION OF SUPERIORITY

The persistence with which the Inquisition maintained any claim once advanced is illustrated by its endeavor to introduce change in the ritual of the mass favorable to its assumption of superiority. It was the custom that the celebrant should make a bow to the bishop, if present, and in his absence, to the Eucharist. In 1635, at Valladolid, the inquisitors required that when the Edict of Faith was read the bow should be made to them and, on the refusal of the officiating canon, they arrested him and the dean who upheld him and held them under heavy bail. This aroused the whole city and brought a rebuke from the king, who ordered them to discharge the bail and not to abuse their jurisdiction. Unabashed by this the effort was made again at Compostella, in 1639, and duly resisted; the king was again obliged to examine the question and, after consultation with learned men, decided that the chapter was in the right and that the inquisitors had the alternative of absenting themselves from the reading. Two rebuffs such as this should have sufficed but, in 1643, after careful preparation, another attempt was made at Córdova, which produced a fearful scandal. Neither side would yield; the services were interrupted; the inquisitors endeavored to excommunicate the canons, but the latter raised such a din with howls and cries, the thunder of the organ, the clangor of bells and breaking up the seats in the choir, that the fulmination could not be heard. Even the inquisitors shrank from the storm and left the church amid hisses, with their caps pulled down to their eyes, but they lost no time in commencing a prosecution of the canons, who appealed to the king, in a portentous document covering two hundred and fifty-six folio pages. Philip and his advisers at the moment had ample occupation, what with the dismissal of Olivares, the evil tidings from Rocroy and the rebellions in Catalonia and Portugal, but they had to turn aside to settle this portentous quarrel. A royal letter of June 16, 1643, ordered the inquisitors to restore to the canons certain properties which they had seized and to remove the excommunications, while reference to similar decisions at Compostella, Granada and Cartagena shows how obstinate and repeated had been the effort of the Holy Office. Notwithstanding this the tribunal of Córdova refused obedience to the royal mandate and a second letter, of September 28th from Saragossa, where Philip was directing the campaign against Catalonia, was required. This was couched in peremptory terms; the excommunications must be removed and, for the future, the Roman ceremonial must be observed, prescribing that in the absence of the bishop, the reverence must be made to the sacrament.[888]

QUESTIONS OF CEREMONY

While thus steadily endeavoring to encroach on the rights of others, the Inquisition was supersensitive as to anything that might be reckoned as an attempt by other bodies to assert superiority, and it vindicated what it held to be its rights with customary violence. When the funeral solemnities of Queen Ana, of Austria were celebrated in Seville, in 1580, a bitter quarrel about precedence in seats arose between the tribunal, the royal Audiencia or high court and the city authorities, when the former arbitrarily suspended the obsequies until consultation could be had with Philip II, then in Lisbon, engaged in the absorption of Portugal. He regulated the position which each of the contending parties should occupy and the postponed honors were duly rendered. Matters remained quiescent until a similar function became necessary, after the death of Philip in 1598. The city spent weeks in costly preparations and the catafalque erected in the cathedral was regarded as worthy of that magnificent building. November 29th was fixed for the ceremonies; on the vigil, the regent, or president judge of the Audiencia, sent a chair from his house to the place assigned to him, but the chapter protested so vigorously against the innovation that he was obliged to remove it. The following morning, when the various bodies entered the church at half-past nine, the benches assigned to the judges and their wives were seen to be draped in mourning. This was at once regarded as an effort on their part to establish pre-eminence and excited great indignation. The services commenced and during the mass the inquisitors sent word to the cabildo, or city magistracy, that it should order the mourning removed. After some demur, the cabildo sent its procurador mayor, Pedro de Escobar, with a notary and some alguaziles to the Audiencia, bearing a message to the effect that if the drapery were not removed, the inquisitors and the church authorities were agreed that the ceremonies should be suspended. He was told not to approach and on persisting he and his followers were arrested and thrown into the public gaol. The inquisitors then sent their secretary with a message, but he too was kept at a distance when he mounted the steps of the catafalque and cried out that the tribunal excommunicated the three judges, Vallejo, Lorenzana and Guerra, if they did not depart. A second time he came with a message, which he was not allowed to deliver, and again he mounted the steps to declare all the judges excommunicated and that they must leave the church in order that the services might proceed, for the presence of excommunicates was a bar to all public worship. This was repeated again by the fiscal, when the Audiencia drew up a paper declaring the acts of the tribunal to be null and void and ordering it to remove the censure under pain of forfeiting citizenship and temporalities, but the scrivener sent to serve it was refused a hearing and on his persisting was threatened with the pillory. The alcalde of the city endeavored to calm the inquisitors, but Inquisitor Zapata replied furiously that if St. Paul came from heaven and ordered them to do otherwise they would refuse if it cost them their souls.

Meanwhile there were similar trouble and complications among the church authorities. The vicar-general, Pedro Ramírez de Leon, ordered the services resumed, under pain, for the dean and officiating priest, of excommunication and of a thousand ducats; the precentor and canons appealed to the pope, but the vicar-general published them in the choir as excommunicates. The celebrant, Dr. Negron, was sought for, but he had prudently disappeared in the confusion and could not be found. It was now half-past twelve and the canons sent word to the Audiencia that they were going and it could go. To leave the church, however, would seem like an admission by the judges that they were excommunicate and they grimly kept their seats. The cabildo of the city and the tribunal were not to be outdone and the three hostile groups sat glaring at each other until four o’clock, when the absurdity of the situation grew too strong and they silently departed. Meanwhile the candles had been burning until five hundred ducats’ worth of wax was uselessly consumed.

So complicated a quarrel could of course only be straightened out by the king to whom all parties promptly appealed. The judges proved that they had not draped their benches as a sign of pre-eminence but had proposed that the same be done by the cabildo and the tribunal. As far as regards the latter, the royal decision was manifested in two cédulas of December 22d. One of these told the inquisitors that they had exceeded their jurisdiction in excommunicating the judges, whom they were to absolve ad cautelam and they also had to pay for the wasted wax. The other ominously ordered the inquisitors Blanco and Zapata to appear at the court within fifteen days and not to depart without licence. At the same time, on December 21st the suspended obsequies were duly celebrated.[889]

SUPERIORITY TO LAW

It will be seen from these cases that the only appeal from inquisitorial aggression lay to the king and that, even when the inquisitors were wholly in the wrong and the royal decision was against them, no steps were taken to keep them within bounds for the future. The altered position of the Holy Office under the Bourbons was therefore significantly indicated by a decision of Fernando VI in 1747. At the celebration in Granada, on September 11th, of his accession, the chancillería, or great high court of New Castile, observed that the archbishop occupied a chair covered with taffety, outside of his window overlooking the plaza, and that the inquisitors had cushions on their window-sills. It sent messengers to request the removal of these symbols of pre-eminence and, on receiving a refusal in terms of scant respect, it stopped the second bull-fight and put an end to the ceremonies. The matter was referred to the king, when the Suprema, in a memorial of solemn earnestness, argued that the Inquisition had for centuries been in the uncontested enjoyment of the privilege of which it was now sought to be deprived. It was the highest tribunal, not only in Spain but in the world, as it had charge of the true religion, which is the foundation of all kingdoms and republics. The time had passed for this swelling self-assertion. Full discussion was devoted to the momentous question and, on October 3d, Fernando issued a decree which proclaimed to Spain that the Holy Office was no longer what it had been. This was to the effect that, as the chancillería represented the royal jurisdiction, and thus indirectly the king himself, it was entitled to pre-eminence in all such celebrations and in those of the royal chapel; it was justified in its action and thereafter no such signs of dignity as canopies, cushions, ceremonial chairs and the like should be used in its presence. In case of attempts to do so, one of the alcaldes del crimen with his officers should remove them and punish any workmen in setting them up.[890]

The Inquisition and its members were protected in every way from subjection to local laws and regulations. An edict of Charles V, in 1523, forbade all municipalities or other bodies from adopting statutes which should in any way curtail their privileges or be adverse to them and, if any such should be attempted he declared them in advance to be null and void.[891] This in fact, was only expressing and enforcing the canon laws enacted in the frenzied efforts to suppress heresy in the thirteenth century and still in vigor. A constitution of Urban IV (1261–5) declares invalid the laws of any state or city which impede, directly or indirectly, the functions of the Inquisition, and the bishop or inquisitor is empowered to summon the ruler or magistrates to exhibit such statutes and compel him by censures to revoke or modify them.[892] While this was designed to prevent the crippling of the Inquisition by hostile legislation, it inferred a superiority to law and was construed in the most liberal way, as was seen in a struggle in Valencia which lasted for nearly two centuries. A police regulation for the improvement of the market-place ordered the removal of all stands for the display of goods under the arcades of the houses. One house belonged to the tribunal; its tenant was the worst offender, and he obstinately kept his stand and appealed to the tribunal for protection against the law. This protection was accorded with such vigor in 1603, that the saintly Archbishop, Juan de Ribera, who was also captain-general, vainly endeavored to secure obedience to the law. Until the close of the eighteenth century the tribunal thus successfully defied the Real Junta de Policia, consisting of the captain-general, the regente and other high officials. At length, in 1783, Carlos III issued a royal declaration that no one should be exempt from obedience to orders of police and good government and that all such cases should be adjudicated by the ordinary courts without admitting the competencias with which the Holy Office habitually sought to tire out those who ventured to withstand its aggressiveness. Under this, in 1791, the nuisance in Valencia was abated, when the tribunal apologized to the Suprema for yielding and excused itself in virtue of the royal declaration of 1783. It had held out as long as it could, but times had changed and even the Inquisition was forced to respect the law.[893] Madrid had been earlier relieved from such annoyance, for a royal cédula of 1746, regulating the police system of the capital, has a clause evidently directed at the Inquisition for it declares that no exemption, even the most privileged, shall avail in matters concerning the police, the adornment and the cleanliness of the city.[894]

INVIOLABILITY

The lawlessness thus fostered degenerated into an arbitrary disregard of the rights of others, leading to a petty tyranny sometimes exercised in the most arbitrary and capricious manner. Inquisitor Santos of Saragossa was very friendly with the Licenciado Pedro de Sola, a beneficed priest of the cathedral, and Juan Sebastian, who were good musicians and who gathered some musical friends to sing complins with them on Holy Saturday at Santa Engracia, where the inquisitors spent Holy Week in retreat. Santos used to send his coach for them and entertain them handsomely, but when, in 1624, he became Bishop of Solsona, although the singing continued, the coach and entertainment ceased and the musicians went unwillingly. Finally, in 1637, some of them stopped going; the inquisitors sent for them and scolded them which made them all indignant. Then, in 1638, the secretary Heredia was sent to order them to go and when the chapel master excused them, with an intimation that they ought to be paid, Heredia told them the tribunal honored them sufficiently in calling for them. They did not go and, when Easter was over, two of them, beneficed priests, were summoned and, after being kept waiting for three hours, were imprisoned in a filthy little house occupied by soldiers and were left for twelve hours without bedding, food or drink. The next day they managed to communicate with the chapter, but it was afraid to interfere and, after six days of this confinement, they were brought before the tribunal and informed that they had the city for a prison, under pain of a hundred ducats, and were made to swear to present themselves whenever summoned. As they went out they saw two more brought in—the chapel-master and a priest. At last the chapter plucked up courage to address a memorial to the king through the Council of Aragon, which added the suggestion that he should order the inquisitor-general to see to the release of the musicians and the prevention of such extortion. May 11th Philip referred this to the Suprema which, after a month’s delay, replied, June 14th, that, desiring to avoid controversy with the church of Saragossa, it had ordered the tribunal to pay the musicians in future, to release any that were in prison and to return whatever fines had been imposed.[895] When petty tyranny such as this could be practised, especially on the privileged class of priests, we can appreciate the terrorism surrounding the tribunals.

Another distinction contributed to the supereminence claimed by the Inquisition—the inviolability which shielded all who were in its service. From an early period the Church had sought to protect its members, whose profession was assumed to debar them from the use of arms, by investing them with a sanctity which should assure their safety in an age of violence. Throughout the middle ages no canon was more frequently invoked than Si quis suadente diabolo, which provided that whoever struck a cleric or monk incurred an anathema removable only by personal appearance before the pope and accepting his sentence.[896] More than this was asked for by the Inquisition, for the greater portion of its officials were laymen. They were no more exposed to injury or insult than those of the secular courts, but it was assumed that there was a peculiar hatred felt for them and that their functions in defending the faith entitled them to special security. We shall see hereafter that the Inquisition obtained jurisdiction in all matters connected with its officials, but this, while enabling it to give them special protection, had the limitation that judgements of blood rendered ecclesiastics pronouncing them “irregular.” In cases of heresy this had long been evaded by a hypocritical plea for mercy, when delivering convicts to the secular arm for execution, but it was felt that some special faculties were requisite in dealing with cases of mere assault or homicide and a motu proprio was procured from Leo X, January 28, 1515, empowering inquisitors to arrest any one, even of the highest rank, whether lay or clerical, who strikes, beats, mutilates or kills any minister or official of the Inquisition and to deliver him to the secular arm for punishment, without incurring irregularity, even if it results in effusion of blood.[897] The Holy Office thus held in its own hands the protection of all who served it.

This was rendered still more efficient by subsequent papal action. Irritated at some resistance offered to the Roman Inquisition, Pius V published, April 1, 1569, the ferocious bull Si de protegendis, under which any one, of whatever rank, who should threaten, strike or kill an officer or a witness, who should help a prisoner to escape or make way with any document or should lend aid or counsel to such act, was to be delivered to the secular judge for punishment as a heretic—that is to say, for burning—including confiscation and the infamy of his children.[898] Although this was intended for Italy, the Spanish Inquisition speedily assumed the benefit of it; it was sent out October 16th and it was annually published in the vernacular on Holy Thursday.[899]

INVIOLABILITY

Thus all concerned in the business of the Holy Office were hedged around with an inviolability accorded to no other class of the community. The inquisitors themselves were additionally protected against responsibility for their own malfeasance by the received theory that scandal was more to be dreaded than crime—that there was inherent in their office such importance to religion that anything was better than what might bring that office into contempt. Francisco Peña, in treating of this, quotes the warning of Aquinas as to cardinals and applies it to the punishment of inquisitors; if scandal has arisen, they may be punished; otherwise the danger to the reputation of the Holy Office is greater than that of impunity to the offender.[900] The tenderness, in fact, with which they were treated, even when scandal had arisen, was a scandal in itself. Thus, when the reiterated complaints of Barcelona caused a visitation to be made there, in 1567, by de Soto Salazar, and his report confirmed the accusations, showing the three inquisitors to be corrupt, extortionate and unjust, the only penalty imposed, in 1568, was merely suspension for three years from all office in the Inquisition. Even this was not enforced, at least with regard to one of them, Dr. Zurita, for we chance to meet him as inquisitor of Saragossa in 1570. He does not seem to have reformed, for his transfer thence to Sardinia, the least desirable of the tribunals, can only have been in consequence of persistent misconduct.[901] The tribunals naturally showed the same mercy to their subordinates, whose sole judges they were, and this retention in office of those whom unfitness was proved was not the least of the burdens with which the Inquisition afflicted Spain.

What rendered this inviolability more aggravating was that it extended to the servants and slaves of all connected with the Holy Office. About 1540 a deputy corregidor of Murcia, for insulting a servant of the messenger of the tribunal, was exposed to the infamy of hearing mass as a penitent.[902] In 1564, we find Dr. Zurita, on circuit through his district, collecting evidence against Micael Bonet, of Palacio de Vicio, for caning a servant boy of Benet Modaguer, who held some office in the Inquisition, and the case was sent to Barcelona for trial, which shows that it was regarded as serious. So, in 1568, for quarrelling with a servant of Micer Complada, who styled himself deputy of the abogado fiscal at Tarragona, the Barcelona tribunal, without verifying Complada’s claims to office, threw into prison Gerónimo Zapata and Antonio de Urgel and condemned Zapata to a fine of thirty ducats and six months’ exile and Urgel to ten ducats and three months.[903] In Murcia, Sebastian Gallego, the servant of an inquisitor, quarrelled with a butcher over some meat, when they exchanged insults. The secular judge arrested both but the tribunal claimed them, prosecuted the butcher and banished him from the town.[904] Such cases were of frequent occurrence and it is easy to conceive how galling was the insolence of despised class thus enabled to repay the contempt with which it was habitually treated.

ENFORCEMENT OF RESPECT

When the honor of slaves was thus vindicated inquisitors were not apt to condone any failure, real or imaginary, in the respect which they held to be their due, and the offender was made to feel the awful authority which shrouded the tribunal and its judges. As their powers were largely discretional, with undefined limits, the manner in which they were exercised was sometimes eccentric. In 1569, for instance, the Jesuits of Palermo prepared for representation in their church a tragedy of St. Catherine and, on October 4th, they gave a private rehearsal to which were invited the viceroy and principal dignitaries. The inquisitor, Juan Biserra, came as one of the guests and finding the door closed knocked repeatedly without announcing himself or demanding admittance. The janitor, thinking it to be some unauthorized person, paid no attention to the knocking and Biserra departed, highly incensed. When the Jesuits heard of it, the rector and principal fathers called on him to apologize, but, after keeping them waiting for some time he refused to see them. The public representation was announced for October 8th; the church was crowded with the nobility awaiting the rising of the curtain, when a messenger from Biserra notified the Jesuits that he forbade the performance, under pain of excommunication and other penalties at his discretion, until after the piece should have been examined and approved by him. The audience was dismissed and the next day the MS. was sent to Biserra who submitted it to Dominican censors. Although they returned it with their approval he discovered in it two objectionable points, so absurdly trifling as to show that he wanted merely to make a wanton exhibition of his power. The censors replied to his criticism and he finally allowed the performance to proceed. We may not unreasonably assume that this may have been one of the freaks for which Biserra was suspended in 1572, on the report made of him by the visitor Quintanilla. Then, with customary tenderness, he was employed in the responsible post of visitor at Barcelona, where he died soon afterwards.[905]

The sensitiveness to disrespect and the terrorism which its arbitrary punishment diffused through the community were well illustrated when, in 1617, Fray Diego Vinegas preached the Lenten sermons in the Hospital of N. Señora de la Gracia of Saragossa. He was a distinguished Benedictine, who had held high offices in his Order, and his eloquence on this occasion brought in alms amounting to eight thousand crowns. On January 21st the inquisitors sent him a message to come to them the next day at 2 P.M., to which he replied in writing that he was indisposed and closely occupied with his sermons; if they wished to order him to preach the Edict of Faith, he held himself already charged to do so and begged them to excuse his coming. A second message the same day told him to come at the same hour another day, when he would be told what was wanted of him, to which he answered that he would come but that if it was only to order him to preach the sermon he would return at once to Castile, without again mounting the pulpit. Whether anything underlay this somewhat mysterious action does not appear; the significance of the affair lies in the fact that it at once became a matter of general public concern. When that same night the governor of the Hospital heard of it he recognized the injury that would accrue to the institution and to the whole city and forthwith reported it to the viceroy, who commissioned the Licentiate Balthasar Navarro to undo the mischief. The result of his labors was that the inquisitors declared that as Fray Vinegas pleaded indisposition they would excuse him from preaching the Edict of Faith. The affair appeared to be settled and Vinegas begged permission to call on the two inquisitors, Santos and Salcedo, and pay them the Easter compliments. They graciously acceded and on Easter Monday he waited on them, exculpated himself, and begged their pardon for having been prevented by indisposition from preaching the Edict, all of which they accepted with great courtesy. The community breathed freer, for some vindication of the honor of the Inquisition had been expected. The inquisitors however had been consulting the Suprema and vengeance was at hand. The next day, Tuesday, was the last of the series of sermons; Vinegas preached successfully to a crowded church when, on descending from the pulpit, he was arrested by an alguazil of the Inquisition, dragged through the crowd like a heresiarch attempting escape, thrown into a coach and carried to the Aljafería. There he was placed on a bench like a criminal, interrogated as one and then, without being listened to, was sentenced to perpetual deprivation of the honors of the Inquisition (preaching at autos, the edicts, etc.) and reprimanded with the utmost severity. The mark of infamy thus inflicted was indelible and the scandal was immense. The people flocked in crowds to the viceroy in the greatest excitement and he had much ado to quiet them by promising that it should be remedied. Vinegas applied for the reinstatement of his honor to the Council of Aragon, which replied that it had no jurisdiction; then he applied to the Suprema, which refused to hear him. He sent a memorial to the king, who referred it to the Council of Aragon and he continued his efforts for more than a year but it does not appear that he ever obtained relief.[906]

ENFORCEMENT OF RESPECT

As a rule, any criticism of the justice of the Inquisition and any complaint by one who had passed through its hands were offences to be punished with more or less severity. To this, however, there was an exception in a case the singularity of which deserves mention. Perhaps the most distinguished Franciscan theologian of his day was Miguel de Medina. He fell under suspicion of Lutheranism, was arrested and tried and died during trial, May 1, 1578, in the secret prison of Toledo after four years of detention. Another Franciscan, Francisco Ortiz, espoused his cause so zealously that, in a public sermon in 1576 he pronounced the trial to be unjust, for it was the work of a conspiracy among his brother frailes; the arrest was a mortal sin, as though it were St. Jerome or St. Augustin, and the inquisitor-general (Espinosa) who had signed the warrant was in hell unless he had repented; the inquisitors were ashamed and were seeking to avert the disgrace from themselves, when they ought to be punishing the perjury of those who had testified. This was flat blasphemy against the Holy Office, and it is not easy to understand why the daring fraile escaped, when tried by the tribunal of Toledo, with a reprimand administered privately in the audience-chamber and a prohibition to enter Madrid without permission—a sentence which was duly confirmed by the Suprema.[907] We shall see hereafter that another Fray Francisco Ortiz, for a similar offence, did not escape so easily.

These were the defences thrown around the Inquisition to secure its effectiveness in its supreme function of maintaining religious unity, and these were the efforts which it made to secure the recognition of the supremacy to which it aspired. It was an institution suddenly introduced into an established ecclesiastical and secular hierarchy, which regarded the intruder with natural jealousy and dislike and resented its manifest resolve to use its spiritual authority for their humiliation. Its arrogant self-assertion led it into frequent mistakes in which even its royal protectors could not justify it, but it gradually won its way under the Hapsburgs. The advent of the Bourbons brought into play a new theory as to the relations between Church and State and the civil authorities were able in time to vindicate their equality and independence. We shall have the opportunity of following this struggle, in which religion was in no way concerned, for the defence of the faith was a pretext under which the Holy Office sought to arrogate to itself control over a constantly widening area of secular affairs, while claiming release from secular obligations.