THE INQUISITION OF SPAIN

WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR

A HISTORY OF THE INQUISITION OF THE MIDDLE AGES. In three volumes, octavo.

A HISTORY OF AURICULAR CONFESSION AND INDULGENCES IN THE LATIN CHURCH. In three volumes, octavo.

AN HISTORICAL SKETCH OF SACERDOTAL CELIBACY IN THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. Third edition. (In preparation.)

A FORMULARY OF THE PAPAL PENITENTIARY IN THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY. One volume, octavo. (Out of print.)

SUPERSTITION AND FORCE. Essays on The Wager of Law, The Wager of Battle, The Ordeal, Torture. Fourth edition, revised. In one volume, 12mo.

STUDIES IN CHURCH HISTORY. The Rise of the Temporal Power, Benefit of Clergy, Excommunication, The Early Church and Slavery. Second edition. In one volume, 12mo.

CHAPTERS FROM THE RELIGIOUS HISTORY OF SPAIN, CONNECTED WITH THE INQUISITION. Censorship of the Press, Mystics and Illuminati, Endemoniadas, El Santo Niño de la Guardia, Brianda de Bardaxí.

THE MORISCOS OF SPAIN. THEIR CONVERSION AND EXPULSION. In one volume, 12mo.

A HISTORY
OF THE
INQUISITION OF SPAIN

BY
HENRY CHARLES LEA. LL.D.
———
IN FOUR VOLUMES
———
VOLUME II.
———
New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., Ltd. 1922
All rights reserved
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Copyright, 1906,
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
——
Set up and electrotyped. Published January, 1906.

CONTENTS OF VOL. II.

THE INQUISITION OF SPAIN.

BOOK III.
JURISDICTION.

CHAPTER I.
HERESY.

THE Inquisition was organized for the eradication of heresy and the enforcement of uniformity of belief. We shall have occasion to see hereafter how elastic became the definition of heresy, and we have seen how far afield its extinction led the operations of the Holy Office but, to the last, the suppression of unorthodox belief remained the ostensible object of its existence.

It is not easy at the present day, for those accustomed to universal toleration, to realize the importance attached by statesmen in the past to unity of belief, or the popular abhorrence for any deviation from the standard of dogma. These convictions were part of the mental and moral fibre of the community and were the outcome of the assiduous teachings of the Church for centuries, until it was classed with the primal truths that it was the highest duty of the sovereign to crush out dissidence at whatever cost, and that hatred of the heretic was enjoined on every Christian by both divine and human law. The heretic was a venomous reptile, spreading contagion with his very breath and the safety of the land required his extermination as a source of pestilence.[1]

In the earlier periods of the Inquisition, moreover, when the hierarchy was filled with New Christians of doubtful orthodoxy, it was essential to know that the sacraments necessary to salvation were not vitiated by the apostasy of the ministrant, for his intention is indispensable to their validity. No man could tell how many priests there were like Andrés González, parish priest of San Martín de Talavera, who, on his trial at Toledo, in 1486, confessed that for fourteen years he had secretly been a Jew, that he had no intention when he celebrated mass, nor had he granted absolution to the penitents confessing to him. There was also a classical story, widely circulated, of Fray Garcia de Zapata, prior of the Geronimite monastery of Toledo, who, when elevating the Host, used to say “Get up, little Peter, and let the people look at you” and who always turned his back on the penitent to whom he pretended to grant absolution.[2]

CONDITIONS OF JURISDICTION

The merciless zeal of the Holy Office might gradually relieve the people of this danger, but it intensified by its methods the unreasoning abhorrence of heresy. The honest cavalier Oviedo, about the middle of the sixteenth century, merely phrases the current opinion of the time when he says that all possible punishments prescribed by the canons and admitted by the laws should be visited on the persons and property of heretics; they eat the bread of the good, they render the land infamous, by their conversation they lead souls to perdition and, with their marriages and kinships, they corrupt the blood of good houses.[3] As time wore on this increased rather than diminished. Galceran Albanell, Archbishop of Granada, who had been tutor of Philip IV, wrote to his former pupil April 12, 1621, to express his horror at learning that the English ambassador had been allowed to have divine service performed in his house, after the rites of his sect. The king should not allow it; it is the greatest of sins and unless it is remedied we shall all perish. It is an accursed reason to allege that that accursed king permits the Spanish ambassador to have mass celebrated in London. The English ambassador should be dismissed and the English king can send away the Spanish ambassador; if the Council of State interferes, let Philip show them the way of God. The Licenciado de Angulo should have a bishopric because he resigned his office as fiscal of the Council rather than affix his name to a paper in which the English king was styled Defender of the Faith and Albanell declares his readiness to resign his own see in Angulo’s favor.[4] To a population sedulously trained in such sentiments the awful ceremonies of the auto de fe were a triumph of the faith, of which they felt proud, and they were filled with pious exultation when the flames of the brasero consumed the bodies of heretics who passed through temporal to eternal fire. It was a vindication of the honor of God, and it is necessary to understand and bear in mind this temper when considering the performance by the Inquisition of its allotted task.

The jurisdiction of the Holy Office over heresy was confined to the baptized, for baptism is a condition precedent to heresy; the unbaptized are outside of the Church and it has no spiritual authority over them. In the auto de fe of 1623, at Valladolid, a woman taken out to be relaxed for Judaism, declared that she was not baptized, whereupon the proceedings respecting her were stopped and she was remanded for investigation.[5] Although baptism can be validly administered by a heretic, yet in the trial of foreign Protestants, minute inquiry was made as to the details of their baptism in their sects, so as to be assured that they were truly baptized; in the case of Jacques Pinzon, at Toledo, in 1598, his advocate ingeniously but vainly argued that this could not be assumed, because it could not be proved that the minister had the proper intention, without which the rite was invalid.[6]

Age placed slender limits on inquisitorial jurisdiction. Children were considered capable of committing heresy as soon as they were doli capaces, at six or seven years, but were not held responsible until they reached years of discretion. This was fixed by Torquemada at twelve for girls and fourteen for boys, below which they were not to be made to abjure in public,[7] but the limit was frequently infringed. In 1501, Inesita, daughter of Marcos Garcia, between nine and ten years old and Isabel, daughter of Alvaro Ortolano, aged ten, were sentenced to appear in an auto de fe. They had confessed to fasting once or twice and the latter had been told by her father not to eat pork.[8] In 1660, at Valladolid, Joseph Rodríguez, aged eight, accused of Judaism, was regularly tried, with all the complicated formalities of procedure, occupying a year, and was made to give evidence against his father and brother; he was absolved secretly and placed in the penitential prison for instruction.[9] Of course there was no maximum limit of age. In 1638, at Valladolid, María Díaz, a hundred years old, was thrown into the secret prison for Judaism and her trial went forward.[10]

Responsibility to the Inquisition varied with the grade of heresy, which was carefully classified by the theologians. Material heresy is error in a baptized person arising from ignorance and, if the ignorance is inculpable, it is scarce to be considered as true heresy deserving of punishment.[11] Formal or mixed heresy is voluntary and pertinacious error, pertinacity being adherence to what is known to be contrary to the teachings of the Church. This formal heresy is again distinguished into internal, or mental, and external. Internal, or mental, heresy is that which is secretly entertained and is not manifested by either word or act. External heresy is subdivided into occult and public. Occult external is that which is manifested by words or signs, either in secret or to one or two persons only—as though a man in the solitude of his chamber should say “There is no God,” or should utter his thought in the presence of another. Public external is that which is manifested openly, either in public or to more than two persons.[12] The bearing of these distinctions on the work of the Inquisition will be apparent hereafter.

EPISCOPAL JURISDICTION

There was still another definition of even greater importance. Heresy was both a sin and a crime. As a sin it was subject to the forum internum, or forum of conscience; as a crime, to the forum externum or judicial forum. A penitent in sacramental confession, admitting heretical belief, might receive sacramental absolution and be pardoned in the sight of God, but the crime, like that of murder or any other violation of human laws, would still remain to be punished in the judicial forum. We shall see that in the Inquisition the penitent, who confessed and repented and received absolution, was still subject to penalties ranging, according to circumstances, from slight penance to death.

Prior to the organization of the Inquisition in the thirteenth century, the cognizance of heresy was a natural attribute of the episcopal office. The duty of persecution was negligently performed and, when the Catharan and Waldensian heresies threatened the predominance of the Latin Church and the Albigensian Crusades left it master of the situation, the Inquisition gradually sprang up as an assistance to the bishops. There was some rivalry, but the bishops, as a rule, did not share in the confiscations and, as few of them had persecuting zeal sufficient to induce them to perform this gratuitous service, the field was virtually abandoned to the new organization, in the lands where it was introduced. Still the episcopal rights were undisputed. Jurisdiction over heresy was recognized to be cumulative—that is, it was enjoyed by both tribunals, either of which was entitled to any case in which it had taken prior action. Finally, in 1312, the Council of Vienne, in response to complaints of the cruelty of inquisitors, formulated a settlement under which the combined action of both jurisdictions was required in all commitments to harsh detentive prison, in all sentences to torture and in all final sentences, unless the one called upon to coöperate failed to come within eight days.[13] This, embodied in the acts of the council, technically known as the Clementines, remained the law of the Church. The bishops, however, remained indifferent and rarely took independent action. The inquisitorial districts were large, comprehending a number of dioceses; the episcopal jurisdiction was limited to the subjects of a single diocese. It was impossible for the bishops to assemble at the seat of the tribunal, and when an auto de fe was in preparation they would usually delegate their Ordinaries to represent them or commission an inquisitor to act.

Such was the somewhat cumbrous combination of episcopal and inquisitorial jurisdiction which the founding of the Holy Office brought into Spain. Independent action by bishops still continued occasionally, of which we have seen example (Vol. I, p. 167) and it was recognized, though subordinated to the inquisitorial jurisdiction in a brief of Innocent VIII, September 25, 1487, conferring on Torquemada appellate power in cases before episcopal courts, whether they were acting separately or in conjunction with inquisitors, provided appeal was made before sentence was rendered.[14] The popes of the period, moreover, were careful to maintain the assertion of episcopal participation in inquisitorial proceedings, as is manifested in the superscription of their letters addressed “Ordinariis et Inquisitoribus,” or assuming that inquisitors acted under episcopal as well as papal authority.[15] Theoretically, this continued throughout the sixteenth century. The writers of highest authority treat bishops and inquisitors as possessing cumulative jurisdiction, so that both could prosecute, either separately or conjointly and the old canons were still cited threatening with deposition the bishop who was negligent in purifying his diocese of heresy.[16]

CLAIM OF EXCLUSIVE JURISDICTION

Thus there was no legislation depriving the episcopal order of its traditional jurisdiction over heresy, yet the Inquisition claimed, and made good the claim, that its cognizance was exclusive and that the Clementines merely gave to the bishops a consultative privilege in the three sentences specified. No such privative right was conferred in the papal commissions to the inquisitors-general and the only source of such right is to be looked for in Ferdinand’s masterful determination that nothing should interfere with the swift operation of his favorite institution, and no claim be admitted to a share in its pecuniary results. It was natural that he should favor the Inquisition, for procedure in the spiritual courts was public and was much less likely to result in conviction than the secrecy of the tribunals, and by 1500 he seems to have established the matter to his satisfaction for, in a letter of August 19th of that year to the Archbishop of Cagliari, he expresses surprise that the prelate, without his licence, or a commission from the inquisitor-general, should have meddled with matters belonging to the Inquisition and have collected certain pecuniary penances, although he had already been forbidden to do so. This prohibition is now emphatically repeated; he is to have nothing to do with the affairs of the Inquisition, except to aid the inquisitor when called upon, and he is at once to hand over his collections to the receiver, Pedro López, who is going to Sardinia.[17] Nothing can be more peremptory in tone than this missive, although the Sardinian tribunal was thoroughly disorganized and was about to be reconstructed by sending a full corps of officials. We may assume from this that if there had been any resistance on the part of the Castilian episcopate it had by this time been overcome.

That this concentration of exclusive jurisdiction in the Inquisition was the work of the royal power and was not universally admitted, even by the middle of the sixteenth century, is manifest from the remark of Bishop Simancas, himself an experienced inquisitor, when he says that it is the duty of bishops to enquire into cases of heresy, but they ought to send the prisoner and the testimony to the inquisitor, for otherwise their inexperience is apt to result in failure, as he had often found; there ought to be a papal decree prescribing this and, in default of it, the king is accustomed to order it of the bishops.[18] Of this we have an example, in 1527, when the vicar-general of the Archbishop of Toledo was required by Inquisitor-general Manrique to surrender a cleric whom he had arrested and was prosecuting.[19]

Simancas still recognizes the duty of the bishop to make preliminary inquiries into heresy, but even this had long before been forbidden, although there was a prolonged struggle before it was surrendered. In 1532 the Ordinary of Huesca issued an Edict of Faith, modelled on that of the Inquisition, calling for denunciation of heretics, for which the empress-regent sharply rebuked him, in a letter of March 23d, calling it an innovation unknown since the Inquisition had been introduced, and threatening him with fitting measures for the repetition of such intrusion on the jurisdiction of the Inquisition.[20] In spite of this, Archbishop Ayala of Valencia, in 1565, and his successor the Blessed Juan de Ribera, in 1576, and another bishop in 1567 repeated the indiscretion for which they were promptly called to account. When, in 1583, the Bishop of Tortosa committed the same offence, the Suprema wrote, January 14, 1584, that the popes had given the Inquisition exclusive jurisdiction over heresy and had prohibited its cognizance by others and that he must not in future intervene in such matters.[21] Undeterred by this, the Council of Tarragona, in 1591, reasserted the ancient episcopal jurisdiction by ordering all bishops to be vigilant in watching their flocks and, if they found any disseminators of heresy, to see to their condign punishment according to the canons.[22] How completely justified was the council in this and how false was the assertion of the Suprema, was manifested in 1595, when the Archbishop of Granada complained to Clement VIII that the inquisitors had forbidden him to issue an edict on the subject of heresy and the pope forthwith wrote to the inquisitor-general that this must not be allowed, for the faculties delegated to inquisitors in no way abridged episcopal jurisdiction.[23]

EXCLUSIVE JURISDICTION ENFORCED

After this, at least, the Suprema could not plead ignorance and yet it persisted in the assertion that it knew to be false. A savage quarrel broke out in Guatimala between the bishop, Juan Ramírez, and the commissioner of the Inquisition, Phelipe Rúiz del Carral, who was also dean of the chapter. Ramírez imprisoned him and undertook to organize a sort of inquisitorial tribunal of his own, whereupon, in 1609, the Suprema presented to Philip III for signature a letter which it describes as drawn in the form customary for cases where bishops interfere in matters concerning the faith. This describes how the pope, in instituting the Inquisition, evoked to himself all cases connected with heresy and committed them to the inquisitor-general and his deputies, inhibiting all judges and Ordinaries from intervening in them, in consequence of which they have ceased to take cognizance of such matters and have referred to the inquisitors whatever came to their knowledge. As the bishop has laid his hand on things beyond his jurisdiction, he is ordered in future not to meddle with anything touching the Inquisition, as otherwise fitting measures will be taken.[24] The only foundation for this mendacious assertion was, as we shall see hereafter, that, in the struggle made by Ferdinand and Charles V to prevent appeals to Rome from the Inquisition, briefs were sometimes obtained from popes evoking to themselves all cases pending in the tribunals and committing them to the inquisitor-general, with inhibition to any one, including cardinals and officials of the curia, to entertain appeals from him. In this there is absolutely nothing that relates to original jurisdiction and nothing to limit the traditional functions of the episcopate, but the Suprema held the records and could assert what it pleased concerning them.

Still the bishops did not wholly abandon their rights and cases continued occasionally to occur, in which of course they were worsted. They were frequent enough to justify, in a Formulary of 1645, the insertion of a formula framed to meet them. It is addressed to the provisor of Badajoz and recites that the fiscal complains of him as having commenced proceedings against a certain party for heretical propositions; as this is a matter pertaining exclusively to the Inquisition, he is commanded to surrender it under the customary penalties of excommunication and fine. The fiscal also demands that the provisor be prosecuted so that in future neither he nor any one else shall dare to usurp the jurisdiction of the Inquisition and the document ends with a statement that the prosecution has been commenced.[25] Such methods were not easily resisted. When, in 1666, the Barcelona tribunal learned that the Bishop of Solsona, on a visitation, had taken considerable testimony against some parties in a matter of faith, it at once claimed the papers, which he promptly surrendered. It had the audacity to propose to prosecute him, but the Suprema wisely ordered it to take no action against him.[26] Yet Benedict XIV repeated the assertion of Clement VIII that the popes, in delegating powers to inquisitors, had never intended to interfere with episcopal jurisdiction or to relieve bishops from responsibility.[27]

Not content with thus depriving the episcopate of its immemorial jurisdiction over heresy, inquisitors sought to obtain cognizance of a class of cases clearly belonging to the spiritual courts, on the ground of inferential heresy—bigamy, disregard of church observances, infractions of discipline and the like. In 1536 the tribunal of Valencia created much excitement by including in its Edict of Faith a number of matters of the kind but, on complaint from the vicar-general, the Suprema ordered the omission of everything not in the old edicts.[28] The attempts continued and, in 1552, a decision was required from the Suprema that eating pork on Saturdays was not a case for the Inquisition,[29] and the Concordia of 1568 contains a clause prohibiting inquisitors from entertaining cases belonging to the Ordinaries.

EPISCOPAL CONCURRENCE

In a carta acordada of November 23, 1612, the Suprema made an attempt to define the boundaries of the rival jurisdictions, in which it allowed to the spiritual courts exclusive jurisdiction only over ecclesiastics in matters touching their duties as pastors, the ministry of the Church, simony and cases relating to Orders, benefices and spiritual affairs, while it admitted cumulative jurisdiction in usury, gambling and incontinence.[30] Restricted as were these admissions, the Suprema itself did not observe them. In 1637, Sebastian de los Rios, cura of Tombrio de Arriba, who met with one or two accidents in handling the sacrament and feared accusation, by his enemies, of irreverence, denounced himself to the provisor of Astorga and was fined in four thousand maravedís. In spite of this he was prosecuted, in 1640, by the tribunal of Valladolid; he vainly pleaded his previous trial; the Suprema assumed its invalidity in ordering his incarceration in the secret prison, where he died.[31] This process of encroachment continued and towards the end, when there was little real heresy to occupy its energies, its records are full of cases which, even under its own definitions, belonged unquestionably to the spiritual courts—inobservance of ecclesiastical precepts of all kinds, irregularities in the celebration of mass, taking communion after eating, eating flesh on fast days, working and inattendance at mass on feast days and other miscellaneous business, wholly foreign to its original functions.[32] It does not argue favorably for the Spanish episcopate that they seem to have welcomed this relief from their duties and strenuously resisted the abolition of the Inquisition in 1813, which restored to them, under limitations, their original functions. After the Restoration, the Archbishop of Seville, in 1818, gathered evidence to show that the cura of San Marcos had not confessed for many years and then, in place of punishing him, handed the papers over to the tribunal. This was probably fortunate for the peccant priest, as the Suprema ordered that nothing should be done except to keep him under surveillance and that the archbishop should be warmly thanked and assured that the necessary steps had been taken.[33]

There was one formality preserved which recognized the episcopal jurisdiction over heresy. We have seen that, in the Clementines, the concurrence of both bishop and inquisitor was requisite in ordering severe detentive incarceration, in sentencing to torture and in the final sentence. No allusion was made to this in the bull of Sixtus IV authorizing the appointment of inquisitors for Castile. No allusion, in fact, was necessary, as it had been for nearly two centuries a matter of course in inquisitorial procedure, but the earliest inquisitors took no count of it and Sixtus, in his brief of February 11, 1482, called forth by complaints of their cruelty, insisted on the concurrence of episcopal officials in all judgements.[34] Ferdinand was indisposed to anything that threatened interference with the autonomy of the Inquisition and his experience in Valencia with the representatives of Rodrigo Borgia, the absent archbishop, showed him how this episcopal right could be exercised to obstruct proceedings and compel division of the spoils. He doubtless represented to Sixtus that there were many of Jewish blood among the bishops and their officials, whom it would not be safe to trust, for Sixtus, with Borgia behind him, met such objection with a brief of May 25, 1483, addressed to all the Spanish archbishops. In this he ordered them to warn any of their suffragans of Jewish extraction not to meddle with the business of the Inquisition but to appoint an Old Christian, approved by the archbishop, who should have exclusive powers over all such matters. In case this was not done the archbishop was to make the appointment for each diocese and the appointee was to be wholly independent of the bishop.[35] Then a question arose whether Torquemada’s appellate jurisdiction, as inquisitor-general, could override judgements in which bishops participated, but this was settled in Torquemada’s favor by a brief of Innocent VIII, September 25, 1487, thus completely subordinating episcopal to inquisitorial jurisdiction.[36]

Ferdinand was not satisfied, but he had to acquiesce and adopt the device of the bishops delegating one of the inquisitors as their representative—an expedient for which precedents can be found in the early Inquisition of Languedoc. That this soon became common is indicated in the Instructions of 1484, which warns the inquisitor holding the commission that he is not to deem himself superior to his colleagues.[37] Another plan was to require the bishops to issue a commission as vicar-general to whomsoever the inquisitors might designate, as Ferdinand ordered the bishops of Aragon to do, in a letter of January 27, 1484. The individual thus selected became an official of the tribunal and was borne on its pay-roll for a salary to be paid out of the confiscations for which he might vote. Of this we have examples in Martin Navarro thus serving at Teruel, in 1486, on a yearly stipend of two thousand sueldos and in Martin Garcia, included as vicar-general at a salary of three thousand sueldos, in the Saragossa pay-roll of the same year.[38]

EPISCOPAL CONCURRENCE

It is possible that the bishops grew restive under this absorption of their powers and that they remonstrated with the Holy See for, in 1494, when Alexander VI issued commissions to the four new inquisitors-general there appeared a new condition requiring them to exercise their functions in conjunction with the Ordinaries of the sees or their vicars or officials, or other persons deputized by the Ordinaries.[39] Ferdinand, however, was not accustomed to brook opposition to his will. The most efficient and economical expedient was the episcopal delegation to an inquisitor and this he enforced by whatever pressure was necessary. Thus when, in 1498, the Bishop of Tarazona demurred to do this, Ferdinand, in a letter of November 21st, brushed aside his reasons and imperatively ordered the delegation to be sent at once. Still the bishop recalcitrated and Ferdinand wrote, January 4, 1499, that he must do so at once; no excuse would be admitted and nothing would change his determined purpose, but it was not until March that he learned the bishop’s submission. In this same year, 1499, he broke down, in similar rude fashion, the resistance of two other bishops and when, in 1501, the Archbishop of Tarragona notified the tribunal of Barcelona not to hear, without his participation, certain cases committed to them on appeal, Ferdinand expressed his indignant surprise; the archbishop must remove the obstruction at once and not await a second command.[40]

Ferdinand’s resolve was to render episcopal concurrence a mere perfunctory form and, when bishops presumed to act or their vicars-general were distasteful to him, there are various cases which attest his imperious methods of dealing with them. He had some trouble, on this account, with his son, Alfonso Archbishop of Saragossa, who, in 1511, obtained the perpetual administratorship of Valencia and who persisted in retaining as his delegate the vicar-general of Valencia, Micer Soler, against the commands of his father, so that in 1512 and again in 1513, there was delay in the celebration of autos de fe, greatly to Ferdinand’s annoyance.[41] These occasional obstructions explain why, as he wrote November 27, 1512, he endeavored to reduce it to a rule that the Ordinary should confer his powers on the inquisitors and should not be allowed to see the cases.[42]

The people did not view the matter in the same light and regarded the participation of the bishop or his representative as some guarantee against the arbitrary proceedings of the inquisitors. Among the complaints of the prisoners of Jaen, in 1506, to Philip and Juana, is one reciting that the inquisitors act independently of the episcopal provisor and communicate nothing to him, so as to be able to work their wicked will without interference.[43] Similarly the Córtes of Monzon, in 1512, included among the abuses requiring redress the royal letters concerning episcopal concurrence, the delegation of powers to inquisitors and other methods by which the participation of the bishops was evaded, and when Leo X, in 1516, confirmed the Concordia, he ordered that the Ordinaries should resume their functions.[44] It was the same in Castile, where, as we have seen (Vol. I, p. 217) one of the petitions of the Córtes of Valladolid, in 1518, was that the episcopal Ordinaries should take part in the judgements.

EPISCOPAL CONCURRENCE

While the petitions of Valladolid for the most part received scant attention, this one at least bore fruit for, with the removal of Ferdinand’s pressure, the bishops had an opportunity to reassert themselves. In 1520, a decision of Cardinal Adrian required the presence of both inquisitors and Ordinary at abjurations and confessions under Edicts of Grace and, in 1527, Manrique and the Suprema declared that the Ordinary concurred in the cases required by the law—an ambiguous phrase which seems to have been variously construed.[45] This was not conducive to harmony, the inquisitors grudging any intrusion on their jurisdiction and the Ordinaries insisting on their rights under the Clementines. In 1529, when the Suprema chanced to be at Toledo, the matter was brought before it by Diego Artiz de Angulo, fiscal of the local tribunal, in a memorial arguing that to require the presence of the Ordinary would entail great delay, as he often could not attend when summoned; besides, he was always in contradiction with the tribunal, as was notorious to all connected with the trials, objecting to pecuniary and light penalties and endeavoring to acquire jurisdiction at the expense of the Holy Office. At Angulo’s request, the Suprema had a number of witnesses examined, of whom the most important was Martin Ximenes, who had been occupied for forty years in the tribunals of Barcelona, Toledo, and Seville. He testified that the Ordinaries were only called in for the three acts specified in the Clementines, but in explaining details he showed that the inquisitors construed them in a fashion to exclude the Ordinary from much of his functions, for, in place of participating in all sentences, he was allowed to join only in convictions for heresy and bore no part in the lighter cases, the object being to prevent his claiming a share in the pecuniary penalties, although he was summoned to the consulta de fe in which they were voted on. Other witnesses bore the same testimony and it is not difficult to understand why the Ordinaries took little interest in the exercise of the jurisdiction thus arbitrarily limited.[46] It was probably owing to this discussion that the Suprema, January 25, 1530, told the tribunals that differences with the Ordinary must be avoided. In the same year it notified Valencia that all cases sent up to it must have been voted on by him and, in 1532, it sent similar orders to Barcelona, adding that the presence of the Ordinary was requisite at all abjurations.[47] Evidently the tribunals were jealous, the Ordinaries were rebuffed and discouraged, and the coöperation of the two jurisdictions was little more than a formal recognition of a virtually obsolete right.

The routine practice and its working are exemplified in the report of a summons served, August 8, 1534, on Blas Ortiz, then vicar-general of Toledo. It cited him to come and assist in despatching the accumulation of cases since the last auto de fe, held nearly four years before. He was to lay aside all other business and present himself daily at the morning audience to witness the torture in nine specified cases and, at the afternoon audience, to vote on ten of which the trials had been completed. He was notified that, if he did not come, the inquisitors, after the delay specified by law (eight days) would proceed without him. The summons was borne by the fiscal, accompanied by a notary, who made a formal act of the service. When the fiscal stated his errand, Blas Ortiz negligently told him that there was no necessity of reading the paper; he was not well but, if he were able, he would be present at all the cases; if he did not come he committed his powers to the two inquisitors, or to either of them who was willing to accept the commission.[48] Apparently Ortiz did not come, for in several sentences rendered this year at Toledo the inquisitors styled themselves “apostolic inquisitors holding the powers of the Ordinary.”[49]

From some motive, not clearly apparent, a custom arose to some extent of appointing episcopal Ordinaries or provisors as inquisitors. This was frequent enough to lead the Córtes of Madrid, in 1552, to complain of the combination of the two offices, because when a provisor arrested a layman, which he could not do legally, he claimed that he acted as inquisitor, with the result that many persons were subjected to infamy. They therefore petitioned that no provisor should also be inquisitor, to which the answer was returned that in such cases royal cédulas had been issued and that this would be continued.[50] Discouraging as was this reply, the petition seems to have made an impression for, in 1556, both Charles V and Philip II rebuked Inquisitor-general Valdés, who was also Archbishop of Seville, because his provisor was also inquisitor in that tribunal. His defence was that this had been the case in Seville for half a century, owing to the poverty of the tribunal, which paid only one-third the customary salaries and that he himself defrayed the stipend of the provisor.[51]

EPISCOPAL CONCURRENCE

During the remainder of the century we generally find the participation of the Ordinary carefully recorded, whether it was by a special representative or by delegation to the inquisitors. In 1561, Inquisitor Cervantes takes the Barcelona tribunal to task for not keeping record of this and he orders the fiscal to observe it sedulously for, without the concurrence of the Ordinary, the sentence is invalid.[52] A carta acordada of October 15, 1574, reminds the tribunals that he must sign all sentences of torture and all final sentences on which he has a vote, but there was a rule that he did not sign sentences of acquittal, even though he had voted on them.[53] Yet how purely perfunctory was his participation appears in the case of Fray Hieronimo de la Madre de Dios, at Toledo, in 1618. In the consulta de fe, Melgoso, the provisor, agreed with one of the inquisitors and a consultor on a certain punishment; another inquisitor voted for a heavier penalty and, when the matter was submitted to the Suprema, it adopted the latter, but Melgoso obediently signed the sentence.[54] The inquisitorial jurisdiction, for all practical purposes, had absorbed the episcopal.

As the inquisitorial districts usually embraced several dioceses and it was impossible for the bishop or provisor of those at a distance from a tribunal to be personally present when their subjects were tortured or sentenced, it became customary for them to delegate their powers to some resident of the city which was the seat of the tribunal. That they were not always careful in their selection would appear when the tribunal of Sicily was obliged, in 1574, to notify an archbishop that he must appoint ecclesiastics and not laymen to sit in judgement on matters of faith.[55] Taking advantage of this carelessness the Inquisition undertook to control the character of appointees and it issued, August 17, 1637, instructions to bishops that their provisors must be graduates in canon law but, as canonists proved to be scarce, it was obliged, October 12, to modify this and permit the appointment of theologians. In accordance with this there is an entry by the tribunal of Valencia, that it will recognize Don Luis Crispi as Ordinary of Tortosa, although he is a theologian.[56]

Thus a further encroachment was made on episcopal jurisdiction by the Inquisition in claiming and exercising the right to determine whom it would recognize as a fit representative of the bishop. How offensively this was sometimes used was manifested in 1752, in Lima, when the inquisitors Amusquibar and Rodríguez were involved in a prolonged quarrel with the secular and ecclesiastical organizations. To annoy the inquisitors, Archbishop Barroeta notified them that in view of their bitter competencia with the viceroy, he withdrew the faculty of Don Fernando de la Sota as his representative and appointed Padre Francisco Larreta, S. J. To this they replied that they recognized his right to withdraw the faculty, but as for Larreta he was incapacitated by his profession from exercising the functions; if the archbishop would appoint some one in accordance with the statutes of the Holy Office and possessing the necessary qualifications, he would be received. The assumption that they would recognize only whom they pleased staggered the archbishop and he asked them to explain the disqualification of Larreta, to which they insolently replied that they had already stated what was sufficient for his guidance. He submitted and appointed the Franciscan Thomas de la Concha, who was accepted, but when the archbishop transmitted the correspondence to Inquisitor-general Prado y Cuesta and asked for reparation he obtained none.[57]

Episcopal concurrence had never been more than a bare formality in recognition of the immemorial jurisdiction of bishops over heresy and, as time wore on, the Inquisition became careless even of this. In a number of trials by the tribunal of Madrid, between 1703 and 1710, the inquisitors are recorded as acting sometimes with and sometimes without the episcopal representatives and, in the latter half of the century, a writer informs us that the concurrence of the Ordinary is unusual; it depends on the will of the inquisitors, who sometimes summon him and sometimes do not.[58] Still there were some bishops, zealous for the claims of their order, who persisted in asserting this remnant of jurisdiction. Antonio Tavira, Bishop of Canaries, and subsequently of Salamanca, expressed their feelings when, in 1792, he complained to Carlos IV of the treatment of the episcopal order by the Inquisition, saying that they had ceased to vote in cases of faith in order to escape the humiliation and degradation to which they were exposed; they sent their vicars, although this was indecorous and wholly useless, but they felt that they must preserve this little shadow of a jurisdiction which was rightly theirs.[59]

THE FORUM OF CONSCIENCE

Under the Restoration greater attention seems to have been paid to episcopal concurrence and the adherence to strict formalities is shown in a duplicate trial of Juan Antonio Manzano, a physician of Lumbrales in the diocese of Ciudad-Rodrigo and inquisitorial district of Llerena. In 1817 he was tried for heretical propositions by the tribunal of Logroño, which inquired of the Suprema whether the Ordinary of its own diocese could act and was told that the authority of the culprit’s own bishop was imperative and that the Bishop of Ciudad-Rodrigo must appoint a representative. The next year Manzano was again arrested, for the same offence, by the tribunal of Llerena and was transferred to Seville because Llerena had no prison. April 17, 1819, the Seville tribunal asked whether its own Ordinary could join in the sentence and received the same answer—that it must apply to the Bishop of Ciudad-Rodrigo to make an appointment.[60] It was all the merest technicality, for by this time the Suprema decided all cases, irrespective of how the consulta de fe might vote and thus the incontestable episcopal jurisdiction over heresy was practically abolished.

As regards the internal forum, or forum of conscience, the Inquisition claimed and enjoyed a still more absolute jurisdiction than in the external forum for which it had been primarily instituted. While in a formal and perfunctory manner it recognized the episcopal claims in the judicial forum, it so employed its delegated papal authority as to vindicate with the utmost jealousy exclusive control over the forum of conscience in matters of heresy. Bishops, in fact, had long before been ousted from this by the invention of papal reserved cases—cases in which sacramental absolution could only be had from the Holy See, thus creating a profitable market for its indulgences, confessional letters and the absolutions of its Penitentiary. Heresy was the chief sin anathematized in the early form of the bull, subsequently known as in Cœna Domini, from its annual publication on Holy Thursday and, in 1364, Urban V placed all the offences enumerated in it under the jurisdiction of the papal chamberlain.[61] The papacy thus assumed exclusive control over the sin of heresy, for which no absolution could be granted save by papal delegation, and Paul II, in 1469, and Sixtus IV, in 1478, issued further decrees to the effect that special licence was necessary for this, as no general commissions were held to cover it.[62] The Council of Trent, in 1563, timidly endeavored to revendicate a fraction of episcopal rights by asserting that bishops, in the forum of conscience only, could personally absolve for secret or occult heresy, but the Roman Inquisition, by repeated decisions based on the utterances of St. Pius V and Gregory XIII, overrode the conciliar decree and deprived them of that slender remnant of their functions.[63]

This strict reservation of the sin of heresy was imperfectly understood in Spain and so little was known of the laws of persecution that at first the New Christians, who apprehended arrest, endeavored to escape by sacramental confession and absolution, ignorant that already in the thirteenth century it had been decided that the pardon of the sin, in the forum of conscience, did not cover the crime in the judicial forum. This method of evasion could not be allowed and yet the Inquisition was uncertain how to act. A brief was therefore procured, November 10, 1487, from Innocent VIII, addressed to all the inquisitors and Ordinaries in Spain, reciting their doubts about proceeding against those who assert that they have secretly confessed and abjured to their confessors. To overcome this it was asserted that the decrees of the fathers required such abjurations to be accompanied by an oath, taken before an Ordinary, in presence of a notary and witnesses, never to return to the abjured heresy, wherefore the inquisitors were empowered to proceed against all who had not observed this rule.[64] If such a rule had ever existed, which is doubtful, it had long been forgotten and was wholly unknown in Spain, so that all who had had recourse to this device were brought under the jurisdiction of the Inquisition.

OCCULT HERESY

The New Christians were not long in realizing the futility of such attempts and we hear little of them in the later periods. Yet there were cases of occult heresy concerning which the functions of the Inquisition seem to have varied. In the earlier times the Edicts of Grace brought these to the tribunals and the Instructions of 1484 permit the inquisitor to admit them to secret reconciliation and abjuration and do not contemplate his delegating his power to another.[65] There must have been doubts as to his faculties for this, since, in 1530, Clement VII delegated powers to inquisitors to absolve and reconcile for occult heresy, with the imposition of appropriate penance.[66] This evidently contemplates his administering sacramental absolution and yet not long afterwards he was told that he was judge in the external and not in the internal forum and that it was not his business to hear sacramental confessions.[67] In fact, the inquisitor was by no means necessarily in priests’ orders and, when acting in his judicial capacity, sentencing a culprit and hearing his abjuration, he simply granted licence to any approved confessor to absolve him from excommunication and to impose salutary penance.[68]

There was, however, a class of cases, by no means infrequent, demanding sacramental rather than judicial ministration, which gave rise to some debate before their treatment was settled. These consisted of good Christians, who were assailed by secret doubts or indulged in erroneous speculations and who brought their spiritual troubles to the confessional. Over these, priest and bishop had been deprived of jurisdiction, and to make sure of this there was a clause in the annual Edict of Faith prohibiting confessors from granting absolution in any case touching the Inquisition and ordering the penitent to be sent to the tribunal.[69] If he refused to go, the only alternative was for the confessor to obtain from the inquisitor a licence to absolve him, for the confession was covered by the seal and prosecution was out of the question, but as to this, even in the middle of the sixteenth century, there were doubts. Bishop Simancas says that the power of the inquisitor to grant licences is doubtful and he can only suggest reference of each case to the Suprema.[70] A body of practice, of uncertain date, asserts that when a confessor reports that a penitent has confessed heresies and asks for a licence to absolve him, it cannot be given. He must be ordered to induce the penitent to come to the tribunal; in case of necessity, or of persons in high station, the inquisitor may go with a notary to receive the confession, which is examined in the tribunal and the consequent absolution or abjuration is performed in secret. In the case of nuns, who could not be induced to discharge their consciences before a commissioner and a notary, there was a concession that the confessor might reduce the confession to writing and send it to the tribunal which would consult the Suprema, and frailes were to be compelled to seek the tribunal, where they were treated as espontaneados, or spontaneous self-denouncers and were absolved or reconciled secretly with spiritual penances.[71]

The indisposition to license confessors to absolve for heresy in the forum of conscience is easily explicable. By compelling the penitent to come to the tribunal, a record was made for use in case of relapse; if he had accomplices he could be forced to reveal them and their prosecution followed, and there was an opportunity of inflicting pecuniary penances, although confiscation was waived in such cases.[72] These same reasons operated in a contrary sense with the penitent, besides the horror which all men felt as to falling into the hands of the Inquisition. When he was obstinate, the tribunal was powerless, for the seal of confession shielded his identity; it finally yielded the point and no longer pretended that licenses could not be given to confessors. In 1562 a case was referred to the Suprema of a person who had confessed sacramentally to certain heresies, without having been taught them by any one, when the inquisitor-general empowered the inquisitors to absolve him in such way as they thought best and they empowered the confessor.[73] Finally it became the rule that the confessor sought to induce the penitent to apply to the Inquisition; if he resolutely refused the confessor applied for a faculty, which was granted or not, according to the temper of the tribunal.[74]

OCCULT HERESY

A case in 1754 shows the Inquisition in a favorable light and has interest also as illustrating the tortures of a soul which rejects belief and yet holds belief to be essential to salvation. Fray Thomas de Sos reported to the Toledo tribunal that, while on a mission at Ajofrin, a penitent had asked him to obtain a commission to absolve her for heresies internal and external, which yet were occult, as she had never expressed them except to her aunt. She said that, on a previous occasion, a confessor had done this for her and she wished to avoid the disgrace of personal appearance before the Inquisition. He was ordered to ascertain all details and reported that the penitent was a poor woman named María Lara, living with an aunt aged eighty. Her heresies were only of a few months’ standing, occasioned by intense grief at the ingratitude of one whom she had benefited; she disbelieved in the Trinity, the Incarnation, the Law of God, the Virgin, hell and the devil and at the same time felt herself lost beyond the hope of salvation. She could not say how much of this she had uttered to herself or before her aunt and the importance attached to this point indicates the weight attributed to the distinction between internal and external heresy. The aunt was examined, the cura of Ajofrin was called in, the registers were searched and finally, after six weeks had been consumed, a commission was issued which the good fraile, eager to heal a despairing soul, at an hour’s notice bore to Ajofrin and absolved her.[75]

These cases gave the Inquisition considerable concern and, in 1772, the Suprema called upon all the tribunals to report what was their practice. After carefully weighing their answers, it issued, November 9, 1772, instructions that, when a confessor reported such a case, he was to be ordered to use every effort to induce the penitent to denounce himself, assuring him of merciful treatment and showing him that he would thus be saved in case of denunciation by others. He could make this denunciation to the tribunal or to a commissioner, or could even authorize the confessor to denounce him, giving all details under oath. If, however, the penitent obstinately refused, then the confessor could absolve him, explaining that it was only in the forum of conscience.[76] If we may believe Lorenzo Villanueva, however, this liberal concession was by no means put in practice, at least by all tribunals.[77]

Confession of formal heresy was not so leniently treated and, as it inferred accomplices, every effort was made to secure their denunciation. The confessor was ordered to persuade, if possible, the penitent to come to the Inquisition and confess as to himself and others, promising secret absolution without confiscation. This was virtually the offer made to those who came forward under an Edict of Grace and did not exclude arbitrary pecuniary penance; it was not likely to attract self-denunciation, especially as it included betraying kindred and friends, although power to absolve was not granted in case of refusal. This led to a dead-lock and possibly in such cases the confessor was expected to violate the seal of confession under the old rule that it did not cover heresy. At least this may be inferred from a case occurring in Lima about 1580, when Padre Luis López, S. J. reported that a penitent in confession had admitted to have Judaized and on being told to go to the Inquisition had refused. The matter was regarded as so grave that it was referred to the Suprema which sent orders to deliver López to the viceroy for shipment to Spain—apparently one who would not violate the seal was too dangerous to be left in Peru.[78] Simancas, however, characterized this as a most pernicious doctrine and argues that infraction of the seal is much worse than allowing a heretic to escape punishment.[79]

When the Inquisition was re-established in 1814, under the Restoration, it recognized the impossibility of investigating and punishing the innumerable heresies disseminated in the licence of years of warfare and exposure to foreign armies. In its zeal for the salvation of souls it therefore, by edict of January 2, 1815, granted for a year, to all confessors, faculties to absolve for heresy external or mixed. The confessor, in fact, was made a quasi-inquisitor and the procedure formidably resembled that of the tribunals. The penitent had a pledge of secrecy, but his confession had to be minute and comprehensive; it was reduced to writing, signed and sworn to, and was then forwarded to the tribunal to be filed among its records. This relieved him from prosecution in case of denunciation by others, while, if he refused to do this, he was to be absolved, but only in the forum of conscience; he was to be reported to the tribunal and remained liable to the external forum.[80]

CRUZADA AND JUBILEE INDULGENCES

In view of the recognized principle that sacramental absolution does not affect the external forum, it shows the watchful jealousy with which the Inquisition guarded its jurisdiction that it remonstrated against the papal indulgences of the Santa Cruzada and the jubilee. The former granted an indulgentia plenissima; it was a state affair, managed by the Government and bringing in a large revenue of which a portion accrued to the Holy See; its sale was pushed in every quarter with the utmost vigor and the Inquisition punished severely any utterances calculated to diminish the demand. Only extreme sensitiveness as to its jurisdiction could have led the Inquisition to cast any doubt as to the unlimited efficacy of the indulgence but, when St. Pius V, in 1571, after an interval of five years, renewed the concession of the Cruzada, it took the alarm. In cartas acordadas of May 30 and June 13, 1572, the Suprema informs the tribunals that in some places it is asserted that the Cruzada bulls grant faculties for the absolution of heresy; this is not the case and, if it were, the pope would be asked to withdraw them; the assertion must be contradicted everywhere and the prelates are to be asked to give corresponding instructions to confessors.[81] A more effective step was taken, in 1576, by procuring from Gregory XIII a brief declaring that it never was the papal intention that the indulgence should include heresy and to make this known he authorized the Commissioner of the Cruzada to translate the brief into the vernacular and publish it wherever the Cruzada was preached. The Suprema did not trust the Commissioner, but sent copies of the brief to all the tribunals, with instructions to notify the Ordinaries and the prelates of the Orders, so that confessors might be duly informed. A month later, in January, 1577, it ordered the brief to be published in all the churches.[82] Eventually, however, its anxieties were removed by a clause in the bulas of the Cruzada specifically excepting heresy from the faculties granted to confessors, a form which they have retained to the present day, long after the extinction of the Holy Office.[83]

The Cruzada indulgence was a special financial favor to the Spanish monarchy which it could virtually control, but it was otherwise with the jubilee indulgences which, about this period, the popes began to publish—plenary remissions of sins such as were obtainable by pilgrimage to Rome at the jubilees celebrated every twenty-five years. St. Pius V set the example of this, on his accession in 1566, which has since been followed by his successors, together with special jubilees decreed at decreasing intervals. The jubilee published in 1572, on the accession of Gregory XIII, excepted heretics and readers of prohibited books and added a positive declaration that in it and all that might be subsequently issued the absolution was only in the forum of conscience and did not affect the judicial forum.[84] Taking advantage of this, when another jubilee indulgence appeared, in 1578, the Suprema ordered it to be published with the omission of all that concerned the Inquisition, in accordance with the declarations of Gregory.[85] Subsequent jubilees, however, of 1589, 1592 and 1595 included heresy and called forth unavailing protests from Spain until finally, in the latter year, preachers were ordered to declare, as of their own motion, that, under the general clause of the jubilee, absolution could not be had for heresy.[86] While the Roman Inquisition made no protest against these indulgences, the Spanish persistently objected to them and it seemed impossible to harmonize the conflict. When Alexander VII, on his accession, in 1655, published a jubilee, it contained the obnoxious clause; Cabrera, the agent of the Suprema in Rome, warmly remonstrated with him and he promised in future to except heresy; this did not satisfy Cabrera who asked for a constitution excepting heresy from all jubilees. Alexander promised to investigate the matter, but apparently his investigations were resultless for the subject continued till the end of the century to furnish occasion for repeated discussion.[87]

SECRECY AND EXCLUSIVENESS

Heresy was an elastic term and the Inquisition stretched it to extend its exclusive jurisdiction in all directions. It did the same to shield itself from investigation and restraint. We are told that, in the numerous cases of appeal to the throne for injustice suffered at its hands, if the king ordered the inquisitor-general to report on the subject so that it might be submitted to a junta composed of members of the Suprema and Royal Council, the first business of the Suprema was to examine whether the question arose from a matter of faith, or was in any way dependent upon faith, or concerned the free exercise of the duties of the Holy Office. There were not many things that could not be brought within this charmed circle and then a consulta was addressed to the monarch protesting that he could not refer it to a junta, because its nature precluded its consideration by laymen and it would be a violation of the secrecy of the Inquisition, so that it had to be submitted to the Suprema alone, which would make a verbal report to him. It was on record that, in a case of this kind, Philip II pledged his royal word that he and Don Cristóval de Mocera alone should be admitted to the confidence and, in 1645, Philip IV could only obtain from Arce y Reynoso a verbal explanation.[88] Thus between exclusive cognizance and inviolable secrecy the Inquisition realized the ideal of spiritual jurisdiction—it judged all and was judged by none.

CHAPTER II.
THE REGULAR ORDERS.

OVER the laity the jurisdiction of the Inquisition was complete. No one was so high-placed as to be exempt, for heresy was a universal leveller. Theoretically the king himself was subject to it, for it was based on the principle of the supremacy of the spiritual over the temporal power. The piety of the Spanish monarchs prevented occasion for putting this to the test, for we may safely reject as fables the stories concerning Juana la loca and Don Carlos, but no station exempted him who was suspect in the faith from prosecution and from punishment if he was found guilty. In Valencia, nobles who sought to protect their Morisco vassals from the raids of the Inquisition were tried as fautors of heresy, the most conspicuous of these being Don Sancho de Córdova, Admiral of Aragon and allied to the noblest blood of Spain. At the age of 73 he was compelled to abjure for light suspicion of heresy, he was fined and confined in a convent, where he died.[89] We shall have occasion to consider in detail the still more remarkable case of Don Gerónimo de Villanueva, Prothonotary of Aragon and favorite of both Olivares and of Philip IV and, even when the Inquisition was far gone in its decline, we shall see how it took steps to assail Don Manuel de Godoy, Prince of the Peace and all powerful favorite of Carlos IV.

With the exception of bishops, of whom more hereafter, the secular clergy were equally at the mercy of the Holy Office. Even when, as we have seen, in the bitter quarrels between the tribunal of Majorca and the clergy of the islands, the latter obtained the protection of special papal briefs, these exempted them only from the royal jurisdiction of the Inquisition and did not affect their liability in matters of faith, against which they raised no protest. The regular clergy, however—the members of the religious Orders—made long and persistent struggles to escape subjection, preferring the milder discipline of their own prelates. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the monastic establishments had, for the most part, obtained exemption from episcopal jurisdiction and were amenable only to the Holy See. When the Mendicant Orders were organized, in the thirteenth century, they were likewise subject immediately to the pope. It is true that, in 1184, Lucius III, in his Verona decree, had abolished this immunity in matters of faith and had remanded, in so far, the regulars back to episcopal jurisdiction, for as yet the Inquisition had not been thought of,[90] but, when the Mendicants claimed that this did not apply to their subsequently founded Orders, Innocent IV, in 1254, subjected them to the Inquisition, which by that time was in full operation. Boniface VIII emphatically confirmed this, even declaring that for heresy they were to be punished more severely than laymen, as the Spiritual Franciscans found to their cost under John XXII.[91] As inquisitors acted under delegation from the pope, there would be no question as to their jurisdiction over the regulars, but, in the case of the Dominican Master Eckart, tried, in 1327, by the Archbishop of Cologne, it was settled that the episcopal Inquisition also had cognizance.[92] Yet, about 1460, Pius II granted to the Franciscans the privilege of being tried only by the vicar-general of their Order and, in 1479, Sixtus IV, in view of the inveterate hostility between Franciscans and Dominicans, from which Orders nearly all inquisitors were drawn, prohibited those of one Order from prosecuting members of the other.[93]

FLUCTUATING POLICY

Such was the situation when the Spanish Inquisition was founded. Conversos were numerous in the Orders and many were prosecuted. Under Torquemada, himself a Dominican, the inquisitors were largely Dominicans and the Franciscans naturally claimed the privileges of the papal decrees of 1460 and 1479; when, in 1487, some Observantine Franciscans were prosecuted, Innocent VIII ordered their release and repeated the provisions of 1479.[94] In the following year, however, by a motu proprío of May 17, 1488, he declared that none of the Orders were exempt and specially mentioned the Cistercians, Dominicans and Franciscans.[95] Even before this, Torquemada had treated the regulars as under his jurisdiction for, though he had granted to the Geronimite prelates power to try some of their frailes he revoked this, May 3, 1488, and commissioned the inquisitors of Toledo to prosecute them.[96] In Rome the influence of the regular Orders was great; that of the growing Spanish power was steadily increasing, and the contest between these opposing forces is seen in the fluctuating policy of the Holy See. The motu proprio of 1488 remained in force for a considerable time, but, after the death of Ferdinand, the Franciscans in 1517 obtained from Leo X the renewal of their old privileges, which probably also included the Dominicans.[97] The Augustinians soon followed, for a letter of the Suprema, May 7, 1521, directs the tribunals, in view of their privileges to be tried by their prelates, to obtain from the superiors delegated power to act in their cases, or to get a fraile assigned to sit as assessor, or to remit the cases to the Suprema as they may deem best.[98] Apparently these exemptions were not always respected, for Clement VII, by a brief of January 18, 1524, emphatically confirmed the Franciscan privileges and ordered all their cases pending in the tribunals to be transferred within six days to the prelates of the accused.[99] So when, in a brief of March 19, 1525, he prohibited descendants of Jews and heretics from acquiring dignities in the Observantine branch of the Order, he gave as a reason that the provincials are judges of their subjects.[100]

It required but a few months to change all this. The Inquisition was restive under this restriction on its jurisdiction. Inquisitor-general Manrique, in a letter of June 30, 1524, asserted that a revocation of the Augustinian privileges would be procured and he proved a true prophet.[101] The services of Charles V in stemming the tide of the Lutheran revolt were indispensable and his demands could not be refused. A brief of April 13, 1525, subjected the frailes again to the Inquisition, but softened the blow by providing that the provincials should appoint assessors to sit with the tribunals in their cases. This did not satisfy Spain and, two months later, a brief of June 16th subjected them absolutely to the inquisitor-general.[102] That the Inquisition thus obtained and exercised jurisdiction over the regulars is seen in an order by the Suprema, July 18, 1534, requiring that it should be consulted and the testimony be submitted to it, before proceedings were instituted against a fraile—an order repeated, June 10, 1555, and subsequently extended to all ecclesiastics.[103]

JURISDICTION OBTAINED

In issuing this the Suprema evidently was unaware that some three weeks earlier there had occurred another shifting of the scales. The frailes had not been idle; the Franciscans, and presumably the other Orders, had won a victory. A brief of Clement VII, June 23, 1534, recites the various exemptions granted by preceding popes to the Franciscans, while numerous complaints showed that some inquisitors continued to prosecute them, to their great perturbation and scandal, wherefore it was ordered that whenever any of the frailes were suspected of heresy they must be remitted to their superiors for punishment, notwithstanding all privileges granted to the Holy Office. Confirmation of this was procured from Paul III, November 8th of the same year, but apparently these commands received slender attention, for another confirmation was obtained, December 15, 1537, with the addition that all cases pending in the Inquisition must be surrendered to the superiors of the Order within six days and all sentences in derogation of this were declared invalid.[104] Even this did not keep the Inquisition in check and Paul issued, March 6, 1542, another decree reciting cases in contempt of his orders, wherefore all inquisitors, in every part of the world, were commanded, under penalty of excommunication, deprivation of benefice and disability for preferment, not to proceed against the frailes and to deliver up any who might be imprisoned. All bishops and prelates were made executors of the brief, with power to invoke the aid of the secular arm.[105]

The rigor of these provisions is the measure of the resistance encountered and, in singular contrast to them is the fact that, but a fortnight later, Paul, by a brief of March 21st, annulled all the exemptions of the Mendicant Orders in Upper Italy and the Island of Chios, and subjected their members, with the exception of bishops, to the Inquisition, in matters of faith.[106] This put the Spanish Inquisition at a disadvantage in comparison with the newly organized Roman Congregation, although its order of June 10, 1555, above referred to, would indicate that it paid but little attention to the papal utterances. It fully recovered its lost ground, however, when the Holy See recognized that it was the only tribunal that could be relied upon to check the prevalent vice of “solicitation” or seduction in the confessional—the principal offenders being frailes. When, as an experiment, Paul IV, in 1559, empowered the tribunal of Granada to prosecute these cases, he withdrew all privileges and exemptions, not only in this offence but in all heretical crimes; he authorized the inquisitors to degrade the culprits and to deliver them to the secular arm for execution and the provisions of this brief were extended by Pius IV, in 1561, to all the tribunals in the Spanish dominions.[107] This rendered the Inquisition master of the situation, while, at the same time, the inclusion of solicitation among heretical crimes made the regular Orders still more solicitous to escape from its jurisdiction.

The development of the Society of Jesus and the unbounded favor which it enjoyed with the Holy See introduced a new factor in the struggle. In 1587 the Inquisition discovered that the Jesuits claimed exemption. The Compendium of their privileges stated that Gregory XIII, vivæ vocis oraculo, on March 18, 1584, had conferred on their General, with power of subdelegation, faculty for absolving his subjects from heresy, even in cases of relapse; any one knowing the heresy of another was therefore to denounce him to his superior and not to the Inquisition and it was broadly asserted that the members were subject to no judge, episcopal or inquisitorial.[108] It was impossible for the Inquisition to overlook such denial of its authority and it promptly ordered the suppression of the Compendium and of all regulations incompatible with its jurisdiction, giving rise to considerable correspondence with Rome.[109]

The case which led to this proceeding is too suggestive not to deserve relation in some detail. Solicitation being subjected to the exclusive jurisdiction of the Inquisition it became, under the Edict of Faith, the duty of every one, under heavy penalties, to denounce to the nearest tribunal any case coming to his knowledge. In 1583, the Jesuits of the college of Monterey, in Galicia, learned that one of their number, the Padre Sebastian de Briviesca, had been guilty of it with certain beatas and also of some Illuminist practices. Padre Diego Hernández was sent to Segovia to report the matter to Antonio Marcen, the Provincial of Castile. To avert from the Society the disgrace of the prosecution of a member, Hernández was ordered to return and get the evidence in legal shape, so that Briviesca could be secretly tried and punished, but Marcen warned him that all consultation and action must be under pretext of confession, so as to be covered by the seal. Hernández went back to Monterey and consulted with Padres Francisco Larata and Juan López, who said it was a dangerous business; the case belonged to the Inquisition and but for the seal of confession, they would be bound to denounce Briviesca, however damaging it might be to the Society. Profound secrecy was enjoined on the beatas; Hernández took the evidence to Marcen, gave it to him under the seal and was sent with it to Salamanca, where it was submitted, without names, to the theologians of the Jesuit college. They reported that the culprit must be denounced to the Inquisition and that the beatas could not be absolved unless they denounced him but, on being told that the Society was involved, they reversed their opinions. Hernández was sent to Monterey, where he absolved the beatas, while Marcen imprisoned Briviesca, obtained a partial confession, gave him dismissory letters and the habit of a secular priest, and sent him with a companion to Barcelona, where he was shipped to Italy. He had previously been guilty at Avila of the same practices.

EFFORTS TO EVADE IT

Hernández had dutifully obeyed orders, but he was becoming thoroughly frightened. He begged Marcen to allow him to denounce the matter to the Inquisition and was told that if through him harm came to the Society he would be imprisoned for life in chains. He persisted and then reports were spread that he was insane and possessed by the devil; he was sent to the college at Oviedo, where there was no Inquisition and no means of communicating by post, and for a year he was unable to discharge his conscience, for the confessors were forbidden to absolve him unless he pledged submission to his superiors. Then promises were tried and he was told that whatever he asked for would be obtained for him from the General, and he was further informed that the beatas had retracted their testimony.

How the Inquisition obtained knowledge of the affair is not stated, but it was probably through the garrulousness of the beatas who could not be kept from talking. As soon as it obtained sufficient evidence it acted vigorously. Marcen, Larata and López were imprisoned and put on trial, in 1585; in the progress of the case it was found that this was by no means the first time that Marcen had defrauded the Inquisition of its culprits. Padre Cristóbal de Trugillo had been guilty of the same offence and Marcen had simply dismissed him from the Society. Also Padre Francisco de Ribera had repeatedly uttered heretical propositions for which some of the brethren demanded that he should be denounced to the Inquisition, but Marcen dismissed him from the Society and gave him money to betake himself to Italy, for all of which his defence was that he only obeyed the orders of the General.[110]

The case was a clear one; Marcen and his colleagues were convicted, but the Inquisition had not the satisfaction of punishing them. The Society did not venture to question the jurisdiction of the Inquisition, but its influence at Rome was great and it probably had little difficulty in convincing Sixtus V that the interests of religion required the suppression of the scandal, for which he had only to exercise his right of evoking the case to himself. He did so, in 1587, and when the Suprema tried its usual dilatory tactics, the impetuous pontiff notified Cardinal Quiroga that, if the prisoners and the papers were not surrendered forthwith, he would be deprived of both the cardinalate and the inquisitor-generalship. Sixtus was not a man to be trifled with and the surrender was made.[111] The treatment of Briviesca, Trugillo and Ribera serve to explain why the frailes were so anxious to avoid the inquisitorial jurisdiction of which the familiars were so eager to avail themselves.

The ascription to the Inquisition of the crime of solicitation naturally stimulated the desire of the frailes to recover their exemption and Marcen’s case rendered the Jesuits especially active. A prolonged agitation in Rome was the result, which finally took the shape of submitting to the Congregation of the Inquisition the question whether, in this crime, the jurisdiction of the Holy Office was exclusive or whether it was cumulative with that of the prelate, depending on the first possession of a case. The decision was made, December 3, 1592, in the presence of Clement VIII, declaring that the jurisdiction of the Inquisition was exclusive, that the prelates could not exercise it and that all members of the Orders were bound to denounce offenders to the tribunals. The victory of the Inquisition was complete, but the pope expressed to the Suprema, through a cardinal, his desire that the inquisitors would exercise their functions with the prudence, circumspection and moderation that would preserve the cult due to the sacrament of penitence and, at the same time, the good repute of the frailes.[112]

Still the regulars could not be brought to submit to the jurisdiction of the Inquisition and Paul V, by a brief of September 1, 1606, evoked to himself all pending cases and committed them to it, at the same time decreeing that it should have exclusive jurisdiction in all cases of suspected heresy; whenever, during a visitation, any member of an Order was found to be suspected he was at once to be denounced and any superior refusing obedience was threatened with deprivation and perpetual disability. Moreover this decree was to be read in all chapters of the Orders. Even this was deemed insufficient and was supplemented, November 7th, with another prohibiting superiors, under any pretext or custom, from receiving denunciations or taking cognizance in any way of cases pertaining to the Inquisition. Every member, whether superior or subject, was required, without consulting any one, to denounce to the Inquisition or to the Ordinary all who were suspected, however lightly, of heresy.[113]

JURISDICTION CONFIRMED

Some details in this would seem to point to the Society of Jesus as the chief recalcitrant and this is confirmed by a brief of Alexander VII, July 8, 1660, which condemns, as pernicious and rash, opinions calling in doubt the obligation to denounce and the pretexts employed of fraternal correction to prevent denunciation. Even the Company of Jesus is ordered to obey the constitution of Paul V; no superiors are to molest or oppress their subjects for performing this duty but must exhort them to it. Disobedience is threatened not only with the penalties provided by Paul V but with deprivation of office, the right of voting and being voted for, perpetual disability and other punishments at the discretion of the pope and removable only by him. The decree is to be read annually on March 1st at the public table and notarial attestation of the fact is to be sent to the nearest tribunal or to Rome and a copy is to be posted where all can read it. The Inquisition lost no time in publishing this and the decree of November 7, 1606, in an edict commanding their observance and pointing out that the alternative of denunciation to the Ordinary was invalid in Spain, where the Inquisition had exclusive jurisdiction. It further ordered that in all books where contrary opinions were taught there should be noted in the margin “This opinion is condemned as pernicious and rash by our Holy Father, Alexander VII.”[114]

No further papal utterances seem to have been asked for; indeed there was nothing that the Holy See could add to these comprehensive decrees. In time, however, they seem to have been conveniently forgotten for, in 1732, Inquisitor-general Juan de Camargo reissued them in an edict saying that some persons were ignorant, or affected ignorance, of the doctrines expressed in them, wherefore he ordered them to be posted in the sacristies of all churches, with the announcement that all contraventions would be punished with the utmost rigor.[115] Of course it is impossible to say how many frailes may have escaped prosecution through the indisposition of the Orders to recognize the jurisdiction of the Inquisition, but, from the numbers who appear in the registers of the tribunals, it is charitable to assume that evasion in this way was exceptional.

The completeness of the domination assumed by the Inquisition over the religious Orders is illustrated by its intervention in a matter which would appear wholly beyond any possible definition of its jurisdiction. The internecine strife between the different bodies had long been an inextinguishable scandal. The old hatred between Franciscans and Dominicans was inflamed to white heat by the quarrel over the Immaculate Conception. The immense success of the Jesuits brought upon them the virulent enmity of the older communities, which regarded them as upstarts and were repaid with interest. The new Moral Philosophy of the Probabilists was a fresh source of active discord. These mutual antagonisms found free expression in the press, the pulpit and the professorial chair, where the rivals derided and insulted each other, to the grief of the faithful and the amusement of the godless. The Inquisition appeared to be the only authority that could restrain the expression of the mutual wrath of the good fathers, though it might not be easy to define on what grounds it could claim authority on such a matter. Scruples as to this, however, rarely gave it concern and it undertook to effect what popes had repeatedly failed to accomplish.

March 9, 1634, the Suprema issued a decree which it printed and sent to all superiors with instructions to publish and make it known. This recited the evils arising from the discord and rivalry between the Orders, scandalous to the Christian people and dangerous as arising from the difference in the manners and customs of the various organizations. To bring about peace and concord the inquisitor-general proposed to assemble a council of the superiors of all the Orders and meanwhile rigorous proceedings were threatened against all who should provoke or foment these discords. Any religious who, by writing or words or in sermons or lectures, should insult another Order, or any of its members, would incur major excommunication and be recluded in a convent in another district, for a time proportioned to the gravity of the offence and moreover be incapable of holding any position in the Holy Office. Superiors were charged to expurgate all offensive expressions in books written by their subjects, before according the necessary licence to print or, if they had not authority to do this, they must refer the objectionable matter to the Suprema, and this was binding on those deputed to examine the MSS. The decree closed with a threat of rigorous punishment for all contravention of its provisions.[116]

QUARRELS BETWEEN THE ORDERS

Whether the council indicated was ever assembled or whether any offender was ever punished under this decree does not appear, but any effect which it may have produced was transient. The old passions and hatreds remained as vehement as ever and the controversy over the claims of the Carmelites to have been founded by Elijah furnished fresh material for acrimonious debate. In spite of this failure, the Inquisition maintained its claim to intervene and Inquisitor-general Valladares, June 24, 1688, issued another edict, incorporating that of 1634 and deploring that the old quarrels had become more virulent than ever. It was doubtful, he said, whether the previous utterances had been communicated to the Orders outside of Madrid, so a copy was ordered to be sent to every convent in Spain, with orders to be posted in a conspicuous place and the threat that it would be rigidly enforced. The belligerent ebullitions of the holy men were as little checked by this as by its predecessor and Inquisitor-general Rocaberti, October 19, 1698, took a further step by an edict in which he reprinted the previous ones and sent it to the tribunals with orders to publish it in all towns and have it posted on all church doors, thus taking the public into confidence and proclaiming to it not only the disreputable conduct of the frailes but the powerlessness of the Inquisition to reduce them to order and decency.[117] In fact, the Inquisition eradicated Judaism, it virtually expelled the Moriscos, it preserved Spain from the missionary zeal of Protestantism, but it failed ignominiously when it undertook to restrain the expression of aversion and contempt mutually entertained by Dominican and Franciscan, Jesuit and Carmelite.

CHAPTER III.
BISHOPS.

THERE was, in Spain, but one class over which the Inquisition had no jurisdiction. Boniface VIII, at the close of the thirteenth century, had decreed that, when a bishop was suspect of heresy, the inquisitor could not prosecute. The most that he could do was to gather evidence and send it to the Holy See, which reserved to itself judgement on the episcopal Order.[118] This was embodied in the canon law and remained in force, although of course the pope could delegate his power or could enlarge inquisitorial commissions, as when, in 1451, Nicholas V responded to the request of Juan II and included bishops among those subjected to the inquisitors whom he appointed.[119] During the middle ages the question was one of scarce more than academic interest, but in Spain, where the conversos had attained so many lofty positions in the Church and where all of Jewish blood were regarded with suspicion, it might at any moment become of practical importance.[120] The influence and power of the Inquisition would manifestly be increased if it should be granted faculties to prosecute bishops and Torquemada seems to have applied for this, in 1487, intimating that there were suspects among the bishops. Innocent VIII, however, was not disposed to subject the whole episcopate of Spain to the Holy Office and replied, September 25th, reciting the decree of Boniface and telling him to examine carefully all the evidence collected by the inquisitors and, if in it he found what incriminated prelates or showed that they were defamed or suspected of heresy, he should send it in legal shape and carefully sealed to Rome, where it would be duly weighed and proper action be taken.[121]

THE ACCUSED SENT TO ROME

If Torquemada failed in obtaining the desired jurisdiction over the Spanish episcopate, he could at least strike terror by accusing some of them to the Holy See, where their condemnation would be followed by that of their ancestors and large confiscations would result. Two of those of Jewish blood, Dávila of Segovia and Aranda of Calahorra, were selected for attack. In the existing popular temper it could not have been difficult to collect evidence that they were regarded as suspect and were defamed for heresy. Presumably this was sent to Rome and the matter was regarded as of sufficient moment to induce the despatch of Antoniotto Pallavicini, then Bishop of Tournay, as a special nuncio to confer with Torquemada.[122] He returned to Rome with evidence deemed sufficient to justify their summons thither. In 1490, Dávila went to Rome, in his eightieth year. Since 1461 he had been Bishop of Segovia and, in spite of Jewish descent, his family was one of the most influential in Castile, intermarried with its noblest blood.[123] He had given ample proof of pitiless orthodoxy, in 1468, when, at Sepúlveda, the rabbi, Solomon Pico and the leaders of the synagogue were accused of crucifying a Christian boy during Holy Week. Bishop Dávila promptly arrested sixteen of those most deeply implicated, of whom seven were burnt and the rest were hanged, except a boy who begged to be baptized—although this did not satisfy the pious Sepúlvedans, who slew some of the remaining Jews and drove the rest away.[124] He had given cause of offence, however, for, when the Inquisition was introduced in Segovia, he drove the inquisitors from his diocese and remonstrated boldly with the sovereigns and, when this proved fruitless, it was in evidence that he dug up at night, from the cemetery of the convent of la Merced, the bones of his ancestors and concealed them, in order to destroy the proof of their interment in the Jewish fashion.[125] In Rome he seems to have found favor with Alexander VI who, in 1494, sent him to Naples in company with his nephew, the Cardinal of Monreale. His case was protracted and he died in Rome, October 28, 1497; the result is not positively known, but it must have been favorable as otherwise his pious legacies would have been fruitless and Colmenares, the historian of Segovia, would not have dared to call him one of the most useful prelates that the see had enjoyed, nor would Galindez de Carvajal have said that his errand to Rome was merely to defend the bones of his father.[126]

Pedro de Aranda of Calahorra was a man of equal mark who, in 1482, acquired the high position of President of the Council of Castile. His father, Gonzalo Alonso, had been baptized with the famous Pablo de Santa María and had been ennobled. The Valladolid tribunal prosecuted his memory, with the result of a discordia, or disagreement, and the bishop went to Rome in 1493, where he gained papal favor and procured a brief transferring the case to the Bishop of Córdova and the Benedictine Prior of Valladolid. He remained in Rome, when Alexander VI, in 1494, sent him to Venice as ambassador and subsequently made him Master of the Sacred Palace. Since 1488, however, Torquemada had been collecting evidence against him. It was sent to Rome and, on the night of April 21, 1498, he was ordered to keep his room in the palace as a prison; on the 26th he was brought before the pope and had a hearing, after which he was taken to other rooms and kept under guard until September. Meanwhile Alexander seized his property and Sanuto intimates that his real crime was his abundance of ready money, while Burchard tells us that he was accused of heresy and marrania and that he had many enemies. Three bishops of the curia were commissioned as his judges; they heard many witnesses presented by the fiscal and a hundred and one by the accused, but all of these testified against him. The points against him were that he said the Mosaic Law had one principle, the Christian three; in praying he said Gloria Patri, omitting Filio et Spiritui Sancto; he celebrated mass after eating; he ate meat on Good Friday and other prohibited days; he declared that indulgences were useless and had been invented by the Fathers for gain; that there was neither hell nor purgatory but only paradise, and much more of the same nature. On November 16th the judges laid the evidence before the pope in secret consistory when, by the advice of the cardinals, Aranda was deposed and degraded from Orders; he was confined in the Castle of Sant’ Angelo, where he was given a good room and he died there, apparently in 1500.[127]

Pope Alexander seems to have felt that it was necessary to guard his jurisdiction against the encroaching tendencies of the Spanish Inquisition, for in granting to the Bishop of Avila appellate powers, in his brief of November 4, 1594 (Vol. I, p. 179), he was careful to except the venerable brethren, the archbishops and bishops, whose cases by law were reserved to the Holy See.[128] It was well understood by this time, however and, in the case of Archbishop Talavera of Granada, it will be remembered that Lucero made no attempt to do more than gather evidence to be sent to Rome and, when papal authority was obtained, it was granted not to the Inquisition but to prelates specially commissioned.[129]

TEMPORARY JURISDICTION GRANTED

Half a century was to elapse before there was another case involving the episcopal Order. It has been sometimes thought that the Inquisition was concerned in the trial and execution of Antonio de Acuña, Bishop of Zamora, but such was not the fact, although the case illustrates the difficulty of holding a bishop accountable for his misdeeds. That turbulent prelate, somewhat absurdly styled a second Luther by Leo X, was an active leader in the Comunidades, who, after the defeat at Villalar, April 21, 1521, fled in disguise but was caught at Villamediana, on the Castilian border. Episcopal immunity rendered him a doubtful prize; Charles V was resolved on his death, but there was considerable doubt as to how he was to be punished. The Inquisition was not brought into play but, after some negotiation, Leo X was induced to issue a commission to Cardinal Adrian and the nuncio to take testimony and forward it for judgement by the pope in consistory. On Adrian’s accession to the papacy he transferred the commission to the Archbishop of Granada and the Bishop of Ciudad-Rodrigo, but gave no authority to employ torture. Then Clement VII, by a brief of March 27, 1524, granted faculties to proceed to extremities, under which the trial went on, but apparently died out when carried to Rome. Wearied with five years’ confinement in the castle of Simancas, Acuña made a fruitless attempt to escape, in which he killed the alcaide, Mendo Noguerol. Charles then sent to Simancas his alcalde de casa y corte, Rodrigo Ronquillo, with instructions to torture Acuña and put him to death—instructions faithfully executed, March 23, 1526. This violation of the immunities of the Church caused no little scandal. Charles speedily obtained for himself, from Clement, absolution from the ipso facto excommunication incurred, but that which he had promised to procure for his subordinates was granted with difficulty and only after delay of more than a year, the final ceremony not taking place until September 8, 1527. At Valladolid a tradition was long current that Ronquillo came to an evil end, being carried off by demons.[130]

As the Lutheran revolt grew more threatening and the dread of its extending to Spain increased, a certain limited jurisdiction over bishops was conferred on Cardinal Manrique by a brief of Clement VII, July 15, 1531. He was empowered to inquire against them if suspected of favoring Lutheran doctrines or of aiding those who held them; he was not permitted, however, to arrest and imprison, although he could punish them according to the canons and he was granted the fullest faculties of absolving and rehabilitating those who abandoned their errors and asked for forgiveness.[131] It is not likely that any occasion arose for the exercise of these faculties, but if there was it has left no trace.

This evidently was a personal delegation, expiring with Manrique, for no reference to it was made in the next case—that of Bartolomé de Carranza, Archbishop of Toledo. This was, perhaps, the most important affair during the career of the Inquisition. It attracted the attention of all Catholic Europe and illustrates in so many ways, not only inquisitorial methods but the conflict between orthodoxy and reform that it merits consideration in some detail.[132]

VALDÉS OUT OF FAVOR

Inquisitor-general Valdés, who was also Archbishop of Seville and whose name often comes before us, was perilously near disgrace in 1557. Philip II was in desperate straits for money; the glories of Saint-Quentin and Gravelines were not acquired cheaply and the war forced upon him by Paul IV was exhausting his Italian possessions. From Flanders he sent Count Melito to Spain with orders to raise forced loans from nobles and prelates, and the Princess Juana, then Governor, called among others on Valdés for a hundred and fifty thousand ducats. The Bishop of Córdova when approached, promptly furnished a hundred thousand and promised more if he could raise it: the Archbishop of Saragossa, who was asked for a hundred thousand, only gave twenty thousand. Valdés was even more niggardly, and supplied nothing, although it was observed about this time that six loads of money reached Valladolid for him. Charles V, from his retirement of Yuste, wrote to him, May 18th, expressing surprise that he, the creature of imperial favor, should hesitate to repay the benefits conferred, especially as he could have what security he desired for the loan. This letter, with one from Juana, was conveyed to him by Hernando de Ochoa, whose report to Charles, May 28th, of the interview, showed how little respect was felt for the man. Ochoa reproached him with having promised to see what he could do, in place of which he had gone into hiding at San Martin de la Fuente, fourteen leagues from the court at Valladolid, where he had lain for two months, hoping that the matter would blow over. “He said to me, before a consecrated host, that the devils could fly away with him if ever he had 100,000 or 80,000, or 60,000, or 30,000 ducats, for he had always spent much in charities and had made dotations amounting to 150,000.” Ochoa pressed him hard; he admitted that his archbishopric, which he had held since 1546, was worth 60,000 ducats a year and Ochoa showed that, admitting his claims for charities and expenses, he had laid aside at least 30,000 a year “which you cannot possibly have spent, for you never have any one to dine in your house and you do not accumulate silver plate, like other gentlemen; all this is notorious, and the whole court knows it.... This embarrassed him, but he repeated with great oaths that he had no money, that it was not well thus to oppress prelates, nor would money thus obtained be lucky for war; God would help the king and what would Christendom say about it.” The honest Ochoa still urged him to return to the court and save his honor, intimating that the king might take action that would be highly unpleasant, but it was to no purpose. Valdés was obdurate and clung resolutely to his shekels.[133]

Philip had sent instructions as to the treatment of recalcitrants—probably relegating bishops to their sees and nobles to their estates—but there was hesitation felt as to banishing Valdés from the court, although the continued pressure of Charles and Juana only extorted a promise of fifty thousand ducats. Yet it was desired to remove him and plans were tried to offer him a pretext for going. In March, 1588, Juana ordered him to accompany the body of Queen Juana la loca to Granada for interment, from which place he could visit his Seville church; he made excuses but promised to go shortly. Then, when she repeated the order, he offered many reasons for evading it, including the heresies recently discovered in Seville and Murcia; the translation of the body could wait until September and everybody, he said, was trying to drive him from the court. She referred the matter to the Royal Council, which decided that his excuses were insufficient and that, even if the interment were postponed he could properly be ordered to reside in his see.[134]

It was evident to Valdés that something was necessary to strengthen his position and he skilfully utilized the discovery of a few Protestants in Valladolid, of whom some were eminent clerics, like Augustin Cazalla and Fray Domingo de Rojas, and others were persons of quality, like Luis de Rojas and Doña Ana Enríquez. We shall have occasion to note hereafter the extraordinary excitement caused by the revelation that Protestantism was making inroads in court circles, the extent of which was readily exaggerated, and it was stimulated and exploited by Valdés, who magnified his zeal in combating the danger and conjured, at least for the moment, the storm that was brewing. Philip wrote from Flanders, June 5, 1558, to send him to his see without delay; if he still made excuses he was to be excluded from the Council of State and this would answer until his approaching return to Spain, when he would take whatever action was necessary. Ten days later, on receiving letters from Valdés enumerating the prisoners and describing the efforts made to avert the danger, he countermanded the orders.[135] Still, this was only a respite; we chance to hear of a meeting of the Council of State, in August or September, in which Juan de Vega characterized as a great scandal the disobedience of a vassal to the royal commands, in a matter so just as residence in his see, and he suggested that, when the court moved, no quarters should be assigned to Valdés, to which Archbishop Carranza replied that it was no wonder that the orders of the king were unable to effect what the commandments of God and the Church could not accomplish.[136]

Something further was necessary to render him indispensable—something that could be prolonged indefinitely and if, at the same time, it would afford substantial relief to the treasury, he might be forgiven the niggardness that had resisted the appeals of the sovereign. He had for some time been preparing a scheme for this, which was nothing less than the prosecution of the Primate of the Spanish Church, the income of whose see was rated at from 150,000 to 200,000 ducats. To measure the full audacity of this it is necessary to appreciate the standing of Archbishop Carranza.

ARCHBISHOP CARRANZA

Bartolomé de Carranza y Miranda was born in 1503. At the age of 12 he entered the university of Alcalá; at 18 he took the final vows of the Dominican Order and was sent to study theology in the college of San Gregorio at Valladolid, where, in 1530, he was made professor of arts, in 1533 junior professor of theology and, in 1534, chief professor as well as consultor of the tribunal of Valladolid. In 1540 he was sent as representative of his Order to the General Chapter held in Rome, where he distinguished himself and was honored with the doctorate, while Paul III granted him a licence to read prohibited heretic books. On his return to Spain his reputation was national; he was largely employed by the Suprema in the censorship of books, especially of foreign Bibles, while the Councils of Indies and Castile frequently submitted intricate questions for his judgement. In 1542 he was offered the see of Cuzco, esteemed the wealthiest in the colonies, when he replied that he would willingly go to the Indies on the emperor’s service but not to undertake the cure of souls.[137] On the convocation of the Council of Trent, in 1545, Charles V selected him as one of the delegates and, during his three years’ service there, he earned the reputation throughout Christendom of a profound theologian. When, in 1548, Prince Philip went to join his father in Flanders, they both offered him the position of confessor which he declined, as he did the see of Canaries which was tendered to him in 1550. In this latter year he was elected provincial of his Order for Castile and, in 1551, he was sent to the second convocation of the Council of Trent by Charles and also as the representative of Siliceo, Archbishop of Toledo. As usual, he played a prominent part in the Council and, after its hasty dissolution, he remained there for some time employed in the duty of examining and condemning heretical books. In 1553 he returned to his professorship at Valladolid and when, in 1554, Prince Philip sailed for England to marry Queen Mary and restore the island to the unity of the Church, he took Carranza with him as the fittest instrument for the work.[138]

Carranza subsequently boasted that, during his three years’ stay in England, he had burnt, reconciled, or driven from the land thirty thousand heretics and had brought two million souls back to the Church. If we may believe his admiring biographers he was the heart and soul of the Marian persecution and Philip did nothing in religious matters without his advice. When, in September, 1555, Philip rejoined his father in Flanders, he left Carranza as Mary’s religious adviser, in which capacity he remained until 1557. Regarded by the heretics as the chief cause of their sufferings he barely escaped from repeated attempts on his life by poison or violence.[139] It is true that English authorities of the period make little mention of him, but the continued confidence of Philip is ample evidence that his persecuting zeal was sufficient to satisfy that exacting monarch.

When, in 1557, Carranza rejoined Philip in Flanders he was probably engrossed in the preparation and printing of his large work on the Catechism, of which more hereafter, but he still found time to investigate and impede the clandestine trade of sending heretic books to Spain.[140] That he had completely won Philip’s esteem and confidence was seen when Siliceo of Toledo died, May 1, 1557, and Philip appointed him as successor in the archbishopric. He refused the splendid prize and suggested three men as better fitted for the place. Philip persisted; he was going to a neighboring convent to confess and commune prior to the opening of the campaign and ordered Carranza to obey on his return. When he came back he sent the presentation written in his own hand; Carranza yielded, but on condition that, as the war with the pope would delay the issue of the bulls, the king in the interval could make another selection. This effort to avoid the fatal gift was fruitless. On his return from the campaign, Philip in an autograph letter summoned him to fulfil his promise and made the appointment public. So high was Carranza’s reputation that, when the presentation was laid before the consistory in Rome, on December 6th, it was at once confirmed, without observing the preconization, or the customary inquiry into the fitness of the appointee, or a constitution which prohibited final action on the same day.[141]

ARCHBISHOP CARRANZA

The elevation of a simple friar to the highest place in the Spanish Church was a blow to numerous ambitions that could scarce fail to arouse hostility. Valdés himself was said to have aspirations for the position and to be bitterly disappointed. Pedro de Castro, Bishop of Cuenca, had also cherished hopes and was eager for revenge. Carranza, moreover, was not popular with the hierarchy. He was that unwelcome character, a reformer within the Church and, while everyone acknowledged the necessity of reform, no one looked with favor on a reformer who assailed his profitable abuses. As far back as 1547, while in attendance on the Council of Trent, Carranza had preached a sermon on one of the most crying evils of the time, the non-residence of bishops and beneficiaries, and had embodied his views in a tractate as severe as a Lutheran would have written on this abuse and the kindred one of pluralities, to which possibly the stringent Tridentine provisions on the subject may be attributed.[142] Such an outburst was not calculated to win favor, seeing that the splendor of the curia was largely supported by the prelacies and benefices showered upon its members and that in Spain there was scarce an inquisitor or a fiscal who was not a non-resident beneficiary of some preferment.

Carranza had, moreover, a peculiarly dangerous enemy in a brother Dominican, Melchor Cano, perhaps the leading Spanish theologian of the time when Spanish theology was beginning to dominate the Church. Learned, able, keen-witted and not particularly scrupulous, he was in intellect vastly superior to Carranza; there had been early rivalry, when both were professors of theology, and causes of strife in the internal politics of the Order had arisen, so that Cano could scarce view without bitterness the sudden elevation of his brother fraile.[143] His position at the time was somewhat precarious. When, in 1556, Paul IV forced war on Philip II, that pious prince sought the advice of theologians as to the propriety of engaging in hostilities with the Vicegerent of God, and the parecer, or opinion which Cano drew up, was an able state paper that attracted wide attention. He defended uncompromisingly the royal prerogatives, he virtually justified the German revolt when the Centum Gravamina of the Diet of Nürnberg, in 1522, were unredressed and he described the corruption of Rome as a disease of such long standing as to be incurable.[144] This hardy defiance irritated Paul in the highest degree. April 21, 1556 he issued a brief summoning that son of perdition, Melchor Cano, to appear before him within sixty days for trial and sentence, but the brief was suppressed by the Royal Council and Cano was ordered not to leave the kingdom. The Spanish Dominicans rallied to his defence; in the chapter of 1558 he was elected provincial and deputy to the general chapter to be held in Rome, but Paul ordered the election to be annulled and Cano to be deprived of his priorate of San Esteban. Cano complained of lukewarmness in his defence on the part of both Philip and Carranza and it is easy to understand that, feeling keenly the disgrace inflicted on him, he was in a temper to attack any one more fortunate than himself.[145]

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At this inauspicious moment Carranza presented himself as a fair object of attack by all who, from different motives, might desire to assail him. If we may judge from his writings, he must have been impulsive and inconsiderate in his speech, given to uttering extreme views which made an impression and then qualifying them with restrictions that were forgotten. He was earnestly desirous of restoring the Church to its ancient purity and by no means reticent in exposing its weaknesses and corruption. He had been trained at a time before the Tridentine definitions had settled points of faith which, since the twelfth century, had been the subjects of debate in the schools, and even in his maturity the Council of Trent had not yet been clothed with the awful authority subsequently accorded to it, for the inglorious exit of its first two convocations, in 1547 and 1552, gave little promise of what lay in the future. The echo of the fierce Lutheran controversies had scarce penetrated into Spain and comparatively little was there known of the debates which were shaking to its centre the venerable structure of the Church. Carranza’s very labors in condemning heretic books and converting heretics had acquainted him with their doctrines and modes of expression; he was a confused thinker and his impulsive utterances were liable to be construed in a sense which he did not anticipate. As early as 1530 he had been denounced to the Inquisition by Fray Juan de Villamartin as a defender of Erasmus, especially in the matter of confession and the authorship of the Apocalypse and, during his persecuting career in England, he more than once gave opportunity, in his sermons, to unfavorable comment.[146] It was also in evidence that when in Rome, in 1539, he had written to Juan de Valdés in Naples, asking what authors should be studied for understanding Scripture, as he would have to teach that subject, and that Valdés replied in a letter which Carranza circulated among his students in Valladolid—a letter highly heretical in its teachings which Valdés subsequently included in his “One hundred and ten Divine Considerations.”[147] It is true that, in 1539, Juan de Valdés was not reckoned a heretic, but, if the letter was correctly identified with the “Consideration” in question its circulation was highly imprudent, for it asserted that the guides for the study of Scripture are prayer inspired by God and meditation based on spiritual experience, thus discarding tradition for private interpretation, and it further dwelt upon the confidence which the soul should feel in justification through Christ. In the death-struggle with Protestantism the time had passed for easy-going latitude of opinion and, in the intricate mazes of scholastic theology, it was necessary to walk warily, for acute censorship could discover heresy in any unguarded expression. The great services rendered by Cardinal Morone and Cardinal Pole did not save them from the prosecuting zeal of Paul IV and Contarini and Sadoleto were both suspect of heresy.[148] Under such conditions a rambling inconsequential thinker like Carranza was peculiarly open to attack.

He had unquestionably been more or less intimate with some of the prominent personages whose arrest for Lutheranism, in the spring of 1558, produced so immense a sensation. It was not unnatural that, on their trials, they should seek to shield themselves behind his honored name, but the detached fragments of conversation which were cited in support of vague general assertions, even if correctly reported, amount to nothing in the face of the emphatic testimony by Fray Domingo de Rojas, for the discharge of his conscience, a few hours before his execution, that he had never seen in Carranza anything that was not Catholic in regard to the Roman Church and all its councils, definitions and laws and that when Lutherans were alluded to he said their opinions were crafty and deceiving; they had sprung from hell and the incautious could easily be deceived by them.[149] The credence due to the evidence of the Lutherans, on which so much stress was laid, can be gauged by a subsequent case illustrative of the tendency to render Carranza responsible for all aberrations of belief. A certain Gil Tibobil (de Bonneville) on trial in 1564 for Lutheranism, in Toledo, sought to palliate his guilt by asserting that he had heard Carranza preach, in the church of San Agustin, against candles and images and that confession was to be made to God and not to the priest. This was too crude to be accepted and he was sternly told that it cast doubt on the rest of his confession for, if Carranza had thus preached publicly, it would have come to the knowledge of the Inquisition and he would have been punished.[150]

Whether the testimony acquired in the trials of the Lutherans was important or not, Inquisitor-general Valdés lost no time in using it to discredit Carranza in the opinion of the sovereigns. As early as May 12, 1588, in a report to Charles V at Yuste, his assistance is asked in obtaining the arrest of a fugitive, whose capture would be exceedingly important; he had been traced to Castro de Urdiales, where he was to embark for Flanders to find refuge with Carranza or with his companion Fray Juan de Villagarcia, where he was sure of being well received. That the real motive was to injure Carranza with Charles appears from Valdés repeating the story to him in a report of June 2, adding that the fugitive had escaped and that information had been sent to Philip in order that he might be captured.[151] It is reasonable to assume that whatever incriminating evidence could be obtained from the prisoners was promptly brought to the notice of the sovereigns and that inferences were unscrupulously asserted as facts.

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At this critical juncture, Carranza delivered himself into the hands of his enemies. In England and Flanders he had employed the intervals of persecution in composing a work which should set forth the irrefragable truths of the Catholic faith and guard the people from the insidious poison of heretical doctrine. This was a task for which, at such a time, he was peculiarly unfitted. He was not only a loose thinker but a looser writer, diffuse, rambling and discursive, setting down whatever idea chanced to occur to him and wandering off to whatever subjects the idea might suggest. Moreover he was earnest as a reformer within the Church, realizing abuses and exposing them fearlessly—in fact, he declared in the Prologue that his object was to restore the purity and soundness of the primitive Church, which was precisely what the heretics professed as their aim and precisely what the ruling hierarchy most dreaded.[152] Worst of all, he did this in the vulgar tongue, unmindful of the extreme reserve which sought to keep from the people all knowledge of the errors and arguments of the heretics and of the contrast between apostolic simplicity and the splendid sacerdotalism of a wealthy and worldly establishment.[153] This he cast into the form of Commentaries on the Catechism, occupying a folio of nine hundred pages, full of impulsive assertions which, taken by themselves, were of dangerous import, but which were qualified or limited, or contradicted in the next sentence, or the next page, or, perhaps, in the following section.

No one, I think, can dispassionately examine the Commentaries without reaching the conviction that Carranza was a sincere and zealous Catholic, however reckless may seem many of his isolated utterances. Nor was his orthodoxy merely academic. He belonged to the Church Militant and his hatred of heresy and heretics breaks out continually, in season and out of season, whether apposite or not to his immediate subject. Heretic arguments are not worthy of confutation—it is enough to say that a doctrine is condemned by the Church and therefore it is heretical. The first duty of the king is to preserve his dominions in the true faith and to chastise those who sin against it. Even if heretics should perform miracles, their disorderly lives and corrupted morals would be sufficient to guard the people from listening to them or believing them. If they do not admit their errors they are to be condemned to death; this is the best theology that a Christian can learn and it was not more necessary in the time of Moses than it is at present.[154]

Even in that age, when theology was so favorite a topic, few could be expected to wade through so enormous a mass of confused thinking and disjointed writing, and it was easy for Carranza’s enemies to garble isolated sentences by which he could be represented to the sovereigns as being at least suspect in the faith, and suspicion of heresy was quite sufficient to require prosecution. Carranza himself, after his book was printed, seems to have felt apprehension and to have proceeded cautiously in giving it to the public. A set of the sheets was sent to the Marchioness of Alcañizes and a dozen or more copies were allowed to reach Spain, where they were received in March, 1558. Pedro de Castro, Bishop of Cuenca, obtained one and speedily wrote to Valdés, denouncing the writer as guilty of heretical opinions. Valdés grasped the opportunity and ordered Melchor Cano to examine the work. Cano took as a colleague Fray Domingo de Cuevas and had no difficulty in discovering a hundred and one passages of heretical import. The preliminaries to a formal trial were now fairly under way, the result of which could scarce be doubtful under inquisitorial methods, if the royal and papal assent could be obtained, necessary even to the Inquisition before it could openly attack the Primate of the Spanish Church.

Despite the profound secrecy enveloping the operations of the Inquisition, it was impossible that, in an affair of such moment, there should not be indiscretions and Carranza in Flanders was advised of what was on foot. His friends urged him not to return to Spain but to take refuge in Rome under papal protection, but he knew that this would irrevocably cost him the favor of Philip, for exaggerated jealousy of papal interference with the Inquisition was traditional since the time of Ferdinand and Isabella, and he virtually surrendered his case at once by instructing his printer, Martin Nucio, not to sell copies of the Commentaries without his express orders, thus withdrawing it from circulation.[155]

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But little adverse impression seems as yet to have been made on Philip. When Carranza was about to leave Flanders, the king gave him detailed instructions which manifest unbounded confidence. He was to go directly to Valladolid and represent the extreme need of money; then he was to see Queen Mary of Hungary, Charles’ sister, and persuade her to come to Flanders; then he was to hasten to Yuste where Philip, through him, unbosomed himself to his father, revealing all his necessities and desires in family as well as in state affairs. In short, Carranza was still one whom he could safely entrust with his most secret thoughts.[156]

Carranza, with his customary lack of worldly wisdom, threw away all the advantages of his position. Landing at Laredo on August 1st, he passed through Burgos, where he was involved in an unseemly squabble with the archbishop over his assumed right to carry his archiepiscopal cross in public. He did not reach Valladolid until the 13th and there he tarried, busied ostensibly with a suit between his see and the Marquis of Camarasa over the valuable Adelantamiento of Cazorla, but doubtless occupied also with efforts to counteract the intrigues of Valdés. Then he performed his mission to Mary of Hungary and it was not until the middle of September that he set out on a leisurely journey to Yuste. Valdés had taken care to forestall his visit. An autograph letter of the Princess Juana to Charles, August 8th, says that Valdés had asked her to warn him to be cautious in dealing with Carranza, for he had been implicated by the Lutheran prisoners and would already have been arrested had he been anyone else. Charles was naturally impatient to see him, not only to obtain explanations as to this, but also to receive the messages expected from Philip, for which he was waiting before writing to Flanders. Carranza’s delay, in spite of repeated urgency from Yuste, could not but create a sinister impression and all chance of justification was lost, for Charles was prostrated by his fatal illness before Carranza left Valladolid and the end was near when he reached Yuste about noon on September 20th. Charles expired the next morning at half-past two, Carranza administering to him the last consolations, his method in which formed one of the charges against him on his trial. He had thrown away his last chance and the unexpected death of Charles deprived him of one who might possibly have stood between him and his fate.[157]

The plans of Valdés were now sufficiently advanced for him to seek the papal authorization which alone was lacking, and his method to obtain this was characteristically insidious. The Suprema addressed, September 9th, to Paul IV a relation of its labors in discovering and prosecuting the Lutheran heretics. There was skilful exaggeration of the danger impending from a movement, the extent of which could not be known, and it was pointed out that sympathy with the sectaries might be entertained by officials of the Inquisition itself, by the Ordinaries and the consultors; so that extraordinary powers were asked to arrest and judge and relax those suspected or guilty, even though they were persons holding a secular or pontifical and ecclesiastical dignity or belonging to any religious or other Order.[158] As the Inquisition already had jurisdiction over all but bishops (it had not hesitated to arrest and try the Dominican Fray Domingo de Rojas) the self-evident object of this was to obtain surreptitiously, under cover of the word “pontifical,” some general expression that might be used to deprive Carranza of his right to trial by the pope. The Dean of Oviedo, a nephew of Valdés, was sent to Rome as a special agent to procure the desired brief; whether royal sanction for this application was obtained does not appear, but it probably was not, at least at this stage.

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Carranza meanwhile had been vainly endeavoring to get copies of the censures on his book in order to answer them. He appealed earnestly to his friends in Philip’s court and in Rome but, without awaiting their replies, he pursued his policy of submission and, on September 21st, the day of Charles’s death, he wrote to Sancho López de Otálora, a member of the Suprema, that he consented to the prohibition of his work, provided this was confined to Spain and that his name was not mentioned.[159] In this and what followed he has been accused of weakness, but it is difficult to see what other course lay open to him. He doubtless still considered his episcopal consecration a guarantee for his personal safety, while his reputation for orthodoxy could best be conserved by not entering into a fruitless contest with a power irresistible in its chosen field of action—a contest, moreover, which would have cost him the royal favor that was his main reliance.

In pursuance of this policy he even descended to attempting to propitiate Melchor Cano by offering to do whatever he would recommend. Cano subsequently asserted, with customary mendacity, that Carranza would have averted his fate had he adopted any of the means which he devised and advised to save him, but it is difficult to imagine what more he could have done.[160] Towards the close of November he wrote to Valdés and the Suprema and to other influential persons professing his submission. He explained the reasons which had led him to write his book in the vernacular after commencing it in Latin; it could readily be suppressed for, on reaching Valladolid, he had withdrawn the edition from the printer; there were no copies in the bookshops and what he had brought with him he would surrender, while the dozen or so that had been sent to Spain could easily be called in as the recipients were all known. Then, on December 9th, he proposed to the Suprema that the book should be prohibited in Spanish and be returned to him for correction and translation into Latin.[161] Had the real object of Valdés been the ostensible one of preserving the faith, this would have amply sufficed; the book would have been suppressed and the public humiliation of the Archbishop of Toledo, so distinguished for his services to religion, would have been an amply deterrent warning to all indiscreet theologians. It was a not unnatural burst of indignation when, in a letter to Domingo de Soto, November 14th, he bitterly pointed out how the heretics would rejoice to know that Fray Bartolomé de Miranda was treated in Spain as he had treated them in England and Flanders and that, after he had burnt them to enforce the doctrines of his book, it was pronounced in Spain unfit to be read.[162] Carranza’s submission brought no result save to encourage his enemies, who put him off with vague replies while awaiting the success of their application to the pope.

Meanwhile he had reached Toledo, October 13th, and had applied himself actively to his duties. He was rigid in the performance of divine service, he visited prisons, hospitals and convents, he put an end to the sale of offices and charging fees for licences, he revised the fee-bill of his court, he enforced the residence of parish priests and was especially careful in the distribution of preferment—in short he was a practical as well as theoretical reformer. His charity also was boundless, for he used to say that all he needed was a Dominican habit and that whatever God gave him was for the poor. Thus during his ten months of incumbency, he distributed more than eighty thousand ducats in marrying orphans, redeeming captives, supporting widows, sending students to universities and in gifts to hospitals.[163] He was a model bishop, and the resolute fidelity with which the chapter of Toledo supported his cause to the end shows the impression made on a body which, in Spanish churches, was usually at odds with its prelate.

He had likewise not been idle in obtaining favorable opinions of his book from theologians of distinction. In view of the rumors of inquisitorial action, there was risk in praising it, yet nearly all those prominent in Spanish theology bore testimony in its favor. The general view accorded virtually with that of Pedro Guerrero, Archbishop of Granada, than whom no one in the Spanish hierarchy stood higher for learning and piety. The book, he said, was without error and, being in Castilian, was especially useful for parish priests unfamiliar with Latin, wherefore it should be extensively circulated. It was true that there were occasional expressions which, taken by themselves, might on their face seem to be erroneous, but elsewhere it was seen that they must be construed in a Catholic sense. To this effect recorded themselves Domingo and Pedro de Soto, men of the highest reputation, Garrionero Bishop of Almería, Blanco of Orense, Cuesta of Leon, Delgado of Lugo and numerous others.[164] If some of these men belied themselves subsequently and aided in giving the finishing blow to their persecuted brother, we can estimate the pressure brought to bear on them.

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Valdés speedily utilized the power of the Inquisition to check these appreciations of the Commentaries. When, at the University of Alcalá, the rector, the chancellor, and twenty-two doctors united in declaring the work to be without error or suspicion of error, save that some incautious expressions, disconnected from the context, might be mistaken by hasty readers, Valdés muzzled it and all other learned bodies and individuals by a letter saying that it had come to his notice that learned men of the university had been examining books and giving their opinions. As this produced confusion and contradiction respecting the Index which the Inquisition was preparing, all persons, colleges and universities were forbidden to censure or give an opinion concerning any book without first submitting it to the Suprema, and this under pain of excommunication and a fine of two hundred ducats on each and every one concerned.[165] It was impossible to contend with an adversary armed with such weapons. Not content with this, the rector of the university, Diego Sobaños, was prosecuted by the tribunal of Valladolid for the part he had taken in the matter; he was reprimanded, fined and absolved ad cautelam. Similar action was taken against the more prominent of those who had expressed themselves favorably and who, for the most part, were forced to retract.[166] The Inquisition played with loaded dice.

Dean Valdés of Oviedo meanwhile had succeeded in his mission to Rome, aided, as Raynaldus assures us, by the express request of Philip, though this is more than doubtful. The brief was dated January 7, 1559; it was addressed to Valdés and recited that, as there were in Spain some prelates suspected of Lutheranism, he was empowered for two years from the receipt of the brief, with the advice of the Suprema, to make investigation and, if sufficient proof were found against any one and there was good reason to apprehend his flight, to arrest and keep him in safe custody, but as soon as possible the pope was to be informed of it and the prisoner was to be sent to him with all the evidence and papers in the case.[167] With the exception of the provision against expected flight, this was merely in accordance with the received practice in the case of bishops, but it was the entering wedge and we shall see how its limitations were disregarded.

The brief was received April 8th. In place of complying with it and sending Carranza to Rome with the evidence that had been collecting for nearly a year, a formal trial was secretly commenced. The fiscal presented a clamosa or indictment, on May 6th, asking for Carranza’s arrest and the sequestration of his property, “for having preached, written and dogmatized many errors of Luther.” The evidence was duly laid before calificadores, or censors, who reported accordingly and, on the 13th, there was drawn up a summons to appear and answer to the demand of the fiscal. Before proceeding further, in an affair of such magnitude, it was felt that the assent was required of Philip, who was still in Flanders.[168] As recently as April 4th he had replied encouragingly to an appeal from the persecuted prelate. “I have not wanted to go forward in the matter of your book, about which you wrote to me, until the person whom you were sending should arrive; he has spoken with me today. I had already done something of what is proper in this business. Not to detain the courier who goes with the good news of the conclusion of peace, I do not wish to enlarge in replying to you, but I shall do so shortly and meanwhile I earnestly ask you to make no change in what you have done hitherto and to have recourse to no one but to me, for it would be in the highest degree disadvantageous.”[169] Philip evidently thought that only Carranza’s book and not his person was concerned, that the affair was of no great importance and his solicitude was chiefly to prevent any appeal to Rome, a matter in which he fully shared the intense feeling of his predecessors. When Carranza ordered his envoy to Flanders, Fray Hernando de San Ambrosio, to proceed to Rome and secure an approbation of the Commentaries, he replied, April 19th, that all his friends at the court earnestly counselled against; it had been necessary to assure Philip of the falsity of the reports that he had done so, whereupon the king had expressed his satisfaction and had said that any other course would have displeased him.[170]

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Advantage, for which Carranza foolishly offered the opportunity, was taken of this extreme jealousy to win him over. When the Dominican chapter met, in April, 1559, there was open strife between him and Cano, over a report that Cano had styled him a greater heretic than Luther and that he favored Cazalla and the other prisoners. Carranza demanded his punishment for the slander and sought to defeat his candidacy for the provincialate. In this he failed. Cano’s assertion that he had been misunderstood was accepted; he was again elected provincial and Carranza unwisely carried his complaint to Rome.[171] There it became mixed up with the question of Cano’s confirmation, for Paul IV naturally resented the repeated presentation of that “son of iniquity.” Philip, on the other hand, could not abandon the protection of one whose fault, in papal eyes, was his vindication of the royal prerogative, and he interested himself actively in pressing the confirmation. Paul equivocated and lied and sought some subterfuge which was found in Cano’s consecration, in 1552, as Bishop of Canaries (a post which he had resigned in 1553) which was held to render him ineligible to any position in his Order, and a general decree to that effect was issued in July.[172]

All this was skilfully used to prejudice Philip against Carranza. In letters of May 16th to him and of May 22nd and 25th to his confessor Bernardo de Fresneda, Cano with great adroitness and small respect for veracity represented himself as subjected to severe persecution. He had always been Carranza’s friend; he had withheld for seven months his censure of the Commentaries and had yielded only to a threat of excommunication and now Carranza was repaying him by intriguing against the confirmation in Rome—the truth being that it was not until the end of June that Carranza’s agent reached there. It was a terrible thing, Cano added, if the archbishop, through his Italian General, could thus wrong him and he could not defend himself. He was resolved to suffer in silence, but the persecution was so bitter that if the king did not speedily come to Spain he would have to seek refuge in Flanders.[173] What, in reality, were his sufferings and what the friendly work on which he was engaged, are indicated by a commission issued to him, May 29th, granting him the extraordinary powers of a substitute inquisitor-general and sending him forth on a roving expedition to gather evidence, compelling everyone whom he might summon to answer whatever questions he might ask.[174] The Suprema and Valdés, moreover, in letters of May 13th and 16th to Philip, adopted the same tone; Cano’s labors throughout the affair had been great and it was hoped that the king would not permit his persecution for the services rendered to God and his majesty; there need be no fear of injustice to Carranza, for the investigation was impartial and dispassionate.[175]

Philip had already been informed by Cardinal Pacheco, February 24th and again May 13th, that Carranza had sent to the pope copies of the favorable opinions of his book, asking that it be judged in Rome and that his episcopal privilege of papal jurisdiction be preserved.[176] Whatever intentions he had of befriending Carranza were not proof against the assertions that to his intrigues was attributable the papal interference with Cano’s election. On June 26th he wrote to Cano, expressing his satisfaction and assuring him of his support in Rome and, on the same day, to the Suprema approving its actions as to the Commentaries and expressing his confidence that it would do what was right.[177] In thus authorizing the prosecution he ordered the archbishop’s dignity to be respected and he wrote to the Princess Juana that, to avoid scandal, she should invite him to Valladolid to consult on important matters, so that the trial could proceed without attracting attention.[178]

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Philip’s letters were received July 10th, but there was still hesitation and it was not until August 3d that the princess wrote, summoning Carranza in haste to Valladolid, where she would have lodgings prepared for him. This she sent, with secret instructions, by the hands of Rodrigo de Castro, a member of the Suprema.[179] Carranza was at Alcalá de Henares, whither Diego Ramírez, inquisitor of Toledo, was also despatched, under pretext of publishing the Edict of Faith. Carranza, who suspected a snare, was desirous of postponing his arrival at Valladolid until Philip, on whose protection he still relied, should reach Spain. Accordingly he converted the journey into a visitation, leaving Alcalá on the 16th and passing through Fuente el Saz and Talamanca to Torrelaguna, which he reached on the 20th. On the road he received intimations of what was in store and at Torrelaguna Fray Pedro de Soto came with the news that emissaries had already started to arrest him, which elicited from him a despairing and beseeching letter to Fresneda, the royal confessor.[180]

De Soto’s report was true. Valdés dreaded as much as Carranza desired Philip’s arrival; the delay on the road risked this if the device of the invitation to Valladolid was to be carried out. For his plans it was essential that an irrevocable step should be taken in the king’s absence—a step which should compromise Carranza and commit the Inquisition so fully that Philip could not revoke it without damaging the Holy Office in a way that to him was impossible. To allow Carranza to be at liberty while investigating the suspicion of his heresy, as Philip had ordered, would leave the door open to royal or papal intervention; to seize and imprison him would leave Philip no alternative but to urge forward his destruction, while his dilatory progress could be assumed to cover preparations for flight. Accordingly, on August 17th the Suprema issued a commission, under the papal brief of January 7th, to Rodrigo de Castro to act with other inquisitors in the case, while, as justice required Carranza’s arrest, Valdés commissioned de Castro, Diego Ramírez and Diego González, inquisitor of Valladolid, to seize the person of the archbishop and convey him to such prison as should be designated, at the same time sequestrating all his property, real and personal and all his papers and writings. Simultaneously Joan Cebrian, alguazil mayor of the Suprema, was ordered to coöperate with the inquisitors in the arrest and sequestration.[181]

Cebrian started the same day for Torrelaguna, where he kept his bed through the day and worked at night. The inquisitors came together; a force of familiars and others was secretly collected and, by day-break on the 22nd the governor, the alcalde and the alguaziles of Torrelaguna were seized and held under guard, the house where Carranza lodged was surrounded, de Castro, Ramírez, Cebrian and a dozen men ascended the stairs and knocked at the door of the antechamber. Fray Antonio de Utrilla asked who was there and the dread response came “Open to the Holy Office!” It was the same at the door of Carranza’s chamber; de Castro knelt at the bed-side, where Carranza had drawn the curtains and raised himself on his elbow; he begged Carranza’s pardon with tears in his eyes and said his face would show his reluctance in performing his duty. Cebrian was called in and read the order of arrest. Carranza replied “These señores do not know that they are not my judges, as I am subject directly to the pope.” Then de Castro produced the papal brief from the bosom of his gown and read it. Some say that Carranza fell back on his pillow, others that he remained imperturbable. He ordered out all the rest and remained for a considerable time alone with de Castro and Ramírez.[182]

He was at once secluded in the most rigid manner, all his people being excluded, except Fray Domingo Ximenes, who was required to assist in the sequestration and inventory. At table he was served by de Castro and Ramírez, who treated him with the utmost respect and endeavored to console him, for by this time his fortitude had given way and he was overwhelmed. His attendants were all dismissed and given money to find their way whither they chose and their grief we are told moved every one to compassion. Only the cook and steward and a muleteer were retained to serve the party. At nine in the evening proclamation was made throughout the town that until daylight no one was to leave his house or look out of a window. At midnight Cebrian assembled forty horsemen; de Castro and Ramírez brought Carranza down and stationed themselves on either side of his mule as the cavalcade rode forth in the darkness and then Salinas, the owner of the house, was allowed to come out to close his door. The heat was overpowering and when, by ten in the morning they reached Lozoya, they rested for a day and a night. On the 27th they arrived at Laguna del Duero, near Valladolid, where de Castro and Ramírez left the party and rode forward for instructions, returning the same day and, at two in the morning of the 28th, Carranza was brought to the city and lodged in the house of Pedro González de Leon, in the suburb of San Pedro beyond the walls, which had been taken by the Inquisition.[183]

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Carranza thus disappeared from human sight as completely as though swallowed by the earth. It is a forcible illustration of inquisitorial methods, but conspicuous only by reason of the dignity of the victim, for it rested with the discretion of the officials whether thus to spirit away and conceal their prisoners or to cast them publicly into the secret prison. Morales tells us that it was years before the place of Carranza’s incarceration was known, although every one said that he had been seized by the Holy Office. Even to say this, however, was not unattended with danger, for, in the trial, in September, by the tribunal of Toledo, of Rodrigo Alvárez, one of the charges against him was that, about September 5th, he had remarked to a casual fellow-traveller, that he came from Valladolid and was quite certain that the archbishop was imprisoned.[184]

There could be no doubt about it in Toledo, where the news of the arrest was received on the 24th. On the 26th the chapter assembled in sorrow to take what measures they could, in aid of their beloved prelate, but they were powerless save to delegate two of their number to reside in Valladolid and render such assistance as was possible. It amounted to little save a testimony of sympathy, for no communication was allowed, but they advised with his counsel and performed what service they were able. This faithful watch was kept up during the long and weary years of the trial and when it was adjourned to Rome they went thither and remained to the end. The chapter also, almost monthly, sent memorials to Philip praying for a speedy and favorable end of the case. The great Dominican Order also felt keenly the disgrace inflicted on its distinguished member and exerted itself in his favor as far as it could. The Spanish episcopate also was greatly perturbed, not knowing where the next blow might fall and the scandal throughout the land was general.[185]

Philip had disembarked at Laredo on August 29th. Valdés evidently felt that some excuse was necessary for action so much more decisive than that prescribed by the king and, in a letter of September 9th, explained to him that Carranza was delaying his movements in order to meet him on his arrival at Laredo; that he was working in Rome to impede the matter; that the infamy of his position was daily spreading and that the auto de fe prepared for the Lutherans could not take place while he was at liberty. Seeing that the effort to entice him to Valladolid had failed, it was resolved to bring him there, which was done quietly and without disturbance. He had been well treated and would continue to be so and the king might rely on the affair being conducted with all rectitude. An intimation, moreover, that all his property had been sequestrated indicates that the financial aspect of the matter was deemed worthy of being called to the royal attention and the whole tone of the letter shows that Carranza’s imprisonment was predetermined. The allusion to his design of meeting the king at Laredo disposes of the plea that he was suspected of flight and the fact that the auto de fe of the Lutherans did not take place until October 8th is a test of the flimsiness of the reasons alleged.[186]

Carranza’s treatment was vastly better than that of ordinary prisoners confined in the cells of the secret prison. He was asked to select his attendants, when he named six, but was allowed only two—his companion, Fray Alonso de Utrilla and his page, Jorje Gómez Muñoz de Carrascosa.[187] Two rooms were allotted to the party—rooms without provision for the needs of human nature, with windows padlocked and shutters closed, so that at times the stench became unendurable. The foul atmosphere brought on a dangerous illness in which Carranza nearly perished; the physicians ordered the apartment to be ventilated, morning and evening, but all that the Suprema would permit was a small grating in the door, though at times it was left ajar with a guard posted at it.[188] Communication with the outside world was so completely cut off that when, in 1561, a great conflagration ravaged Valladolid, raging for thirty hours, destroying four hundred houses and penetrating to the quarter where the prison stood, the prisoners knew nothing of it until after reaching Rome.[189] The inquisitorial rule that all consultation with counsel must be held in the presence of an inquisitor was rigidly observed and also that which denied to prisoners the consolation of the sacraments.

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Diego González, one of the inquisitors of Valladolid, was assigned to the special charge of Carranza who, in a long and rambling memorial to the Suprema represents him as treating him without respect, insulting him, suppressing his communications with the Suprema, fabricating answers, throwing every impediment in the way of his defence and aggravating, with malicious ingenuity, the miseries of his position. Some details as to the parsimony with which he was treated are almost incredible when we reflect that the Inquisition and Philip were enjoying the enormous sequestrated revenues of their prisoner.[190]

Although the papal brief only authorized the collection of evidence and its transmission to Rome with the person of the accused, the trial was conducted as though the Inquisition had full jurisdiction. It was commenced September 4th; as Carranza could not be taken to the Inquisition, Valdés and the Suprema came to his place of confinement, administered the customary oath and, according to routine procedure, gave him the first monition to discharge his conscience and confess freely. He replied by recusing Valdés as his judge on the score of enmity, to whom he subsequently added two members of the Suprema, Andrés Pérez, Bishop of Ciudad-Rodrigo and Diego de Cobos, Bishop of Jaen.[191] This recusation excited no little debate. There were some who pronounced it frivolous, others that it should be referred to the pope and others again that it should be decided by arbitrators. The latter opinion prevailed; Carranza and the fiscal named their arbitrators who rendered a decision in Carranza’s favor on February 23, 1560. A new judge thus became necessary; Carranza’s friends and the Dominicans were busy in Rome to have the case transferred thither, but at that time Philip’s will was substantially law to Pius IV and, on May 4th a brief was obtained authorizing the king to appoint one or more bishops, or other just and experienced ecclesiastics, to hear the case and bring it to a proper conclusion. This conferred full jurisdiction and placed Carranza in a worse position than before. Strenuous representations must have been made to Pius for, on July 3rd he issued another brief defining his intention to be that the judges should conduct the case up to the point of sentence and then send the papers under seal to Rome, where he, in secret consistory, would decide it as a matter specially reserved to the Holy See.[192] This revendicated the papal jurisdiction, but at the same time it confirmed the usurpation of Valdés in formally trying Carranza in lieu of merely collecting testimony for a trial in Rome.

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Philip leisurely postponed for a year the nomination of new judges. It may seem harsh to attribute this to the repulsive motive of prolonging the trial in order to enjoy the benefit of the sequestrated revenues of Toledo, but his financial needs were extreme and the temptation was great. In violation of the rule of the Inquisition that sequestrations were held for the benefit of the owner, to be accounted for unless confiscation was imposed, Philip had appointed Tello Giron administrator of the archbishopric, had procured his confirmation from Pius IV, in spite of the earnest remonstrances of the chapter, and was quietly absorbing the revenues, except such portion as the Suprema claimed for the expenses of Carranza and of the trial.[193] We happen to have evidence of this in the promise of a pension of twelve thousand cruzados on the see of Toledo, by which he won over Cardinal Caraffa to the Spanish interest, during the long conclave which resulted in the election of Pius IV[194], and the acquiescence of that pope in his enjoyment of the revenues was probably purchased by the promise of a similar pension of twelve thousand crowns to his favorite nephew, St. Charles Borromeo—a promise which he neglected to fulfil although, in 1564, it was reckoned that he had already received from the see some eight hundred thousand crowns. When he quarrelled with Pius for deciding the question of precedence in favor of France, the pope threatened to make him disgorge, but without success.[195] It is therefore easy to understand why the case promised to be interminable. The two years of the original brief expired in April, 1561; Pius extended it for two years more; then, by a brief of April 4, 1563, he renewed it for another year, at the same time prescribing that Carranza should be more mercifully treated; then, August 12, 1564, it was extended until January 1, 1565, and for another year still before the matter passed into the sterner hands of St. Pius V.[196] These delays it was the fashion to impute to Carranza. Bishop Simancas, who hated him for the proverbial reason odisse quem læseris, asserts that he was constantly employing devices to prevent progress, but this is absurd.[197] It was Carranza’s interest to be released from his dreary incarceration and to be sent to Rome, where he felt confident of favor; the cumbrous estilo of the Inquisition enabled it to retard action at will, while the accused could do little either to hasten or to impede.

When Philip at last acted on the power to name Carranza’s judges he appointed, March 13, 1561, Gaspar Zuñiga, Archbishop of Santiago who, on May 2nd, subdelegated the work to Bishops Valtodano and Simancas, both members of the Suprema and hostile to the prisoner. Carranza, as the result of his recusation, thus found himself practically remanded to Valdés, who was moreover shielded from direct responsibility. Carranza naturally recused his new judges, on the ground that they had voted for his arrest, but Philip airily dismissed the recusation, saying that if this were just cause no judge could try a culprit whose apprehension he had ordered.[198] In the following June Carranza was allowed to select counsel—a special favor for, as a rule, the accused was restricted to one or two lawyers who held appointments under the tribunal. He chose Martin de Azpilcueta and Alonso Delgado and also Doctors Santander and Morales, though of these latter we hear nothing subsequently. Azpilcueta, known also as Doctor Navarro, was one of the leading canonists of the time and a man of the highest reputation. He served faithfully to the end and probably thereby ruined his career in Spain, for he remained in Rome as a papal penitentiary.

After nearly two years of imprisonment the formal trial began July 30th and proceeded in most leisurely fashion. The rules of the Inquisition required three monitions to be given within ten days after arrest, but Valtodano and Simancas administered the first monition to discharge his conscience by confession on July 30th, the second on August 25th and the third on August 29th. He replied that for two years he had been desirous of learning the cause of his arrest and begging to be informed, which showed how ignorant he was of inquisitorial practice, for this was sedulously concealed from the accused, who was sternly ordered to search his conscience and earn mercy by confession. Then, on September 1st, the fiscal presented the accusation, in thirty-one articles, to each of which the accused was required to make answer on the spot. After this a copy was given to him on which to frame a more formal defence and for this he asked to have access to his papers—a fruitless request, for it was not the style of the Inquisition to allow the accused to have means of justifying himself.[199]

The articles of accusation were drawn not only from the Commentaries but from the confessions of the Lutheran heretics, the gossip and hearsay evidence industriously collected, and from the mass of papers seized when he was arrested. Many of these were not his own, but essays of others. There were extracts from heretic books which he had made at Trent for the purpose of refuting them; there were essays written when as a youth he had entered the Dominican Order, forty years before; there were notes of sermons taken down for practice when he was a student, and sermons preached in the refectory as required by the Rule of his Order; scattered thoughts jotted down for consideration and development; memoranda made when examining heretic Bibles and their comments for the Inquisition—in short all the vast accumulation of a man who for forty years had been busily studying and teaching and preaching and writing and wrangling on theology.[200] All the intellectual sins of youth and manhood had been scrutinized by malevolent eyes and he was called upon to answer for them without being allowed to know from what sources the charges were brought. There was in this no special injustice inflicted on him—it was merely the regular inquisitorial routine.

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Thus a year passed away and, on June 5, 1562, the fiscal presented a second accusation, for there was no limit to these successive charges, each of which could be made to consume time. These new articles were mostly based on rumors and vague expressions of opinion, for all who were inimical, secure in the suppression of their names, were free to depose as to what they thought or imagined and it was all received as evidence. These he answered as best he could and he succeeded in identifying the names of some of the adverse witnesses. Then he presented a defence, doubtless drawn up as customary by his counsel, for it was clear and cogent, bearing little trace of his discursive and inconclusive style. In support of this he handed in a long list of witnesses to be examined, including Philip II and the Princess Juana, but the fiscal, passing over the royalties, objected to the rest on the ground that they were friends of Carranza—hostile testimony was admitted from any source, but that which was suspected of favorable partiality was rejected. As a principle, this was recognized in inquisitorial practice, but it was not habitually applied with so much rigor.[201]

On August 31, 1562, Carranza addressed an earnest appeal to Philip, reminding him of his command, in April, 1559, to trust in him alone. Three years had passed in prison, his case had scarce more than begun and promised to be interminable. His judge, the Archbishop of Santiago, had not delegated full powers to Valtodano and Simancas; questions arose which they could not or would not decide and, when these were submitted to the archbishop, months elapsed before an answer was received. On January 19th his counsel had issued a requisition on the archbishop to come and hear the case personally or to grant full powers to his delegates, but up to the present time no reply had come. Never in the world, he said, was justice administered in this fashion, and he despairingly entreated Philip to expedite the case or to permit him to appeal to the pope.[202] Whether or not this cry from the depths reached Philip, it produced no effect.

By this time the affair had become a European scandal. The bishops assembled at the third convocation of the Council of Trent felt it acutely, both as an opprobrium to the Church and an attack on the immunities of their order. Philip was aware of this and, in letters of October 30th and December 15, 1562, to his representative at Trent, the Count of Luna, and to Vargas, his ambassador at Rome, he gave instructions to prevent its discussion and to ask the pope to order his legates to see that the Council kept its hands off from the Spanish Inquisition.[203] It was with difficulty that the council could be restrained. In the early months of 1563 the legates repeatedly reported that it ardently desired him to evoke the case and order the papers sent to Rome. In reply Pius earnestly disclaimed indifference; he had urged the matter until Philip’s temper showed that further pressure would disrupt the concord so necessary to the universal good. This did not satisfy the bishops, who persisted till Pius assured them that he had seen the earlier papers in the case and could affirm that Carranza’s imprisonment was not unjust; he promised that he would not permit delay beyond April, 1564, and that he would render a just judgement.[204] If the bishops could not help their captive brother, they could at least provide for their own safety and this they did by a decree which greatly strengthened a declaration adopted in 1551 concerning the exclusive papal jurisdiction over bishops.[205]

There was another way in which the council sought to aid Carranza. It had a standing congregation employed in compiling an Index of prohibited books. The Commentaries came legitimately before it and, after examination, it was pronounced, June 2, 1563, to be good and Catholic and most worthy to be read by all pious men. The secretary of the congregation, Fra Francesco Forerio, issued a certificate of this, conferring licence to print it, and Pius followed, June 23rd, with a papal licence to the same effect. The Count of Luna was greatly exercised at this and was aided by the celebrated scholar, Antonio Agustin, then Bishop of Lérida. Matters went so far that the Legate Morosini dreaded the disruption of the council and peace was only restored by withdrawing the certificate of approbation. A copy had been given to Carranza’s friends which they were forced to surrender.[206] Philip’s indignation at this, as expressed in a letter to Luna, of August 2nd, was too late to be of service and is important only from its statement that he considered the affair of Carranza to be the most momentous that he had in connection with the council.[207]

Meanwhile the case was dragging on, one series of charges being presented after another, until the aggregate was over four hundred, each of which furnished opportunity for discussion and procrastination.[208] Besides the financial motive for this delay, Philip was now engaged in a struggle with Rome to protect the Inquisition from the consequences of its own evil work. There was nothing in his eyes more important than to preserve and augment its privileges, and his jealousy of any attempt at interference by the Holy See was an overmastering passion. His secret object was to arrogate to it complete jurisdiction over bishops and prevent the final submission of the case to papal decision.

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Pius IV, to do him justice, felt keenly the humiliating position in which he was placed by the overbearing determination of Philip, but each attempt at self-assertion only rendered more evident the contempt in which he was held. More than once he wrote to the Archbishop of Santiago rebuking him for the long delay which kept Carranza in prison while the case made no advance. He named January 1, 1564, as the limit of the archbishop’s commission, after which the process, whether completed or not, was to be forwarded to Rome. The limit passed without obedience to his commands and he wrote again, expressing high displeasure at the contumacy which doomed such a man to grow old in the squalor of a prison without law or justice. Again he ordered the case, whether completed or not, to be sent to Rome; if there were delay, all concerned were ipso facto anathematized, deprived of all dignities and functions and rendered infamous and incapable of restoration; all letters granting jurisdiction were revoked and the case was evoked to Rome for decision. Carranza himself was to be delivered forthwith to the nuncio, who was empowered either to keep him in honorable custody or to liberate him on bail. These were brave words, but there was no heart to back them up with action and, when they were disregarded, he extended, on August 12th the Archbishop’s commission until January, 1565, after which, as previously ordered, the case was to be transmitted to Rome, and there was a significant absence of the minatory tone so prominent in the previous briefs.[209]

Encouraged by this evidence of weakness, on November 24, 1564, Philip sent Rodrigo de Castro to Rome on a mission to have Carranza abandoned to the Inquisition, significantly instructing him not to disdain whatever means he might find necessary to win over everybody of influence. Even the unlimited bribery thus planned failed of success, although the secondary object of procrastination was effected. Castro commenced by demanding, in a private audience, that the case be abandoned to the Inquisition, but refused to put the demand in writing. Then he lowered his tone and the pope agreed to send a special legate to Spain to review the case and pronounce sentence, but Castro insisted that the Suprema and such prelates as the king might select should be adjoined to the legate. This the pope refused, but there was some misunderstanding about it, and when Castro saw the commission drafted for the legate he was furious. He sought an audience and accused the pope of breaking his word; Pius lost his temper and said that in this whole business he had been treated like an ass; the affair was his and he would do as he pleased. Thus rebuffed, Castro poured forth his griefs to Cardinal Borromeo and declared that, if the legate went to Spain with such a commission, he would not get a real. This assertion may seem enigmatical to modern ears, but it is explained by the remark of the shrewd French ambassador, when reporting to Charles IX the arrival of the legate, that the case of Carranza and the use of his legatine faculties would bring him much money.[210]

The Holy See has rarely sent abroad a body so distinguished as this legation, predestined to failure. The special legate a latere was Cardinal Buoncompagni, afterwards Gregory XIII, accompanied by Archbishop Rossano, subsequently Urban VII, Fra Felice Perretti, afterwards Sixtus V and Giovanni Aldobrandini, subsequently cardinal and brother of Clement VIII. The legate had been given discretional power as to admitting Spanish associates, but he found on arrival at Madrid, in November, 1565, that the demand made on him was the impossible one which Pius had refused to Castro—the whole Suprema and prelates, amounting in all to fifteen Spaniards. He offered to admit two as against two of his associates, but he would do no more. As he wrote to Pius, the terror inspired by the Inquisition was beyond belief; to admit a majority of Spaniards would be to invite injustice, for the acquittal of Carranza would be the conviction of the Inquisition and any one who had the courage to bring this about would be exposed to lifelong persecution.[211] Of course Philip was firm, as his object was to baffle the legate, but discussion was cut short when the news came of the death of Pius IV, December 9th. Buoncompagni departed in haste to participate in the conclave; he was met at Avignon with the intelligence of the election of Pius V, January 7, 1566, in spite of which he continued his journey to Rome.[212]

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Pius IV had carried to an extreme his subservience to Philip. Pedro de Avila, one of Philip’s agents, wrote, August 23, 1565, that Cardinal Borromeo assured him that the pope had done and was doing more than he had power to do in order to gratify the king; he had gone against the canons, the councils and the cardinals and, when recently he thought himself to be dying, nothing weighed on his conscience more heavily than this.[213] His successor was a man of different stamp. To few popes does Catholicism owe more than to St. Pius V, for, while pitiless in his persecution of heresy, his recognition of the need of reform and his unbending resolution to effect it, regained for the Church much of the respect which it had forfeited. The Spanish agents speedily found that in the matter of Carranza he was incorruptible and intractable. As the ambassador Zuñiga plaintively reported to Philip, February 23, 1566, “He is certainly well-intentioned but, having no experience in affairs of state and no private interests, which are the two things that ordinarily make popes yielding, he fixes his eyes on what he deems just and is immovable.”[214] As cardinal-inquisitor and Dominican he had been favorably inclined to Carranza, whose friends received with hope the news of his accession. They conveyed this by means of an arrow aimed at one of his window-shutters and he responded by casting out a paper, picked up by a person stationed for the purpose, in which he addressed the new pope in the words of Peter, “Lord, if it be thou, bid me come unto thee on the water” (Matt. xiv, 28).[215]

Pius did not need urging. One of his first acts was to despatch a messenger to Buoncompagni ordering him to remain and bring the affair to a conclusion, but the legate’s Spanish experience did not incline him to return from Avignon. Doubtless his report brought conviction that justice was not to be expected in Spain, for Pius speedily made a demand for the person of Carranza and the papers so that he might decide the case. Accustomed to browbeat popes, Philip replied that the demand was offensive and contrary to the royal prerogative, as an attempt to change a matter unalterably fixed by the Holy See, and that it would not be entertained; the pope could commit the case to such persons as he pleased, provided they were Spaniards, otherwise, if Carranza should linger in prison until he died, the responsibility would not be with those who had offered every possible alternative. This audacious answer only strengthened the determination of Pius, who summoned Zuñiga and told him to tell his master that he exposed himself to all the indignation of the Holy See, for the pope was resolved to carry the matter to a conclusion. Zuñiga was silenced and could only report to Philip the terrible earnestness of Pius, from which there was no hope of diverting him.[216]

That he was in deadly earnest is apparent in his brief of July 30th, which he caused to be privately printed and sent copies to the nuncio Rossano, with an autograph letter of August 3rd, commanding its rigid execution. After dwelling on the injustice and scandal of the treatment of Carranza, he deprived Valdés, the Suprema and all concerned of jurisdiction in the case. Under pain of excommunication and suspension of functions, Carranza was to be set at liberty and, after appointing a vicar for his see of Toledo, was at once to present himself to the pope for judgement. Under pain of the indignation of God and of the apostles Peter and Paul and of excommunication, all the papers in the case were to be delivered in Rome within three months, and any one impeding the execution of these commands incurred excommunication and suspension from office.[217]

By this time Pius was known as a man who was not to be trifled with, but Valdés and the Suprema were ready to risk a rupture with the Vicegerent of Christ rather than to remit their victim to his judgement. When Philip consulted them they urged him not to permit even a copy of the process to be sent to Rome, much less Carranza’s person, lest he should impair his prerogatives. They asserted that the papal brief had given ample power both to prosecute and to sentence and that, having been granted, it could not be withdrawn; that, under the papal concessions to Ferdinand and Isabella, the Spanish Inquisition was wholly independent of Rome and that, if the episcopal character were successfully urged in this case, some other excuse would be found in other cases.[218]

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Valdés might be willing to risk a schism, but Philip drew back; it was not to be thought of that the Catholic king should incur excommunication, and he recognized what strength the heretic cause throughout Europe would derive from such a quarrel in such a cause. Still he dallied, until Pius forced Valdés to resign and threatened to lay all Spain under interdict.[219] He had encountered a will stronger than his own and Antonio Tiepolo, the Venetian envoy, is doubtless correct in saying that no other pope but Pius could have carried his point.[220] The pressure became irresistible and he yielded. Carranza, under charge of the hated inquisitor Diego González and guarded by a body of troops, left Valladolid December 5th, reaching Cartagena on the 31st, where he was confined in the castle until April 27, 1567, awaiting the arrival of the voluminous papers of the case, when he was placed on the admiral’s ship which was conveying the Duke of Alva on his fateful way to Flanders. Civita Vecchia was reached May 25th and Rome May 28th, where he was confined in the Castle of Sant’ Angelo—a second imprisonment that was to last for nine years. It was much less harsh than the previous one; besides his two faithful attendants he was allowed two others; he was assigned apartments in the quarters reserved for archbishops, he was sometimes permitted to leave his room under guard and enjoy the landscape, and at the first jubilee he was admitted to confession, although communion was still denied.[221]

The case promised to be as interminable in Rome as it had been in Spain. The anxiety of Pius for a thorough investigation caused endless delays, which were skilfully improved by the agents of the Inquisition. The enormous mass of papers reached Rome in the utmost confusion and some portions were lacking which had to be sent for. Then they had to be translated, as well as the voluminous Commentaries, which consumed a year. Philip was frequently sending new opinions and statements and Pius ordered all of Carranza’s writings, and even notes of his lectures taken by students, to be searched for and brought to Rome. He formed a special congregation of seventeen consultors, including four of the Spaniards who had been concerned in the case, with Ramírez as the fiscal. When all was ready the congregation met weekly under the presidency of the pope; the Spaniards insisted on his presence and, as his other duties frequently prevented this, the affair dragged on from year to year. Philip followed it with intense anxiety, as shown in his correspondence with Zuñiga. Thus a long letter of instructions, June 6, 1570, tells the ambassador to assure the pope that everything had been done in Spain with the most minute deliberation; there is an almost childish insistence on the opinions of some obscure theologians as to Carranza’s guilt, and it is pointed out that, if he is acquitted, he will teach and preach with greater authority than before and the whole prosecution will have been a blunder. All this, he says, should have weight with the pope, who is moreover to be threatened with what the king may find it necessary to do if the sentence is warped by personal considerations. Foolish communications of this kind were reiterated until, August 12, 1571, Pius, in an autograph letter, alluded to the repetition of these insinuations, which he declared to be groundless and, in dignified terms, warned Philip not to let his pious zeal get the better of his discretion.[222]

ARCHBISHOP CARRANZA

The Spanish tactics of delay were successful. Pius V died, May 1, 1572, without having published a sentence. Whether one was framed or not is a disputed question. Salazar tells us that it was drawn up, but that Pius, before publication, desired to submit it to Philip and sent it by his chief chamberlain, Alessandro Casale, who was detained by bad weather and other accidents until after the death of the pope. Llorente gives the details of the sentence as absolving Carranza of the charges but maintaining the prohibition of the Commentaries in the vernacular, with permission to translate it into Latin after removing the doubtful expressions. Simancas, who was one of the inquisitors employed on the case in Rome, says positively that Pius died without framing a sentence; that when Carranza’s friends claimed that he had done so, and urged his successor, Gregory XIII, to publish it, the latter offered twenty thousand crowns to any one who would produce it and thus save him the task of reviewing the case.[223] However this may be, Pius was convinced of Carranza’s innocence. He allowed the Commentaries to be publicly sold in Rome; when the fiscal Salgado petitioned for its suppression, he made no answer and, when Salgado insisted upon it in the congregation, he replied angrily that he did not consider it subject to suppression and that they had better not by persistence force him formally to approve it by a motu proprio.[224]

Gregory XIII was not liable to the reproach bestowed by Zuñiga on Pius V of indifference to personal and worldly considerations. He was quite accessible to them and realized fully the importance to the Holy See of keeping on good terms with the Spanish master of Italy. His experience as the Legate Buoncompagni had sufficiently acquainted him with Philip’s temper and, when Carranza’s friends naturally expected him to take the matter up where the death of Pius had left it, he insisted on going over it personally from the beginning. As he could give but fragmentary attention to it he was thus able to postpone committing himself for some years. This gave Philip opportunity to gather fresh testimony. By means not the most gentle, the survivors of Carranza’s friends, who had approved of the Commentaries, were induced to retract. The three bishops, Guerrero, Blanco and Delgado condemned propositions by the hundred, drawn from works submitted to them as Carranza’s and they exculpated themselves from their approval of the Commentaries by saying that they had not then seen his MS. writings and, in view of his reputation, they had sought to give a Catholic sense wherever possible. Other opinions were industriously collected; Gregory made a decent show of resistance to admitting fresh testimony at this late day, but yielded to Philip’s threats of what he might find necessary to do in case his desires were thwarted, and thus excuses, if not reasons, were afforded for reaching a different conclusion from that of Pius V.[225]

As the time approached at which it was understood that the long protracted case would be terminated, Philip’s anxiety increased. An autograph letter of February 16, 1575, to Pope Gregory, strongly urged Carranza’s speedy condemnation, in view of the dangers which he had represented to Pius, and asked the fulfilment of a promise to communicate to him the sentence before publication. Whether such promise was made or not, Gregory refused to submit it to him, but intimation of what it was to be reached him and, on April 20th, he wrote vigorously to Zuñiga expressing surprise that the pope did not keep his word. As for Carranza, he was so thoroughly convicted of heresy that, according to inquisitorial routine, he ought to be burnt, or at least reconciled after abjuring all kinds of heresy. To allow him to abjure for vehement suspicion of heresy, with temporary suspension from his see, assumes that in time he will return to occupy the primatial church of Toledo, which would cause disturbance and scandal impossible to contemplate. The pope can well conceive the dangers which may follow, in Spain and elsewhere, by the mere example of such a criminal in such a position. Even if the suspension were perpetual yet, if God should remove his Holiness, a successor might lift the suspension unless Carranza is wholly deprived.[226]

This was passion and eloquence wasted, for the sentence had been pronounced six days before, on April 14, 1576. Whatever promise Gregory had made was kept to the letter but not to the spirit by announcing it to him on April 11th. Its provisions were shrewdly framed to turn the whole affair to the advantage of the Holy See, by keeping Carranza as a potential sword of Damocles hanging over Philip’s head and meanwhile absorbing the revenues of the see of Toledo. The tenor of the articles was, as communicated to Philip:—

The Archbishop of Toledo will be declared vehemently suspect of sundry errors and as such will be required to abjure them.

He will be suspended and removed from the administration of his church for five years and subsequently at the pleasure of the pope and the Holy See.

During this time he will be recluded in a monastery in Orvieto, and not allowed to depart without special licence of the pope and the Holy See.

The pope will appoint an administrator of the church of Toledo, with disposition of all the fruits since the date of sequestration and during the suspension, which he will convert to the benefit of the Church and other pious uses, after deducting pensions, expenses and debts.

For the support of the archbishop there shall be assigned a monthly allowance of a thousand gold crowns.

Some salutary penances will be imposed on him.

ARCHBISHOP CARRANZA

His Catechism will be prohibited to be possessed, read, or printed.[227]

The errors of which he was declared vehemently suspect amounted to sixteen, professedly drawn from his writings. As they were merely the peg on which to hang the sentence they need not be recapitulated here and it suffices to say that on April 12th they were taken, with the abjuration, by Giantonio Fachinetti (afterwards Innocent XI) to the Castle of Sant’ Angelo, where Carranza obediently signed the abjuration.[228]

The publication of the sentence was made with a solemnity befitting the conclusion of a case which, for seventeen years, had occupied the attention of Christendom. On April 14th, Carranza was brought from his prison to the Hall of Constantine, where Gregory occupied the papal throne under a canopy, the cardinals sat on benches and about a hundred other spectators stood around. After the opening formalities, Gregory handed a roll containing the sentence to Alonso Castellon, the secretary in the case, who read it aloud. It was very long, reciting the vicissitudes of the affair from the beginning and concluded with the articles as stated above. Then Carranza read his abjuration, as Simancas tells us, with impassive indifference, as though it related to another, after which he was led to the feet of the pope who expatiated on the mercy shown to him and told him he might expect more if he lived as he ought. He was then handed to the captain of the guard to be conveyed to the Dominican convent of Santa Maria sopra Minerva and, as he was led out, in passing Cardinal Gambara, he quietly asked him to have his effects transferred to the convent. Evidently there was no sense of guilt or humiliation.[229] It was a fitting end to Gregory’s disgraceful part in the tragedy that when, on April 20th, he formally notified Philip and the chapter of Toledo of the result, he mournfully expressed his regret that he had been compelled to condemn in place of acquitting, as he had hoped.[230]

As a penance, the pope ordered Carranza to visit the seven churches on Saturday of Easter week (April 28th) and offered him his own litter and horses for his servants, which he declined. It was noised abroad and the whole population was stirred to accompany him, for the compassion felt for him was universal. To avoid such a demonstration Gregory changed the day to Monday the 23rd, but notwithstanding this the throng of coaches and crowds of people changed the penance into a triumph. In the churches he was received with all honor and at the Lateran he celebrated mass but, towards the end of the day, a strangury commenced and, on his return to the convent, he took to his bed, never to leave it. The disease made rapid progress, during which the pope repeatedly sent consolatory messages and, on April 30th, his apostolic benediction, with an indulgence a poena et a culpa. The same day Carranza made a solemn declaration before his secretaries, affirming his unbroken adhesion to the faith; he received with fervor the last consolations of religion and passed away at 3 A.M. on May 2nd. He had entered his prison a vigorous man of 56 and had left it to die, a broken old man of 73.[231]

ABCHBISHOP CARRANZA

That an autopsy should have been ordered indicates that immediately doubts had arisen whether the death had been natural. The physicians reported some slight ulcers in one kidney and three stones in the gall-bladder, but in a position to do no harm and they attributed the retention to some “carnosities.”[232] If suspicions existed of poison, they found no public utterance that has reached us, yet, in an age when the removal of an impediment was a recognized resource of state policy, the opportune and sudden death of Carranza is at least suggestive. We have seen how energetically Philip remonstrated against his being left in a position in which his return to Toledo was possible. His resumption of his see would have inflicted an incurable wound on the authority and influence of the Inquisition and have covered the monarch with mortification; it would have led to complications which, in the temper of the age, would have been insoluble. The injustice meted out to Carranza had rendered his death a necessity, if he was not branded as a heretic or disqualified as a bishop. Philip and he could not exist together in Spain. Besides, so long as Carranza lived, he was a dangerous weapon, in the hands of the papacy, to thwart Spanish policy by threats of removing the suspension or to extort concessions as the price of maintaining it. To attribute his sudden death to the zeal of Spanish agents in Rome, or to secret orders sent in advance, would do no injustice to a prince who did not shrink from the executions of Montigny and Lanuza or the assassinations of Escobedo and of William the Silent. It suited him, however, to accept it piously as a special dispensation of Providence. June 11th he replied to Gregory’s letter of April 11th and 16th conveying copies of the sentence and abjuration. To persons, he said, of great learning and experience in Spain, the sentence was too lenient, but he recognized the pope’s holy zeal and that God’s hand had applied the proper remedy to avert greater evils.[233] Yet subsequently Morales, writing by Philip’s order, concludes his account “They say that he apparently died as a saint, which I believe and that it was really so.... The Lord reserved him for the other life, a signal mercy which he grants to those whom it pleases him.”[234]

In one respect the Inquisition was triumphant. The Commentaries, which had been approved by the Council of Trent and by Pius IV and Pius V, was condemned and prohibited with a callous disregard of consistency. The work remained in the successive issues of the Spanish Index until 1747, but was dropped in the latest one of 1790. Rome was even more persistent and retained it until 1899, though it disappeared, with much other antiquated lumber, in the recension of 1900. Yet Carranza’s reputation as an orthodox champion of the Church seems to have suffered little from his prosecution and condemnation. Cardinal Quiroga, the inquisitor-general, who in 1577 succeeded him in the see of Toledo, caused his portrait to be placed with those of his predecessors, erected a tomb to his memory and, in June, 1578, performed solemn obsequies for him which lasted for a fortnight.[235] Odoricus Raynaldus, the official annalist of the Holy See, and Cardinal Pallavicini, the official historian of the Council of Trent, unite in saying that nothing serious was found against him, only vehement suspicion, and that on his death-bed he gave evidence not only of uncorrupted faith but of singular piety.[236] Nicholás Antonio tells us that for some mere presumptions, in the absence of legitimate proof of admitted impiety, he was ordered by abjuration to purge all suspicion of guilt.[237] Balmés, the champion of Catholicism, while admitting that, on the delicate subject of justification, his expressions lacked clearness, asserts that beyond doubt, in his own conscience before God, he was wholly innocent.[238] The dispassionate judgement of posterity has condemned the Inquisition in acquitting its victim.

If Philip failed to blast the memory of Carranza he at least succeeded in one of his objects. For seventeen years he had wrongfully enjoyed Carranza’s sequestrated revenues, which, allowing for all deductions, must have yielded him two or three millions of ducats. Much must have been spent in the endeavor to convict the rightful possessor but, when the case was concluded, outstanding engagements were repudiated. During the trial in Rome, Don Lope de Avellaneda had borrowed twenty-six thousand ducats to pay the salaries of the parties employed in the notoriously expensive litigation of the curia, but the bills of exchange drawn to satisfy the indebtedness were returned dishonored. The Roman bankers were too important an adjunct of the curia not to be efficiently protected; on April 10, 1577, Gregory wrote to the inquisitors (probably of Toledo) to collect the amount, with interest up to the date of payment, from the revenue of the archiepiscopal table of Toledo, enforcing the demand, if necessary, by excommunication, interdict and the invocation of the secular arm.[239] Philip evidently maintained his hold on the revenues until the consecration of Archbishop Quiroga, in December, 1577, and his administrator would allow no diversion of the funds. Gregory, in the sentence had endeavored to provide for an accounting to him of the accumulations, but the effort was a failure. Like Philippe le Bel, in the analogous case of the Templars, Philip had a grip on the spoils which nothing could loosen. When, in 1581, Gregory sought to stimulate him to undertake an expedition against Queen Elizabeth, and promised him financial assistance towards so pious an enterprise, it turned out that this aid was merely the mesne profits of the see of Toledo which he had collected and had long since consumed.[240]

JURISDICTION CLAIMED

The affair of Carranza seems to have been regarded as weakening the position of bishops and, with the customary audacity of the inquisitors in extending their jurisdiction, the tribunal of Cuenca boasted or threatened that it would arrest the bishop. The services of the incumbent, Pedro de Castro, in furnishing evidence against Carranza, had been too recent to permit him to be hoisted by his own petard and Valdés, in a letter of June 17, 1560, rebuked the tribunal for its superserviceable zeal.[241] We have seen how the bishops, at the Council of Trent, endeavored to protect themselves by reserving to the pope exclusive right to pronounce sentence, but this was of small avail when he assumed the right to delegate his power as he pleased. When Sixtus V, January 25, 1586, issued a commission to the Cardinal Archduke Albert of Austria, as inquisitor-general of Portugal, it specifically subjected archbishops, bishops and patriarchs to his jurisdiction and that of his subdelegates.[242] As Portugal was under the Spanish crown, this served as a precedent when in December, 1629, the Inquisition desired to prosecute Gavino Mallani, Archbishop of Oristano in Sardinia, against whom it had gathered evidence that, since his consecration, in 1627, he had never been to confession or had celebrated mass, that he was a blasphemer, that he had a familiar demon confined in a ring, etc. The Suprema submitted to Philip IV the Portuguese commission and asked him to instruct his ambassador to procure a similar one for Spain or, failing this, to obtain a special brief for the case of Mallani. Philip ordered the necessary letter to be drafted for his signature, but the effort failed. Mallani was probably sent to Rome with the evidence, for he was deposed, being succeeded, in 1635, by Pedro Vico, while he did not die until 1641.[243] In spite of this recognition of lack of jurisdiction over bishops, we have seen (Vol. I, p. 501) that, in the quarrel with Manjarre de Heredia, Bishop of Majorca, in 1668, Inquisitor-general Nithard claimed that the Inquisition could prosecute him criminally. He had the effrontery to assert, in a consulta of February 5, 1668, that its possession of this power was so notorious and so completely established in practice as to require neither argument nor demonstration, and the infatuated queen-regent sustained him in summoning the bishop to appear for trial. In spite of an adverse decision in Rome, the Inquisition continued the prosecution, even after the expulsion of Nithard, and proceedings ceased only with the death of the bishop.[244]

The next case in which the Inquisition had to deal with a bishop was one which attracted much attention at the time—that of José Fernando de Toro, Bishop of Oviedo. We shall have to consider it hereafter in its relation with Illuminism and Molinism and need only say here that he was an adept in the dangerous mysticism which mistook the promptings of the senses for divine impulses and taught that union with God conferred impeccability. There was no doubt of his guilt, for he confessed freely when arraigned, and the Inquisition raised no question as to the exclusive papal jurisdiction. After elaborate investigation, Inquisitor-general Ibañez de la Riva Herrera put the mass of testimony into shape and sent it to Clement XI, November 27, 1709. On June 7, 1710, Clement authorized the imprisonment of Toro and the prosecution of the case, the results to be sent to him. After the death of Ibañez, a fresh commission was sent to his successor Giudice; in 1714 Clement granted permission to Toro to come to Rome, but this was not carried out until 1716, when he was confined in the Castle of Sant Angelo and his trial dragged on until 1719. Sentence was pronounced July 27th, with the same ceremonies as that of Carranza, the records of which were examined for the purpose.[245]

JURISDICTION ASSERTED

While the Inquisition thus freely admitted its incompetence to sit in judgement on bishops yet, in the next case that occurred, it asserted complete jurisdiction. Manual Abad Queipo was bishop-elect of Mechoacan (Valladolid) in Mexico where, although not consecrated, he was accepted by the chapter and governed the diocese as bishop, fulminating, in 1810, excommunication against Hidalgo and his followers, which was confirmed by the archbishop, Ligama y Beaumont.[246] He was thus fully recognized as bishop and it was probably the disturbed state of the land, during the rebellion of Hidalgo and Morelos, that prevented the assembling of bishops for his consecration. In the turbulence of the period he made enemies and an anonymous denunciation was lodged against him with the Mexican tribunal. It collected evidence and forwarded it, August 31, 1814, to the Suprema which referred it to the Madrid tribunal for investigation and report.

The question as to the liability of bishops-elect is rather intricate, dependent on whether there has been presentation by the king or election by the chapter and confirmation by the pope,[247] but it would seem that Queipo was not subject to the Inquisition, nor were the charges matters of heresy. The Madrid tribunal recognized this in its report, October 27, 1814, saying that he should be cited to answer, provided his office did not stand in the way, at the same time admitting that the charges were the work of enmity and that at most he had been careless in conduct and ministration. Queipo returned to Spain and, on February 12, 1816, the Suprema ordered the tribunal to proceed. He refused to acknowledge the jurisdiction; the tribunal, May 16th, pronounced his reasons invalid and the Suprema, September 2nd took the high ground that no one could question its acts; when it has once declared itself a competent judge no private person could dispute it or impede the execution of its decrees. This could only be done by an authority feeling its jurisdiction invaded and, as there was none such in the kingdom, he was only prejudicing his case, which otherwise he could expedite and preserve the right of maintaining his claims by a protest which would be admitted. Queipo offered to answer the charges extra-judicially, but this was refused and he was told that if he did not present himself to answer them fully within three days, he would be prosecuted in contumacy. He yielded under protest and was spared the humiliation of appearing in the Inquisition, for Inquisitor Zorilla was ordered to conduct the audiences in the convent where he was residing, but during them he was ordered not to leave it and when they were over he was set at liberty, under command to present himself at the house of the fiscal whenever summoned. Thus, at the end of its career, the Inquisition successfully asserted its jurisdiction over a bishop, but he had his revenge. It was evidently no accident that, in the revolution of 1820, Queipo was made a member of the Provisional Junta of March 9th which, on the same day, caused Fernando VII to decree the extinction of the Holy Office.[248]

CHAPTER IV.
THE EDICT OF FAITH.

OCCASIONAL allusions have been made above to the Edicts of Faith, whereby the tribunals obtained knowledge of offences coming within their jurisdiction. This was one of the most efficient methods by which that jurisdiction was exercised and was brought home to the consciences of the people as an ever-present power. It rendered every individual an agent of the Inquisition, bound under fearful penalties spiritual and temporal, to aid it in maintaining the purity of the faith and, at the same time, it made every man conscious that his lightest word or act might subject him to prosecution by that terrible court whose very name inspired dread. No more ingenious device has been invented to subjugate a whole population, to paralyze its intellect and to reduce it to blind obedience. It elevated delation to the rank of high religious duty, it filled the land with spies and it rendered every man an object of suspicion, not only to his neighbor but to the members of his own family and to the stranger whom he might chance to meet. Continued through generations, this could not fail to leave its impress on the national character. Even Mariana, in enumerating the results of the Inquisition, ventures to allude to the cautious reserve which it rendered habitual among Spaniards.[249]

A somewhat crude prototype of the Edict of Faith is found in the old Inquisition, when inquisitors visited their districts and, at each town, summoned an assembly of the people, preached to them and caused to be read an edict calling upon all the inhabitants to come forward within a specified time and reveal anything that might tend to the suspicion that any one was a heretic, under pain of ipso facto excommunication, removable only by them or by the pope.[250] While this was nominally preserved in the Aragonese Inquisition, that institution had become so inert that we may assume that the inquisitors no longer visited their districts or had occasion to issue edicts. In Castile, when the Inquisition was founded, this practice was evidently unknown, for the Instructions of 1484 merely order that when the inquisitors open their tribunal in any town, after the sermon they shall publish a monition with censures against all who resist or contradict them.[251] By 1500, however, the efficacy of what became known as the Edict of Faith had been discovered, and Inquisitor-general Deza, in ordering yearly visitations of the districts, specifies that, on arriving at every town or village, a general edict shall be issued, summoning those who know anything of heresy to come forward and reveal it.[252] The form of this was probably the same as that which, in the same year 1500, the inquisitors of Sicily, Dr. Sgalambro and Montoro Bishop of Cefalù, issued, requiring all cognizant of heresy to denounce it within fifteen days, promising secrecy to the informer and threatening with prosecution, as fautors of heresy, those who failed to do so.[253] In Catalonia, the Concordia of 1512, in alluding to the edict requiring the denunciation of all offences against the faith, shows that it was already an established custom,[254] while, in 1514, the Instructions of Inquisitor-general Mercader prove that the various offences included in the expanding jurisdiction of the Inquisition were specifically enumerated, for the general term of heresy no longer sufficed.[255] The effect on the people of these proclamations, with their threats and anathemas, is vividly expressed in the description of the terror excited by the publication of the edict, when the tribunal of Jaen made a raid on Arjona.[256]

DETAILS OF THE EDICT

As, in the course of time, new fields of activity were opened to the Inquisition the enumeration of offences requiring denunciation grew to be a long and detailed catalogue, in which all the acts by which they could be recognized were specified so that there could be no excuse for omission. The simplest and oldest formula which I have met is that published in Mexico at the installation of the Inquisition, in 1571, and, in view of its comparative brevity, it is given in the Appendix. Subsequently the edict grew to portentous dimensions, the purport of which can be gathered from an abstract of that of 1696.

It begins by reciting that the fiscal has represented that for some time there has been no visitation or inquest made in many places of the province, whereby numerous crimes against the faith remain unpunished. Seeing this complaint to be justified, the edict is addressed to every one individually, so that, if he has known or heard say that any one, living or dead, present or absent, has done or uttered or believed any act, word or opinion, heretical, suspect, erroneous, rash, ill-sounding, scandalous or heretically blasphemous, it must be revealed to the tribunal within six days. Then follows an enumeration of all Jewish rites and customs; then similar lists concerning Mahometanism, Protestantism and Illuminism; then, under the heading of “Diversas Heregias,” follow blasphemy, with specimens of heretical oaths; keeping or invoking familiar demons; witchcraft; pacts tacit or expressed with the devil; mixing for this purpose sacred and profane objects and attributing to the creature that which belongs to the Creator; marrying in Orders; solicitation of women in confession; bigamy; saying that there is no sin in simple fornication, or usury, or perjury, or that concubinage is better than marriage; insulting or maltreating crucifixes or images of saints; disbelieving or doubting any article of faith; remaining a year under excommunication or despising the censures of the Church; having recourse to astrology, which is described at length and pronounced fictitious; being guilty of sorcery or divination, the practices of which are described with instructive profusion; possessing books condemned in the Index, including Lutheran and Mahometan works and Bibles in the vernacular; neglecting to perform the duty of denouncing what has been seen or heard, or persuading others to omit it; giving false witness in the Inquisition; concealing or befriending heretics; impeding the Inquisition; removing sanbenitos placed by the Inquisition; throwing off sanbenitos or non-performance of penance by reconciled penitents, or their saying that they confessed in the Inquisition through fear; saying that those relaxed by the Inquisition were innocent martyrs; non-observance of disabilities by reconciled penitents, their children or grandchildren; possession by scriveners or notaries of papers concerning the above-enumerated crimes. Confessors, moreover, were ordered, under the same penalties, to withhold absolution from penitents who had not denounced all offences coming to their knowledge.[257] This was a tolerably searching grand inquest in which the whole population was summoned to assist, and the ceremonies of its publication were designed to render it as impressive as possible.

On the Saturday previous, a proclamation was made by the inquisitors, requiring all persons over the age of twelve (or of fourteen in some texts) to assemble to hear the edict and, on the following Sundays to hear the anathema, under pain of excommunication and of fifty ducats.[258] In the smaller towns this proclamation was made by the town-crier or, if there were none, by house-to-house notification. The next day, at the offertory in the mass, the edict was to be read slowly, distinctly and in a loud voice, after which the priest was to explain the obligation to denounce whatever was known of the living and of the dead, of themselves or of others, and the peril of omitting it; it was not to be talked about but was to be done directly, even if it was known that others had done so, otherwise the penalty was incurred.[259]

In larger cities, especially the seats of tribunals, the ceremonies were more imposing. In Seville, for instance, on the afternoon of Saturday before the second Sunday of Lent, the familiars assembled on horseback at the castle of Triana, where they formed a procession with drummers and trumpeters and the town-crier to escort the alguazil mayor and one of the secretaries of the Inquisition. This wound through the city, stopping at eight principal places, to publish the proclamation and to order that there should be no sermons in other churches on the days of the publication and anathemas. Then, on those Sundays, other processions were timed to meet the inquisitors at the doors of the cathedral and San Salvador—the churches designated for the ceremonies. Inside, the secretary, at the proper time, mounted the pulpit and read the edict; the sermon followed and then the mass was resumed.[260]

THE ANATHEMA

When the six days allowed for denunciation or confession had elapsed, a second proclamation was made, reciting the former one and adding that the fiscal complained that many had not complied with it and he demanded the fulmination of the censures in the most aggravated form. An edict was therefore addressed to all priests requiring them at high mass, when the people were assembled, to denounce as publicly excommunicated and anathematized all who had not obeyed the first edict, sprinkling holy water to drive away the demons who kept them in their toils and praying Christ to bring them back to the bosom of the Church. If they persisted in contumacy, all faithful Christians were ordered within three days to withdraw from all intercourse with them, under pain of similar excommunication. Both those who should have confessed and those who should have denounced, but who continued contumacious, were involved in the anathema pronounced on the third Sunday.

This was an awe-inspiring solemnity. The clergy marched in procession; the cross was covered with black and two flaming torches were on the altar, where the priests stood in profound silence during the reading of the curse.—“We excommunicate and anathematize, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, in form of law, all apostate heretics from our holy Catholic faith, their fautors and concealers who do not reveal them, and we curse them that they may be accursed as members of the devil and separated from the bosom and unity of the holy Mother Church. And we order all the faithful to hold them as such and to curse them so that they may fall into the wrath and indignation of Almighty God. May all the curses and plagues of Egypt which befell King Pharaoh come upon them because they disobey the commandments of God! May they be accursed wherever they be, in the city, or in the country, in eating and in drinking, in waking and in sleeping, in living and in dying! May the fruits of their lands be accursed and the cattle thereof! May God send them hunger and pestilence to consume them! May they be a scorn to their enemies and be abhorred of all men! May the devil be at their right hand! When they come to judgement may they be condemned! May they be driven from their homes, may their enemies take their possessions and prevail against them! May their wives and children rise against them and be orphans and beggars with none to assist them in their need! May their wickedness ever be remembered in the presence of God! May they be accursed with all the curses of the Old Covenant and of the New! May the curse of Sodom and Gomorrha overtake them and its fire burn them! May the earth swallow them alive, like Dathan and Abiram for the sin of disobedience! May they be accursed as Lucifer, with all the devils of hell, where may they remain with Judas and the damned forever, if they do not acknowledge their sin, beg mercy and amend their lives!” Then the people responded Amen! while the clergy again marched in procession, chanting the Psalms Deus laudem meam and Miserere, to the chapel or altar. The great bells tolled as for a death and the bearers of the torches extinguished them in the font of holy water saying “As these torches die in the water, so will their souls in hell!” and the procession was resumed to the sacristy. After this, the edict continues, any one knowing these things and not revealing them, and remaining contumaciously and persistently thus for a year, is held suspect in the faith and shall be prosecuted with all the rigor of the law.[261]

Thus all the resources of religious terrorism were exhausted to impress upon the popular conscience the supreme duty of denouncing kindred and friends for the slightest act or word which might be held to infer suspicion of heresy or of the varied classes of offences over which the Inquisition had succeeded in extending its jurisdiction. It is true that the constant abuse of anathemas in the pettiest quarrels with officials, lay and clerical, must have somewhat blunted their effect. It is also true that casuistry, early in the seventeenth century, had no difficulty in proving that, when the obligation to denounce involved danger to life or reputation, the natural law of self-protection overrode the positive law of denunciation, with its threat of excommunication.[262] Still, to those not trained in such subtilties and who piously believed in the power of the keys, it was impossible that this terrible cumulation of curses, temporal and spiritual, should not overcome natural affection and human kindliness. It was not the fault of the Inquisition if Spain was not converted into a nation of spies and informers, in which no man could trust those nearest and dearest to him.

ITS DISTRIBUTION

The Edict of Faith was published annually, on a Sunday in Lent, in cities which were the seat of a tribunal and, during the earlier times, elsewhere, when the inquisitors went on their visitations; indeed, we are told, in 1560, that it was of little service unless the inquisitors visited their districts, for people would not incur the labor and expense of coming from a distance and the publication was regarded as the chief object of the visiting inquisitor who was directed to see that it was made in the monasteries as well as in the churches.[263] Visiting their districts, as we shall see, was the duty most disliked by the inquisitors, which they shirked whenever possible, and, with the development of postal communication, it was easier and more speedy to send the printed edicts to commissioners for distribution. What was the total number thus annually showered upon the land we have no means of knowing, but it must have been large. In 1595, the Inquisitor Arevalo de Zuazo, reporting his visitation of the mountainous dioceses of Urgel, Vich and Solsona, states that he distributed six hundred copies among the parish churches, besides personally publishing it in all the towns. From a printer’s bill of June 7, 1759, when the custom was declining, it appears that in Valencia the edition printed was four hundred and a list of churches in the city, in which it was posted, amounted to sixty-three.[264]

This device was not confined to Spain, though Rome was somewhat tardy in adopting it. The Congregation of the Inquisition issued, January 3, 1623 a brief edict, commanding the denunciation, within twelve days, of all heretics, under pain of excommunication removable only by it or by the pope.[265] This was followed, January 10, 1666, by one more in detail, specifying the offences to be denounced. It was universal in its character and therefore applied to Spain, but as usual the Spanish Inquisition maintained its independence and continued to employ its own more elaborate formulas.[266]

Although the annual publication remained the rule, there were occasional intermissions. In 1638, for instance, it was suspended without a reason being assigned and again in 1689 on account of the death of María Luisa, wife of Carlos II.[267] Local causes, also, sometimes interfered with it, especially when questions of etiquette arose, as that which we have seen at Valladolid, in 1635, over the point whether, at its reading, a bow should be made to the sacrament or to the inquisitors. Sixteen years later, we are told that since then there had been no reading of the edict at Valladolid and that in consequence, during the visitations of the inquisitors, other places refused to have it read, on the ground that this was not done in the city where there was a full tribunal.[268] A similar trouble arose at Quito, because the Audiencia refused to allow the commissioner of the Inquisition a seat with a cushion during the reading; for this, in 1699 and again in 1700, he appealed to the viceroy, stating that, in consequence of this, it had been many years since the edict had been published there.[269]

With the decline in the activity of the Inquisition, towards the close of the eighteenth century, there grew to be negligence in the annual publication. In 1775 the Suprema ordered that there should be no change with regard to it. A document of 1777 indicates that it was still customary, but on inquiry, in 1784, by the Suprema of the tribunals, whether or not it had been suspended, shows that it was falling into desuetude, and another of 1806, asking how long it had been since the publication ceased, indicates that it had become obsolete.[270]

ITS INFLUENCE

The efficacy of the Edict of Faith is incontestable, although, in 1578, the Inquisitor Francisco de Ribera, in reporting his visitation of the dioceses of Gerona and Elne and his publication of it in places which had never before been visited, complains that it did not render the people disposed to make denunciations, which he attributes to their limited intelligence.[271] In more enlightened centres its effectiveness is seen in the frequency with which accusers preface their charges with the statement that their attention has been called to the duty by the publication of the edict. It naturally set men to searching their memories for what they had seen or heard respecting the various offences so elaborately enumerated and described. For instance, the edict was published in Madrid on September 4, 1569 and, the next day, Hans de Evalo appeared before the inquisitor to denounce Hans Brunsvi and Costancio, two members of the royal Guarda Tudesca, for things which he had heard and known of them, but of which he had thought nothing until he heard the edict read.[272] It was the same in stimulating self-denunciation, whether through pricks of conscience or fear of accusation by others. Thus, in 1581 we have two cases following each other, in which Juan González and Bartolomé Benito accuse themselves of having, in conversation with their wives, asserted that fornication is no sin, for which both were duly penanced and fined. The wives were sent for and confirmed the confessions, which we may safely attribute to the fear that the spouses might be led to denounce them.[273]

The habit of delation in which the Spaniard was thus trained continued after the Edict of Faith ceased to be published and was stimulated by the assurance of immunity through the profound secrecy which denied to the accused all knowledge of his accuser. The records of the tribunals show how these were welcomed, no matter how flimsy was the evidence, nor through how many months it had passed. Thus, January 5, 1816, the Dominican Fray Vicente Manendo writes to the tribunal of Barcelona that he had heard Joseph Castellar of Manlleu say that, on Easter day, 1815, he had been discussing some pending suits with the advocate Balderich when the time came for hearing mass and he said “Let us go to mass” to which Balderich replied by a contemptuous expression. Instructions were therefore forthwith sent to the commissioner at Panelada to put the denunciation into formal legal shape for prosecuting Balderich. Informers thus were not put to the trouble of coming forward personally and facilities for delation were brought to every man’s door. Thus on June 28, 1807 Dr. Pedro Reguart of Suria writes to the tribunal of Barcelona that he has a denunciation to make and asks that a commission be sent to some one in Suria to receive it. Full instructions were accordingly sent to the parish priest of Suria, when deposition was made to the effect that, eighteen months before, at the clinic in Barcelona, Reguart had seen, in the possession of a student named Pedro Sitzas, a book entitled Eusebio, which he understood to be prohibited, and a year ago he had also seen a copy in the hands of another student named Jaime Coll. In this case the tribunal, with rare moderation, only ordered its apparitor to seize the books in the hands of the students.[274] So carefully were accusers protected against recognition that when, in 1818, Don Francisco de Mora, a retired lieutenant of artillery, accused Don Thomas Sans, of the same corps, to the tribunal of Valencia, because, in a loose conversation between them, he had asserted that there was no sin in fornication, and when Mora found himself obliged to testify that another officer, Manuel Moreno was present, the tribunal dropped the case at his request because Moreno would have identified the source of the accusation.[275]

The very triviality of these cases is the measure of their importance. It was not merely the Judaizing converso or the secret Protestant, but the whole body of the Catholic nation that was exposed to prosecution and infamy for a thoughtless word, the denunciation of which was commanded by the Edict of Faith and invited by the impenetrable secrecy of the tribunal. The shadow of the Holy Office lay over the land and no one could feel sure that a trusted comrade might not at any moment become a spy and an informer, or might not repeat an incautious word until it reached some one who recognized the inexorable duty imposed on all—a duty more deeply felt by the conscientious than by those of easy morals.

ITS INFLUENCE

There was, moreover, the fatal facility afforded for the safe gratification of malice, as in the case of Don Joseph del Campillo, whose merits raised him from obscurity to the position of finance minister under Philip V, in 1740. In 1726, when holding a responsible office in the administration of the navy, he had a quarrel with a Gerónimite fraile over the occupancy of a house. The fraile forthwith collected gossip about him, especially from a dissolute chaplain whom he had dismissed from the service, and all this was welcomed by the tribunal of Logroño, which commenced to gather testimony against him with a view to prosecution. It came to his ears through the boasts of the frailes as to what they had done, and the profound horror which seized him at the prospect of being dishonored for life, by the mere suspicion that he was liable to prosecution, shows how terrible a weapon the system placed at the service of malignity.[276]

In the life of a nation, outward calamities can be survived and recovery from their effects is but the work of time. Far more lasting and benumbing are the results of the perpetual and unrelaxing vigilance which seeks to penetrate into the secret heart of every man, to control his thoughts, to stifle their expression, to repress every effort to move out of a beaten and prescribed track, to destroy mutual confidence and to lead each individual to regard his fellows as the possible destroyers of his reputation and career. Such was the system imposed on Spain by the Inquisition, and its appropriate expression is found in the Edict of Faith.

CHAPTER V.
APPEALS TO ROME.

SO long as the acts of the Spanish Inquisition were not final but were subject to revision by the Roman curia, its jurisdiction was incomplete. To emancipate itself from this it struggled for more than two centuries, aided unreservedly by all the power of the Spanish crown. This long-protracted and intricate contest is full of interest and merits a somewhat detailed investigation.

Soon after the Inquisition commenced its work, complaints of its remorseless cruelty poured in upon the sovereigns. They sent around, as we are told, certain conscientious prelates to investigate and report, who informed them that four thousand houses had been abandoned in Andalusia, but this seems only to have inflamed Isabella’s ardor and the business of vindicating the faith was prosecuted with undiminished energy.[277] The only refuge of the victims was the Holy See, which had always been open to appeals from the sentences of the Inquisition.

APPEALS TO ROME

Papal predominance had its foundation in the universal supreme jurisdiction, original and appellate, of Rome in all matters of faith and the unlimited area of affairs contingent on faith. This had been gradually acquired during the dark ages and was strenuously upheld, as it was the source of wealth as well as of power, and without it the Bishop of Rome would speedily shrink to his original primacy of honor. That he should divest himself of it was not to be expected, especially for the benefit of inquisitors, whose jurisdiction was a delegation from him and whose claim to superiority over bishops was based on the functions of the latter being merely “ordinary” while theirs were “apostolic.” It is true that Nicholas V, in his projected Castilian Inquisition of 1451, had granted jurisdiction without appeal, but this could have been withdrawn at any time and the whole attempt had been so soon forgotten that no allusion was ever made to it in the subsequent controversy. In the Old Inquisition, appeals to the pope were recognized, but it was an intricate and costly process, only possible to those familiar with canon law and, as the victims then were mostly peasants or ascetic missionaries, it was rarely employed and still more rarely successful.

Now, however, the situation was wholly different. The class assailed consisted largely of men of wealth or learning—merchants, bankers, lawyers, high officials, theologians and prelates, able to command the services of skilful canonists and ready to sacrifice a portion of their fortunes to save their persons from the stake and their estates from confiscation. The curia of the period, moreover, was notorious for shameless venality—a place where everything was for sale, from cardinalates to pardons, and where the supreme jurisdiction of the papacy was exploited to the utmost. It did not take long for the keen-witted Conversos to recognize that the mercy denied them in Spain could be bought in the open market of Rome and the curia, which had mourned the lost opportunity of sharing in the confiscations, welcomed the prospect of selling exemptions from confiscation.

Everything therefore pointed to an exercise of the supreme appellate jurisdiction of the Holy See which would seriously limit the activity of the Spanish Inquisition, or at least would confine it to those whose poverty rendered them unprofitable subjects of persecution. Ferdinand soon became alive to the situation and manifested little reverence for the papacy in his resolute resistance to the protection which it sold to all applicants.

CONFESSIONAL LETTERS

The earliest recourse was naturally to the papal Penitentiary. It had long been in the habit of selling confessional letters, empowering any confessor, whom the purchaser might select, to absolve him from all sins, including those reserved to the Holy See. Originally these were understood to be good only in the forum of conscience, but the further step was easily taken of making them effective also in the judicial forum, thus anticipating or annulling the action of the courts and selling immunity for crime as well as pardon for sin.[278] There was no difficulty in obtaining such letters for anyone, and they were sought by the Conversos as a means of protection in advance and of setting aside sentences after conviction. In the Appendix will be found a specimen, issued December 4, 1481, by the Major Penitentiary, to Francisco Fernández of Seville and his wife and mother. It purports to be granted by the direct command of the pope and authorizes the recipient to select any confessor who, after secret abjuration, can absolve him for all acts of heresy, apostasy, relapse and dogmatism and annul all sentences by whomsoever pronounced after trial and conviction, redintegrating him into the Church, removing all stain of heresy, restoring him to all his rights and releasing him from all punishment, only imposing on him salutary penance—which, at that period, was understood to be a money payment for the benefit of the poor, i. e. the Church or its members. A final clause grants the further faculty of overcoming all opposition by the use of censures under papal authority.

It was impossible for Ferdinand and Torquemada to allow the Inquisition to be reduced to impotence by the speculative activity of the curia in selling such exemptions, which were not only good for the future but had a retroactive effect in annulling its acts. No reverence for the Holy See could restrain them from visiting their wrath on all who were concerned in rendering effective this purchasable clemency. We have a glimpse at the methods adopted by both sides, in a notarial act, evidently part of a process to set aside a papal letter of a somewhat different kind, and to punish those engaged in its use, the narrative showing that all concerned felt that they were incurring serious perils. The notary, Anton Peláez, deposes that in Xeres de la Frontera he received from the Duke of Medina Sidonia a letter of April 16, 1482, calling him to San Lucar de Barrameda to draw certain business papers. He went and, while engaged on them in the house of Juan Matheos, on April 20th, at 2 P.M. a messenger summoned him to the duke, whom he found in company with the duchess, the Teniente de Bora, Fray Thomas, prior of the Order of Santa María de Barrameda, and others. Then entered Juan Ferrández of Seville, the duke’s contador, or auditor, carrying a bull with a lead seal, said to be from the pope, Sixtus IV, and ordered Peláez to read it to the prior. He was alarmed and refused, but finally yielded to the entreaties of the duke and duchess. Then Fray Thomas refused to accept it, as he had been inhibited verbally by the inquisitors, and promised to produce the inhibition in writing within eight days. The duchess left the room in anger, but, in a quarter of an hour, Ferrández brought Fernando de Troxillo, prior of the universidad of Xeres and not of the church of San Salvador, as described in the bull. The duke told him that this made no difference and urged him to accept it, throwing his arms around him and promising that he would expose his whole rank and dignity to make good whatever he might suffer in person or property. Troxillo accepted the bull with the greatest reverence and kissed it. Then, as apostolic judge under it, he ordered Juan Matheos, cura and vicar of San Lucar, to absolve Ferrández and his wife of any sentence of excommunication, interdict, suspension etc. placed on him by the inquisitors, on his giving security, which was promptly furnished by Gonzalo Peráez, Ruy Perráez and Ferrand Riquel, swearing that Ferrández would stand to the mandates of the Church, as required in the bull. Thereupon Troxillo, as apostolic judge, ordered Juan Matheos to absolve Ferrández and his wife, which was duly performed. The duke’s lawyers drew up an inhibition to the inquisitors, which the deponent engrossed; the duke wanted Troxillo to sign it, but the deponent privately advised him not to do so until he should consult his counsel at Xeres and, whether he did so or not, the deponent could not say.[279]

POWER OF THE PENITENTIARY

This gives us an inside view of the struggle to escape the Inquisition which was going on in every corner of the land. It was useless, for these papal letters were disregarded and the purchasers could look for no redress from the curia, for Pope Sixtus had no scruple in abandoning his customers. It was a lucrative business, this disposing of exemptions and then allowing them to be annulled for a consideration. Both sides thus contributed to the papal treasury and, as it all came from the Conversos in the end, the curia indirectly got its share of the confiscations, and the Inquisition was but nominally restricted. One device for accomplishing this is revealed in a cruzada indulgence, granted March 8, 1483, ostensibly in aid of the war with Granada, but, as Sixtus bargained for one-third of the proceeds, his share was sufficient inducement for sacrificing the purchasers of his confessional letters. A special clause of the indulgence empowered any confessor to absolve the possessor of it—the price being six reales—for killing or despoiling those seeking the Roman court, or for preventing the execution of papal letters, or for forbidding notaries to draw up acts concerning such letters, or for detaining them from those to whom they belonged,—all of which was evidently framed to allow the sovereigns to annul the papal briefs in any way they deemed best.[280]

Yet while Sixtus thus was content, for a moderate compensation, to permit those who were seeking his court to be detained or slain and to have his letters contemptuously annulled, yet when their market was threatened by the assertion that the Penitentiary was only a court of conscience and its absolutions were good only in the interior forum, his indignation burst forth in a bull of May 9, 1484, stigmatizing all such opinions as contumacious and sacrilegious. The Penitentiary, he declared, could grant absolutions good in either forum and those for the judicial forum were good in both spiritual and secular courts. This monstrous assumption, which claimed for the Penitentiary the power to anticipate or set aside the judgement of every criminal court in Europe, for the benefit of culprits who could pay the moderate fee demanded for its letters, was not merely a temporary policy adopted by Sixtus for this occasion. Having once been asserted, it was persisted in. Paul III, July 5, 1549, confirmed the bull of 1484 and subjected to the anathemas of the bull in Coena Domini all who called in question the validity of such letters; when confined to the forum of conscience they were sealed and addressed to the confessor, when intended for the judicial forum they were patent. As Paul died, November 10, 1549, before the publication of this brief, it was confirmed and issued, February 22, 1550, by Julius III.[281] It was the settled purpose of the Holy See of the period to continue this profitable business of selling pardons so long as purchasers could be found for them; they continued to plague the Inquisition and we shall see what stern measures Ferdinand found necessary for their suppression. Yet Ferdinand was justified and the curia was self-condemned for, when the Roman Inquisition was reorganized and found its operations similarly impeded by the letters of the Penitentiary, it ordered, September 26, 1550, its subordinates to pay no attention to them.[282]

Meanwhile the struggle continued in Spain. Isabella applied in 1482 to Sixtus to give her inquisitors power to pronounce final judgements that should not be subject to revision or appeal. He replied, February 23, 1483, that he would take counsel with the Sacred College, the result of which was a bull of May 25th, in which he conferred on Iñigo Manrique, Archbishop of Seville, appellate jurisdiction from the inquisitors, deputizing him in place of the pope for the Spanish dominions.[283] This expedient brought no relief to the Conversos. The inquisitors paid no respect to it and would-be appellants found that it was not safe to go to Seville for revision of their cases by the archbishop. It was the same with the letters of absolution that continued to be issued; they were disregarded and many fugitives who had procured them found on their return that they had been burnt in effigy during their absence and that the document on which they relied was of no avail. They needed something more and Sixtus was nothing loath to grant it. As early as August 2nd, he followed the bull of May 25th with another, for which we may safely assume that the Conversos paid roundly, for in it he evoked to Rome all pending cases of appeal, he ordered the Spanish bishops to protect at all hazards the bearers of papal letters of absolution, even to the invocation of the secular arm, and he entreated Ferdinand and Isabella to show mercy to their subjects as they hoped for mercy from God.[284]

STRUGGLES WITH THE CURIA

Whatever was paid for this was money vainly thrown into the bottomless sea of the curia. Eleven days later, with shameless effrontery, Sixtus wrote to the sovereigns that it had been issued without proper deliberation and that he suspended it. This reinstated Manrique as appellate judge, and Juan of Seville, who had carried the previous brief to the Bishop of Evora for multiplying, was brought, with his companions, before the archbishop, who condemned them.[285] The gold of the victims was vainly pitted against the unalterable will of the sovereigns, for the Holy See had no scruple in selling exemptions and abandoning the purchasers. The delegation to Archbishop Manrique by no means inferred that Sixtus relinquished his own profitable appellate jurisdiction and, to encourage appeals, it was necessary to manifest indignation when the inquisitors rated the papal action at its true value. How little they respected it is manifested in a brief of July 4, 1484, addressed to the inquisitors Miguel de Morillo and Juan de San Martin, reciting that the Dean of Mondoñedo, two canons of Seville and several others, whom they were prosecuting and whose property they had sequestrated, had appealed from them; that Sixtus had referred the cases to the Bishop of Terracina and some auditors of the Sacred Palace, at whose instance the inquisitors had been ordered to cease proceedings, to grant absolution ad cautelam and to lift the sequestration which deprived the parties of the means to carry on the appeal; that the inquisitors had not only flatly refused obedience and had kept possession of the property, but had constrained the appellants under oath and threat of censures not to prosecute the appeal or even to write to Rome, on the ground that they had the jurisdiction and would render judgement. Wherefore Sixtus now pronounces null and void all proceedings since the issue of the inhibitory order and prohibits further action under threat of excommunication; the sequestration is to be lifted and all the papers are to be sent to Rome.[286] There was no reason why this should command obedience more than the previous order and we may feel sure that the appellants fared no better in consequence. The case has interest only as a specimen of innumerable others which were bringing an abundant harvest to the officials of the curia, without affording relief to the victims, who were like a shuttlecock between two battledores, yielding sport to the players, as they were driven from one to the other.

Archbishop Manrique’s position as appellate judge must also have been lucrative for, on his death in 1485, the succession was eagerly sought for and was obtained by the papal vice-chancellor, Rodrigo Borgia, but Ferdinand had had experience of him in Valencia and the sovereigns remonstrated so effectually that he was obliged to withdraw in favor of their nominee, Cardinal Hurtado de Mendoza, Bishop of Palencia.[287]

Sixtus IV had died, August 12, 1484, to be succeeded by Innocent VIII. The Inquisition might hope for an improvement, but was resolved to resist with greater energy than before, if the new pope should imitate his predecessor. In a series of instructions, issued December 6, 1484, Torquemada provided for a resident agent in Rome, whose expenses were to be defrayed from the confiscations; he complained of the extraordinary and illegal letters so profusely granted by Sixtus and announced that the sovereigns would suspend the operation of such letters, but that action would be withheld until it should be seen whether Innocent continued a practice so prejudicial.[288] Innocent must already have given evidence that his methods were the same as those of Sixtus, for, in less than ten days, Ferdinand issued, December 15th, a savage pragmática far more decisive than Torquemada had forecast, for it decreed death and confiscation for all who should use such letters, whether emanating from the pope or his subordinates, unless they should have received the royal exequatur, and all notaries and scriveners who should act under them or make transcripts of them were deprived of their offices.[289]

STRUGGLES WITH THE CURIA

As a matter of course the change of pontiffs worked no change in the lucrative business, except that perhaps under Innocent the practice of taking money and betraying those who paid it became more unblushing than before and promises to both sides were made and broken with still greater facility. To this end, care was taken to maintain the papal jurisdiction, for when the new pope was asked to confirm or renew Torquemada’s commission and power was asked for him to disregard the exemptions issued in blank for names to be filled in and absolutions granted on false confessions, and other abuses impeding in every way the Inquisition, Innocent turned a deaf ear and the commission was only renewed, not enlarged.[290] Then the sovereigns assumed the power denied to Torquemada and issued circular letters, July 29, 1485, addressed to all the ecclesiastical authorities, reciting how, to the scandal of religion, disregard of the royal pre-eminence and damage to the fisc, certain parties obtained bulls, rescripts, provisions and confessional letters, from Sixtus IV and Innocent VIII, to protect themselves in their crimes. As it is not to be supposed that the popes would do this knowingly, all such letters are suspended until the papal intention, after due information, can be ascertained and obeyed. Meanwhile no such briefs are to be enforced until after submission to the sovereigns for their approval.[291]

It is not easy to follow the rapid tergiversations of the pope, for the pledges given to either side were impartially violated almost as soon as given, the only explanation being that both sides could get what briefs they desired provided they were willing to pay what was demanded. For awhile the influence of Ferdinand and Isabella prevailed and, in a solemn repetition of Torquenada’s commission, April 24, 1486, Innocent directed that all appeals should be made to him and not to the Holy See.[292] Still more emphatic was a disgraceful brief of November 10, 1487, by which he declared inoperative all the letters issued by the Penitentiary, whose purchasers he thus surrendered to the inquisitors, whom he authorized to proceed in spite of the inhibitions contained in them.[293] Possibly he may have recognized that this breach of faith was likely to damage the market by destroying confidence, for the ink was scarce dry on this brief when he issued another, November 27th, ordering that, when such letters were produced, they, or authentic copies of them, should be sent, with details of the case, and that, until his decision was announced, proceedings should be suspended.[294]

Ferdinand thereupon forbade the inquisitors to accept such letters, notwithstanding which their issue continued without intermission for, on May 17, 1488, Innocent declares that they should be invalid unless presented within a month of that date.[295] Simultaneous with this was an elaborate bull of the same date, doubtless procured by the Converses of Aragon, addressed to the Bishop of Majorca, reciting the daily appeals from the kingdoms of Aragon which were committed to judges in the curia who issued inhibitions to the inquisitors. As this impeded the Inquisition the pope evoked to himself all pending cases and committed them to the bishop to be decided without appeal, his commission continuing during the papal pleasure.[296] We may reasonably doubt whether Ferdinand permitted the bishop to exercise these functions; even if he did so the Conversos profited little, for the good bishop died in about six months and there is no trace of the appointment of a successor.

Yet when Ferdinand wanted to save those whom he favored from the Inquisition, he sometimes had recourse to procuring for them papal letters to which he granted his exequatur. He did this for his treasurer, Gabriel Sánchez and for the vice-chancellor of Aragon, Alonso de la Caballería; Gabriel Sánchez also obtained letters for his brothers Alonso and Guillen, which Ferdinand approved and had some difficulty, in 1498, in preventing the tribunal of Saragossa from seizing and suppressing them.[297] There was an even more significant recognition of the appellate power of the Holy See in the case of Gonsalvo Alfonsi, defunct, in 1493. The consulta de fe was unable to reach unanimity and, in place of referring it to the Suprema, the consultors referred it to Alexander VI, who, by brief of August 13th, appointed the Bishop of Córdova and the Benedictine Prior of Valladolid to decide the case, at the same time inhibiting the inquisitors from further cognizance.[298]

STRUGGLES WITH THE CURIA

The year 1492 saw the conquest of Granada achieved and the death of Innocent VIII. The one event greatly increased the reputation and influence of Ferdinand and the other placed in the papal chair Rodrigo Borgia, better known as Alexander VI. Both men were unscrupulous, but the political situation brought them into close relations and the services rendered by the king to the pope—or still more, perhaps, the disservice which he could render—made the latter eager to gratify him. In 1494 he confirmed and enlarged the letters of Innocent VIII prescribing that appeals should be made to the inquisitor-general and not to the Holy See.[299] To render this effective he commissioned, as we have seen, one of the inquisitors-general, Francisco de la Fuente, as appellate judge to hear all cases. The brief of appointment, November 4, 1494, shows in what a tangled condition these matters had been brought by the shifting and shiftless papal policy, governed alone by the expectation of profit. It recites that Innocent VIII, at the instance of Spanish suspects of heresy, had committed their cases, both original and appellate, to various auditors of the Sacred Palace, where they remained pending for lack of evidence not obtainable in Rome, wherefore Innocent had evoked them all to himself, but had appointed no judge to hear them and no further progress was made. Besides, under their commissions, the said auditors had issued letters compulsory, inhibitory and citatory on inquisitors and other officials, in consequence of which they were under excommunication and against this they appealed. To put an end to these dangers and scandals, Alexander therefore evoked anew all these cases to himself and committed them to la Fuente, together with all arising in future, granting him full power for their final determination.[300]

Still the lucrative business of issuing letters of absolution and redintegration went on unchecked, until pressure from Spain, which was insufficient to restrain their manufacture and sale, at least induced Alexander to betray those who had bought them. On August 29, 1497, he issued a bull reciting how heretics, who had been burnt in effigy, had obtained from him absolution, rehabilitation and exemption from inquisitorial jurisdiction, to the scandal of the faithful, wherefore, at the request of Ferdinand and Isabella, he now withdraws and annuls all these letters, except in the forum of conscience.[301] Even this did not satisfy Ferdinand who, under the pretext that a papal secretary named Bartolommeo Florido had issued false ones, ordered the inquisitors to seize them when presented and send them to him in order that he might communicate with the pope about them. This was followed by decrees of the Suprema, January 8 and February 12, 1498, commanding all who had obtained absolutions and dispensations from Rome to deliver them within a given time to the inquisitors, who would forward them to the inquisitor-general for verification of their genuineness, thus obtaining possession of all letters, to the general terror of the owners. Ferdinand, as we have seen, was obliged to write to Saragossa to protect Alonso de la Caballería and the brothers Sánchez, while Isabella interceded, June 26th, for a servant of hers who had procured such a letter and could not produce it.[302] Then Alexander was called upon for a more absolute surrender of those who had dealt with him and, on September 17th, he addressed a brief to the Spanish inquisitors empowering them to proceed against all heretics, notwithstanding all letters of absolution and redintegration heretofore or hereafter issued, for all such letters were to be held as having been granted inadvertently.[303] What with Spanish fanaticism and papal faithlessness the Conversos were between the hammer and the anvil.

STRUGGLES WITH THE CURIA

Their only recourse was exile. Many abandoned Spain and a portion of these found in Rome a refuge, for Alexander welcomed them in view of the heavy imposts which they paid for safety and toleration. They also furnished him with material for a speculative outburst of persecution when, in 1498, he was in need of funds to furnish forth the magnificent embassy of his son Cæsar, sent to bear to Louis XIII the bull of divorce from Queen Jeanne. He appointed as inquisitors Cardinal Pietro Isuali and the Master of the Sacred Palace, Fra Paolo de Monelia, who proclaimed a term of grace during which the Spaniards suspect of heresy could come forward. Two hundred and thirty presented themselves; the form of receiving and examining their confessions was gone through with; they were admitted to mercy and a salutary penance was imposed in lieu of the penalties that might have been inflicted in Spain. What was the amount of this cannot be known, but it must have been considerable, for the inquisitors could ransom them at discretion. A solemn auto de fe was celebrated in St. Peter’s, July 29th, in the presence of Alexander and his cardinals. The penitents were marched thither in pairs, were reconciled to the Church, abjured their heresies and were sentenced to wear the sanbenito and to undergo penance, after which they were taken in procession to Santa Maria sopra Minerva, where they were relieved of the sanbenitos and discharged. The performance evidently was expected not to be pleasing to the Spanish sovereigns, for part of the penance assigned was to furnish a notarial attestation that they would not return to Spain without licence from the Catholic kings under pain of relaxation as relapsed.[304]

There were doubtless intimations of Ferdinand’s displeasure which drew from these impromptu inquisitors a letter of September 10th to their Spanish brethren and one of October 5th from Alexander to the sovereigns, in which the provision respecting return to Spain was emphasized. Ferdinand however was not to be thus placated; indeed he had already, on August 2nd, issued an edict, designed to frustrate further attempts by the papacy to share in the profits of persecution. In this he ordered the execution, without trial, of all who had fled from condemnation by the Inquisition and who should venture to return, no matter what exemptions, reconciliations, safe-conducts or privileges they might allege. Any property they might possess was apportioned in thirds to the informer, the official and the fisc and any one harboring them and any official neglecting to execute the edict was threatened with confiscation.[305] The prevention of further speculative performances of the kind was doubtless the motive for the stringent regulations, which we have seen above, in 1499 and 1500, to prevent the escape of Conversos.[306]

Ferdinand sometimes recognized the papal letters as in the case of some parties named Beltram, in 1499, which he permitted to be heard by the commissioners appointed by the pope,[307] but there was too much at stake for him to abandon the struggle and the papacy followed its practice of sacrificing those who sought its protection, while never failing to promise it. Early in 1502, the sovereigns remonstrated forcibly as to the great damage to the faith resulting from these letters transferring cases to special commissioners, and Alexander promptly responded by a bull evoking to himself all such cases and committing them to Inquisitor-general Deza, to be decided by him personally or with assessors whom he might call in. To this Ferdinand objected, under pretext of the hardship which it would inflict on the appellants, as Deza had to follow the migratory court and Alexander, with his usual pliancy, empowered Deza, August 31st, to appoint deputies to decide cases. Deza availed himself of this to restore the cases to the tribunals, instructing them to proceed to final judgement without regard to any papal letters that might be presented, and thus again the unlucky appellants were delivered back to their persecutors without recourse.[308]

Julius II was elected November 1, 1503, and the next day, even before his coronation, he issued a motu proprio to Ferdinand and Isabella, confirming all graces and privileges granted by his predecessors and especially those to the Inquisition. Still, appeals to the Holy See continued to pour in and to be welcomed and, in 1505, Ferdinand remonstrated energetically, asking a recall of all commissions and drawing a doleful picture of the religious condition of Spain, which was saved only by the Inquisition from a schism worse than that of Arius.[309] Philip of Austria, however, in his eagerness to win papal support, abandoned the claims of the Inquisition and admitted to the Holy See that it could not refuse to entertain the appeals of those who sought its protection.[310] Julius had no intention of divesting himself of the supreme jurisdiction which was so profitable and he took care to assert it in the commissions issued, in 1507, to Ximenes and Bishop Enguera, as inquisitors-general respectively of Castile and Aragon, by evoking to himself all cases pending in the tribunals and committing them to the new incumbents and those whom they might deputize.[311]

STRUGGLES WITH THE CURIA

Like his predecessors, Julius, with one hand, sold letters of absolution and inhibition while, with the other, he declared them invalid. A brief of November 9, 1507, recites that some persons, pretending to be aggrieved, have appealed to the Holy See, whereby the Inquisition is impeded; therefore he decrees that all appeals must be to the inquisitor-general, while those to Rome are to be regarded as null; the inquisitors are to disregard them and not to delay on account of them.[312] Still, the output of these letters was unchecked and for awhile Ferdinand fluctuated in his policy with regard to them. Sometimes, as in a Sardinia case, in 1508, he orders the inquisitor to arrest and punish severely those concerned in procuring them, assuring him of the royal protection against the indignation of Rome.[313] Sometimes, as in a Valladolid case, in 1509, he assumes the current convenient fiction that the letters are issued surreptitiously, that the pope, on better information, will withdraw them, and meanwhile they are held suspended; the trial is to go on and the sequestrations are not to be lifted.[314] Finally, in a pragmática of August 31, 1509, a definite policy was adopted combining both methods and based on the principle that, if the letters were surreptitious, those who obtained them deserved condign punishment. This required all such briefs to be submitted to the Suprema for examination and reference back to Rome; if found to be rightly issued, exequatur would be granted, but without this any one presenting such letters to inquisitors incurred, as in the pragmática of December 15, 1484, irremissible death and confiscation; notaries acting under them were deprived of office, while secular officials were commanded to execute the edict under pain of five thousand florins and ecclesiastics under seizure of temporalities and perpetual exile.[315]

The ferocity of this, after a constant struggle with the curia for twenty-five years, shows the importance attached by Ferdinand to the autonomy of the Inquisition and his determination to suppress all papal interference. Still that interference continued and Ferdinand could not but recognize that it was legal. In a case occurring in 1510, when a certain Augustinian Fray Dionisio, on trial before the tribunal of Seville, obtained letters committing the case to a judge who inhibited the tribunal, Ferdinand requested the pope to evoke the case and commit it to Cardinal Ximenes and further that all future cases of the kind should be similarly treated.[316]

In all this long wrangle the diplomatic reserve is observable which assumed that the Holy See was actuated by motives that, if mistaken, were at least disinterested. The financial element underlying its action was fully recognized, however, and, when the Spanish delegates were sent to the Lateran Council in 1512, among the instructions which they bore was one which said that Rome must not in future defend, as it had been defending, the apostates of Jewish race who were burnt in effigy at home while they purchased for money dispensations in the curia. In fact, Charles V, in a letter of April 30, 1519, to his ambassador Luis Carroz, openly asserted that the briefs issued in the time of Ferdinand had been obtained by the Conversos through the payment of heavy sums.[317]

The delegates to the Lateran council of course effected nothing, and Leo X, while his penitentiaries and auditors were as busy as ever, was even more regardless than his predecessors of the papal dignity, in annulling their acts after the fees had been paid. In a motu proprio of May 31, 1513, he alludes to the letters negligently granted by Julius II and himself, through which the business of the Inquisition was impeded, wherefore he empowers Ximenes to inhibit, under excommunication and other penalties, all persons, even of episcopal rank, from using such letters of commission to entertain appeals.[318]

STRUGGLES WITH THE CURIA

In the kingdoms of Aragon, the Córtes of Monzon, in 1510, agreed that no one should appeal from the tribunals to the pope, but only to the inquisitor-general.[319] Possibly this may have led to the invention of a method of reprisals which was infinitely annoying and difficult to meet. A certain Baldiri Meteli procured from Rome a citation to appear addressed to Mossen Coda, the judge of confiscations in Barcelona, and some other officials. This completely nonplussed the tribunal and Ferdinand was driven to instructing, November 2, 1510, his Lieutenant-general of Catalonia to consult with Inquisitor-general Enguera as to the best mode of inducing Meteli to withdraw the citation. He was obstinate, especially as he had meanwhile procured citations on other officials, and Ferdinand could find no other remedy than notifying the diputados that the agreement of Monzon was a totality and that, if the clause respecting appeals was violated, Enguera would disregard the rest.[320] What was the result the documents fail to inform us, but an even more troublesome case occurred in Saragossa when Sánchez de Romeral on being prosecuted fled to Rome. March 11, 1511, Ferdinand wrote to his ambassador to request the pope to send him back to the inquisitor-general, but the pope declined and Ferdinand was moved to lively wrath, in 1513, on learning that Romeral, who had meanwhile been burnt in effigy, had procured citations on all the officials, from inquisitors down, including even the consultors who had acted in the consulta de fe, and that he had managed to get the citations published in Tudela and Cascante. Ferdinand wrote to Rome in terms of vigorous indignation and ordered the Archbishop of Saragossa, the Captain-general of Navarre and the inquisitors to consult with lawyers as to the best means of punishing this audacious attack on the Inquisition. Apparently there were no means of parrying such an attack save coming to terms with the other side, so long as the curia was willing to lend itself to this guerrilla warfare. This was seen in a somewhat similar case in Sicily, in 1511, when a certain Cola de Ayelo, condemned to perpetual imprisonment by Inquisitor Belorado, managed to escape; he took himself to Rome as a penitent and there commenced suit against Belorado and his colleague the Bishop of Cefalù. The bishop was obliged to obey a summons to Rome; the affair was protracted and gave so much trouble that, when Ayelo wanted to return to Sicily and offered to withdraw the suit, Ferdinand agreed to let him come back, pardoned his offences, including gaol-breaking, and gave him a safe-conduct against further prosecution. This method of fighting the Inquisition would probably have been more frequently adopted but for the risk to which were exposed the notaries and scriveners whose ministrations were essential. In the present case the one who sent the citation to the bishop was seized by the viceroy, tortured and probably punished severely.[321]

One or two cases will illustrate the chaotic condition produced by these contending elements, especially after the death of Ferdinand, January 23, 1516, had removed from the scene of action his resolute will and ceaseless activity. Miguel Vedreña, suspected of complicity in the murder of Bernardo Castelli, assessor of the tribunal of Balaguer, appealed to the pope from the prison of the tribunal of Barcelona. The Suprema of Aragon vainly instructed its Roman agent to make every effort to defeat the appeal. Leo X committed the case to the Bishop of Ascoli, who ordered the tribunal to release Vedreña on his giving security to constitute himself a prisoner in Rome. The inquisitors had lost all respect for papal letters and refused obedience, whereupon the bishop appointed certain local prelates as commissioners to prosecute them and inflict censures. The Suprema inhibited these commissioners from acting, but not before they had excommunicated the inquisitors, who applied to Leo for relief. Leo had already, at least in appearance, abandoned Vedreña, in a brief of May 5, 1517, addressed to Cardinal Adrian, then Inquisitor-general of Aragon, styling Vedreña “that son of iniquity,” evoking the case to himself and committing it to Adrian. But accompanying this brief and of the same date was another of private instructions, in which Vedreña was alluded to as his dearest son and Adrian was told that the case was committed to him in order that his dexterity might compound it; the evidence was doubtful and Vedreña had purged it sufficiently; it would seem that he should rather be acquitted than condemned but if Adrian thought otherwise he was to send a statement, when Leo would give final orders. Some three months later there was another brief to Adrian about the excommunicated inquisitors; if the censures were subsequent to the withdrawal of the case from the Bishop of Ascoli, they were invalid, but the whole matter was left to Adrian.[322] We have no means of knowing what was the final outcome of the case, but it sufficiently indicates the entanglements caused by the conflicting jurisdictions and the contradictory actions of the pope as his officials were bought by one side or the other.

STRUGGLES WITH THE CURIA

Another aspect of these affairs is exhibited in the case of the heirs of Juan Enríquez de Medina, whose bones were condemned, by the tribunal of Cuenca, to be exhumed and burnt. The heirs appealed to Ximenes, who commissioned judges to revise the sentence, but these refused to the heirs a copy of the proceedings, by which alone they could rebut the evidence. Then they appealed to Pope Leo, who appointed three commissioners to hear the case and communicate the proceedings to the heirs, on their giving security not to harm the witnesses. The parties appointed, doubtless fearing to incur the enmity of the Inquisition, declined to serve and the last we hear of the case is a brief of May 19, 1517, threatening them with excommunication for persistence.[323]

With the appointment of Cardinal Adrian, as inquisitor-general of Castile as well as of Aragon, Leo, in 1518, confirmed the decrees of Innocent VIII and Alexander VI, granting to him exclusive appellate jurisdiction and Adrian, when pope, repeated this in 1523, in favor of Manrique.[324] Yet this in no way interfered with the reception in Rome of the multitudinous applications, both appellate and in first instance, which Charles V, in a letter of October 29, 1518, to Cardinal Santiquatro, broadly hinted was accomplished by the free use of money.[325] How recklessly, indeed, the papal jurisdiction was prostituted at the service of the first comer, is evidenced in the case of a mill in Paterna, purchased by Juan Claver from the confiscated estate of Jufre Rinsech. The Infante Enrique laid claim to it; the tribunal of Valencia decided in favor of Claver and imposed perpetual silence on Enrique. On the death of Claver, Enrique brought suit against his heir before a judge of his own selection, whom the tribunal promptly inhibited. Enrique then procured a papal brief inhibiting the tribunal and committing the case to this judge. Then Charles V intervened, October 29, 1518, ordering Enrique to bring his suit before the tribunal.[326] Papal letters issued after such fashion had no moral weight and were lightly disregarded. The contempt felt for them was increased by Leo’s perpetual vacillations. A brief of September 9, 1518, to Adrian states that, in view of the iniquity and injustice of the tribunal of Palermo and some others, he had placed all such matters in the hands of his vicar, the Cardinal of S. Bartolommeo in Insula, with faculties to decide them and coerce the inquisitors with censures and fines, but now he thinks it better that these affairs shall be confided to Adrian, to whom he commits them with full powers.[327]

STRUGGLES WITH THE CURIA

A contemporary case, which attracted much attention at the time, shows Leo in a more favorable light. Blanquina Díaz was an octogenarian widow of Valencia, whose orthodoxy had never been suspected, but in 1517 she was denounced for Judaism and thrown into the secret prison. An appeal to the pope brought orders that she be released on good security, be allowed defence and the case be speedily tried. This brief never reached the tribunal, being apparently suppressed by the Suprema, whereupon Leo issued a second one, March 4, 1518, evoking the case to himself and committing it to two ecclesiastics of Valencia, Blanquina being meanwhile placed in a convent and Cardinal Adrian being especially prohibited from intervening, anything that he might do being declared invalid. It was probably before this was received that the tribunal submitted the case to Adrian, who assembled a consulta de fe and condemned Blanquina to perpetual imprisonment and confiscation. The papal intervention seems to have aroused much feeling; Charles was ready to sign anything drawn up for him by Adrian, and, in two letters, of May 18th and June 18th to his Roman agent Luis Carroz, he ordered the latter to disregard all other business in the effort to procure the withdrawal of the two briefs. If the safety of all his dominions had been at stake he could not have been more emphatic; such interference with the Inquisition was unexampled; unless the pope would revoke the briefs and promise never to issue similar ones, the Holy Office would be totally destroyed, and heresy would flourish unpunished, for every one would seek relief at the curia and the service of God would become impossible. He also wrote to the pope and the cardinals, while Adrian and the Suprema sent pressing letters. Leo, however, was firm in substance, though he yielded in form. In briefs of July 5th and 7th to Adrian he ordered that everything done since his letters of March 4th should be annulled, Blanquina being restored to her good fame, her sanbenito being removed and she being placed, under bail, in a convent or in the house of a kinsman. As the evidence against her consisted of trifles committed in childhood, he again evoked the case to himself and committed it to Adrian. There had been active work on both sides in Rome, for the brief of July 5th gave Adrian full power to decide the case while that of the 7th limited him to sending the results to Leo and awaiting instructions as to the sentence. Leo thus kept Blanquina’s fate in his hands; Adrian was only his mouthpiece and the sentence pronounced her to be lightly suspect of heresy and discharged her without imprisonment or confiscation.[328]

A further instance of Leo’s vacillation is the coincidence that the brief of March 4th in Blanquina’s favor was dated the same day as Adrian’s commission as inquisitor-general of Castile, in which Leo evoked to himself all pending cases, whether in the tribunals or the curia, and committed them to Adrian with full power to inhibit all persons from assuming cognizance of them.[329] With this before him it is scarce a subject of surprise that Charles V on April 30th instructed his ambassador to tell the pope that no letters prejudicial to the Inquisition would be admitted.[330] This threat he carried out in a contemporaneous case which for some years embroiled the Inquisition with the curia. Bernardino Díaz had been tried and discharged by the tribunal of Toledo, after which he had a quarrel with Bartolomé Martínez, whom he accused of perjury in his case, and killed him. Díaz fled to Rome, while the tribunal not only burnt him in effigy but seized his wife and mother and some of his friends as accomplices in his escape. In Rome he secured pardon in both the interior and exterior forum on condition of satisfying the kindred of Martínez, to the great indignation of Charles, who complained, not without reason, of this invasion of jurisdiction. Díaz also procured a brief ordering the liberation of the prisoners and the release of their property, but when the executors named in it endeavored to enforce it, the Toledo tribunal seized their procurator and compelled its surrender. This realization of Charles’s threat exasperated the curia and the auditor-general of the Camera summoned the inquisitors to obey the brief or answer personally in Rome for their contumacy; they did neither and were duly excommunicated. Charles wrote repeatedly and bitterly about this unexampled persecution of those who had merely administered justice; the case dragged on for some three years and its ultimate outcome does not appear, but the family of Díaz were probably released for, in 1520, we hear of the removal of the excommunication in connection with the revocation by the inquisitors of their proceedings against Juan de Salazar, a canon of Toledo, residing in Rome in the papal service, whom they had deprived of citizenship and temporalities for some action of his in prejudice of the Inquisition.[331]

STRUGGLES WITH THE CURIA

Another person who, about this time, gave infinite vexation to Charles and Adrian was Diego de las Casas of Seville, the agent who bore to Rome the contested proceedings of the Córtes of Aragon and labored for their confirmation. He was well supplied with funds and naturally was a persona grata to the curia. The Inquisition speedily attacked him, in its customary unscrupulous manner, by not only prosecuting him in absentia but by seizing his brothers, Francisco and Juan, and their wives. To meet this he procured a brief committing the cases to Adrian and to Ferdinand de Arce, Bishop of Canaries, with a provision that the parties should present themselves to Adrian and Arce and keep such prison as might be designated for them, and further permitting them to select advocates for their defence. Equitable as were these provisions, the brief excited hot indignation. When laid before the royal council it was pronounced scandalous and of evil example and its execution was refused. Charles wrote in haste to Leo, April 30, 1519, that it was scandalous and would destroy the Inquisition; he instructed his agents to procure its revocation to be forwarded by the next courier and he invoked by letters the cardinals in the Spanish interest to bring what pressure they could upon the pope. His urgency was fruitless and when, in September, he sent Lope Hurtado de Mendoza to Rome, as special ambassador in the quarrel with Aragon, his instructions were to represent to the pope the impropriety of harboring in Rome fugitives from the Inquisition, especially Diego de las Casas and his colleague Juan Gutiérrez, whose parents and grandparents and kindred had been reconciled or burnt; they should be expelled, and Mendoza was to labor for the revocation of their briefs and all other exemptions and commissions in favor of Conversos. Mendoza exerted all his diplomatic ability, but, although Leo admitted, in a brief of July 13, 1520, to Adrian that the evocation of cases to Rome, both on appeal and in first instance, led to delays, impunity for offenders and encouragement of offences, still he would not abandon Diego de las Casas. The grant by Sixtus IV of appellate jurisdiction to the inquisitor-general, he admitted had been beneficial and, in hopes that Adrian would use it with integrity and justice, he evoked to himself all cases pending in the Roman courts and committed them to Adrian with full powers, but he made no promises as to the future and he especially excepted his physician, Ferdinand de Aragon and his wife, Diego de las Casas, Juan Gutiérrez and the deceased Juan de Covarrubias, whose cases had long been in dispute.

To all these, and to their kindred to the third degree and their property, Leo granted letters exempting them from the jurisdiction of the Inquisition and committing them to the Archbishop of Saragossa and certain other ecclesiastical dignitaries. Complaints soon arose as to the manner in which these commissioners exercised their powers to the dishonor of the Inquisition; Leo yielded by a brief of January 8, 1521, in which he substituted Adrian and the nuncio Vianesio de’ Albergati, with full power to inhibit their predecessors. Then, in a more formal brief of January 20th he deprecated the evil caused by the cases which were daily brought to Rome and committed them all to Adrian, saving those of the five exempts, in which the nuncio was to be conjoined with him, and at the same time he revoked the letters exempting them and their kindred and empowering them to select judges for themselves.[332] It was a practical surrender, although Leo distinguished las Casas and Gutiérrez by styling them his beloved children.

These cases will suffice to show how the traditional policy of the curia continued, of taking the money of the refugees and appellants for protecting briefs, and then abandoning them by revocations issued, without even a sense of shame, when their funds were exhausted in the protracted struggle. Yet, undeterred by this, there was a constant succession of new applicants, who had no other refuge on earth, and the valueless briefs were granted with unfailing readiness. It was a source of perpetual irritation and Charles was untiring in his efforts to counteract it, not always observing due courtesy, as when, March 25, 1525, he wrote to Clement VII, in violent language, to revoke and erase from the registers a brief granted to Luis Colon and to order his officials not to issue such letters, as they were scandalous.[333] He no longer had the excuse of his youthful tutelage under Adrian and yet his subserviency to the Inquisition was complete. This was manifested in the case of Bernardo de Orda, a servant of Cardinal Colonna, who had a suit against Doctor Saldaña about the treasurership of the church of Leon. Saldaña was a member of the Suprema and, when Orda came to Spain, it was not difficult to have him charged with heresy and arrested by the tribunal of Valladolid. He escaped to Rome and the prosecution was continued against him in absentia, whereupon Charles demeaned himself by writing to Colonna, July 30, 1528, asking him to prevent Orda from obtaining a brief of exemption, as it would be an injury to the faith, and also not to favor him in his suit with Saldaña.[334]

STRUGGLES WITH THE CURIA

Meanwhile the popes continued to propitiate Charles’s growing power by granting, with as much facility as ever, what was nominally exclusive appellate jurisdiction to the inquisitor-general. In 1523, Adrian VI, as we have seen, confirmed in favor of Manrique the bulls of Sixtus IV and Alexander VI. Clement VII went even farther for, in a bull of January 6, 1524, he not only evoked all pending cases and committed them to Manrique but decreed that any commissions which he might thereafter issue should be invalid without the express assent of Charles, while all appeals were to be made to the inquisitor-general and not to the Holy See, and this he repeated, June 16, 1525. Still appeals continued to be made to Rome and briefs to be granted requiring repeated confirmations of the bulls of 1524 and 1525 with inclusion of the letters obtained in the interval, of which we have examples in 1532 and 1534.[335] Charles was thus justified in enforcing Ferdinand’s pragmática of 1509, as when, in 1537, he ordered the corregidor of Murcia to prevent the publication of certain letters understood to have been procured from the pope against the Inquisition; if presented they were to be sent to the Council of Castile for its action, and parties endeavoring to use them were to be arrested and dealt with as might be deemed most advantageous to the Holy Office.[336]

The position of Charles, as the master of Italy and the protagonist of the Church in its struggle with Lutheranism, had thus enabled him to obtain for the Inquisition virtual, though not acknowledged, independence of Rome. There is a very striking illustration of this, in 1531, when Clement VII intervened in favor of Fray Francisco Ortiz, a celebrated Observantine preacher, prosecuted for audaciously criticizing the Inquisition from the pulpit. He had lain in prison for more than two years, obstinately refusing to retract, when the interposition of Clement was sought. He did not evoke the case but, in terms of remarkable deference, July 1, 1531, he suggested to Manrique that, if nothing else was alleged against Ortiz, he might be held as sufficiently punished by his long imprisonment and might be restored to liberty, in view of his blameless life and the profit to souls to be expected from his preaching. This Clement asked as a favor, moved only by Christian charity and zeal for the salvation of souls.[337] To this carefully guarded request the Inquisition turned a deaf ear. If the trial of Ortiz came to an end in February, 1532, it was because he voluntarily submitted himself completely and his sentence was by no means light, including public penance, which was rarely inflicted on an ecclesiastic.[338] Paul III was more decided when his intervention was asked by Charles V, who, in spite of his bitter protests against papal interference, found himself obliged to appeal in behalf of his favorite preacher, Fray Alonso Virues. The Seville tribunal had prosecuted the latter on a charge of Lutheranism, had kept him imprisoned for four years and had sentenced him to reclusion in a convent for two years and suspension from preaching for two more. Charles, who had vainly sought to protect him during his trial, supported an appeal to the pope and obtained a brief of May 29, 1538, which not only annulled the sentence but forbade his future molestation.[339]

When, in 1542, Paul III reorganized the moribund papal Inquisition by forming a congregation of cardinals as inquisitors-general for all Christendom, there was a not unnatural apprehension that this, even if not so intended, might interfere with the independence of the Spanish Holy Office. To representations of this he responded by a brief of April 1, 1548, in which he characterized such fears as baseless; he declared that it was not designed to interfere with the authority of inquisitors in Spain and he formally revoked anything to their prejudice that might be found in the decree establishing the Congregation.[340] This brief remained to the end the charter to which the Spanish Inquisition appealed in its frequent collisions with the Roman Congregation and, but for such a declaration, it would probably have been subordinated.[341]

This in no way affected the continual applications to Rome for relief, nor the effort of the Inquisition to suppress them. It was a singular departure from the settled policy of the government in this matter which led the Suprema, in 1548, to utter a bitter complaint to Charles V, setting forth the facility with which citations and inhibitions and commissions were granted in Rome and the daily royal cédulas despatched to prevent them, and yet when recently a Converso presented to the Royal Council a petition stating that he did not dare to notify the inquisitor-general of letters concerning a case which had been decided, the Council issued an order permitting any notary to serve the papers and testify to the service, with penalties for impeding it.[342] The popes were more consistent in their inconsistency. We have seen how Paul III, in 1549 and Julius III in 1551, confirmed the 1484 bull of Sixtus IV insisting on the validity of papal letters in both the interior and judicial forum and threatening the curses of the bull in Cæna Domini on all who should impede them, yet in 1550 a case in which papal letters were obtained led to vigorous remonstrance and Julius, by a brief of December 15, 1551, confirmed those of Clement VII and Paul III, besides evoking all pending cases and committing them to Inquisitor-general Valdés.[343]