A History of the Inquisition of Spain; vol. 1

Ferdinand’s hand had been forced; he had been obliged to yield to public opinion, but his resolve was inflexible to undo as far as he could the results reached by Ximenes. In October he visited Córdova, where he rewarded some officials of the tribunal by grants out of the confiscated estates, which should have been restored when the proceedings were annulled. It is true that the judge of confiscations, Licenciado Simancas, was suspended, but in November, 1509, he was ordered to resume his functions and to act as he had formerly done. We happen to know that, in 1513, the house of the unfortunate Bachiller Membreque was still in possession of the Inquisition. There was no relief for those who had suffered. When the new inquisitor, Diego López de Cortegano, Archdeacon of Seville, revoked Lucero’s sentence on the Licenciado Daza, who had been penanced and his property confiscated, the purchasers who had bought it complained to Ferdinand and he expressed his wrath by promptly dismissing the inquisitor and ordering all the papers in the case to be sent to the Suprema for review and action. The vacancy thus created was not easy to fill, for when, in September, 1509, Ferdinand offered the place to Alonso de Mariana he declined, saying that it would kill him, but he agreed to take the tribunal of Toledo, and it was not until February, 1510, that the Licenciado Mondragon was transferred from Valladolid to take Cortegano’s place. In fact, the interests involved in the confiscations were too many and too powerful for the victims to obtain justice.

Martin Alonso Conchina had been condemned by Lucero to reconciliation and confiscation; when the pressure was removed he revoked his confession as having been extorted by threats and fear, whereupon the confiscated property was placed in sequestration awaiting the result. Unluckily for him one of the items, a ground-rent of 9000 mrs. a year had been given, in April, 1506, to the unprincipled secretary Calcena, with the result that one of the new inquisitors, Andrés Sánchez de Torquemada, promptly arrested Conchina, tried him again, convicted him and sentenced him to perpetual imprisonment, so that the confiscation held good and the ground-rent, with all arrears, was confirmed to Calcena by a royal cédula of December 23, 1509. There seems to have still been some obstacle to this reaction in the episcopal Ordinary, Francisco de Simancas, Archdeacon of Córdova for, in February, 1510, Ferdinand wrote to the bishop that, without letting it be known that the order came from the king, he must be replaced with some one zealous for the furtherance of justice and, a month later, this command was peremptorily repeated. It is true that the extravagant wickedness of Lucero was scarce to be dreaded, but, with a tribunal reconstructed under such auspices, the people of Córdova could not hope for justice tempered with mercy and its productive activity is evidenced by the large drafts made, in 1510, on its receiver of confiscations.

We may assume that Ximenes looked on this with disfavor for, in a letter to Ferdinand, after his return from the expedition to Oran in 1509, he supplicates that the decision of the Congregation be maintained for he has never infringed it and never intends to do so.[570]

As for the author of the evil, Lucero himself, he was sent in chains to Burgos with some of his accomplices. Ximenes, as inquisitor-general, had full power, as we have seen, to dismiss and punish them but, for some occult reason, a papal commission for their trial was applied for. This caused delay under which Ferdinand chafed, for he wrote, September 30, 1509, to his ambassador complaining that it caused great inconvenience and ordering him to urge the pope to issue it at once so that it could be sent by the first courier.[571] When it came, it empowered the Suprema to try the case and Ferdinand, who warmly espoused Lucero’s cause, expressed his feelings unequivocally in a letter of April 7, 1510—“the prisoners say that they have been long in prison and those who informed against them have gone to Portugal or other parts, and others have been burnt or penanced as heretics, showing clearly that they testified falsely, and they supplicate me to provide that their trial be by inquisitorial and not by accusatorial process, so that they shall not be exposed to greater infamy than hitherto by dead or perjured witnesses, especially as the law provides that the trial be summary and directed only to reach the truth. There is great compassion for their long imprisonment and suffering, wherefore I beg and charge you to look well into the matter and treat it conscientiously and with diligence for its speedy termination, with which I shall be well pleased.”[572]

In spite of this urgency the trial dragged on, much delay being caused by the difficulty of finding an advocate willing to undertake Lucero’s defence. The Suprema selected the Bachiller de la Torre, but he declined to serve and Ferdinand, on May 16th, expressed his fear that no one would assume the duty. July 19th he writes that Lucero complains that he still has no counsel and he suggests that, if none of the lawyers of the royal court can be trusted, Doctor Juan de Orduña of Valladolid be called in and his fees be paid by the Inquisition. The suggestion was adopted and, on August 20th, Ferdinand wrote personally to Orduña ordering him to take charge of the defence and see that Lucero suffered no wrong, and at, the same time, he wrote to the University of Valladolid to give Orduña the requisite leave of absence. Under this royal pressure, and considering that the adverse witnesses had been largely burnt or frightened into flight, it is perhaps rather creditable to the Suprema that it ventured to dismiss Lucero, without inflicting further punishment on him. He retired to the Seville canonry, which he had acquired by the ruin of the Archdeacon of Castro, and there he ended his days in peace.

In 1514, Ferdinand manifested his undiminished sympathy by a gift of 15,000 mrs. to Juan Carrasco, the former portero of the tribunal of Córdova, to indemnify him for losses and sufferings which he claimed to have endured in the rising of 1506.[573] Yet before we utterly condemn him for his share in this nefarious business we should make allowance for the influence of Lucero’s accomplice, his secretary Calcena, who was always at hand to poison his mind and draft his letters. To the same malign obsession may doubtless also be attributed an order of Charles V, in 1519, requiring the Córdovan authorities to bestow the first vacant scrivenership on Diego Marino, who had been Lucero’s notary.[574]

That Lucero was an exceptional monster may well be admitted, but when such wickedness could be safely perpetrated for years and only be exposed and ended through the accidental intervention of Philip and Juana, it may safely be assumed that the temptations of secrecy and irresponsibility rendered frightful abuses, if not universal at least frequent. The brief reign of Philip led other sorely vexed communities to appeal to the sovereigns for relief, and some of their memorials have been preserved. One from Jaen relates that the tribunal of that city procured from Lucero a useful witness whom for five years he had kept in the prison of Córdova to swear to what was wanted. His name was Diego de Algeciras and, if the petitioners are to be believed, he was, in addition to being a perjurer, a drunkard, a gambler, a forger and a clipper of coins. This worthy was brought to Jaen and performed his functions so satisfactorily that the wealthiest Conversos were soon imprisoned. Two hundred wretches crowded the filthy gaol and it was requisite to forbid the rest of the Conversos from leaving the city without a license. With Diego’s assistance and the free use of torture, on both accused and witnesses, it was not difficult to obtain whatever evidence was desired. The notary of the tribunal, Antonio de Barcena, was especially successful in this. On one occasion he locked a young girl of fifteen in a room, stripped her naked and scourged her until she consented to bear testimony against her mother.

A prisoner was carried in a chair to the auto de fe with his feet burnt to the bone; he and his wife were burnt alive and then two of their slaves were imprisoned and forced to give such evidence as was necessary to justify the execution. The cells in which the unfortunates were confined in heavy chains were narrow, dark, humid, filthy and overrun with vermin, while their sequestrated property was squandered by the officials, so that they nearly starved in prison while their helpless children starved outside. Granting that there may be exaggeration in this, the solid substratum of truth is clear from the fact that the petitioners only asked that the tribunal be placed under the control of the Bishop of Jaen—that bishop being Alfonso Suárez de Fuentelsaz, one of Torquemada’s inquisitors, who had risen to be a colleague of Deza. He had not been a merciful judge, as many of his sentences attest, yet the miserable Conversos of Jaen were ready to fly to him for relief.[575]

A memorial from Arjona, a considerable town near Jaen, illustrates a different phase of the subject. It relates that a certain Alvaro de Escalera of that place conspired with other evil men to report to the inquisitors of Jaen that there were numerous heretics in Arjona, so that when confiscations came to be sold they could buy the property cheap. In due time an inquisitor came with the notary Barcena. No Term of Grace was given, but the Edict of Faith was published, frightening the inhabitants with its fulminations unless they testified against their neighbors. Then a Dominican preached a fiery sermon to the effect that all Conversos were really Jews, whom it was the duty of Christians to destroy. The inquisitors then sent for the slaves of the Conversos, promising them liberty if they would testify against their masters and assuring them of secrecy. The notary followed by traversing the town with Escalera and his friends, proclaiming that there was a fine of ten reales on all who would not come forward with testimony, and the exaction of the fine from a number had a quickening influence on the memories of others. Then a house to house canvass was made for evidence; the women were told that it was impossible that they should not know the Jewish tendencies of their neighbors; they could give what evidence they pleased for their names would not be divulged; they were not obliged to prove it, for the accused had to disprove it.

Those who would not talk were threatened that they would be carried to Jaen and made to accuse their neighbors, and, in fact, a number were taken and compelled to give evidence in prison. Then the inquisitors departed with the accumulated testimony; there was peace in Arjona for three months and the Conversos recovered from their fright. Suddenly one night there arrived the notary, the receiver and some officials; they quietly aroused the regidores and alcaldes and made them collect a force of armed men who were stationed to guard the walls and gates. When morning came the work of arresting the suspects was commenced; their property was sequestrated, their houses locked and their children were turned into the street, while the officials carried off their prisoners, who were thrust into the already crowded gaol of Jaen. The confiscations were auctioned off and those who had plotted the raid had ample opportunity of speculating in bargains.[576]

Still other methods are detailed in a memorial from Llerena, the seat of one of the older tribunals with jurisdiction over Extremadura. It stated that for many years the Inquisition there had found little or nothing to do, until there came a new judge, the Licenciado Bravo. He was a native of Fregenal, a town of the province, where he had bitter law-suits and active enmities; he had had two months’ training under Lucero at Córdova and he came armed with ample evidence gathered there. On his arrival, without waiting for formalities or further testimony, he made a large number of arrests and sent to Badajoz where he seized forty more and brought them to Llerena. They were mostly men of wealth whose fortunes were attractive objects of spoliation, and Bravo took care of his kindred by appointing them to positions in which they could appropriate much of the sequestrated property. The treatment of the prisoners was most brutal, and when his colleague, Inquisitor Villart, who was not wholly devoid of compassion, was overheard remonstrating with him and saying that the death of the captives would be on their souls, Bravo told him to hold his peace, for he who had placed him there desired that they should all die off, one by one. The petitioners were quite willing to be remitted to the tribunal of Seville or to have judges who would punish the guilty and discharge the innocent, but they earnestly begged, by the Passion of Christ, that they should not be left to the mercy of Inquisitor-general Deza.

Orders, they said, had been given to him to mitigate in some degree the sufferings of the people of Jaen, which he suppressed and replaced with instructions to execute justice. What this meant we may gather from a last despairing appeal, by the friends of the prisoners of Jaen, to Queen Juana; a junta of lawyers, they said, had been assembled, a scaffold of immense proportions was under construction; their only hope was in her and they entreated her to order that no auto de fe be held until impartial persons should ascertain the truth as to the miserable captives.[577] Juana was in no condition to respond to this agonized prayer, and we may safely assume that greed and cruelty claimed their victims. These glimpses into the methods of the tribunals elucidate the statements of the Capitan Avora as to the desolation spread over the land by the Inquisition.

It would seem that these fearful abuses were creating a general feeling of hostility to the institution and its officials, for Ferdinand deemed it necessary to issue a proclamation, January 19, 1510, calling upon all officials, gentlemen and good citizens to furnish inquisitors and their subordinates with lodgings and supplies at current prices and not to maltreat or assail them, under penalty of 50,000 maravedís and punishment at the royal discretion. A month later, February 22d, we find him writing to the constable of Castile that inquisitors are to visit the districts of Burgos and Calahorra, and he asks the constable to give orders that they may not be impeded. Somewhat similar instructions he gave in March to the provisor and corregidor of Cuenca, when the inquisitors of Cartagena were preparing to visit that portion of their district, as though these special interpositions of the royal power were requisite to ensure their comfort and safety in the discharge of their regular duties. Even these were sometimes ineffectual as was experienced, in 1515, by the inquisitor Paradinas of Cartagena, who, while riding on his mule in the streets of Murcia, was set upon, stabbed and would have been killed but for assistance, while the assassins escaped, calling forth from Ferdinand the most emphatic orders for their arrest and trial.[578]

Yet, however rudely the Inquisition may have been shaken, it was too firmly rooted in the convictions of the period and too energetically supported by Ferdinand to be either destroyed or essentially reformed. When he died, January 23, 1516, his testament, executed the day previous, laid strenuous injunctions on his grandson and successor Charles V—“As all other virtues are nothing without faith, by which and in which we are saved, we command the said illustrious prince, our grandson, to be always zealous in defending and exalting the Catholic faith and that he aid, defend and favor the Church of God and labor, with all his strength, to destroy and extirpate heresy from our kingdoms and lordships, selecting and appointing throughout them ministers, God-fearing and of good conscience, who will conduct the Inquisition justly and properly, for the service of God and the exaltation of the Catholic faith, and who will also have great zeal for the destruction of the sect of Mahomet.”[579]

With his death, during the absence of his successor, the governing power was lodged in the hands of Inquisitor-general Ximenes. From the papal brief of August 18, 1509, alluded to above (p. 178), we may infer that he had already endeavored to effect a partial reform, by dismissing some of the more obnoxious inquisitors, and he now made use of his authority to strike at those who had hitherto been beyond his reach. Aguirre was one of these and another was the mercenary Calcena, concerning whom he wrote to Charles, December, 1516, that it was necessary that they should in future have nothing to do with the Inquisition in view of their foul excesses. Another removal, of which we chance to have cognizance, was that of Juan Ortiz de Zarate, the secretary of the Suprema. Whatever were the failings of the inflexible Ximenes, pecuniary corruption was abhorrent to him and, during the short term of his supremacy in Castile, we may feel assured that he showed no mercy to those who sought to coin into money the blood of the Conversos.[580] With his death, however, came a speedy return to the bad old ways. Adrian of Utrecht, though well-intentioned, was weak and confiding. When appointed Inquisitor-general of Aragon, he had made Calcena, February 12, 1517, secretary of that Suprema and, after the death of Ximenes we find Calcena acting, in 1518, as royal secretary of the reunited Inquisition, a position which he shared with Ugo de Urries, Lord of Ayerbe, another appointee of Adrian’s, who long retained that position under Charles V.

Aguirre had the same good fortune, having been appointed by Adrian to membership in the Suprema of Aragon and resuming his position in the reunited Inquisition after the death of Ximenes. His name occurs as signed to documents as late as 1546, when he seems to be the senior member.[581]

Ferdinand’s dying exhortation to his grandson was needed. Charles V, a youth of seventeen, was as clay in the hands of the potter, surrounded by grasping Flemish favorites, whose sole object, as far as concerned Spain, was to sell their influence to the highest bidder. During the interval before his coming to take possession of his new dominions, he fluctuated in accordance with the pressure which happened momentarily to be strongest. The Spaniards who came to his court gave fearful accounts of the Inquisition, which they said was ruining Spain, and we are told that his counsellors were mostly Conversos who had obtained their positions by purchase.[582] In his prologue to his subsequent abortive project of reform, Charles says that while in Flanders he received many complaints about the Inquisition, which he submitted to famous men of learning and to colleges and universities, and his proposed action was in accordance with their advice.[583] Ximenes was alive to the danger and it was doubtless by his impulsion that the Council of Castile wrote to Charles that the peace of the kingdom and the maintenance of his authority depended on his support of the Inquisition.[584] A more adroit manœuvre was the advantage which he took of the death, June 1, 1516, of Bishop Mercader, Inquisitor-general of Aragon.

It would probably not have been difficult for him to have reunited the Inquisitions of the two crowns under his own headship, but he took the more politic course of urging Charles to nominate his old tutor, Adrian of Utrecht, then in Spain, as his representative, and to secure for him the succession to Mercader’s see of Tortosa. Charles willingly followed the advice; July 30th he replied that in accordance with it he had written to Rome for the commission; November 14th Pope Leo commissioned Adrian as Inquisitor-general of Aragon, and we shall see hereafter how complete was the ascendancy which he exercised over Charles in favor of the Holy Office.[585]

Meanwhile Charles continued to vacillate. At one time he proposed to banish from his court all those of Jewish blood, and sent a list of names in cypher with instructions to report their genealogies, to which the Suprema of Aragon replied, October 27, 1516, with part of the information, promising to furnish the rest and expressing great gratification at his promises of aid and support in all things.[586] Then there came a rumor that he proposed to abolish the suppression of the names of witnesses, which was one of the crowning atrocities of inquisitorial procedure. For this there must have been some foundation for, March 11, 1517, Ximenes sent to his secretary Ayala a commission as procurator of the Inquisition at Charles’s court, with full power to resist any attempt to restrict or impede it, and he followed this, March 17th, with a letter to Charles, more vigorous than courtly, telling him that such a measure would be the destruction of the Inquisition and would cover his name with infamy; Ferdinand and Isabella, when in straits for money during the war with Granada, had refused 1,200,000 ducats for such a concession, and Ferdinand had subsequently rejected an offer of 400,000.[587]

It can readily be imagined that, in spite of the character of Ximenes, the death of Ferdinand and the uncertainty as to the views of the distant sovereign had sensibly diminished the awe felt for the Inquisition. There is an indication of this in a complaint made by the Suprema, in September, 1517, that, when it moved with the court from place to place, the alcaldes of the palace refused to furnish mules and wagons to transport its books and papers and personnel, or, at most, only did so after all the other departments of the government had been supplied.[588] There is significance also in a tumult occurring in Orihuela, in 1517, when the inquisitors of Cartagena made a visitation there, obliging the Licenciado Salvatierra to invoke the royal intervention.[589] The Conversos, though decimated and impoverished, still had money and influence and the abuses which Ximenes had not been able to eradicate still excited hostility.

When Charles, after his arrival in Spain, in September, 1517, held his first Córtes at Valladolid in 1518, the deputies petitioned him to take such order that justice should be done by the Inquisition, so that the wicked alone should be punished and the innocent not suffer; that the canons and the common law should be observed; that the inquisitors should be of gentle blood, of good conscience and repute and of the age required by law, and, finally, that episcopal Ordinaries should be judges in conformity with justice.[590] Although drawn in general terms this formal complaint indicates that the people felt the Holy Office to be an engine of oppression, for the furtherance of the private ends of the officials, to the disregard of law and justice. Charles made reply that he would consult learned and saintly men, with whose advice he would so provide that injustice should cease and meanwhile he would receive memorials as to abuses and projects of reform. The deputies made haste to give him ample information as to the tribulations of his subjects and the injury resulting to his dominions, and the outcome of the consultations of his advisers was a series of instructions to the officials of the Inquisition which, if carried into effect, would have deprived the Holy Office of much of its efficiency for persecution as well as of its capacity for injustice.

Peter Martyr tells us that the New Christians, to procure this, gave to the high chancellor, Jean le Sauvage, who was a thoroughly corrupt man, ten thousand ducats in hand, with a promise of ten thousand more when it should go into effect, but that, fortunately for the Inquisition, he fell sick towards the end of May and died early in July.[591] The Instructions had been finally engrossed and lacked only the signatures; they were drawn in the names of Charles and Juana and were addressed not only to the officials of the Inquisition but to those of the state and secular justice, but nothing more was heard of them, for the new chancellor, Mercurino di Gattinara, was a man of different stamp, and Charles as yet was swayed by the influences surrounding him. The elaborate project is therefore of no interest except as an acknowledgement, in its provisions for procedure, of the iniquity of the inquisitorial process as we shall see it hereafter, and, in its prohibitory clauses, that existing abuses exaggerated in every way the capacity for evil of the system as practised.

Thus it prohibited that the salaries of the inquisitors should be dependent on the confiscations and fines which they pronounced, or that grants should be made to them from confiscated property or benefices of those whom they condemned, or that sequestrated property should be granted away before the condemnation of its owners; that inquisitors and officials abusing their positions should be merely transferred to other places instead of being duly punished; that those who complained of the tribunals should be arrested and maltreated; that those who appealed to the Suprema should be maltreated; that inquisitors should give information to those seeking grants as to the property of prisoners still under trial; that prisoners under trial should be debarred from hearing mass and receiving the sacraments; that those condemned to perpetual prison should be allowed to die of starvation.[592] The general tenor of these provisions indicate clearly what a tremendous stimulus to persecution and injustice was confiscation as a punishment of heresy, how the whole business of the Inquisition was degraded from its ostensible purpose of purifying the faith into a vile system of spoliation, and how those engaged in it were inevitably vitiated by the tempting opportunity of filthy gains.

Although Charles, on the death of his chancellor, dropped the proposed reform, he seems to have recognized the existence of these evils. When his Inquisitor-general, Cardinal Adrian, was elevated to the papacy in 1522, he sent from Flanders his chamberlain La Chaulx to congratulate him before he should leave Spain, and among the envoy’s instructions was the suggestion that he should be careful in his appointments and provide proper means to prevent the Inquisition from punishing the innocent and its officials from thinking more about the property of the condemned than the salvation of their souls—a pious wish but perfectly futile so long as the methods of the institution were unchanged, and its expenses were to be met and its officials enriched by fines and confiscations.[593]

The sufferers had long recognized this and offers had more than once been vainly made to Ferdinand to compound for the royal right of confiscation—offers of which we know no details. With the failure of the comprehensive scheme of reform, this plan was revived and, before Charles left Spain, May 21, 1520, to assume the title of King of the Romans, a formal proposition was made to him to the effect that if justice should be secured in the Inquisition, by appointing judges free from suspicion who should observe the law, so that the innocent might live secure and the wicked be punished and the papal ordinances be obeyed, there were persons who would dare to serve him as follows. Considering that greed is the parent of all evils; that it is the law of the Partidas that the property of those having Catholic children should not be confiscated[594] and further that the royal treasury derived very little profit from the confiscations, as they were all consumed in the salaries and costs of the judges and receivers who enriched themselves, his Majesty could well benefit himself by a composition and sale of all his rights therein, for himself and his descendants for ever, obtaining from the pope a bull prohibiting confiscations and pecuniary penances and fines. If this were done the parties pledged themselves to provide rents sufficient, with those that Ferdinand had assigned towards that purpose, to defray all the salaries and costs of the Inquisition, on a basis to be defined by Charles.

Moreover, they would pay him four hundred thousand ducats—one hundred thousand before his departure and the balance in three equal annual payments at the fair of Antwerp in May. Or, if he preferred not to do this in perpetuity, he could limit the term, for which two hundred thousand ducats would be paid, in similar four instalments. For the collection of the sum to meet these engagements there must be letters and provisions such as the Catholic king gave for the compositions of Andalusia, and it must be committed in Castile to the Archbishop of Toledo (Cardinal de Croy), and in Aragon to the Archbishop of Saragossa (Alfonso de Aragon) from whose decisions there was to be no appeal. But to furnish the necessary personal security for the fulfilment of this offer, it was significantly added that it would be necessary for the king and Cardinal Adrian to give safe-conducts to the parties, protecting them from prosecution by the Inquisition and these must be issued in the current month of October so that there might be time to raise the money.[595] It is scarce necessary to say that this proposition was unsuccessful. Charles was under the influence of Cardinal Adrian and Adrian was controlled by his colleagues. It was asking too much of inquisitors that they should agree to allow themselves to be restricted to the impartial administration of the cruel laws against heresy, to be content with salaries and forego the opportunities of peculation.

It was also in vain that the Córtes of Coruña, in 1520, repeated the request of those of Valladolid for a reform in procedure.[596] Charles sailed for Flanders leaving his subjects exposed to all the evils under which they had groaned so long. There were still occasional ebullitions of resistance for, in 1520, when the tribunal of Cuenca arrested the deputy corregidor it gave rise to serious troubles and Inquisitor Mariano of Toledo was despatched thither with his servants and familiars to restore peace, a task which occupied him for five months.[597]

A still further project for mitigating the rigors of the Inquisition was laid before Charles in 1520, apparently after his arrival in Flanders. This proposed no payment, but suggested that the expenses should be defrayed by the crown, which should wholly withdraw the confiscations from the control of the inquisitors. With this were connected various reforms in procedure—revealing the names of witnesses, allowing the accused to select his advocate and to see his friends and family in presence of the gaoler, the punishment of false witness by the talio, the support of wife and children during the trial from the sequestrated property and some others.[598] There would seem also, about 1522, to have been a further offer to Charles of seven hundred thousand ducats for the abandonment of confiscation, but it does not appear what conditions accompanied it.[599] It was all useless. The grasp of the Inquisition on Spain was too firm and its routine too well established for modification.

In the revolt of the Comunidades, which followed the departure of Charles, the affairs of the Inquisition had no participation. Some ten years later, however, in 1531, the tribunal of Toledo came upon traces of an attempt to turn the popular movement to account in removing one of the atrocities of inquisitorial procedure. The treasurer, Alfonso Gutiérrez, is said to have spent in Rome some twelve thousand ducats in procuring a papal brief which removed the seal of secrecy from prisons and witnesses. He endeavored to secure for his scheme the favor of Juan de Padilla, the popular leader, by a loan of eight hundred ducats on the pledge of a gold chain, but Padilla, while accepting the loan, prudently refused to jeopardize his cause by arousing inquisitorial hostility.[600]

What Gutiérrez failed to obtain was sought for again from Charles V in 1526. About this time commenced the efforts to subject the Moriscos of Granada to the Holy Office and apparently in preparation for this Granada was separated from Córdova and was favored with a tribunal of its own, transferred thither from Jaen. The frightened inhabitants made haste to petition Charles to do away with the secrecy which was so peculiarly provocative of abuses. They pointed out that a judge, if licentiously disposed, had ample opportunity to work his will with the maidens and wives brought before him as prisoners and even with those merely summoned to appear, whose terror betrayed that they would dare to offer no resistance. In the same way the notaries and other subordinates, who were frequently unmarried men, had every advantage with the wives and daughters of the prisoners, eagerly seeking to obtain some news of the accused, immured incomunicado in the secret prison, from which no word could escape, and ready, in their despairing anxiety, to make any sacrifice to learn his fate. Or, if the officials preferred, they could sell information for money and all this was so generally understood that these positions were sought by evil-minded men in order to gratify their propensities. Bad as was this, still worse was the suppression of the witnesses’ names in procuring the conviction of the innocent while facilitating the escape of the guilty.

The memorial assumes, what was practically the fact, that the only defence of the accused lay in guessing the names of the adverse witnesses and discrediting and disabling them for mortal enmity, and it pointed out how, in diverse ways, this facilitated miscarriage of justice. It did not confine itself to argument, however, but added that the little kingdom of Granada would pay fifty thousand ducats for the removal of secrecy from the procedure and prisons of the Inquisition, and that a very large sum could be thus obtained from the other provinces of Spain.[601] The only possible answer to the reasoning of the memorial was that the faith would suffer by any change, but this always sufficed and the Inquisition continued to shroud its acts in the impenetrable darkness which served to cover up iniquity and give ample scope for injustice.

When Charles had returned to Spain and again held the Córtes at Valladolid, in 1523, they repeated the petitions of 1518 and 1520, adding that nothing had been done. They further suggested that inquisitors should be paid salaries by the king and not draw their pay from the proceeds of their functions, and that false witnesses should be punished in accordance with the Laws of Toro. This shows that the old abuses were felt as acutely as ever, but Charles merely replied that he had asked the pope to commission as inquisitor-general the Archbishop of Seville, Manrique, whom he had especially charged to see that justice was properly administered. Again, in 1525, the Córtes of Toledo complained of the excesses of the inquisitors and the disorders committed by the familiars and asked that the secular judges might be empowered to restrain abuses, but they obtained only a vague promise that, if abuses existed, he would have them corrected.[602] It required no little courage for deputies to arraign the Inquisition publicly in the Córtes, and it is not surprising that the hardihood to do so disappeared with the recognition of the fruitlessness of remonstrance.