A History of the Inquisition of Spain; vol. 1

A scrivener was introduced who read to him the king’s order, which he said he was ready to obey. Gastañara told him that he must start at once; a coach was at the door to which he was escorted with all honor; lackeys with flambeaux were ready and a guard of twenty-five musketeers. Gastañara gave him money and he was provided with all comforts, even to a courteous gentleman as a companion to enforce all proper respect for him. As he was leaving the palace, his violent temper burst forth in regrets that he had not been allowed time to cast the interdict on the city. He was driven to the embarcadero, placed on board a vessel that had been made ready and was conveyed to the nearest Valencian port. It is symptomatic of Spanish conditions that in war-time the captain-general was obliged to abandon all other duties and devote a day to kidnapping a troublesome priest, and this is emphasized by the fact that the inquisitor-general rewarded the conduct of Muñoz by appointing him to one of the most desirable tribunals of Spain.[1164] Possibly this affair may have influenced Carlos II in reissuing, in 1696, his father’s injunction of 1661 to observe the Concordias exactly and to be more sparing of excommunications.[1165]

Philip V was scarce seated on the throne when he found himself confronted with the eternal question of Catalan hostility towards the tribunal. A consulta of the Suprema, October 16, 1701, warns him that the inquisitors of Barcelona report that, in the Córtes about to assemble, efforts will be made to limit its usefulness and he is exhorted to follow the example of his predecessors.[1166] Whatever was done was of little consequence for, in the war which broke out soon afterwards, Catalonia enthusiastically acknowledged the Archduke Charles as Carlos III and became the stronghold of the Austrian party. The situation of the rebellion of 1640-52 was duplicated. The tribunal was withdrawn, but seems to have been replaced by a local organization, for an article of the Córtes of 1706, duly approved by the Austrian Carlos, regulating the insaculacion for public office, recognizes its certificates respecting its officials.[1167] Of course it could exercise no jurisdiction over the heretic English allies; it has left no traces of its activity and was replaced by a revival of the episcopal cognizance of heresy.

As to places beyond the control of the Austrian party, a provision of the Suprema, March 16, 1706, extended the jurisdiction of the Saragossa tribunal over all that should be recovered from the enemy until such time as the Inquisition of Barcelona should be re-established.[1168] The desperate resistance of the Catalans postponed this until 1715, and when the tribunal was reinstated it found in the secret prison two captives, Juan Castillo a bigamist and Mariana Costa accused of sorcery, both of them confined by order of the vicar-general of the diocese.[1169] As all the liberties and privileges of Catalonia were abolished by the conquerors, its subsequent relations with the Inquisition offer no special characteristics.

Majorca had no Concordia and its tribunal was free to claim what extent of jurisdiction it saw fit, limited only by the resistance of the civil authorities, which, as we have seen, was energetically expressed at an early period. As defined by Portocarrero, in 1623, in practice it asserted complete jurisdiction, active and passive, in civil and criminal cases, over its salaried and commissioned officials and their families; over familiars, in criminal matters, active and passive; in civil, passive only, with exclusion of their families.[1170] The occasion of his book was a violent struggle between the viceroy and the tribunal, which presents the ordinary features of these contests for supremacy between rival departments of the government. In a search for arms in the house of Juan Zuñez, receiver of confiscations, some were found. The viceroy at once arrested him, sentenced him to leave the island within twenty-four hours and shipped him away. The inquisitor promptly excommunicated the viceroy; the royal fiscal appealed; the viceroy and royal judges summoned the inquisitor to a conference preparatory to a competencia or to appear in the Banch Reyal and defend his proceedings. On his refusal the Banch Reyal pronounced sentence of banishment and seizure of temporalities, which was published with sound of drum and trumpet.

They also issued an edict declaring the censures null and void and ordering the clergy to disregard them; they refused to consider themselves excommunicated, they attended mass and apparently had the support of the people and clergy, for no attention was paid to the interdict cast on the city by the inquisitor.[1171] What was the final result does not appear, nor does it much matter; the significance in these affairs is the spectacle presented to the people of lawless collisions between the representatives and exponents of the law.

In Majorca the most impressive cases of this kind occurred between the Inquisition and the ecclesiastical courts and will be considered hereafter. It suffices here to say that broils with the secular authorities were constant and contributed their share to occupy and distract the attention of the central government. It would be superfluous to enumerate those of which the details have chanced to reach us; they would merely prove that, considering their small size and scanty population, the Balearic Isles were not behind their continental sisters of Aragon in adding to the perplexities of the monarchy.

This somewhat prolonged recital of the struggles of the kingdoms of the Crown of Aragon gives an opportunity of realizing the stubborn resistance, to the arrogant pretensions of the Inquisition, of provinces which still retained institutions through which public opinion could assert itself. The people of the kingdoms of Castile had been reduced to submission under the absolutism of the House of Austria and, though they might at times complain, they could make no effective efforts to ameliorate their position. When, in 1579 and again in 1583, the Córtes of Castile complained of the arrest and immurement in the secret prisons of individuals in every quarrel with an official of the Inquisition, to the permanent disgrace of families, Philip II merely replied that he would make inquiry and take such action as was fitting.[1172] The only resource was to raise contests in individual cases and these were frequent enough and violent enough to prove that there was the same spirit of opposition to inquisitorial encroachment and the same pervading discontent with the abuses flourishing so rankly under inquisitorial protection. Instances of this could be cited almost without limit, but one or two will suffice as examples of the multiform aspect of these quarrels and the temper in which they were fought over. It should be borne in mind that, in these struggles as in those of Aragon, there was no question of freedom of conscience and no desire to limit the effectiveness of the Holy Office as the guardian of purity of faith.

The chancellery of Granada was the supreme tribunal of New Castile as that of Valladolid was of Old Castile. The alcaldes of its Sala del Crimen constituted the highest criminal court, from which there was no appeal save to God. April 15, 1623, the alcalde mayor, after five days’ trial, condemned Gerónimo Palomino, an habitual criminal and rufian, to two hundred lashes and six years of galleys for various offences, including sundry blasphemies; on the 24th, the Sala confirmed the sentence and ordered its execution. On the same day the Inquisition served two notices on the alcalde mayor prohibiting his cognizance of the case, as some of the alleged crimes concerned the faith, over which it had exclusive jurisdiction, and it demanded the surrender of the accused and of all the papers under the customary comminations. The alcalde mayor responded by calling for a competencia and offering to deliver Palomino for trial on any charges of heresy, if record were made that he was already a galley-slave to be returned to the royal prison. The next day the tribunal sent to the prison and claimed him, on the pretext that the case had been transferred to it, whereupon the alcaide of the prison surrendered him without orders from the judges. When the latter heard of this they also learned that the transfer had been effected through the efforts of the prisoner’s friends and liberal bribery of the officials of the tribunal, who had been active in getting him out of prison.

After satisfying themselves of this by investigation, they ordered the arrest of four laymen—a notary, a messenger and two familiars—and they further imprisoned in their houses the alcalde mayor and alcaide of the prison for acting without informing the Sala. The tribunal concluded Palomino’s trial within forty-eight hours, sentencing him to hear a mass in the audience chamber, and it appears that it returned him. It further commenced proceedings against the alcaldes, summoning them to liberate the officials within three hours under pain of excommunication. The alcaldes protested against this and demanded a competencia, as provided under the Concordia, but the next day they were excommunicated in all the churches and this was followed by an interdict laid on the city. This forced a compromise by which the prisoners were liberated, subject to rearrest in case the competencia should result in justifying the alcaldes, and the latter were absolved from the censures. The matter seemed to be settled, but all parties had counted without the impetuous and aggressive Inquisitor-general Pacheco. Without awaiting further information, and in disregard of the laws prescribing peaceful settlement by competencias, he had evoked the case to himself and acted upon it off-hand. Two days after the absolution, the inquisitors reimposed the excommunication by his command, and notices were served on the alcaldes and their alguazil mayor to appear before him within fifteen days to stand trial.

The alcaldes were the direct and highest judicial representatives of the king, but such was Philip’s subservience to the Inquisition that he would not permit a competencia following the regular course but took the affair into his own hands. The President of the Council of Castile, in remitting to the royal favorite Olivares, July 4, 1623, a memorial from the Council, declared that the condition to which the chancellery of Granada was reduced, owing to the methods of the Inquisition, was the most ignominious that had ever been heard of in Spain, especially considering how slight was the cause of all this disquiet, for, when everything was settled it was again enkindled at the mandate of the inquisitor-general. As the matter was in the king’s hands, the Council could do nothing but appeal to his majesty, with all the disadvantages under which it labored in combating the inquisitor-general; had its hands been free it might already have conquered, to the benefit of the royal jurisdiction and service of the king, for every day brought greater disturbance to the Republic.[1174]

In spite of this appeal, Philip decided in favor of the Inquisition and the humiliation of the chancellery was complete. Yet Pacheco was not satisfied with victory and proceeded to trample on the vanquished. In the course of the quarrel, Gudiel de Peralta, one of the judges, and Matias González de Sepúlveda, the fiscal of the court, had drawn up legal arguments in its justification. These Pacheco submitted to his censors, who of course discovered latent heresies lurking in them, whereupon he ordered them to be suppressed as heretical and announced his intention of proceeding rigorously against the authors. The Council, on October 7th, again appealed to Philip. The accused, it said, had only defended the royal jurisdiction in a perfectly legitimate manner; the inquisitor-general should not have attacked royal officials and inflicted irreparable injury on them and their posterity by denouncing them as heretics, without consulting the king. He was begged to intervene and order Pacheco to suspend proceedings, while a junta of the two Councils should consider the papers and decide what course should be taken.[1175] It is probable that in some such way this indefensible attempt was suppressed, for neither of the inculpated names appear in the Expurgatory Index of Zapata, in 1632.

It would seem difficult to set bounds to the power of an organization which could thus arbitrarily employ the censures of the Church on any department of the government, without being subject to control save to that of a king docile to its exigencies. Yet the Suprema, which always sustained the tribunals in their wanton excesses, adopted their quarrels and fought them unsparingly to the end, was thoroughly conscious of their wrong-doing. While this conflict was in progress, it issued a carta acordada, April 23d, earnestly exhorting the tribunals to maintain friendly relations with the royal officials and not to waste time in dissensions to the neglect of their duties in matters of faith; competencias were always to be admitted and no censures were to be employed without consulting the Suprema, unless delay was inadmissible.[1176]