A History of the Inquisition of Spain; vol. 1

[1334] Coleccion de Cédulas, IV, 388, 400 (Madrid, 1829).

[1335] As an incident to this fictitious valuation of the vellón coinage, counterfeiting flourished to an enormous extent, unrepressed by the severest penalties. The importation of coins manufactured abroad added to the confusion, for it was too lucrative to be prevented by even the most rigorous measures. In 1614 a chronicler states that since the recent doubling of the nominal value of the cuartos five or six millions in vellón money had been brought from England and Holland, stowed in vessels under wheat. It was exchanged for silver at 30 per cent. discount and the silver exported. The remedy devised was to bring inland twenty leagues from the coast the foreign traders engaged in the business, but this remedy was found to be worse than the disease and was abandoned (Cabrera, Relaciones, pp. 551, 553). We shall see hereafter that the Inquisition was invoked to put an end to this traffic.

[1336] Under these perpetual changes it will be readily understood how difficult it is to estimate values at any special period. In a document of 1670 I find the doblon converted into reales de vellón at the rate of 1 to 81, although in this case the doblon was of 4 pesos or 32 reales de plata. Similar to this is the conversion in another item of 162 reales de plata into 405 reales de vellón, showing that vellón was at a discount of 60 per cent. or specie at a premium of 150.—Arch. de Simancas, Inquisicion, Leg. 1476, fol. 2, 61.

The unutterable confusion produced by these sudden and arbitrary changes in the legal value of the coinage is illustrated by a contention, in 1683, between the auditor-general and the receiver-general of the Suprema, respecting the accountability of the latter for funds on hand and receipts and payments at the time when the pragmática of February 10, 1680, went into effect, involving points of which the equities were not easy to determine.—Ibid., Leg. 1480, fol. 129.

[1337] It was probably from this that the custom arose in giving receipts for money to reserve or to renounce, as the case might be, “las leyes y excepciones de la non numerata pecunia.”

[1338] Full information as to the coinage of the fifteenth century will be found in Saez, Demostracion del Valor de las Monedas que corrian durante el Reinado de Don Enrique IV (Madrid, 1805).

For the subsequent period reference is made to the very voluminous series of laws and decrees preserved in the Nueva Recopilacion, Lib. V, Tit. xxi; the Autos Acordados, Lib. V, Tit. xxi and xxii, and the Novisima Recopilacion, Lib. IX, Tit. xvii.

[1339] These instructions are supplementary to those issued by the assembly of Inquisitors in Seville, Nov. 29, 1484. Some of them are printed by Arguello, but they are not in the Granada edition of 1537 of the Instructions.

[1340] These instructions partly repeat and partly supplement those of December, 1484. So far as I am aware they are inedited. They are not in the Granada edition of the Instructions, nor do they correspond with the fragments printed by Arguello (Instrucciones del Santo Oficio, Madrid, 1630, fol. 16-23) as the Instructions of January, 1485, and by Llorente, Añales, I, 96-99, 388-94.

[1341] Both the Granada edition of 1537 and Arguello print only the first four articles of these Instructions. Llorente describes them (Añales, I, 261) as being in seven articles of which the last two are not in this original document.

[1342] The date of Bologna fixes the time of this brief between Nov. 10, 1506, when Julius II entered that city, and Feb. 22, 1507, when he left it.—Raynald. Annal. ann. 1506, n. 30; 1507, n. 2.

[1343] The end of the document is torn.

[1344] This MS. I procured from a bookseller in Madrid, and I know nothing of its provenance. It is in small quarto, with 62 unnumbered pages of a handwriting which I should attribute to the seventeenth or early eighteenth century; about three pages towards the middle are in a different hand, with some blanks filled in by the scribe of the rest of the MS., as though the copying had been entrusted to a second writer who had proved unable to decypher the original. The record bears on its face every mark of authenticity. There are occasional discrepancies in names and dates between it and the list at the end of the Libro Verde, but in general they correspond, as it also does with such trials of the period as I have examined from the Llorente MSS. in the Bibliothèque Nationale. It supplies much that is lacking, and the abstracts of the sentences of the murderers of San Pedro Arbués are sufficient to render it a document of interest, besides the light which the sentences in general throw upon the business of the Inquisition. I transcribe in full the earlier portion, with the final “Resumen.” Of the remainder, which consists of little more than lists of names of convicts and penitents, I only give a summary.

The MS. has much in common with the anonymous Orígen de la Inquisicion cited by Llorente (Añales, I, 76, 94, 114, etc.) which he says is in the Academia de la Historia and was written in 1652.

[1345] Amin was a kind of Jewish broth. In the trial of Juan de la Caballeria, in 1488, there is an allusion to “hamin y otras potages de Judios.”—MSS. Bib. Nat. de Paris, fonds espagnol, 81.

[1346] Unleavened bread—“panem azmum sive cotaco comedendo”—Trial of Beatrix de la Cavallería, MSS. Bib. Nat. de France, fonds espagnol, 80, fol. 175.

[1347] The total number is 614. There is a mistake of 3 in the addition, and errors in several years.