Chapter II: The Tribunal (2)

These regular routine inspections came to an end and, though the wholesome supervision was not abandoned, it became irregular, either employed occasionally or when complaints seemed to indicate its necessity. Barcelona was a troublesome tribunal, but it seems to have been visited only at intervals of from six to ten years. The inspections were not inexpensive and the cost had to be defrayed by the Suprema. When, in 1567, de Soto Salazar, a member of the Suprema, was sent to investigate Valencia, Barcelona and Saragossa, he was given at the outset four hundred ducats and his secretary, Pablo Garcia, two hundred.[627] The rule became established to employ only inquisitors and those in active service, not retired.[628] The work, when conscientiously performed, was not light. An inspection of the Canary tribunal, made by Claudio de la Cueva, lasted from 1595 to 1597 and his report forms a mass of 1124 folios.[629] This was unusually laborious, but reports covering three, four or five hundred pages are not uncommon.

The _visitador_ was expected to make a thorough investigation of the condition and working of the tribunal, to discover all neglect of regulations, all abuses and malfeasance of the officials, all derelictions of duty, all maladministration of the property and revenues, all misuse of power, whether through oppression of the defenceless or remissness in vindicating the faith. He was to examine the records, not only to see that they were properly kept and indexed but also whether justice had been duly administered and the _estilo_ of the Holy Office had been rigidly followed. He visited the prisons, listened to the complaints of the prisoners and investigated them. On arrival, he fixed a day on which he would appear in the audience-chamber; the inquisitors and all officials were assembled, his credentials were read and the inquisitors promised obedience in the name of all present. The next day the inquisitors were examined under oath, as to whether there was anything requiring amendment and whether the officials performed their full duty, the answers being taken down in writing. The inspector brought with him an elaborate series of interrogatories, usually forty-eight or fifty in number, covering all the points which experience had shown as likely to tempt to wrongdoing and on these he examined all the officials singly. He also listened to all who had complaints to make; if these appeared to be justified he investigated them thoroughly, summoning all witnesses, who were guaranteed that their names would be kept secret, and on this evidence he framed charges against those inculpated and heard them in defence. When his duties in the tribunal were accomplished he was expected to visit the district and investigate all complaints. The results were reduced to writing and, when his labors were completed, he sent or carried the whole to the Suprema for its action.[630] As a rule, he had no executive authority and could only make recommendations, but visitadores to the colonies were frequently invested with greater power, presumably in view of the long delays in communication. When, in 1654, Medina Rico came as inspector to Mexico, where maladministration was flagrant, he sat in judgement on the inquisitors, Estrada and Higuera, suspended them and occupied the tribunal for years.[631] It can readily be conceived that at times there was no little friction between inspector and inquisitors, and, in 1645, the Suprema presented to the king a consulta on the controversies thence arising.[632]

The necessity for these visitations diminished in proportion as the tribunals were subordinated to the Suprema. When they had to make monthly reports of all pending cases, so that their action was under constant supervision; when all sentences were submitted for confirmation or revision, with the papers showing the conduct of the cases; when no arrest could be made without presenting the sumaria and receiving authority; when, moreover, the business management of property was scrutinized through monthly reports of the _junta de hacienda_, there was no longer a justification for the expenses of visitations. The growing facilities of intercommunication encouraged centralization and enabled the Suprema to maintain a constant supervision. When, therefore, it concentrated in itself all the judicial faculties of the Inquisition, rendering the tribunals merely instruments for investigation, the functions of the visitador became superfluous, at least in the Peninsula.

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[Sidenote: _THE SECRETO_]

The palace or building, which was the seat of the tribunal, was divided into the _secreto_ and the outside rooms or apartments. It was expected to furnish lodgings for the inquisitors and, if spacious enough, for the other officials. The most important feature was the _carceles secretas_ or secret prison for those on trial, for it was necessary that they could be brought at any moment to the audience-chamber without being seen by any one. There was, of course, a torture-chamber, which seems to have generally been underground. The _secreto_ originally was merely a record-room in which the papers and documents were preserved. From the first these were guarded with jealous secrecy, not only on account of their importance in the trials but because their abstraction or destruction was so ardently desired by the kindred or accomplices of convicts. As early as 1485, Ferdinand, in his instructions to the tribunal of Saragossa, orders that no servant of any of the officials shall enter "lo secreto de la Inquisicion."[633] The Instructions of 1498 provide that the chest or chamber in which the papers are kept shall have three keys, two held by the _notarios del secreto_ and one by the fiscal, so that no one can take out a document save in the presence of the others, and no one shall enter it except the inquisitors, the notaries and the fiscal, rules substantially repeated in the Sicilian instructions of 1516. Among the derelictions of the Barcelona tribunal, reported in 1561 by Cervantes, was the neglect of this rule, leading, he said, to grave abuses.[634] The functions and extent of the secreto were gradually enlarged. In Mercader's Instructions of 1514, the money-chest with three keys was ordered to be kept in the secreto, a provision which became permanent.[635] When the rule was established of conducting the trials in profound secrecy, and a veil of impenetrable mystery was thrown around all the operations of the Inquisition, the audience-chamber was included in the secreto, as well as the offices occupied by the fiscal and secretaries. The door to it was secured by three locks having different keys and entrance was forbidden save to those officially privileged or summoned.[636] In 1645, it was discovered that there was danger in the notaries or secretaries bringing in their swords, for a prisoner when led to an audience might in his desperation seize one and give trouble, and they were consequently ordered in future to be left outside.[637] In the Valencia tribunal there was considerable excitement, in 1679, when the pages of the inquisitors got possession of the keys and had false ones made, with which they gained at will access to the sacred precincts, but no harm seems to have arisen from the boyish prank.[638] One feature of the audience-chamber was significant--a _celosía_ or lattice, behind which a witness could identify a prisoner, without being seen or recognized.[639]

[Sidenote: _THE INQUISITORS_]

In considering the personnel of the tribunal, we may dismiss the assessor with a few words. Such an official was unknown in the Old Inquisition, but we have seen that, when the first inquisitors were sent to Seville, they were accompanied by an assessor, and such a functionary continued for some time to be considered a necessary adjunct to a tribunal. At the beginning the inquisitors were Dominican friars, presumably good theologians but unversed in the intricacies of the law. It was therefore desirable to associate with them a lawyer as a guide, and his presence moreover might serve as an assurance to the people of the legality of the proceedings. In Torquemada's instructions of 1485 it is provided that they must always act in concert and that anything done by one without the other was invalid; even communications to the Suprema must be signed by both.[640] In the trials of this period we sometimes find the assessor sitting with the inquisitors and sometimes not, and the sentences are rendered by the latter with the concurrence of the former.[641] In the secular law of the period, the assessor had only a consultative and not a decisive vote, and this would appear to be his position in the tribunal, when the routine of the Inquisition had established its own precedents, when all doubtful questions were decided by the Suprema and the services of trained lawyers were no longer required.[642] In the early time their salaries were the same as those of the inquisitors--indeed, at Saragossa, in 1486, Martin Martínez, the assessor, receives five thousand sueldos while the inquisitors are rated at four thousand.[643] It was not long, however, before it apparently became indifferent whether there was an assessor or not. In 1499, the salary lists of Seville, of Burgos and of Palencia have no mention of such an official, while there is one at Saragossa and, in 1500, Ferdinand empowers the inquisitor of Sardinia to select for his assessor any doctor he pleases.[644] The office continued to exist for a time, as a kind of supernumerary, employed in hearing the civil cases of officials but, in the Aragonese Concordia of 1568, this duty was placed on the inquisitors and the assessorship was abolished. In Castile, the list of officials, promulgated in the same year by Philip II, as entitled to exemption from taxation, makes no mention of the assessor, who may be assumed by this time to disappear.[645]

The inquisitors, of course, were the superior officials of the tribunal. They were the judges, with practically unlimited power over the lives and fortunes and honor of all whom they summoned before them, until they were gradually restricted by the growing centralization in the Suprema. To the people they were the incarnation of the dreaded Holy Office, regarded with more fear and veneration than bishop or noble, for all the powers of State and Church were placed at their disposal. They could arrest and imprison at will; with their excommunication they could, at a word, paralyze the arm of all secular officials and, with their interdict, plunge whole communities into despair. Such a concentration of secular and spiritual authority, guarded by so little limitation and responsibility, has never, under any other system, been entrusted to fallible human nature. To exercise it wisely and temperately called for exceptional elevation of character, self-control and mature experience of men and things. That friars, suddenly called from the cloister or the schools and clothed with such limitless power over their fellow-beings, should sometimes grow intoxicated with their position and commit the awful slaughter which marked the early years of the Inquisition, gives no occasion for surprise, nor that their successors should have trampled with such arrogant audacity on all who ventured to raise a voice against their misuse of their prerogatives. It is therefore worth our while to examine what qualifications were required by popes and kings in those whom they selected as fitted for an office of such bewildering temptations and such vast opportunities for evil.

[Sidenote: _QUALIFICATIONS_]

Sixtus IV, in the bull of November 1, 1478, empowered Ferdinand and Isabella to appoint, as inquisitors, three bishops or other worthy men, priests either regular or secular, over forty years of age, God-fearing, of good character and record, masters or bachelors of theology or licentiates of canon law. The prescription as to the minimum age was as old as the Council of Vienne, in 1312, and had become a matter of course; the rest was as well-chosen a definition of the requisite qualities as perhaps could be expressed in general terms, considering the temper of the age and the work to be performed.[646] So, in 1483, when Sixtus, under the influence of Cardinal Borgia, desired to get rid of Inquisitor Gualbes, he asked Ferdinand to replace him with some master of theology who had the fear of God and was eminent for his virtues.[647] The only inquisitors that Spain had known were Dominicans and, although they were not specified, it seemed to be a matter of course that the Inquisition should remain in their hands, but Ferdinand, in his struggle with Sixtus for the control of the Aragonese Inquisition, had encountered the obstacle of the obedience due by the friars to their General, who of course was a creature of the curia. He was resolved to organize the Inquisition to suit himself, which explains why Torquemada, in his Instructions of December 6, 1484, simplified the formula of qualifications to _letrados_ (either lawyers or men of university training) of good repute and conscience, the fittest that could be had.[648] This did not even require the inquisitor to be an ecclesiastic, except in so far as there were comparatively few letrados of the time who were not in orders. When Innocent VIII renewed the commission of Torquemada, February 3, 1485, it empowered him to appoint as inquisitors fitting ecclesiastics, learned and God-fearing, provided they were masters of theology or doctors or licentiates of laws, or cathedral canons or holding other church dignities, but, while this was repeated in a subsequent bull of March 24, 1486, it was simplified, in another clause, into ecclesiastics of proper character and learning, not less than thirty years of age.[649] This reduction in the age limit was retained by Alexander VI, in the commissions issued to Deza, November 24, 1498 and September 1, 1499, when the requisite of being an ecclesiastic was omitted, for the qualification was reduced simply to suitable men of good and tender conscience, even if they have not reached forty years of age but are more than thirty.[650] This became virtually the accepted formula, as shown in the commissions issued, June 4 and 5, 1507 by Julius II, to Enguera for Aragon and to Ximenes for Castile, and in those of Leo X to Mercader and Poul in 1513 and to Cardinal Adrian in 1516 and 1518.[651]

The office of inquisitor was thus thrown open to the laity and there was no hesitation in employing them so long as they remained single but, if they married, they were obliged to resign--possibly because it was thought impossible for a married man to preserve the absolute secrecy regarded as essential in the Holy Office. The Licentiate Aguirre, Ferdinand's favorite member of the Suprema, was a layman. On June 28, 1515, Ferdinand writes to Ximenes that the Licentiate Nebreda, Inquisitor of Seville, desires to marry and, as he is a good servant, another office has been found for him, while the treasurer of the church of Pampeluna will make a suitable appointee for Seville.[652] Two other similar cases occur about the same time.[653] It was an anomaly to allow laymen to sit in judgement on matters of faith, but no action was taken to prevent it until Philip II, in his instructions of 1595 to Manrique de Lara, ordered that inquisitors and fiscals at least must be in holy orders--a clause omitted by Philip III in his instructions of 1608.[654] At length the Suprema met the question, November 10, 1632, by requiring all inquisitors to have themselves ordained and prohibiting them otherwise from exercising their functions, a provision which apparently met with slack obedience, for it had to be repeated January 12 and June 5, 1637, with the addition that inquisitors and fiscals who were not in orders should receive no salaries.[655] Even this does not seem to have been effective for, in 1643, a consulta called attention to the matter as a great evil and indecency, and suggested that a papal brief should be obtained, rendering priests' orders an essential qualification for inquisitors and fiscals.[656] This was not done, but we may presume that in time the functions were confined to ecclesiastics.

Legal training was prescribed as a requisite in 1608, by Philip III, who ordered that no one should be appointed inquisitor or fiscal who could not exhibit to the Suprema his diploma of graduation in law. Carlos II repeated this, in 1695, adding that inquisitors and secretaries must not be natives of the provinces to which they were assigned, so as to avert partisanship, and that the strictest investigation into character and limpieza must precede appointment.[657]

The papal requirements expressed in the successive commissions issued to inquisitors-general continued for a while to be simply that they should appoint prudent and suitable men of good repute and sound conscience who had attained the age of thirty years. Apparently this violation of the Clementine rule of forty years led to some animadversion and, in the commission of Valdés, in 1547, there is no allusion to age. This example was followed until, in 1596, Clement VIII, in the commission to Portocarrero, inserted a minimum age limit of forty years, as required by the canons, adding that if enough suitable men of that age could not be found, as to which he charged Portocarrero's conscience, then men of thirty-five could be appointed, but if this were done without necessity, the appointment would be invalid. To this Portocarrero objected, saying that it rendered it impossible for him to make appointments without scruples of conscience, as it was difficult to find suitable persons of the designated age to take the office, and he therefore begged that the limit should be reduced to thirty years, as had been done by all popes since Innocent VIII. Clement yielded, but was careful to insert a derogation of the apostolic constitutions and especially of the Clementine _Nolentes_.[658]

[Sidenote: _APPOINTING POWER_]

Thenceforth to the end all limitation of age was discreetly omitted, the formula being simply "prudent and suitable men of good repute and sound conscience and zealous for the Catholic faith."[659] Yet the minimum age was understood to be thirty and, when younger men were appointed, dispensations were required, as when, in 1782, Inquisitor-general Bertran gave the inquisitorship of Barcelona to Don Matias Bertran. Apparently objection was made to his youth and, in 1783, a papal dispensation was procured empowering him to exercise the office in spite of his not having attained the age of thirty.[660]

* * * * *

The patronage of the inquisitors was greatly limited by the gradual centralization of power in the Suprema. In the early period they had the appointment of porteros and nuncios--apparitors and messengers--and when, in 1500, Ferdinand reorganized the Sicilian tribunal, he sent inquisitors with power to fill all offices except that of receiver. In 1502 he even authorized the inquisitor of Lérida and Huesca to appoint a judge of confiscations and notary at each place.[661] Subsequently, as we have seen, the inquisitor-general absorbed all the patronage of salaried offices, even to the porteros and nuncios. If a vacancy occurred in a post of which the daily duties were essential, the inquisitors could fill it temporarily, while reporting it at once to the Suprema and awaiting its orders, but they had no other power.[662] As regards the numerous unsalaried officials, the inquisitor-general appointed the consultores and calificadores, or censors, and also the commissioners for cathedral towns, sea-ports and cities which were seats of tribunals. This left to the inquisitors only the appointment of familiars and of commissioners in other places, though at first in cathedral towns they might select a canon of the cathedral for commissioner.[663] It was the same with regard to expenditures, as to which originally they enjoyed a certain freedom of action. This, as has been shown above, was curtailed until ultimately the Suprema controlled even the smallest outlays.

It also kept watch over the morals of the inquisitors, recognizing the temptations to which they were exposed and the opportunities afforded by their position. Among the interrogatories which the inspector was instructed to make was whether the inquisitors lived decently, without publicly keeping concubines or corrupting the female prisoners or the wives and daughters of prisoners or of the dead whose fame and memory were prosecuted.[664] When attention was called to official misconduct it was promptly looked into, as in 1528, when the inquisitors of Barcelona were accused of receiving bribes and suborning witnesses, an inquisitor of Valencia with a notary of Tortosa was despatched thither, fully commissioned to investigate and report.[665]

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[Sidenote: _DISTRICT VISITING_]

The most laborious work imposed on the inquisitors was the visitation of their districts. These were large, usually embracing several bishoprics, and, when the tribunals became sedentary, the necessity was apparent of a closer watch over aberrations than could be exercised from a fixed centre. Already, in the Instructions of 1498, a system of visitation, termed the General Inquisition, is seen at work and, in 1500, Deza ordered the inquisitors to visit all places where an inquest had not been held. Each inquisitor was to travel with a notary, receiving denunciations and taking testimony, so that on his return the colleagues could consult together and order such arrests as might be found necessary. In districts where such visitations had already been made, one of the inquisitors was ordered to travel every year, holding inquests in the towns and villages and publishing the Edict of Faith to attract denunciations; the other inquisitor remained in the tribunal to despatch routine business or, if there were none such, he too was ordered to take the road. Reports in detail of the work accomplished in the visitation were to be made to the inquisitor-general.[666] This remained the basis of the system and the Instructions of 1561 merely define more clearly the functions of the visiting inquisitor, who was told that he was not to make arrest unless there were danger of flight, but was only to gather testimony and carry it to the tribunal for action; if he made an arrest he was not to try the accused but to send him to the secret prison. Trifling cases, however, he could despatch on the spot, taking care that he bore delegated powers from the Ordinary for that purpose.[667] The importance attached to these visitations is apparent when, during the siege of Toledo in the Communidades, Cardinal Adrian and the Constable and Admiral of Castile joined in an order, November 3, 1521, to the commanders of the besieging forces, to allow the inquisitors to come out and perform their accustomed visits.[668]

In 1517 these visits were ordered to be made every four months, each inquisitor taking his turn under pain of forfeiting a year's salary. This indicates that the duty was distasteful and likely to be shirked and, in 1581, the obligation was reduced to once a year, starting at the end of January and taking such portions of the district as were deemed to require special attention. In 1607 the districts were ordered to be laid out in circuits, to be visited in turn until all were covered, when the process began anew.[669] In 1569 an elaborate code of instructions was framed by which it appears that the principal objects were the publication of the Edict of Faith with its consequent crop of denunciations, an investigation into the character and conduct of commissioners and familiars and the maintenance in the churches of the sanbenitos of those punished by the Inquisition, for which purpose the visitor carried lists for all the places to be visited.[670]

A certain amount of stateliness and ceremony attended the visit. Before reaching a town, word was sent forward of the hour of expected arrival, when the authorities, the church dignitaries and the principal gentlemen of the place were summoned to go forth to meet the inquisitor and escort him to his lodgings. The secretary was instructed to note the details of these receptions, whether honorable or otherwise, the character of the lodgings provided and utensils furnished.[671] Lack of respect on these occasions was punishable. In 1564, Dr. Zurita, visiting the sees of Gerona and Elne found the gates of Castellon de Ampurias closed against him and one of the guards seized his horse's reins. He proceeded to prosecute the local authorities, when the consuls proved that they were not in fault, but two guards, Salbador Llop and Juan Maraña, were sent to Barcelona for trial.[672]

Although occasionally nests of Morisco and Jewish apostates were discovered in these visits, as a rule the practical results appear to have been rather the gratification of old grudges by neighbors in little towns and the gathering in of fines by the inquisitors. In 1582, Juan Aymar, Inquisitor of Barcelona, in reporting a visitation of the sees of Gerona and Elne and part of Barcelona and Vich, makes parade of having published the Edict of Faith in 263 places, but he brought in only seven trivial cases, of which four were of Frenchmen.[673]

These trips involved no little labor and even hardship; four months was the time prescribed for them, commencing early in February, and the vernal equinox was not likely to be agreeable, especially in mountainous districts. Naturally the duty was shirked whenever practicable, and the effort of the Suprema to compel its performance was endless. In 1557 it instructed the receiver at Saragossa that each inquisitor, on alternate years, must spend at least four months in visitations and that this performance is an absolute condition precedent to his receiving the customary ayuda de costa.[674] This was carried even further in a carta acordada of January 25, 1607, to all the tribunals; the inquisitor, in his turn, must start on the first Sunday in Lent, without attempting an excuse or a reply, and the report of his visit must be included in the annual statement of cases, for otherwise the ayuda de costa will be withheld from the whole tribunal, because these visits are the principal reason of its bestowal.[675] This solidarity enforced on all the officials was possibly owing to the recalcitrance of subordinates for, in 1598, we find a tribunal asking the Suprema to issue the necessary orders to them direct, which it obligingly did, while remonstrating that it should not be burdened with such details.[676] Throughout the seventeenth century, the correspondence of the Suprema with the tribunals of Valencia and Barcelona is filled with orders to the inquisitor whose turn it is to go and refusals to accept excuses and, in 1705, a letter to Valencia asks why the visit had been neglected.[677]

[Sidenote: _THE FISCAL_]

When there were three inquisitors, the absence of one did not interfere with current business, but where there were only two it was a serious impediment. From the beginning the rule was absolute that two must act conjointly in all important matters, such as sentencing to torture, ordering publication of evidence, or rendering final sentence, and this in both civil and criminal actions. Minor and trivial cases, however, could be despatched by one in the absence of his colleague and he could continue to hold audiences and gather testimony, while, in the habitual leisurely transaction of inquisitorial business, procrastination caused by the crippling of the tribunal for four months in every year was evidently not regarded as of any moment.[678] In the little tribunal of Majorca, however, which could support but a single inquisitor, he was deemed competent to act by himself and he probably was excused from visitations.[679]

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Next in importance to the inquisitors stood the promoter fiscal, or prosecuting officer. In the original Inquisition of the thirteenth century there was no such officer; there was candor in the position of the inquisitor as both judge and prosecutor, infinitely preferable to the hypocrisy that the trial was an action between a prosecutor and an accused with the inquisitor as an impartial judge. How this came to pass will be considered hereafter.

We have seen that, even in the skeleton organization of the first tribunal in 1480, a fiscal was deemed essential. He ranked next to the inquisitors and, in 1484, it was ordered that he should assist in all public functions, after the inquisitors and Ordinary but before the judge of confiscations.[680] Yet he was a subordinate. In the regulation of salaries in 1498, the inquisitors received 60,000 maravedís, the receiver the same, while the fiscal was rated at 40,000, the same as the notaries, and even the messenger had 20,000.[681] So, in the Sicilian tribunal, in 1500, the inquisitors and receiver have 6000 sueldos, while the fiscal and notaries have only 2500.[682] It was the same with the ayuda de costa. In 1540 we find the fiscal allowed only the same as the notaries and alguazil, and when, in 1557, the scale was fixed for Saragossa, the fiscal was portioned with 1000 sueldos and the inquisitors with 3000.[683]

The fiscal was held to act wholly under orders from the inquisitors. In the Instructions of 1484, they are represented as ordering him to accuse the contumacy of fugitives and to denounce the dead against whom they find evidence. So, in a trial of 1528, we find the inquisitors ordering the fiscal to present his accusation against the defendant.[684] In 1561, among his duties was prescribed that of keeping the secreto clean and in good order; he opened and closed its door with his own hands and, in 1570, he was required to have all the multitudinous documents well arranged, sewed, covered and so marked that they could readily be had when wanted. The letters and instructions of the Suprema were placed in his hands and it was his duty to give in writing to each official such portion as applied to him. In 1632, there was added to his labors that of furnishing the Suprema a monthly report embracing every pending case with a summary of all that had been done in it since the beginning--a duty apparently not relished for the order had to be repeated in 1639.[685] With all these somewhat multifarious duties, we never hear of a fiscal having a clerk, assistant or deputy.

In 1582, it was prescribed that his seat in the audience-chamber was to be smaller than those of the inquisitors, placed to one side and without cushions. In public functions his chair was to be similar to theirs except that it had no cushion. The inquisitors were required to address him and the judge of confiscations as _merced_, and, when he entered, they were not obliged to rise but merely to raise their caps.[686]

[Sidenote: _NOTARIES OR SECRETARIES_]

The position of the fiscal gradually improved. In his instructions of 1595 to Manrique de Lara, Philip II couples him with the inquisitor, in requiring both to be in orders, and prescribes great care in the appointment for it is customary to promote fiscals to the inquisitorship. Similarly Philip III, in 1608, requires both offices to be filled by jurists and when, in 1632 and 1637, the Suprema made holy orders a condition it included fiscals with inquisitors.[687] The assimilation between the offices was rapid and, in 1647, in a payment of ayuda de costa in Valencia there occurs an item of thirty thousand maravedís to Inquisitor Antonio de Ayala y Verganza, "por la plaza de fiscal," showing that he was acting as fiscal.[688] The idea of coalescence was becoming familiar. When, in 1658, Gregorio Cid, after six years' service as inquisitor of Sardinia, was transferred to Cuenca, he suggested that there ought to be there two inquisitors and a fiscal, or at least that the junior inquisitor should serve also as fiscal.[689]

The identification of the offices was facilitated, in 1660, by a royal cédula prescribing that fiscals were to be held the equals of inquisitors in precedence and honors, canopies, cushions and the like, as well as in pay and emoluments.[690] Thenceforth the office of fiscal came to be filled by one of the inquisitors, though he took care to preserve his dignity by styling himself "inquisidor fiscal" or "the inquisitor who performs the office of fiscal." Thus at length the two offices coalesced and we have seen in the table of officials in 1746 that they were reckoned together. As a matter of course the inquisitor who acted as prosecutor did not enter the consulta de fe and vote on the fate of the accused whom he had prosecuted.[691] Sometimes, when there was no fiscal and no inquisitor willing to perform the duties, the senior secretary assumed the function. Such a case occurs as early as 1655, and it continued occasionally to the end.[692]

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The notaries, or secretaries, formed an important part of the tribunal. They reduced to writing all the voluminous proceedings of the trials, all the audiences given to the accused with the interrogatories and answers, all the evidence of the witnesses and its ratification, the endless repetitions in the cumbrous and involved system of procedure which developed until the object seemed to be to protract business beyond the limits of human endurance. They kept the records which required an elaborate system of indexing, so that the name of any culprit and his genealogy could be found whenever wanted. In the later period, moreover, when the tribunals communicated to each other all their acts, the correspondence served to fill the gap arising from diminished business. At the beginning they were forbidden to employ clerks and were required to write everything with their own hands and this seems to have continued to the last.[693] In the earlier period they were styled notaries and sometimes _escribanos_ or scriveners, possibly because as such their attestation authenticated all papers. Early in the seventeenth century the title gradually changed to secretaries, an innovation to which a writer in 1623 objects, as not distinguishing them from the secretaries of magnates and cities.[694] This objection did not prevail and a document of 1638 uses the terms as convertible, although an order of the Suprema, in the same year, forbids notaries to be called secretaries, while in 1648 we find the new appellation firmly established.[695] The importance of the office is shown by its fairly liberal salary. In the Instructions of 1498 it is placed at 30,000 maravedís, one-half of that of the inquisitors,[696] though the proportion diminished in time, for we have seen that, in 1746, the secretary received 2352 reales, while the inquisitor had 7352. There was compensation for this, however, in the heavy fees accruing to the secretaries from applicants for proofs of limpieza--a business shared with a new official known as "secretario de actos positivos." The number moreover had greatly increased for, while at the early period, with its heavy work, a tribunal was allowed but two notaries, in the later time there were often four or five salaried secretaries, to whom were sometimes added honorary secretaries with entrance to the secreto and honorary secretaries without entrance.[697]

[Sidenote: _THE ALGUAZIL_]

There was also a notary of sequestrations, whose duties were highly important in the early times of abundant confiscations. He was always present when arrests were made, so as to draw up on the spot an inventory of the property seized, but, as confiscations diminished, the office became superfluous and was suppressed by a carta acordada of December 1, 1634. After this we hear of a superintendent of sequestrations, in 1647, and subsequently its occasional duties were discharged by some other official for a moderate compensation as, in 1670, in Valencia, the procurator of the fisc received twenty-five libras a year for attending to them.[698]

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The alguazil was the executive officer of the tribunal. In the early lists of salaries his pay is the same as, or even larger than, that of the inquisitors, but this was because the prison was at his charge.[699] From this he was relieved, in 1515, by Ferdinand, who empowered the inquisitors to appoint _carceleros_, at a salary of five hundred sueldos, after which the wages of the alguazil declined to those of the secretaries and even of the alcaide who succeeded him as gaoler.[700] His superior dignity, however, was recognized in a carta acordada of May 13, 1610, which provided that in public functions he should have precedence over the secretaries.[701] His long wand of office, which exceeded that of secular alguaziles, was also a distinction and when, in 1576, the alguaziles of the Santa Cruzada in Barcelona ventured to imitate him, the Suprema ordered the inquisitors to punish them.[702]

His functions were various. The inquisitors, the receiver and the judge of confiscations were forbidden to appoint any one else to execute their orders if he were at hand. If, in his absence, an arrest had to be made, the fact had to be attested at the foot of the warrant issued to another, without which the receiver was ordered not to pay the expenses incurred. He made all levies and seizures and was entitled to fees for the service.[703] By the instructions of 1488, if the duty was at a distance of more than three or four leagues, he was not to be sent, but a temporary substitute, whose commission expired with the performance of the errand. Perhaps this was because the thrifty Ferdinand had insisted that, if he was sent out of the city, he must pay his own expenses, but this was relaxed for, in 1502, we find the rule established that, if an alguazil is sent from one province to another, to a greater distance than four leagues, his expenses were to be paid. He had, however, to furnish at his own cost a satisfactory person to take charge of the prison during his absence and, if he required assistance in making arrests, the inquisitors selected the persons and determined their pay.[704]

The alguazil mayor seems to have been an ornamental personage, usually a man of distinction, who thereby proclaimed his purity of blood and devotion to the faith. We have seen that, in Seville and Córdova, the office was hereditary in noble houses whose ancestors had abandoned to the Inquisition royal castles of which they were alcaides, receiving in return this position with handsome emoluments. In 1655 the alguazil mayor of the tribunal of Córdova was Luis Méndez de Haro, Conde-Duque of Olivares and his deputy was Gonzalo de Cardenas y Córdova, a Knight of Calatrava. In Seville, Don Juan de Saavedra y Alvarado, Marquis of Moscoso, served as alguazil mayor at the auto de fe of March 11, 1691, and November 30, 1693. About 1750, the tribunal of Seville had the Marquis of Villafranca as alguazil mayor; that of Valladolid had the Marquis of Revilla; in Granada the incumbent was a minor, Don Nicolas Velázquez, and the office was served by Don Diego Ramírez de la Piscina.[705]

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[Sidenote: _THE PORTERO--THE GAOLER_]

The humbler officials of the tribunal were the nuncio, the portero and the carcelero or alcaide de las carceles secretas. Strictly speaking the nuncio was a messenger or courier, bearing despatches to the Suprema or other tribunals and, before the post-office was organized, his life must have been an active one. In 1502 we hear of his salary being twelve hundred sueldos, out of which he defrayed his travelling expenses, but subsequently these were paid by the receiver and, in 1541, his stipend was five hundred sueldos.[706] His ayuda de costa, in 1567, was made dependent on his accompanying the inquisitors on their visitations.[707] At that period the tribunals seem to have been allowed two nuncios but, with the development of postal facilities, the functions of the position gradually shrank, the number was cut down to one and, in the eighteenth century we find him converted into a _nuncio de camera_, or interior attendant, called indifferently nuncio and portero, while a _nuncio extraordinario_ makes the fires and attends to other servile work.[708]

The _portero_ in the secular courts was a kind of apparitor, to serve summonses, authorized to take bail up to the sum of a hundred reales and forbidden to keep a shop or tavern.[709] In the Inquisition his function was to serve citations, notices of autos de fe, decrees and other similar work, and he was prohibited from engaging in trade of any kind; he was not allowed to enter the audience-chamber, but, in the eighteenth century we find him converted into a _portero de camara_, or usher and janitor, in which capacity he had entrance to the audience-chamber. When, in 1796, we find a Doctor Don Josef Fontana serving as portero in the Valencia tribunal, we may infer that the office was not servile, and it is observable that the portero and his wife are qualified as Don and Doña, a title withheld from the nuncio and his spouse. Their salaries, however, were the same, 1420 reales. When about 1710, porteros laid claim, in public functions, to seats on the _banco de titulados_--the bench of commissioned officials--their pretensions were rejected.[710]

The gaoler was necessary to a tribunal which had its special prison. At first, as we have seen, the alguazil had charge of this and his employees were not reckoned among the officials. The first allusion to a _carcelero_ that I have met occurs in 1499, when Juan de Moya is spoken of as the _carcerarius_ of the Barcelona tribunal; he must have been an exceptional official and a person of some consideration, for he was provided with a prebend.[711] In 1515 Ferdinand deemed it advisable to put the prisons under control of the tribunals, with which view he empowered the inquisitors to appoint carceleros with salaries of five hundred sueldos.[712] The gaoler thus became a salaried official, entitled to all the privileges and immunities of this position and gradually, toward the middle of the sixteenth century, the humble title of carcelero was exchanged for the more dignified one of _alcaide de las carceles secretas_.[713] He was necessarily a person of confidence, responsible for the safe-keeping of prisoners and for their proper maintenance, functions which will be more conveniently treated when we come to consider the prison system. From the report of the tribunal of Murcia, in 1746, it appears that the salary then was 2353 reales, in addition to which there was a jubilado alcaide with 330 reales. Possibly this habit of providing for supernumeraries explains why, in the table of officials, Toledo has four alcaides and Llerena and Valencia have three each.[714] In the early period the carcelero sometimes served as torturer, but subsequently it became customary to employ the public executioner.[715]

[Sidenote: _MINOR OFFICIALS_]

The prison, sometimes crowded with inmates and exposed to insanitary conditions, rendered necessary an official physician, whose services were also indispensable in examinations before and after torture and in the not infrequent cases of insanity, real or feigned. As his duties called him within the sacred limits of the secreto, he had to be a person of confidence, sworn like all the rest to secrecy. He was expected also to bestow gratuitous service on the officials, and the Suprema, in the eighteenth century, indulged itself in two, at the fairly liberal salary of 1258 reales apiece, though they did not share in the extra emoluments so freely bestowed on other officials.[716] At first the appointment of physicians was not universal, although the salary was inconsiderable--attributable, no doubt, to the fact that the physician was at liberty to continue his private practice. Thus, in 1486, Ferdinand designated ten libras as the pay of the physician of the Saragossa tribunal, while there was none provided for that of Medina del Campo.[717] The surgeon was rated at even less for, in 1510, one is furnished to Saragossa at a salary of five libras and the same is paid to an apothecary, who can scarce have furnished expensive drugs on such a stipend.[718] The surgeon, at this period, was also a barber and, in 1502, a grant, once for all, of fifteen libras was made to Joan de Aguaviva, "cirujano y barbero" of Calatayud, for fourteen years curing and barbering the poor prisoners, without salary or other advantage.[719] By 1618, apparently, the professions had become distinct, for there is an order to pay Narciso Valle, surgeon and Miguel Juan, barber, to the tribunal of Valencia.[720] A chaplain was also a necessity, not for the prisoners, who were denied the sacraments, but for the daily mass celebrated before commencing the work of the audience-chamber. In 1572, a stipend of 7500 maravedís is assigned for this but, in the eighteenth century, the Suprema paid the handsome salary of 5500 reales.[721] Confessors were also required for the penitential prison and were called in to the secret prison for the moribund.[722] There were also two _personas honestas_, or discreet persons, friars as a rule, whose duty it was to be present when witnesses ratified their testimony. In the earlier period these services were gratuitous but, in the later time, there was a small payment which, in the case of a friar, would enure to his convent. An alcaide of the _casa de penitencia_, or penitential prison, was also a necessity during the period of active work, although subsequently it was virtually a sinecure and in many tribunals was suppressed. We occasionally also meet with the office of _proveedor_, or purveyor of the secret prison, who seems to be identical with the _dispensero_ or steward. In the sixteenth century this official had a salary of 2000 maravedís, besides two maravedís a day for each prisoner and five blancas for cooking and washing; he was required to have honest weights and not to charge more for food than it cost him; he kept an account with each prisoner and was paid out of the sequestrations.[723] Locksmiths, masons and other mechanics employed on the buildings were also sometimes reckoned as officials, for their duties in repairing the prisons were confidential. All tribunals moreover had from one to three _abogados de presos_ or advocates of prisoners, whose duties will claim consideration hereafter; they were classed as salaried officials, though sometimes they received a small stipend and sometimes none, and they were allowed to serve other clients if they had any.

* * * * *

Besides these officials who were concerned in the primary business of the tribunal as a bulwark of the faith, there were others whose functions may be briefly dismissed here. The finances necessarily required a special organization, consisting of a receiver of confiscations, subsequently called the treasurer, whose duties in the active period were of the utmost importance, entitling him to a salary which sometimes was even larger than that of the inquisitors.[724] The fines and penances also amounted to large sums for which, in the earlier period, there was usually a special receiver, for they were kept as a separate fund, but finally they likewise passed through the hands of the treasurer. The receiver had to pay his own assistants and agents but, in the enormous amount of complicated business thrown upon him, he was aided by the _abogado fiscal_, a salaried official of legal training, while the notary of sequestrations had charge of sequestrated property until its confiscation was pronounced, and further served as a check upon the receiver. The intricate claims arising from these seizures were settled in a separate court of confiscations, known as the _juzgado_, presided over by the _juez de bienes_ or judge of confiscations and furnished with its notary and nuncio. We sometimes also meet with a _procurador del fisco_ and also with a superintendent of property. All this, which, especially at first, formed so large a part of the business of the Inquisition, will be more conveniently considered in detail hereafter.

We have seen how much of the activity of the tribunals was consumed in the civil and criminal business of their officials, and it necessarily formed a separate department, which had its _notario de lo civil_ and _secretario de las causas civiles_, the latter office being suppressed in 1643.[725]

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[Sidenote: _SALARIES_]

The qualifications for holding office in the tribunal were simple. From some of the cases of hereditary transmission it would appear that the minimum age was nineteen or twenty. Limpieza, or purity of blood from admixture of Jewish or Moorish or heretic strain, was the chief essential, as will be seen when we come to consider that important subject. Legitimacy was also a requisite in both the official and his wife, although dispensations could be had for its absence.[726] By a carta acordada of June 15, 1608, those who were unmarried could not marry without permission of the Suprema; they were obliged to furnish proof that the bride was _limpia_ and, if a foreigner or the daughter or grand-daughter of foreigners, a dispensation was necessary, of all of which the appointee was solemnly notified when he took the oath of office.[727]

There was also a well-intended _informacion de moribus_ concerning applicants for office. When the inquisitor-general proposed to make an appointment in a tribunal he notified it; it then issued a commission to some one at the residence of the nominee, with an interrogatory asking whether he was a person modest, quiet, peaceable, of correct life and habits and what was known as to his limpieza, which, when returned, was forwarded to the inquisitor-general. As the witnesses examined were, however, presented by the applicant, the whole was scarce more than a formality.[728]

* * * * *

In spite of the constant complaint of the meagreness of the salaries, they seem to have been fairly adequate, at least during the first century and a half of the existence of the Inquisition. The rapid fall in the purchasing power of the precious metals necessitated frequent advances and I have met with allusions to these in 1548, 1567, 1581, and 1606, after which they seem to have remained stationary until 1795, although the vellon coinage reduced still further the value of the currency.[729] The salary of an inquisitor, which, in 1541, was 100,000 maravedís, including ayuda de costa, by 1606 had become 300,000 or 800 ducats. This was not extravagant, but was fairly remunerative. In 1630, Arce y Reynoso, when occupying one of the highest professorships in Salamanca, as _catedratico de prima de leyes_, received only 300 ducats.[730] It must be borne in mind that most of the lower officials had a comfortable additional source of revenue from the fees which they were entitled to charge for nearly all their work outside of cases of faith and, when the _arancel_ or fee-bill of 1642 sought to regulate these charges it was generally disregarded and the inspectors winked at its violation, charitably alleging the increased cost of living as an excuse.[731] The inquisitors and fiscal, on their side, usually held some canonry or other benefice which served to make good all deficiencies. In fact towards the middle of the eighteenth century, when the salaries had become really inadequate, a writer ascribes the inefficiency of the Inquisition to the fact that the inquisitors-general were obliged to appoint ignorant men who happened to possess prebends or other benefices.[732]

[Sidenote: _AYUDA DE COSTA_]

There were also the gratifications for house-rent, illuminations, bull-fights and mourning, which the officials of the tribunals enjoyed, like those of the Suprema, although not on so liberal a scale, while the ayudas de costa replaced the propinas.[733] There was also a kindly liberality in granting extra ayudas de costa to those in need and to their widows and children when they died. Applications of this kind were perpetual and innumerable; they were made to the Suprema, which naturally found little difficulty in being charitable at the expense of others.[734] It would be needless to enumerate examples of what was of such constant occurrence and these liberalities, together with the exemptions and the economies in the cost of the necessaries of life, rendered the financial position of the officials reasonably secure. Perhaps the resources of the tribunals might have justified larger salaries if they had not been drawn upon to supply the extravagance of the Suprema and been squandered on other objects with careless profusion characteristic of the age. Thus, in 1633, a Doctor Pastor de Costa, of the Royal Council of Catalonia, obtained from Inquisitor-general Zapata, on the plea of services rendered by his father, a grant of a hundred ducats a year, in silver, on the tribunal of Barcelona. Doubtless it was suspended during the Catalan revolt to be subsequently resumed and, in 1665, he applied to Arce y Reynoso to confirm it to him for life, but Arce only ordered it to be continued for four years. Not content with this, he asked for an ayuda de costa on the ground of his poverty.[735] It is not surprising that Philip V, as we have seen, in his attempted reform of 1705, forbade all grants of over thirty ducats without his confirmation.

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