Chapter I: Confiscation (4)

Aliaga of Valencia was one of Ferdinand's oldest and most trusted receivers and had given evidence of similar powers of resistance, if we may judge from the anticipatory measures taken when the interests of the powerful favorite, the Prince of Chimay, were involved. When news was brought to the court of the reconciliation and confiscation of the wealthy Alonso de Abella of Valencia, a speedy partition was made among the vultures. Eight hundred ducats were assigned to Jean de Baudré and Philibert de la Baulme, gentlemen of the chamber, three hundred to another gentleman, Jayme de la Trullera, and the rest of the estate to the Prince of Chimay, after paying salaries, if they could not be met out of other confiscations. Orders to this effect were despatched to Aliaga, July 5, 1519, with a pressing letter from Charles to the inquisitors. Apparently the beneficiaries felt that more active measures were necessary; Simon Tisnot, the prince's majordomo, was empowered to receive the property and, as his agent, Gui Morillon was sent to Valencia, July 9th, with letters to the inquisitors, to the Governor of Valencia and to Aliaga. The inquisitors were told that, as the clause concerning salaries might be so construed as to consume the whole, they must order Aliaga, under pain of excommunication, to deliver to Chimay's agent, within three days, all the property, goods, debts and money of the confiscation, except the eleven hundred ducats to the other courtiers; if the necessities of the tribunal required any portion, it must be very moderate so that Chimay, if possible, might get the whole. The governor was ordered to help Tisnot and to urge the inquisitors to compel Aliaga to obey. Aliaga was told that, under pain of deprivation of office, he must deliver the estate to Morillon within three days and must strain every nerve to meet the needs of the tribunal from other sources, so that Chimay may suffer no deduction. If the salvation of the monarchy had depended on the realization of the grants, the letters could scarce have been more vehement. Yet it was all in vain; Aliaga was imperturbable and, on December 8th, Charles expressed his displeasure that the eleven hundred ducats had not yet been paid though he had postponed to them the grant to Chimay, but it is not likely that his vague threats, in case of further delay, proved effective.[1122]

In this carnival of plunder, there is small risk in assuming that the pressure on the tribunals gave a stimulus to the prosecution of the richer class of the Conversos and that wealth became more than ever a source of danger. In fact, the number of large estates referred to in these transactions would seem to indicate that few escaped whose sacrifice would supply needful funds to the Inquisition, while ministering to the greed of the courtiers. It need occasion no surprise, therefore, if the threatened New Christians, in their despair, appealed to Leo X and rendered it worth his while to remonstrate with Charles. Yet the latter, while scattering ducats by the thousand among his sycophants, had the effrontery to instruct his envoy, Lope Hurtado de Mendoza, September 24, 1519, to disabuse the pope as to the accusation that the Inquisition was prosecuting the rich for the confiscations, the truth being that all, or nearly all, of those prosecuted were poor, and that the fisc had to support them while in prison and to pay their advocates and procurators.[1123]

After Charles's departure, in May, 1520, to assume the imperial dignity, we hear of few new grants. He was rapidly ripening under the weight of the tremendous responsibilities accumulated upon him and was recognizing that his position implied other duties than the gratification of his courtiers' greed. It would seem that he willingly shifted upon the inquisitor-general and Suprema the burden of such trivial matters, and left it to them to assent to or dissent from such graces as he might bestow. A grant from a confiscation at Saragossa, dated at Brussels, October 1, 1520, bears the formula that it is with the assent and advice of the inquisitor-general and Council of Aragon, and, though it is signed by Ugo de Urries by order of the emperor, it has the _vidimus_ of Cardinal Adrian.[1124] Practically thus the control was lodged with the Suprema, whose needs, as we have seen, prevented any accumulations in the tribunals and we hear little or nothing subsequently of this dissipation of the confiscations.

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[Sidenote: _RESULTS_]

If I have entered thus minutely into the details of this branch of inquisitorial activity, it is because its importance has scarce been recognized by those who have treated of the Inquisition. It not only supplied the means of support to the institution during its period of greatest activity, but it was recognized by the inquisitors themselves as their most potent weapon and the one most dreaded by the industrious classes which formed their chief field of labor. Its potency is the measure of the misery which it inflicted, through long generations, on the innocent and helpless, far transcending the agonies of those who perished at the stake. To it was largely owing the ultimate extinction of Judaism in Spain, for the exalted heroism which might dare the horrors of the _brasero_ might well give way before the prospect of poverty to be endured by disinherited offspring. To it also is greatly attributable the stagnation of Spanish commerce and industry, for trade could not flourish when credit was impaired, and confidence could not exist when merchants and manufacturers of the highest standing might, at any moment, fall into the hands of the tribunal and all their assets be impounded. Even the liberality of the Spanish Inquisition, in not confiscating the debts due by the heretic, was but a slender mitigation of this, for the creditor was liable to ruin through the difficulties and delays interposed on the realization of his credits, and past transactions were not secure until protected by a proscription of forty years. The Inquisition came at a time when geographical discovery was revolutionizing the world's commerce, when the era of industrialism was dawning, and the future belonged to the nations which should have fewest trammels in adapting themselves to the new developments. The position of Spain was such as to give it control of the illimitable possibilities of the future, but it blindly threw away all its advantages into the laps of heretic Holland and England. Many causes, too intricate to be discussed here, contributed to this, but not the least among them was the bleeding to anæmia, through centuries, of the productive classes and the insecurity which the enforcement of confiscation cast over all the operations of commerce and industry.