Chapter XVI: Miscellaneous Business (2)

The brief was promptly transmitted to the tribunals by the Suprema, with orders for its enforcement which show how delicately such explosive material had to be handled. They were cautioned that, when they or their commissioners were present at sermons preached by Dominicans, they must be careful that any action taken was such as not to create scandal. They were not trusted with prosecuting transgressors, but were ordered, beforehand, to transmit to the Suprema the sumarias with the opinions of the calificadores, and to await instructions. Apparently the customary jealousy arose between the episcopal and inquisitorial jurisdictions, for a carta acordada of 1667 calls for information as to whether the Ordinaries concurred in hearing cases, or whether they were treated as belonging exclusively to the Inquisition.[782]

It was impossible to make the angry disputants keep the peace, and the Suprema was busy in condemning and suppressing writings on both sides. In 1663 we find it ordering the seizure at the ports of two books printed in Italy. An edict of January 4, 1664, suppressed fifteen books and tracts, issued in 1662 and 1663, as indecent and irreverent to the Holy See, the Religion of St. Dominic and the Angelic Doctor Aquinas. Another decree, of December 7, 1671, suppressed two books indecently attacking the Dominicans and another of prayers and exercises for the devotion of the Immaculate Conception by the Franciscan Provincial Bonaqua. Books of devotion thus assumed a controversial character, and we can safely assume this to be the cause of an order, in 1679, to seize at Alicante and transmit to the Suprema a box of Dominican breviaries.[783]

I have chanced to meet with but few cases of prosecutions for impugning the Immaculate Conception, but they occurred occasionally. Thus, in 1782, Don Antonio Fornes, a pilot's mate of a naval vessel, was tried in Seville for obstinately denying it and, in 1785, Don Isidro Moreno, a physician, and his son Joaquin, were brought before the Saragossa tribunal for the same offence.[784]

UNNATURAL CRIME.

Inherited from classical antiquity, unnatural crime was persistent throughout the Middle Ages, in spite of the combined efforts of Church and State. It is true that, with the leniency shown to clerical offenders, the Council of Lateran, in 1179, prescribed for them only degradation or penitential confinement in a monastery, which was carried into the canon law, but secular legislation was more severe and the usual penalty was burning alive.[785] In Spain, in the thirteenth century, the punishment prescribed was castration and lapidation, but, in 1497, Ferdinand and Isabella decreed burning alive and confiscation, irrespective of the station of the culprit. The crime was _mixti fori_--the law treated it as subject to the secular courts, but it was also ecclesiastical and, in 1451, Nicholas V empowered the Inquisition to deal with it.[786] When the institution was founded in Spain it seems to have assumed cognizance, for we are told that, in 1506, the Seville tribunal made it the subject of a special inquest; there were many arrests and many fugitives, and twelve convicts were duly burnt.[787] Possibly this may have called attention to the incongruity of diverting the Inquisition from its legitimate duties with the New Christians, for a decree of the Suprema, October 18, 1509, assumes that this had already been recognized, and it informs the tribunals that they are not to deal with the crime, as it was not within their jurisdiction.[788] This apparently settled the matter as far as the Castilian kingdoms were concerned.

[Sidenote: _UNNATURAL CRIME_]

In Aragon it does not appear that the early Inquisition took cognizance of the matter, as is shown by the curious connection of the crime with the rising of the Germanía. In 1519, the city of Valencia was suffering from a pestilence which had driven away most of the nobles and higher officials when, on St. Magdalen's day (June 14th), Fray Luis Castelloli preached an eloquent sermon in which he attributed the pest to the wrath of God excited by the prevalence of the offence. The populace were excited and hunted up four culprits, who confessed and were duly burnt by the justiciary, Hieronimo Farragud, on July 29th. There was a fifth, a baker who wore the tonsure and was delivered to the episcopal court, which sentenced him to vergüenza. This dissatisfied the people who tore him from the spiritual authorities, garroted and burnt him. The governor was summoned, and the leaders of the mob feared punishment. There had been a scare concerning a rumored attack by the Moors, which had led the trades to form military companies; these were further organized, elected a chief and swore confraternity, when, recognizing their strength, they utilized the opportunity of gratifying their hatred of the nobles and the rebellion broke out.[789]

In all this the Inquisition was evidently not thought of as having jurisdiction, but possibly it may have drawn attention to the crime and led to an application to Clement VII for a special brief placing it under inquisitorial jurisdiction. Bleda, however, tells us that, when the Duke of Sessa, ambassador at Rome, made request for such a brief, he gave as a reason that it had been introduced into Spain by the Moors.[790] Be this as it may, the brief of Clement, February 24, 1524, recites that Sessa had represented the increasing prevalence of the crime and had asked for an appropriate remedy, which the pope proceeded to grant. The form in which it is drawn shows that the matter was regarded as wholly foreign to the regular duties of the Holy Office, for it is addressed, not to the inquisitor-general as usual, but to the individual inquisitors of Aragon, Catalonia and Valencia, and it authorizes them to sub-delegate their powers to whom they please. They are empowered to proceed against all persons, lay or clerical, of whatever rank, either by accusation, denunciation, inquisition, or of their own motion, and to compel the testimony of unwilling witnesses. That the offence was not ecclesiastical or heretical was admitted by the limitation that the trial was to be conducted in accordance with local municipal law, but yet, with singular inconsistency, the episcopal Ordinary was to be called in when rendering sentence.[791] The Barcelona tribunal seems to have questioned, in 1537, whether the brief continued in force, for the Suprema wrote to it July 11th, that there had not been time to decide this positively, but that it might continue to act.[792] Whatever doubts existed were settled in favor of the Inquisition, and the Aragonese tribunals enjoyed the jurisdiction to the end. The Archbishop of Saragossa had complained of being thus deprived of cognizance of these cases, and it was restored to him by a brief of January 16, 1525, but, at the request of Charles V, Pope Clement, July 15, 1530, evoked all pending cases to himself and committed them to the inquisitors, with full power to decide them, in conjunction with the Ordinary.[793]

Castile was never included within the special grant. In answer to some inquiring tribunal, the Suprema replied, November 6, 1534, that the matter did not pertain to the Inquisition, nor was it deemed advisable to procure a brief conferring such power. This was adhered to. In 1575, the Logroño tribunal was informed that it could not prosecute such cases as it had no faculty and, about 1580, the tribunal of Peru was told not to meddle with it in any way, except in cases of solicitation.[794] The Consulta Magna of 1696 states that Philip II, towards the close of his reign, applied to Clement VIII for a brief conferring the power on the Castilian Inquisition, but the pope declined for the reason that the whole attention of the inquisitors should be concentrated on matters of faith.[795]

Majorca, although belonging to the crown of Aragon, was not specifically included in the brief of Clement VII, and never assumed the power. When, in 1644, the commissioner in Iviza reported to Inquisitor Francisco Gregorio about Jaime Gallestria, a cleric denounced for this offence, Gregorio replied that he had no jurisdiction; still the tribunal was accustomed to arrest offenders and hand them over for trial to the secular judges, so he sent a warrant for the arrest of Gallestria, even though he had taken asylum in a church.[796] It is symptomatic that arrest by the Inquisition, for a crime over which it had no jurisdiction, was considered a matter of course.

[Sidenote: _UNNATURAL CRIME_]

Sicily also belonged to Aragon, but was not included. In 1569 Philip II ordered the death-penalty to be rigidly enforced, without exceptions, and that the informer should receive twenty ounces from the estate of the convict, but this was slackly obeyed by the secular courts and, in the Concordia of 1597, he reserved the crime exclusively to the Inquisition, with the understanding that a papal brief should be applied for, relieving inquisitors from irregularity for relaxing culprits. Application was accordingly made to Clement VIII, but, after Philip's death, the Viceroy Duke of Maqueda and the ambassador, the Duke of Sessa, at the instance of influential Sicilians, urged Clement to refuse, which he not only did but forbade the Inquisition to take cognizance of such cases. The tribunal complained that this deprived it of its jurisdiction over its own officials, to which the reply was that it was not the pope's intention to exonerate them from it. The tribunal therefore continued to punish its own guilty ministers, and the number of cases cited would seem to indicate that the crime was by no means uncommon. The punishments inflicted were comparatively moderate--occasionally imprisonment for life or banishment, perpetual or temporary, from the place of offending, or deprivation of office with heavy fines.[797]

Dr. Martin Real, who tells us this, writing in 1638, further informs us that, throughout Italy, the crime was everywhere treated with a leniency wholly inadequate to its atrocity. The Roman Inquisition, moreover, took no cognizance of it. When, in 1644, some Conventual Franciscans rendered themselves conspicuous by sounding the praises of the practice, the Congregation contented itself with ordering their superiors to proceed against them with severity.[798]

In Portugal, João III had no sooner got his Inquisition into working order than he was seized with the desire to obtain for it jurisdiction over the _pecado maao_. This he pursued with characteristic obstinacy, while the papacy manifested its customary repugnance. It was not until after his death that Pius IV, in a brief of February 20, 1562, committed the decision to the conscience of Cardinal Henrique, confirming in advance what he might do--but trials were to be conducted according to municipal law. Henrique had no scruples, but, in 1574, he applied to Gregory XIII for confirmation and for using the process for heresy in these cases, when again the pope committed to him the decision and ratified it in advance.[799] In 1640, the Regulations prescribe that the offence is to be tried like heresy, and the punishment is to be either relaxation or scourging and the galleys. In a case occurring in the Lisbon auto of 1723, the sentence was scourging and ten years of galley-service.[800]

* * * * *

In their general hostility to the Inquisition, the Aragonese kingdoms objected to this extension of its jurisdiction. There were complaints by the Córtes and, in the various Concordias and settlements, there were concessions secured which gave to the secular judges some participation in the trials. Into the details of these more or less temporary arrangements it is scarce worth while to enter, except to mention that, in the struggle which resulted in the Concordia of 1646, Aragon gained the point that the crime was recognized as _mixti fori_, to be tried by either the secular court or the Inquisition, according to priority in commencing action, and that familiars were included in this.[801]

The current practice may be gathered from the answers of Valencia and Saragossa, in response to inquiries by the Suprema, in 1573. In Valencia arrest was accompanied by sequestration, but not in Aragon, where the crime did not entail confiscation. In Aragon, when a new inquisitor was inducted, the papal briefs were presented to him and he accepted them, and all sentences commenced by qualifying the inquisitors as _juezes comisarios apostolicos para conocer en el crimen de sodomia_, showing that this was a special jurisdiction. The routine of procedure in the two tribunals did not vary much; the process was somewhat simpler than in heresy trials, the accused was allowed ample means of defence in counsel, advocates and procurators, witnesses' names were not suppressed, except in Valencia when the accused was of high rank, in which case the Suprema was consulted. After the publication of evidence, the procurator had the right to examine the witnesses. The Concordia of 1568 had provided that convicts should not appear in autos, but in Aragon this was left to the discretion of the tribunal, which generally exhibited them there.[802]

[Sidenote: _UNNATURAL CRIME_]

These reports make no allusion to the concurrence of secular judges, but the practice may be gathered from a letter of Philip II, March 17, 1575, to the Captain-general of Catalonia, where it appears that, when a convict was relaxed, the royal court demanded to see the papers of the case before pronouncing sentence. This the king pronounced to be wholly wrong and ordered the custom of Valencia and Aragon to be followed--that, when a case was ready for decision, the inquisitors notified the captain-general, who delegated judges to take part in the consulta, after which the sentence was to be executed without further examination.[803]

Torture was freely employed, even on the testimony of a single accomplice. This raised a question in Aragon, where the use of torture was forbidden, as the trials were to be conducted in accordance with municipal law, but the Inquisition replied that the brief of Clement VII had been applied for at the request of the secular judges, who had found themselves unable to convict for lack of torture, and desired, for that reason, the Inquisition to have jurisdiction--the truth of which assertion may well be doubted. In 1636 there was raised a question as to torturing witnesses who revoked, but it was decided in the negative.[804]

Punishment varied with time and place. In Aragon, spontaneous confession was encouraged by simply reprimanding the culprit, warning him and ordering him to confess sacramentally, and this was confirmed by the Suprema, in a decree of August 6, 1600. In Valencia, however, self-denunciation was visited with scourging and galleys and, if testimony of accomplices supervened, with relaxation.[805] For those accused and regularly convicted, the statutory and ordinary punishment was burning. When, in 1577, the Captain-general of Valencia had some hesitation as to his duty, in the case of two culprits relaxed to him by the Inquisition, Philip II ordered him to execute them promptly and, as late as 1647, in an auto at Barcelona, one was garroted and burnt.[806] Yet, on the whole, there seems to have been a disinclination to relax these offenders, who could not escape, as heretics could, by confession and conversion. In 1616 we find the Suprema asking the Valencia tribunal why it had not confiscated the estate of Dr. Pérez, convicted of this crime and, in 1634, it enquires whether there is any fuero prohibiting the _pena ordinaria_, when guilt has been fully proved and the offender is of full age.[807] About 1640, an experienced inquisitor informs us that, in Saragossa, the penalty for those over 25 was relaxation; for minors, scourging and the galleys, but he adds that this is not observed; he had seen many thus convicted and condemned to relaxation, but the Suprema always commuted the penalty.[808]

Ecclesiastics seem to have been regarded as entitled to especial leniency. In 1684, the Suprema called to account the Valencia tribunal for its benignity, in a case of this kind, when it replied in much detail. Two decrees of Pius V in 1568, it said, had prescribed relaxation, with preliminary degradation, in the case of priests and, in 1574, the tribunal had so treated the case of a subdeacon. Many authorities, however, held that clerics were not to be subjected to the rigor of the law for this offence, and it was the common opinion that incorrigibility was required to justify the ordinary penalty. This had been the practice in Valencia, especially since 1615, when a priest was convicted of a single act and, by order of the Suprema, was sentenced to an extraordinary penalty. This had since been followed in various cases, so that clerics were not relaxed unless incorrigible, and this was defined to be when repeated punishment showed that the Church could not reform them. This argument, moreover, precluded the use of torture which, as the tribunal pointed out, could be used only when the penalty was worse than torture.[809]

[Sidenote: _UNNATURAL CRIME_]

The case which called forth this explanation affords a very instructive example of the advantage to justice of an open trial, with opportunity of cross-examination. The accused was Fray Manuel Sánchez del Castellar y Arbustan, a distinguished member of the Order of La Merced. The trial had lasted for nearly three years, when the papers were submitted to the Suprema, in August, 1684. There were two accomplice witnesses to consummated acts, others to solicitation, others to lascivious and filthy actions, and others to general foul reputation. Under the ordinary inquisitorial process, condemnation would have been inevitable, but repeated examinations and cross-examinations revealed discrepancies and contradictions and variations, and a knowledge of the witnesses enabled the accused to present evidence of enmities. The conclusion reached by the tribunal was that nearly the whole mass of evidence was the result of a conspiracy, embracing a number of frailes of the convent, incited by jealousy of the honors and position obtained by Sánchez. Still, there was some testimony as to indiscretions, which was not rebutted and, as there had been a great scandal requiring a victim, with customary inquisitorial logic, he was sentenced to four years' exile from Valencia, Orihuela and Madrid, for the first two of which he was deprived of active and passive voice, of confessing and preaching and of all honors in his Order. In this, consideration was given to three years spent in prison, so that, if innocent, he had suffered severely and was sent forth branded with an ineffaceable stigma while, if guilty, he had a penalty far less than his deserts. When the Suprema asked why the two witnesses to complicity were not prosecuted, the tribunal replied that they were regarded as spontaneously confessing, and it was not customary to prosecute in such cases; besides, although their enmity and contradictions invalidated their testimony, these were insufficient to justify prosecution for false-witness.[810] Altogether it was an unpleasant business, which the tribunal evidently desired to despatch with as little damage as possible to the Church.

The tendency towards leniency increased with time, and was shown to laymen as well as to ecclesiastics. In 1717, the Barcelona tribunal sentenced Guillaume Amiel, a Frenchman, to four years of presidio and perpetual banishment from Spain. The Suprema commuted the presidio to a hundred lashes but, when the sentence was read, Amiel protested that his father was a gentleman and that he held a patent as "teniente del Rey Christianisimo," thus claiming exemption from degrading corporal punishment. The proceedings were suspended, and the Suprema was consulted, which omitted the lashes and, on the same account, the boy Ramon Gils, who was the accomplice, was spared the vergüenza to which he had been condemned.[811]

[Sidenote: _USURY_]

The most conspicuous case of this nature in the annals of the Inquisition was that of Don Pedro Luis Galceran de Borja, Grand-master of the Order of Montesa. He was not only a grandee of Spain, but was allied to the royal house, he was half-brother to Francisco de Borja, Duke of Grandía and subsequently General of the Jesuits, and was of kin to nearly all the noblest lineages of the land. For his arrest, in 1571, the assent of Philip II was necessary; he was not confined in the secret prison, but had commodious apartments from which, during his trial, he conducted the affairs of the Order. He claimed exemption on the ground of the privileges of the Order, and more than two years were spent in debating the question, though it was pointed out that, while the Trinitarians had even greater privileges, two members professed of that Order had recently been relaxed for the same crime, and Borja was not even a cleric, but a married man with children. The claim was finally disallowed and the trial went slowly on. The evidence reduced itself to two "singular" witnesses, who testified to solicitation and attempt, and to one, Martin de Castro, who testified to consummation and then revoked. Powerful influence from all quarters was brought to bear to save the accused, and in the final consulta de fe there was discordia. Two inquisitors and the Ordinary voted for acquittal. The other inquisitor, who was Juan de Rojas, in a written opinion, called for four years of exile and a heavy fine. The Suprema, after prolonged correspondence with the tribunal, accepted this, but changed the exile to six years of reclusion in his convent of Montesa. Llorente intimates that the inquisitors expected to gain bishoprics, or at least places in the Suprema, and that a bargain was made through which, on Borja's death, the Order of Montesa was incorporated with the crown, as the military Orders of Castile had been under Ferdinand; to this latter some color was lent by Philip's appointment of Borja's natural son to the grand commandership of the Order, from which he rose to the cardinalate. There is an evident allusion to this case in the remark of an Italian traveller in 1593, who, when speaking of the severity of the Inquisition in these matters, illustrates it by the story of a grandee who, for merely throwing his arm around the neck of a page, spent ten years in prison and fifty thousand ducats.[812]

Cases were sufficiently frequent to give the Aragonese tribunals considerable occupation, especially after it was included in the Edict of Faith in 1574, as a crime to be denounced.[813] I have but a few scattering data, but they are suggestive. Thus, in Saragossa, at the auto of June 6, 1585, there were four culprits relaxed.[814] In Catalonia, in 1597, the report, by Inquisitor Heredia, of a visitation through the see of Tarragona and parts of those of Barcelona, Vich and Urgel, contains sixty-eight cases of all kinds and of these fifteen were for this class of offences, though most of them were subsequently suspended.[815] In Valencia, there appeared in the autos from January 1598 to December 1602, twenty-seven of these culprits, of whom seven were frailes.[816] As it was customary to read the sentences _con meritos_, the populace had an edifying education. From 1780 to 1820, the total number of cases coming before the three tribunals was exactly one hundred.[817]

USURY.

The ecclesiastical definition of usury is not, as we understand the term, an exorbitant charge for the use of money, beyond the legal rate, but any interest or other advantage, however small or indirect, derived from a loan of money or other article. Forbidden by the Old Law, between the Chosen People, and extended under the New to the brotherhood of man, it has been the subject of denunciation continuously from the primitive Church to the most recent times. Ingenuity has been exhausted in devising methods of repression and punishment, only to show how impossible has been the task of warring against human nature and human necessities.

From an early period, usury was regarded as an ecclesiastical sin and crime, subject to spiritual jurisdiction in both the _forum internum_ and _forum externum_. In 1258 Alexander IV rendered it justiciable by the Inquisition and, at the Council of Vienne, in 1312, the assertion that the taking of interest is not a sin was defined to be a heresy, which the Inquisition was in duty required to prosecute.[818] During the later Middle Ages, when the greater heresies had been largely suppressed, the prosecution of usurers formed a considerable, and the most profitable, portion of inquisitorial activity. It is true that the heresy consisted in denying that usury is a sin, but, as the Repertorium of 1494 explains, the usurer or simonist, who does not affirm or deny but is silent and tacitly believes it not to be a sin to commit usury or simony, is a pertinacious heretic mentally.[819]

[Sidenote: _USURY_]

In Spain, the usurious practices of Jews and Conversos were the principal source of popular hostility, but Jews were not subject to the Inquisition and, in its earlier years, it appears not to have recognized its jurisdiction in this matter over the Conversos, for I have met with no trace, at this period, of action by it against usury, whether in Castile or in Aragon. As regards the latter, indeed, it was impeded by a fuero of the Córtes of Calatayud, in 1461, prohibiting the prosecution of usurers, by both the secular and spiritual courts, and the procuring of faculties for the purpose by the Inquisition. To ensure the observance of this, Juan II was required to swear that he would not obtain any papal rescript or commission authorizing inquisition into usury and that, if such rescript were had, it should not be used but be delivered within a month to the Diputados.[820] It may be assumed that the Inquisition sought relief from this restriction, for Julius II issued a _motu proprio_, January 14, 1504, reciting the fuero of Calatayud and stating that the _usuraria pravitas_ had so increased that a measure of wheat would be multiplied to twenty-five within three years, chiefly because the Inquisition, in consequence of this fuero, was precluded from the exercise of its lawful jurisdiction. He therefore ordered Inquisitor-general Deza to prosecute all Christian usurers and compel them to desist, by inflicting the penalties prescribed by the general council, while Ferdinand was summoned to aid the inquisitors, and he and his successors were released from any oaths to observe the fuero.[821]

As all commercial and financial transactions at the time were based on interest payment and, as the agriculturist habitually borrowed seed-corn before sowing, to be repaid with increase after harvest, the Inquisition thus had an ample field opened for its operations. That it did not neglect the opportunity is fairly inferable from the opposition excited. It was the subject of one of the most energetic remonstrances of the Córtes of Monzon in 1510, and the Concordia of 1512 bore an article in which Ferdinand promised to obtain from the pope the revocation of the faculties granted to the inquisitors; that he would allow no other grant to be obtained, and that meanwhile he would arrange that no prosecutions should be brought except for open assertion that usury was no sin. For this, as for the other articles, he swore to procure the papal confirmation. Inquisitors were likewise sworn to obey the Concordia and, when Ferdinand was released from his oath by Leo X, in the brief of April 30, 1513, a _motu proprio_ followed, September 2d, to the effect that, as heresy and usury are the most heinous of crimes, to be prosecuted with the sharpest rigor, the inquisitors were released from their oaths and directed to employ the faculties granted by Julius II for the suppression of usury.[822] This serves to explain why, in the compromise embodied in Inquisitor-general Mercader's Instructions of 1514, there is no allusion to usury--the inquisitors were not to be disturbed in the exercise of their functions in this respect.[823] When, however, Leo, in 1516, confirmed the Concordia of 1512, he removed usury from inquisitorial jurisdiction and prohibited its prosecution unless the culprit should hold it not to be a sin.[824]

It has already been seen how completely the Inquisition ignored all these agreements, in spite of royal and papal confirmations. So, when Charles V was obliged, in 1518, at the Córtes of Saragossa, to take the specific and elaborate oath imposed on Juan II, it proved equally futile.[825] Inquisitors continued to exercise jurisdiction, but, in Aragon proper, they were impeded for a time by a brief of Clement VII, January 16, 1525, ordering them to confine themselves in future to heresy--a brief procured by Juan of Austria, Archbishop of Saragossa, who claimed jurisdiction over usury for his own court.[826] This afforded slender relief, for he employed the inquisitorial process and the Córtes of Saragossa, in 1528, adopted a fuero, confirmed by Charles V, reciting that the laws provide for the punishment of usurers by the secular courts, but that the ecclesiastical judges were prosecuting them, wherefore, at the desire of the four brazos, his majesty ordered the ancient laws of the kingdom to be enforced without exception.[827]

So long as the Inquisition was not involved, Charles was indifferent as to how usurers were treated, but, when the Catalans, at the Córtes of Monzon, in the same year, complained of the prosecution of usury by inquisitors and petitioned that it be prevented, he drily answered that the laws should be observed and justice should be done.[828] No greater satisfaction than this could be had when, a few years later, the Córtes of the three kingdoms reiterated the complaint of the prosecutions for usury by the Inquisition, inflicting an ineffaceable stain upon parties and their descendants, even though they were discharged without penance. The reply of the inquisitor-general to this was a simple denial, coupled with the demand that the names of injured parties should be produced.[829]

[Sidenote: _MORALS_]

In the absence of documents, it is not easy to understand why the Inquisition suddenly abandoned a jurisdiction for which it had contended so strenuously, but so it was. In 1552, Simancas asserts that inquisitors have no cognizance of questions arising from usury, but must leave them to the Ordinaries, for usurers are not moved by erroneous belief, but by the desire for sordid gains.[830] In this Simancas evidently spoke by authority, for the Suprema, in a carta acordada of March 17, 1554, forbade the tribunals to take cognizance of usury, and the subject disappears from inquisitorial records.[831] The secular and spiritual courts were left to fight the losing battle with industrial and commercial progress, which eventually compelled the recognition of the fact that payment for the usance of money is customarily profitable to both parties.

MORALS

The object of the Inquisition was the preservation of the purity of faith and not the improvement of morals. The view taken of its duties as to the latter is set forth in the comments of the Suprema on the report by de Soto Salazar of his visitation, in 1566, of the Barcelona tribunal. Clement, Abbot of Ripoll, was prosecuted for saying that so great was the mercy of God that he would pardon a sinner who confessed, even though he had not a firm intention to abstain in future, and also for keeping a nun as a mistress. He was fined in four hundred ducats, and was ordered to break off relations with the nun under pain of a thousand ducats. The Suprema sharply reprimanded Inquisitor Padilla for inflicting so heavy a penalty and for exceeding his jurisdiction in prohibiting the unlawful connection. So, when the inquisitors fined Jaime Bocca, an unmarried familiar, in twelve ducats for keeping a married woman as mistress, the Suprema told them that it was none of their business. It is true that in two other cases of familiars, fined in twenty ducats each for keeping mistresses, the comment is simply that the rigor was excessive.[832]

The same principle, as we have seen, was observed in the treatment of solicitation. The question of morals was studiously excluded, as a matter entirely beyond the purview of the Inquisition, and the only point considered was the technical one whether cases came within papal definitions drawn up to safeguard the sacrament of penitence. The same remark applies to the vigorous prosecution of those who held simple fornication to be no sin. There was no attempt to repress the sin itself, for this was beyond the faculties conferred on the Inquisition, but merely to ascertain and punish the mental attitude of the accused.

As time passed on, however, and as the heretics who were the legitimate objects of the Holy Office grew scarce, there arose a tendency to enlarge its sphere of action and to assume the position of acustos morum. This has been seen in the censorship, which, during the later period, came to be applied not only to obscene books but to all manner of works of art that did not accord with the censor's standard of decency.

From this it was an easy step to intervene in the private lives of individuals, in matters wholly apart from its legitimate jurisdiction, of which we find occasional examples in the later period of decadence. Thus, in 1784, Josef Mas was prosecuted in Valencia for singing an improper song at a dance, and in 1791, there is a prosecution of Manuel de Pino for "indecent and irreligious acts." In 1792 the Barcelona tribunal takes the testimony of Ramon Seroles of Lloc, with respect to the scandalous life of the parish priest of that place and his abuse of the holy oils. In 1810 the Valencia tribunal is investigating Rosa Avinent, keeper of a tobacco-shop, for suspicion of maltreating some children in her house. In 1816 the Santiago tribunal sentences Don Miguel Quereyzaeta, a post-office official, to leave the city where he has led a disorderly and scandalous life, and charges him to reconcile himself to his wife and to live with her. In 1819, Don Antonio Clemente de Polar is prosecuted by the Madrid tribunal for propositions and for dressing in such wise as to satisfy the passions and for other excesses.[833]

[Sidenote: _THE SEAL OF CONFESSION_]

In these and similar cases, it may be assumed that the parties inculpated richly deserved correction, but this sporadic defence of virtue and punishment of vice was much more likely to encourage the gratification of malice than to elevate the standard of public morals, and the employment of the tremendous machinery of the Inquisition in such matters marks the depth of its fall from its former height. Had its object from the beginning been the purification of morals as well as of religion, possibly the awe which it inspired in all classes might have resulted in some ethical improvement but, during the time of its power, the impression that it produced was that morals were of slender account in comparison with faith and, in the day of its decline, these occasional attempts to extend its jurisdiction could only produce exasperation without amendment.

THE SEAL OF CONFESSION.

When, in 1216, the fourth Council of Lateran rendered auricular confession imperative, it was essential that the father confessor should be bound to preserve absolute silence as to the sins revealed to him. For a time there were some exceptions admitted, as heresy for instance, but eventually the obligation became universal and the schoolmen exhausted their ingenuity in devising the most extreme cases by which to illustrate the inviolability of what has become known as the seal of confession. Human nature being what it is, and priestly nature being subject to human infirmities, the violation of the seal has, at all times, been a source of anxiety and the object of rigorous punishment, administered to the secular clergy by the spiritual courts, and to the regulars by their superiors. The Roman Inquisition, in the first half-century of its existence, assumed exclusive cognizance of the offence, and demanded that all offenders, whether secular or regular, should be tried by its tribunals, but, in 1609, it abandoned its jurisdiction and left them to their bishops and prelates.[834]

As the heresy involved in betraying the confidence of the penitent was only an inferential error as to the sacrament--an artificial pretext like that devised with regard to solicitation--the Spanish Inquisition did not hold it to be comprised in the general delegation of faculties, but that a special papal commission was requisite. No attempt seems to have been made to obtain this until 1639, when, on October 11th, the Suprema addressed Philip IV a consulta setting forth that numerous denunciations were received by the tribunals against confessors who revealed confessions, and that inquisitors were asking urgently for permission to prosecute such cases as violations of divine, natural and political law, rendering culprits suspect in the faith, this being even more derisory of the sacrament than solicitation. It was notorious that the Ordinaries did not check it among the secular clergy, nor their prelates among the regulars, nor could, in such hands, any remedy be efficacious, because in public trials the witnesses would be bought off or frightened off, and there were no secret prisons to assure the necessary segregation of the accused. The king was therefore asked to procure from the pope, for the Inquisition, exclusive jurisdiction over the offence.[835] The Suprema probably did not exaggerate as to the denunciations received by the tribunals, for, in the minor one of the Canaries, we find it, in 1637, receiving testimony against Diego Artiaga, priest of Hierro, for this offence, in 1643, against Diego Salgado, priest of la Palma and, in 1644 against Fray Matías Pinto of Teneriffe.[836]

There can be no doubt that Philip, as usual, acceded to the request of the Suprema, but Urban VIII seems not to have been responsive. He had a plausible reason for declining, in the fact that the Roman Inquisition had abandoned its jurisdiction over the matter and, at the moment, he was at odds with the Spanish over the question of censorship and of the Plomos del Sacromonte. The offence was never included in the Edict of Faith, but occasionally it is enumerated among the charges against confessors on trial for solicitation, as in the cases of the Franciscan Fray Juan Pachon de Salas, in Mexico in 1712, of the Carmelite Ventura de San Joaquin in 1794, and of Fray Antonio Ortuño in 1807.[837] It was difficult to eradicate belief in the competence of the Inquisition and, as lately as 1808, José Antonio Alvárez, priest of Horcajo de los Montes, was denounced for this offence to the Toledo tribunal, but the trial was suspended, probably through doubt as to jurisdiction.[838] When the question was brought up squarely, in the case of Doctor Don Francisco Torneo, before the Valencia tribunal, after due discussion it decided, March 28, 1816, that it had no jurisdiction, and the case was accordingly dismissed.[839]

GENERAL UTILITY.

[Sidenote: _GENERAL UTILITY_]

The efficient organization of the Inquisition and the dread which it inspired caused it to be invoked in numberless contingencies, most diverse in character and wholly foreign to the objects of its institution. A brief enumeration of a few of these will serve to complete our survey of its activity and, trivial as they may seem, to illustrate how powerful was the influence which it exercised over the social life of Spain.

The value of its services, arising from the indefinite extent of its powers, was recognized early. In 1499, a Benedictine monastery complained to Ferdinand that it had pledged a cross to a certain Pedro de Santa Cruz and could not recover it, as he had placed himself under protection of Dominicans, who claimed exemption from legal processes. Ferdinand thereupon ordered the inquisitors of the city to settle the matter; they neglected it and he wrote again peremptorily, instructing them to seize the cross and do justice between the parties. In April, 1500, the king instructs the Valencia tribunal to recover for Don Ramon López, of the royal guard, two runaway slaves and some plate which they had stolen.[840] Evidently there was no little variety of duties expected of the Holy Office.

In 1518 a nunnery of Clares, in Calatayud, complained that, within ten paces of their house, there had been built a Mercenarian convent of which the inmates were disorderly; the nuns could not walk in their garden without being seen and great scandals were apprehended. Charles V applied to Leo X to have the Mercenarians replaced by Benedictines or Gerónimites and the Inquisition was invoked to assist.[841] Parties sometimes obtained papal briefs to have their suits transferred to the tribunals. In 1548 Doña Aldonza Cerdan did this in a litigation with Don Hernando de la Caballería and, in 1561, Doña Isabel de Francia in a suit with Don Juan de Heredia. In both cases the inquisitors of Saragossa refused to act until Inquisitor-general Valdés ordered them to do so.[842] All inquisitors were not thus self-restrained, for when, about this time, a general command was issued forbidding them to prosecute for perjury committed in other courts, it shows that they had been asked to do so and that some of them, at least, were ready to undertake such business.[843] In 1647, when the prevalence of duelling called for some effective means of repression, among the remedies proposed was that sending a challenge should be made a matter for the Inquisition, on the ground that the infamy accruing to the offender and his descendants would be the most effective discouragement to punctilious gentlemen.[844] The suggestion apparently was not adopted, but it illustrates the readiness to have recourse to the elastic jurisdiction of the Holy Office.

The Jesuits found the Inquisition of much service when, through the favor of Olivares, they were enabled to invoke its intervention in one of their quarrels with the Dominicans. In 1634, Fray Francisco Roales issued a pamphlet against the Society and Dr. Espino, an ex-Carmelite, published two others. They were answered by Padre Salazar and there the matter might have ended, but the Jesuits appealed to Philip IV and to Olivares, who promised satisfaction and ordered the Inquisitor-general Sotomayor (himself a Dominican) to take action, with the significant hint that he would be watched. A royal decree of January 29, 1635, rebuked the Suprema for lack of zeal, and ordered it to act with all diligence and to inflict severe punishment. It responded promptly on February 1st with an edict suppressing the pamphlet of Roales under heavy penalties, but this did not suffice and, on June 30th, it prohibited every one, layman or ecclesiastic, from saying anything in private or in public, derogatory to any religious Order or the members thereof, under exemplary penalties, to be rigorously executed--a decree which had to be repeated in 1643.

On June 27, 1635 the three obnoxious pamphlets were burned with unprecedented ceremony. There was a solemn procession of the officials and familiars, with the standards of the Inquisition, while a mule with carmine velvet trappings bore a chest painted with flames in which were the condemned writings. It traversed the principal streets to the plaza, where a fire was lighted; a herald, with sound of trumpet, proclaimed that the Company of Jesus was relieved of all that had been said against it and that these papers were false, calumnious, impious and scandalous; they were cast by the executioner into the flames and then the box and the procession wended their way solemnly back to the Dominican College of San Tomas. The effect of the demonstration, however, was somewhat marred by the populace believing that the box contained the bones of a misbelieving Jew, and accompanying the procession with shouts of "Death to the dogs!" and other pious ejaculations.

[Sidenote: _General Utility_]

Espino was arrested and incarcerated--not for the last time for, in 1643, he boasted that he had been imprisoned fifteen times for his attacks on the Jesuits. Roales was more fortunate; he was a chaplain of Philibert of Savoy; his pamphlet had been printed in Milan and he was safe in Rome, but a printer who had issued an edition in Saragossa was arrested and presumably sent to the galleys, and a Dominican Fray Cañamero, who had circulated the three pamphlets, was ordered to be arrested but seems to have saved himself by flight. Still the irrepressible conflict continued and the Inquisition was kept busy in prosecuting offenders and suppressing obnoxious utterances. It even construed its duty so rigidly that it condemned a memorial of the unfortunate creditors who suffered by the bankruptcy, in 1645, of the Jesuit College of San Hermengildo in Seville, when some three hundred depositors lost four hundred and fifty thousand ducats, and were struggling to rescue the remaining assets from the hands of the Jesuits.[845]

The Granada tribunal did not pause to enquire as to its jurisdiction when, in May 1646, owing to the scarcity of wheat, there were bread-riots and the mob had control of the city. It summoned all the grain-measurers and porters, under pain of excommunication, to appear before it on a matter of importance. By examining them, considerable stores of hidden corn were revealed; the corregidores registered it and the price was fixed at forty-two reales.[846] This was volunteer action but, in 1648, when a pestilence was raging in Valencia, the tribunal was called upon to maintain the quarantine at one of the city gates. The king, on February 1, 1649, notified the Suprema that the pest had ceased in Valencia, but that it was violent at Cádiz, San Lucar and other places, and urged continued vigilance, to which the Suprema replied that it had, since April, done its full duty, but that the municipal officials were very negligent, and it asked him to order them to do their share.[847] Apparently the Inquisition was relied upon for quarantine work. As lately as July 2, 1818, the Suprema wrote to all the tribunals that the plague had appeared at Tangier and threatened Spain with the most terrible of calamities. The king had ordered energetic precautions, in which all branches of the Government must coöperate, and it was no time for hesitation or scruples. The tribunals were therefore instructed to keep watch on the officials of all departments and see that they did their duty and, if they could devise more effective measures, they were invited to make suggestions.[848]

The unlimited interference of the Inquisition with matters pertaining to episcopal supervision is seen in two or three cases tried by the Madrid tribunal. May 5, 1656, it sentenced the priest, Francisco Pérez Lozano, to exile for a year from various places for his share in founding a confraternity with what were called "statutos execrables." February 6, 1688, Juan Moreno de Piedrola, a priest of the Congregation of San Salvador, who proposed to establish a congregation, in the rules of which the tribunal discovered censurable propositions, was ordered to surrender all the papers and not to discuss it in word or writing and was exiled until he should have permission to return, with warning that otherwise he would be prosecuted with the full rigor of the law. As he was not required to abjure even _de levi_, it shows that there was no suspicion of heresy involved. Then, in 1697, Fray Juan Maldonado, of the Order of San Juan de Dios, had three years of exile for preaching, in the church of his convent at Ciudad Real, a sermon characterized as burlesque and scandalous, though there is no hint of its being in any way heretical.[849]

[Sidenote: _General Utility_]

This perpetual intrusion into all manner of affairs, irrespective of heresy rather increased towards the last. In 1788, Antonio López was prosecuted in Valencia for selling rosaries with bones made of clay as relics. In 1789, Andrés Joáñez, a coachman, for a conversation on a superstitious subject. In 1791, the Carmelite Fray Bonifacio de San Pablo, for attempting to print a satirical paper; Josef de la Rosa, in Cordova, for carrying a consecrated wafer in a relic-bag; Vicente Felerit, in Valencia, for a "vain observance." In 1795, Don Miguel Catalá, fiscal in Buñol and Josef Sánchez Masquifa, a scrivener, were prosecuted for using, in drafting testaments, the words "diversos atributos," when alluding to the Trinity. In 1799, Juan Rodríguez, a priest in Santiago, for assisting and performing ceremonies in a mock-marriage. In 1808, Josef Várquez de la Torre, a scrivener of Valencia, for drawing a deed of separation between spouses. In 1818, in Valencia, Vicente Maicas, priest of Cedrillos, for not wanting his parishioners to die in the Franciscan habit.[850] As all these cases presuppose denunciation, they illustrate the popular estimate of the all-embracing powers of the Inquisition and the espionage under which every Spaniard lived.

In fact, there was scarce anything in which the Inquisition did not feel itself authorized to intervene. The latitude with which inquisitors construed their own powers is manifest in their assuming to issue licences to hunt in prohibited places, sometimes for their own benefit and sometimes for that of others. This was an abuse which the Suprema strove to correct by forbidding it in 1527, but it was so persistent that the prohibition had to be repeated in 1530 and again in 1566.[851]

As the Inquisition was supreme within its jurisdiction and claimed the right to define the extent of its powers, there was no one to call it to account for their arbitrary exercise. If any other body in the State felt that its rights were invaded, the only recourse was to the sovereign and we have seen how, under the Hapsburgs, the crown, with scarce an exception, decided in its favor.