Every attempt has been made to replicate the original book as printed.
Some typographical errors have been corrected. A list follows the text.
No attempt has been made to correct or normalize Spanish words or accents marks.
(etext transcriber’s note)
WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR.
_A HISTORY OF THE INQUISITION OF SPAIN._ In four volumes, octavo.
(_Now Complete._)
_A HISTORY OF THE INQUISITION OF THE MIDDLE AGES._ In three
volumes, octavo.
_A HISTORY OF AURICULAR CONFESSION AND INDULGENCES IN THE LATIN
CHURCH._ In three volumes, octavo.
_HISTORY OF SACERDOTAL CELIBACY IN THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH._ Third
edition. In two volumes, octavo. (_Now Ready._)
_A FORMULARY OF THE PAPAL PENITENTIARY IN THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY._
One volume, octavo. (_Out of print._)
_SUPERSTITION AND FORCE._ Essays on The Wager of Law, The Wager of
Battle, The Ordeal, Torture. Fourth edition, revised. In one
volume, 12mo.
_STUDIES IN CHURCH HISTORY._ The Rise of the Temporal Power,
Benefit of Clergy, Excommunication, The Early Church and Slavery.
Second edition. In one volume, 12mo.
_CHAPTERS FROM THE RELIGIOUS HISTORY OF SPAIN, CONNECTED WITH THE
INQUISITION._ Censorship of the Press, Mystics and Illuminati,
Endemoniadas, El Santo Niño de la Guardia, Brianda de Bardaxí. In
one volume, 12mo.
_THE MORISCOS OF SPAIN, THEIR CONVERSION AND EXPULSION._ In one
volume, 12mo.
THE
INQUISITION
IN THE
SPANISH DEPENDENCIES
SICILY--NAPLES--SARDINIA--MILAN--THE CANARIES--MEXICO--PERU--NEW
GRANADA
BY
HENRY CHARLES LEA, LL.D., S.T.D.
New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., LTD.
1908
_All rights reserved_
COPYRIGHT, 1908
BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
Set up and electrotyped. Published January, 1908
PREFACE.
The scope of my History of the Spanish Inquisition precluded a detailed
investigation into the careers of individual tribunals. Such an
investigation, however, is not without interest, especially with respect
to the outlying ones, which were subjected to varying influences and
reacted in varying ways on the peoples among whom they were established.
Moreover, in some cases, this affords us an inside view of inquisitorial
life, of the characters of those to whom were confided the awful
irresponsible powers of the Holy Office and of the abuse of those powers
by officials whom distance removed from the immediate supervision of the
central authority, suggesting a capacity for evil even greater than that
manifested in the Peninsula.
This is especially the case with the tribunals of the American Colonies,
of which, thanks to the unwearied researches of Don José Toribio Medina,
of Santiago de Chile, a fairly complete and minute account can be given,
based on the confidential correspondence of the local officials with the
Supreme Council and the reports of the _visitadores_ or inspectors, who
were occasionally sent in the vain expectation of reducing them to
order. While thus in the colonial tribunals we see the Inquisition at
its worst, as a portion of the governmental system, we can realize how
potent was its influence in contributing to the failure of Spanish
colonial policy, by preventing orderly and settled administration and by
exciting disaffection which the Council of Indies more than once warned
the crown would lead to the loss of its transatlantic empire. It is
perhaps not too much to say that these revelations moreover go far to
explain the influences which so long retarded the political and
industrial development of the emancipated colonies, for it was an evil
inheritance weighing heavily on successive generations.
I have not attempted to include the fateful career of the Inquisition in
the Netherlands, for this cannot be written until the completion of
Professor Paul Fredericq’s monumental “Corpus Documentorum Inquisitionis
hæreticæ pravitatis Neerlandicæ,” the earlier volumes of which have
thrown so much light on the repression of heresy in the Low Countries up
to the dawn of the Reformation.
It is scarce necessary for me to make special acknowledgement to Señor
Medina in all that relates to the American tribunals, for this is
sufficiently attested by the constant reference to his works. With
regard to Mexico I am under particular obligation to David Fergusson
Esq. for the use of collections made by him during long residence in
that Republic and also to the late General Don Vicente Riva Palacio for
the communication of a number of interesting documents. To the late
Doctor Paz Soldan of Lima my thanks are also due for copies made in the
archives of Peru prior to their dispersion in 1881.
PHILADELPHIA, OCTOBER, 1907.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I--SICILY.
PAGE
The Old Inquisition in Sicily 1
The Spanish Inquisition introduced in 1487 2
Expulsion of Jews in 1492 3
Tardy Organization of the Tribunal 5
It gradually becomes efficient 7
Financial Mismanagement 9
Popular Disaffection 10
Increasing Activity 12
Complaints of Sicilian Parliament 13
Death of King Ferdinand--Tumult of 1516 14
Re-establishment in 1519 17
Efforts to reform Abuses 18
Renewed Complaints of the Parliament 21
Charles V suspends the Temporal Jurisdiction in 1535 22
Dread of Protestantism--Jurisdiction restored in 1546 24
Official-Immunity--Case of the Duke of Terranova 25
Renewed Activity--Popular Hostility 26
Enormous Increase in Number of Familiars 27
Abuse of official Immunity 28
Attempt at Reform in the Concordia of 1595 31
Increased Aggressiveness of the Tribunal 33
Collisions with the Secular Authority 34
Quarrels with the Bishops 35
Continued Strife--Concordia of 1635 37
Activity during the Seventeenth Century 38
The Inquisition under Austrian Rule--Auto de Fe of 1724--Pragmatic
Sanction of 1732 40
Reconquest of Sicily by Spain in 1734--The Inquisition placed
under the Holy See--Its Exuberance repressed by Carlos III 42
Suppressed by Ferdinando III in 1782 43
MALTA.
A Dependency of the Sicilian Tribunal 44
Charles V in 1530 grants the Island to the Knights of St. John 45
Episcopal Inquisition under Bishop Cubelles 45
The Tribunal passes under Papal Control 46
CHAPTER II--NAPLES.
The Old Inquisition in Naples--The Jews 49
Refugees from Spain 50
Spanish Conquest in 1503--Capitulation excludes the Spanish
Inquisition 52
Julius II revives the Papal Inquisition 53
Ferdinand proposes to introduce the Spanish Inquisition in 1504 53
Neapolitan Organization--the _Piazze_ or _Seggi_ 54
Activity of the Papal Inquisition--Its Subordination to the Royal
Power 55
Ferdinand, in 1509, arranges to introduce the Spanish Inquisition 56
Popular Opposition becomes uncontrollable 58
Ferdinand abandons the Attempt 62
His fruitless efforts to stimulate Persecution 63
Inertness of the Papal Inquisition 65
Banishment of Jews in 1540 66
Protestantism in Naples--Juan de Valdés--Bernardino Ochino 67
Organization of Roman Inquisition in 1542--Charles V orders its
Introduction in Naples 70
Tentative Efforts create popular Excitement 71
The Tumult of 1547--its Suppression 73
Punishment of the Leaders 76
Recrudescence of Persecution--The Roman Inquisition tacitly
introduced 78
The Calabrian Waldenses--Their Extermination 79
The Apulian Waldenses 85
Intermingling of Jurisdictions 86
Philip II promises the _Via Ordinaria_ 87
The Roman Inquisition under Cover of the Episcopal 87
The Accused sent to Rome for Trial and Punishment 88
The Exequatur of the Viceroy is a Condition precedent 89
Gradual Encroachment--A Commissioner of the
Roman Inquisition established in Naples 92
He assumes to be an Inquisitor--Rome in 1628 denies the
Necessity of the Viceregal Exequatur--Quarrels over it 94
The Roman Inquisition virtually established in Naples 96
Popular dissatisfaction--Demand for the _Via Ordinaria_ 96
Commissioner Piazza banished in 1671 99
Outbreak in 1691--Commissioner Giberti ejected 99
Carlos II prohibits the residence of Commissioners--Permanent
Deputation to oppose the Inquisition 100
The Roman Inquisition in 1695 publishes an Edict
of Denunciation 101
The Episcopal Inquisition disregards the _Via Ordinaria_--Struggles
under the Austrian Domination 102
Accession of Charles of Spain--_Atto di fede_ of 1746 104
Episcopal Inquisition suppressed--Archbishop Spinelli forced
to resign 105
Continued Vigilance of the Deputati until 1764 107
CHAPTER III--SARDINIA.
The Spanish Inquisition introduced in 1492 109
Conflicts with the Authorities 110
Productive Confiscations 112
Decadent condition of the tribunal 114
Charles V endeavors to reanimate it--Its chronic Poverty 115
Interference of the Bishops 117
Multiplication of Officials 117
Quarrels with the Secular Authorities 118
The Inquisition disappears under the House of Savoy 119
CHAPTER IV--MILAN.
The Old and the reorganized Roman Inquisition 121
Energy of Fra Michele Ghislieri (Pius V) 122
Inefficiency of the Inquisition 123
Cardinal Borromeo’s persecuting Zeal 124
Philip II proposes to introduce the Spanish Inquisition 125
Popular Resistance--General Opposition of Italian Bishops 126
Philip II abandons the Project 128
Political and Commercial Questions affecting Lombardy--Intercourse
with Heretics 129
Cardinal Borromeo stimulates Persecution 131
His Mission to Mantua 133
The Roman Inquisition perfected--Its Struggle to exclude Swiss
Heresy 135
It is suppressed by Maria Theresa in 1775 137
CHAPTER V--THE CANARIES.
Importance of the Islands as a Commercial Centre 139
Episcopal Inquisition by Bishop Muros, in 1499 140
Tribunal established in 1505--It is dependent on Seville 140
Its Activity until 1534 141
It becomes dormant and is suspended 144
It is reorganized in 1567 and rendered independent of Seville 145
Activity of Inquisitor Diego Ortiz de Fúnez 147
Visitation of Doctor Bravo de Zayas in 1570 148
Visitation of Claudio de la Cueva in 1590--Abuses 150
Prosecution of escaped Negro and Moorish Slaves 152
Prosecution of English and Dutch Sailors 153
Number of Relaxations 155
Finances--Early Poverty--Wealth from Confiscations 156
Prosecution of Judaizers 158
Moorish and Negro Slaves--Renegades 159
Trivial Cases 161
Mysticism--_Beatas revelanderas_ 162
Solicitation in the Confessional 163
Sorcery and Superstitions 165
Foreign Heretics--Sailors and Merchants 167
Treaties with England in 1604 and with Holland in 1609 171
Precarious Position of Foreign Merchants 173
Censorship 176
Examination of Houses of Foreign Residents 177
Irreverent religious Objects 178
_Visitas de Navíos_ 179
Quarrels with the Authorities, secular and ecclesiastical 180
Popular hostility--Opposition to Sanbenitos in Churches 188
Suppression in 1813 189
Final Extinction in 1820 190
CHAPTER VI--MEXICO.
Propagation of the Faith the Object of the Conquest 191
Organization of the Colonial Church 192
Attempts to exclude New Christians 193
Episcopal Inquisition 195
Establishment of a Tribunal proposed--Dread of Protestantism 199
Inquisitors sent out in 1570 200
Tribunal installed, November 4, 1571 202
Distance renders it partially Independent 203
Commencement of Activity--The first auto de fe, February 28,
1574 204
Autos of 1575, 1576, 1577, 1578, 1579, 1590, 1596, and 1601 207
Persecution of Judaizers 208
Indians not subject to Inquisition 209
Finances--Temporary royal Subvention--The Tribunal expected
to be self-supporting 212
Its early Poverty 213
It claims Indian Repartimientos 215
It refuses to render Account of its Receipts 216
It obtains a Grant of Canonries in 1627 216
Fruitless Efforts to make it account for the Confiscations 217
Large Remittances made to the Suprema from the Autos of
1646, 1648 and 1649 219
Efforts to make it forego and refund the royal Subvention 219
Misrepresentations of the Confiscations and Remittances 223
Comparative Inaction in the first Half of the Seventeenth Century 226
Efficacy of the Edict of Faith 227
Growth of Judaism--Active Persecution commences in 1642 229
Autos de Fe of 1646, 1648 and 1649 230
Auto de Fe of 1659 234
Cases of William Lampor and Joseph Bruñon de Vertiz 236
Inertia during the Rest of the Century 240
Solicitation in the Confessional 241
Temporal Jurisdiction--Immunity of Officials entitled to the
_Fuero_ 245
Familiars--Commissioners--Abuse of their Privileges 247
Concordia of 1610 251
Competencias 252
Concordia of 1633 254
Abusive Use of Power by Commissioners 256
Quarrels with Bishops--Case of Bishop Palafox 257
Case of Doctor Juan de la Camara 259
Exemption from Military Service 263
Censorship--Irreverent Use of Sacred Symbols--_Visitas de
Navíos_ 264
Repression under the Bourbon Dynasty 267
Decadence of the Tribunal 269
Political Activity caused by the Revolution--Censorship 272
Prosecution of Miguel Hidalgo 276
Suppression in 1813 288
Re-establishment in 1815 290
Prosecution of José María Morelos 292
Extinction in 1820 297
Persistent Intolerance 298
THE PHILIPPINES.
Included in the District of the Mexican Tribunal 299
A Commissioner established there--His Powers 300
Solicitation--Military Deserters 302
Trivial Results 304
Censorship 306
Conflicts with the Authorities 308
Audacity of the Commissioners 310
Commissioner Paternina imprisons Governor Salcedo and
rules the Colony 311
Records burnt in 1763 317
Episcopal Inquisition in China 317
CHAPTER VII--PERU.
Deplorable Condition of the Colony 319
Episcopal Inquisition--Its Activity 321
Case of Francisco de Aguirre 322
The Bishops seek to maintain their Jurisdiction 325
The Tribunal established January 29, 1570 326
The first Auto de Fe, November 15, 1573 328
Organization and Powers--Exemption of Indians 329
Supervision over Foreigners 332
Extent of Territory--Commissioners and their Abuses 333
New Granada detached in 1611--Other Divisions proposed 337
Finances--Initial Poverty--Speedy Growth of Confiscations 342
Fruitless Efforts to withdraw the Royal Subvention 344
Suppression of Prebends for the Benefit of the Tribunal 346
Enormous Confiscations in the Auto de Fe of 1639 347
Other Sources of Income 349
Increased Expenses exceed the Revenues 350
Malversations and Embezzlements in the Eighteenth Century 351
Financial Condition at Suppression in 1813 354
Abusive use of arbitrary Power 355
Scandalous conduct of Inquisitor Ulloa 355
Visitation of Juan Ruiz de Prado 357
His charges against Cerezuela and Ulloa 358
Ulloa’s Visitation of the District 360
Abusive use of arbitrary Power:
Inquisitor Ordoñez y Flores 362
Inquisitors Gaitan and Mañozca 363
Inquisitors Calderon and Unda 366
Visitation of Antonio de Arenaza 367
Paralysis of the Tribunal--Purchase of Offices 372
Quarrels with the Viceroys 373
Humiliation of Viceroy del Villar 374
Complaints of succeeding Viceroys 380
Conflicts of Jurisdictions 382
Limitation of the Temporal Jurisdiction by Fernando VI 386
Quarrels of Inquisitor Amusquíbar with Archbishop Barroeta 389
Activity of the Tribunal--Bigamy, Blasphemy, Sorcery 390
Propositions 392
Solicitation in the Confessional 393
Mystic Impostors--Maria Pizarro 396
Angela Carranza 400
Quietism--The Jesuit Ulloa and his Disciples 406
Protestantism--English Prisoners of War 412
Judaism 419
Portuguese Immigration through Brazil and Buenos
Ayres 421
Case of Francisco Maldonado de Silva 423
The _Complicidad Grande_--Auto de Fe of 1639 425
Decline of Judaism--Case of Doña Ana de Castro 433
Punishments 437
Arbitrary Inconsistency--Case of François Moyen 439
Censorship 444
Morals and Politics 446
Decadence and Suppression 447
Re-establishment and Extinction 449
Work accomplished 451
CHAPTER VIII--NEW GRANADA.
Settlement of New Granada 453
Commissioners appointed by Tribunal of Lima 454
Demand for an Independent Tribunal 455
Extent of District--Attempt to include Florida 457
Tribunal established in 1610 at Cartagena 460
Early Operations 461
Sorcery and Witchcraft--Blasphemy 462
Judaism 466
Inertia--Sack of Cartagena in 1697 467
Decadence 468
Censorship--The Copernican System 470
Quarrels with the Authorities 473
Arbitrary Control exercised by Inquisitor Mañozca 473
Incessant Broils--Inquisitor Vélez de Asas y Argos--Fiscal
Juan Ortiz 476
Visitation of Dr. Martin Real in 1643--Its Failure 480
Internal Dissensions and external Quarrels 483
Visitation of Pedro Medina Rico in 1648--Death of Inquisitor
Pereira and Secretary Uriarte 485
Internal and external Quarrels continue 488
Degradation of the Tribunal 489
Quarrel with Bishop Benavides y Piedrola--Inquisitor Valera 491
Humiliation of Governor Ceballos 498
Decadence after the Sack of 1697 499
Finances--The Royal Subvention 500
Wealth accruing from Confiscations 501
Quarrels over the Subvention 502
Asserted Distress of the Tribunal 505
The Revolutionary Junta banishes the Tribunal in 1810 506
It takes Refuge in Santa Marta and Puertobelo 508
It returns to Cartagena in 1815 508
It is extinguished by the United States of Colombia in 1821 510
Influence of the Inquisition on the Spanish Colonies 511
APPENDIX OF DOCUMENTS 517
THE INQUISITION
IN THE
SPANISH DEPENDENCIES.
CHAPTER I.
SICILY.
The island of Sicily, in the fifteenth century, was a portion of the
dominions of Aragon. Like the rest of the possessions of that crown, it
had enjoyed the benefits of the old papal Inquisition under the conduct
of the Dominicans, but, as elsewhere, towards the close of the Middle
Ages, the institution had become nearly dormant, and at most was
employed occasionally to wring money from the Jews. An effort to
galvanize it, however, was made, in 1451, by the Inquisitor Fra Enrico
Lugardi, who produced a fictitious decree, purporting to have been
issued in 1224, by the Emperor Frederic II, granting to the inquisitors
a third of the confiscations, together with yearly contributions from
Jews and infidels; this was confirmed by King Alfonso of Naples, and
again, in 1477, by Ferdinand and Isabella.[1] When, in 1484, the Spanish
Inquisition was extended to Aragon, Ferdinand did not at first seek to
carry its blessings to his insular possessions. February 12, 1481, he
had appointed Filippo de’Barbari, one of his confessors, as inquisitor
of Sicily, Malta, Gozo and Pantelaria, who apparently did nothing to
further the cause of the faith, for Sixtus IV, in letters of February
23, 1483, to Isabella, complained of the prevalence in the island of the
same heresies that pervaded Spain; to repress these he had issued sundry
bulls, which had proved inoperative in consequence of the opposition of
the royal officials, to his no little grief. Seeing the zeal displayed
in Spain, he prayed and exhorted that it should be extended to Sicily
and that the necessary royal favor be exhibited to the measures which he
had taken and might take in the future.[2] There is no evidence that
this produced any effect, and the institution seems to have remained
inert until, about 1487, Torquemada, as Inquisitor-general of Aragon,
appointed Fray Antonio de la Peña as inquisitor who, on August 18th of
that year, celebrated the first auto de fe, in which Eulalia Tamarit,
apparently a refugee from Saragossa, was burnt. It seems that a
Dominican, named Giacomo Roda, had been exercising the functions under a
commission from the General of his Order, who subsequently instructed
the provincial, Giacomo Manso, to dismiss him. In 1488 la Peña left
Sicily, appointing Manso to act during his absence, when Roda reasserted
himself and it required a brief from Innocent VIII, February 7, 1489, to
make him desist. In fact, at this time there seems to have been some
confusion between the claims of the papal and Spanish Inquisitions, for
we hear of another Dominican inquisitor, Pietro Ranzano, Bishop of
Lucera, to whom the senate of Palermo, on January 19, 1488, took the
customary oath of obedience.[3]
In Sicily, as in Spain, the objects of the principal labors of the Holy
Office were the converts from Judaism. The Jews were numerous and rich
and, although popular hatred was perhaps not so active as in Spain, it
was sufficiently vigorous, in 1474, to bring about a massacre, under
the pretext that they were endeavoring to undermine the Catholic faith
by argument. The viceroy, Lope Ximenes de Urrea, hanged six of the
leaders of the movement, in the hope of suppressing it but, undeterred
by this, the populace, in many places, sacked the Juderías and put the
inmates to the sword; five hundred thus were slain in Noto, six hundred
in Modica and, for several years, the Jews were in constant fear of
massacre, in spite of royal and vice-regal edicts.[4] The number of
victims in these troubles indicates how considerable was the Jewish
population; indeed, in 1450, they petitioned that, in the assessment of
a donation to King Alfonso of 10,000 florins they might be reckoned as a
tenth of the population, a favor which was refused and, when in 1491,
the Jews were banished from Provence, a large portion of them flocked to
Sicily, attracted by the favorable conditions which had long been
accorded there to the race.[5]
The edict of expulsion from Spain, in 1492, was operative in Sicily,
under conditions even more repulsively cruel. It was published June
18th, and the day of departure was fixed at September 18th, under pain
of death and confiscation. At once all their valuables were seized, in a
house to house investigation, and inventories were made of their other
possessions. They were required, within the three months, not only to
collect what was due to them and to pay their debts, but also to
indemnify the king for their special tributes by capitalizing the annual
aggregate, on a basis of four per cent. interest. On August 13th an
order was issued to license each to take a suit of common clothes, a
mattress, a pair of worn sheets, a coverlet, three _tari_ in money
(equivalent to half a florin), and a few provisions for the journey.
Reduced to despair, the Jews of Palermo petitioned to be allowed to
retain money enough to pay their passages; that the rich could leave
their property on deposit, and that poor debtors might be discharged
from prison a month in advance. This drew from the viceroy an edict
allowing the rich to take twice as much as the poor, except in the
matter of clothes. Not only their mattresses were to be searched for
money and jewels, but even the cavities of their bodies, for which
examiners of both sexes were appointed. A payment of fifty thousand
florins to the king procured a postponement of three months, until
December 18th, and during the interval the composition for their
tributes was agreed upon, at a hundred thousand more, on payment of
which they were to be allowed to take what was left of their inventoried
goods, but all precious metals and jewels were required to be turned
into merchandise. There was delay in collecting these sums, causing a
further postponement of departure until January 12, 1493.[6] As the
object of the measure was the salvation of souls, the alternative of
conversion was offered, to which the Jews were urged by a proclamation
of Torquemada and by promises from the bishops and the viceroy.
Ferdinand, however, was not disposed thus to forego the opportunity of
despoiling his Jewish subjects, and issued an order requiring them to
purchase the privilege of baptism with the surrender of forty-five per
cent. of their property, which must have brought him in a considerable
sum for, in spite of it, the rigorous terms imposed upon the exiles
drove many into the Christian fold.[7]
These compulsory Christians, always suspected, and generally with
reason, of secretly cherishing their ancient faith, furnished a larger
and more lucrative field for inquisitorial operations, but there seems
to have been no immediate haste to cultivate it, and there is no trace
of increased inquisitorial activity during the remaining years of the
century. In December, 1497, Micer Sancho Marin, inquisitor of Sardinia,
was ordered to transfer himself to Sicily; he was in no haste to obey
and, on March 11, 1498, Ferdinand wrote to him angrily that he was doing
no good where he was and was much wanted in his new post, wherefore he
was commanded summarily to go there and leave all the effects of the
Sardinian tribunal for his successor. Short as was his career in Sicily,
he managed to disorganize the Inquisition and to incur general
detestation. Before the year was out, Ferdinand ordered him home and, on
January 20, 1499, he sent for all the other officials to return. To get
back, Marin borrowed three hundred ounces,[8] without making provision
for repayment; to settle this and other debts and to pay for the
homeward voyage of the officials, Ferdinand ordered his viceroy to give
to the receiver of confiscations, who was practically the treasurer,
eight hundred ducats, with a significant order to see that the parties
were not maltreated, which indicates the feelings popularly entertained
for them. The eight hundred ducats apparently were not easily raised,
for correspondence continued during the rest of the year as to the
payment of debts and salaries; Pedro de Urrea, the receiver, fell into
disgrace and Ferdinand, in August, sent the notary, Ximeno Mayoral, to
make copies of all the papers in the tribunal, in order to be able to
straighten out matters.[9] Apparently the officials had been intent
solely upon their own gains, allowing the affairs of the tribunal to
fall into complete confusion, and had confined their operations to
selling pardons and exemptions for, when the auditor examining Urrea’s
accounts asked for certificates of all who were condemned or penanced
during his tenure of office, Ferdinand epigrammatically replied that, as
there were none condemned or penanced, no certificates were required. It
is true that there is mention of a certain Iñigo de Medina as having
died in prison, but he had not been arrested as a heretic and his
sequestrated property was ordered to be returned to his widow.[10]
Evidently the Sicilian Inquisition thus far had been a failure and
thorough reorganization was necessary. It was for this that Ferdinand
had recalled the officials and, after an interval of some months, he
proceeded to replace them. A letter of July 27, 1500, to Montoro, Bishop
of Cefalù, announced his appointment as inquisitor, together with that
of the bearer, Doctor Giovanni Sgalambro as his colleague, with whom
were sent Diego de Obregon as receiver, and Martin de Vallejo as
alguazil, the rest of the officials being left for his selection. At the
same time the viceroy was instructed to show them all favor, to lodge
them in some suitable building and to advance to Obregon 780 gold
ducats for salaries, the sum to be repaid out of the expected
confiscations.[11] The Sicilian tribunal, however, was doomed to be
unlucky. Ferdinand speedily discovered that Sgalambro was utterly unfit
for the position and, on November 6th, we find him writing in hot haste
to Inquisitor-general Deza that, after it had had so unfortunate a
beginning, Sgalambro’s incumbency would destroy it; he had sent to
Valencia to stop his departure, but too late, and now he instructs Deza
to select some good jurist for the place, as soon as possible, and
before some evil is wrought in Sicily.[12] This eagerness, however,
speedily subsided and Sgalambro was allowed to retain his office for a
year. On November 8th, Montoro and he issued an edict requiring the
surrender of all official papers by those formerly connected with the
tribunal; also one prohibiting all Conversos, or baptized Jews, from
leaving the island without special licence, under pain of
excommunication, confiscation and arbitrary penalties, and offering to
informers ten per cent. of the confiscations. In December, the viceroy
and all public officials took the customary oath of obedience and the
inquisitors issued an Edict of Grace, promising relief from death and
confiscation to all heretics who would, within fifteen days, come
forward and confess fully as to themselves and their associates. This
was accompanied with an Edict of Faith, ordering all cognizant of heresy
to denounce it within fifteen days, threatening those who omitted to do
so with prosecution for fautorship of heresy and promising secrecy for
informers. This latter edict apparently brought in few denunciations,
for it was repeated on January 14, 1501, and, at the same time, was
published a decree of the inquisitor-general, announcing the
disabilities of the descendants of those convicted of heresy. That these
proceedings were as yet a novelty in Sicily is apparent from a monition
issued by the inquisitors to the president of the states of the _Camera
reginale_ not to impede in those districts the publication of the
edicts.[13]
Evidently the Inquisition was rapidly becoming organized for work, but
it still lacked a fixed habitation for, on August 22d, Ferdinand wrote
to his viceroy that a house was necessary for it and, as the one
occupied by Mosen Johan Chilestro, the royal carver, was suitable, it
was to be taken for the purpose; he had no recollection that it had been
given to the latter except for life but, if the heirs could prove a gift
in perpetuity, they should be paid a suitable rent. Apparently the
labors of the tribunal were beginning to promise results in the
long-expected confiscations, for a letter of September 4th empowers the
receiver Obregon to compound a suit against Johan de San Martin, for
property derived through his brother and father, for five thousand
florins and more if it could be obtained. It would seem, however, that
as yet the status and privileges of the officials were not clearly
recognized in Sicily, for a letter of September 10th to the viceroy
urges him to see that the inquisitors enjoy the immunities and
exemptions conceded to them by the Holy See and that the officials are
as well treated as in the rest of the Spanish dominions.[14]
At length a successor was found for Sgalambro in the person of Pedro de
Belorado, an old Spanish inquisitor, now Archbishop-elect of Messina, to
whom Obregon was ordered, September 30th, to pay the same salary.[15]
The people had not even yet become accustomed to the arbitrary methods
of the Holy Office, for the earliest act by which Belorado makes himself
known to us is his excommunication of the magistrates and judges of the
town of Catania as impeders of the Inquisition, because they had
prevented the alguazil Martin de Vallejo from removing from their city
certain New Christians whom he had arrested. Vallejo had vindicated his
office by imposing on the spot a fine of a thousand ducats on the
offenders, and this Belorado confirmed. In 1502 we find him issuing
fresh Edicts of Grace and of Faith and, in 1503, Deza empowered him and
Montoro to act either independently or conjointly.[16] It would seem
that the governor of the districts of the Camera reginale was still
recalcitrant, for a letter from Ferdinand, August 13, 1504, orders him
to favor the operations of the tribunal, “for our officials have naught
to do but what we ourself do, which is to obey the Holy Office.”[17]
There is not much evidence of activity at this period, but an auto de fe
was celebrated, August 11, 1506, in which was burnt Olivieri de Mauro,
a renegade Christian.[18] Probably this was followed by others, of which
the records have not reached us, but the troubles of the tribunal were
not yet over and, in 1509, it was practically suspended for awhile, for
the Bishop of Cefalù was transferred to Naples, as we shall see
hereafter; Belorado died, the receiver Obregon was in Spain, and the
other officials apparently dispersed, as there was no money to pay their
salaries. At length a successor was found in Doctor Alonso Bernal, whose
appointment Ferdinand announced to the viceroy, January 19, 1510, but he
was in no haste to assume the duties for, on April 2d Ferdinand was
obliged to furnish him with sixty ducats to expedite his departure from
Valencia. Obregon accompanied him and, as the whole staff of the
tribunal had disappeared, he was empowered to fill their places and
regulate their salaries, which were to be paid out of three hundred
ducats to be advanced by the royal treasurer and to be repaid out of the
first proceeds of the expected confiscations.[19] The need of money was
doubtless an incentive to active work. Bernal lost no time in getting
the tribunal into shape and, by August 27th, we hear of his having many
prisoners, for whose safe-keeping he had spent fifty ducats in arranging
a gaol.[20] The result of this industry manifested itself in an auto de
fe, celebrated June 6, 1511, in which eight persons were burnt.[21]
He was speedily furnished with a colleague, for royal letters of June
18th and 24th inform us of the appointment of a second inquisitor, in
the person of Doctor Diego de Bonilla, promoted from the position of
fiscal, to whom Obregon was ordered to pay a salary of 6000 sueldos,
while the new fiscal, Leonardo Vázquez de Cepeda was to receive 2000 and
the notary, Pedro de Barahona the same. It was one thing, however, to
grant salaries and quite another to get them paid, in the habitual
mismanagement of inquisitorial business. From a letter of September 17th
we learn that Obregon had left Sicily in the fleet, placing as his
substitute his son, a boy of 15 or 16. The salaries had fallen greatly
in arrears and the boy declared that he had no funds save twenty ounces,
while Inquisitor Bernal asserted that he had imposed fines and pecuniary
penances to the amount of thirteen hundred ducats, besides considerable
confiscations, which should be ample to meet all salaries and expenses,
whereupon Ferdinand ordered the viceroy to investigate the accounts and
discover where the money had gone.[22]
These were not the only difficulties which the tribunal had to
encounter. Accustomed as the people had been for centuries to the
existence of the Inquisition, the Spanish institution was a very
different affair, not only as to activity and severity but still more
from the privileges and immunities claimed and enforced by its officials
and their servants and familiars, especially their exemption from taxes
and import dues and their _fuero_ or right to the jurisdiction of the
Inquisition, whether as plaintiffs or defendants, giving rise to
perpetual irritation through the oppression and injustice thus rendered
possible. These innovations were not admitted without resistance, which
Ferdinand sought to repress by a letter of September 10, 1508, ordering
Belorado to see that his officials were as well treated in these
respects as elsewhere in the Spanish dominions. This received scant
obedience for, on November 14, 1509, he wrote to the _stratico_ of
Palermo expressing extreme displeasure on learning that he had arrested
a scrivener of the tribunal and had deprived other officials of their
arms; in future he must maintain their privileges and exemptions and
show them every favor and protection.[23] Yet Ferdinand knew that the
troubles arose from the over-weening pretensions of the tribunal and its
officials for, in a letter of July 30, 1510, to Bernal he attributed
them to the exorbitant invasions of the royal jurisdiction by the
inquisitors and their appointment of men of evil life who caused
scandal and infamy. Bernal must bear in mind that, in Sicily, the
prerogatives of the crown were greater than elsewhere; whenever he had
to take action in matters unconnected with heresy he must consult the
viceroy or advocate fiscal, so as to avoid prejudice to the royal
pre-eminence; he must also furnish to the viceroy a list of officials,
servants and familiars, the latter not to exceed ten in number.[24]
Inquisitors, especially of distant tribunals, were not accustomed to pay
much heed to instructions inculcating moderation in the exercise of
their powers and the Sicilians were indisposed to submission. We learn
from a royal letter of December 25, 1510, that the jurats objected to
taking the customary oath of obedience to inquisitors and that the local
authorities persisted in levying taxes on the officials.[25] Relations
were strained and disaffection grew until there was an explosion on St.
Bernard’s day, August 20, 1511, when the people rose with demands that
the privileges of the officials should be curtailed--a rising which
cost, it is said, the lives of a thousand Spanish soldiers.[26] Neither
this warning nor Ferdinand’s exhortations abated the pretensions of the
Holy Office. A letter of the viceroy, Hugo de Moncada, September 6,
1512, relates that when some troops pursued a band of robbers and
arrested them in the country-house of an inquisitor, where they had
sought refuge, the latter threatened the captain and his men with
excommunication if the prisoners were not released and then claimed
jurisdiction to try them, on the ground of the place of their
capture.[27] This was by no means an isolated case for soon afterwards
two other flagrant examples of similar character evoked from Ferdinand,
October 25th, an order to rescind their action, coupled with an
expression of extreme displeasure at their thus affording protection to
malefactors on one pretext or another. Their behavior in the
custom-house to evade the payment of duties was a further subject of
animadversion and he warned them sternly to avoid in future creating
such scandals.[28]
This somewhat exuberant zeal in asserting their privileges was
accompanied with corresponding activity in the performance of their
regular duties. In 1513 there were three autos de fe celebrated, in
which the burnings aggregated thirty-nine, a large portion being of
those who had been previously reconciled and had relapsed, thus
indicating the increased vigilance of the tribunal.[29] A further
evidence of this was the arrival, in September, 1513, at Naples, of four
hundred fugitives, including a number of priests and friars, to escape
the rigor of the inquisitors, who they said were endeavoring to force
confessors to reveal the confessions of their penitents.[30] One
gratifying result of this activity was the financial ease afforded by
the resultant large confiscations. A letter of Ferdinand’s to Obregon,
June 27, 1513, calls his attention to them and to those anticipated from
the number of prisoners on trial, requiring greater care than had
hitherto been devoted to the management; the officials were now
receiving their salaries and doing their duty. In spite of this warning
we find, a year later, that Obregon had abruptly quitted Palermo,
leaving the affairs of the office in confusion, rendering necessary the
appointment, June 15, 1514, of a successor, Garcí Cid, who was
instructed to reduce it to order and to invest in ground-rents twelve
hundred ounces which Obregon had deposited in a bank.[31] That the
profits of persecution continued is evidenced by a gift made, March 30,
1515, by Ferdinand, to his wife, Queen Germaine, of all the
confiscations of that year, in the city of Syracuse and district of the
Camera reginale, up to the sum of ten thousand florins--a gift which
Garcí Cid was ordered to keep secret until after he should have rendered
a statement of all that was on hand and was expected.[32]
It is perhaps not surprising that this increased effectiveness of the
tribunal stimulated popular discontent, which found expression in a
petition from the Sicilian Parliament asking Ferdinand that the
Inquisition be required to observe the ancient canons and methods of
procedure, for many of those burnt in the autos asserted their
innocence, declaring that their confessions had been extorted by torture
and dying with every sign of being good Christians. It was further asked
that some limit be put to the issue of licences to bear arms and as to
the kind of persons licensed; that the judge of confiscations should
have a fixed salary and should not exact fees and that there should be
an appeal from him to the viceroy; also that those who in good faith
entered into contracts with persons reputed to be good Christians should
be able to collect their debts, in place of having them included in the
confiscation, the contrary practice being destructive to trade and
commerce.[33] There was also a special embassy from Palermo, complaining
that the inquisitors required the city authorities to renew every year
the oath of obedience and that they issued licences to bear arms to men
of evil life who caused much disorder and scandal.[34] Ferdinand
promised relief of these grievances and, in due course, a fresh series
of instructions was issued, in 1515, by Bishop Martin de Aspeitia and
the Aragonese Supreme Council, or Suprema. It limited the number of
familiars to thirty for Palermo, to twenty for Messina and Catania, to
fifteen for Syracuse and Trapani and to not over ten in other places;
they were to be men of approved character and were to carry certificates
identifying them, in the absence of which they could be disarmed by the
secular authorities. If officials were accused of serious crime, the
evidence was to be sent to the inquisitor-general when, if the proof was
sufficient, the offender would be dismissed and the inquisitor who had
tolerated it would be punished. Officials were deprived of the _voz
activa_ or right as plaintiffs to the jurisdiction of the tribunal,
although Dr. Martin Real assures us that experience had already shown
that they could not exist without it, so universally were they detested.
Their buying up of claims and matters in litigation, in which they had
the benefit of the tribunal as a court, was prohibited. The dowries of
wives were protected from confiscation when husbands were convicted and
dealings with those in good repute as Christians were held good, in case
of confiscation, so that the claims of creditors were allowed and, if
the fisc desired to seize alienated real estate, it was required to
refund the purchase-money to the buyer.[35] There were various other
reforms embodied in the instructions, all indicating a desire to avoid
injustice to innocent third parties, but the whole is interesting rather
as an exposure of customary abuses than as effecting their removal,
although when, towards the close of 1514 a new inquisitor, Miguel
Cervera by name, was sent to Sicily, he was ordered to obey to the
letter the instructions of Torquemada and his successors and not to
increase the number of officials without permission.[36]
However praiseworthy may have been the intentions at headquarters, it
was impossible to control the tribunal or to allay popular hostility,
which found opportunity for expression after the death of Ferdinand,
February 23, 1516. Hugo de Moncada had held the office of viceroy for
six years and had earned universal hatred by his cruelty, greed and
lust. Among other devices, he had monopolized the corn-trade and, by his
exportations, had reduced the island almost to starvation, though its
fertility rendered it the granary of the Mediterranean, while the
poverty of the people was aggravated by an adulterated currency.[37] He
concealed the news of Ferdinand’s death, in hopes of reappointment by
Charles V, but it became known and the people, led by some powerful
nobles, claimed that his commission had expired. While the popular mind
was thus excited, Fra Hieronimo da Verona, in his lenten sermons in
Palermo, denounced as sacrilegious the wearing of red crosses on the
green penitential sanbenitos of the reconciled heretics, who were very
numerous, and he urged the people to tear off the symbol of Christ from
the heretical penitents. His advice was followed and the aspect of the
mob grew more and more threatening. Moncada attempted to quiet matters
by proclaiming Charles and Juana, abolishing an obnoxious corn-tax and
exhibiting letters from Charles confirming him in office. These were
denounced as forgeries; a man who demanded to see them was arrested by
the prefect and rescued by the people, while the prefect was obliged to
fly for his life. That night, March 7, 1516, an immense crowd, with
artillery taken from the arsenal, besieged the vice-regal palace;
Moncada, disguised as a serving-man, escaped by a postern to the house
of a friend, whence he took refuge on a ship in the harbor and sailed
for Messina, which consented to receive him. After sacking the palace,
the mob turned its attention to the Inquisition. Cervera saved his life
by taking a consecrated host in a monstrance, under protection of which
he gained the harbor, amid the jeers and insults of the people, who
cried that he was an inquisitor and hunter of money, not of heretics. He
took ship for Spain, while the mob released the prisoners, destroyed the
records and pillaged the property of the Inquisition. The Palermitans
followed this with an embassy to Charles, complaining of the evil doings
of Moncada and the disorders caused by the Inquisition which had
well-nigh destroyed their city. The sole object of its officials they
said was to accumulate money and they would lay down their lives rather
than see it restored, except under the ancient form as carried on by the
bishops and Dominicans. Cervera betook himself to Flanders to solicit
his restoration, but the island held out and, for three years, there was
no Inquisition in Sicily, except in Messina and its territory.[38]
Enlightened by the insurrection and the Palermitan complaints, the
Suprema or supreme council of Aragon, on August 29, 1516, sent to
Centelles, Bishop of Syracuse, a commission to investigate the tribunal,
with a list of interrogatories from which it appears that Cervera had
filled the office with his kindred and servants, while every kind of
pillage and oppression is suggested, even to the rifling of the
treasure-chest by the officials on the day of the tumult. Bishop
Centelles, however, had died on August 22d; of course no investigation
was made and the Suprema contented itself with expressing, on October
27th, to Charles its gratification at his determination to restore with
the greatest honor the tribunal which had been expelled with such
disgrace.[39] This, however, was not so readily accomplished. Some seven
months later, on June 15, 1517, Charles wrote to the Sicilian viceroy
ordering Cervera to be received back and obeyed under penalty of the
royal wrath and three thousand crowns but, for a time, this was a dead
letter. Cervera returned to Spain when Charles went there, in 1517, and
it was not until 1519 that Sicily was sufficiently pacified to render it
expedient to send him back. A royal cédula of May 29, 1519, announces
this and orders Garcí Cid, the receiver, to pay him 343 ducats for his
accrued salary without deduction for absence, and, when the cédula of
June 15, 1517, was published at last on July 6, 1519, it was not in
Palermo but in Messina, where the Marquis of Monteleone, the new
viceroy, was still residing. Meanwhile a certain Giovanni Martino da
Aquino had been enjoying the title of inquisitor there, but he was
removed, May 20, 1519, in favor of Cervera. A second inquisitor, Tristan
Calvete had been appointed in 1517 and had been welcomed in Messina.[40]
Calvete’s first act was to issue an edict, May 16, 1518, requiring,
under pain of excommunication, all papers and property of the
Inquisition to be returned within fifteen days and the anathema duly
followed on June 6th.[41] Presumably this produced little result;
Palermo, the seat of the tribunal and scene of insurrection, had not yet
returned to obedience; the records had been destroyed and their lack
long remained a source of embarrassment. The tribunal however, in 1519,
was re-established and fully manned; it celebrated an auto de fe, June
11, 1519 and, for five or six years, there seems to have been one nearly
every year, but the number of executions was not large.[42] Popular
antagonism was by no means disarmed, for we find Calvete issuing,
September 29, 1525, two edicts, one commanding everyone to aid and favor
the Inquisition and not to defend heretics, and the other summoning all
cognizant of the numerous _penitenciados_ and their descendants, who
disregarded the disabilities imposed on them, to denounce them.[43]
There was ample cause for disaffection, arising, not from sympathy with
heresy, but from the arbitrary proceedings of those who regarded
persecution primarily as a source of enrichment. Instructions given,
July 31, 1517, by Cardinal Adrian to Calvete, commence with the remark
that all inquisitors thus far sent to Sicily had disregarded the rules
of the Holy Office, both as to civil and criminal procedure, as to
confiscations and as to familiars. It was therefore ordered that all
officials, under pain of excommunication, should inviolably observe the
instructions, including those given to Melchor Cervera; the whole body
of these rules was ordered to be read in presence of all the officials
assembled for the purpose, a notarial act being taken to attest the
fact. Moreover, in addition to excommunication for violations of the
rules, the special penalties provided were to be irrevocably enforced.
Following this were particular instructions for the correction of abuses
which indicate how completely the interests of the fisc and the rights
of the people were subordinated to official cupidity. One of the
practices prohibited shows how repulsive the religion of Christ, in
such hands, was rendered to converts. The inquisitors, it appears, were
in the habit of making reconciled penitents and baptized neophytes labor
on the fortifications of the castle; when they did not appear at the
appointed hour they were fined and these fines, which were collected by
Zamporron, the messenger of the tribunal, amounted to a considerable
sum, of which no account was rendered.[44] In this, as in all similar
denunciations of malversations and abuses, a noteworthy feature is that
punishment is always threatened for the future and none is inflicted for
the past; no one is dismissed and the thieving and corrupt officials are
allowed unmolested to continue their career of plunder and oppression.
Apparently Cardinal Adrian was advised that his instructions were not
obeyed and he sent Master Benito Mercader as “visitor” or inspector to
report on the condition of the tribunal. Before this report was
received, Adrian had passed through the papacy to the tomb, and it was
acted upon by his successor, Manrique, Archbishop of Seville, who
issued, January 31, 1525, a fresh set of instructions, based on its
revelations. From this it would appear that there was little in which
the inquisitors and their officials did not violate the rules, both in
the conduct of trials and management of the finances. There seems, in
fact, to have been a Saturnalia of peculation. Collections were made by
both authorized and unauthorized persons, of which no accounts were
kept. The fines and pecuniary penances, which formed so lucrative a
source of income, were kept from the knowledge of the notary of
sequestrations so that he could make no charge of them to the receiver.
Officials claimed and received twenty or twenty-five per cent. for
discovering hidden confiscated property, their knowledge of which was
acquired officially. The Christian slaves of condemned heretics were
sold in place of being set free, according to law. Inquisitors and
their subordinates received “presents,” or rather bribes, from penitents
and litigants, which perhaps explains the complaint that sentences to
the galleys and other penalties were not executed and that the
disabilities and sanbenitos of those reconciled were not enforced. There
is significance in the instructions for the collection of the two
hundred gold ducats, which the late inquisitor, Melchor Cervera,
had bequeathed to the Inquisition for the discharge of his
conscience--probably but a small portion of the irregular gains for
which he had had ample opportunity. As a whole, this inside picture of
the Holy Office shows us how completely it was converted into an engine
for oppression and peculation and how little there was of genuine
fanaticism to serve as an excuse for its existence, but, as usual, there
are no dismissals or punishments inflicted and the only remedy proposed
is the formal semi-annual reading of the instructions to the officials.
That they should continue to be the objects of popular detestation was
inevitable, and the complaint is made that their maltreatment and the
resistance offered to them remain unpunished.[45]
This was the only point on which reformation was attempted. Charles V,
in a letter to his viceroy, October 22, 1525, says that he understands
that the royal courts take cognizance of the cases of the officials of
the tribunal, which displeases him greatly; it is his will that the Holy
Office shall be cherished and favored and that in all cases, civil and
criminal, its officials are to enjoy the immunities and privileges to
which they are entitled; they are to exercise their functions with all
freedom, under the royal protection, guarded by the penalties expressed
in the royal concessions. This was supplemented by another cédula of
August 25, 1526, taking the inquisitors and their officials under the
royal safeguard and ordering that they should have all aid and support
and protection from the secular authorities.[46]
As for the wrongs committed by the inquisitors, their continuance is
shown by repeated petitions from the Sicilian Parliament, which indicate
how completely the instructions of 1515 and 1517 were ignored, while
Charles’s replies--probably drawn up for him by the Suprema--prove how
little hope there was of redress through an appeal to the throne. The
Parliament represented that the Conversos who remained were few and
poor, the rest having fled or been condemned, wherefore the inquisitors
despoiled the native Christians of their property, to remedy which it
asked as before that in future the Inquisition should be conducted by
the bishops and Dominicans as of old. To this the answer was that he
would consult the pope. It was also asked that Christians who had, in
good faith, made contracts with reputed Catholics and thus were their
creditors, should have their claims recognized and satisfied out of the
confiscated property of a condemned debtor. This shows that the
instructions of 1515 to this effect had been disregarded and there was
little hope of improvement in Charles’s assent with the nullifying
proviso that there must be a prescription of thirty years’ possession,
concerning which he would write to the pope. A further request was that
the dowries of orthodox wives should not be subject to confiscation and
that children’s portions should be exempted, to which the reply was
“agreed as to dowries received before the commission of heresy; for the
rest, the pope will be consulted.” Another point was that, in case of
denial of justice or evident scandal, the viceroy could appoint some
prelate who, with the Gran Corte or the doctors, could decide the
matter. This was rejected with the declaration that all appeals must be
to the inquisitor-general. It was further asked that each inquisitor
when he came should file his commission in the ordinary public
registers, so that every one could learn what was his authority, for the
inquisitors often exceeded their lawful powers. Complaint was also made
that the officials abused their immunities and privileges by engaging in
trade and it was asked that in suits thence arising they should be
subjected to the vice-regal or episcopal courts, to which Charles
replied that he had given orders to the inquisitor-general to see to
this.[47]
Thus supported, the Inquisition pursued its course and held one or more
autos de fe every year, until 1534, though the number of burnings was
not excessive, the summary for the nine years showing only thirty-nine
victims relaxed to the secular arm, the most of whom suffered for
relapse after previous conviction and reconciliation.[48] While thus
performing its full duties to the faith, the consciousness of imperial
support had not led it to mend its ways or to reform abuses, and popular
opposition was undiminished, for Charles found it necessary to issue
another rescript, January 18, 1535, addressed to Viceroy Monteleone,
confirming at much length the privileges and exemptions of the officials
from secular jurisdiction and their right to bear arms.[49] When,
however, in the following September, Charles visited Palermo, on his
return from his crusade to Tunis, and listened to the earnest
representations of the Parliament, his convictions changed--a change
possibly facilitated by a subsidy granted to him of two hundred and
fifty thousand ducats over and above the ordinary revenue.[50] He
suspended, for a period of five years, the jurisdiction of the
Inquisition in all cases involving the death-penalty and not connected
with matters of faith, and, when this term had elapsed, he prolonged the
suspension for five years more.[51] The historians of the Inquisition
tell us that this resulted in the unchecked multiplication of heretics
among the noblest families, while the hatred of the people for its
representatives manifested itself without fear of punishment. There can,
in fact, be little doubt that its operations were crippled on this
account, for its officials were no longer shielded from popular anger as
soon as offences committed against them became cognizable by the secular
courts in sympathy with the offenders. Thus when the Inquisitor
Bartolomé Sebastian made a visitation of the town of Jaca, with his
officials and servants, and published the Edict of Faith, the
inhabitants piled up wood around the house in which they were lodged and
would have burnt them all had not the Baroness de la Florida assembled
her kinsmen and retainers, raised the siege and enabled them to escape.
Soon afterwards, when the alguazil and his assistants went to San Marcos
to arrest some heretics, they were set upon by Matteo Garruba and his
accomplices; he was left for dead and some of his people were slain.[52]
Apparently the danger, of which these are examples, caused the
inquisitors to confine their labors to the larger cities for, in
January, 1543, Inquisitor-general Tavera ordered a general visitation of
the island, which he says had not been performed for a long while. In
June a new inquisitor, the Licentiate Gongora, was sent with special
instructions to carry out this visitation and peremptory orders were
issued by Prince Philip that he and his officials should be efficiently
protected.[53] Another manifestation of popular repugnance was the
resistance offered to the invariable custom in Spain of hanging in the
churches the sanbenitos of the condemned, or linens with inscriptions of
their names, heresies and punishment, thus perpetuating their infamy,
which was one of the severest features of the penalty of heresy. Páramo
explains that this was not observed in Sicily for when, in 1543,
Inquisitor Cervera endeavored to introduce it, by hanging them in the
church of St. Dominic, there arose so great a tumult that he was obliged
to abandon the attempt and it had never since then been possible to
effect it, up to his time (1598).[54] To add to the embarrassment of the
tribunal, it was or professed to be impoverished. When its alguazil
Marcos Calderon died, there was owing to him for arrears of salary 155
ounces, 24 tarines and 9 granos, and in February, 1543, the receiver
Francisco Cid declared his inability to pay this to the heirs. To
relieve him the Suprema agreed to place half the burden of this on the
tribunal of Granada and, by letter of May 30, 1544, ordered Cid to pay
the other half.[55]
In spite of popular disaffection and curtailment of temporal
jurisdiction, the Inquisition continued its deadly work. On May 30,
1541, there was celebrated at Palermo an auto in which twenty-two
culprits appeared, nineteen of them for Judaizing and three for
Lutheranism--among the latter Fra Perruccio Campagna, a tertiary of San
Francisco de Paola, who courted martyrdom and was burnt as an obstinate
impenitent heretic.[56] By this time Lutheranism was much more dreaded
than Judaism. In view of its threatening spread and of the occasional
outbursts of popular detestation, there was probably little difficulty
in convincing Charles that he had made a mistake in limiting the
exemptions of the officials; he announced in advance his intention of
not prolonging the limitation and, by letters of February 27, 1543, he
ordered his Sicilian officials, after the expiration of the term, to
give the Inquisition full liberty of action and not to interfere with it
in any way under a penalty of two thousand ounces. When the term
expired, Prince Philip, as regent of the Spanish dominions, by a decree
of June 18, 1546, published the letters of 1543 and ordered their strict
observance.[57]
It would seem that even before the expiration of the term the tribunal
arrogantly and successfully asserted the immunity of its officials from
secular law. Juan de Aragon, Duke of Terranova, was Constable and
Admiral of Naples, a Spanish grandee of the first class and kinsman of
Charles V, acting as President or Governor of Sicily, in the absence of
the viceroy. In this capacity he had occasion to torture and condemn to
the galleys Maestro Antonio Bertin, a familiar, and to imprison some
other familiars. The inquisitors took up the matter and sentenced him to
perform public penance, to release Bertin and to pay him a _solatium_ of
two hundred ducats. The case was of course carried to Spain, where both
sides were heard and as usual the decision was against the crown and in
favor of the Inquisition. Prince Philip conveyed this to Terranova by
letter of December 16, 1543, exhorting him to submit to it willingly and
not to wait to be compelled by excommunication. Terranova recalcitrated
against the public humiliation and finally a letter of Philip, April 24,
1544, remitted the penance, when the duke released and compensated the
criminal.[58]
Such an occurrence does not justify the assertion made by Prince Philip,
June 15, 1546, when a new inquisitor, Bartolomé Sebastian, was sent to
Palermo, that the officials of the Sicilian Holy Office were held in
such contempt and were so impeded in their functions that they could
scarce discharge their duties, wherefore special injunctions were laid
on him to exact from all authorities the oath of obedience, while every
assistance was emphatically ordered to be rendered to him.[59] In fact,
almost simultaneously with these utterances, an auto de fe, held June 6,
1546, showed that there was no impediment to the discharge of the proper
functions of the inquisition. In this auto there were no living bodies
delivered to the stake, but the effigies of four fugitives answered the
purpose of demonstrating that the authority of the tribunal was
undiminished. Sebastian indicated how far that authority extended when,
in 1547, he repeated the prohibition of Conversos expatriating
themselves and their families under pain of confiscation, while a fine
of two hundred ounces was decreed against shipmasters transporting such
persons without special licence. This recrudescence of inquisitorial
activity aroused the Parliament, which petitioned Charles V that the
accused should have copies of the evidence against them, with the names
of the witnesses, so that his faithful subjects should not perish
undefended, through false testimony suborned by enmity, but the emperor
turned this off with a vague promise that Sicilians should not be unduly
molested. This did not soothe popular hostility, for a letter of the
Regent Juana to the Viceroy Juan de Vega, September 29, 1549, thanks him
for the solicitude which he has shown in protecting the rights and
immunities of the Inquisition, seeing that recently some of its
officials have been wounded and slain while discharging their duties.
Possibly this may refer to the case of Giacomo Achiti, who was relaxed
to the secular arm, May 19, 1549, for having with others resisted and
slain Giovanni de Landeras, a minister of the Inquisition. Yet whatever
may have been the good will of Vega, it was impossible for a viceroy to
perform his duties and remain on good terms with the Holy Office. In
this same year, 1549, a certain D. Pietro di Gregorio had torture
administered to a familiar, for which Alberto Albertini, Bishop of Patti
and inquisitor, threw him in prison, when Vega liberated him by force
and was duly reproved therefore by Charles.[60]
In the numerous autos de fe which are recorded during the following
years, it is interesting to observe that Judaism sinks into the
background and that the predominant heresies punished are Protestant.
The Inquisition was aroused to renewed activity and its victims, whether
burnt or penanced, were numbered by scores.[61] It is probable that
peculation and waste continued for a letter of the inquisitors, April 2,
1560, to Philip II congratulates him on the prospect of some large
confiscations impending; these, they say, will relieve the tribunal,
which is deeply in debt and it is suggested to the king that if he will
invest the proceeds in ground-rents, the income will go far to pay the
salaries and perpetuate the institution. Apparently the suggestion was
unheeded for the complaints of poverty and indebtedness continue; the
convicts are mostly poor people, whose property barely meets their
prison expenses, and some rich abbey is asked for, of which the revenues
may be devoted to this holy cause.[62]
Whether the complaint of poverty be true or not, the inquisitors had
ample opportunity of irregular gains. The privileges and immunities of
its officials rendered the position of familiar eagerly sought for and,
in an age of corruption, we may reasonably assume that it was liberally
paid for. In addition to this, the exclusive jurisdiction over them, in
both civil and criminal matters, was very lucrative, not only from the
fees exacted for every transaction in suits and trials, but from the
custom of punishment by fines for all delinquencies. It is noteworthy
that in the discussions which arose, it was assumed on all sides that
the fuero of the tribunal was equivalent to immunity for crime, and so
it was as far as corporal penalties were concerned, but pecuniary ones
were a profitable substitute, which enured exclusively to the tribunal.
I have not met with any trials of Sicilian officials, but this was the
custom in the Peninsula and it is an unavoidable assumption that the
example was followed in the island. In addition to this was the
influence derivable from thus enrolling an army under the inquisitorial
banner, and thus there were ample motives for disregarding the
limitations placed by the instructions on the number of appointments.
The viceroy, Marc’ Antonio Colonna, in a letter of November 3, 1577,
states that there were twenty-five thousand familiars and that the
inquisitors proposed to increase them to thirty thousand; they included,
he says, all the nobles, the rich men and the criminals.[63] It was
practically an alliance between the tribunal on one side and the
influential and the dangerous classes on the other, against the
vice-regal government and the courts, rendering impossible the orderly
administration of justice and the maintenance of public peace. The
viceroys were involved in perpetual struggles with the Holy Office and
were constantly remonstrating with the home government, but to little
effect. An attempt was made to amend the situation by an agreement,
known as the Concordia of Badajoz, July 4, 1580, which was, in reality,
a surrender of the secular authorities to the Inquisition. In Castile, a
number of the more serious crimes were excepted from the exemption of
familiars, but in Sicily they were entitled to the jurisdiction of the
tribunal for all offences, however atrocious. This was continued by the
Concordia, which provided that, whenever a case involving an official or
familiar should come before the viceroy, he should promptly hand it over
to the tribunal. The inquisitors were empowered to excommunicate judges
who interfered with their jurisdiction and the judge so excommunicated
was required to present himself before them, to beg for absolution and
to promise obedience. Provision however was made for _competencias_, or
conferences between judges and inquisitors on disputed questions when,
if they could not agree, the matter was referred to the king for final
decision--a process which usually prolonged it indefinitely.[64]
The secular authorities were naturally restive under this and quarrels
continued. In 1589 there was an outbreak, when the Gran Corte undertook
to try a familiar named Antonio Ferrante. The Inquisition claimed him;
the viceroy, the Count of Alva, was less enduring than some of his
predecessors; he caused the sentence of hanging to be executed and, in
the ensuing recriminations, he imprisoned the consultors of the
Inquisition and its judge of confiscations. Both parties appealed to
Philip II who, after examining all the documents, wrote to Alba, March
29, 1590, strongly reproving him for bringing such scandal and discredit
on an institution so necessary for the peace and quiet of the land. In
future he must strictly observe the Concordia and the judges of the Gran
Corte must present themselves individually before the inquisitors and
obey their commands. Alba apparently had argued that the consultors were
not formally officials, for in 1591 Philip decided that they were so and
were entitled to all the privileges of that position.[65]
Philip was firmly convinced that the Inquisition was essential to keep
Sicily in subjection, which accounts for his upholding it against his
own representatives, but his eyes were somewhat opened by another case
which was in progress at the same time. Count Mussumelli, a familiar,
was charged with the murder of Giuseppe Bajola, fiscal of the Gran
Corte; he was claimed by the Inquisition and took refuge in its prison.
From this the Count of Alva took him forcibly, whereupon the inquisitors
excommunicated the subordinates concerned in the act and, finding this
ineffective, on April 6, 1590, they not only laid an interdict on the
whole city, but stretched their jurisdiction by prohibiting all vessels
from leaving the port. This brought Alba to terms; Mussumelli was
restored to the inquisitorial prison and the interdict was lifted.[66]
The case was necessarily carried up to the king and, as usual, was
referred to a _junta_ consisting of two members each of the Suprema and
of the Council of Italy. To the consulta which they in due course
presented, Philip replied, expressing his grief at the atrocious crimes
of recent occurrence in Sicily. That of the Count Mussumelli was so
aggravated that its impunity would render difficult the enforcement of
justice and he must therefore be remitted to the viceroy and judges of
the Gran Corte. As for the Count of Rocalmuto and the Marquis of la
Rochela, they were to be left to the Inquisition, in full confidence
that their punishment would correspond to the enormity of their
offences, for which he charged the inquisitor-general and Suprema.
Moreover, to prevent such occurrences for the future, he decreed that
the crime of assassination should be excepted from the immunity enjoyed
by familiars and should not be made the subject of competencias. In
addition to this, he proceeded to state that experience had shown the
great troubles and scandals arising from nobles being officials and
familiars--positions which they sought, not to discharge their duties
but to commit crimes under the protection of the Inquisition, thus
creating many quarrels between the jurisdictions to the discredit of
both, to scandal of the people and hindrance of justice. It would
therefore be well for the inquisitor-general and Suprema to order that
Sicilian nobles be no longer appointed as officials and familiars and
that existing appointments be called in and revoked, for he had resolved
to order the viceroys and judges to hold that they are not entitled to
the fuero of the Inquisition. It was unreasonable that so holy a
business should serve as a cover for delinquents and evil-doers and
there was ample experience that this was their sole object in seeking
these positions, so that he greatly wondered that the Inquisition
should persist in a course so damaging to its reputation and so foreign
to the object of its foundation.[67]
Such rebuke and such action could only have been elicited from a monarch
like Philip II by a profound conviction of the unbearable abuses of
inquisitorial jurisdiction. He would more wisely have followed the
example of his father in suspending wholly that jurisdiction, for the
tribunal continued to exercise it in a manner provocative of continual
disturbance. At length, in 1595, a junta or conference was formed,
consisting of two members of the Suprema, Doctors Juan de Zuñiga and
Caldas, and two regents of the Gran Corte, Bruñol and Escudero, to
reach, if possible, an agreement that should lead to peace. There were
many discussions and tentative attempts which finally resulted in a
consulta presented to Philip as a compromise acceptable to both sides.
This commences by stating that the special cases in dispute had been
settled or laid aside, awaiting further documents, and that for the
future it had been agreed that the Concordia of 1580 should be observed
with certain amendments. The Inquisition was not to protect officials or
familiars guilty of treason against the viceroy or his counsellors, of
assassination, of shooting from ambush, of insulting, wounding or
killing any one in presence of judges of the Gran Corte or Real
Patrimonio. It was the same with familiars who were notaries and
committed frauds in that capacity, or were warehousemen and adulterated
commodities stored with them, or dealers in provisions who used false
weights, or bankers or other debtors delinquent to the Real Patrimonio,
or delinquent taxpayers in general. Widows of officials were to enjoy
the fuero only so long as they remained unmarried, and servants were
only to be entitled to it when they were really part of the household
and not merely serving for food and wages, concerning which inquisitors
were strictly enjoined not to commit frauds. In Palermo and its suburbs
the number of familiars was limited to one hundred; in towns of sixty
hearths, to one; in other places the Suprema was to decide; they were
to be prohibited from carrying guns in the country and fire-arms of any
kind in the cities. If a judge arrested a familiar or official, he was
at once to send the papers in the case to the inquisitors that they
might see whether it was excepted or whether there should be a
competencia and, in the latter case, the judges were to be invited
courteously to meet them and not be summoned as inferiors. The judges,
when excommunicated, were to apply for absolution and not refuse as
heretofore to do so, thus discrediting inquisitorial censures, but the
viceroy was not to be excommunicated without the assent of the
inquisitor-general. The Regent Bruñol argued earnestly in favor of
including rape among the excepted crimes, pointing out how provocative
it was of assassination, when the husband of a woman thus injured saw
the culprit walking the streets unpunished, and he seems to have
succeeded in getting it added to the scanty list of those which the
Inquisition would permit to be dealt with in the secular courts.[68]
Thus far the conferees agreed, but they differed on the exclusion of
nobles from official position. The members of the Suprema represented to
the king that, since he had ordered their removal, the Inquisition had
fallen greatly in public estimation and found much difficulty in making
arrests; therefore they asked that there might be thirty, who would
always be selected from the most quiet and peaceable; otherwise the
tribunal would be confined to men of low extraction, who could not make
arrests. To this the regents replied that the maintenance of the royal
order was the only means of keeping the nobles and barons obedient to
the viceroy; in Sicily more than elsewhere this was necessary and
without it matters would be worse than before, when the tribunal
excommunicated the viceroy in the affair of Count Mussumelli; heresy was
unknown, the nobles and barons had never made an arrest and they
obtained the positions solely to gain the privileges.[69] These
arguments were unanswerable and the prohibition was maintained. With the
accession of Philip III an attempt was again made to have it repealed;
Inquisitor Páramo, in a letter of March 8, 1600, to the new king
described the condition of the tribunal as most deplorable in
consequence of it, but the appeal was unsuccessful. Philip contented
himself with secret instructions to the viceroy to enforce the cédula of
January 18, 1535, and the Concordia and to endeavor to come to some
understanding with the inquisitors.[70]
So far, indeed, was the Inquisition from being oppressed, that it was
seeking to assert exclusive claim to the obedience of its “subjects,” as
though they were released in all things from the control of the civil
authorities. Thus, in 1591, the tribunal issued an edict condemning all
its “subjects” who had not revealed the amount of corn possessed by them
or had sold it at unlawful prices--evidently referring to certain
measures taken by the government, as was frequently done in times of
scarcity. The Viceroy Alba was quick to recognize this attempt to
supplant the civil power and he stopped the publication of the edict. He
was soon afterwards succeeded by Count Olivares, whose temper Inquisitor
Páramo, with characteristic pertinacity, proceeded to test with a
proclamation of April 23, 1592, published throughout the island to sound
of trumpet, reciting the disturbance of public order by bands of
robbers, against whom and all harboring or favoring them the viceroy had
issued edicts, wherefore he summoned all those subject to the
jurisdiction of the Inquisition to abstain from sheltering the said
bandits, under the penalties provided by the laws and of a thousand
ounces applicable to the Holy Office. Olivares was no more disposed than
his predecessor to admit that his actions required inquisitorial
confirmation and, on May 30th, he issued an edict prohibiting, under
heavy penalties, the publication of the proclamation; if, in any place,
it had been entered on the records of the magistrates, the entry was to
be erased and no similar orders of the Inquisition were to be received
in future. He moreover told the inquisitors that it was none of their
business to issue decrees on this or any other matter of general policy,
but simply to obey the laws; that it had been done merely to enlarge
their jurisdiction illegally and that the government could not be
divided into two heads with one body.[71]
Between conflicting pretensions such as these, harmony was impossible
and the conclusions of the junta of 1595 did not restore it. Collisions
were frequent and the extremes to which they were sometimes carried are
seen in one occurring in 1602, when the Gran Corte prosecuted Mariano
Agliata, a familiar, for the murder of Don Diego de Zúñiga and Don Diego
Sandoval, a captain and a sergeant of the royal troops. The inquisitors
arrested him and claimed jurisdiction and, when the Gran Corte refused
to abandon the prosecution, they excommunicated the judges.
Excommunication by an inquisitor could be removed only by the power
which fulminated it or by the pope, but the viceroy, the Duke of Feria,
persuaded the archbishop, Diego de Haëdo, to absolve the judges,
whereupon the inquisitors interdicted him from performing any functions
until he should admit that his absolutions were invalid. At this the
viceroy lost his temper and despatched, August 7th, two companies of
soldiers to the Inquisition, with a gallows and the executioner. They
remained in front of the building until two o’clock in the morning and
returned on the 8th in greater force, erected six gallows, each with its
hangman, and stood with lighted matchlocks pointed at the windows. The
inquisitors were not daunted by this impotent display of force; they
barred the doors, hoisted the standard of the Inquisition, with a papal
flag and a crucifix, and flung out of the windows among the troops
notices of excommunication. Undeterred by this, the Spaniards broke
their way in and, after some parley, the inquisitors promised to absolve
them. Feria had gone as far as he dared without result and the victory
remained with the inquisitors, for the case of Agliata was surrendered
to them, on their removing the interdict on the archbishop and the
excommunication of the judges.[72] To emphasize Feria’s defeat, Philip
III, in 1603, issued a general letter to all of his viceroys, lauding
the services of the Inquisition and ordering them to give it all the
favor and assistance it might ask for, and to maintain intact the
privileges, exemptions and liberties, assured to its ministers and
familiars, by law, by the concordias, by the royal cédulas, by use and
custom and by any other source.[73]
* * * * *
As though these sempiternal conflicts with the civil authorities were
not sufficiently disturbing to the public peace, the Inquisition was
involved in a similar series with the bishops, in which it did not fare
so well, entrenched as they were behind the canon law, which the
monarchs could not set aside. A portion of the officials of the Holy
Office were clerics, of whose immunity from the secular courts there
could be no question, but the bishops claimed, under divine and canon
law, an imprescriptible right of cognizance of their offences, when
these did not concern the faith or their official functions. The
inquisitors held that they possessed exclusive jurisdiction over their
subordinates and the conflict was waged with abundant lack of Christian
charity, causing great popular scandal until, as we are told, the people
were in the habit of asking where was the God of the clergy. The contest
raged chiefly over the commissioners appointed everywhere throughout the
island, whose duty it was to investigate cases of heresy in their
districts and report or, if necessary, make arrests and send the
culprits to Palermo for trial. In 1625 the Suprema endeavored to effect
a compromise, by designating what offences were cognizable by the
bishops exclusively, what by the inquisitors and what cumulatively by
either jurisdiction, for that of the bishops could not be denied and the
Inquisition had no papal letters to show in support of its claims. This
seems only to have emboldened the bishops and the quarrels continued. In
1630 Philip IV and the inquisitor-general wrote to the viceroy and the
inquisitors, enquiring what was the established custom in such cases,
but apparently the two ecclesiastical camps could not agree on terms of
peace and nothing was done. In 1642 the inquisitor, Gonsalvo Bravo
Grosero submitted to the Suprema a long and learned paper in which he
describes the condition of the Sicilian Inquisition as most deplorable,
in consequence of the implacable hostility of the bishops. It could not
possibly do without commissioners, for the inquisitors could not travel
around to visit the provinces; the roads were too bad and their salaries
too meagre to bear the expense, as they could not venture into the
country without a guard of at least forty men, in view of the robbers
and bandits. There was not money to pay the commissioners a salary and
their only inducement to accept the office was to gain immunity from
episcopal jurisdiction. As this was virtually denied to them, it became
impossible to find fitting clerics to undertake the duties, so there
were many vacancies that could not be filled.
Grosero evidently did not pause to consider the reflection cast on the
character of the clerics thus anxious to find refuge in the Inquisition
from the courts of their bishops, but the cases which he mentions, if
not exaggerated, testify amply to the virulence of episcopal
vindictiveness. Recently, he says, the tribunal became involved in a
quarrel with the Bishop of Syracuse over the case of a familiar.
Indignant at its methods, the bishop indulged in reprisals on the
unlucky commissioner of Lentini, on a charge of incontinence; he was
seized by a band of armed clerics, stripped and carried on a mule to
prison as a malefactor and cast into a dungeon where he lay, deprived of
all communication with his friends, until the Bishop of Cefalù, then
governor of the island, procured his release, but his persecution
continued for two years. So the Bishop of Girgenti seized the
commissioner of Caltanexeda because he had, under orders from the
tribunal, stopped the prosecution of a familiar. He was confined in a
damp, underground cell for forty days, until the viceroy procured his
release, and his unwholesome confinement nearly cost him his life. The
impelling cause of Grosero’s memorial was a pending case, which scarcely
evokes sympathy with his complaints. Alessandro Turano, commissioner of
Burgio, had given refuge in his house to a kinsman, a monk guilty of
murder, and had refused admission to the officers who came to arrest the
criminal. For this the Bishop of Girgenti was prosecuting him, and
Grosero appeals to the Suprema to intervene and put an end to such
violations of the immunity necessary to enable the Inquisition to
perform its pious work.[74] It is not likely that the Suprema succeeded
in establishing concord between the irreconcilable pretensions of the
two ecclesiastical bodies, but the struggle is worth passing attention
as affording a glimpse into the social conditions of the period under
such institutions.
* * * * *
Meanwhile the incessant bickering with the civil authorities continued
as active and as bitter as ever. No attention was paid to the
limitations prescribed in the Concordias, or to the protests of the
viceroys until, in 1635, an attempt was made, in a new Concordia, to
remedy some of the more crying evils by empowering the viceroy, in cases
of exceptional gravity, to banish criminal officials, after notice to
the senior inquisitor, so that he might appeal to Madrid, and in these
cases the inquisitors were forbidden to excommunicate the officers of
justice.[75] Slender as was this concession, the inquisitors, in a
letter of April 26, 1652, to the Suprema, did not hesitate to assert
that the exemptions of the officials were reduced to those of the vilest
plebeians and that their revenue suffered heavily through the
limitation of their jurisdiction and the great reduction in the number
of those who applied for appointments.[76] On the other hand, if we may
believe the _Consulta Magna_, drawn up, in 1696, by a special junta
composed of representatives of all the royal councils except the
Suprema, the Sicilian tribunal paid no respect whatever to the
Concordias, held itself as wholly independent of all rules and enforced
its arbitrary acts by the constant abuse of excommunication, which
rendered the condition of the island most deplorable. The inquisitors
refused to meet the judges in competencias on disputed cases and though,
by the Concordia of 1635, such refusal incurred a fine of five hundred
ducats for a first offence and dismissal for a second, yet as the
enforcement of this required the issue by the Suprema of a commission to
the Council of Italy, it was easily eluded. As a matter of course the
suggestion of the junta was ineffective that those oppressed by the
abuse of spiritual censures should have the right of appeal to the royal
judges.[77]
* * * * *
These quarrels and the exercise of its widely extended temporal
jurisdiction by no means distracted wholly the tribunal from its
legitimate functions of preserving the purity of the faith. In 1640 it
held a notable auto de fe in which one case is worth alluding to as an
illustration of inquisitorial dealings with the insane. Carlo Tabaloro
of Calabria was an Augustinian lay-brother, who had conceived the idea
that he was the Son of God and the Messiah, Christ having been merely
the Redeemer. He had written a gospel about himself and framed a series
of novel religious observances. Arrested by the Palermo tribunal, in
1635, he had imagined it to be for the purpose of enabling him to
convert the inquisitors and through them the people. For five years the
theologians labored to disabuse him, but to no purpose; he was condemned
as an obstinate and pertinacious heretic and was led forth in the auto
of 1640 to be burnt alive. On his way to the stake he still expected
that torrents of rain would extinguish the fires, but finding himself
disappointed and shrinking from the awful death, at the last moment he
professed conversion and was mercifully strangled before the pile was
lighted.[78] At another auto, June 2, 1647, there were thirty-four
penitents and six months later another, January 12, 1648, with
thirty-seven, followed, December 13th of the same year, by one with
forty-three. January 22, 1651, there was another with thirty-nine,
honored moreover with the presence of Don John of Austria, fresh from
the triumph of suppressing the Neapolitan revolt of Masaniello. In fact,
in a letter of April 26, 1652, the inquisitors boasted that they had
punished two hundred and seven culprits in public autos, besides nearly
as many who had been despatched privately in the audience chamber. This
would show an average of about eighty cases a year, greatly more than at
this time was customary in Spain. The offences were mostly blasphemy,
bigamy and sorcery, with an occasional Protestant or Alumbrado, the
Judaizers by this time having almost disappeared.[79] The position of
inquisitor was not wholly without danger, for Juan López de Cisneros
died of a wound in the forehead inflicted by Fray Diego la Mattina, a
prisoner whom he was visiting in his cell and who was burnt alive in the
auto of March 17, 1658.[80] The activity of the tribunal must at times
have brought in considerable profits for, in 1640, we happen to learn
that it was contributing yearly twenty-four thousand reales in silver to
the Suprema and not long afterwards it was called upon to send five
hundred ducats, _plata doble_, to that of Majorca, which had been
impoverished by a pestilence. Still these gains were fluctuating and the
demands on the tribunal seem to have brought it into financial straits,
from which the Suprema sought to relieve it by an appeal, August 6,
1652, to Philip IV, to grant it benefices to the amount of twenty-five
hundred ducats a year.[81]
The treaty of Utrecht, in 1713, gave Sicily to Savoy, but the
Inquisition remained Spanish and nominally subject to the Suprema. There
was, however, an immediate change of personnel, for we find the
inquisitor, José de la Rosa Cozio, early in 1714, taking refuge in Spain
and billeted upon the tribunal of Valencia.[82] When, in 1718, Savoy
exchanged Sicily with Austria for Sardinia, the Emperor Charles VI would
not endure this dependence of the tribunal upon a foreign power and
procured, in 1720, from Clement XI a brief transferring the supremacy to
Vienna. In accordance, however, with the persistent Hapsburg claims on
the crown of Spain, the Inquisition remained Spanish. A supreme council
for it was created in Vienna, with Juan Navarro, Bishop of Albarracin as
chief who, although resident there gratified himself with the title of
_Inquisidor-general de España_, but in 1723 he was succeeded by Cardinal
Emeric, Archbishop of Kolocz. Apparently it was deemed necessary to
justify this elaborate machinery with a demonstration and, on April 6,
1724, an auto de fe was celebrated at Palermo with great splendor, the
expenses being defrayed by the emperor. Twenty-six delinquents were
penanced, consisting as usual mostly of cases of blasphemy, bigamy and
sorcery, but the spectacle would have been incomplete without
concremation and two unfortunates, who had languished in prison since
1699, were brought out for that purpose. They were Geltruda, a beguine,
and Fra Romualdo, a friar, accused of Quietism and Molinism, with the
accompanying heresies of illuminism and impeccability. Their long
imprisonment, with torture and ill-usage, seems to have turned their
brains, and they had been condemned to relaxation as impenitent in 1705
and 1709, but the sentences had never been carried out and they were now
brought from their dungeons and burnt alive.[83] Less notable was an
auto de fe of March 22, 1732, in which Antonio Canzoneri was burnt alive
as a contumacious and relapsed heretic.[84]
Although the zeal of Charles VI led to increased activity of the
tribunal in matters of faith, he was little disposed to tolerate its
abuse of its temporal jurisdiction, which had led to so many fruitless
remonstrances under Spanish domination. In letters of January 26, 1729,
to his viceroy the Count of Sástago, he recites the complaints made to
him, by the English factory, that foreign merchants were exposed to
constant frauds by bankruptcies of debtors who claimed the forum of the
Inquisition or of the Santa Cruzada, where creditors could get no
justice or even ascertain whether the bankruptcies were fictitious or
not. The emperor therefore orders that in future the Concordias shall be
strictly construed and rigidly adhered to; that if the inquisitors
proceed by excommunication they shall experience the effect of “los
remedios económicos” (presumably the suspension of their emoluments) and
that in future all mercantile cases, whether civil or criminal, shall
not be entitled to the forum of the Inquisition--all of which was duly
proclaimed by the viceroy in an edict of March 17th. At the same time
the legal functionaries were required to investigate the whole subject
and report what further measures might be essential to prevent
interference with the course of justice. The result of their labors is
embodied in a Pragmatic Sanction of May 12, 1732, consisting of eleven
articles, whereby it was ordered that the inquisitorial forum should not
include exemption from military service and taxes; that widows of
stipendiary officials should enjoy the forum only during widowhood; that
the privilege of bearing arms should be exercised only when in actual
service of the Inquisition; that commissions as messengers should not be
given to shipmasters; nobles holding fiefs were not to be enrolled as
familiars; the forum was not to exempt from serving in onerous public
office and the use of excommunication in cases of impeding jurisdiction
was allowed under certain limitations. This latter is explained by a
decision of March 6, 1734, on cases in which the inquisitors had
excommunicated D. Antonio Crimibela, a judge of the Gran Corte and D.
Felipe Venuto, _capitan de justicia_ of Paternò, when it was ordered
that excommunications could only be employed in matters of faith and in
cases where the secular tribunals had refused the conference preliminary
to forming a competencia to decide as to the jurisdiction.[85]
The conquest of the Two Sicilies by Charles III, in 1734, led the
inquisitors to imagine that, under a Spanish dynasty, they could
reassert their superiority over the law, but they were promptly
undeceived. D. Sisto Poidimani, when on trial, recused them for enmity
as judges in his case and the Giunta of Presidents recognized his
reasons as sufficient, whereupon Viceroy de Castro ordered them, October
2, 1735, to take no further action except to appoint some one to act in
their place. To this they demurred and de Castro repeated the order,
January 24, 1736, and again on February 19th. Finally, on April 21st he
told them that they were actuated, not by reason but by disobedience,
and that, if the order was not promptly obeyed, the senior inquisitor
must sail, within forty-eight hours, for Naples to render to the king an
account of his actions.[86]
The various changes that had occurred rendered the position of the
Sicilian tribunal somewhat anomalous and to remedy this the king
obtained, in 1738, from Clement XIII the appointment of Pietro Galletti,
Bishop of Catania, as inquisitor-general of Sicily, with power to
deputize subordinates, who was followed, in 1742, by Giacomo Bonanno,
Bishop of Patti, appointed by Benedict XIV.[87] Thus the severance from
Spain was perpetuated and it was rendered independent. This seems to
have revived its aggressiveness and it assumed that the limitations
imposed by the Emperor Charles VI had become obsolete with the change of
sovereigns for, in 1739, it endeavored to intervene in the bankruptcy
case of Giuseppe Maria Gerardi, who was entitled to its forum, but the
attempt was promptly annulled by the Viceroy Corsini. A further blow was
inflicted by a decree of July 12, 1746, suppressing the system of
competencias, for the settlement of conflicting cases of jurisdiction,
and substituting, in all cases not of faith, the decision of the
viceroy, who could, in matters of grave importance, refer them to the
king.[88] Thus gradually the secular business of the Holy Office was
circumscribed; in its spiritual field of activity there were no more
burnings, though it occasionally held autos de fe, in which figured
mostly women accused of the vulgar arts of sorcery, and in addition it
interfered with scholars in its capacity of censor.
The enlightened views of Charles III were not abandoned, when he was
summoned to the throne of Spain in 1759, and left that of Naples to his
young son, Ferdinando IV, then a child eight years of age. Public
opinion in Italy was rapidly rendering the Holy Office an anachronism
and Ferdinando only expressed the general sentiment when, by a decree of
March 16, 1782, he pronounced its suppression. He gave as a reason that
all attempts had failed to make it alter its vicious system, which
deprived the accused of legitimate means of defence; he restored to the
bishops their original jurisdiction in all matters of faith, but
required them to observe the same procedure as the secular courts of
justice and to submit to the viceroy for approval all citations to
appear, all orders for arrest and all sentences proposed; moreover, he
appropriated the property of the Inquisition to continuing for life the
salaries of the officials, with a provision that, as these pensions
should fall in, the money should be used for the public benefit. The
revenues, in fact, amounted to ten thousand crowns a year and eventually
they served to found chairs in mathematics and experimental physics and
to build an observatory. When the royal officials took possession of the
Inquisition, they found only three prisoners to liberate--women accused
of witchcraft. A few more had previously been discharged, in
anticipation of the suppression, by the inquisitor-general, Salvatore
Ventimiglia, Archbishop of Nicodemia.[89]
In its career, since 1487, Franchina, writing in 1744, boasts that the
Holy Office had handed over to the secular arm for burning two hundred
and one living heretics and apostates and two hundred and seventy-nine
effigies of the dead or fugitives.[90] It illustrates forcibly the
changed spirit of the age that Viceroy Caraccioli, in writing to
D’Alembert an account of the abolition, says that he shed tears of joy
in proceeding to the Inquisition with the great dignitaries of State and
Church, when he caused the royal rescript to be read to the inquisitor
and the arms of the Holy Office to be erased from the portal amid the
rejoicing of the assembled people.[91]
MALTA.
Malta, if we may believe Salelles, enjoyed the honor of having St. Paul
as the founder of its Inquisition, when he was cast ashore there on his
voyage to Rome.[92] In the sixteenth century, however, as a dependency
of Sicily, it was under the Sicilian tribunal, which maintained an
organization there, under a commissioner.[93] When, in 1530, Charles V
gave the island to the Knights of St. John, the Sicilian jurisdiction
lapsed but, even without the Holy Office, the Church had efficient
machinery for the suppression of heresy. In 1546 a Frenchman named
Gesuald was found to have been for ten years infecting the islanders
with Calvinist opinions, and the Aragonese Domingo Cubelles, the Bishop
of Malta, was at no loss in exercising his episcopal jurisdiction.
Gesuald was obstinate in his faith and was duly burnt alive; on his way
to the stake he called out “Why do priests hesitate to take wives, since
it is lawful?” whereupon Cubelles ordered him to be gagged and he
perished in silence. His converts lacked his stubborn convictions and
were reconciled--among them two priests who had secretly married their
concubines, for which they were condemned to wear the sanbenito. In
1553, the Grand Master, Juan de Omedes, constituted three of the knights
and a chaplain as an Inquisition, but there is no trace of their labors
and Cubelles continued to exercise his episcopal jurisdiction in several
cases during the following years. In 1560, however, when a Maltese,
named Doctor Pietro Combo, fell under suspicion, Cubelles seems to have
felt uncertain what to do with him and sent him in chains to the Roman
Inquisition, where he was acquitted. Cubelles informed the cardinals
that the Lutheran heresy was spreading in the island and this probably
explains why, by letters of October 21, 1561, the Roman Inquisition,
while recognizing the episcopal jurisdiction of Cubelles, enlarged it to
that of an inquisitor-general, empowering him to appoint deputies and to
proceed against all persons, whether clerics or laymen, to try them,
torture them, relax them or reconcile them with appropriate penance.[94]
In his zeal for the effective discharge of his duties, Cubelles sent to
Palermo for detailed information as to the conduct of the Inquisition
and was furnished with copies of the Spanish instructions and forms.
This seems to have provoked the Roman Congregation of the Holy Office,
between which and the Spanish there was perpetual jealousy, and it sent
to Malta a Dominican to act as his assistant and to direct him. He was
succeeded, both as bishop and inquisitor, by Martin Rojas de Portorubio,
to whom in 1573 Gregory XIII sent a commission. Apparently it was
impossible for the Inquisition to maintain harmonious relations with the
temporal power and, already in 1574, he complained to Rome that his
officials were beaten and that the Grand Master, Jean l’Evesque de la
Cassière, threatened to throw him out of the window if he came to the
palace. This created considerable scandal, but Rome, unlike Spain, was
not accustomed to support inquisitors through thick and thin, and the
result was that, by brief of July 3, 1574, Gregory revoked his
commission and sent Dr. Pietro Duzzina as apostolic vicar to conduct the
Inquisition. In thus separating it from the episcopate no provision was
made for its expenses, but soon after this the confiscated property of
Mathieu Faison, a rich heretic burnt in effigy, yielded a revenue of
three hundred crowns and, when Bishop Rojas died, March 19, 1577,
opportunity was taken to burden the see with a pension of six hundred
more for its benefit.[95] It was thus rendered permanent, but a
protracted struggle with successive grandmasters was necessary to secure
for its officials the privileges of the forum and the immunities and
exemptions which they claimed.[96]
Yet the Spanish Inquisition was not satisfied to be thus completely
superseded by that of Rome, even in so remote and inconspicuous a spot
as Malta. In 1575 Duzzina arrested a man as a heretic; it was known that
testimony against him had been taken in Sicily and application for it
was made to the inquisitors of Palermo. They applied for instructions to
the Suprema, which ordered them not to give it but to claim the
prisoner. The result was that the Maltese tribunal tried him on what had
occurred on the island and discharged him.[97] This emphasized its
absolute separation from the Spanish Holy Office and its history need
not be further followed here, except to allude to the most celebrated
case in its annals, when the two Quakeresses, Katharine Evans and Sarah
Cheevers, moved by the Spirit, went to Malta on a mission of conversion
and suffered an imprisonment of four years.[98]