CHAPTER V.

THE CANARIES.[258]

In 1402 Jean de Bethencourt, an adventurer from Normandy, discovered or

rediscovered the Canaries and made himself master of the islands of

Lanzarote, Fuerteventura, Gomera and Hierro. After various changes of

ownership, they fell to the crown of Castile, and Isabella undertook the

conquest of the remainder of the group, the Grand Canary, Tenerife and

la Palma. The sturdy resistance of the native Guanches rendered the

enterprise an arduous one, consuming eighteen years, and it was not

until 1496 that it was finally accomplished. That Columbus, on his first

voyage, took his departure from Gomera indicates the importance assumed

by the Canaries in the development of trade with the New World and this,

conjoined with their productiveness, as they became settled and

cultivated, rendered them a centre of commerce frequented by the ships

of all maritime nations, as well as an object of buccaneering raids, in

an age when trade and piracy were sometimes indistinguishable. Their

proximity to Morocco and the Guinea coast moreover exposed them to

attacks from the Moors and gave them an opportunity of accumulating

Moorish and negro slaves, whom the piety of the age sought to convert

into Christians by the water of baptism. In various ways, therefore,

there came to be abundant material for inquisitorial activity, although

the Judaizing New Christians, who furnished the Spanish tribunals with

their principal business, appear to have been singularly few.

There was no haste in extending the Spanish Inquisition to the Canaries.

As early as 1406 a bishopric had been founded in Lanzarote, subsequently

transferred to Las Palmas in the Grand Canary, which was regarded as the

capital of the group. If the successive bishops, who, with more or less

regularity, filled the see, exercised their episcopal jurisdiction over

heresy, their labors have left no trace. It is not until the time of

Diego de Muros, who was consecrated in 1496, that we have any evidence

of such action. That stirring prelate, who held a diocesan synod in

1497, announced, April 25, 1499, that, as inquisitor by his ordinary

authority, he would have inquest made in some of the islands into heresy

and Judaism and other crimes against the faith. What was the result, we

have no means of knowing except a confession made, on May 22d, by Isabel

Ramírez, of having taught a superstitious prayer which was regarded as

sorcery. It is probable that Bishop Muros was warned that he was

invading the jurisdiction of the Holy Office, for he sent the papers in

the case to the tribunal of Seville.[259] It is noteworthy that, after

the establishment of the Canary tribunal, the bishops and their

provisors long continued to use the title of “ordinary” inquisitor, to

which no exception seems to have been taken, although elsewhere it was

contested and forbidden. The latest occasion of its employment with

which I have met occurs in 1672.[260]

It was not until 1505 that the Suprema bethought itself of establishing

a tribunal in the Canaries, when Inquisitor-general Deza appointed as

inquisitor Bartolomé López Tribaldos. The first entry in his register is

dated Tuesday, October 28, 1505, and the earliest record that we have of

his activity is in 1507, when there were two reconciliations, one of

Juan de Ler, a Portuguese, for Judaism, and the other of Ana Rodríguez,

a native, for sorceries, whose sanbenitos were duly hung in the

cathedral.[261] What were the exact powers conferred on Tribaldos we

have no means of knowing, but they must have been exceedingly limited,

and for a long time the tribunal continued to be in close dependence on

that of Seville. When, about 1520, Martin Ximenes, fiscal of the Seville

tribunal, came to Las Palmas in the combined capacity of precentor of

the Cathedral, provisor and inquisitor, he left as his deputy fiscal in

Seville Doctor Fernando de Zamora, thus not abandoning that office. Even

as late as 1548 we chance to have the record of a _consulta de fe_ held

by the Seville tribunal, January 13th, to decide on certain informations

and cases sent to it by the Canary inquisitor Padilla. In the affair of

Juan Alonso, a Morisco, it was ordered that he should be arrested and

tried, when the result was to be reported for action. In that of Juan

Fernández, he was to be summoned and examined as to his blasphemy and

then be penanced at the discretion of Padilla and the Ordinary. Leonor

de Lera was to be arrested and tried and the result be submitted. The

case of Diego Martínez had apparently been concluded under Padilla, for

the Seville consulta sentenced him to twelve years of galley

service.[262] Thus every act, from the preliminary arrest to the final

decision, was regulated from Seville. To render the position still more

anomalous we hear of an _inquisidor ordinario_, Alonso Vivas, Prior of

the cathedral, commissioned, in October, 1523, to try cases of faith

throughout the Grand Canary as he had already done in Telde and

Agüimes.[263]

Irregular and imperfect as may have been the organization of the

tribunal, it yet managed to accomplish some convictions. In 1510 there

was held an auto de fe in which there were three reconciliations for

Judaism and one, of a Moorish slave, for reincidence in Mahometan error,

while a fifth culprit was penanced for Judaism.[264] Then in 1513

occurred the first relaxation, that of Alonso Fátima, a native Morisco,

who had fled to Barbary. This was always deemed sufficient evidence of

relapse to former errors, and he was duly burned in effigy. It was

probably also to 1516 that may be attributed the first relaxation in

person--that of Juan de Xeres of Seville, for Judaism. It shows that the

tribunal was indifferently equipped that, when he was sentenced to

torture, the physician whose presence was obligatory on such occasions,

Doctor Juan Meneses de Gallegas, was required personally to administer

it. It was exceedingly severe, extending to eleven jars of water; the

accused was unable to endure it; he confessed his faith, was sentenced

to relaxation as a relapsed and for fictitious confession, and was

executed on Wednesday, June 4th.[265]

Martin Ximenes seems to have performed his duties with commendable

energy. He commenced by making an alphabetical register of all the

parties denounced under his predecessor, comprising 139 individuals,

besides various groups, such as “the Confesos and Moriscos of

Lanzarote,” “other Confesos, their kindred,” “certain persons of Hierro”

etc., which indicate how slovenly had been the procedure.[266] He made a

visitation of Tenerife and la Palma, from which he returned with ample

store of fresh denunciations.[267] May 29, 1524, all the dignitaries,

civil and ecclesiastical, and all the people were assembled in the

church of Santa Ana, where an edict was read commanding them to render

aid and favor to the Inquisition, and an oath to that effect was

administered. There was also an Edict of Grace, promising relief from

confiscation to all who would come forward and confess as to themselves

and others; also an Edict of Faith requiring denunciation of errors and

specifying the various kinds of blasphemies and sorceries and the

distinctive Jewish and Moorish rites; and finally an edict reciting that

the Conversos were emigrating and forbidding their leaving the islands

and all ship-masters from carrying away suspected persons without

licence from him, under the penalties of fautorship and of forfeiting

their vessels.[268]

The terror inspired by the activity of Ximenes may be estimated from a

single instance. On May 21st, Ynes de Tarifa came before him to confess

that when, a couple of months before, she had heard of the burning in

Seville of her son-in-law Alonso Hernández and of his brother Francisco,

she recalled that after meals Alonso used to read to Francisco out of a

book in an unknown tongue and, if she had erred in not denouncing this

to the Seville tribunal, she begged to be treated mercifully.[269] The

publication of the edicts throughout the islands brought in an abundant

store of denunciations, the record for eight months, from September 13,

1524, to May 15, 1526, amounting to 167. They were nearly all of petty

sorceries by women, in sickness or love affairs, but with an occasional

blasphemy or suspicion of Judaism, and persons of station were not

exempted, for the list comprises the Adelantado Don Pedro de Lugo and

his wife Elvira Diaz, the Dean Juan de Alarcon, the Prior Alonso Bivas

and others of position. The adelantado, in fact, was dead, but the

accusation against his memory is sufficiently significant of the

prevailing temper to be worth relating. The Bachiller Diego de Funes

came forward, by command of his confessor, to state that when Diego de

San Martin was holding for ransom a _Judío de señal_ (one obliged to

wear a distinctive mark) who had been caught on his way to Portugal, the

captive was starving to death because he could not eat meat slaughtered

by Christians: de Lugo charitably gave him a sheep to kill according to

his rites and even himself ate some of the mutton. These petty cases

kept Ximenes busy and he despatched them with promptness; the

punishments as a rule were not severe--in one or two cases scourging or

vergüenza, but mostly small fines, exile and occasionally spiritual

penances.[270]

There were, however, cases in which the faith demanded more exemplary

vindication. The island of Grand Canary, from 1523 to 1532, was ravaged

with pestilence creating great misery. Among other causes of divine

wrath the people included the secret apostasy of the Portuguese New

Christians and of the Moorish slaves, and demanded severe measures for

its repression. It may have been with an idea of placating God that

Ximenes, on February 24, 1526, celebrated the first _auto publico

general de fe_ with great solemnity, in which all the nobles of the

island assisted as familiars. The occasion was impressive, for there

were seven Judaizers relaxed in person and burnt, there were ten

reconciliations, of which five were of Moorish baptized slaves, four

were for Judaism and one of a Genoese heretic, in addition to which

there were two blasphemers penanced.[271]

This is the last that we hear of Ximenes, whose place, in 1527, was

filled by Luis de Padilla, treasurer of the cathedral. For awhile he

imitated his predecessor’s activity and, on June 4, 1530, another

oblation was offered to God, in an auto celebrated with the same

ostentation as the previous one. This time there were no relaxations in

person, but there were six effigies burnt of as many Moorish slaves, who

had escaped and were drowned in their infidelity while on their way to

Africa and liberty. There were also the effigy and bones of Juan de

Tarifa, the husband of the Ynes de Tarifa who had denounced herself in

1524; he was of Converso descent and had committed suicide in prison,

which was equivalent to self-condemnation. There were three

reconciliations, of which two were for Judaism and one for Islam and

five penitents for minor offences.[272] The next auto was held on May

23, 1534, in which there were two relaxations of effigies for Judaism

and twenty-five reconciliations--twenty-four of Moriscos and one of a

Judaizer. One of the relaxations carries with it a warning, for it was

of Costanza Garza, who had died in 1533 during her trial. When too late

her innocence was discovered and the Suprema humanely rehabilitated her

memory and her children, and ordered the restoration of her confiscated

estate.[273]

Whether this aggressive vindication of the faith put an end to heresy or

whether Padilla had exhausted his energies, it would be impossible now

to say, but after this auto the tribunal sank into lethargy so complete

that on February 8, 1538, the chapter notified Padilla and the

secretary, Canon Alonso de San Juan, that the revenues of their prebends

were stopped, for they did not assist in the choir and it was notorious

that the Holy Office had nothing to do.[274] Possibly this may have

stimulated action, but we have seen that in 1548 the tribunal was merely

collecting evidence and obeying the instructions of the Seville

Inquisition. Under this there was an accumulation of culprits for an

auto held in 1557, where there were seventeen effigies burnt of

fugitives--all Moriscos, except a Fleming, Julian Cornelis Vandyk. There

were also four Moriscos reconciled, one of them, curiously enough, for

so-called Calvinism.[275] This seems to have exhausted whatever remains

of energy Padilla possessed for we hear of no further action by him,

except a quarrel with the royal Audiencia in 1562, but nevertheless the

tribunal shared in the suppression of prebends, and a papal brief

assigning one to it was presented to the chapter, August 27, 1563, thus

adding another efficient cause of dissension between them.[276] Soon

after this the tribunal virtually ceased to exist. In 1565 there was a

curious case, of which more hereafter, of John Sanders, an English

sailor. It was carried on wholly by the episcopal provisor, during the

absence of the bishop Diego Deza. There were arrest, sequestration and

the collection of voluminous testimony, which was carefully sealed and

despatched to Bishop Deza, to be handed to the Seville tribunal.

Throughout it all, there is no trace of participation by the local

Inquisition, which, in the consuming jealousy of episcopal

encroachments, could not possibly have been the case had there been a

tribunal in the Canaries.[277]

The policy followed thus far had evidently proved a failure, and

Inquisitor-general Espinosa resolved to reorganize the tribunal and

render it independent of Seville. The fiscal of Toledo, Diego Ortiz de

Fúnez, was selected and was sent out as a full inquisitor, with the

unusual powers of selecting and removing his subordinates, while

subjected only to the requirement of reporting his acts to the Suprema.

The royal letters commanding obedience to him are dated October 10,

1567, and he left Madrid in the Spring of 1568, landing at Las Isletas

on April 17th. Four days later he started for Las Palmas, accompanied in

procession by all the dignitaries, secular and ecclesiastical, of the

island. On May 1st all the population was summoned, under pain of fine

and excommunication, to assemble the next day in the cathedral, at the

reading of the Edict of Faith and to take the oath to obey and favor the

Holy Office, all of which was performed with due solemnity.[278]

Fúnez carried instructions to appoint twenty familiars and no more in

Las Palmas, and such as were found necessary in the other cities and

islands. This was his first care, and he soon had a formidable body,

recruited from the old nobility, to support his authority. Thus far the

Inquisition had had no special habitation, not even a prison, and those

under trial on the most serious charges were confined in their own

houses or in the public gaol, where there was no provision for their

segregation. Fúnez demanded a competent building, with the necessary

conveniences, a demand not easily complied with in so small a place, and

he finally was installed in the episcopal palace, then vacant through

the absence of the bishop.[279] This of course could be but temporary

and some other provision must have been made, for we are told that, when

the Dutch under Pieter Vandervoez, in 1599, took possession of Las

Palmas, they burnt both the episcopal palace and the building of the

Inquisition. The former was not rebuilt until thirty years later by

Bishop Murga and the latter, as we shall see, was reconstructed in due

time on a large scale by the tribunal.[280]

A matter not easily understood is the bestowal, May 25, 1568, on Fúnez,

by the dean and chapter, _sede vacante_, of cognizance of superstitions

and sorcery, because these crimes should not remain unpunished and his

powers as inquisitor were deficient in this respect.[281] These offences

in Spain were recognized as subject to inquisitorial jurisdiction when

savoring, as they always were assumed to do, of heresy and pact with the

demon; they formed by far the larger part of the cases coming before the

Canary tribunal and the previous inquisitors had not hesitated to deal

with them. They formed however a kind of debatable ground, claimed by

both the secular and spiritual as well as the inquisitorial jurisdiction

and Fúnez may have taken advantage of the impression produced by his

reception to obtain from the chapter, in the absence of a bishop, a

transfer of its powers.

Fúnez was zealous and energetic in restoring the tribunal to usefulness

and, in about eighteen months, he had accumulated material for an auto

de fe, celebrated November 5, 1569. For this he sent out his

proclamation through all the islands so that, as he boasted to the

Suprema, although the Grand Canary had only fifteen hundred inhabitants,

there were fully three thousand spectators assembled. The new bishop,

Juan de Azólares, took so warm an interest in the affairs of the

Inquisition that he voted personally in all the cases, he walked in the

procession and he preached the sermon. There were twenty-seven penitents

for minor offences, involving fines, scourging, galleys and other

penalties, and there were three effigies of Moriscos relaxed. One of

these represented Juan Felipe, a rich merchant of Lanzarote who, on

learning that a warrant had been issued for his arrest, chartered a

vessel under pretext of going to Tenerife, on which he embarked with his

wife and children and some thirty of his compatriots, finding a safe

refuge in Morocco and furnishing material for heightening the interest

of several more autos.[282]

The activity of Fúnez was not confined to the Gran Canaria for he made

repeated visitations to the several islands, gathering in denunciations

from all quarters, so that, between May 2, 1568, and January 4, 1571,

the list of accused amounts to 544 besides a number of collective

entries, such as “_bruxas_,” “the Frenchmen who took the caravel of the

Espinosas,” “renegades,” “Moriscos of Lanzarote,” “fugitive negroes”

etc. The names of Englishmen and of an occasional Fleming also begin to

appear. Yet the denunciations consist largely of the veriest trifles of

careless speech, indicating how acute was the watchfulness excited to

observe and report whatever might seem to savor of heresy. There was no

safety in lapse of time, for matters were treasured up to be brought out

long afterwards, when there was no possibility of disproving them. In

Gomera, October 23, 1570, María Machin denounced Catalina Rodríguez for

telling her of a love-charm some thirty years before; in Garachico,

December 21, 1570, Marina Ferrera informs on Vicente Martin, a cleric

who had gone to the Indies, who told her more than twenty-seven years

before of an unnamed woman who had tried on him a conjuration to stop

nose-bleeding. More serious was the accusation brought in Laguna,

January 14, 1571, by Barbolagusta, wife of the Regidor Francisco de

Coronado, against the physician Reynaldos, because, twelve or thirteen

years before, when the husband of a patient told her to seek the

intercession of the saints, he said that God alone was to be prayed to

and there was no need of saints.[283]

Complaints of Fúnez must have reached the Suprema for, after a short

interval, probably in 1570, Doctor Bravo de Zayas was sent out as

visitador or inspector. He seems to have associated himself

companionably with Fúnez as a colleague and, in August, 1571, he made a

visitation of the islands, bringing back an abundant store of

denunciations. The two held together an auto on December 12, 1574, in

which there was but one relaxation--the effigy of a fugitive Morisco.

Four slaves were reconciled, including a case which is suggestive--that

of a negro of whom it is recorded that he was tortured for an hour, when

the infliction was stopped because he was so ignorant and stupid. Pious

zeal for the salvation of these poor savages led to their baptism after

capture; they could not be intelligent converts or throw off their

native superstitions, and no one seemed able to realize the grim

absurdity of adding the terrors of the Inquisition to the horrors of

their enslaved existence. When a negro slave-girl was bemoaning her

condition, she was kindly consoled with the assurance that baptism

preserved her and her children from hell, to which she innocently

replied that doing evil and not lack of baptism led to hell. This was

heresy, for which she was duly prosecuted.[284]

Under the inquisitorial code the attempt to escape from slavery thus was

apostasy, punishable as such if unsuccessful, and expiated if successful

by concremation in effigy. This is illustrated in an auto, held by Zayas

and Fúnez, June 24, 1576, in which among sixteen effigies of absentees

were those of eight slaves, seven negroes and one Moor. They had

undergone baptism, had been bought by Doña Catalina de la Cuevas and

were worked on her sugar plantation. They seized a boat at Orotava and

escaped to Morocco, for which they were duly prosecuted as apostates and

their effigies were delivered to the flames--a ghastly mockery which

does not seem to have produced the desired impression in preventing

other misguided beings from flying from their salvation.[285]

While Zayas thus coöperated with Fúnez, he did not neglect the special

mission entrusted to him. Charges piled up against Fúnez, which he

condensed into a series of thirty articles, embracing all manner of

misdeeds--favoritism, injustice, improper financial transactions,

illicit trading with the Moors of Barbary, ill-treatment of prisoners,

lack of discipline in the tribunal, etc. Zayas and Fúnez seem to have

returned to Spain towards the close of 1576, for the latter’s defence

against the charges is dated at Madrid, February 12, 1577. In this he

answered all the points in full detail, with citation of documents; the

people of the islands, he asserts, are given to perjury and, when

offended, bring false accusations to revenge themselves--a habit which,

it may be hoped, he bore in mind when sitting as a judge. Doubtless he

had given them provocation enough to induce them to exercise their

talents in this line against him and the numerous charges indicate a

wide-spread feeling of hostility towards the tribunal. His defence was

skilfully drawn and, on its face, seems to be sufficient.[286]

The Canary tribunal was thus placed upon the same footing as those of

Spain, though perhaps it was subjected to a somewhat closer supervision

by the Suprema than was as yet exercised at home, for we happen to have

a letter of October 11, 1572, ordering that Antonio Lorenzo be released

from the secret prison and be given his house as a prison. Perhaps it

felt that assertion of its authority was necessary, in view of the delay

and uncertainty of communication, for commercial intercourse was not

frequent; as Fúnez says, about this time, it was notorious that there

were no vessels sailing for two or three or even more months.[287] Be

this as it may, there was another visitor sent to the Canaries in 1582,

and a third about 1590. The latter was Claudio de la Cueva, whose

visitation lasted until 1597 and was useful in exposing the iniquities

of Joseph de Armas, who had served as fiscal for more than twenty years.

A quarrel between him and the secretary, Francisco Ibañez, led to mutual

accusations and the unveiling of secrets which show how the terror

inspired by the Inquisition and the immunity of its officials enabled

them to abuse their positions. There was a rich and respected Fleming

named Jan Aventrot, married to a native widow, who was accused by a

stepdaughter of eating meat on Fridays and saying that meat left no

stain on the soul; also of eating meat in Lent and speaking Flemish.

Aventrot was secretly a Protestant, which could readily have been

developed by the ordinary inquisitorial methods, but he escaped with a

reprimand and a fine of 200 ducats.[288] How this happened finds its

explanation in the fact that, while he was in prison, Armas obtained

from him, without payment, a bill of exchange on Seville.[289] He also

defrauded the revenue by receiving goods imported by an Englishman named

John Gache (Gatchell?) and selling them through his brother Baltasar.

Hernan Peraza, alguazil of the tribunal, complained that Armas would not

pay his debts and so did Daniel Vandama, a Flemish merchant. A harder

case was that of a chaplaincy in the Inquisition founded by Andrés de

Moron for the benefit of Juan de Cervantes, son of Gaspar Fullana,

auditor of accounts in the cathedral. Armas induced Inquisitor Francisco

Madaleno to take the chaplaincy from Cervantes and give it to him. When

Claudio de la Cueva came, Fullana complained to him and he ordered the

chaplaincy restored and the income accrued during four years, amounting

to 190 doblas, to be refunded. Armas delayed payment for some months and

then insisted on compromising it for 120 doblas, which Fullana agreed

to, fearing that Armas, who was a canon, would induce the chapter to

deprive him of his auditorship, but in place of getting money he

received orders on parties at a distance. In stating this under

examination by la Cueva, May 4, 1596, Fullana begged him not to insist

on the restitution of the remaining 70 doblas, for Armas was a dangerous

man.[290]

He proved so to the convent of la Concepcion, founded by Doña Isabel de

Garfias, a Cistercian nun, whom Cardinal Rodrigo de Castro, Archbishop

of Seville, had sent to Las Palmas for the purpose. Armas persuaded the

bishop, Fernando de Figueroa, to appoint him as visitor of the convent

and used his authority to cultivate a suspicious intimacy with some of

the younger inmates, to the destruction of discipline and rules of the

Order. When the abbess endeavored to enforce them, he deposed her and

replaced her with Francisca Ramírez, a Dominican, who had accompanied

her from Spain, and who was of near kin to Doña Laura Ramírez, his

mistress, by whom he was said to have a child. The abbess appealed to

the archbishop, who addressed, December 19, 1595, a forcible letter to

the bishop, recapitulating the misdeeds of Armas and ordering him to

investigate and apply the appropriate remedies, but to no purpose, and

the abbess turned to la Cueva, February 28, 1596, with an earnest

memorial, imploring his interposition. Armas, she said, desired her

death, for when she was sick he would not allow the physician to visit

her, so that she nearly died.[291] A more prominent ecclesiastic who

experienced the risk of provoking him was the prior of the cathedral,

Doctor Luis Rúiz de Salazar, who was also a consultor of the tribunal.

They had a quarrel in the chapter; Salazar called him the son of a

clockmaker and, when Armas gave him the lie, Salazar seized his cap and

beat him with it. Inquisitor Madaleno promptly threw Salazar into prison

and prosecuted him, but, as the affair concerned a church dignitary, he

was obliged to submit the papers to the Suprema for the sentence. With

unexpected moderation the latter replied, April 2, 1591 that, as the

affair took place in the chapter and in the capacity of canons, the

tribunal must abandon the case and allow it to be decided by whatever

judges had jurisdiction--but it did not prescribe any satisfaction to

Salazar for the infamy inflicted by his imprisonment.[292]

Meanwhile the tribunal had been actively performing such duties as came

in its way, strengthened by the addition of another inquisitor, for, in

1581, we find Fúnez replaced with Diego Osorio de Seijas and Juan

Lorenzo, who celebrated a public auto on March 12th of that year. It

will be remembered that, in the auto of 1569, there appeared the effigy

of Juan Felipe, who had escaped from Lanzarote, carrying with him some

thirty other fugitives. The tribunal had not forgotten them and now,

after duly trying them it burnt their effigies, to the number of

thirty-one, including Felipe’s wife and sister and three children,

fifteen slaves, mostly negroes and a miscellaneous group of others. In

addition there were fifteen reconciled penitents, with the usual

penalties.[293]

Six years elapsed before there was another auto, celebrated July 22,

1587, in which there were burnt three effigies of a remnant of the

Lanzarote fugitives. There was also the more impressive relaxation of a

living man--the first since that of the Judaizers in 1526. This was an

Englishman named George Gaspar who, in the royal prison of Tenerife, had

been seen praying with his back to a crucifix and, on being questioned,

had said that prayer was to be addressed to God and not to images. He

was transferred to the tribunal, where he freely confessed to having

been brought up as a Protestant. Torture did not shake his faith and he

was condemned, a confessor as usual being sent to his cell the night

before the auto to effect his conversion. He asked to be alone for

awhile and the confessor, on his return, found him lying on the floor,

having thrust into his stomach a knife which he had picked up in the

prison and concealed for the purpose. The official account piously tells

us that it pleased God that the wound was not immediately mortal and

that he survived until evening, so that the sentence could be executed;

the dying man was carted to the _quemadero_ and ended his misery in the

flames. Another Englishman was Edward Francis, who had been found

wounded and abandoned on the shore of Tenerife. He saved his life, while

under torture, by professing himself a fervent Catholic, who had been

obliged to dissemble his religion, a fault which he expiated with two

hundred lashes and six years of galley service. Still another Englishman

was John Reman (Raymond?) a sailor of the ship Falcon; he had asked for

penance and, as there was nothing on which to support him in the prison,

he was transferred to the public gaol. The governor released him and, in

wandering around he fell into conversation with some women, in which he

expressed Protestant opinions. A second trial ensued in which, under

torture, he professed contrition and begged for mercy, which he obtained

in the disguise of two hundred lashes and ten years of galleys. In

addition there were the crew of the bark Prima Rosa, twelve in number,

all English but one Fleming. One of them, John Smith, had died in

prison, and was reconciled in effigy; the rest, with or without torture,

had professed conversion and were sent to the galleys, some of them

with a hundred lashes in addition. Besides these, this notable auto

presented twenty-two penitents, penanced or reconciled, for the ordinary

offences and with the usual penalties.[294]

Another auto was celebrated December 21, 1597, with a large number of

penitents, but no relaxations either in person or in effigy. It was the

last of these solemnities held in public, for the next one, December 20,

1608, was an _auto particular_, in the cathedral, when three effigies

were relaxed.[295] In fact, while the Inquisition in Spain was

consolidating its power and threatening to dominate the monarchy, in the

Canaries there seems to have been an unconscious combination of opposing

forces which crippled its energies and gradually rendered it inert. Yet

during the early years of the seventeenth century it had vigor enough to

burn two unfortunates alive. Gaspar Nicholas Claysen (Claessens?) a

Hollander, had been condemned to a year of prison, in the auto of 1597,

when he must have professed conversion. He seems to have imagined that

he would escape recognition and, in 1611, he tempted his fate again and

sought the Canaries as the captain of a merchant vessel. He was arrested

April 19th and tried again. In spite of torture he maintained his faith

to the last and, on January 27, 1612, he was sentenced to relaxation, as

an impenitent, by the inquisitors Juan Francisco de Monroy and Pedro

Espino de Brito. Then a delay of two years occurred, possibly occupied

with efforts for his salvation, and it was not until February 22, 1614,

that the governor, Francisco de la Rua, was summoned to hear his

sentence and receive him for execution. There was a Dutch ship in the

harbor and many of his compatriots in the town, so that his rescue seems

to have been feared, for such is the reason given for loading him with

chains and guarding him with four soldiers carrying arquebuses with

lighted matches. At the appointed hour he was paraded through the

streets, under a guard of soldiers, to the plaza de Santo Domingo, where

he was duly burnt alive. The next year, on June 2, 1615, Tobias

Lorenzo, a Hollander settled in Garachico (Tenerife), who had been

arrested in 1611, was burnt as a relapsed Protestant.[296]

This was the last relaxation in person, making, according to Millares, a

total of only eleven since the foundation of the tribunal, but, as he

omits the earliest one, Juan de Xeres, the count amounts to twelve.[297]

After this a long interval occurs before there was even an effigy burnt.

Duarte Henríquez Alvarez was a Portuguese New Christian, who was a

collector of the royal revenues and a rich merchant in Tenerife. In his

frequent voyages to Europe he fell in love with the daughter of an

Amsterdam correspondent and resolved to marry her and return to the

faith of his ancestors. He remitted to Holland as much money as he could

without exciting suspicion, he abandoned to the Inquisition the rest of

his considerable property and departed, never to return. He was duly

prosecuted _in absentia_ and condemned to relaxation in effigy.

Permission to execute the sentence in an auto particular was asked of

the Suprema and its assent was received, May 29, 1659. No time was lost;

on June 1st the auto was held in the cathedral; the effigy was delivered

to the corregidor and was solemnly burnt in the quemadero, being the

last execution in the Canaries.[298] From this time to the end of the

century the work of the tribunal was almost nothing, the records of the

prison showing that there were rarely more than one or two

prisoners.[299]

* * * * *

Before following the history of the tribunal to its decadence and

extinction, we may pause to consider its condition and the various

directions in which its activity was developed.

Its financial resources presumably were limited. During the earlier term

of its career, when it had no buildings of its own and no prison to

maintain, when its officials for the most part were drawn from the

chapter and other beneficed incumbents, an occasional confiscation and

levying of fines probably met the moderate necessary expenses. In 1563

it had the benefit of a suppressed prebend and when, in 1568, Fúnez was

sent to organize it, the energy of his administration doubtless supplied

the funds necessary for the establishment which he founded. Imposing

fines, however, probably was easier than collecting them, for when, in

1570, he was about to depart on a visitation of the islands he impressed

upon the fiscal, Juan de Cervantes, that there were many persons who

owed the fines to which they had been condemned and he was especially

empowered to use all the rigor of law in compelling payment.[300] This

seems to have been the only source thus far of funds, for when one of

the charges against Fúnez, in the visitation, was that he kept no book

for recording confiscations, his reply, in 1577, was that there had been

none since that of the Felipes (in 1569) and this was so involved that

he waited till he could visit Lanzarote and straighten it out.[301]

A more promising field, however, as we shall see, was now developing in

the prosecution of heretic merchants and shipmasters who were seeking

the trade of the Canaries, when a latitudinarian construction of the law

permitted the seizure of vessels and cargoes, on which the grip of the

Inquisition was not easily relaxed. Either from this or some other

source the tribunal was emerging from its poverty, for a stray document

shows us that, in 1602, it was investing 5000 ducats in a ground-rent,

from which it was still receiving the income in 1755.[302] We also catch

a glimpse of its affairs in 1654, when the Seville Contratacion sent its

fiscal to the Canaries to put a stop to the exportation of wine to the

Indies, the commerce of which was confined to Seville. On June 15th the

tribunal addressed to Philip IV a memorial, arguing that to cut off

this trade would be the total destruction of the islands, which now pay

the king 60,000 ducats a year over the expenses of the garrison and

judiciary, for the English took only the malmsey of Tenerife and the

rest of the vintage, amounting to 16,000 pipes per annum, went to the

Indies. The bishopric, now worth 30,000, would not be worth 10,000; as

for the Inquisition, it held ground-rents on the vineyards paying 22,232

reales and 28 maravedís, which it would lose, and, as its only other

source, the prebend, was worth only 300 ducats a year, its support would

fall on the king.[303] The only relief obtained from the king was

permission to ship 1000 tuns a year to various American ports. Whether

the tribunal suffered or not we have no means of knowing, but in 1660 we

find it gathering in the estate of Duarte Henríquez, burnt in effigy in

1658, and applying 1942 reales from it to the renewal of 212 sanbenitos,

hung in the churches, which had become worm-eaten and indistinct with

age.[304]

This does not look as if the tribunal were oppressed with poverty; in

fact it must have enjoyed abundant means for about this time it

completed what is described as an imposing palace for its habitation.

This had a spacious patio, covered with an awning in hot weather, which

led into a handsome garden, opening upon a street in the rear. To these

the public was freely admitted and they formed a thoroughfare from one

street to another, the object of which was to enable witnesses and

informers to come without attracting attention. In the building were

lodged the senior inquisitor, the gaoler and the subordinate officials,

the prison and the torture-chamber being in the rear.[305] Later

financial data are missing, but the tribunal probably managed to meet

its expenses to the end, with no greater difficulty than those of the

Peninsula. From first to last it was not burdened with a punitive prison

or _casa de la misericordia_, and its sentences to confinement are

always to convents or to the houses of the culprits or to hold the city

as a prison. The detentive or secret prison was economically

administered, the ration, as we learn in 1577, being only 24 maravedís a

day. The visitor, Bravo y Zayas, was assailed with many complaints by

the inmates of insufficient food, which they ascribed to the knavery of

the officials, but Fúnez explained it by saying that, while in the

Canaries there were usually one or two months of scarcity in a year,

there had been a famine lasting through 1571, 1572 and 1573, when the

price of bread went up to a cuarto of six maravedís for two or three

ounces and the people were reduced to eating chestnuts; meat was

correspondingly scarce and the supply of fish was very uncertain. Rich

and poor suffered alike and, as the prisoners’ allowance was in money,

their food was unavoidably diminished.[306]

* * * * *

Judaizing New Christians, who furnished, in the Peninsula, so abundant a

source of exploitation, formed a comparatively insignificant feature in

the activity of the Canary tribunal. At first there was better promise,

as we have seen in the statistics of the earlier autos, but these

energetic proceedings seem either to have driven them away or to have

thoroughly converted them and, in the subsequent period, the cases of

Judaism are singularly few, in so far as we can learn from existing

documents. In 1635 there is a denunciation of a Dutchman named Rojel,

who had been in Tenerife and who subsequently was seen in Holland,

dressed and living as a Jew. In 1636, a man named Mardocheo, aged 80,

resident of La Laguna in Tenerife, was accused of talking Judaism by a

man who had been a fellow-prisoner with him in the public gaol. In 1638

the Licenciado Diego de Arteaga was suspected of being _de casta de

Judío_, in consequence of irregular conduct in a procession. In 1653,

Francisco Vicente, a West Indian, who had accompanied his master Diego

Rodrigo Arias from Havana to London and thence to Tenerife, denounced

him for taking a crucifix every night from his chest and flogging it for

half an hour. In 1659 we have seen the relaxation in effigy of Duarte

Henríquez Alvarez. In 1660 Fray Matias Pinto accused Antonio Fernández

Carvajal of saying that he was a Jew since Protector Cromwell had broken

peace with Spain. In 1662 Gaspar Pereyra, alias de Vitoria, was

convicted of Judaism and sent to Seville to serve out his term of

imprisonment. His grandmother had been burnt and his business as a

merchant had carried him to Brazil, Angola, Lisbon, Madrid, Antwerp,

Amsterdam, Middelburg and many other places, so that he had a

comprehensive acquaintance with the communities of Jewish refugees

everywhere, and the care with which the minute evidence that he gave

concerning them was collected and ratified, although they were all out

of reach, shows that the paucity of cases in the records is not the

result of any lack of desire to persecute. It was natural however that

the inquisitors should enquire about Gerónimo Gómez Pesoa, a rich Lisbon

merchant who disappeared just in time to avoid arrest and, as an English

vessel sailed that night without a licence, he was supposed to have

escaped in it--a supposition fortified by learning that he had joined

the colony of Conversos in Rouen and had thence gone to Amsterdam.[307]

Doubtless there were more cases than these, but the records available do

not furnish them.

* * * * *

During the sixteenth century baptized Moorish and negro slaves furnished

a certain amount of business, especially when they escaped and added to

the impressiveness of the autos with their effigies, but subsequently we

hear little of them. When prosecuted in person it would seem that the

owner was obliged to pay for their maintenance, for a warrant of arrest,

in 1575, of Pedro Morisco manco, slave of Pedro d’Escalona, requires

eight ducats to be brought with him, to be furnished by his

master.[308] There is one case of a free Morisco which is not easy to

understand. About 1590, Sancho de Herrera Leon, with his wife and

children, was carried off in a Moorish raid. After a short time he

returned and, although he asserted that he had come back to preserve his

faith, he was made to abjure _de levi_, was fined in forty doblas and

was exiled perpetually from Lanzarote and Fuerteventura, under pain of

scourging and galleys.[309] In the seventeenth century we hear little of

such cases, but in 1619 there occurs one which throws some light on the

fate of the Moriscos expelled from Spain in 1610. Juan de Soto, born in

Valladolid and brought up as a Christian, was seven years old at the

time of the expulsion. The family passed into France; at Toulouse his

parents and brothers died, but a kinsman took charge of him and carried

him to Barbary, where he was circumcised and made to utter certain words

in Arabic. For seven years he served various masters, who carried him

twice to Constantinople, Alexandria and other places. In 1618 a fleet

sailed from Algiers to the Canaries, in which he served a Turkish

captain named Hamet. Sent ashore on Lanzarote with a foraging party and

attacked by the natives, three were killed and he was wounded and

captured. The Inquisition claimed him, which was probably fortunate for

him, for, as a renegade he escaped with reconciliation and four years of

sanbenito and reclusion in a convent.[310]

Renegades, in fact, were quite numerous, and the facility is noteworthy

with which Christians when captured abandoned their faith. The tribunal

kept a close watch on them and all who escaped from Barbary were closely

questioned as to fellow-prisoners who had renegaded, when these could be

prosecuted _in absentia_, or record be kept to confront them in case of

their return.[311]

* * * * *

The vast number of denunciations which kept pouring in upon the

tribunal shows how sedulously the population was trained as spies and

informers upon their neighbors. Many of the alleged offences were of the

most trivial character, yet they have their interest as an index of the

hypersensitiveness of orthodoxy with which the Spanish mind was imbued.

Among the cases which Doctor Bravo y Zayas brought home with him for

trial, from his visitation of the islands in 1571, was that of a man

who, while dressing himself, was annoyed by the glare of the sun and

pettishly exclaimed “Devil take the sun,” which was gravely qualified as

blasphemy. Another who, in a procession, had aided in carrying the frame

on which was seated an image of the Virgin, remarked that it was a load

for a camel, which was decided to be ill-sounding and offensive to pious

ears. Even absence of intention did not excuse. In 1591, Gaspar López of

Tenerife, when on guard one night, went through the exercise of arms

with his partizan, in the course of which he happened to strike a wooden

cross that was behind him, and for this he was sentenced to the

indelible disgrace of appearing in an auto, followed by

vergüenza--parading on an ass through the streets, naked from the waist

up, while the town-crier proclaimed his misdeed.[312] This hyperæsthesia

did not diminish with time. In 1665 the tribunal entertained and

investigated an accusation that a certain person when praying allowed

his rosary to hang down his back, which was regarded as

irreverence.[313]

How readily such a system could be abused to gratify malevolence is

indicated in the case of the Dominican Fray Alonso de las Roelas. In

March, 1568, he made an utterance about purgatory which excited remark,

and some of his brother frailes discussed it with him, when Fray Blas

Merino, a prominent member of the Order, said that Roelas was simple and

did not know what he said and that it was not for them to denounce him.

Some years later, however, Blas Merino, in the hope of being made

Provincial, was engaged in a sort of plot to get the Canaries separated

from the Province of Andalusia and erected into a province of the Order.

The Dominican authorities heard of this and Roelas was commissioned to

seize all the papers connected with it and to notify Merino to abandon

the project. To revenge himself Merino hunted up all the witnesses to

Roela’s utterance and persuaded them to denounce him in 1572. Bishop

Azólares, whose zeal for the Inquisition we have seen, said that the

matter was not worth prosecuting, because Roelas did not deny purgatory,

which was a matter of faith, while its place and the character of its

torment were matters of debate with theologians. Nevertheless Roelas was

arrested and tried, and, as usual during trial, he was recluded in the

convent of his Order in Las Palmas. One midnight he came knocking at the

door of the Inquisition; Fúnez was awakened and sent him word that it

was no time for him to call and that he could come the next day. He did

so and stated that his brethren so maltreated him, because he had once

served as inspector of the house, that he asked to be placed in the

secret prisons, a request which was granted, and he stayed there until

sentenced. The sentence punished him with reclusion and he was delivered

to the prior of the convent, when they at once commenced snarling and

growling at each other like quarrelsome dogs. Fúnez rebuked the prior,

telling him to avoid such public scandals and that he would send Roelas

to the convent in Tenerife until the Provincial should decide as to his

place of reclusion. Fúnez probably spoke from experience when he said

that among frailes there was no restraint nor truth, but only envy.[314]

* * * * *

The Canaries enjoyed an ample supply of _beatas revelanderas_, but, as a

rule, the tribunal did not follow the example of the Peninsula in

molesting them. One of the most renowned of these was Catalina de San

Mateo, a nun of the house of Santa Clara in Las Palmas, who had

ecstasies and revelations and was reverenced as a saint. God spoke with

her familiarly through the medium of a painted Ecce Homo, which hung in

her cell, giving her counsels and spiritual comfort and prophecies. On

her death, May 26, 1695, the body lay for three days emitting the odor

of sanctity and was viewed by a vast concourse, eager to touch it with

rosaries and other objects, and all her clothes and effects were

treasured as relics. All this is described in a letter of July 5th, to

the Suprema, by the inquisitors Lugo and Romero, who express no doubts

as to her holiness. Commencement was made to collect testimony for her

canonization, but enthusiasm evaporated and the effort was abandoned.

She was succeeded in popular veneration by Sor Petronila de San Esteban,

of the convent of San Bernardo in Las Palmas, which she had entered in

1680, at the age of four. She was a bride of God; the child Jesus came

to nestle in her arms; the man Christ came to soothe her with sweet

words; legions of angels, headed by David, came to rejoice her with the

music of heaven. She had terrible conflicts with demons, whom she

overcame, and a little wooden image of St. John, with which she held

discourse, was the medium through which she enjoyed revelations and

prophecies. The Inquisition took no action to interfere with her and

almost the only case in which it instituted proceedings, in such

matters, was one, in 1695, against Don Miguel de Araus, confessor of two

beatas in La Laguna, Francisca Machado de San José and Margarita de

Santa Teresa, the former of whom boasted of the stigmata.[315]

* * * * *

In the later period a very considerable share of the labors of the

tribunal was devoted to cases of “solicitation”--the seduction of women

by their confessors. It was not until 1561 that this crime was subjected

to inquisitorial jurisdiction, under the pretext that it implied

erroneous belief as to the sacrament of penitence, and some time was

required to settle the question of including it in the Edict of Faith

calling for denunciations. The earliest case I have met occurs in 1574,

when María Ramos accused her confessor, Fray Pedro Gallego.[316] After

this they occur with increasing frequency and offenders appear to be

treated with even more sympathetic leniency than in Spain. There was

moderate rigor in the sentence of Fray Pedro de Hinojosa, denounced in

1579 by numerous maids, wives and widows, for he was deprived of the

faculty of hearing confessions, he received a circular discipline in his

convent and he was recluded for three years in a convent with the

customary disabilities.[317] Much less severity was shown, in 1584, to

Manuel Gómez Pacheco, priest of Garachico, accused by a number of women,

for he was only sentenced to abjuration _de levi_, deprivation of

administering the sacrament of penitence, two months reclusion in a

convent and some spiritual exercises.[318] The penalties varied with the

discretion of the tribunal. About 1590 Fray Antonio Pacheco Sampayo,

against whom there were many accusers, was deprived of confessing, had

three years of reclusion and fifty lashes in his convent, while Andrés

de Ortega, parish priest of Telde, likewise accused by several women,

was deprived merely of confessing women, fined in twenty ducats and

severely reprimanded.[319]

Cases grow more frequent with time and, with their increasing frequency,

the penalties seem to grow less. In 1694 Fray Domingo Mireles was

accused by four women, with details of foul obscenity. He was sentenced

to deprivation of confession and reclusion for four years, but was

allowed to choose his place of retreat. He served out the term, went to

Spain, and returned with a rehabilitation charitably granted by the

inquisitor-general. In 1698 Fray Cipriano de Armas was prosecuted on the

evidence of two women; the case was carried to the end and remitted for

decision to the Suprema, which ordered its suspension. In two cases in

1742 the sentence was merely deprivation of confessing, six months’

reclusion and five years’ exile from certain places. In 1747 Fray

Bartolomé Bello had not only seduced Maria Cabral González, but had

strangled in his cell a child born to them, after piously baptizing it,

but when the case reached the Suprema it was suspended. In 1750

Francisco Rodriguez del Castillo was prosecuted on very serious charges

but was only suspended for two years from confessing and given some

spiritual exercises. In 1755 there were nine complainants against Fray

Francisco García Encinoso, who was deprived of confessing and sentenced

to six months’ reclusion, when he was sent to the convent of N. Señora

de Miraflor, with instructions to the superior to keep the matter

profoundly secret and to treat him well. In 1769 Fray Domingo Matos was

sentenced only to six months’ reclusion and the denial of certain

privileges, which was subsequently remitted. The sympathy of the

tribunal apparently was exhaustless and frequently resulted in practical

immunity. In 1785, Fray Joseph Estrada, Franciscan difinidor, was

accused by several women with full details, but the tribunal, on

December 7, 1793, suspended the case. Then, in 1804, he was again

accused by a nun in the convent of la Purisima Concepcion of Garachico.

Finally, after twelve years’ delay, on February 28, 1805, the tribunal

ordered its commissioner to give him _audiencias de cargos_, or private

examinations, on report of which the case would be voted on, bearing in

mind the advanced age of the accused and the difficulty of communicating

with the Suprema, in consequence of the war. This was the last of the

matter for, on April 9, 1806, the commissioner at Ycod reported the

death of the culprit.[320] When so serious an offence was visited so

lightly, we can scarce be surprised that its subjection to inquisitorial

jurisdiction failed to check it. There naturally was much difficulty in

inducing women to come forward as accusers, yet the number of

denunciations was large and steady. Thus, from July 26, 1706, to

February 15, 1708, the total denunciations of all kinds to the tribunal

was 75; of these only 22 were of men, out of which 7, or practically

one-third, were for solicitation.[321]

* * * * *

The bulk of the business of the tribunal consisted in trials for

sorcery, under which term were included all the superstitions, more or

less innocent, employed to cure or to inflict disease, to provoke love

or hatred, to discover theft and to pry into the future, for

theological ingenuity inferred pact, express or implicit, with the demon

in everything which could be construed as transcending the powers of

nature, except the ministrations of the priest or exorcist. Such a

community as that of the Canaries, in which the primitive magic arts of

the natives were added to those of their conquerors, and on these were

superimposed the beliefs of Moorish and negro slaves, could not fail to

accumulate an incongruous mass of superstitions affecting all the acts

of daily life, and the summaries of cases printed by Mr. Birch afford to

the student of folk-lore an inexhaustible treasury of curious details.

No matter what might be the industry of the tribunal in prosecuting and

punishing the practitioners of these arts, it could effect nothing in

repressing them, or in disabusing popular credulity, for its very

jurisdiction was based on the assumption that the powers attributed to

the sorcerer were real, and he was punished not as an impostor but as an

ally or instrument of the demon.

It would carry us too far to attempt even a summary of the multitudinous

superstitions embalmed in the records, but a couple of cases may be

mentioned which illustrate the popular tendency to ascribe to sorcery

whatever excited wonder, and also the good sense which sometimes

intervened to protect the innocent. In 1624, Diego de Santa Marta of

Garachico was denounced as a sorcerer to the tribunal in consequence of

his performance of some tricks with cards. The accusation was

entertained and Fray Juan de Saavedra was ordered to investigate and

report. He invited Diego to exhibit his skill and the performance took

place in the cell of the Provincial, Fray Bernardo de Herrera, who was a

consultor of the Inquisition, with whom were associated Padre Luzena,

regent of the schools, several theological professors and Don Francisco

Sarmiento, alguazil of the tribunal. Diego was not aware that he was

practically on trial before this imposing assemblage, and he performed

some surprising card tricks as well as sundry other juggleries.

Fortunately for him the spectators were clear-sighted and Fray Saavedra

reported that it was all a matter of sleight of hand, which could be

detected by careful observation.[322] More serious was the denunciation,

in 1803, of any one of four women named (apparently the individual was

not identified) who had, twelve years before, administered to María

Salome some snuff which caused her to bark like a dog. Luckily Doctor

Elchantor, the inquisitor-fiscal, had a touch of the rationalism of the

age. He reported that the vomiting and extraordinary movements alleged

might have been produced by natural causes; that among timid and

ignorant women there was a habit of attributing all disease to sorcery;

that it could not be said that the snuff had been prepared with diabolic

arts and that there were no other suspicions against the parties

accused. He therefore advised that the papers be simply filed away, and

in this Inquisitor Borbujo concurred.[323]

Although the term _bruja_, or witch, occasionally appears in the

records, there would not appear to be any cases of specific witchcraft.

The nearest allusions to the Sabbat occur in 1674, when Doña Isabel

Ybarra testified that, a year before, Doña Ana de Ascanio told her that

Don Juan de Vargas, now dead, told her that once, in returning home

about midnight; he encountered a dance of women with timbrels and

lighted candles. In the same year Fray Pablo Guillen deposed that at

midnight he saw Guillerma Peré naked; she anointed herself and flew

through the air with another woman. Connected with this was the

statement that a son of Juan Hernandez, at midnight, found in the street

Doña Ana María, widow of Captain Juan de Molina, entirely naked. He took

her to her house, when she gave him a garment and begged him to keep

silence.[324]

* * * * *

For a comparatively brief period the most important work of the tribunal

concerned the foreign heretics--mostly Englishmen and Flemings, or

rather Hollanders--who frequented the islands, whether for peaceful

commerce or for piracy. As the port of call in the trade with America,

the islands were the favorite resort of the sea-rovers of all the

nations at enmity with Spain, that is of nearly all Europe, in hopes of

capturing some rich galleon or of ravaging some unprotected spot. In

1570, a Norman Huguenot, cruising off Gomera, seized a vessel starting

for Brazil with forty Jesuit missionaries; he put them all to death and

landed his other prisoners at San Sebastian, a port of Gomera, which

next year was sacked by another French corsair.[325] To some extent,

doubtless, the Inquisition was regarded as a safeguard against such

marauders. In 1589, an Englishman, captured at Garachico from the ship

of Vincent Pieter the Fleming, was said to have been a pirate who had

pillaged in company with other Englishmen, and was brought before the

tribunal, although nothing else was alleged against him. About the same

time certain French “pirates,” taken on the islet of Graciosa, off

Lanzarote, were delivered to the tribunal, when they proved themselves

to be good Catholics by their familiarity with the prayers and other

observances.[326]

Much more serious was the interference of the Inquisition with those who

came to trade, and it is difficult to understand how Spain could carry

on any commerce with foreign nations under the impediments which it

interposed. The earliest case in the records is one to which allusion

has already been made, that of John Sanders who, in 1565, came as a

sailor in a vessel from Plymouth, of which the master was James Anthony,

the cargo consisting of 28 casks of sardines, 20 dozen of calf-skins and

a lot of woollen goods, the property of the master and his brother

Thomas. On arrival at Las Isletas, as Sanders could speak and write

Spanish, Anthony got him to enter the goods as his own and installed him

in a shop to sell them. After two or three months, one day the public

scrivener, Melchor de Solis, came and demanded three reales, which

Sanders refused. While they were talking he placed his hand on the wall,

where there was hanging a paper print of Christ, which he had not

recognized, as its face was turned to the wall and it was partly torn.

Passing his hand over it, a piece fell off, when Solis charged him with

tearing an image of Christ; he picked it up, reverently kissed it and

replaced it. The story spread and caused scandal; in the abeyance of the

tribunal, the provisor took up the matter, arresting Sanders March 29th

and sequestrating the property, which consisted of 2492 reales in money,

3-1/2 casks of sardines and 2-1/2 dozen of calf-skins, all of which was

duly placed in the hands of the secrestador, and, in addition, Leónez

Alvarez testified that he had bought and paid for goods to the amount of

340 ducats. Under examination Sanders professed himself a Catholic; he

could recite the Pater Noster and Credo and the Ave Maria without the

final clause imploring the prayers of the Virgin, which he said he had

never been taught; he could cross himself but did not know the peculiar

Spanish form; he reverenced images of saints although the Queen of

England had banished from the churches all but those of Christ and the

Virgin, and he had attended mass since he came. Then James Anthony came

forward and claimed the property, confirming the story of Sanders, and

it was delivered to him, but not until he had furnished satisfactory

security to abide the result. What was the outcome we have no means of

knowing, as the papers were sent to the tribunal of Seville for its

action, but the least that could happen to Sanders and Anthony was

interminable delay.[327]

Trading with the Canaries evidently was a hazardous business and the

danger increased as time went on, for it sufficed that the crew were

heretics to justify their trial and punishment, with the accompaniment

of sequestration and confiscation. Thus on April 24, 1593, a single vote

ordered the arrest with sequestration of the pilot and other officers,

the sailors and boys and passengers of the ship named El Leon Colorado

and of all who came in the ship named San Lorenzo, both now at anchor in

the port of Las Isletas.[328] The case of the Leon Colorado is

suggestive. She was an English ship which, until 1587, had been employed

in the Lisbon trade under a licence from the Marquis of Santa Cruz, but

after his death she seems to have been transferred to Flanders. On this

voyage she had sailed from Antwerp, a Spanish port, under a licence from

Alexander of Parma, the nephew of Philip II and the governor of the Low

Countries. The _escrivano_ or purser of the ship, Franz Vandenbosch,

while on trial, procured a certificate from the municipal authorities of

Antwerp setting forth that his parents were good Catholics and so were

their children, and that Franz had sailed for the Canaries with the

licence and passport of the Duke of Parma. The only effect of this was a

vote to torture him, on learning which he confessed that in Mecklenburg

he had embraced Calvinism, and his sentence was reconciliation and

confiscation, prison and sanbenito for three years and perpetual

prohibition to visit heretic lands or to approach within ten leagues of

the sea, for which reason he was to be sent to Spain. Another member of

the crew Georg Van Hoflaquen asserted his Catholicism and adhered to it

through four successive inflictions, each of three turns of the

_cordeles_. Then he was ordered to be placed on the _burro_ or rack,

when he declared that he could no longer endure the agony and that he

was a heretic. He was sentenced to reconciliation and confiscation, and

three years of prison and sanbenito, with the corresponding

disabilities.[329]

In these cases the adverse evidence is almost wholly derived from other

members of the crews, who had no hesitation in testifying to their

comrades’ Protestantism. There was usually no concealment attempted but,

when orthodoxy was asserted, torture was unsparingly employed.

Conversion did not obtain much alleviation of punishment. Another of the

crew of the Leon Colorado was Jacob Banqueresme, a Hollander, who freely

admitted his Calvinism. He knew nothing of Catholicism but was ready to

embrace it if it seemed to him good. Theologians were set to work and,

in due time, he announced his conversion and was formally admitted to

the Church, but he was sentenced to be sent to Spain and confined in a

convent for two years, in order to be thoroughly instructed, and he was

prohibited to go to heretic lands or to approach the sea within ten

leagues.[330]

The result of these labors was seen in the auto of 1597, in which there

were seventeen Englishmen and Flemings reconciled, with imprisonment

ranging from two to eight years, and twenty-six penanced, with from one

to four years of prison, the ships to which they belonged being La Rosa,

San Pedro, La Posta, San Lorenzo, Leon Colorado, Margarita and María

Fortuna.[331] There were no obstinate heretics and no martyrs. When this

active proselytism was carried on for twenty years or more with its

consequent confiscation of ships and cargoes, it is easy to understand

the financial ease of the tribunal and to conjecture its influence on

the commerce and prosperity of the islands.

This flourishing industry was interfered with by the treaty with England

ratified by James I on August 29/19, 1604, and by Philip III on June 16,

1605. It provided that English subjects visiting or resident in the

Spanish dominions were not to be molested on account of their religion,

so long as they gave no occasion for scandal, and this was extended to

the United Provinces in the twelve years’ truce, concluded in 1609.[332]

The caution induced by the treaty, even before its ratification by

Spain, is exemplified in the case of Edward Monox, an English captain

and merchant, charged September 10, 1604, with offences in the matter of

images and with following the doctrines of Luther and Calvin. The

consulta de fe, September 11th, unanimously voted his arrest with

sequestration but that, before action, the papers be sent to the Suprema

for its decision, in view of the considerations of state arising from

the peace with England, and from the fact that he was a rich merchant

who, since the death of Queen Elizabeth, had twice come with highly

commendatory passports from the Spanish ambassador in London.[333]

While thus some wholesome restraint was imposed on the Inquisition and

the vexations inflicted on merchants and seamen became much less

frequent, they did not wholly cease, for the Suprema construed the

treaties arbitrarily in such wise as to limit the privileges of foreign

heretics as far as possible. How it still continued to throw obstacles

in the way of trade may be seen in the petition of Jacob and Conrad de

Brier and Pieter Nansen, merchants of Tenerife, presented May 3, 1611.

The ship Los Tres Reyes arrived at Las Isletas with some goods for them;

for some reason, not stated, it had been seized by the tribunal and its

cargo had been sequestrated and they sought release of their property.

Their prayer was granted and, on May 25th, an order was given to deliver

to their agent the packages specified and their letters, subject however

to the payment of the cost of disembarking the goods, the carriage to

Las Palmas, the fees of the secrestador for keeping them, 24 reales to

the interpreter of the tribunal for his trouble, 18 ducats 4 reales for

the freight and 10 reales average to the ship, at the rate of one real

per package.[334]

When war broke out with England, lasting from 1624 to 1630, of course

the treaty of 1604-5 became dormant, but it was not until April 22,

1626, that a royal proclamation of non-intercourse with England

appeared, confiscating all English goods imported in contravention of

it, and this was followed, May 29th, by a _carta acordada_ of the

Suprema ordering the prosecution, in the regular way, of all Englishmen

who had been delinquent as regards the faith.[335] This led to a

discussion between the three inquisitors. Francisco de Santalis

presented a long opinion to the effect that in Tenerife there were very

many of them who, in spite of the war, remained, in place of departing

as enemies. The orders of the Suprema were therefore applicable to them;

Catholics incurred the risk of excommunication in supplying them with

food and were exposed to the danger of infection; they were delinquents

in not hearing mass or confessing and communing, and in eating meat on

fast days. This was not only a great scandal, but it afforded

opportunity of flight and of concealing their property, which was

large. He therefore voted that secret information be taken as to their

delinquencies and, when this was sufficient, that they should all be

arrested and their property be sequestrated, after which the orders of

the Suprema could be awaited as to their prosecution. The other two

inquisitors, Alonso Rincon and Gabriel Martínez, referred to a

consultation had on September 2d with the Ordinary, the consultors, and

the calificadores, when it was resolved that the matter be referred to

the Suprema and no action be taken till its orders were received; the

royal proclamation had said nothing about residents; to seize them and

their property would be a great hardship; the commissioners at La

Laguna, Orotava and Garachico had been instructed to be vigilant and no

denunciations had been received. It is creditable to the tribunal that

it resisted the temptation of seizing the large amount of property

involved, and the English appear not to have been molested.[336]

Yet the position of the foreign merchants was exceedingly precarious, as

is shown by the case of John Tanner, prior to these deliberations. He

was arrested and brought to the prison, November 12, 1624. On

examination he stated his age as 22; he was a baptized Christian, who

kept feast-days and Sundays, but did not hear mass or confess, for in

his country there was no mass or confession; he knew nothing of the

Catholic faith and had never been instructed in it. When asked as usual

if he knew the cause of his arrest he said that he did not, unless it

was because Juan Jánez, the commissioner at Garachico, had asked him for

some linens and a pair of wool stockings which he refused, when Jánez

called him a heretic dog and they came to blows, and then he was thrown

into the public gaol. On being told, as usual, to search his memory, he

added that once he went with some other Englishmen to La Laguna to see

Don Rodrigo de Bohórquez, then governor of Tenerife; he asked Bohórquez

to pay him 400 pesos owing to him and 2800 reales due to Robert Spencer

for goods taken, when Bohórquez grew angry and said that Henry Ysan was

the cause of all the English making demands upon him; if he had hanged

him while in his power there would be none of this and he was a heretic

dog, for no one could be a Christian who was not a Roman. Tanner replied

that one could be a Christian without being a Roman, when Bohórquez

called for witnesses and swore that he should suffer for it. Tanner was

then asked what he meant by saying that one could be a Christian without

being a Roman, when he fell on his knees and begged mercy if he had

erred. He was a poor youth and had a ship lying at Garachico, on which

he had to pay demurrage of 120 reales a day, while the embargo on his

property prevented his despatching her. At a second audience on November

19th he again begged mercy on his knees; his credit was being ruined by

the demurrage on his ship, and the loss fell on his principal. Then, on

the 23d, he asked for an audience in which he represented that the ships

were loading and preparing to sail, while his was idle; his whole career

was being wrecked; he begged them for the love of God to have mercy on

him and tell him what he had done; he had lived in the religion of his

fathers and must continue to do so, or he could not return to England;

he had engaged to serve his master for seven years and his parents were

under bonds for him. The pleadings of the poor wretch were fruitless;

the case dragged on through the customary formalities and, on February

11, 1625, the consulta de fe voted that he be absolved _ad cautelam_ and

be recluded for two years in a convent for instruction, at the

expiration of which he must bring a certificate of improvement. In

accordance with this, on February 18th, he was placed in the Franciscan

convent, his maintenance being paid for as a pauper.[337] Proselytism

after this fashion can scarce have conduced to the salvation of souls,

however much it may have replenished the treasury of the Holy Office.

With the peace of 1630 the provisions of 1604 were revived but hardly a

year passed in which some Englishman was not thrown in prison and

prosecuted on one pretext or another, as Roderick Jones, in 1640, for

saying that God alone is to be prayed to, and Edward Bland, in 1642, for

having a Bible in his house.[338] In spite of this the flourishing

wine-trade of the islands brought many English and Hollanders as

residents, and there was even an English company established at

Tenerife, where, in 1654, the tribunal reported that there were more

than fifteen hundred Protestants domiciled, who were prevented from

infecting the people by its incessant vigilance. The captains-general

usually sought to protect them, and the influence of their ambassadors

in Madrid was invoked on occasion, but, when one fell sick, the

Inquisition sought to isolate him from his family and friends and put

him in charge of theologians to convert him, giving rise to unseemly

contests in which it was not always successful. To remedy this the

tribunal, September 18, 1654, asked of the Suprema power to insist that

when one of the rich Protestant residents fell sick, his compatriots

should be excluded and entrance should alone be permitted to learned

Catholics who might wean him from his errors.[339] We should probably do

no injustice to the motives of the tribunal in assuming that this was

dictated rather by the expectation of pious bequests than by zeal for

death-bed conversions.

Foreigners sometimes sought to avert trouble by pretending Catholicism

and thus placed themselves in the power of the tribunal, which was

constantly on the watch for them. In 1654, for instance, Fray Luis de

Betancor was summoned and interrogated as to his knowledge of such

cases, to which he replied that, some twelve years before, Evan Pugh, an

English surgeon, had come to Adeje to cure Doña Isabel de Ponte, and

sometimes went out to hunt with her brother Juan Bautista de Ponte. He

remembered that one day, when he had finished celebrating mass, he was

told that Pugh had stood at the church-door with his hat in his hand,

and it was currently said that he confessed to Fray Juan de Medina.

Similarly, in 1674, we find the Hollander Pieter Groney testifying that

when he sailed from the Texel in 1671 Juan de Rada was a

fellow-passenger, who told him he was a Protestant and as such joined in

the services during the voyage, but, when the ship was visited on

arrival he swore that he was a Catholic and had since then acted

exteriorly as a Catholic, though, when they lived together for a couple

of months, he ate meat freely on fast days and he regarded him as a

Protestant rather than as a Catholic.[340] What was the outcome in these

cases cannot be told, but the investigations illustrate the careful

watchfulness of the tribunal and the dangers incurred by residence

within its jurisdiction. Even his official position did not protect from

prosecution Edmund Smith, the British consul at Tenerife, when he was

accused, in 1699, of maltreating converts to Catholicism and of

persuading and threatening those inclined to it, even, it was said,

shipping them away when other measures failed.[341]

In the 18th century, while foreign vessels were closely watched and a

vigilant eye was kept on resident Protestants, they were no longer

molested with investigations and denunciations. If, in 1728, Philip V

ordered the expulsion of all foreigners, it was not on religious

grounds, but to put an end to frauds on the revenue. None, however, were

expelled, although some professed conversion to save themselves from

annoyance.[342] A similar impulse seems to have impelled Dr. James

Brown, a physician of Tenerife, who wrote, in March, 1770, to the

tribunal, from the Augustinian convent of La Laguna, in which he had

sought asylum from the captain-general, who was seeking to seize him and

send him to England. To secure its protection he asserted his desire to

abjure his errors and to be received into the Catholic Church, but in

this he failed for, on July 14, he was ordered to leave the islands

within forty days.[343]

* * * * *

The intellectual activity of the Canaries was not such as to call for

much vigilance of censorship, at least during the earlier period. The

_visitas de navíos_, or examination of ships arriving, for heretics and

heretic books, was performed after a fashion, but the tribunal was

inadequately equipped for the duty. One of the charges against

Inquisitor Fúnez, in 1577, was his sending the gaoler to perform it, to

which he replied that he had done so but once and that on occasions he

had sent the fiscal or the secretary; it was not his business and he had

no one to whom to depute it.[344]

Towards the middle of the seventeenth century there was some little

activity with regard to the foreign Protestants, who were assumed to be

subject to the rules of the Index. The prosecution of Edward Bland, in

1642, for possessing a Bible, seems to have attracted attention to this

and, on July 5, 1645, the tribunal ordered its commissioner at Orotava

to take the alguazil, notary and two familiars and visit the houses of

the English heretics, secretly, without disturbance and with much

discretion, asking them to exhibit all the books they possessed,

examining all their chests and packages, making an inventory of all

books and their authors, and making them swear before the notary as to

their having licences to hold them; also whether they had been examined

by the Inquisition and, if so, at what time and by what officials. If

there were works by prohibited authors, or such as had not been seen by

the Inquisition, they were to be deposited with a suitable person,

sending a report to the tribunal, with lists of the books, and awaiting

its action. If portraits or busts of heresiarchs were found they were to

be seized and deposited with the books.

Under these elaborate instructions the search was duly made and the

reports, if truthful, would indicate that literature and art were not

extensively cultivated by the English traders. Nothing dangerous was

found, though of course, as regards English books, the investigators had

to accept the word of the owners. In one house they describe, as hanging

on the walls of a room, very ugly half-length portraits of a strange

collection of worthies--Homer, Apelles, Philo Judæus, Aristotle, Seneca,

Pliny, two of Gustavus Adolphus and one without a name. It is perhaps

significant that nowhere was there a Bible, a prayer-book or a work of

devotion. The houses of two Portuguese traders were similarly

inspected, where were found pictures of saints and of damsels with

exuberant charms; also of Barbarossa and of some other pirates.[345]

Possibly supervision of this kind may have continued for, on June 7,

1663, Richard Guild was summoned to the tribunal to describe six English

books and four pamphlets, found in possession of Edward Baker, when

among them there proved to be several controversial works as to

Presbyterianism and the Independents. So, in 1670, Captain Joseph

Pinero, a Portuguese, who was building a ship, was denounced for the

more dangerous offence of having some Jewish books, but diligent search

failed to discover them.[346]

Books, however, were not the only objects of censorial animadversion. In

1671 some plates and jars with figures of Christ, the Virgin and the

saints, sold by Juan Martin Salazar of Ycod, were apparently deemed

irreverent, as subordinating the divine to the commonplace of daily

life, and Fray Lucas Estebes was ordered to go to his shop, with

alguazil and notary, and break the stock on hand, at the same time

ascertaining the name of the seller and of all purchasers. Soon after

this, in 1677, an edict was issued ordering the surrender of some

snuff-boxes, brought by an English vessel, which were adorned with two

heads--one with a tiara and the legend _Æcclesia perversa tenet jaciem

diaboli_, and the other of a philosopher and the motto _Stulti sapientes

aliquando_.[347]

In the latter half of the eighteenth century there seems to be more

intellectual activity and desire to seek forbidden sources of knowledge,

for we begin to hear of licences to read prohibited books. A register of

them, commencing in 1766, shows that when obtained from the

inquisitor-general they had to be submitted to the tribunal for its

endorsement, but it could exercise the discretion of suspending and

protesting, as in the case of one granted, in 1786, by Pius VI and

endorsed by Inquisitor-general Rubin de Cevallos, to Fray Antonio

Ramond, on which the tribunal reports that he ought not to have it, as

he is of a turbulent spirit and disorderly life. Licences generally made

exception of certain specified books and authors, but sometimes they

were granted without limitation. When the holder of a licence died, it

was, as a rule, to be returned to the tribunal.[348]

At this period the main activity of the tribunal was in its function of

censorship. It did not content itself with awaiting orders but assumed

to investigate for itself; nothing escaped its vigilance, and we are

told that the monthly lists which it forwarded to the Suprema of the

books denounced or suppressed are surprising as coming from a province

so small and so uncultured. In fact, in 1781 it expressed its grief that

great and small, men and women, were abandoning themselves to reading,

especially French books.[349] To do it justice it labored strenuously to

discourage culture and to perpetuate obscurantism.

Yet the _visitas de navíos_, as described in a letter of August 23,

1787, were less obstructive to commerce than the practice in Spain. When

a vessel cast anchor, after the visit of the health officer, the captain

landed and, in company with the consul of his nation, went to the

military governor, and then to the Inquisition where, under oath, he

declared his nationality, his port of departure and what passengers and

cargo he brought. When the vessel was discharging, the secretary of the

tribunal superintended the process and noted whatever he deemed

objectionable, whence it often happened that matters adverse to religion

were seized.[350]

Notwithstanding all vigilance, however, the dangerous stuff found

entrance. The works of Voltaire and Rousseau were widely read among the

educated class and the hands of the tribunal were practically tied. It

would laboriously gather testimony and compile a _sumaria_ against one

who read prohibited books, only to be told, when submitting it to the

Suprema, to suspend action for the present. In a letter of May 24, 1788,

it complained bitterly of this and of the consequent diminution of

respect for the Inquisition. Chief among the offenders were the

Commandant-general and the Regent of the Audiencia, whose cases had been

sent on April 26th. Their openly expressed contempt for the tribunal

perverted the whole people, who laughed at censures and read prohibited

books. An object of especial aversion was the distinguished historian of

the Canaries, José de Viera y Clavijo, Archdeacon of Fuerteventura. His

sermons had caused him to be reprimanded repeatedly and, when his

history appeared with its explanation of the apparition of the Virgen de

Candelaria and other miracles of the Conquest, and its account of the

controversies between the chapter and the tribunal, the indignation of

the latter was unbounded. A virulent report was made to the Suprema,

September 18, 1784, which remained unanswered. Another was sent,

February 7, 1792, complaining of the evil effect of allowing the

circulation of such writings, but this failed to elicit action, for the

work was never placed on the Index.[351]

* * * * *

Whatever may have been its deficiencies in other respects, the tribunal

seems never to have lost sight of its functions in fomenting discord

with the authorities, secular and ecclesiastical. In 1521 we hear of

Inquisitor Ximenes excommunicating some of the canons, in consequence of

which the chapter withdrew the revenue of his prebend and sent a special

envoy to the court, but he appealed to Rome and a royal cédula of July

8, 1523, ordered the chapter to make the payments.[352] Even during the

inertness of Padilla’s later inquisitorship, he had sufficient energy to

carry on a desperate quarrel with the Audiencia. He ordered the deputy

governor, Juan Arias de la Mota, to arrest Alonso de Lemos, who had been

denounced to the tribunal and, on his obeying, the Audiencia arrested

and prosecuted him, which led to an envenomed controversy in which

excommunications and interdict were freely employed, until Philip II,

February 16, 1562, ordered the liberation of Arias, adding an emphatic

command in future to give to the inquisitor and his officials all the

favor and aid that they might require in the discharge of their duties

and to honor them as was done everywhere throughout his dominions. It

was doubtless in the hope of putting an end to these unseemly

disturbances that Philip, by a cédula of October 10, 1567, prescribed

rules for settling competencias, or conflicts over jurisdiction. The

inquisitor and the Regent of the Audiencia were required to confer,

when, if they could not come to an agreement, the bishop was to be

called in, when the majority should decide.[353]

No regulations were of avail to prevent the dissensions for which all

parties were eager and which were rendered especially bitter by the

domineering assumption of superiority by the Inquisition. It was not

long after Fúnez had reorganized the tribunal that he became involved in

an angry controversy with Bishop Cristóbal Vera. Alonso de Valdés, a

canon, incurred the episcopal displeasure by removing his name from an

order addressed to the chapter for the reason that he was not present.

Vera thereupon imprisoned him _incomunicado_ so strictly that his food

was handed in to him through a window. It chanced that Valdés was also

notary of the tribunal and Fúnez claimed jurisdiction, but the bishop

refused to surrender him, in spite of the fact that the absence of its

notary impeded the Inquisition. The tribunal complained to the Suprema

which came to its aid in a fashion showing how complete was the

ascendancy claimed over the episcopal order, and how little chance a

bishop had in a contest with such an antagonist. Inquisitor-general

Quiroga wrote to Vera that, if the fault of Valdés was such that he

should punish it, this should have been done in such wise as not to

impede the operation of the tribunal. He hoped that already the case

would have been handed over to the tribunal to which it belonged and

that in future Vera would not give occasion for such troubles. This was

enclosed in a letter of instructions from the Suprema prescribing the

utmost courtesy and the most vigorous action. Fúnez is to call, with a

witness, on the bishop and demand the person of Valdés and the papers

in the case, as being his rightful judge, at the same time promising his

punishment to the bishop’s satisfaction. If Vera refuses, Quiróga’s

letter is to be handed to him, and if he still refuses he is to be told

that he obliges the tribunal to proceed according to law.

This so-called law is that the fiscal shall commence prosecution against

the bishop and his officials for impeding the Inquisition. Then the

inquisitor is to issue his formal mandate against the provisor,

officials, gaolers, etc., ordering them, under pain of major

excommunication and 200 ducats without further-notice, to surrender

Valdés within three days to the tribunal for punishment, so that he can

resume his office of notary. If this does not suffice, a similar mandate

is to be issued against the bishop, under pain of privation of entering

his church. If the provisor and officials persist in disobedience

through three _rebeldias_ (contumacies of ten days each), the inquisitor

shall proclaim them excommunicated. If the bishop is stubborn he is to

be prohibited from entering his church and to be admonished that if he

does not comply he will be suspended from his orders and fined. If he

perseveres through three _rebeldias_, letters shall be issued declaring

him to have incurred these penalties and admonishing him to obey within

three days under pain of major excommunication. If still contumacious,

letters shall be issued declaring him publicly excommunicated and

subject to the fine, which shall be collected by levy and execution. In

all this he is not to be inhibited from cognizance of the case, but only

that he must not impede the Inquisition by detaining its notary, and, as

it is very possible that he may seek the aid of the Audiencia, if it

intervenes it is to be notified of the royal cédula (of 1553)

prohibiting all interference in cases concerning the Inquisition.[354]

This portentous document was received in the tribunal, April 11, 1577.

It was impossible to contend with adversaries armed with such weapons

and Bishop Vera was obliged to submit. Not content with its triumph the

tribunal undertook to humiliate him still further. Doña Ana de Sobranis

was a mystic who believed herself illuminated and gifted with miraculous

powers. In 1572 she had denounced herself because a Franciscan, Fray

Antonio del Jesús, had given her, as he said by command of God, nine

consecrated hosts, which she carried always with her and worshipped. The

tribunal took the hosts and dismissed the case but, as the bishop was

her warm admirer and extolled her virtues, to mortify him, in 1580, the

fiscal presented a furious accusation against her, as a receiver and

fautor of heretics and heresies. She was arrested and imprisoned, but

the tribunal had overreached itself. She had friends who appealed to the

Suprema and, in May, 1581, there came from it a decision ordering a

public demonstration that she was innocent and that there had been no

cause for her arrest.[355]

Undeterred by the fate of Bishop Vera, his successor Fernando de

Figueroa, about 1590, had a lively struggle with the tribunal. He

excommunicated Doctor Alonso Pacheco, regidor of the Grand Canary and

deputy governor of Tenerife, because he would not abandon illicit

relations with a married woman. The tribunal intervened and evoked the

case, giving rise to a prolonged competencia, which remained undecided

in consequence of the death of the culprit.[356] Causes of such strife

were never lacking and the first half of the seventeenth century was

largely occupied by them and by an endless struggle to compel the

chapter to allow to the inquisitors cushioned chairs in the

cathedral.[357] On one occasion, in 1619, the chapter offended the

tribunal by obeying a royal cédula and disregarding a threat which

enjoined disobedience. The canons were thereupon excommunicated and

appealed to the king, who found himself obliged to withdraw the

cédula.[358] The overbearing conduct of the tribunal produced a chronic

feeling of exasperation and the veriest trifle was sufficient to cause

an outbreak. One custom provocative of much bad blood was that of

selecting in Lent a fishing-boat and ordering it to bring its catch to

the Inquisition, when, after supplying the officials and prisoners, if

there was anything left it might be sold to the people. In 1629 the

municipality fruitlessly complained of this to the visitor Juan de

Escobar, and in 1631 there was an explosion. The Audiencia rudely

intervened by throwing in prison Bartolomé Alonso, the luckless master

of a boat selected, and threatening to scourge him through the streets.

He managed to convey word to the tribunal, which at once sent its

secretary Aguilera to the Audiencia, with a message asking the release

of Alonso, but the Audiencia refused to receive anything but a written

communication and Aguilera came back with a mandate requiring obedience

under pain of two hundred ducats, but he was received with insults and

Alonso was publicly sentenced to a hundred lashes. Then the tribunal

declared the judges excommunicate, displayed their names as such in the

churches and had the bells rung. The Audiencia disregarded the censures

and arrested Aguilera, while the Alcaide Salazar, who had accompanied

him, hid himself, but the Audiencia ordered a female slave of his to be

seized and his house to be torn down, in response to which the tribunal

published heavier censures and fines, demanding the release of the

prisoners. Then Bishop Murga intervened and asked the tribunal to accept

an honorable compromise, but it refused; he returned to the charge,

urging the affliction of the people, who dreaded an interdict at a time

when there was so much need of rain and when Holy Week was approaching;

if reference were made to the Suprema there would be a delay of six

months and meanwhile the prisoners under trial by the Audiencia would

languish in gaol, for the judges would be incapacitated by the

excommunication. The inquisitors, in their report to the Suprema,

explained that, seeing that the people were ready for a disastrous

outbreak, and as the bishop promised that the prisoners should be

released at once (as they were, after a confinement of five hours) they

ordered the excommunicates to be absolved and abstained from proceeding

against the guilty. Then, when peace seemed restored, the quarrel broke

out fiercely again, for the inquisitors demanded the surrender of the

warrant of arrest, which Bartolomé Ponce, the official charged with it,

refused to give up. He was arrested and as, after two days, he appealed

to the Audiencia, they manacled him and ordered the arrest of the

advocate and procurator who had drawn up the appeal. This secured the

surrender of the document and the inquisitors felicitated themselves to

the Suprema on the vigor with which they had impressed on every one the

power of the Inquisition. Whether the innocent cause of the disturbance,

the fisherman Bartolomé Alonso, received his lashes, seems to have been

an incident too unimportant to be recorded.[359]

Rodrigo Gutiérrez de la Rosa, who was bishop from 1652 to 1658, was a

man of violent temper, not as easily subdued as Bishop Vera, and his

episcopate was a prolonged quarrel with his chapter and with the

tribunal. In 1654, Doctor Guirola, the commissioner at Santa Cruz de

Tenerife, was denounced, for his oppression, to the bishop, who ordered

an investigation and his arrest if cause were found. This proved to be

the case and the arrest was made, against which the tribunal protested

in terms so irritating that Gutiérrez excommunicated all its officials,

ringing the bells and placing their names on the _tablillas_, besides

imposing a fine of 2000 ducats on each of the inquisitors. They met this

by calling on the civil and military authorities for forcible aid and

summoned all the bishop’s dependents to assist them. Miguel de Collado,

the secretary, went to the cathedral to serve these notices, on hearing

which Gutiérrez hastened thither with his followers and, not finding

Collado, proceeded to the house of Inquisitor José Badaran, which he

searched from bottom to top for pledges to secure the payment of the

fine. Word was carried to the tribunal, when the inquisitors, with a

guard of soldiers, went to Badaran’s house, which they found barred

against them, broke open the door and a stormy interview ensued. The

bishop in the cathedral, published Badaran and the fiscal as

excommunicates; the inquisitors ordered the notices of excommunication

removed and fined the bishop in 4000 ducats. To collect this, they

embargoed his revenues in Tenerife and he in turn embargoed the fruits

of their prebends. They obtained guards of soldiers posted in their

houses and in that of the fiscal, fearing attack from the satellites of

the bishop, such as he had made in 1552 in the cathedral and in 1554 at

the house of the dean. In reporting all this to the Suprema, they

promise to send the fiscal with all the documents by the next vessel,

for the authority and power of the Inquisition depend upon the

result.[360]

While this was pending a quarrel arose between the tribunal and the

chapter, because the latter refused to pay to the fiscal the fruits of

his prebend. Inquisitor-general Arce y Reynoso ordered the chapter to

make the payment, which led the canon Matheo de Cassares and the

racionero Cristóbal Vandama to commit certain acts of disrespect. To

punish this the inquisitors, on November 16, 1655, arrested them, in

conformity with the rules prescribed by the Suprema, in its letter of

September 6, 1644, respecting the arrest of prebendaries, but, at the

prayer of the chapter, they were released on the third day. They were

friends of Bishop Gutiérrez, who nursed his wrath until December 26th,

when there was a solemn celebration in the cathedral, at which

Inquisitor Frias celebrated mass. When Inquisitor Badaran entered and

took his seat in the choir, Gutiérrez in a loud voice commanded him to

leave the church, as he was under excommunication for arresting clerics

without jurisdiction. To avoid creating a tumult he did so; Frias

celebrated mass and then joined him in the tribunal, where they drew up

the necessary papers. The affair of course created an immense scandal

and led to prolonged correspondence with the Suprema, which ordered it

suspended April 12, 1657.[361] They were not much more successful in the

outcome of the previous quarrel, although they succeeded, at the end of

1656, in procuring a royal order summoning Gutiérrez to the court. In

communicating this to the bishop, December 13, 1656, the Licenciate Blas

Canales advises him, if he has any money to spare, to invest it in a

jewel for presentation to the king, through the hands of the minister

Louis de Haro. He probably followed the judicious counsel, for the

matter ended with a decree relieving him from the fine imposed on him by

the inquisitors.[362]

The next encounter was with the Audiencia, in 1661. For eight years

there had been no physician in the island, when the tribunal, needing

one for the torture-chamber, induced, in 1659, Dr. Domingo Rodríguez

Ramos to come. He became a frequent visitor at the house of Doña Beatriz

de Herrera, the _amiga_ of the judge Alvaro Gil de la Sierpe, to whom

she had borne several children. Sierpe became jealous and, on some

pretext, Dr. Ramos was arrested, January 28, 1661, and imprisoned in

chains. The tribunal asserted its jurisdiction by inhibiting the

Audiencia from prosecuting the case and, on this being disregarded, the

judges were excommunicated with all the solemnities. They impassively

continued their functions; the tribunal then excommunicated the

officials of the court, who were more easily frightened; for several

months there was much popular excitement but, in October, the

competencia was decided in favor of the Audiencia--doubtless because the

physician was not an official of the tribunal--and a royal letter

sharply rebuked the inquisitors.[363]

The tribunal was evidently losing its prestige and matters did not

improve with the advent of the Bourbon dynasty. The enmity between it

and the chapter continued undiminished and when, on the death of the

Marquis of Celada, in 1707, his son, the Inquisitor Bartolomé Benítez de

Lugo, asked that his exequies should be performed in the cathedral, the

request was refused. This led to a violent rupture, in the course of

which the tribunal voted the arrest of the canons, with sequestration.

The chapter appealed to Philip V, who condemned the tribunal in a cédula

of November 7, 1707. This did not arrive until the following year, when

the chapter kept it secret until Easter; in the crowded solemnity of the

feast-day, when Inquisitor Benítez was present, a secretary mounted the

pulpit and read the royal decree, to his great mortification.[364] Even

worse befell the tribunal in 1714, when its inexcusable violence, in

another quarrel with the chapter, led Philip V to demand the recall of

the inquisitors and to enforce his commands in spite of the repeated

tergiversations of the Suprema.[365]

* * * * *

As the eighteenth century advanced, the hostility of ecclesiastics and

laymen towards the tribunal continued unabated, while respect for it

rapidly decreased and its functions dwindled, except in the matter of

censorship. A curious manifestation of the feeling entertained for it is

to be found in the attitude of the parish priests with regard to the

sanbenitos of the heretics hung in their churches. A report on the

subject called for by the Suprema, in 1788, elicited the statement that

for many years there had been no culprits of the class requiring

sanbenitos. In 1756, when the walls of the parish church of Los Remedios

de La Laguna were whitened, the incumbents resisted the replacement of

the sanbenitos, or at least wished to hang them where they should not be

seen, but the tribunal ordered them to be renovated and hung

conspicuously. In the Dominican church of Las Palmas, there used to be

sanbenitos, but they had disappeared and the inquisitors could not

explain the cause of their removal. Eight years ago the parish church of

Telde was whitened and the incumbents would not replace them; Inquisitor

Padilla was informed of this, but he took no action. The only ones then

to be seen in Las Palmas were in the cathedral; the building was

undergoing alterations and the walls would be whitened, which the

inquisitors expected would be alleged as a reason for removing

them.[366] Equally suggestive of the feeling of the laity is the fact

that, when the position of alguazil mayor fell vacant, it was offered in

vain to representatives of the principal families, who all declined

under various pretexts.[367]

The sentiment of the population was duly represented by the eloquent

priest Ruiz de Padron in the debates of the Córtes of Cádiz, in 1813,

and the suppression of the Inquisition was greeted by the ecclesiastics

of the Canaries in a temper very different from that manifested in the

Peninsula. The bishop, Manuel Verdugo, a native of Las Palmas, was an

enlightened man, who had had frequent differences with the tribunal. The

decree of suppression was received by him March 31st; it was his duty to

take charge of the archives and to close the building, and he lost no

time in communicating it to the inquisitors, José Francisco Borbujo y

Riba and Antonio Fernando de Echanove. The chapter was overjoyed and, at

a session on April 3d, it addressed the Córtes, characterizing the

decree as manifestly the work of God and as removing from the Church of

Christ a blemish which rendered religion odious. The same afternoon the

sanbenitos in the cathedral were solemnly burnt in the patio. The bishop

also reported to the Córtes that their manifesto, which had excited the

canons of Cádiz to such extremity of opposition, had been duly read that

morning, and that he had been greatly pleased to see that the acts of

the Córtes had been received throughout his diocese with universal

satisfaction. He lost no time in taking possession of the archives, but

the inquisitors had already taken the precaution to remove, from the

volume of their correspondence with the Suprema, two leaves in which

they had spoken ill of him. The financial officials at the same time

assumed charge of the landed property and censos, or ground-rents, of

the tribunal, which we are told were large and numerous. Inquisitor

Borbujo remained at his post, awaiting the reaction. The poets of the

island were prompt in expressing the exuberance of their joy in verses,

for which action was subsequently taken against the priest, Mariano

Romero, Don Rafael Bento and Don Francisco Guerra y Bethencourt.[368]

When the Restoration swiftly followed, Inquisitor Borbujo received, on

August 17, 1814, the decree re-establishing the Inquisition and called

on the bishop to surrender the building, but the latter declared that he

must await orders from competent authority. On September 29th there

came an order for the re-installation of the tribunal and Borbujo made

another effort to gain possession of the building and property, but it

was not until a royal mandate of November 28th was received that he

succeeded in doing so. The tribunal was thus fairly put on its feet

again, but such was the abhorrence in which it was held that its edicts

were torn down, its jurisdiction was everywhere contested, and its

offices of alguazil and familiars could not be filled.[369]

Thus resuscitated, it diligently collected the pamphlets and periodicals

and verses of the revolutionary period, and molested their authors as

far as it could. In fact, under the Restoration, except the occasional

prosecution of a wise-woman, its functions, as in Spain, were mainly

political, liberalism being equivalent to heresy and, except when it had

some political end in view, its efforts were ridiculed by both the civil

and military authorities, which regarded it with no respect and

encroached upon it from all sides. When the Revolution of 1820 broke

out, news of Fernando VII’s oath to the Constitution and decree of March

9th suppressing the Holy Office reached Santa Cruz de Tenerife April

29th and Las Palmas some days later. Amid popular rejoicings, the

Inquisition closed its doors, delivered up its archives and the

inquisitors sailed for Spain. No care was taken of the archives, which

were pillaged by curiosity hunters and those whose interests led them to

acquire documents concerning limpieza or old law-suits. What remained

were stored in a damp, unventilated place; when removed, they were

carried off by cartloads, without keeping them in any order and, in

1874, Millares describes them as forming a pile of chaotic, mutilated

and illegible papers in a room of the City Hall.[370]

The reader may reasonably ask what, in its labor of three centuries, the

tribunal of the Canaries accomplished to justify its existence.