This was but one of the many attempts to solve the increasing

difficulties of the Morisco problem, and its only relation to the

general policy of the Inquisition is to prove how easily, when

sufficient motive existed, the unsparing cruelty of the canon law could

be set aside. Under that law, we can readily conceive how large a

portion of the executions were due to relapse. Details are lacking as to

the earlier period of activity, but the later records are sufficient to

indicate how efficient an agent it was in procuring victims. In the

great Madrid auto of 1680, there were eighteen Judaizers relaxed in

person, of whom ten were for relapse, six for pertinacity and two for

denial or imperfect confession.[602] In the terrible Mallorquin autos of

1691, all the relaxed--thirty-eight in person and seven in effigy--were

condemned for relapse, having been reconciled in 1679, and of these only

three were burnt alive as pertinacious.[603] At the Granada auto of

January 31, 1723, of the eleven Judaizers relaxed, all were relapsed; at

that of Cordova, April 23, 1724, seven out of eight were relapsed, and

the same was the case with all of the six relaxed in the Cuenca auto of

July 23, 1724.[604] In these last three autos only one person was

pertinacious; the rest all professed contrition and conversion and would

have escaped with reconciliation instead of strangulation had it not

been for the rigor in the treatment of relapse.

[Sidenote: _RELAPSE_]

A case already alluded to exemplifies this and is worth relating in

some detail, if only for its psychological interest. Fray Joseph Díaz

Pimiento was born in Cuba, of Old Christian parents, in 1687. He was

bred to the Church and his life was an example of the licence pervading

the colonies. He drifted around the shores of the Caribbean, involved in

all kinds of disreputable adventures. In Mexico, he forged a certificate

of baptism in order to obtain ordination under age. In the Dutch colony

of Curaçoa, he professed conversion to Judaism and was circumcised, in

the hope of getting a few hundred dollars from the Jews. After

incredible hardships he fell into the hands of the Inquisition of

Cartagena de las Indias, where he recanted, was reconciled and was sent

to Spain for reclusion in a convent. While confined in the episcopal

prison he broke gaol, but was captured at Xeres, and was put in a

convent, heavily fettered, where he endeavored to get assistance from

some New Christians who were under suspicion, but in this he failed,

although to excite their compassion, he wrote to the commissioner of the

Inquisition that he was a Jew. Then again he escaped and fled to Lisbon,

where he worked for a Dutch ship-master, who promised to carry him to

Holland, whence he could sail for Jamaica. Then a sudden impulse took

possession of him, which carried him to Seville, where he presented

himself to the Inquisition. At first he professed to be a Christian but,

after a few days, he told the alcaide that he was a Jew, and in this he

persisted, stubbornly refusing to make defence. Necessarily, as a

relapsed, he was condemned to relaxation in the auto of July 25, 1720,

and, during the three days prior to the auto, all the learning and piety

of Seville were enlisted in his conversion, while prayers for his soul

were put up in all the churches. Then came another revulsion and, after

two days, he announced that the grace of God had touched him, and that

he was a Christian. But for his relapse, this would have saved him; as

it was, it only obtained for him preliminary strangulation and this he

sought to reject for, at the stake, he begged to be burnt alive in order

to prove that his conversion was the result of conviction and not of

fear. This could not be permitted, and the deputy assistente sentenced

him to be garrotted and burnt, and his ashes scattered as usual. The

pile was fired at 5 <small>P.M.; it took until day-break to reduce the body to

ashes, and it was observed that the customary stench was absent. Then

the Hermandad de la Caridad asked to have the ashes to give them

Christian burial, as he had died a Christian, but the assistente refused

and ordered them to be scattered over the fields, in obedience to the

royal pragmáticas and apostolical constitutions--all of which, we are

told, was done, to the great honor of the holy Catholic faith.[605]

Yet, notwithstanding the canons that prohibited mercy to the relapsed

and withheld, even from the inquisitor-general, the power to pardon,

cases, as has been stated above (p. 148), are not infrequent, in which

the relapsed were admitted to a second reconciliation. Even as early as

1486, we hear of Micer Gonzalo de Santa María, of the great converso

family of Burgos, who was thrice penanced by the Inquisition and who

finally died, not at the stake, but in gaol, under a sentence of

perpetual prison.[606] Some scattering cases of penances subsequent to

reconciliation occur at Barcelona between 1491 and 1502, mingled with

others in which the full penalty of relaxation was inflicted, though no

reasons are alleged for the distinction.[607] In 1511, at Cuenca, Leonor

and Juana Rodríguez who had been reconciled in time of Grace, were

reconciled again for fresh delinquencies.[608] In the later period,

instances of the same benignity occur more frequently, although

accompanied with punishment severe enough to show that the trivial

evidence required to prove persistency was far exceeded. Thus, in the

Toledo auto of December 27, 1654, Gaspar de los Reyes was sentenced, as

a relapsed observer of the Law of Moses, to abjure _de vehementi_, to

six years of galleys and a fine of a thousand ducats, while his wife,

Isabel Rodríguez, and his mother, María López, both relapsed, had the

same sentence, save that exile replaced the galleys and the fine was six

hundred ducats each. A more unusual case was that of Manuel Rodríguez

Moreira, who was relaxed for relapse in the Toledo auto of September 8,

1704, after rejecting an offer of mercy. There is even an instance,

December 8, 1681, of a sentence of reconciliation, _citra p[oe]nam

relapsi_--without the punishment of relapse--but this is explained by

the tender age of the culprit, Diego de Castro, who was but ten years

old.[609]

[Sidenote: _RELAPSE_]

Remembering the prudent intimation given to inquisitors that sometimes

fines were more productive than confiscation, the heavy mulcts

inflicted on the relapsed who were admitted to mercy, suggest that

possibly there may have been financial reasons, in special cases, for

benignity. We have seen the number of executions for relapse in the

Mallorquin autos of 1691. Besides these there were twenty-two cases of

those who had been reconciled in 1679 who were not relaxed but penanced

in various ways, including fines ranging from one to five hundred

libras, and aggregating in all sixty-five hundred libras.[610] It is

difficult not to recognize in this a speculative exercise of rigor or

mercy.

As the eighteenth century wore on, it would seem that the canonical

penalty of relaxation came to be enforced only on the relapsed who were

pertinacious, or refused to confess and beg for mercy. In the Valladolid

auto of June 13, 1745, there are three illustrative cases. Luis de la

Vega, who had been reconciled in 1701, was relaxed as an impenitent

relapsed, who persisted in denying his guilt. Miguel Gutiérrez,

reconciled in 1699, and Franciso García, reconciled in 1706, were

admitted again to reconciliation, with irremissible prison and

sanbenito, ten years of galleys and two hundred lashes--a somewhat

doubtful mercy but, if the sentence was justifiable, the offence

unquestionably under the canons, called for relaxation.[611]

It was only in formal heresy that relapse entailed relaxation for, as we

have seen, the stake was reserved for heretics. Where heresy was merely

inferential, as in bigamy, blasphemy, solicitation in the confessional,

reading prohibited books, and other offences reserved to the

Inquisition, relapse was treated only as an aggravation, to be punished

with such additional severity as the circumstances might indicate. Even

relapse in the crime of administering the sacraments without being in

orders, which the Roman Inquisition treated as the equivalent of heresy,

was visited in Spain only with the ordinary penalties in somewhat

rigorous measure. Thus Juan Vicente Esquirel y Morales--a man with a

number of aliases who had been a foot-soldier--was penanced for this

offence at Granada in 1727. He persisted in his evil courses and, in the

Córdova auto of March 4, 1731, he was forbidden to wear clerical

garments and was sentenced to two hundred lashes and ten years of

galleys.[612]

The latter half of the eighteenth century witnessed the gradual

disappearance of relaxation. Llorente tells us that during the reign of

Carlos III (1759-1788) he has found accounts of only ten autos de fe, in

which there were but four cases.[613] Probably the latest instance was

that of Isabel María Herraiz, an impostor known as the _Beata de

Cuenca_, who died in prison without confession and, being thus unable to

recant and beg mercy, was burnt in effigy in 1802.[614] When it came to

relaxing a living fellow-creature, however, the Inquisition by this time

was honestly desirous of escaping the necessity. Padre Miguel Sorano,

cura of Esco in Aragon, was an unmanageable heretic, who discarded

tradition and the fathers and held that Scripture was the sole

authority; purgatory and limbo were human inventions; fees for masses

were simony; tithes were a fraud; the pope was not the vicar of Christ

and his decretals were mere devices to raise money. All this he embodied

in a book which he audaciously submitted to his bishop and other

theologians. Tried by the Saragossa tribunal, he was pertinaciously

impenitent, impervious alike to argument and threats, and there was no

alternative but to vote for relaxation. Then the Suprema ordered fresh

testimony to be sought and renewed efforts at conversion, but all proved

fruitless and again relaxation was voted. As a last resource the Suprema

ordered an investigation into his sanity. All the population of the

vicinage was examined, and one doctor was found to say that some years

before he had been dangerously sick, which might have affected his

brain, and since then he had talked freely of these heretical doctrines.

Taking advantage of this, renewed efforts were made to convert him

without coming to a vote. While this was in progress he was attacked

with mortal illness and, at the end of twenty days, he was told that the

end was near. He merely said that he was in the hands of God; he refused

all the consolations of religion and passed away unrepentant in 1805, to

be buried in unconsecrated ground, when the Suprema ordered the case to

be closed, without proceeding to conviction and burning in effigy.[615]

We shall see that twenty years later the episcopal Inquisition was less

merciful.

CHAPTER V.

THE AUTO DE FE.

The Act of Faith--the Auto de Fe--was the name by which the Spanish Holy

Office dignified the _Sermo_ of the Old Inquisition. In its full

development it was an elaborate public solemnity, carefully devised to

inspire awe for the mysterious authority of the Inquisition, and to

impress the population with a wholesome abhorrence of heresy, by

representing in so far as it could the tremendous drama of the Day of

Judgement.[616] It was regarded as an eminently pious duty. Ferdinand,

in 1499, congratulating the inquisitors of Saragossa on the reports of

their autos, and the consequent edification of the people, exhorts them

to continue to serve God and to discharge their consciences and his. In

a similar mood Cardinal Adrian, in 1517, urged the tribunal of Sicily to

celebrate one as early as possible for, besides the service to God, it

would greatly edify the people.[617] The old designation of Sermo was

derived from the sermon with which the proceedings commenced--originally

preached by one of the inquisitors, but subsequently by some eloquent

fraile, who dilated on the supreme importance of preserving the faith in

its purity and of exterminating heresy and heretics. To insure a large

attendance, an indulgence, usually of forty days, was granted to all

present at the pious work.

At the height of its power the Inquisition spared no labor or expense to

lend impressiveness to the _auto publico general_, as a demonstration of

its authority and of the success with which it performed its functions.

In the earlier and busier period, the exhibition was simpler, and

confined to the practical work in hand. Thus in the first one celebrated

in Toledo, August 16, 1486, the victims were marched on foot to the

plaza, their hands tied with ropes across the breast, wearing sanbenitos

of yellow linen with their names and the inscription "herege condenado,"

and bearing mitres on their heads. In the plaza they were ranged in

tiers on a staging, while the inquisitors and their officials occupied

another staging opposite. The sentence of each one was read and,

although the culprits were numerous, the affair, commencing at 6 <small>A.M.,

was over by noon, when the convicts were carried to the _brasero_ or

_quemadero_ for burning. Apparently the exhibition consisted only of

those condemned to the stake, to the exclusion of the reconciled or

otherwise penanced.[618] The autos of the period, moreover, were not

confined to the seats of the tribunals. We hear of them in the smaller

towns, and, from a letter of Ferdinand, November 21, 1498, it appears

that the convicts were distributed to their several bishoprics where the

celebration and execution, though on a minor scale, would bring the

terror of the Inquisition and the danger of heresy more directly home to

the people.[619] By 1515, however, we may assume that they were

centralized in the tribunal cities, for a royal cédula of that year

orders the tribunal of Murcia to confine its autos to the city of Murcia

and not to celebrate them in Orihuela.[620] It was evidently desired to

render them more impressive, and this was further accomplished, about

the same time, by requiring all penitents to appear in them for, in

1517, we find the Suprema instructing the tribunal of Navarre that, in

future, abjurations _de levi_ were not to be made privately, but in the

public autos, which were to be celebrated with all solemnity.[621] There

was cruelty in this, for appearance in an auto was in itself a severe

punishment, and we shall see that subsequently _autos particulares_, or

private autos, were instituted which enabled those guilty of lighter

offences to escape without public humiliation.

[Sidenote: _IMPOSING SOLEMNITIES_]

Thus far autos were held at the discretion of the tribunals, which

celebrated them whenever there was an accumulation of finished trials

requiring relief to the prisons. A consulta de fe would be assembled,

the sentences would be agreed upon, and a day would be appointed. It

probably was not often that any external interference was apprehended,

as at Cuenca, in 1520, where the tribunal had so excited popular passion

by arresting the deputy corregidor, in some collision of jurisdictions,

that it was obliged to procure a royal cédula instructing the

corregidor not to permit the inquisitors to be impeded in the

performance of their functions.[622] Gradually, however, in this, as in

so much else, the Suprema assumed control. A commencement of this is

seen, in 1537, when it ordered that, whenever an auto was proposed, it

should be apprised before any one else, but even the Instructions of

1561 leave as yet the determination with the tribunals.[623] It could

not have been long after this, however, that the permission of the

Suprema became requisite for, in 1585, we find the Inquisitor of Cuenca,

Ximenes de Reynoso, writing, September 3d, for a decision of certain

cases, and for authority to hold an auto, as there were thirty

penitents, many of whom being poor were a charge on the fisc. The

Suprema delayed its answer and, on October 14th, Reynoso sent a special

courier, asking the reply to be returned by him; the auto was necessary

for the benefit of the sick prisoners, as there was a pestilence raging,

and also for the relief of the treasury; it was only by special entreaty

that the receiver had paid the expenses of the last month, saying that

there were no funds. This brought a speedy answer, with the desired

permission.[624] Finally, the customary routine was for the tribunal to

send a list of the cases in readiness and to ask for licence to hold an

auto; if the Suprema approved, it ordered the auto to be celebrated

without delay. Apparently in the active work of the eighteenth century

there was an effort to regain control of the matter, for a carta

acordada of June 5, 1720, orders that no auto be held without advising

the Suprema and awaiting its commands.[625]

As public autos became less frequent, they lost the simplicity of the

earlier period and grew to be imposing demonstrations of the authority

of the Inquisition. Possession was taken of the principal square of the

city, and two vast stagings were erected, one for the penitents and

their ghostly attendants, and the other for the inquisitors with their

officials and all the ecclesiastical and secular authorities, while the

windows of the surrounding houses were filled with the notables of the

place and their families. The participation of prelate and magistrate,

in the processions and spectacle, was compulsory, for though, as a rule,

they were proud to take their places, causes of quarrel were too

frequent and bitter not occasionally to render them unwilling thus to

do honor to their imperious adversaries. In 1486, the local authorities

of Valencia absented themselves from an auto and, when this was reported

to Ferdinand, he rebuked them and ordered them in future always to be

present, for nothing was so important as the service of God.[626]

Similar commands had to be repeated not infrequently. About 1580, a

royal cédula to the viceroy and officials of Majorca instructs them to

lend the weight of their authority to the Inquisition, by accompanying

the inquisitors in the procession to the staging, and then conducting

them back to their palace. In 1588, the President of the Royal Council

of Castile issued a general order to all the judges of the royal courts

to march in the processions and, in 1598, the inquisitors were empowered

to compel by excommunication the attendance of all public

officials.[627]

The staging, on great occasions, was elaborate and costly, and the

question of defraying the expense was variously decided. In 1553, we

find the Suprema settling it, in Cuenca, by requiring the city to erect

it, as was customary in Toledo. These two cities and Madrid remained

charged with it, but elsewhere it was paid by the tribunals. At the

great Madrid auto of 1632, Philip IV ordered the city to construct the

staging in conformity with plans drawn by his chief architect, and the

same course was followed in that of 1680, where we have long details of

the complicated structure erected under the superintendence of

commissioners of high rank, who esteemed the duty to be an honor.[628]

[Sidenote: _POLICE POWER OF THE TRIBUNAL_]

It was essential that both inquisitors should be present, and a single

inquisitor was forbidden to celebrate a public auto in the absence of

his colleague. The day selected must be a feast-day--ordinarily a

Sunday--in order to insure a larger attendance. It sometimes chanced,

however, in the eccentricities of spiritual jurisdiction, that the city

lay under an interdict on the day appointed and, in such case, the

Inquisition had to yield. In 1582 the Suprema instructed the tribunals

that, when this occurred, they should endeavor to have the interdict

lifted for the occasion, but, if those who had cast it refused, the

inquisitors must not assume to lift it of their own authority, and must

postpone the auto or do the best they could.[629]

In all other respects the inquisitors were masters of the situation.

Repeated royal cédulas, commencing in 1523, addressed to the authorities

of the cities, made the inquisitors virtual rulers for the time. They

were authorized to erect stagings in the public plazas, to regulate the

police arrangements of the towns, and even to assign to the secular and

clerical officials such seats and precedence as they saw fit. The climax

would appear to be reached when Philip II empowered them to distribute

at their will the windows of the private houses overlooking the scene.

Against this, in 1595, the president and judges of the Audiencia of

Granada protested, begging that house-owners should be allowed to rent

their windows, and pointing out the hardship of a gentleman of high

degree securing the use of a window for his family, and being turned out

because the inquisitors chose to give it to a notary for the use of his

wife. Philip, however, held good, except in so far that he gave the

inquisitors instructions to have special consideration for the houses of

the judges and alcaldes.[630] How the tribunals exercised the police

power thus conferred on them is exemplified in the Seville auto of

September 24, 1559, when they forbade any one, between the preceding

midnight and the close of the solemnity, to carry arms or ride on

horseback in the city, under penalty, for common folk, of a hundred

lashes, and for gentlemen, of forfeiture of the horse or mule, thirty

days of prison, and a fine of fifty thousand maravedís.[631]

* * * * *

Numerous relations are extant, in print and in MS., of the great _autos

publicos generales_, giving in more or less detail the elaborate

ceremonial which developed itself, in the effort to render impressive

these crowning manifestations of the piety that regarded, as the highest

service to God, the extermination of those who persisted in worshipping

him according to their own consciences. These show that fashions varied

somewhat with time and place; they give the point of view of the

spectator, and we may preferably take as our guide a memoir of the

seventeenth century showing the internal machinery, according to the

custom of Toledo, drawn up for the instruction of succeeding

inquisitors.[632] The minuteness of the rules prescribed shows what

importance was attached to rendering the spectacle imposing and to

making manifest the subordination of the civil power, while the care

taken to designate the exact place of every man or body of men indicates

how fruitless was the authority granted to the tribunal in these matters

to prevent the inveterate quarrels as to precedence. At the great Madrid

auto of 1632, the Franciscans, indignant at the position assigned to

them in the procession, after lively altercation, retired sullenly to

their convent, for which the Suprema prosecuted them. These undignified

squabbles were so much a matter of course that our author, in describing

the report to be made to the Suprema, assumes that a place must be

reserved in it for them, and for the reasons which governed the tribunal

in its decisions.

When cases sufficient for an auto have accumulated, the tribunal reports

them to the Suprema, which orders it to be held. Then the inquisitors

determine on a feast-day, which should be at least a month off, in order

to give sufficient time for the preparations. Word is then sent to the

corregidor and the dean of the cathedral chapter to convene their

respective bodies at nine o'clock the next morning, to receive a

communication from the Inquisition and, at the appointed hour, some of

the higher officials, with familiars, announce to them and to the bishop

the expected celebration. Then in due time mounted familiars and

notaries, with drums and trumpets and clarions and the standard of the

Inquisition, move in procession through the streets, and at stated

places a bell-man rings a bell and the town crier proclaims "Know all

dwellers in this city that the Holy Office of the Inquisition, for the

glory and honor of God and the exaltation of our holy Catholic faith,

will celebrate a public auto de fe at such a place on such a day."

[Sidenote: _PREPARATIONS_]

No time is lost in making preparation. Commissioners are appointed for

the erection and ornamentation of the staging, and wax is provided for

the candles in the procession of the Green Cross on the evening before

the auto. All the Mendicant Orders and the parish churches are invited

to take part in the procession and the auto. Letters of convocation are

despatched, summoning all familiars, notaries, commissioners,

consultores and calificadores of the district, under penalties and

censures, to come on the day previous to the procession of the Green

Cross.[633] The frailes, who are to assist the condemned during their

last night on earth, are selected and notified. _Corozas_ (conical

mitres, about three quarters of an ell in height) are ordered, with

flames for those who are to be relaxed, and in the ordinary form for

bigamists, sorcerers and false-witnesses; also sanbenitos with flames

for the relaxed, with two aspas for the reconciled, and with one aspa,

behind and before, for those abjuring _de vehementi_; also halters for

the relaxed and for those to be scourged. If there are effigies, they

are made half length, to be carried on poles by porters; if there are

bones, the boxes containing them are black, to be placed at the foot of

those to which they belong; the effigies wear mitres with flames, and

sanbenitos with flames on one side and, on the other, the name,

residence and crime of the culprit.[634] Green crosses are also provided

to be carried by the relaxed, yellow wax candles for the penitents and

bundles of osiers for the reconciliation ceremonies. There must also be

a box for carrying the sentences, of crimson velvet with gold fringe and

a gilt lock and key, while a list of the relaxed and the effigies is

given to the magistrates, so that they may have the sentences ready.

Besides these there is the large green cross to be borne by the

Dominican prior, and the white cross by the mayordomo of the Cofradia,

in the procession of the preceding evening. The standard to be carried

by the fiscal is to be made of crimson damask, richly embroidered on one

side with the royal arms, a green cross rising from the crown, and the

sword and olive-branch to right and left, on the other side a shield

with arms of San Pedro Martir; the staff is to be gilt, ending in a

cross, with pendant cords bearing gold and silver tassels. Elaborate

trappings are to be provided for the mules ridden by the officials, and

silver-plated batons for the familiars who marshal the procession. The

parish church usually supplies the carpets, hangings, and other

adornments of the staging, and the singers for the evening procession

and the reconciliation ceremonies. Then the preacher is

appointed--usually a Dominican calificador--though in Galicia a bishop

is generally selected and, in Madrid, the royal confessor. The day

before the auto, the altar on the staging is decorated, and torches and

candles are arranged around the place where the green cross is to be

set. The inquisitors assign all the windows overlooking the plaza; they

order that no coaches shall traverse the streets, and decide where the

barriers are to be erected; the municipal authorities surrender the city

to them and do whatever they require.

[Sidenote: _THE CELEBRATION_]

In the evening preceding the auto, the procession of the Green Cross

takes place--a solemn affair in which the standard is borne by a crowd

of familiars and gentlemen; the white cross follows with the religious

Orders, the cross of the parish church with its clergy, the Green Cross

carried by the Dominican prior and his frailes with torches and chanting

the Miserere. The procession winds through the designated streets to the

plaza, where the Green Cross is planted above the altar and is guarded

by Dominicans during the night. The white cross is carried on to the

brasero, where it is guarded by a body, existing in some cities, known

as the soldiers of the Zarza, whose function is to guard the brasero and

plaza and to furnish the wood for the burning.[635] The Inquisition

itself is guarded during the night by soldiers who, before day-break,

arouse the officials by beat of drum. Within the building, the

sanbenitos and insignia are arranged in order and porters are assembled

in readiness to carry the effigies and bones and such penitents as have

been disabled from walking. At 9 <small>P.M. the senior inquisitor, with a

secretary, visits those who are to be relaxed and informs them of their

approaching fate; with each of them he leaves two frailes to guide them.

If any of the pertinacious or negativos are converted, they are to be

heard immediately and their confessions received, when the inquisitors

with the Ordinary determine whether to admit them to reconciliation, and

the same is done with those converted on the staging.

Before dawn mass is celebrated in the audience-chamber, and also at the

altar of the Green Cross. By daylight breakfast is given to all who are

to appear in the auto, and also to the frailes assigned to the

relaxed.[636] They are not taken from their cells till the hour of

forming the procession, when the penitents are ranged along the walls of

the audience-chamber in the order of their marching; all are dressed in

their sanbenitos with the requisite insignia.

The procession starts with the soldiers of the Zarza at its head; then

the cross of the parish church, shrouded in black, with an acolyte who

tolls a bell mournfully at intervals. Then come the penitents, one by

one, each with a familiar on either side; first are the impostors, then

personators of officials of the Inquisition, followed in order by

blasphemers, bigamists, Judaizers, Protestants, the effigies and chests

of bones and finally those to be relaxed, each with two frailes. Mounted

officials follow, then familiars in pairs, the standard of the

Inquisition, and finally the inquisitors bring up the rear. Thus the

procession moves through the designated streets, filled with a densely

packed crowd, kept off by railings, to the plaza, where the culprits are

seated in the same order, the lightest offenders on the lowest benches.

The staging is provided with two pulpits, from which the sentences are

read alternatively. Between them is a bench elevated on two steps, on

which the penitents are brought successively, to sit with their faces to

the tribunal and hear their sentences read; the bench is furnished with

a rail, kindly provided for them to cling to, in case of fainting, for,

with the exception of the relaxed, this is the first definite

announcement to them of their fate. Below the seats of the tribunal

there is a room handsomely fitted up for refreshments, to which the

inquisitors, officials, municipal officers and clergy resort from time

to time, and a similar one is provided for the familiars and persons of

note. To the former is brought any pertinacious convict who may be

converted on the staging previous to hearing his sentence, and there an

inquisitor and secretary take his confession, after which the

inquisitors and Ordinary consider the case: if he is to be admitted to

reconciliation he is sent back to the Inquisition in a coach or chair,

or is replaced on the staging, to return with the rest of the penitents.

If any culprit dies on the staging, if he is condemned to relaxation his

sentence is read, and his body is delivered to the secular arm; if he is

one of those to be reconciled, he is absolved and the parish church

buries him in consecrated ground; if simply one penanced, he is absolved

_ad cautelam_ and the church buries him.

After the preaching of the sermon, a secretary mounts a pulpit and, in a

loud voice, reads the customary oath, elaborately pledging all the

officials and people present to obedience to the Holy Office, and to the

active persecution of heretics and heresy, to which every one responds

Amen! If the king is present, the senior inquisitor goes to his balcony

and, on the cross and gospels, administers to him an oath to defend the

faith, to persecute heretics and to show all necessary favor to the

Inquisition.[637]

[Sidenote: _THE CELEBRATION_]

Then the sentences are read from the alternate pulpits, the alguazil

mayor producing each culprit to hear his sentence. In this there must be

no interruption, as all the sentences must be read, if it lasts till

nightfall, for which torches and torch-bearers must be in

readiness.[638] Although the sentences of the relaxed are left to the

last, yet, if the auto is prolonged into the night they are introduced

earlier, as it is essential that the burning should be executed in broad

day-light. As these sentences are read, the effigies and chests of bones

are ranged on one side of the stage, and the living convicts on the

other. They are then delivered to the secular arm, and the judge who

utters the sentences does so, either on the stage, or at the table of

the secretaries or outside of the staging. If there is a _compañia de la

Zarza_, it marches in squadron into the plaza, when the sentences are

read, and the men discharge their arquebuses. They surround the

condemned and march with them to the brasero, to protect them from the

populace which, in some places, is accustomed to maltreat and even to

kill them, against which the inquisitors give special instructions. The

magistrates provide the asses on which they ride and the wood to burn

them. The frailes in charge attend them to the last breath and exhaust

all effort to bring about their repentance and conversion.

The public solemnities conclude with the ceremonies of abjuration and

reconciliation, after which the alguazil mayor and familiars conduct the

penitents back to the Inquisition, where they have supper and are locked

up, three or four in a cell. The priests of the parish church remove the

black veil from their cross and take it back, while the Dominicans bear

the green cross to the Inquisition, singing psalms and escorted by the

municipal officials. The next morning the reconciled have the terms of

their sentences read over to them; they and the other penitents take the

oath of secrecy, and they are conveyed by the alcaide to the penitential

prison. At ten o'clock the alguazil mayor, with a secretary and

familiars, all mounted, with the public executioner and town-crier, take

out those sentenced to scourging and vergüenza, and the punishment is

duly administered through the customary streets. On their return, those

whose sentences include the galleys are furnished a certificate of their

length of service and are transferred to the royal prison, and with this

concludes the stately ceremony by which the Holy Office, at the height

of its power, impressed its terror on the population.

The place of burning--the quemadero or brasero--as a rule was outside of

the city. With this the tribunal had nothing to do, except that a

secretary and alguazil were present to certify and report as to the

execution of the sentences.[639] Consequently the documents of the

Inquisition furnish no details, but some may be gleaned from a relation

of the Madrid auto of 1632. For this occasion the city had constructed

the brasero beyond the Puerta de Alcalá; as there were seven to be

burnt, it was made fifty feet square, and had the requisite stakes with

garrotes. The confusion and crowd were great, and so also was the fire,

which lasted until eleven o'clock at night, by which time the bodies

were reduced to ashes, so that the memory of the impious might vanish

from the earth.[640] The scattering of the ashes over the fields, or

into running water, was a prescription of old standing, to prevent

disciples of heresiarchs from preserving fragments to be venerated as

relics. This was not an easy matter, for the total calcination of a

human skeleton requires a prolonged intensity of heat not likely to be

maintained where wood was expensive, and the bones found with the

cinders on the site of the old quemadero of Madrid, when, about 1868,

the Calle de Carranza was cut through it, would indicate that part, at

least, of the remains of the victims were allowed to lie where they had

perished.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: _THE AUTO PARTICULAR_]

The _auto público general_, while looming large in popular imagination,

represented, in truth, but a small part of inquisitorial activity. It

was a solemnity on a grand scale, in which the Holy Office magnified its

importance, but by far the greater number of cases were despatched in

_autos particulares_ or _autillos_, held in churches, or in the

audience-chamber, or anywhere that circumstances might dictate. In the

Toledo record, from 1575 to 1610, there are contained but twelve autos

generales, in which three hundred and eighty-six culprits appeared,

while seven hundred and eighty-six cases were settled in autos

particulares.[641] As stated above, appearance in a public auto was, in

itself, a severe punishment, and the sentence always specified whether

the offender was to be subjected to a humiliation entailing

consequences on him and his family so greatly dreaded that, at a Toledo

auto of December 13, 1627, Juan Nuñez Saravia, a wealthy Portuguese,

vainly offered twelve thousand ducats to escape it.[642] The great

majority of cases deserved no such severity. The jurisdiction of the

Inquisition extended over a wide field; it was, in a certain sense, a

_custos morum_ and took cognizance of a vast number of comparatively

trivial offences--careless speeches, blasphemies, propositions of all

kinds, indecent writings and works of art, sorceries and conjurations

more or less innocent and the like--which it disposed of without

summoning the entire population as spectators. Clerical offenders,

moreover, as we have seen, unless degraded for formal heresy, were

shielded from the scandal of publicity in the audience chamber.

The _auto particular_, or private auto, was often celebrated in a

church, to which the spiritual and civil authorities were not invited,

but where such portion of the public as could find room were at liberty

to be present. More frequently it was held in the _sala_, or

audience-chamber, and here again there was a distinction, for the

sentence defined whether it should be with open doors or closed and, in

the former case, the bell was often tolled in order to invite a curious

crowd of spectators. Even the apartments of the senior inquisitor were

sometimes used in this manner, as when, March 23, 1680, three alguaziles

of the corregidor of Toledo, for maltreating the purveyor of the

tribunal, were sentenced in the apartments to various terms of exile.

When nuns were the culprits, the _autillo_ was customarily performed in

their convent, as in the case, August 8, 1658, of Sor Josefa de

Villegas, for superstitions and sorceries, who was sentenced to various

penances, through the grating of the Augustinian nunnery of San

Torquato, in presence of the nuns and, on February 13, 1685, Sor

Dionisia de Rojas was sentenced in the choir of the Franciscan house of

Santa Isabel, in the presence of the superior and four elderly

sisters.[643]

As financial distress grew more and more acute, in the seventeenth

century, the tribunals shrank from the heavy expenses attendant on the

elaborate demonstrations of the great public autos which, however

gratifying to their pride, bore too heavily upon their diminishing

resources, exposed as they were to the royal exactions. In Barcelona,

there would seem to have been no public auto between 1627 and the revolt

of 1640; in Valladolid, none between 1644 and 1667. In Toledo one was

held, after prolonged consideration, January 1, 1651, in which the

number of culprits shows that it relieved the prisons of a long

accumulation; it was the last public auto celebrated in Toledo, and

there was none even in a church, between 1656 and 1677.[644] Seville

appears to have been less hampered and celebrated public autos generales

in 1631, 1643, 1648, 1656, and a most impressive one in 1660 at which

less fortunate tribunals unloaded their convicts, for there were seven

relaxations in person, twenty-seven in effigy and fifty-two penitents,

but this appears to be the last of its kind there.[645]

[Sidenote: _CONTRIBUTORY AUTOS_]

In fact, the public auto would have been abandoned ere this, but for the

rule that judgements of blood must not be rendered in churches. As early

as 1568 the Suprema had decreed that, when there was a relaxation, the

auto must be held in the plaza and not in a church, which was in

accordance with the ancient authorities.[646] When the public autos

became an onerous burden, we can imagine that this led to hesitation in

pronouncing death-sentences for, when this was unavoidable, the convict

became a troublesome personage. A suggestive case was that of Juan

López, condemned to relaxation for Judaism, at Valladolid, in 1633;

after he lay in prison for thirty months with no prospect of getting rid

of him, the Suprema ordered him to be tortured and another vote to be

taken, which resulted, September 1, 1637, in a revised sentence of

reconciliation, with severe punishments.[647] A device less damaging to

the purity of faith was to transfer a convict from one tribunal to

another for execution. Thus when, at Valencia, the Morisco Gerónimo

Buenaventura was condemned for pertinacity, there was no auto in which

to execute the sentence. On November 19, 1635, the Suprema ordered him

to be sent to Valladolid, apparently under the impression that he could

be burnt there but, after two years, Valladolid reported that it had no

public auto in which to despatch him, so, in 1638 the Suprema ordered

his transfer to Saragossa.[648] Whether he met a speedy death there we

have no means of knowing, but there is something peculiarly revolting in

thus sending a poor wretch from one corner of Spain to another, in order

to find some place in which to burn him economically.

When any tribunal managed to celebrate a public auto, it was utilized to

disembarrass the others. Thus the Toledo auto of 1651 had effigies

contributed by Cuenca, Córdova and Seville. In 1655 Santiago celebrated

a public auto, to which Valladolid sent for relaxation one living person

and four effigies, two of the latter having been kept waiting since 1644

and 1648. The consulta de fe of Murcia, on July 18, 1658, voted to relax

nine fugitive Judaizers of Beas, but the formal sentence was delayed

until December 5, 1659, in preparation for the great public auto at

Seville, April 13, 1660, when the effigies were duly cremated.[649] The

imposing Madrid auto of 1680--the last of its kind--was a general gaol

delivery to which all the tribunals contributed their embarrassing

convicts.

There was no prospect of an improvement in the situation, although it

was supremely humiliating to the Inquisition that it could not afford to

burn those whom it condemned, promptly and on the scene of their

transgressions, under the alternative of exercising a compulsory mercy.

Some relief must be found, and a partial attempt was made, in a carta

acordada of September 4, 1657, permitting effigies to be relaxed at

autos particulares in churches. Toledo promptly availed itself of this

by relaxing, December 9th, eight effigies of fugitives in such an

auto,[650] but the other tribunals seem to have discountenanced the

device. The further step, of overthrowing the traditional prohibition of

uttering sentences of blood in churches, appears to have been under

consideration in 1664, when the Suprema called on the tribunals for

information as to relaxations in person or in effigy in autos

particulares. In reply, Valencia reported that the sentence of Gaspar

López, to be relaxed in effigy, voted in 1641, had never been published,

for lack of an auto, although the corresponding sentence of

confiscation had been executed--which the Suprema pronounced to be

highly irregular.[651]

It required time to familiarise the conscience with so revolutionary a

measure, and the project slumbered for a quarter of a century, but the

pressure to escape the burden of public autos increased, and the Suprema

finally conquered its scruples. A carta acordada, of September 23, 1689,

pointed out that, in view of the diminished resources from confiscations

and of the increased cost of celebrating these public functions with due

solemnity, they were avoided as far as possible, and it was no longer

practicable to reserve for them the relaxed, whose numbers unfortunately

were daily increasing. They had to be fed while lying forgotten in their

cells, after their cases were finished; even the expense of transferring

them from one tribunal to another was considerable, and it was kindly

added that there was risk to their souls in detaining them so long while

in ignorance of their fate. Weighing all this and, in view of the fact

that there were cases of relaxation in churches both before and after

the Instructions of 1561, and that the Council of Constance, sitting in

the cathedral, had condemned Jerome of Prague, the Suprema reached the

conclusion that judgement of relaxation could be rendered in churches,

provided the sentence of the civil magistrate was uttered outside. The

tribunals were therefore instructed that they could relieve themselves

of their convicts in autos particulares in churches, delivering them to

the secular arm outside of the sacred limits. To such autos the civic

and cathedral chapters were not to be invited, and the rule as to time

was to be observed, so that the burning could be performed by

daylight.[652]

[Sidenote: _AUTOS HELD IN CHURCHES_]

Against this there arose a protest on the part of the secular

magistrates, who felt slighted at not being invited and having seats

allotted to them. To meet this, the Suprema, April 7, 1690, addressed to

the king a consulta deploring the impossibility of celebrating the autos

with the ceremonial and impressiveness of old. But great numbers of

those deserving relaxation had accumulated in most of the tribunals;

there were not funds to maintain them in prison, or to despatch them in

general autos, and to bring them together would excite horror, as

occurred in the auto of 1680. It therefore proposed that the secular

officials be stationed outside of the church, where the convicts could

be delivered to them, but this was not acceptable to the civil

authorities and a compromise was effected, July 20th, designating the

single official who was to represent the secular arm. The tribunal was

to send him a message, appointing time and place; he was to be at the

church door when the procession arrived; he was to follow the

inquisitors, the fiscal and the Ordinary, and have a seat near them and,

after the sentences of relaxation were pronounced, he was to leave the

church for a place agreed upon, where the convicts were to be brought to

him, when he sentenced them and executed the sentences.[653]

Thus came to an end the gorgeous general public autos in which, during

its more prosperous days, the Inquisition had made so profound an

impression on the imaginations of men. Thenceforth, no matter how many

living beings and effigies were consigned to the quemadero, the ceremony

was conducted within the sacred precincts of a church, in a simpler and

more economical fashion. The great autos of Majorca, in 1691, in which

so many unfortunates perished, were held in the church of San Domingo.

Yet still there was elaboration of display. A writer, in 1724, giving an

account of the autos celebrated in Seville since 1719, is vastly more

concerned with enumerating the names of officials and familiars, with

describing the ceremonial and dilating upon the crimson velvet chairs

and cushions and canopies embroidered in gold and silver and the diamond

badges worn by the functionaries, than with the real work of the

tribunal, grim and cruel though it continued to be.[654]

These gauds might gratify the vanity of the Inquisitors, but the old

attractiveness of the imposing public ceremonial had vanished. The

population no longer poured in from all the surrounding district,

camping out in the fields, in the vast crowds described with so much

pride in the relations of the great autos. When we remember the thousand

familiars and officials in Logroño, and the grandees who eagerly

competed for positions of honor in the processions, we can estimate the

change that compelled the complaint of the Seville tribunal, in 1729. It

denounced the luke-warmness of the familiars in accompanying its

processions, whereby it was losing the respect of the people, and

compared unfavorably with the public demonstrations of the Audiencia and

civic authorities. It was with this object that the familiars had been

so greatly increased in numbers and had been favored with so many

privileges and exemptions. Besides the occasional autos, the tribunal

made _salidas_, or processions, on five principal feasts of the year,

and it ordered the Hermandad de San Pedro Martir to nominate eight

familiars, from among whom it would select four, two to accompany it on

the regular salidas and two for the autos, with threats of fine and

imprisonment for neglect of duty.[655]

Yet it would not be safe to conclude from this that fanaticism was

extinct. At the Llerena auto of June 25, 1752, there were six effigies

of fugitives to be burnt and one of a dead woman with her bones. It had

always been the custom to have these borne in the procession and to the

brasero by carriers of the lowest class, drawn from the hospital for

vagrants, who were paid for the service but, on this occasion, it

chanced that none of these could be had. The inquisitors were greatly

exercised and, as a last expedient, they represented to the

Lieutenant-governor, Don Manuel de la Fuente y Dávila, that this was an

exalted religious duty which the noblest might be proud to perform, and

they offered that the officials of the Inquisition would carry the

effigies to the church and then to the secular magistrate, if Don Manuel

and other nobles would bear them thence to the brasero. Don Manuel

assented and his example was followed by the Governor, the Marquis of

Torre Mexia and other nobles; the officials were persuaded to do their

share, and thus, we are told, the old custom, so derogatory to the

sacredness of the function, was successfully discarded. The procession

to the brasero was a triumphal march, to the sound of trumpets, with the

escort of all the troops that could be assembled.[656]

[Sidenote: _SPECTACULAR AUTOS_]

Notwithstanding such occasional bursts of zeal, the glory of the

Inquisition was rapidly departing and, with the extermination of the few

remaining Judaizers, its functions continuously dwindled. In the Toledo

tribunal, the last auto held in a church was on March 7, 1778, for a

single penitent condemned to vergüenza for sorcery. After that, to the

close of the century, it had but nine autillos, all held in the

audience-chamber, sometimes with open and sometimes with closed doors,

and in each of them there was but a single penitent. Five of the cases

were for propositions, two for solicitation in the confessional, one for

bigamy, and one for administering sacraments without priests'

orders.[657] To this had shrunk the activity of a once prominent

tribunal and with this shrinkage the power to impress the popular

imagination with its imposing demonstrations.

* * * * *

There is one aspect of the auto de fe which reflects the intensity of

Spanish fanaticism in a most suggestive manner. When the Spaniard

regarded it as a celebration fitted for a day of rejoicing, or as a

spectacular entertainment acceptable to distinguished national guests,

he did so in the conviction that it was the highest exhibition of piety,

and a service to God, glorious to the land which organized it, and

stimulating the devotion of all participants. Probably no autos were

celebrated in honor of Ferdinand and Isabella, for the stern and rapid

work of the period scarce admitted of the pageantry requisite to adapt

the spectacle to royal courtliness, and the Burgundian fashions had not

superseded the ancient Castilian simplicity. None of their successors,

however, of the House of Hapsburg, were without such a testimonial of

pious loyalty. When, in 1528, Charles V passed through Valencia, there

was celebrated in his honor an auto, in which there were thirteen men

and women relaxed in person, besides ten in effigy.[658] In 1560, the

Toledo tribunal contributed an auto, with several relaxations, to the

joyous celebration of the marriage of Philip II with Isabelle de Valois,

daughter of Henry II of France. It was a notable spectacle, for the

royal wedding and the meeting of the Córtes to swear allegiance to the

young Don Carlos brought to Toledo all that was most distinguished in

Spain.[659] When, in February, 1564, Philip was in Barcelona for the

Catalan Córtes, an auto was arranged in his honor, in which there were

eight relaxations in person and numerous condemnations to the galleys.

They were mostly Frenchmen whom Saint-Sulpice, the French ambassador,

had vainly sought to protect.[660]

[Sidenote: _SPECTACULAR AUTOS_]

The accession of Philip III was celebrated by an auto at Toledo, March

6, 1600, in the presence of the king, his queen, Margarita of Austria,

the Duke of Lerma and all the court, where Philip took the oath to

protect and favor the Holy Office. Toledo had but few culprits, as it

had held an auto the year before, but a total of forty-six were

accumulated by drawing upon Córdoba, Granada, Cuenca, Llerena,

Valladolid and Seville. There were but two relaxations in effigy and one

in person--the latter being a Huguenot named Jacques Pinzon, whom the

Granada tribunal had been leisurely endeavoring to wean from his heresy

for a couple of years. He was needed to complete the attraction at

Toledo, and his trial was concluded so hurriedly that the Suprema

ordered his transfer thither before it had received for confirmation the

vote condemning him, so the sentence was made out in blank and sent

after him for the Toledan inquisitors to sign. As he is characterized as

pertinacious he was probably burnt alive.[661] The great auto of Madrid,

in 1632, was held there by the special order of the king, in celebration

of the recovery from confinement of Isabelle de Bourbon, wife of Philip

IV, and was graced with the presence of both and of their son Don

Carlos. There were thirty-seven penitents besides seven relaxations in

person and two in effigy.[662] The revolted Catalans, who had given

themselves to France, took the same means of honoring the Viceroy Condé,

on the eve of his departure for Paris, by an auto celebrated November 7,

1647, in which there were two relaxations in person and two in

effigy.[663] The ostensible purpose of the crowning glory at Madrid,

June 30, 1680, which fitly ended the long series of _autos publicos

generales_, was to honor the marriage of the young Carlos II with Louise

Marie d'Orléans. There were sixty-seven penitents and fifty-one

relaxations, of which nineteen were in person. A _compañia de la Zarza_

was formed, numbering two hundred and fifty members, with Francisco de

Salcedo as captain. On June 28th they were taken to the puerta de

Alcalá, where each man was furnished with a fagot. Then they marched to

the royal palace, where Salcedo took a fagot, specially prepared for the

purpose, and handed it to the Duke of Pastrana, who carried it to the

king. Carlos with his own hands bore it to his queen and exhibited it

and then sent it back by Pastrana with the message that it should be

taken in his name to the brasero and be the first that was thrown upon

the fire.[664] The religious training of the young monarch had evidently

not been neglected. It was an earnest of better things in store for

Spain when, in 1701, Philip V refused to be present at an auto general

proposed to be celebrated in honor of his accession, and the project was

abandoned.[665]

* * * * *

We have thus considered the organization of the Inquisition and its

general methods of action. It remains for us to examine the application

of those methods to the various classes of offenders subjected to its

extensive jurisdiction.

BOOK VIII.

SPHERES OF ACTION.

CHAPTER I.

JEWS.

As the apostasy of the enforced converts from Judaism was the proximate

cause of the establishment of the Spanish Holy Office, so they continued

to be almost the exclusive object of its energies, until the similar

treatment of the Moors created, in the Moriscos, a class with even

greater claims on its solicitude. The rooting out of the latter,

however, in the early years of the seventeenth century, was so complete

that they virtually disappeared from the records of the tribunals, while

the Jewish New Christians remained, and, for more than another century

provided the major portion of their more serious work.

It had been easy, since 1391, to compel baptism by the alternatives of

exile or death, but it had never been deemed necessary to supplement

this by instruction in the new faith, or by efforts to effect a real

conversion. When Ferdinand and Isabella were aroused to the fact that

the Conversos were Christians only in name, terrorism was the sole

method that suggested itself of accomplishing the great task of securing

the desired unity of faith. So, when the expulsion of 1492, filled the

land with a new multitude of neophytes, there was the same disregard of

the duty of persuasion and instruction. The only utterances on the

subject seem to assume that they would in some way instruct and fortify

themselves in their new religion. When, in 1496, a royal pragmática

forbade them for three years to farm the royal revenues, the reason

alleged was that such occupation would distract them from obtaining due

instruction in Christian doctrine. In 1499, the Suprema ordered that the

Conversos anterior to 1492 should live scattered among Old Christians,

while the recent ones should be separated from their rabbis, living by

themselves in towns and strengthening their faith by punctual attendance

on divine service.[666] It was not until 1500 that it bethought itself

to provide that all the banished Jews who returned, claiming to be

baptized, must exhibit certificates of baptism for themselves and their

children; they must observe the feasts and attend mass and sermons, and

all children, over six years of age, must, within six months, know the

four prayers, the seven mortal sins and the confession of faith.[667]

When the enforced conversion of the Moriscos created an even greater

multitude of nominal Christians, there were a few equally ineffective

instructions issued as to both classes, to which little attention was

paid. The simplicity of belief in the adequacy of these measures was

apparently grounded on faith in the effectiveness of the inquisitorial

process, of which we have incidentally seen so many illustrations during

the early period.

That confidence continued unabated, and the enforcement of uniformity in

this fashion was followed energetically, with only such intermissions as

might arise from the lack of accessible material, or from indolence in

searching for it. Where there was zeal there was little scruple, as

appears from a letter addressed, about 1540, by the tribunal of Llerena

to all the inquisitors of Spain and Portugal. It had arrested twenty-one

persons, in addition to three fugitives and two deceased, on

suspicion--probably because they were on their way to Portugal--and it

now asked to have all the registers of the Peninsula ransacked for

evidence to justify their prosecution.[668] We have had occasion to see

how slender was the proof required for this--the slightest adherence to

any of the ancestral customs of Judaism, whether of religious

significance or not, sufficed, and lists of these observances were

carefully drawn up for the guidance of inquisitors. The more obvious,

such as the avoidance of pork and lard, the removal of fat from meat,

the observance of the Sabbath by changing linen, lighting lamps and

abstaining from work, the killing of fowls by decollation, the keeping

of stated fasts, eating meat in Lent and the like, were known of all

men, and perpetual watch was kept by Old Christians on the households of

Conversos, so that all such lapses were eagerly reported to the

tribunals, as required by the Edicts of Faith. They furnished ample

ground for suspicion, justifying arrest and trial, when inquisitorial

methods insured that no lurking Judaic tendencies could escape

detection.

[Sidenote: _EVIDENCE OF JUDAISM_]

An illustrative case was that of Elvira del Campo, tried at Toledo in

1567. She was of converso descent and was married to Alonso de Moya, a

scrivener of Madridejos, who seems to have been an Old Christian.

According to witnesses who had lived with her as servants, or were her

near neighbors, she went to mass and confession and gave all outward

sign of being a good Christian; she was kind and charitable, but she

would not eat pork and, when she cooked it for the household, she

handled it with a rag so as not to touch it, which she explained by

saying that she had a throat-trouble which made it disagree with her,

and that handling it made her hands smell. There was a little cumulative

evidence about putting on clean linen on Saturdays and not working, but

this was insignificant and the case rested on pork. The chief witnesses

were two of her husband's employees, Pedro de Liano and Alonso Collados,

who lived in the house, and their evidence went much into detail as to

their spying about the kitchen, peeping into cupboards, and watching all

the details of her housekeeping. Liano testified that once he and

Collados talked about her putting a leg of mutton into water to soak

over night, when Collados said he thought there was some Jewish ceremony

in this, and it would please him much to know it, for he would accuse

her to the Inquisition, as he was on bad terms with her. Yet Collados,

before the tribunal, concluded his testimony by saying that he wished

her well for her good treatment of him, that he held her to be a good

Christian, because she went to mass and spoke ill of no one and was very

reserved, rarely leaving her home and talking with but few people.

Elvira was arrested early in July, and at first her trial was pushed

with speed, as she was pregnant, but her confinement, August 31st,

caused a delay of three months. She admitted not eating pork, but

attributed this to medical advice, for a disease communicated to her by

her husband, which she desired to conceal. Little stress was laid on the

other charges and she strenuously asserted her orthodoxy. Of the twelve

witnesses against her she identified six, but her effort to disable them

for enmity failed, except as regarded the two most damaging ones,

Collados and Diego Hernández. Of thirteen witnesses for character,

consisting of ecclesiastics and neighbors, all but one--who professed

ignorance--gave emphatic testimony as to her being a good Christian,

attentive and regular in all religious duties, obedient to the precepts

of the Church, and in no way the object of suspicion. There was

evidently nothing to do but to torture her. This, as we have seen above

(p. 24) was administered twice, and resulted in her stating that when

she was eleven years old her mother had told her not to eat pork and to

observe the Sabbath, and she knew this to be against the Christian

Law--but, as her mother had died when she was eleven years old, we can

not unreasonably doubt its truth. The next day a ratification was

obtained in the shape that her not eating pork, changing her chemise and

observing the Sabbath, were in pursuance of the Law of Moses as taught

her by her mother; she had never mentioned this to anyone, for her

father would have killed her and she feared her husband.

On the strength of this, in the consulta de fe, there was one fanatic

who voted her relaxation, but the rest agreed upon reconciliation with

its disabilities, confiscation and three years of prison and sanbenito,

which were duly imposed in an auto of June 13, 1568, but, in a little

more than six months, the imprisonment was commuted to spiritual

penances, and she was told to go where she chose. Thus, besides the

horrors of her trial, she was beggared and ruined for life, and an

ineffaceable stain was cast upon her kindred and descendants. What

became of the infant born in prison is not recorded, but presumably it

was fortunate enough to die. Trivial as may seem the details of such a

trial, they are not without importance as a sample of what was occupying

the tribunals of all Spain, and they raise the interesting question

whether in truth the inquisitors believed what they assumed in the

public sentence, that they had been laboring to rescue Elvira from the

errors and darkness of her apostasy and to save her soul. The minute

points on which the fate of the accused might depend are illustrated by

the insistence with which they dwell on her abstinence from pork, on her

refusal to eat buttered cakes, on her use of two stewing-pots, and on

the time at which she changed her chemise and baked her bread.[669]

[Sidenote: _ERADICATION OF JUDAISM_]

Subjected, on the one hand, to the ceaseless espionage of servants and

neighbors and, on the other, to the pitiless zeal of the tribunals, even

the heroic obstinacy of Judaism, which had triumphed over the countless

miseries of the Dispersion, gradually succumbed to this all-pervading

persecution, so ceaselessly and relentlessly applied. As generation

succeeded generation, with no hope of relief, this unremitting pressure

seemed gradually to be attaining its object. The prosecutions for

Judaism commenced to diminish sensibly. Valencia had a large converso

population and, during the first quarter of the sixteenth century, the

trials averaged between thirty and forty a year. Then came the enforced

baptism of the Moors, who for some time furnished a predominant

contingent. The latter were temporarily released from inquisitorial

jurisdiction in 1540, and, during the three years, 1541, 1542 and 1543,

there was not a single trial for heresy. In 1546 they were again

relieved from the Inquisition and, in the following sixteen years, until

1562, the total number of trials for heresy was but forty-eight--in

fact, in the ten years between 1550 and 1560, there were but two,

showing that Judaism there had almost ceased to be the object of

inquisitorial activity.[670] In Toledo, which included Madrid, during

the sixteen years, 1575-1590 inclusive, there were but twenty-three

cases.[671] In 1565, an auto at Seville presented seventy-four penitents

without one Judaizer, and there were none in a Cuenca auto of 1585 in

which figured twenty-one Moriscos.[672] Even as early as 1558, when the

Suprema was magnifying its services to obtain from Paul IV the grant of

prebends, it admitted that for some years there had been but few

Judaizers found, but it alluded vaguely to some recent discoveries of

them in Murcia, who would soon be punished.[673] In fact, not long

afterward, Paolo Tiepolo, the Venetian envoy, alludes to the arrest in

Murcia of a large number of Jews.[674]

Coincident with this diminution of material for persecution, there seems

to have been a disposition to resort to milder methods, attributable

perhaps to an expectation that Judaism would ere long disappear. In

1567, Pius V, at the request of Philip II, empowered Inquisitor-general

Espinosa, for three years, to have the Judaizing New Christians of

Murcia and Alcaraz absolved, either publicly or privately, with a

salutary and benignant, but not pecuniary, penance; clerics, however,

were not to be habilitated to obtain orders or benefices.[675] There is

a story that Dom João Soares, Bishop of Coimbra, after the Council of

Trent, made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, in the course of which, at

Cyprus, he met many Spanish and Portuguese refugees, from whom he

gathered information which he communicated to the tribunal of Llerena,

resulting in the detection of many Judaizers in Extremadura.[676] They

were treated like those of Murcia, for Philip, in 1573, obtained from

Gregory XIII a brief similar to that of 1567, for the benefit of the

Judaizers of the district of Llerena, except that the faculty was

limited to one year.[677] Even greater privileges were granted, in a

brief obtained by Philip, in 1597, to the Judaizers of Ecija and its

district, for not only were they to be absolved like those of Murcia,

but all prisoners under trial were to enjoy the benefit of the pardon,

with no note of infamy on themselves or their descendants, and this time

of grace was to endure for four years.[678] These may not have been the

only instances of such favors, and they indicate a tendency towards an

entire change of policy. That there was hopefulness that the Inquisition

was accomplishing its work is seen in a careful state paper drawn up for

the Suprema, in 1595, by a distinguished prelate, Juan Bautista Pérez,

Bishop of Segorbe, who felt justified in assuming that the baptized Jews

remaining in Spain, after the expulsion of 1492, had now become good

Christians, except one here and there, and that their Law was

forgotten.[679]

[Sidenote: _INQUISITION OF PORTUGAL_]

In this the good bishop was careful to limit his praise to the

descendants of those who had been baptized a century before, three full

generations having passed under the chastening hands of the Holy Office.

He evidently was aware that a new factor had been injected into the

religious problem--a factor which was to give the Inquisition occupation

for nearly a century and a half more. This was due to the conquest of

Portugal by Philip II, in 1580. Although the union of the two kingdoms

was merely dynastic, and their separate organizations were preserved,

the facility of intercourse which followed led to a large emigration of

New Christians from the poorer to the richer land. They had not been

exposed as long as their Spanish brethren to inquisitorial rigor and,

for the most part, they were crypto-Jews. The fresh justification which

they afforded for the activity of the Inquisition, after the suppression

of spasmodic Protestantism and the expulsion of the Moriscos, and the

part which they played in Spanish Judaism seem to require a brief review

of the curious history of the early Portuguese Inquisition. It also

affords an insight into the relations between the New Christians and the

Holy See, and thus throws a reflected light on the struggles of

Ferdinand and Charles V with the curia.[680]

We have seen (Vol. I, pp. 137, 140) the reception by João II of the

multitudes who flocked to Portugal at the time of the expulsion and

their kindly treatment by King Manoel at his accession in 1495. In

contracting marriage, however, with Isabella, daughter of Ferdinand and

Isabella, the condition was imposed on him of expelling all refugees who

had been condemned by the Spanish Inquisition and, under this impulsion,

seconded by his confessor the Frade Jorje Vogado, he issued a general

edict of expulsion, excepting children under fourteen, who were torn

from their parents--a measure which caused the most deplorable distress,

many of the Jews slaying their offspring rather than surrender them to

be brought up as Christians. By various devices the departure of the

exiled was delayed, until after the time when they incurred the

alternative of slavery, and thus they were coerced to accept baptism. To

temper this, Manoel granted, May 30, 1497, that for twenty years they

should be exempt from persecution; that subsequently all accusations of

Judaism should be brought within twenty days of the acts charged; that

the trial should be conducted under ordinary secular procedure, and that

confiscations should enure to the heirs. Moreover, he promised never to

legislate for them as a distinct race.[681]

This latter pledge was soon broken, by edicts of April 21 and 22, 1499,

forbidding them to leave the kingdom without royal permission and

prohibiting the purchase from them of lands or bills of exchange.

Popular aversion increased and culminated in the awful Lisbon massacre

of 1506. This wrought a revulsion of feeling; in 1507 the restrictive

laws of 1499 were repealed; the New Christians were allowed freely to

trade and to come and go; they were in all things assimilated to the

natives, and were entitled to the common law of the land. In 1512 the

twenty years' exemption was extended to 1534, and although, in 1515, Dom

Manoel applied to Leo X for the introduction of the Inquisition, on the

request being delayed the matter was dropped and was not revived. Until

Manoel's death, in 1521, the New Christians thus enjoyed toleration and

flourished accordingly. They grew rich and prosperous, they intermarried

with the noblest houses, and they largely entered the Church. Externally

their religious observance was unimpeachable, and Portugal naturally

became a haven of refuge for Spanish Conversos, nor is it likely that

the restrictions on such immigration, enacted in 1503, were rigidly

observed.[682]

[Sidenote: _INQUISITION OF PORTUGAL_]

His successor, Dom João III, a youth of 20, was a fanatic of narrow mind

and limited intelligence, but the influence of Manoel's counsellors, who

continued in the direction of affairs, procured, between 1522 and 1524,

the confirmation of the privileges granted by the late king.

Ecclesiastical pressure and popular prejudice, however, made themselves

felt and, in 1524, a secret inquest brought the testimony of parish

priests that the New Christians were suspected of being Christians only

in name.[683] Then João's marriage, in 1525, with Catalina, sister of

Charles V--the only Portuguese queen admitted to a seat in the Council

of State--brought a powerful influence to bear; the growing strength of

these tendencies gradually overcame considerations of plighted faith

and, early in 1531, Dr. Brás Neto, the ambassador at Rome, was

instructed to procure secretly from Clement VII briefs establishing in

Portugal an Inquisition on the Spanish model. We have seen in Spain the

objections of the Holy See to the royal control of the institution and

to the abandonment of all share in the confiscations, and these probably

explain the delays which postponed, until December 17th, the issue of a

brief conferring on the royal nominee, Frade Diogo da Silva, the

requisite faculties as inquisitor-general. This was followed, January

13, 1532 by one ordering him to assume the office; the two reached

Lisbon in February, but it seems to have been feared that their

publication would lead to an immediate exodus of the New Christians, and

they were kept secret until laws could be framed reviving, with

additional rigor, the edicts of 1499, prohibiting, for three years,

departure from the kingdom, the sale of real estate and the negotiation

of bills of exchange. These were issued June 14th, after which there was

a pause, explicable only by the lavish employment of money in both

Lisbon and Rome. The New Christians evidently had obtained knowledge of

the threatened measure; much of the active capital of the kingdom was in

their hands, and the danger called for energetic work and sacrifice. A

fitting emissary to Rome was found in Duarte da Paz, a Converso of no

ordinary ability, energy and audacity; the king was entrusting him with

a mission beyond the borders, under cover of which he made his way to

the papal court, where for ten years he continued to act as agent for

his fellows. Then, in September, there came Marco della Rovere, Bishop

of Sinigaglia, sent as nuncio on this special business, who was speedily

bought by the New Christians, and they probably won over by the same

means the Frade Diogo da Silva, who complicated matters irretrievably by

refusing to accept the office of inquisitor-general. Duarte da Paz also

was not idle, and the confusion became inextricable when, by a brief of

October 17th, Clement VII suspended temporarily the one of the previous

December, and prohibited not only da Silva but all bishops from

proceeding inquisitorially against the New Christians.[684]

As we have seen in Spain, the curia recognized that here was a numerous

and wealthy class of heretics, to whom it could sell protection and

then abandon them, until their fears or their sufferings should produce

a new harvest. This speculation in human agony was all the more

undisguised and lucrative that Portugal was a comparatively feeble

kingdom, which could be treated with much less ceremony than Spain, and

João III a man of wholly different type from Ferdinand or Charles V,

while his invincible determination to have an Inquisition in his realm

prolonged the struggle and rendered especially productive the game of

inclining to either side by turns. This was so self-evident that João

almost openly reproached Clement VII with it, and the committee of

Cardinals entrusted with the conduct of the affair rejoined that

inquisitors were ministers of Satan and inquisitorial procedure a denial

of justice.[685]

João's reproaches were justified when Clement, by a brief of April 7,

1533, granted what was virtually a pardon for all past offences, without

disability to hold office in Church or State, while those defamed for

heresy could justify themselves before the nuncio--a function which he

turned to account for, when recalled in 1536, he was said to have

carried with him to Rome some thirty thousand crowns. João threw

obstacles in the way of the execution of this brief, which called forth

from Clement, in July and October, strenuous orders for its enforcement,

followed by another of December 18th suspending it. It became the

subject of active negotiation and Cardinal Pucci or Santiquatro, the

"protector" of Portugal, suggested that it might be modified and, in the

guise of fines, some twenty or thirty thousand ducats be extorted from

the New Christians, to be divided with the pope. In transmitting this

proposal, Henrique de Meneses, the Portuguese ambassador, added that

nothing could be done in the curia without money, for this was all they

wanted, and that Clement was dissatisfied with João because he had

received nothing from him. Clement, however, who was rapidly approaching

his end, on July 26th, ordered the nuncio to overcome by excommunication

all opposition to the pardon and forbade all prosecution for past

heresies, moved to this, as Santiquatro told Paul III, by his confessor,

who insisted that, as he had received the money of the New Christians,

he was bound to protect them.[686]

[Sidenote: _INQUISITION OF PORTUGAL_]

Clement died, September 25, 1534, and the struggle was renewed under

Paul III, who referred the matter to a commission, and meanwhile

suspended the pardon-brief but ordered that all prosecutions must cease,

for an active episcopal inquisition had been organized, which continued

its operations in spite of the papal commands. The commission reported

in favor of the pardon-brief and of an Inquisition under limitations,

with appeals to Rome. João refused to accept this, and a lull in the

negotiations occurred, during which the nuncio della Rovere entered into

a contract with the New Christians, dated April 24, 1535, under which

they promised to pay to Paul III thirty thousand ducats if he would

prohibit the Inquisition, confining prosecution to the bishops, who

should be limited to ordinary criminal procedure; smaller sums moreover

were provided for less desirable concessions. The curia honestly

endeavored to earn the money, and made several propositions to João,

which he rejected; then, on November 3d, a bull was solemnly published

in Rome, renewing the pardon-brief, annulling all trials, releasing all

prisoners, recalling all exiles, removing all disabilities, suspending

all confiscations, prohibiting all future prosecutions for past

offences, and enforcing these provisions by excommunication.[687]

In this Rome held that it had fulfilled its part of the bargain, but the

New Christians thought otherwise; they declined to pay the full amount,

and della Rovere was not able--at least so he said--to remit more than

five thousand ducats. This parsimony came at an unfortunate moment.

Charles V was in Rome, radiant with the glory of his Tunisian conquest,

and warmly supporting the demands of his brother-in-law. The result of

this was seen in a brief of May 23, 1536, which constituted an

Inquisition on the Spanish model, except that for three years the forms

of secular law were to be observed, and for ten years confiscations were

to pass to the heirs of the convicts. Diogo da Silva was to be

inquisitor-general, with the right of the king to appoint an associate.

Diogo was solemnly invested with his office, October 5th, and the brief

was published on the 22d.[688]

This probably taught the New Christians a lesson on the subject of

ill-timed economy for a brief of January 9, 1537, addressed to Girolamo

Recanati Capodiferro, a new nuncio appointed for Portugal, gave him

complete appellate power, even to evoking cases on trial and deciding

them, while a supplementary brief of February 7th authorized him to

suspend the Inquisition. His instructions also required him to labor

vigorously for the repeal of the law prohibiting expatriation, and this

was emphasized by a brief of August 31st threatening excommunication and

suspension for any interference with those leaving the kingdom to carry

their grievances and appeals to Rome.[689] These appeals were a source

of large profit to the curia, which sold at round prices absolutions and

exemptions to all applicants; the tribunals threw all possible obstacles

in the way of this traffic and it was important to Rome to keep open the

course of the golden stream. At the moment it was of less interest to

the New Christians, for Capodiferro was as venal as his predecessor and

exploited his large powers to the utmost, selling absolutions and

pardons for what he could get. As João asserted, in a letter of August

4, 1539, his scandalous traffic had rendered the Judaizers so sure of

impunity that they sinned with audacity. While demanding his recall, the

king sought to curb him by appointing his brother Dom Henrique, a young

man of 27, to the vacant post of additional inquisitor-general. Henrique

was Archbishop of Braga, a post which he resigned in favor of Diogo da

Silva, who retired from the inquisitor-generalship, and Henrique

remained, until his death in 1580, at the head of the Inquisition. At

the moment the plan was of little avail, as Capodiferro treated him with

imperious arrogance, and even called in question his powers owing to

defect in age, and Paul III refused to confirm him.[690]

[Sidenote: _INQUISITION OF PORTUGAL_]

Paul yielded in so far to João's urgency as to promise that Capodiferro

should leave Portugal on November 1st. At the same time, as the three

years were about to expire during which the Inquisition was restricted

to secular procedure, he listened to the supplications of the New

Christians and in the bull _Pastoris æterni_, October 12, 1539, he

modified in many ways the inquisitorial process, so as to limit its

powers of injustice and to provide ample opportunity of appeals to Rome.

A leading clause was that witnesses' names were only to be suppressed

when grave dangers to them were to be apprehended. Through the

treachery of a courier employed by the New Christians, this bull did

not reach Lisbon until December 1st. Capodiferro delayed his departure

until December 15th, and then left Lisbon without publishing it,

because, as Mascarenhas the Portuguese ambassador reported, the New

Christians refused to pay the extortionate price demanded for it.

Mascarenhas intimates that the pope was privy to this, which is not

unlikely, for Capodiferro was received with all favor. He and della

Rovere were placed in charge of the affairs of the Portuguese

Inquisition; he was soon afterwards promoted to the great office of

Datary, and eventually reached the cardinalate. His nunciature had not

proved as profitable as he had expected, for he lost fifteen thousand

cruzados at sea, and brought with him to Rome only as much more. On his

arrival in Portugal he had demanded of the New Christians two thousand

cruzados to start with, and was regularly paid by them eighteen hundred

per annum during his stay, and this in addition to his pardon traffic.

There was nothing unusual in this. In 1554, Julius III, in a moment of

wrathful candor, told the Portuguese ambassador that nuncios were sent

there to enrich themselves as a reward for previous services.[691]

With the return of Capodiferro, after a little diplomatic sparring, Paul

III dropped the whole question for nearly two years. João was quite

content; the three years' limitation to secular procedure had expired,

the bull _Pastoris æterni_ had not been published, the Inquisition had

full swing, and its activity began to rival that of Spain. Its first

auto de fe was celebrated in Lisbon, September 20, 1540, with

twenty-three penitents and no relaxations and was speedily followed by

others.[692] It is not until December 2, 1541 that Christovão de Sousa,

then ambassador, refers to the New Christians who, he says, were

earnestly at work to have another nuncio sent, and he had had a thousand

discussions over it with the pope whose intention was fixed, because so

many were burnt and so many thousands more were in prison. The New

Christians offered to pay eight or ten thousand cruzados to the pope,

and two hundred and fifty a month to the nuncio. At a subsequent

audience, Paul said that the nuncio would have a salary of a hundred

cruzados a month, to which the New Christians could add a hundred and

fifty, thus raising him above the temptation of bribery, to which Sousa

rejoined that this would convert him from their judge to their advocate.

Then, on a later occasion, he read a remonstrance from the king so

vigorous that the pope walked up and down the room, crossing himself and

saying that it was the work of the devil. Sousa replied by dwelling on

the misdeeds of preceding nuncios, and even offered to let the

Inquisition be withdrawn if it would relieve the kingdom from the evil

of a nuncio.[693]

[Sidenote: _INQUISITION OF PORTUGAL_]

Further discussion was abruptly terminated by an explosion. Miguel da

Silva, Bishop of Viseu and minister of João, a man of high culture, had

been ambassador at Rome in the time of Leo X, and had formed lasting

friendships with the future Clement VII and Paul III. He had recently

fallen into disfavor at court and was about to be arrested, when he fled

and found refuge in Italy. João tried to entice him back with flattering

letters, while employing, as Silva says, bravos to follow and

assassinate him. Paul could wound the king in no more sensitive spot

than by announcing, as he did on December 2, 1541, Silva's appointment

as cardinal. João's rage was unbounded; he promptly deprived the new

cardinal not only of his offices and temporalities, but of his

citizenship, thus rendering him an outlaw and, on January 24, 1542, a

special courier carried to Sousa peremptory orders to leave Rome as soon

as he could present his letters of recall. His report of the manner in

which this abrupt sundering of relations was received indicates that it

gave rise to fears that Portugal was about to withdraw from the Roman

obedience.[694]

This deprived the New Christians of such aid as they had purchased in

Rome and left Henrique in peaceable possession of the inquisitorship,

which he improved by establishing six tribunals--Lisbon, Evora, Coimbra,

Lamego, Porto and Thomar--of which the first three remained permanent

and the others were subsequently discontinued as superfluous.[695] On

the other hand, Paul III persevered in his intention to inflict another

nuncio on Portugal, and appointed to that post Luigi Lippomano,

coadjutor-bishop of Bergamo. An intercepted letter of Diogo Fernandez,

the Roman agent of the New Christians May 18, 1542, shows the anxiety

with which his coming was awaited and throws light on their relations

with the curia. He is expecting the money with which to pay the thousand

cruzados to the nuncio, who demands it at once, although his orders were

not to pay it until Lippomano was outside the walls of Rome. Every one

is clamoring for money, until he is near losing his senses. He has

agreed to pay a hundred and forty cruzados apiece for the pardons of

Pero de Noronha and Maria Thomaz, which he sends, and asks for an

immediate remittance. Then, on the 19th, he adds that he has that day

been compelled to pay the thousand cruzados to the nuncio; he has raised

the amount by giving security and, though he has disobeyed orders, he

prays that the money be sent, as without it all their labor and expense

would be wasted. A postscript on the 20th alludes to a general pardon

which the pope had agreed to grant at a future time. People, he says,

are wasting their money in getting special letters; the pope prefers

that it should all be done in a general provision, to which all should

contribute, and it is the most important of all things to accomplish. It

would appear from the case of Antonio Fernandez of Coimbra that, when

letters of exemption were obtained, the king promptly banished the

recipients, who then procured fresh letters requiring the king to grant

them safe-conducts and permission to sell their property, real and

personal.[696]

João wrote to Lippomano not to come, and he persisted in this against

the entreaties of Charles V. Nevertheless the nuncio set out, and we

hear of him in Aragon in August, where he encountered the Portuguese

treasurer sent to detain him. The latter was fully aware of the payment

of the thousand ducats and of the monthly stipend, as to all of which

the nuncio professed the most innocent ignorance, and he further stated

that the intercepted letters showed that Cardinal Silva was to receive

two hundred and fifty crowns a month to act as "protector" of the Jews.

Nevertheless the treasurer was finally persuaded to write favorably to

his master, and Lippomano resumed his journey towards Valladolid.[697]

João refused to be placated. On learning that the nuncio had reached

Castile he wrote ordering him to advance no further until he should hear

from the pope, to whom, on September 18th, he addressed a vigorous

letter, demanding that no nuncio should be sent to interfere with the

Inquisition; he was not actuated, he said, by greed, for there was no

confiscation, and indeed, from another source we have the assertion that

the maintenance of the Inquisition was costing him ten or eleven

thousand ducats a year.[698]

[Sidenote: _INQUISITION OF PORTUGAL_]

Lippomano had assured the Portuguese treasurer that he did not come to

interfere with the Inquisition; that his orders were only to see whether

the inquisitors observed justice; if they did not, conscience would

require the pope to make the necessary provisions. His secret

instructions, however, were of a very different tenor. He was told that

he need not hesitate to act with energy, though observing external

courtesy, for Portugal was fatally weakened and approaching ruin; the

king was completely impoverished, oppressed with debt, at home and

abroad, hated by his people, and wholly under the influence of the

friars, while his relations with France and with the emperor were

unfriendly. As for the Infante Henrique, if he was not to be deprived of

the inquisitor-generalship, he must at least seek a dispensation for

lack of age, ask absolution for the past and ratify or annul all the

preceding trials. As for the Inquisition, it would be a most holy thing

to abolish it and commit the jurisdiction to the bishops; the nuncio was

furnished with faculties to do this, or to suspend it, and these he was

to show openly, that it might be known that this was at his discretion.

Meanwhile he could issue letters to all who asked for them, on their

making payment, and even if the price was small the aggregate would be

large, as there were fifty thousand of them. The declaratory bull of

November 13, (_sic_) 1539, suppressed by Capodiferro, was to be

published without consulting the king; it need not be affixed to the

church-doors, but copies could be given to all who asked, so that they

could use it when on trial, and Henrique was to be notified that all

procedure must conform to it; if he protested, he was to be told that

such was the papal will and he could write to the pope if he so chose.

Lippomano was finally told that pressure of all kinds would be brought

to bear on him, but he must be firm and remind them that he had power to

abolish the whole institution. Whatever we may think of João's blind

fanaticism, we cannot wonder at his objection to admitting in his

kingdom an emissary who came to set him at defiance and to upset all his

most cherished plans. On the other hand, a letter in December, from the

spokesman of the New Christians to their Roman agent, remitting to him

two thousand cruzados, depicts their agonized anxiety for the coming of

the nuncio; it will be their salvation and his absence is their

destruction; it is useless to spend money on briefs when there is no one

to enforce them.[699] They might well feel desperate, for the

Inquisition was active and unsparing. At an auto held in Lisbon, October

14, 1542, there appeared a hundred culprits, of whom twenty were relaxed

and João de Mello, in reporting this to the king, complained that it

left the prisons still crowded with those on trial. Nor was this all,

for Herculano gives a terrible picture, full of revolting details, of

the atrocities perpetrated everywhere, such as we have seen set forth in

the memorials of Llerena and Jaen.[700]

Although ignorant of the nuncio's instructions, João persisted in

refusing him admittance, until he should have an answer to his letter of

September 18th. This was long in coming, and Lippomano vainly complained

of the disrespect to the Holy See shown in making him wander from one

tavern to another. For awhile he remained in Salamanca and then, on

false news that he would be received, he went to Badajoz, only to find

the frontier closed to him, and there he was forced to stay, for some

months, hopeless and querulous.[701] Meanwhile, Francisco Botelho, who

had been sent with João's letter, was conferring with the pope, who

blandly assured him that Lippomano's mission was only to notify the king

of the approaching convocation of the Council of Trent. At length it was

arranged that he should confine himself to this, and to such other

matters as the king should permit. A brief to this effect, satisfactory

to the Portuguese agents, was framed and despatched from Rome November

3d. It can scarce have reached Portugal before the early months of 1543

for a letter of João of March 2d mentions its arrival and his

satisfaction at the settlement, in which he hopes that the pope's acts

may correspond with his words. Lippomano, thus shorn of his powers and

with no financial prospect before him, was anxious for his recall, but

he was not permitted to return until the close of 1544; he obeyed the

final instructions and abstained from aiding the New Christians.[702]

Possibly Paul's yielding in this may be explained by a negotiation on

foot early in 1543. Through the Cardinal of Burgos, it was proposed to

João that the pope would concede to Portugal an Inquisition identical

with that of Castile, if, for a term of years, one half of the

confiscations should belong to the Holy See. This cold-blooded offer to

sell out the New Christians shows how purely mercantile had been the

fluctuating protection accorded to them hitherto, and it was met by João

in the same spirit. Protesting that he had never sought for gain in his

efforts to serve God, he instructed his envoy that he might agree to

three years, but must endeavor to reduce the papal share to a

quarter.[703] The attempted bargain came to naught, but Rome was

apprehensive that Portugal might follow the example of England, and João

was propitiated with a renewed offer of a cardinal's hat for the Infante

Henrique. To this he at first replied surlily, that when he had asked

for it, it had been given to Silva, and now that he had not asked, it

did not seem fitting to accept it. Subsequently, however, he assented

and, in December, 1545, Henrique received the honor. Moreover, in

October, 1543, a signal favor was granted to the Inquisition, by a

perpetual brief empowering the officials to enjoy the fruits of

benefices _in absentia_, although, as we have seen, in Spain the grant

was only quinquennial. It is true that this was not wholly gratuitous,

for it cost two hundred and fifty cruzados in addition to the regular

fees of seventy.[704]

[Sidenote: _INQUISITION OF PORTUGAL_]

The Inquisition was assisted in another way. Through the subsidized

Cardinal of Paris, the Portuguese ambassador, Balthasar de Faria, was

enabled to inspect all papal letters granted to New Christians. In a

letter of February 18, 1544, he describes the use made of this

information, for he opposed each one, and it was fought over bitterly,

the unfortunate pope being assailed on both sides and driven to change

his decisions repeatedly, as the rival influences prevailed.

Information, moreover, was sent in advance to Henrique, so as to enable

him to forestall the papal graces or render them ineffective. Henrique

was instructed to disregard as surreptitious everything that Faria had

not seen, to appeal to the pope and to report to Faria, for this was the

way that the Castilian inquisitors managed. It was a kind of guerrilla

warfare, in the interval of the greater struggles.[705]

One of these conflicts was close at hand. Paul III resolved to send

another nuncio, charged with the duty of wrenching from the king

Cardinal Silva's temporalities and of moderating the severity of the

Inquisition. For this he selected Giovanni Ricci da Montepulciano who,

at the same time, was advanced to the archbishopric of Siponto. Faria

flattered himself that he had succeeded in postponing the nuncio's

departure till the king should be heard from, but in spite of this Ricci

started July 17, 1544.[706] He travelled leisurely and did not reach

Valladolid until November 5th, where he found awaiting him Christovão de

Castro with letters from the king forbidding his admittance. He

succeeded in making de Castro believe that he had no instructions

concerning Silva or the Inquisition that would offend the king, who

accordingly wrote November 28th, cautiously admitting him under these

presumptions. It so chanced however that, before the courier started

with this letter, Lippomano, who was still acting as nuncio, received

and affixed at the church doors a papal brief of September 22d,

inhibiting all inquisitors and ecclesiastical judges from executing any

sentences pronounced on New Christians, or from proceeding to sentence

in any cases, until Ricci should arrive, investigate and report as to

the conduct of the Inquisition, after which the papal pleasure should be

made known. This settled the question; copies of the brief were sent to

de Castro to justify to the Spanish court the absolute refusal to admit

Ricci until João should have an answer to letters demanding explanation

and reparation, despatched by a special courier. At the same time the

brief was obeyed, for there were no more autos after June, 1544, until

1548.[707]

Considering all that had occurred during the past ten years, there was

an inexcusable aggravation about all this, which it is difficult to

understand in the absence of information as to the secret working of the

New Christians in Rome, unless it was to convince João that he would

have to pay roundly for the pleasure of persecuting his subjects. He

exhaled his wrath in one or two letters to Balthasar de Faria and, on

January 13, 1545, he despatched Simão da Veiga in hot haste with

instructions to demand the installation of the Inquisition in

satisfaction of the royal grievances; the recent brief must be revoked,

and Ricci must come under the limitations imposed on his predecessor and

must say nothing about Cardinal Silva. A prolix letter to the pope, to

be read in consistory, was free-spoken but not intemperate and,

considering the provocation, was much more moderate than the papal

duplicity had deserved.[708]

[Sidenote: _INQUISITION OF PORTUGAL_]

This letter remained unanswered for nearly six months, during which

another experiment was tried on João's credulity. Cardinal Sforza, one

of the papal grandsons, wrote in the name of the pope that, if the

nuncio was admitted, all that he asked for the Inquisition would be

conceded, and Cardinal Crescenzio confirmed this verbally. With natural

distrust, however, the king asked to have Paul himself ratify this to

Faria, and then he would admit Ricci. As late as June 22, 1545, he was

writing in this sense, not knowing that on June 16th the pope had

responded to his letter in a brief in which, with exasperating

affectation of benignity, he pardoned João's asperity; against João's

assertions of the wickedness of the New Christians and the mildness of

the Inquisition, he set the constant complaints reaching him of its

cruelty and injustice, and the numerous burnings of the innocent; as it

was under his jurisdiction, he was responsible and he could not forego

the duty of investigating the truth of these conflicting statements;

there was also the spoliation of Cardinal Silva which must be redressed.

The brief closed with the significant threat that, if these matters

were not remedied, he could not expose himself before Almighty God to

the charge of negligence in an affair of such moment.[709]

The devious ways of the papal court are hard to follow. Four days before

the date of this brief, on June 12th, Cardinal Sforza sent to João the

written assurance that was demanded, promising that if he would admit

the nuncio, the pope would grant all that he desired as to the

Inquisition. On receiving this in August, the king at once replied that,

in reliance on the cardinal's assurances, he would permit Ricci to enter

Portugal and he asked to have the necessary bull made out and sent by

Simão da Veiga. At the same time he gave Ricci permission to come,

cautiously adding that it must be under the limitations imposed on

Lippomano. Ricci, detained by sickness, did not arrive until September

9th, and then he was the bearer of the minatory brief of June 16th. That

João was thunderstruck may well be believed and he wrote to his envoys

that he knew not what to say.[710]

The pope sought a compromise, offering to revoke the brief of September

22, 1544, and that, after the nuncio had reported, he would leave

everything in the king's hands, but he refused to carry out the promises

of Cardinal Sforza. No answer was given to this, but the brief of

revocation was made out and reached Ricci, January 18, 1546, accompanied

with one empowering him to act in case he discovered abuses in the

Inquisition, but the only investigation that João would permit was that

he should examine the papers in four or five cases and interrogate the

inquisitor concerning them. The first case submitted was that of a

septuagenarian, burnt some years before. He was one of those who had

been converted by force; he had at once confessed more than had been

testified against him, and had begged for mercy. Ricci asked the

inquisitor, João de Mello, why he had burnt him, as this was not a case

of relapse, to which Mello replied that his repentance was simulated

because he had varied in the three examinations, but on investigating

the record the variations were found to be trifling. Ricci asked for a

copy of the process to send to Rome, and it was promised but not given.

His report was naturally adverse to the Inquisition and the pope,

assuming that the brief of 1536 had established it for ten years only,

notified João that the term had expired: in deference to him it was

prolonged for a year, but he was told that, within that time, the

question as to the New Christians must be definitely settled; it was

suggested that a general pardon could be granted, or that he could

banish them all from his kingdom.[711]

We may fairly assume that, in such a crisis as this, the gold of the New

Christians had not been spared in Lisbon or in Rome. João evidently felt

that the turning-point had come and that some supreme effort must be

made to outbid his subjects. He had not been niggardly, on his side, in

responding to the urgent calls of his ambassadors for liberality towards

the cardinals. Cardinal Farnese, the favorite grandson of Paul III, and

the most influential member of the Sacred College, had a pension from

him of thirty-two hundred cruzados, assigned in 1544 equally on the sees

of Braga and Coimbra to assure its continuance: at a critical moment, in

1545, the arrearages and two years in advance were paid to him, in a

lump sum of thirteen thousand cruzados. So little reserve was there in

these matters that, after the death of Cardinal Santiquatro, the

"protector" of Portugal, João actually suggested the employment of Paul

III as his successor, pointing out the large "propinas" that would enure

to him from certain provisions as to bishops which the king was

soliciting. For these and for the payment to Farnese, he forwarded bills

of exchange for thirty-three thousand cruzados. Julius III was as

mercenary as his predecessor. In 1551 João, in response to a hint that a

present was desirable, sent him a magnificent diamond, valued by the

Roman jewellers at a hundred thousand cruzados. Julius was greatly

pleased and declared that he would make it an heirloom in his family,

but when the next year he intimated that another gift would be

acceptable, João, who was dissatisfied with him at the time, refused to

respond, saying that when the pope acceded to his demands to make

Henrique perpetual legate it would be time to think of giving him

something. This brought Julius to terms; in 1553 the appointment was

made and in 1554 João sent him a brooch.[712]

[Sidenote: _INQUISITION OF PORTUGAL_]

In such matters it was difficult for subjects to compete with their

monarch. Under the pressure so skilfully applied by Rome, a brilliant

idea occurred to João and, in a letter of February 20, 1546, to

Balthazar de Faria, he suggested that, in return for a free Inquisition,

he would grant to Cardinal Farnese the administration and revenues of

the see of Viseu, which he had been withholding from Cardinal Silva,

thus at once obtaining the object of his desires and gratifying his

rancor against that unfortunate prelate by depriving him of papal

support.[713] This dazzling bribe overcame Paul's scruples as to his

responsibility to the Almighty and his friendship for Silva. The Holy

See has been stained with many examples of nepotism and rapacity, but

its history has furnished few transactions of more shameless effrontery

in sacrificing those whom it was pledged to protect. Still, Paul strove

to maintain some semblance of decency in abandoning the New Christians,

and he advanced a demand that there should be a general pardon for past

offences and the granting of a term during which those desiring to

emigrate could leave Portugal. João was determined to get all that he

could, and a series of intricate negotiations took place, occupying the

whole of 1546 and 1547, in which each side endeavored to outwit the

other with little regard to consistency. Matters were complicated by the

question of the accrued revenues of Viseu, which João was loath to

refund, and which Paul demanded, for the convenient receptacle of the

fabric of St. Peter's. Ignatius Loyola took a hand in the fray and so

did two members of the Council of Trent, Frade Jorje de Santiago, an

inquisitor, and the Carmelite Balthazar Limpo, Bishop of Porto, an

honest and free-spoken fanatic, who was much scandalized by ascertaining

that a brief of safe-conduct had been secretly issued, inviting the

Portuguese New Christians to Italy, with assurance of not being

disturbed on account of their religion. Thus, as the bishop said, those

who had been baptized at birth came and were immediately circumcised and

filled the synagogues under the very eyes of the pope--the inference

being that he desired free emigration from Portugal, in order that Italy

might benefit by the intelligence and industry of the apostates, an

argument which was freely used and was not easy to answer.[714]

[Sidenote: _INQUISITION OF PORTUGAL_]

In the spring of 1547, as matters seemed to approach a settlement, the

necessary briefs were successively drafted. One of May 11th granted a

general pardon for past offences; all prisoners were to be released, all

confiscations returned, all disabilities removed, and reincidence was

not to incur the penalty of relapse. One of July 1st addressed to

Cardinal Henrique announced to him that the pope had granted the

Inquisition, with full powers of procedure. One of July 5th, to João

informed him that the bearer, Cav. Giovanni Ugolino (a nephew of the

late Cardinal Santiquatro) carried the bull for the Inquisition and

exhorted him to see that the inquisitors exercised their powers with

moderation. Ugolino was also empowered to take possession for Farnese of

the see of Viseu and the other benefices of Silva, and to collect the

arrears of revenue for the fabric of St. Peter's. There were two briefs

of July 15th, one appointing Farnese administrator for life of the see

and the benefices; the other withdrew and annulled all the letters of

exemption from the Inquisition which the New Christians had been for so

many years purchasing at heavy cost. Finally, under date of July 16th,

came the long sought-for bull, _Meditatio cordis,_ instituting for

Portugal a free and untrammelled Inquisition. It declared that the pope,

desiring the rigorous punishment of the atrocious crime of heresy,

revoked all previous limitations on its powers, and conferred on it all

faculties at any time granted to inquisitors. To render effective the

withdrawal of the letters of exemption, it evoked to the pope all cases

pending before other judges than Cardinal Henrique, and committed them

to him and his deputies with full powers. That Paul did not, without

some qualms of conscience, thus abandon the New Christians who had

contributed so liberally to the curia, is suggested by a subsequent

brief of November 15th, in which he told the king that, as he had

granted to Portugal a free Inquisition, he earnestly exhorted him to see

that the inquisitors acted with charity and not with judicial severity,

in consideration of the weakness of the neophytes, for this would be

most gratifying to him.[715]

The pope's anxiety to save appearances is visible in the instructions to

Ugolino. Those from Paul bore that his wishes were that, under the

pardon brief, all prisoners were to be discharged; those who had to

abjure should do so before a notary and not in an auto de fe; that for a

year no one was to be relaxed, no arrests were to be made save for

public and scandalous offences, and prosecutions were to be conducted as

in other crimes, while, if the law prohibiting emigration could not be

repealed, it should be kept quiet for a year--thus hiding for a

twelvemonth his betrayal of the friendless.[716] The instructions from

Farnese were more openly cynical. To disarm João's distrust, he had

agreed not to take possession of Silva's temporalities until the affair

of the Inquisition should be settled, while Ambassador Faria and the

Bishop of Porto had pledged that João should raise no difficulties; it

was on that condition that the pope had granted the Inquisition, in the

confidence that both should be settled together. João was to be

persuaded to accede to the general pardon and graces asked for, in lieu

of the permission to emigrate, for that would enable the pope to answer

the appeals and complaints of the New Christians, by telling them that

these were sufficient. The pope was anxious that, for a year, the

Inquisition should not employ rigor and that procedure be that of

secular law; this was of slender importance but it would seem to them a

great matter. They were also to be told that, as in previous cases, the

pope could have had from them twenty thousand cruzados for the pardon,

while he had granted it without getting a single farthing. It was

further significant that both Ugolino and the nuncio Ricci were warned

to be specially careful to exact nothing from the New Christians.[717]

How João regarded these pleadings for the victims is seen in a letter to

Faria after the settlement. He had accepted, he said, the conditions as

to the Inquisition, knowing that further protests would only bring worse

terms, but he intended that the Inquisition should proceed in the form

conceded by the bull. Those pardoned under the pardon brief, if they

committed heresy during the year, could be arrested and prosecuted at

once, but should not be sentenced or relaxed until after the expiration

of the year. For a year the inquisitors should be directed to proceed

mildly, but, as for treating heresy like other crimes, it would be

unreasonable, because the pope ordered otherwise in the bull itself. As

for the prohibition of emigration, it was not for the service of God to

repeal the law as the pope desired. The pardon should be published and

the prisoners released; those who had to abjure should not so do on a

staging but publicly at the church doors.[718] Thus brutally was brushed

aside the mask under which Paul had sought to disguise his abandonment

of the New Christians.

[Sidenote: _INQUISITION OF PORTUGAL_]

Since May, 1547, Ugolino waited in daily expectation of orders to start,

but it was not until December 1st that he left Rome with the bulls that

decided the fate of Portugal. It was probably in January, 1548, that he

reached Lisbon, where fresh delays occurred in settling details, and

only on March 24th was the agreement respecting Silva's temporalities

signed; João grumbled at the assignment of the accrued revenues to the

fabric of St. Peter's; he had not agreed to surrender them and did not

intend to do so, but he finally submitted. The pardon was published in

Lisbon, June 10th, the prisons were emptied and the abjurations, we are

told, for the most part were private.[719] Thus, after a contest lasting

through seventeen years, the Inquisition was fastened upon Portugal and,

in reviewing the kaleidoscopic vicissitudes of the struggle, we cannot

trace, in any act of the Holy See, a higher motive than the sordid one

of making, out of human misery, a market for the power of the keys and

selling it to the highest bidder.

[Sidenote: _INQUISITION OF PORTUGAL_]

The New Christians promptly sought to save a fragment from the wreck, by

obtaining the publication of the names of witnesses, based on the

canonical provision that they were to be suppressed only in the case of

powerful delinquents, who could wreak vengeance on accusers. With this

view they procured from Paul III a brief of January 8, 1549, defining

that New Christians and others could only be deemed powerful men, in

respect to the communication of witnesses' names, provided they were

nobles exercising jurisdiction over vassals, public magistrates, or

officers in the royal palace. There seems to have been some delay in the

publication of this but, when it came to the knowledge of the king, he

sent, August 13, 1550, a copy of it to Julius III, with an urgent

request for its revocation as it would prove the total destruction of

the Inquisition.[720] A long struggle ensued between the Portuguese

ambassadors and the New Christians, in which, for some time, the latter

were successful. Into these details it is not worth while to enter, but

the final incidents are too illustrative of the course of business in

the papal court to be passed over. Paul IV succeeded to the pontificate

May 23, 1555; while yet a cardinal he had expressed opposition to the

brief, and the ambassador, Affonso de Lencastro, with the assistance of

the Grand Inquisitor, Cardinal Alessandrino--the future Pius V--had not

much difficulty in winning him over. The brief of revocation was drafted

and approved and sent to the dataria for despatch. The deputy there

chanced to be a Castilian New Christian and, when the ambassador's

secretary called for the brief, he was told that Paul III had done a

just and holy thing, and that in Portugal the inquisitors wanted to burn

everybody. The brief was withheld and, when complaint was made to the

pope that his datary refused to obey orders, he promised to look into

it. Nothing more could be got from him at the time, and his reckless war

with Philip II gave him ample occupation for the next few years.

Lencastro however continued his efforts until replaced, in April, 1559,

by Lourenço Pirez de Tavora, who brought urgent instructions to procure

the brief of revocation. Peace with Philip was proclaimed April 5, 1559,

but Paul IV, in his 84th year, was broken and was moreover engrossed

with his prosecution of Cardinal Morone. Lencastro and Pirez, however,

labored with the Congregation of the Inquisition which, on July 22,

approved of the revocatory brief. They carried it at once to the pope

and, with the aid of Cardinal Alessandrino, obtained the promise of his

signature. To their dismay they learned the next day that it had not

been signed. Paul had called for his signet-ring, had drawn it from its

bag and was about to append it, when he glanced over the brief; the

preamble did not suit him, for it was not easy to give a reason for

revocation without inferring blame. He laid it aside, and this was

almost his last act, for he died August 18th and for three weeks no

briefs had been expedited. The conclave was prolonged and Pius IV was

not elected till December 26th. Pirez lost no time and, on his visit of

congratulation, January 2, 1560, before the coronation, he urged the

matter on the pope. Cardinal Alessandrino was sent for and gave his

approval. The secretary Aragonia was instructed to draft the brief and

it was, as Pirez thought, the first one signed after the coronation.

Pirez attributed his success to the profound secrecy which kept the

measure from the knowledge of its opponents and, in the midst of his

self-congratulation, he twice solemnly warned Cardinal Henrique to use

his powers with moderation for, under the brief, it would be easy to

burn the New Christians. It was in vain that they sought to obtain its

revocation; their agents and their memorials were alike disregarded, and

the suppression of the names of witnesses became the established

practice in Portugal as in Spain. All hope of relief, moreover, was

extinguished when, in September, Prospero de Santa Croce was sent as

nuncio, Cardinal Henrique was reappointed legate a _latere_, in all

matters concerning the faith, thus cutting off all appeal and all

interference with the Holy Office.[721] The earnest persistence with

which permission to withhold the names of witnesses was sought shows how

great a hindrance to condemnation their publication proved, and this

probably explains the fact that, during the continuance of the

prohibition, the activity of the Inquisition was restricted. A list of

autos de fe, as complete as research could compile, indicates that of

the three established tribunals, Lisbon celebrated no auto prior to

1559, nor Coimbra until 1567. There may be some defect in the archives

to account for this, and they may have been better preserved in Evora,

for there we find autos recorded in 1551, 1552, 1555 and 1560. After

this they became more frequent and increased in severity, but, up to the

time of the conquest by Philip II, in 1580, the whole number of autos

recorded in the three tribunals was only thirty-four, in which there

were a hundred and sixty-nine relaxations in person, fifty-one in effigy

and nineteen hundred and ninety-eight penitents.[722] The insignificant

number of relaxations in effigy, when compared with the multitudes that

figure in the early Spanish autos, would seem to indicate that they were

merely those who escaped from prison or died during trial and that, in

the absence of confiscation, the Portuguese inquisitors were not earnest

in tracing the heresies of ancestors or in following up the records of

fugitives.

The question of confiscation, in fact, had been left by Paul III in the

hands of the king, who found in it a financial resource for his bankrupt

treasury by granting, for a consideration, decennial periods of

exemption--a practice continued by the Regency after João's death.

Probably in 1568, the New Christians hesitated to pay the price

demanded, for a brief of Pius V, dated July 10th of that year, recites

that the last term had expired on June 7th, and that King Sebastian had

not renewed it, finding that it served as an incentive to heresy, and

that he had asked the pope not to listen to appeals. This Pius willingly

promised and withdrew all privileges which the New Christians might

enjoy. Doubtless this induced them to come to terms, for the exemption

was renewed. After this decennium, Sebastian again granted it in his

efforts to provide for his ill-starred African expedition, but Henrique,

on succeeding to the throne, felt his conscience much disturbed at this

concession to apostasy. He applied to Gregory XIII who, by a brief of

October 6, 1579, renewed the one of 1568, and permitted Henrique to

revoke the grant made by Sebastian.[723] As Portugal the next year

passed into the hands of Philip II, we hear nothing more of exemption

from confiscation.

It is somewhat remarkable that João neglected to extend to his colonial

possessions the blessings of the Inquisition. The New Christians had

largely availed themselves of the opportunities presented by the

colonial trade, and had established themselves in Goa and its

dependencies. The comparative freedom there had doubtless encouraged

them to observe less caution than at home, for St. Francis Xavier had

scarce begun his missionary labors when he was scandalized by what he

saw and, on November 30, 1545, he wrote urgently to the king as to the

necessity of an inquisitorial tribunal. No response was made to his

appeal. João died June 11, 1557, leaving the crown to his grandson Dom

Sebastian, a child in his third year, under the regency of the dowager

Queen Catalina, who resigned it, in 1562, in favor of Cardinal Henrique.

The Regency was more mindful of the spiritual needs of the Indies than

the late king and, in March, 1560, Henrique sent to Goa as inquisitor

Aleixo Diaz Falcão who, by the end of the year, founded a tribunal which

in time earned a sinister renown as the most pitiless in

Christendom.[724] When Lourenço Pirez, the ambassador at Rome, learned

through Egypt of this establishment, he expressed to the Regency his

apprehension that this zeal for religion would prove a disservice to God

and to the kingdom, for it would drive to Bassorah and Cairo many who

would aid the enemy in both finance and war.[725] His prevision was

justified more fully than he anticipated for, to the activity of the

tribunal was largely attributable the decay of the once flourishing

Indian possessions of Portugal. After exhausting the New Christians, it

turned its attention to the native Christians, who rewarded so

abundantly the missionary labors of the Jesuits, for Portugal did not

follow the wise example of Spain in exempting native converts from the

Inquisition. It was impossible for these poor folk to abandon completely

the superstitious practices of their ancestors, and any relapse into

these, however trifling, was visited with the rigor with which were

treated similar lapses by the Conversos of the Peninsula. Even Philip II

recognized the impolicy of this and, in 1599, he procured from Clement

VIII a brief empowering the inquisitors to commute the penalties of

relaxation and confiscation for relapse, up to a third relapse but no

further, and the faculty was limited to the term of five years.[726]

It is not a little remarkable that no tribunal was established in

Brazil, although the New Christians who abounded there proved a very

troublesome element, from the encouragement which they gave to the

Dutch in their efforts to obtain a foothold.[727] There was a

commissioner there, but his powers were limited to collecting evidence

and transmitting it with the accused to Lisbon, where they were tried

and punished.[728] It may be worth noting that, in the treaty of 1810

with England, Portugal bound itself never to establish the Inquisition

in its American possessions.[729]

In general, it may be said that the Portuguese Inquisition was modelled

on that of Castile. A series of edicts issued by Dom Sebastian and Dom

Henrique and confirmed by later kings, granted to officials and

familiars the privileges, exemptions and immunities which they enjoyed

in the sister kingdom. This gave rise to similar quarrels and

_competencias_, and to a multiplication of the privileged class even

greater than in Spain. In 1699 we find Dom Pedro II endeavoring to

enforce a decree of 1693, which limited to six hundred and four the

familiars allowed in the larger towns, while small places were to be

reduced to one or two each.[730] The main difference in the organization

of the Inquisitions of the two kingdoms was in the Portuguese officials

known as _deputados_, of whom at least four were appointed by the

inquisitor-general, as assistants to the three inquisitors constituting

each tribunal. They were required to possess qualifications entitling

them to promotion as inquisitors; they performed such duties as might be

assigned to them and, in the consulta de fe, they replaced the Spanish

consultores, with the distinction that they cast decisive and not merely

consultative votes. To render a sentence legal at least five votes were

required besides that of the Ordinary.[731] There was no appeal from a

definitive sentence, for the reason that it was not made known to the

culprit before the auto in which it was pronounced, but all

interlocutory sentences and intermediate proceedings were subject to

appeal, and the Supreme Council came to exercise minute supervision over

every act of the tribunals even earlier than we have seen was the case

in Spain.[732] The minuteness, indeed, of the details prescribed in the

_Regimento_ of Inquisitor-general de Castro, printed in 1640, left

little to the discretion of the inquisitor, and their systematic

arrangement, in an authoritative code of procedure, affords a strong

contrast to the cumbersome and often contradictory _cartas acordadas_,

which lumbered up the _secreto_ of the Spanish tribunals.

[Sidenote: _INQUISITION OF PORTUGAL_]

Although the object of the Inquisition was the purification of the land

from Judaism, it was not confined to this, and it early proved that it

could exercise its blighting influence on the intellectual development

as well as on the material prosperity of Portugal. Among the learned

foreigners whom André de Gouvêa, at the request of João III, brought to

Portugal, in 1547, to found a college of arts in his University of

Coimbra, was George Buchanan, as professor of Greek. Gouvêa died within

a year, and soon afterwards the foreigners were driven out to be

replaced by Jesuits, who were becoming the dominant power in the land.

The process was a simple one. Buchanan and two others were prosecuted by

the Inquisition and thrown in prison. The accusation against the former

was that he had written a poem against the Franciscans, that he had

spoken disrespectfully of the friars, that he had eaten meat in Lent,

that he had said that St. Augustin's views on the Eucharist were akin to

those condemned by Rome, and generally that he was thought to be

ill-affected towards the Holy See. After incarceration for eighteen

months, he was sentenced to reclusion in a monastery for instruction by

the monks, whom he describes as good-natured enough but wholly ignorant.

On his liberation João offered to retain him, but he took the earliest

opportunity to escape to England.[733]