Still the work was making progress, with enormous labor. We happen to
learn that, in 1596, the tribunal of Murcia was instructed to confide to
Dr. Arce and his brother the expurgation of Theodore Zwinger's _Theatrum
Vitæ Humanæ_, an enormous work, in eight folio volumes, published in
Basle in 1565. How long they were engaged upon the task may be inferred
from the fact that, in 1610, the tribunal was ordered to give to Padre
Arce the copy of the book on which he had labored, and the result
appears in thirty-eight pages of the Index, occupied by his
expurgations.[1313] In 1605 we find commissions granted to sundry
calificadores to take from the book-shops whatever books they needed for
examination. A junta was formed, probably in 1608, the members of which
received the liberal salary of a ducat a day and, in 1610, lists of
books were sent to all the tribunals, with instructions to submit them
to learned men for consideration.[1314] The expenditure was large for it
was not until 1612 that the new Index, known by the name of Sandoval y
Rojas, the inquisitor-general, saw the light. It was both a prohibitory
and an expurgatory Index in one stout volume.
The next Index was issued under the authority of Inquisitor-general
Zapata, in 1632, forming a large folio. Then, in 1640, another appeared
in a still larger volume, known as the Index of Sotomayor. Sixty-seven
years elapsed before the publication of another, in 1707, under
Inquisitor-general Vidal Marin. Its preparation had been entrusted to
Antonio Alvárez de la Puente and Fernando Gallego Calderon, the latter
of whom died and the work was carried to completion by the former. It
contained not only the list of Sotomayor and the works condemned or
expurgated during the interval, but many others discovered by the
industry of the compilers or by the revisors appointed by the various
tribunals, under orders of May 31, 1706, to examine all book-shops and
libraries.[1315] It occupied two folios of rather smaller size than the
single one of its predecessor. The next Index was issued in 1747, under
Inquisitor-general Prado y Cuesta, in one large folio. Its preparation
had been committed to two Jesuits, without supervision, who abused their
position by gratifying the interests of the Society of Jesus through
including a large number of authors who had never been condemned, giving
rise to a long debate, of which more hereafter.[1316]
[Sidenote: _EXPURGATION OF BOOKS AND LIBRARIES_]
Although this Index was thoroughly discredited, it was not until 1782
that the Suprema invited proposals for a new one. A memorial, apparently
by a member of that body, in response to this, pointed out the
inconvenience of the previous issues, with their constant growth,
rendering them costly and difficult to consult. The writer suggested the
Roman Index of Benedict XIV as a model--all the works to be gathered
into one alphabet; the long lists of expurgations to be replaced with
the Roman _donec corrigatur_ and a reference to the edict denouncing
them. Allusion was made to the many intricate and delicate questions
involved, largely owing to the irreconcilable pretensions of the Roman
and Spanish Inquisitions, and to the conflict between the royal
prerogative and the papal claims. Thus he says that the Roman
condemnations were not to be regarded unless they emanate from the
Congregation of the Index (not the Roman Inquisition) or a papal brief,
and even the Congregation prohibited many books meriting no theological
censure, because they were adverse to the assumptions of the curia. Then
there was the difficulty of preserving an impartial balance between the
rights of the crown and the power of the Church, and of determining the
numerous questions presented by many books--the circumspection necessary
to distinguish between rights and claims, between exterior and interior
discipline, and between discipline and dogma. In fact, the construction
of an Index involved much beyond the mere definitions of theology, for
it affected the large issues of national policy as well as the
multitudinous interests of whole classes of society and religious
organizations. As the writer said, the task was too great for any one
man, however wise and learned; it could only be performed by a carefully
selected junta.[1317] Most of these suggestions were adopted in the
_Indice Ultimo_, which appeared in 1790, in a moderate-sized volume,
easy of reference, although the absence of expurgations deprived the
possessors of books requiring correction of the facilities afforded by
the ponderous tomes of the older Indexes.
During the long intervals between the successive issues, the tribunals
were expected to compile for themselves lists of the books condemned in
the frequent edicts sent to them. In 1781 we find the Valencia tribunal
taken to task for not knowing that a French translation of Robinson
Crusoe had been prohibited by decree of January 16, 1756, and it was
told that, if it had not kept such a list, it must seek for one in some
tribunal that had done so.[1318] Booksellers likewise were expected to
note all new prohibitions in the copies of the Indexes which they were
required to keep, and a decree of 1627 instructed the tribunal to
furnish to them copies of all edicts as they appeared, so that they
could not plead ignorance and escape punishment.[1319]
As regards the performance of expurgation, so long as the published
Index was merely prohibitive, it was necessary for the owner to deliver
the book to the tribunal or to a commissioner to have the objectionable
passages blotted out and some documents of 1563 and 1568 show this to be
the practice.[1320] When the expurgatory Index of Quiroga appeared, in
1584, we have seen that owners were empowered to do this and that they
were negligent, which perhaps explains why the privilege was
subsequently withdrawn. It was difficult to enforce obedience and the
duty was troublesome, leading to the expedient of licensing professional
expurgators, who were authorized to do the work and give certificates of
its due performance, with the condition that, when working in libraries,
if they found prohibited books, they would seize and deliver them to the
nearest commissioner.[1321] When books were delivered to the tribunals
for expurgation, the habitual delays must have been exasperating. In
1688 we find Don Juan de la Torre, whose patience was exhausted,
obtaining from the Suprema a letter to the Valencia tribunal ordering it
to expurgate a book of his and deliver it to him.[1322]
We can scarce wonder that owners were negligent, as a remedy for which a
carta acordada of October 5, 1712, ordered the tribunals to state in
their edicts that the expurgations were on record there, and all owners
were to send their books to have the offending passages blotted out by
persons deputed for the purpose.[1323] Then, in 1790, the owner was
again permitted to do it on condition of presenting the book within two
months to show that it had been done, but, as the Indice Ultimo gave no
indication of the expurgations required, it was left for the owner to
discover them.[1324] No matter what plan was adopted, expurgation
rendered the ownership of books a source of anxiety and trouble, and
exercised a deterrent influence on the diffusion of culture, for there
was no class of literature, whether fiction, poetry, history, devotion,
statecraft, law or science, as well as theology, in which some lynx-eyed
critic could not discover a phrase or sentiment which called for
revision. Edicts were continually being issued prescribing the
expurgation of individual books, sometimes thirty or forty years after
their publication, and frequently on the most trivial grounds, and the
lover of literature or science had to be constantly on the watch to
escape the penalties of neglect.
The process of expurgation was the application with a brush of a coat of
printing ink to the peccant word or passage, so as to render it
perfectly illegible. When the Mexican tribunal took a notion to condemn
all engraved portraits of the saintly Juan de Palafox, Bishop of Puebla,
the face was thus daubed over with ink so as to render the features
indistinguishable. When, in a book, the length of the offending passage
made this too troublesome, the ruder process was adopted of tearing out
the pages, regardless of the innocent matter thus removed and destroying
the connection of the parts thus sundered.[1325] Literature was of small
account to the butchers of books.
[Sidenote: _EXPURGATION OF BOOKS AND LIBRARIES_]
Booksellers and book-buyers were subjected to constant investigation
conducted in the rudest manner, the influence of which could not fail to
be most depressing. The examination of book-shops and public and private
libraries, which we have seen attempted as early as 1530 and resolutely
prosecuted in 1559, was a settled policy and was pushed with especial
vigor after the issue of every new Index, but it was not limited to
those times. The correspondence of the Suprema is full of letters and
instructions showing the unremitting vigilance with which the work was
carried on. In 1600 the tribunals of Valencia, Barcelona and Murcia were
ordered to send to the Suprema the books of the Constable of Castile--a
work of some duration for, in 1602, there is still a box of them on the
way. Then the Seville tribunal was instructed to examine the books of
Fray Diego Davila and forward those which Montoya had indicated. Then
the Murcia tribunal was told to send to Doctor Montoya the books of Don
Juan de Hoces. In 1602 the books of the confessor to the queen were
ordered to be sent to the Suprema. All these were private collectors,
whose tastes or zeal for learning subjected them to these vexations and
humiliations, to the unlimited detention of their cherished books, to
loss from carelessness or pilfering and to the irreparable damage of
artistic bindings. The mere possession of books rendered the owner an
object of suspicion and investigation. If this was the case with private
collectors of all ranks, we can readily appreciate the endless troubles
and ruinous prosecutions to which booksellers were exposed. In this same
year 1600, the Suprema advised the Toledo tribunal that Doctor Juan
Martínez had been examining the book-shops of Madrid, resulting in the
statement enclosed, as to which it was to do justice--the customary
formula in prosecutions.[1326]
This is merely an indication of the continuous warfare waged against
culture and learning, from which no one was safe. In 1627 a decree
commanded booksellers, under penalty of forty ducats and
excommunication, to report all prohibited books and those requiring
expurgation, which they might meet in private libraries.[1327] In 1618,
the Seville tribunal was ordered to seize all the Hebrew books that had
belonged to Arias Montano.[1328] Even the royal library of the Escorial
was subjected to the most humiliating regulations. When the Index of
1612 appeared, the Geronimite Prior of San Lorenzo petitioned the
Suprema, stating the wish of the king that the prohibited books should
not be removed or expurgated, as it was distinct from the convent
library, and the only keys to it were held by him and the chief
librarian. Thereupon the inquisitor-general sent Fray Francisco de
Jesus to examine and report the arrangements of the library, after
which, on November 12, 1613, it decreed as follows. All books which are
literary and not religious or offensive, by authors of the first class
(those of whom all the works were condemned), are to be separated,
marked and have a prefatory note that the author is condemned, but
permission is given for them to remain where they can be read by the
prior, the chief librarian and the professors of the college. All books
by such authors, treating of religion and cognate matters, such as
chronologies, sacred histories and histories of the popes, seeing that
the king does not wish them removed, shall be stored in a separate room,
always locked as in an archive, and no one shall read them save the
prior and chief librarian, by special licence of the inquisitor-general
and Suprema: there shall be two keys (locks) one kept by the chief
librarian and the other by the Suprema, and two lists shall be made of
them, one kept in the locked room and the other by the Suprema. With
these shall also be placed two MSS. by heresiarchs from the MS.
department. Rabbinical books and Bibles in Romance can remain, but shall
be put in a separate case and be marked as prohibited, but they can be
read as hitherto, by the prior, chief librarian and professors. The
fraile in charge of the pharmacy of the convent, but he alone, can read
books on medicine by authors of the first class, for distillation of
quintessences and other matters of importance.[1329] A quarantine
against the deadliest infection could scarce have been more carefully
devised.
[Sidenote: _EXPURGATION OF BOOKS AND LIBRARIES_]
There was a slight relaxation in this when, in 1616, Inquisitor-general
Sandoval was at the Escorial and extended to all the professors of the
college the privilege of reading books of the first class on religion.
After the Zapata Index of 1632 appeared, the question again came up and
Inquisitor-general Sotomayor confirmed the arrangement of 1613.[1330] On
the publication of his Index, in 1640, the frailes of San Lorenzo
petitioned the Suprema that the library, as belonging to the king,
should not be expurgated under the new Index. To this the Suprema
replied in a consulta to the king, November 16, 1641, arguing that, as
the library was the greatest in the world and belonged to the king, it
was especially important that it should set the example of containing
nothing contrary to Catholic doctrine. Still, there might be a secluded
place, in which all books by heretic writers and of evil doctrine could
be set aside, and the key of it be kept by the inquisitor-general, on
condition that the library should furnish to the Suprema whatever books
it might need.[1331] There can be little doubt that some such
arrangement was reached.
The vigilant supervision over book-shops and libraries was unrelaxing,
and the depressing influence which it exercised on the book-trade and on
culture in general can be estimated from the regulations accompanying
the Index of Vidal Marin, in 1707. The tribunals were authorized to
appoint an unlimited number of _Revisores de Libros_, empowered, at such
times as suited them, to examine the public libraries and auctions and
book-shops. The revisor was to require from booksellers inventories of
stock and to see that these were complete; he was to order sent to his
house or to that of another revisor, all prohibited books and those
requiring examination, and report the result to the tribunal; he was to
expurgate and certify with his signature all books requiring
expurgation. He was to report all omissions or contraventions by
booksellers of the rules of the Index, and for this his inspections must
be frequent. He was to familiarize himself with these inventories and
also with those which the booksellers were obliged to render to the
tribunal at the beginning of each year, with details of all sales made
during the year, so that he should become thoroughly informed and the
booksellers be deterred from committing their customary frauds. All this
was to be done at the expense of the owners of the books or, in the case
of public libraries, of the town. As this was expected to produce much
dissatisfaction, any "licentious" talk against the Index was to be
reported for due punishment.[1332]
The expected dissatisfaction was not lacking. The powers granted to the
revisors gave so large an opportunity for oppression and extortion that
the position was eagerly sought. Commissions were recklessly multiplied,
until the number of these literary spies and blackmailers aroused
general complaint. Nor was this a mere temporary abuse, for a letter of
the Suprema, October 5, 1712, calls attention to the excessive number of
appointees and the evils thence arising, for the palliation of which it
proposed to issue an edict.[1333]
This inspection of public and private libraries and of book-shops
continued till the suppression of the Inquisition. We find, June 25,
1817, the Seville tribunal sending to that of Madrid a list of books
belonging to Juan Gualberto González, royal fiscal in the Council of
Indies and, on August 18th, the fiscal sends to an unnamed tribunal the
translation for which it had asked of a list of books belonging to the
Marquis of Narros, the linguistic attainments of the inspectors having
apparently been insufficient. In the financial distress of the
Inquisition, the work seems now to be performed by officials of the
tribunals, doubtless eager to do anything that would bring in fees, for,
in 1819, we have the report of the secretary of the Valencia tribunal
that, in the inspection of the book-shop of Pedro Juan Mallen, he had
found a sermon in Italian, which he seized as suspicious and which was
duly submitted to calificadores.[1334]
[Sidenote: _ESTATES OF THE DEAD_]
Death afforded an opportunity not neglected of expurgating private
libraries. When the owner died, the Inquisition stepped in to
investigate and control the disposition of his books. In 1651, it would
seem that all books had to pass through its hands for, in the case of
Don Alonso de la Torre, the Suprema orders the Valencia tribunal to
forward to it the packages delivered by the heirs, the prohibited ones
separate from those approved.[1335] The instructions of 1707 apparently
limit this interference to cases of sale, for they provide that when, on
account of death or other cause, a library is sold, the booksellers must
furnish the revisor with a list of all books and their prices, so that
prohibited or suspected ones may be surrendered, for which the
booksellers can take receipts.[1336] In 1748 the case of Doctor Teodoro
Tomás, canon of the cathedral of Valencia, indicates that the executors
had to render to the tribunal a detailed statement under oath of the
disposition made of all books and papers. The prohibited books were
given to the Dominican convent, which had a licence enabling it to hold
them, and the rest were sold to Juan Bautista Malet and Manuel Cortés,
booksellers. The papers were also accounted for--those pertaining to
cathedral affairs were delivered to the chapter, those which seemed
useless were burnt and the servants sold some to an apothecary.[1337]
In this case the necessary preliminary of submitting an inventory to a
revisor had evidently been complied with. When this was omitted the
resultant trouble is exemplified in the library of Gregorio Mayans y
Siscar, the most eminent man of letters of his day, who died in 1781.
His library was large and valuable, and his widow sought to make the
most of it for his children. She was a pious woman but through ignorance
did not observe the requisite formalities. She sold a large portion to
the Augustinian convent, which had a licence to hold prohibited books,
and when she learned that this was unlawful she made great efforts to
get it back; the Augustinians resisted but were finally obliged to
submit. Then she applied to the Suprema for a licence to sell the
prohibited books, which was referred to the Valencia tribunal. It
replied, November 8, 1803, that the Augustinian provincial had exhibited
the licence, and had been told that the convent had a right to hold
them, but the widow had no right to sell them. The inquisitor
sympathized with her, but pointed out that to grant her request would
open the door to fictitious transactions, and he recommended that at
most she should be allowed to sell those which the Augustinians had
bought, for there were others. The library was large; it had taken long
to make an inventory and still longer to find a revisor to go over it
and note the prohibited books. This, however, had at last been
accomplished, and the widow had been furnished with two lists--one of
prohibited books to be surrendered to the Inquisition, and the other of
those which must be expurgated before she could sell them. The Suprema,
before deciding, required to see a list of the prohibited books sold to
the Augustinians, which was duly furnished, and we may hope that, in the
end, the widow was able to dispose of her husband's books, although the
proceeds must have been wofully diminished by the fees and expenses and
the confiscation of those prohibited.[1338] There was scant
encouragement in Spain for scholars to accumulate the means of study and
research.
While this case was dragging along, irrepressible zeal in pursuit of
prohibited books threatened a foreign complication. Leonhardt Schuck,
the Dutch consul at Alicante, died, leaving the French vice-consul as
his executor. The house and effects were duly sealed with the royal seal
during the execution of certain legal formalities, but the commissioner
of the Inquisition called on the governor to remove the seal and deliver
the keys to him, so that he might inventory the books, papers and
prints, for he was informed that there were prohibited articles of all
three kinds. The governor refused until he could consult the king, when
the commissioner at night broke the seal, made his way in, compiled an
inventory and replaced the seal as best he could. The Dutch ambassador
complained to Carlos IV, and the minister Urquijo, who was unfriendly to
the Inquisition, took occasion to issue a _carta orden_ of October 11,
1799, severely rebuking it for this and other similar occurrences, which
had contributed greatly to increase its evil reputation abroad.[1339]
This supervision over the libraries of the dead continued under the
Restoration. In 1815 orders were sent to all commissioners to see that
no books belonging to estates were sold at auction until exact lists
were submitted to the tribunal and its permission was obtained and, in
1817, when Fray Raymundo García, prior of the convent of Montesa at
Onda, died, the Valencia tribunal had his library examined with the
result of finding quite a number of prohibited books, mostly of a
Jansenist character.[1340] Despite the ceaseless vigilance of the
Inquisition, the seekers after forbidden literature took the risk of
gratifying their longings.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: _PREVENTION OF SMUGGLING_]
This forbidden literature was necessarily foreign. Under the preliminary
restrictions on printing, which weighed with such deadly pressure on
authorship, and under such vigilance as that which prompted the Suprema,
in 1602, to order the tribunals to instruct their commissioners to seize
all new books, or those of new authors or new editions, and report about
them without delivering them to any one,[1341] it was impossible that
native works of dangerous tendency could reach the public, and
censorship was confined to theological subtilties or to trivialities.
The only real danger to be guarded against came from abroad, and the
Inquisition's most effective service to obscurantism was rendered in the
quarantine which it established to preserve the nation from the
infection of new ideas. To this were directed the unremitting energies
of the state, which found in the Holy Office its most useful instrument.
We have seen above how early it took the alarm in 1521. In 1532 the
Royal Council adopted the heroic measure of prohibiting the importation
and sale of all recently printed books[1342]--a measure which, if
enforced, would have cut off Spain from all foreign literature, without
preventing the introduction of heretical books concealed in packages of
other merchandise. If not speedily repealed, it at least soon became
obsolete, and the function of guarding the land from the importation of
heretical matter naturally fell into the hands of the Inquisition, which
alone possessed the authority and the ability to decide between what was
innocent and what was obnoxious. This function consisted of two
duties--that of separating the wheat from the tares in books regularly
imported through the custom-houses, and in the suppression of smuggling.
Precisely at what time the Inquisition undertook these duties it would
be impossible to say, but its activity and organization of the work
would seem to date from the Lutheran scare of 1557 and 1558. In a letter
of May 12, 1558, from the Suprema to Charles V, it declares that all the
inquisitors had been instructed to use the greatest vigilance at the
sea-ports and along the French frontier, but such was the audacity of
the heretics that this did not suffice, as was proved by the number of
books daily seized in spite of the most rigorous punishment.[1343] So,
in its report of September 9th to the pope, it stated that to prevent
the importation of heretic books, inquisitors with their officials had
been established along the coasts and in the places of greatest trade,
which was a falsehood for the purpose of obtaining papal sanction for
despoiling the Church, since no new tribunals were established, though
the existing ones were urged to special vigilance. How this was
exercised is detailed in a letter of October 25th from the Seville
inquisitors, in response to an exhortation to diligence. They declare
that all possible care was taken; instructions had been given for the
visiting of all ships on arrival; no merchandise of any kind could be
discharged or opened without the presence of a commissioner, who saw
that there were no books in the packages or, if there were, they were
sent to the tribunal. All packages for Seville were sealed and not
opened save in the presence of their inspector, to see whether there
were books enclosed. All books arriving were delivered to the tribunal
and examined, when those found to be prohibited or suspicious were
detained; it had not come to their knowledge that any one had received
and distributed books without this previous examination.[1344]
This shows that already the system had been established, which continued
with little modification to the end. All packages of books were
carefully inspected, those prohibited or subject to expurgation, and the
new and unknown ones regarded as suspicious were removed and sent to the
tribunal to await its decision, which usually inferred consultation with
the Suprema and indefinite delay. Every package of merchandise,
moreover--box, bale or barrel--was opened in presence of the
commissioner in search of concealed books. Thus the whole importing
commerce of Spain passed through the hands of the Inquisition, whose
officials employed in the business were unpaid, except by the fees which
they could exact from merchants, leading to interminable squabbles,
insufferable delays and grievous impediments to the commercial activity
of the nation.
[Sidenote: _SUPERVISION OF BOOK-TRADE_]
The trade in books suffered especially. It evidently was regarded as a
thing to be restricted as far as possible, and was subject to any
caprice of the authorities. In the sixteenth century orders were
sometimes sent to special ports to forward all packages of books
unopened and finally this was adopted as a universal rule, the whole
foreign book-trade thus passing through the hands of the Suprema. A
carta acordada of June 17, 1666, complains of the inobservance of these
instructions, which must be obeyed by the commissioners at all the
ports; the carriers must be bound under a penalty to return, within a
fixed time, the receipt of the secretary of the Suprema, and a separate
letter of advice must inform the Suprema who he is and at what tavern in
Madrid he is accustomed to lodge.[1345] No trade could be profitably
carried on which was subject to such vexatious and costly interference,
while the Suprema was constantly scolding the tribunals for their
negligence.
How their ignorant scrupulousness affected trade may be guessed by an
incident occurring at Barcelona in 1666. A bookseller of that city
imported a number of copies of a book just printed in Lyons--a
_Pharmacop[oe]ia Medico-Chemica_, by Johannes Schoderius, M.D.,
Physician in ordinary to the Republic of Frankfurt a/M. In the Index of
1640, the inquisitors found, among authors of the first class, the name
of Joan. Schroderus, qualified as "Philosophus et Theologus German.
Luther. August. Confess.," all of whose works were condemned. They
seized the Pharmacop[oe]ias and reported to the Suprema, which ordered a
copy forwarded. It was duly submitted to calificadores and five months
afterwards the tribunal was notified that the books might be delivered
to the owner.[1346]
The internal traffic in books was trammelled by the closest supervision.
In 1645 the Valencia tribunal was instructed to issue no licences to
take books to Castile without a formal order from the Suprema.[1347]
While their departure was thus closely scrutinized, a second inspection
was required on their arrival, as appears from a petition, in 1665, of
Juan Antonio Bonet, bookseller of Madrid, representing that, in 1663, he
had forwarded to Miguel Paysso, a bookseller of Barcelona, certain
books, among which the Barcelona tribunal found and seized a copy of the
works of Quevedo, in two volumes, which he prays to be released, as it
was printed in Madrid, where it enjoyed free circulation.[1348]
It was the same with exports. In 1573 the books of some frailes going to
the Canaries require a special order from the Suprema to commissioners
in Seville, Granada, Córdova and Badajoz to pass them if there were none
prohibited among them.[1349] The instructions of 1707 provide that, when
books are to be exported, lists of them are to be submitted to the
revisers that they may retain any that are prohibited or are unknown to
them and thus require examination.[1350] A transaction in 1788 shows
that a special permit was required for each shipment of books to the
colonies, and a royal order of August 8, 1807, prescribed that the
examination should be made conjointly by the commissioners of the
Inquisition, the royal revisor and a delegate of the _juez de
imprentas_.[1351] Even books in transit were subject to the watchful eye
of the Inquisition, as we learn when, in 1560, some that had belonged to
Cardinal Pole were shipped through Spain to Venice and were diligently
investigated.[1352] Books in fact were regarded with almost an insane
fear, as the most dangerous of all articles of commerce, and the more
thoroughly that Spain could be prevented from knowing what men were
thinking and doing in foreign lands, the safer it was for society.
The regulations adopted for importations were well adapted to protect
the Spanish intellect from such dangers. The requirement of sending all
packages to the Suprema unopened seems to have been abandoned, but other
obstacles were sufficiently onerous. All books, with which the
commissioner of the Inquisition was not acquainted, had to be submitted
to calificadores or sent to the Suprema for decision. As foreign books,
especially the new ones, came under this category, the consequent delays
and the risk of prohibition exposed the importing bookseller to
hardships rendering trade almost impracticable. Thus, in 1772, Pierre
Crozier, a bookseller of Valencia, imported a copy of the _Essais de
Morale_ of Pierre Nicole. It had to be referred to the Suprema, which,
by letter of August 29th, ordered it to be examined and reported upon.
After the lapse of four years we find Crozier still begging the tribunal
to decide whether it will be permitted, as well as copies of the
_Discours de Fleuri_ and the _Histoire de la Bible_ of Royaumont. If
prohibited, he asks permission to sell them to some one who holds a
licence or to return them to France.[1353] How much longer he had to
wait we can only conjecture. These impediments to importation were
aggravated by a regulation of the Royal Council, in 1784, requiring a
licence before a new foreign book could be exposed for sale and, out of
the small number on which the dealer could venture to try the market, he
had, when applying for a licence, to give two copies and to pay the
examining censor a real per sheet for reading it, with the prospect that
if the licence was obtained, the Inquisition might subsequently prohibit
it.[1354]
[Sidenote: _SUPERVISION OF IMPORTS_]
The books seized were detained by the tribunals, and their fate is
revealed in a letter from that of Valencia, July 28, 1798, in answer to
orders from the Suprema to return to Don Josef Joaquin de Soria a copy
of the _Lettres Provinciales_ in four languages, and to send to Madrid,
under seal, the books brought from Holland (some ten years before) by
Don Pedro Antonio Casas. The tribunal explained at much length its
inability to comply. The practice of entering the name of the owner in
books seized is recent. The accumulation of prohibited books is large,
and the room in which most of them are stored is so hot and so infested
with book-worms that in a fortnight a book is pierced through and
through. If those of Casas were placed there or left in their boxes
there would not be a leaf remaining. Besides, a bookseller was formerly
employed to come monthly and dust them, and he carried away all that he
wanted, as appeared in his prosecution on that charge in 1789. This
explains why only a portion of Casas's books can be found; as to Soria's
_Lettres Provinciales_, two copies of that edition have been found, but
each has a different owner's name.[1355] Verily, the Inquisition was the
grave-yard of books.
The outbreak of the French Revolution brought fresh activity and
redoubled watchfulness for the exclusion of dangerous literature.
Politics and religion were inextricably intermingled, and the
revolutionary propaganda was as much dreaded as the religious had been
in the sixteenth century. In 1792, the Suprema ordered all the tribunals
to be especially zealous in preventing the introduction of the books,
which the French were industriously disseminating for the purpose of
exciting rebellion and imperilling religion and the monarchy. With this
it circulated a royal order commanding special examination of books and
papers from foreign parts. Wherever there was a custom-house, there were
two revisors appointed, one royal and the other inquisitorial, who were
to examine together all books and papers arriving. These were to be
divided into three parts; those allowed currency and unknown works on
history and science, which could be delivered to the owners; those
included in the Index, to be retained by the inquisitorial revisor, and
those unknown and suspected, to be kept by the royal revisor, until the
king's pleasure could be ascertained. Thus the forces of the State and
the Inquisition were marshalled together in defence of the faith and of
the crown; unfortunately they did not always work harmoniously for, in
1805 these instructions were reissued with urgent appeals for cordial
coöperation.[1356] It would be useless to follow in detail the numerous
exhortations to vigilance in the succeeding years. In spite of
precautions, foreign ideas drifted through the custom-houses and
embodied themselves in the Constitution of 1812 and, when the reaction
came under the Restoration, the supervision of importations was confided
exclusively to the Inquisition. In 1816 a question arose as to the
functions of the _subdelegado de Imprentas_ and the _revisor Real_, when
Fernando VII decided that it pertained alone to the tribunals to decide
what books should pass through the custom-houses, and that their
permission was necessary.[1357]
* * * * *
If these efforts to control the legitimate importation of books
exercised an unfortunate influence on the intellectual development of
Spain, its commercial interests suffered likewise from the precautions
adopted to prevent the smuggling of the dreaded literature. These were
known as the _Visitas de Navios_, which rendered the ports of Spain an
object of dislike to all merchantmen, whether of native or foreign
origin. Their systematization is attributable to the Protestant scare of
1558, when no means were deemed too radical which should serve to defeat
the propagandist energy ascribed to the Spanish refugees and their
heretical allies.
[Sidenote: _VISITAS DE NAVIOS_]
When a vessel cast anchor, before it could break cargo, it was visited
by the representatives of various jurisdictions--health, war and
customs. Subsequently health and war were combined, under the name of
_almirantazgo_ and there was added a visit from the commissioner of the
Inquisition, with his notary and alguazil. As these officials were
unsalaried, they claimed to be paid for their time and for the expense
of a carriage and boat, by fees exacted of the vessel. Then, after
inspecting the crew and passengers and examining any books belonging to
them, a guard was stationed to prevent the surreptitious landing of
books. When the cargo was discharged, the commissioner opened and
inspected every package and, if it was a bale of books, of course each
one had to be compared with the Index. For all this additional fees
were charged, constituting a tax, not alone on the book-trade but on
commerce in general, deeply resented by all the commercial interests,
nor was the opposition lessened by the arbitrary methods habitual with
all the officials of the Inquisition. Complaints of abuses became loud
and numerous from all the sea-ports while, on the other hand, the
frequent reports of heretical machinations led to constant exhortations
from the Suprema for increased vigilance.
Some feeble attempts were made to check abuses. In 1602 there was a
prohibition that visiting officials should require to have meals served,
should place guards, or insist on having salutes fired; in 1606 it was
forbidden for commissioners to take with them notaries or familiars who
were merchants, and who thus learned the nature of the cargo and had
opportunities to buy or to sell; but no attention was paid to these
reforms.[1358] Then, in 1607, a royal cédula provided that commissioners
should levy no fees for visiting ships, and this was repeated in 1610,
but these commands were disobeyed on the plea that they passed through
the Council of Castile and not through the Suprema, wherefore, as the
latter said, the commissioners were bound to obey them but not to
execute them.[1359]
The royal attention was finally called to the injurious effect of the
system on Spanish commerce and, in January, 1632, a cédula was sent to
the corregidores of the sea-ports, in which the king stated that he had
been informed that the continual vexations inflicted on those who came
to trade at Spanish ports, arising from the abuses practised by the
numerous officials visiting their ships at their arrival and departure,
had not only been the cause of the decline of commerce but of its total
destruction, for every vessel was visited by so many jurisdictions that
the extortions and impositions were great and had much increased of
late. He was therefore obliged to enquire what proper methods could be
adopted to encourage trade on the part of both natives and foreigners,
without abolishing the necessary visits and precautions. There followed
a list of searching questions as to the number of visits, officials,
fees, methods, etc., with a request for suggestions. Although directed
nominally to the abuses of all the jurisdictions, the Inquisition
evidently was especially aimed at, for copies of the cédula were sent by
the Suprema to all the tribunals of the crown of Castile.[1360]
A junta was assembled to frame a reform on the basis of the information
thus obtained. It sat until the end of 1633 but, if it reached any
conclusions, they left no trace on legislation or practice. The only
paper laid before it that I have met is a complaint from Don Pedro de
Barreda, customs inspector of Guipuzcoa, of the excesses committed by
officials of the Inquisition, under pretext of visiting the vessels
coming to the ports of his district.[1361] The probability is that, as
so frequently the case in Spanish administration, the junta did nothing
but submit to the king long consultas representing the conflicting views
of the individual members, and that the king by that time had lost his
interest in the matter and cast them aside without reading.
[Sidenote: _VISITAS DE NAVIOS_]
As was inevitable, the aggressiveness of the officials led to frequent
quarrels. In 1616 there was one in Sardinia, in which the inquisitor
excommunicated the Governor of Sasser, when the viceroy retaliated with
a decree banishing the inquisitor. It was published with trumpet and
cymbals and so frightened the inquisitorial people that the consultors
did not dare to assemble and the familiars took to the mountains. The
affair was referred to the Council of Aragon and the Suprema, which
effected a truce by annulling the acts on both sides.[1362] That the
junta of 1633 brought no harmony is seen in a similar outbreak arising
from the same cause in 1634, between the viceroy of Majorca and the
tribunal, which had to be carried up to the king.[1363] In 1635, the
royal secretary addressed the Suprema, stating that a squadron was being
organized for service on the coast of Guipuzcoa and that, to avoid the
extortions and vexations of the commissioner at San Sebastian, the king
desired that the head chaplain of the squadron should be appointed as
commissioner, so that he could perform the duty of visiting the ships
and prizes when they entered port. To this the Suprema returned an
emphatic protest; such visits were essential and not to be omitted; the
cause of complaint was not the extortions of the commissioners but
their zealous discharge of their duties. As there is no endorsement on
this consulta, the king apparently did not press the matter.[1364]
Perhaps the bitterest struggle was that carried on by Bilbao for more
than a hundred years. As one of the busiest ports of Spain, it naturally
recalcitrated against the burdens laid upon its trade. The system had
scarce been fairly organized when, in 1560, complaints already came to
the Suprema of extortionate and illegal fees. Bartolomé de Robles, a
bookseller of Alcalá, represented that he had imported through Bilbao
forty bales of books, which were forwarded in one lot by ten muleteers;
they had all been duly examined and sealed, the commissioner charging
one real for each seal and then, in place of giving one certificate for
the lot, he made out forty certificates at four reales apiece. The
Suprema forwarded this to the tribunal of Calahorra (Logroño), with a
table of fees, commanding that all exorbitant charges should be returned
to it for distribution to the parties aggrieved.[1365] It was not alone
the booksellers, but merchants in general, who suffered from the opening
of their packages and the fees charged on each, and the shipmasters
exposed to the extortions attendant upon the visits. The mercantile
community of Bilbao was well organized, having a _Casa de Contratacion_
to regulate commerce, with a _Fiel_ or executive officer, a Prior and
Consuls. They made their grievances heard and a compromise was reached
with the tribunal, in 1561, which was not observed; it was the same with
another agreement made in 1567 and yet another in 1576, under which all
fees were abolished. To enforce this the Contratacion brought suit,
resulting in an agreement in 1577, confirmed by the Suprema, by which
the commissioner received fifty ducats a year in lieu of all fees,
except two reales on each package of books, the examination of which was
admitted to be laborious.[1366] Trouble soon recommenced; in spite of
repeated exhortation to moderation by the Suprema, fees were levied on
every package and cask of merchandise. The royal cédula of 1607
abolishing fees was published February 18th, but received no attention
and, in 1609, Bilbao sent a strong remonstrance to the king, to which
the Logroño tribunal replied, asserting it to be false; the labor was
great; it always had been and must be paid by fees, which were always
the subject of contention, especially at Bilbao where there were a prior
and consuls to defend the merchants.[1367] Then came the royal cédula of
1610, again abolishing fees, which received no more attention than the
previous one.
In February, 1612, the Suprema wrote to Logroño that great complaints
continued to come to the king, especially from Bilbao, and it suggested
that an increase in the fifty ducats might be obtained in lieu of fees.
Acting on this, a formal agreement was signed in July and confirmed by
the Suprema, raising the annual payment to two thousand reales, the two
reales on book packages being retained. It is not likely that this was
observed by the commissioner for, in 1616, at the request of the
merchants and shipmasters, a return was made to the fee system and a
definite scale was agreed upon. This scale, however, did not long
content the commissioner for, in 1631, the complaints reaching the
Suprema led it to make an investigation, in which its fiscal admitted
that the excessive fees and vexations were leading shipmasters to
abandon those ports, especially Bilbao; the fees exacted were fifty per
cent. greater than the agreed scale; vessels bringing fish were
compelled in addition to give so many fish out of each barrel, and the
delays were damaging. At the same time the existing commissioner, Pedro
de Villareal, was highly commended. He had merely accepted conditions as
he found them established by his predecessors; his term of service
extended from 1625 to 1662 and was subsequently looked back upon as a
halcyon time of peace.[1368]
[Sidenote: _VISITAS DE NAVIOS_]
This came to an end, in 1663, with the appointment of a new
commissioner, the Licentiate Domingo de Leguina, whose excessive
exactions and arbitrary methods excited the bitterest dissatisfaction.
One thing which was the subject of especial complaint was that, in place
of examining merchandise in the warehouses of the consignees, he
insisted on opening the packages on the quay, cutting the cords and
scattering the contents, which were thus subjected to theft and to the
vicissitudes of the weather; he even bored holes in casks of tar and
explored the interior with a stick in the search for hidden books.
Commerce on a large scale could scarce be conducted under such
conditions, the prosperity of the port was seriously threatened,
passions on both sides were enkindled and a controversy of the fiercest
kind raged for years. The Señorio of Biscay took sides with the
merchants and represented forcibly to the queen-regent the absurdity of
ruining commerce and risking complications with foreign nations on the
pretext of preventing the smuggling of prohibited books, considering the
risks attendant on the attempt and the lack of purchasers for them if
successful, in a community so ardent for the faith.[1369]
Both sides resorted to extreme measures. The Contratacion in 1667
ordered the merchants not to pay fees; the tribunal, with the approval
of the Suprema, ordered Leguina to collect them; he seized goods and
sold them by auction; he prosecuted some of the merchants and
compromised with them for money; the English and Dutch ambassadors
intervened with protests against the disregard of treaty stipulations;
the queen-regent annulled the decree of the Contratacion forbidding the
payment of fees, and against this the Señorio of Biscay, in a solemn
assembly, November 7, 1668, protested, as a violation of the fueros, and
adopted a decree prohibiting their payment; if attempts should be made
to collect them it would resist and, if other remedies failed, a Junta
General would be assembled to determine on further measures. Meanwhile,
any secular official assisting Leguina was declared to be disabled for
insaculation in the choice by lot for public office. This decree was
published in Bilbao to sound of drum and fife, with general popular
rejoicing, and Leguina could find no official to assist him in his work,
even his notary being disqualified for an office to which he aspired.
Then the Council of Castile intervened May 15, 1669, with an order to
Leguina to levy no fees for visiting ships, an action probably induced
by a forcible protest from the Earl of Sandwich, the English ambassador,
in which the exactions of the commissioner were represented as
infractions of the treaties of 1665 and 1667.[1370]
The serious character of the questions thus raised made an impression on
the court and led to a royal decree of July 19, 1669, informing the
Suprema that the vexations and excessive dues levied by Leguina on the
commerce of Bilbao had aroused such hatred that means must be taken to
avoid greater evils, by removing the officials and replacing them with
others who would perform their duties without arousing complaints. An
immediate answer was required to this, but the Suprema waited until
December 23d and then replied in a long consulta, insisting that Leguina
had been right from the beginning; that all laws or regulations
infringing the immunities of the Inquisition were invalid, and the mere
attempt subjected its authors to punishment. As the Suprema was
immovable, an attack was made directly on Leguina by a royal letter and
provision of the Royal Council, January 22, 1670, ordering him to
collect no fees for visiting ships and to make his visits as his
predecessors had done. When this was served upon him he made an unseemly
reply and stopped the commerce of the port until there were eighteen
ships waiting to discharge their cargoes. To overcome this, a solemn
mandate in the name of the king and queen-regent was addressed to him,
February 14th, reciting his misdeeds and ordering him to quit the
kingdom or to present himself at court under penalty of twenty thousand
maravedís. When this was served upon him by a notary, on February 23d,
he reverently placed it on his head and said he respected it as the act
of his king, but the next day he served upon the notary his
_declinatoria_ (denial of jurisdiction), stating that he was simply the
servant of the Suprema and of the Logroño tribunal, in which capacity he
had complied with the obligations of his office, and the Suprema had
never brought a charge against him, wherefore he supplicated the king to
inform himself from the Suprema as to the matters contained in these
royal provisions, which had been obtained surreptitiously, and to
recognize the justice of his reply and of his proceedings.[1371] The
authority of the Suprema evidently was superior to that of the king.
[Sidenote: _VISITAS DE NAVIOS_]
Thus baffled, the queen-regent turned again to the Suprema, with a
decree of April 1, 1670, in which she rehearsed the agreements of 1561,
1567 and 1576 as providing that no fees were to be levied; the visits
must be made in the former fashion, so as to give no occasion of
complaints of the violation of treaties, and Leguina must be removed. To
this the Suprema replied, April 24th, insisting on the necessity of the
visits; the resistance of Bilbao had proved contagious; the other ports
were refusing to pay fees, and this would extend to the whole monarchy;
the labor had to be paid for and the Inquisition had no funds for
salaries. It further explained that, in view of the hostility felt for
Leguina, the Logroño tribunal had replaced him, on January 3d, by Joan
de Zabala, who had found himself unable to act, everybody being
terrorized and refusing to assist him, so Leguina had resumed his
duties. Then, on February 14th the Council of State had intervened and
allowed the eighteen waiting ships to discharge their cargoes without
examination, which was an invasion of the jurisdiction of the
Inquisition and consequently null. At the end of February Leguina had
been replaced by Don Iñigo Zubiaur who had been well received by the
merchants--a fallacious welcome for soon afterwards it was learned that
Zubiaur, though he reduced the fees, could get no assistance; his life
was threatened and he asked to be relieved on June 20th.[1372]
It would be a weariness to follow in further detail these obscure
quarrels which were carried on with equal tenacity by both sides. A new
commissioner, Pedro de Irazagarria Butron, was succeeded by Miguel de
Jarabeytía, who were as little successful as their predecessors. At
length, on May 26, 1680, the king sent to the Suprema a protest from the
Dutch ambassador as to the detention of vessels and damage to goods for
the purpose of extorting illegal fees. This was followed, June 26th, by
another from the ambassador of France, claiming that French vessels
should be exempted, and that only packages of books should be examined.
Then, on September 4th the king transmitted one from the English
ambassador, and accompanied it by a sharp message to the effect that at
the moment it was especially desirable to avoid giving just cause of
offence to England, and that a prompt remedy must be applied. It was not
until October 22d that the Suprema replied, insisting upon the
enforcement of the visits; more books entered the port of Bilbao than
all the other ports of the kingdom combined, and since these troubles
began the visits had been so impeded that immense numbers of books of
evil doctrine were filling all the public and private libraries.[1373]
The Suprema was willing to embroil Spain with half of Europe rather than
to spend a few hundred ducats in salaries, and equally reckless was its
assertion as to the commerce in books at Bilbao. When, in 1648, it had
called for reports on the _visitas de navios_ from all the northern
ports, Commissioner Villareal stated that no books had come to Bilbao
for eight years. At none of the other ports was there any allusion made
to books, except at San Sebastian, where it was added that they rarely
came.[1374] When we recall the forty bales imported in one lot through
Bilbao for Robles of Alcalá, in 1561, we can estimate the success of the
Inquisition, during the interval, in securing the intellectual isolation
of Spain and the flimsiness of the pretext on which was based this
prolonged struggle.
Still the struggle went on, stimulated by fresh protests from the
English and French ambassadors and met by the Suprema with vociferous
assertions of the masses of heretical literature introduced into Spain.
At length, on June 12, 1681, the corregidor of Bilbao, Don Juan González
de Leon, a member of the Royal Council and judge in the Chancellery of
Valladolid, in conjunction with the General Deputies of the Señorio,
issued a proclamation imposing a fine of fifty ducats on all
shipmasters, merchants and others who should pay the fees, thus uniting
the royal and provincial authorities in resistance to the Inquisition.
The Suprema met this, July 17th, by ordering Jarabeytía to collect the
fees, in which if necessary he was to employ excommunication and collect
evidence to prosecute those who impeded the Inquisition. This was a
declaration of war, but it was accompanied with secret instructions that
he was not to seize goods but to keep a record for future use, and that
he was to lose no opportunity of reaching a compromise with the
Contratacion, which could take the shape, as formerly suggested, of a
lump sum in payment on every ship according to its tonnage.[1375] Here
the documents at my disposal come to an end, but there can be little
doubt that, on some such basis, a compromise was reached, as the
Contratacion had shown a willingness to pay a handsome sum in gross, in
the confidence apparently, that when the stimulus of fees for each
package was removed, the examinations would be nominal and the
commissioners would render their office a sinecure.
[Sidenote: _VISITAS DE NAVIOS_]
Barcelona was more fortunate than Bilbao. The opposition of the viceroy
and the intervention of the Banco Regio prevailed against the efforts of
the tribunal. In 1819 it reported that there was no trace of
commissioners ever having visited ships, except when there were Jews on
board, and that a letter of 1677 showed that visits were not made
because shipmasters would not pay the fees.[1376] Elsewhere, abuses were
rife. At Cádiz, among seafaring men, the Santo Oficio was generally
known as the Santo Ladronicio, although there and in Málaga a judicious
system of bribery was established, which removed most of the impediments
of commerce, together with the obstacles to the importation of
prohibited books.[1377] I have met with complaints about Valencia,
Alicante and other ports and, in view of the prevalence of official
venality, it may be assumed that at least many commissioners used their
virtually irresponsible power for profit either by omitting supervision
or rendering it unduly onerous.
In 1705 an elaborate digest of all previous instructions was sent to the
tribunals with orders to impress upon their commissioners the necessity
of constant vigilance to prevent the introduction of prohibited books;
not only were bales, hogsheads, casks, packages and especially packs of
playing cards to be examined, but the chests and beds of the sailors,
yet the utmost tact and dexterity were to be employed, so as to avoid
exciting the repugnance felt for these visits. If any controversy arose,
the commissioners were not to proceed judicially but the matter was to
be referred directly to the Suprema.[1378] In 1742 and 1764, there were
royal orders issued prescribing rules and fees, which have interest only
as showing the control acquired by the crown over the Inquisition.
In 1801, the Suprema called upon the tribunals for information as to
details and fees, the answer to which from Valencia indicates the purely
financial view of the matter entertained by the officials. Since the
royal orders of 1742 and 1764, it said, and for many years previous, no
visits had been made, because the fee for large vessels was eight reales
and four for small ones, while it was necessary to hire a carriage from
the city to the Grao and a boat to the ship, so the cost was greater
than the gain. In Denia the visits had been performed anciently, but for
many years they had been abandoned.[1379]
In fact, it had for the most part become simply an impost levied for the
benefit of the Inquisition on ships from foreign parts. The suppression
of the Inquisition by the Córtes of Cádiz, in 1813, was followed by a
decree stating that at almost all the sea-ports of Spain there was
collected for the Inquisition a fee known as _derecho de Inquisicion_
on all foreign vessels or those from foreign parts, and that in some
places there was further levied on all packages of books and merchandise
another fee for registration--all of which the Córtes now
suppressed.[1380]
With the revival of the Inquisition under the Restoration, the _visitas
de navios_ were naturally resumed, whenever the opposition of
shipmasters and foreign consuls permitted. Desiring to reorganize the
system, the Suprema, June 17, 1816, called for information, the
responses to which show that, at the ports of the northern coasts, for
the most part, it was maintained as far as practicable, while on the
Mediterranean shore, except in Majorca and Velez Málaga, it was in a
thoroughly demoralized condition. No visits were made to the ships.
Where they could, commissioners collected fees from vessels arriving
from foreign ports, but consuls raised objections and, when subsequently
the Suprema ordered the commissioner of Cádiz to enforce payment, he
could not persuade the consuls to assent, as they simply referred him to
their ambassadors. The matter slumbered until, in January, 1819, the
Minister of Marine addressed to the inquisitor-general a complaint from
the Hydrographic Office that it had been obliged to pay to a
commissioner eight reales for examining two cases containing articles
for it. This opened the way, and the Suprema laid before the king a long
consulta, urging a reorganization of the system and presenting an
elaborate series of regulations for his consideration, as the matter was
of immense importance to religion and the state. The scheme resuscitated
all the old details in the most rigorous form; indeed, as regards books,
it provided that the packages should be sealed with sealing-wax, the
duties were to be paid and the packages forwarded to the Suprema by some
confidential person.[1381] No more effective plan could have been
devised for preserving Spain from the contagion of foreign ideas and,
even without this, the other provisions gave to the Inquisition the
power of embarrassing largely the whole foreign commerce of the land.
The scheme is of interest as revealing the aims of the Inquisition on
the brink of its extinction. How it was regarded by the court we have no
means of knowing for, before it could be acted upon, the Revolution of
1820 put an end to the active existence of the Holy Office.
[Sidenote: _LICENCES_]
The restrictions which censorship imposed on learning and culture were
slightly relieved by the licences which were granted to possess or to
read prohibited books. In the struggle with heresy, its confutation
required that some persons should be allowed to read the works in which
it was taught, and it became customary to grant the privilege to those
whose firmness in the faith could be trusted. The bull in _C[oe]na
Domini_ of Paul III, in 1536, excommunicates all who read Lutheran books
without papal licence, showing that already licences were issued and
that the power was reserved to the pope. This power was valuable, and
the officials of the curia, to whom it was confided, were subject to
temptations which, in that age of venality, were not likely to be
resisted. Inquisitors, moreover, assumed that this was included in their
delegated apostolical faculties and undertook to issue licences, leading
to a multiplication of privileged persons which nullified to some extent
the prohibitory edicts. To remedy this, in 1547, the Suprema revoked all
such licences and forbade their future issue by the tribunals, a
provision which had to be repeated in 1549 and 1551.[1382] This still
left the papal licences in the hands of those possessing them, but these
were similarly annulled, in 1550, by Julius III, in a brief, from which
we learn that papal legates also issued them.[1383]
They speedily multiplied again, and the Suprema took advantage of the
Lutheran excitement of 1558 to procure their withdrawal. In its report
of September 9th of that year to Paul IV, it represented that many
prelates and frailes kept prohibited books, in spite of edicts and
censures, refusing to surrender them on the plea that they held papal
licences; in view of the danger thence arising to the faith, the pope
was asked for a brief revoking all such licences, ordering their
surrender under heavy penalties and authorizing rigorous prosecution of
transgressors.[1384] Paul did more than merely respond to this petition.
By a brief of December 21st, he revoked all papal licences and then, by
another of January 4, 1559, he committed the execution of this to
Inquisitor-general Valdés, who printed it in his Index of that
year.[1385]
These briefs granted to the Spanish Inquisition no power to issue
licences. So jealously was this reserved to the Holy See that, in 1574,
Gregory XIII gave a special licence to Inquisitor-general Quiroga, with
a faculty to extend it to members of the Suprema, in order to enable
them to decide cases of heresy.[1386] This caution contrasts strangely
with the favors shown to the Society of Jesus. Pius V, while yet
inquisitor-general, granted to the Jesuit General faculty to issue
licences; this was confirmed, _vivæ vocis oraculo_, by Gregory XIII and,
to establish it more firmly, he was asked to embody it in a brief which
he did, January 9, 1575, moreover releasing them from any censures or
other penalty, by whomsoever inflicted, in so far as necessary to render
the concession effective. Under this the Jesuits claimed to be
independent of the edicts of the Spanish Inquisition, but it asserted
its jurisdiction. In 1584 we find Padre Mariana applying for and
obtaining a licence, through the Toledo tribunal, to read certain
specified books--a licence which was withdrawn the same year. Still more
aggressive was its action when, in 1587, it learned that some books had
been received by the Jesuit Provincial, and the Suprema sent lists of
them to the tribunals of Saragossa, Seville and Valladolid, with orders
to examine them and detain such as they deemed proper. This assertion of
control was repeated in 1602, when the Murcia tribunal was instructed to
examine certain books belonging to the Jesuits and to return them if
found unobjectionable.[1387]
[Sidenote: _LICENCES_]
The earliest formal grant of power to the Spanish Inquisition to issue
licences would appear to have been made by Paul V early in the
seventeenth century,[1388] but it had been exercised long before. The
Index of Quiroga, issued in 1583, in its preliminary rules 3, 4, 5 and
8, assumes that inquisitors can grant written licences, but this power
was held subject to the inquisitor-general and Suprema for, in the
orders accompanying the distribution of the Index, consultation with
them was prescribed as a necessary preliminary.[1389] From some examples
of the period it would seem that only special and not general licences
were granted, and that much circumspection was used with regard to them.
Even Philip IV had no general licence until, about 1640, he wrote to
Inquisitor-general Sotomayor that he had been amusing his leisure with
Guicciardini's History, until he was told that it was prohibited. He
therefore asked for a licence to read it and other prohibited books not
treating of matters of faith, for he would not accept a licence to read
them.[1390] A curious partial licence was one granted in 1614, to Padre
Gullo Sabell (William Saville?) to read Catholic books in the English
tongue--apparently the language sufficed to render them
prohibited.[1391]
The tendency of the Spanish Inquisition to assert its independence of
Rome in matters of censorship was especially manifested with regard to
licences. When in 1622, Gregory XV and, in 1631, Urban VIII, revoked all
licences, the Suprema declared that it was not the papal intention to
interfere with the licences granted by the inquisitor-general, and that
they remained in force.[1392] The next step was to invalidate all papal
licences and accordingly, January 18, 1627, the Suprema presented a
consulta to Philip IV, representing that many persons in Spain obtained
them, and supplicating him to order his ambassador to urge the pope not
to grant them, adding that meanwhile it was deemed necessary to issue an
edict annulling them. Philip was not prepared to sanction so flagrant an
assault on papal authority, and replied that he would ask the pope to
transmit them through the inquisitor-general, but that, until the answer
was received, no innovation must be attempted. Urban took advantage of
the request to assert his supreme authority in a manner for which the
Suprema had not bargained, for he annulled all licences, both papal and
those issued by the inquisitor-general, the only exception being the one
held by the inquisitor-general himself. As all the bishops in Spain were
ordered to publish this brief, the Inquisition could not suppress it,
however humiliating it was. Cardinal Zapata accordingly published it,
February 21, 1628, requiring the surrender of all licences within twenty
days, under heavy penalties, and when he issued his Index of 1632 he
included in it the brief and his edict.[1393]
Urban pursued his victory by instructing Cardinal Mellini to write,
December 6, 1628, to Zapata defining his authority to be that of
granting licences to learned persons who furnished security that they
wished to combat heresy, but the licences were to be limited in time,
and to require the recipients to show to the Inquisition what they
wrote.[1394] This however was a failure, for no attention seems to have
been paid to the prescribed limitations. The Inquisition continued its
independent course and finally carried its point, to a certain degree,
by instructing the tribunals that, if papal licences were presented to
them, they were not to be admitted, but were to be forwarded to the
inquisitor-general for his action.[1395]
[Sidenote: _PENALTIES_]
Towards the close of the eighteenth century, Llorente tells us that
licences were difficult to obtain. When an application was made, the
inquisitor-general instituted secret inquiries as to the character of
the applicant and, if the result was favorable, he was required to state
his object and the nature of the works that he desired to consult; if
the licence was granted, it was limited to a specified number of books
in a definite branch of literature; permission to keep them was rarely
granted, and all licences excepted works directed against Catholicism,
such as the writings of modern philosophers.[1396] Doubtless this
strictness may be true of certain times, but the practice varied
according to the temper of the inquisitor-general or Suprema. There
sometimes was great laxity, if we may believe the reasons alleged, in
1747, by Prado y Cuesta, for revoking all licences, for he says that on
investigation he had found that they were not sought by men of learning,
but by the frivolous of both sexes to gratify idle curiosity; many
persons merely made a verbal request to read a single book and extended
the permission to cover all that they wanted, while others, seeing that
ignorant people were licensed, thought that the privilege was general
and availed themselves of it without asking.[1397] Licences, moreover,
were by no means so restricted in character as Llorente asserts. Some
issued by Inquisitors-general Bonifaz and Beltran cover all prohibited
books, except Machiavelli, Sarpi's Council of Trent, works assailing the
Catholic religion and obscenities,[1398] and we have seen that religious
houses generally and even occasionally individuals held licences
enabling them to purchase from estates considerable miscellaneous lots
of prohibited books, the possession of which, by deceased scholars,
shows that they too must have enjoyed similar privileges.
From the very numerous applications for licences made about this time it
appears that they were customarily addressed to the Suprema, which
referred them to the appropriate tribunal for report as to the age, the
learning and the judgement of the applicant. Under the Restoration this
inquiry was extended to his moral and political conduct, showing that
discrimination was made in favor of those whose conservative tendencies
were approved.[1399]
* * * * *
We have seen the ferocious penalties of death and confiscation provided
in the law of 1558 for unauthorized printing. With these the Inquisition
had nothing to do, as its censorship was concerned only with books after
publication, and its treatment of those who violated its rules was much
more moderate. With its jurisdiction over them it allowed no
interference, even from Rome, for, about 1565, it suppressed a papal
jubilee indulgence, because it contained faculties of absolution for
keeping prohibited books.[1400] In the Index of 1559, the penalties
threatened for reading, possessing, buying or selling prohibited books
were excommunication _latæ sententæ ipso facto_, two hundred ducats and
a menace of prosecution for suspicion of heresy and disobedience.[1401]
In the special edicts prohibiting individual books, there appears to be
no established formula. Sometimes the penalty threatened is
excommunication and two hundred ducats, sometimes excommunication and
punishment at discretion, sometimes excommunication, fine and punishment
at discretion.[1402]
This discretion manifested itself in a great variety of penalties,
moderate and severe, both as regards readers and booksellers, though the
latter appear commonly to be the more harshly visited. A rehabilitation
granted, September 28, 1647, to Luis Sanaren, bookseller of Saragossa,
infers that he had been reconciled and deprived of his civil
rights.[1403] Miguel Rodríguez, a bookseller of Madrid, for importing
and selling prohibited books, was sentenced, August 1, 1763, to
reprimand, absolution _ad cautelam_, certain spiritual penances, all
costs of trial and banishment from Madrid for six years, of which the
first three were to be spent in an African presidio. This of course
meant his utter ruin.[1404] At Logroño, in 1645, Fray Tomas de Nieva,
for teaching in his professorial chair from a prohibited book, was
condemned to grave reprimand before his colleagues, to retract certain
propositions, to four years' reclusion, and to perpetual deprivation of
teaching and of voting and being voted for.[1405] On the other hand, in
1803, Don Jacobo María de Parga y Puga, for the inveterate habit of
reading prohibited books, knowing them to be prohibited, in contempt for
many years of the authority of the Inquisition, was sentenced by the
Madrid tribunal to fifteen days' spiritual exercises and to a private
reprimand in the apartments of the inquisitor.[1406] So, in 1816, the
Suprema, acting on a _sumaria_, and without subjecting the delinquents
to a trial, sent to the Santiago tribunal a sentence on Juan Romero for
reading prohibited books and on Josef Manuel García for selling and
recommending them; they were to present themselves before the nearest
commissioner, who was to reprimand and warn them that for a repetition
of the offence they would not be treated with the same benignity.[1407]
[Sidenote: _THE SCRIPTURES_]
Cases of infraction, until a comparatively recent period, are not
frequent. After the excitement of the Reformation was suppressed,
intellectual activity in Spain seems to have been reduced to such torpor
that the forbidden fruit was little sought. In the Toledo record from
1575 to 1610 there is not a single case, nor is there one in the same
record from 1648 to 1794.[1408] In the disturbance of thought, preceding
and during the revolutionary epoch, prosecutions become more frequent,
although still not as numerous as might be expected from the importance
claimed by the Inquisition for its services. From 1780 until 1820, in
the whole of Spain, the total aggregate amounts only to three hundred
and five. During this period, from 1808 to 1815, inclusive, the
Inquisition was virtually dormant, having only five cases in all, which
would leave, for the remaining years, an average slightly under nine.
The crowding of a hundred and one cases into the six years, 1801 to
1806, reflects the urgency with which the government of Carlos IV was
endeavoring to restrict the press, and that there were twenty in 1819 is
significant of the agitation leading to the revolution of January,
1820.[1409] The slenderness of the whole record is the measure of the
success which attended the combined action of the state and of the
Inquisition in benumbing for nearly three centuries the Spanish
intellect.
* * * * *
Although censorship was instituted for the suppression of heresy and for
keeping heretical books and propositions from the people, it developed
its utility in many directions, more or less connected with its primary
object. It was inevitable that it should wage incessant warfare with the
countless editions of the Bible with Protestant notes and commentaries,
and we have seen how industriously Valdés prepared for his expurgatory
Index of the Scriptures in 1554. It was, however, the vernacular
versions that caused the greatest anxiety. Prior to the Reformation
there was practically no restriction on the circulation of the Bible in
the vulgar tongue. It is true that, in the early thirteenth century, the
struggle with the Waldenses and the Cathari, who possessed versions of
their own, led to prohibitions by Innocent III, in 1199, and by Jaime I
of Aragon in 1234, while the Council of Toulouse, in 1229, prohibited
the possession by laymen of any portion of the Bible, even in Latin, as
well as of the Breviary and Hours of the Virgin in the vernacular,
because they contained extracts. The decree of Pope Innocent became
embodied in the Corpus Juris and thus remained familiar to canon
lawyers; it was adduced in the Repertorium Inquisitorum of 1494, but
only in a kind of _obiter dictum_, showing that at that time it was
regarded as of no practical moment.[1410] Yet from the thirteenth to the
sixteenth century there was no proscription of vernacular Bibles. The
temporary causes which had led to their prohibition had passed away, and
many translations were made, especially in Germany. One in Catalan, by
Bonifacio Ferrer, brother of San Vicente Ferrer, was printed in
Valencia, in 1478, under the editorship of the Inquisitor Jaime
Borell.[1411]
[Sidenote: _THE SCRIPTURES_]
It was natural that the use made of the Bible by the Reformers should
cause the revival of these obsolete prohibitions. Even before the
compilation of the Indexes, we find Inquisitor-general Tavera granting
to the Duchess of Soma, wife of the Admiral of Naples, a licence to keep
and read a Bible in Italian, but the permission is limited to one year,
showing how carefully it was guarded.[1412] It was therefore a matter of
course that the Index of 1551 should contain a prohibition of the Bible
in Spanish or any other vulgar tongue.[1413] This zeal was intensified
by the versions which the Spanish refugees--Francisco de Enzinas, Juan
Pérez, Cipriano de Valera and Cassiodoro de Reina--perfected and strove
to introduce into Spain, but the prohibition was not confined to these.
It extended to all fragments and extracts, however orthodox the
rendering, as though to keep the unlearned ignorant of the existence of
the Bible, or at least to make them understand that it was a wholly
forbidden book. The Index of 1559 condemns twenty-two editions of the
Hours of the Virgin in Romance, together with all others containing
similar superstitions, but the real objection was the passages of
Scripture contained in them, and, in 1573, all Hours in Romance were
forbidden, as the Council of Toulouse had done in 1229.[1414] The
extreme care with which the public was guarded from the Bible is seen in
the 1583 Index of Quiroga, which, in forbidding all portions of
Scripture in Romance, only excepts the fragments embodied in the canon
of the mass, and the texts which Catholic writers may cite and explain,
provided they are not printed alone but are in sermons and other works
of edification.[1415] So unreasoning was this jealousy that, according
to Azpilcueta, there were earnest men who desired to suppress vernacular
versions of the Creed, the Paternoster, the Ave Maria and the Salve
Regina, a zeal which found practical expression, in 1674, when the
Inquisition prohibited a work entitled _Exercicios de Devocion_ because
it contained translations of the Miserere, the Magnificat, the Te Deum
and the Athanasian Symbol.[1416] The people were to be kept in such
profound ignorance that the Sotomayor Index of 1640 prohibits, not only
the vernacular Bible and all its parts, but even summaries and
compendiums of it and, as though to render it hateful, in the Edicts of
Faith, it was classed with the Koran and other Mahometan books, the
possession of which was to be denounced to the Inquisition.[1417] It had
to watch not only over its Spanish flock, but over its converts in the
Indies, when it found that the English Society for the Propagation of
the Gospel had caused versions to be made in the Indian tongues and was
circulating them in America. This unexpected missionary work called for
fresh exertion and, in 1710, we find Clement XI congratulating
Inquisitor-general Ibañez on his efforts and urging him to persistent
watchfulness.[1418]
This treatment of the Bible seems to have piqued the curiosity of the
intelligent for, in 1747, Inquisitor-general Prado y Cuesta complains of
the inordinate desire of many persons to have it in the vernacular, but,
among the mass of the people it produced the impression desired. In
1791, Villanueva tells us that they, who once sought it, now regard it
with horror and detestation; many care nothing for it and more are
ignorant of its very existence.[1419] Yet, within a decade of Prado's
utterance, the policy of the Church changed. Although, in 1713, Clement
XI, in the bull _Unigenitus_, had condemned the use of the Bible by the
laity as a Jansenist error, yet, only forty-four years later, the
Congregation of the Index, in 1757, conceded the use of vernacular
versions, if approved by the Holy See and accompanied with orthodox
comments.[1420] This was followed, in 1771, by a version of the Acts of
the Apostles by Catenacci, dedicated to Clement XIV and, in 1778, by the
brief _In tanta librorum_, in which Pius VI approved of a translation of
the whole Bible by Archbishop Martini.[1421] The Spanish Inquisition
promptly followed the papal example. In 1782, Inquisitor-general Beltran
issued a decree reciting that ample cause had existed for exceeding the
Tridentine rule, but these causes had ceased and, in view of the
usefulness of the sacred text, the Spanish rule was modified to conform
to that of Trent, to the decree of the Congregation of 1757 and to the
brief of 1778.[1422] In 1783 the Suprema ordered that the French version
of Le Maître de Saci should be freely allowed[1423] and, in 1790, there
appeared in Valencia a complete Spanish translation by Scio de San
Miguel, which was speedily and repeatedly reprinted. No such evils have
followed as were dreaded for two centuries, showing how much wiser would
have been the policy of meeting the heretic Scriptures with an orthodox
version, fortified with appropriate comments.
[Sidenote: _EXTENSION OF JURISDICTION_]
The same jealousy of admitting the vulgar to too great a familiarity
with spiritual things showed itself with regard to works of devotion and
edification. In 1570 a consulta of the Suprema to the inquisitor-general
recommended that the catechism should not be printed in Romance.[1424]
In the Preface to the Index of 1583, the prohibition of works by men of
the highest Christian repute, such as Fisher of Rochester, Thomas More,
Gerónimo Osorio, Francisco de Borja, Luis de Granada, Juan de Avila and
others is explained, partly by books having been falsely attributed to
them, partly by occasional incautious passages, and partly by their not
being fitted for circulation in the vulgar tongue. The case of the
_Obras del Cristiano_ of St. Francisco de Borja is illustrative. In the
Index of 1559 it is simply prohibited. After his death, in 1572, as
General of the Society of Jesus, Quiroga, in the Index of 1583, added
"only in Romance or other vulgar tongue." He was beatified in 1624, but
the canonization proceedings were delayed in consequence of his book
being in the Spanish Index and, in 1662, the Jesuit Procurator-general
applied to the Inquisition to rubricate the leaves of a copy and send it
to the Congregation of Rites, so as to remove the impediment, but it was
not until 1671 that he was finally enrolled in the catalogue of
saints.[1425] The effort to suppress mysticism manifested itself, about
1620, in numerous edicts to suppress books of mystic devotion and lives
of men and women who evidently were mystics.
Books of ritual were scrutinized with the same captiousness. June 15,
1568, the Pontificals printed in Dueñas and Valladolid were ordered to
be seized. In 1583 some pernicious errors were discovered in the
Breviary printed in Salamanca, in 1575. Even books so elementary as
_cartillas_, or primers, could not escape. A carta acordada of November
6, 1577, alludes to a previous one of June 14th, ordering the
suppression of cartillas containing an article entitled "Castigo y
doctrina de Caton." Since then, it goes on to say, there have been found
in other cartillas various matters pernicious and contrary to the
teaching of the Church, especially in those printed by Juan de la Plaza
in Toledo, wherefore all cartillas of every kind are to be seized, in
the shops and in the hands of children going to school, and orders are
consequently given that no one, under pains and censures, shall hold,
read, or sell them.[1426]
There was little, indeed, to which the Inquisition could not extend the
jurisdiction of its censorship. The fifth Council of Lateran had alluded
to the danger to the public peace arising from libellous attacks on
individuals, as one of the reasons for the examination and licensing of
books before printing, but this was a purely secular matter, and the
faculties conferred on the inquisitor-general looked solely to the
suppression of heresy. Clement VIII, however, in his Index of 1596,
included, as subjects of condemnation, defamatory memorials against
religion or princes, and this opened the way to much else. It is true
that an experienced writer assures us that, although such writing can be
suppressed by edict, it cannot be under pain of excommunication, but
only as a command under pain of mortal sin, and that the Inquisition
cannot proceed against the author unless the faith is involved.[1427]
These limitations, however, were easily overpassed. We have seen (Vol.
I, p. 488) how Inquisitor-general Pacheco, in 1623, condemned some legal
arguments in defence of the Chancellery of Granada and commenced
prosecutions of the counsel who had drawn them up. His successor Zapata,
in 1627, was a trifle more cautious in a conflict wherein the
Inquisition was not concerned. The Universities of Salamanca, Valladolid
and Alcalá united in an attack on the Jesuits and their new college,
when the Inquisition ordered the paper suppressed on the ground that it
was anonymous and harsh in style. Then Salamanca came forward and
acknowledged the authorship; the Jesuit procurator still asked for its
suppression, but the Inquisition decided that it had not the _calidad de
oficio_ and withdrew the prohibition, but still assumed authority to
require the removal of asperities. Philip IV was dissatisfied, as he
favored the Jesuits, and asked in what this case differed from others in
which Pacheco had suppressed similar papers.[1428]
In 1687, the tribunal of Toledo, in a quarrel with the Carthusian house
of el Paular, suppressed four memorials of its adversaries to the king,
and punished the printer, Lucas Antonio Bedmar with four years' exile
from Toledo and Madrid; the grounds alleged were that they were
scandalous, insulting, untrue and defamatory of those mentioned in them;
there was no assumption that the faith was in any way involved and it
was simply an expeditious way of putting an opponent out of court.[1429]
Other similar cases will come before us presently and meanwhile we may
observe that there was even no scruple in prosecuting individuals, in
matters with which the Inquisition seemingly had no concern or
jurisdiction, as in the case of Fray Bonifaz de San Pablo, tried in
1791, by the Barcelona tribunal, for attempting to print a satirical
paper on his own Carmelite Order, and in that of Josefa and Jacinto
López, prosecuted by Toledo, in 1797, on suspicion of having posted some
pasquinades, characterized as "infamatorios y hereticales."[1430] The
powers of the Inquisition were so elastic that they included the
privilege of self-definition; none dared to call them in question, and
it seems have been invoked to supply any deficiency in the ordinary
machinery of justice--or of injustice.
[Sidenote: _THE REGALIAS_]
Still less concerned with heresy was an important field in which the
censorial functions of the Inquisition were employed by the crown, in
its frequent struggles with the Holy See. In the middle ages papal
domination encroached in many ways on the prerogatives of the temporal
ruler, encroachments submitted to, with more or less resistance, by the
loosely organized feudal monarchies. As these, in the sixteenth century,
transformed themselves into absolutism, it was natural that they should
grow restive, and the Reformation, which divided Europe into two hostile
religious camps, gave to those sovereigns who remained faithful to Rome
the opportunity of advancing their claims as the price of their support.
The Spanish kings had always been distinguished by their resistance to
papal pretensions and though, throughout the sixteenth century, they
sternly kept their people in the Roman obedience, they were none the
less resolute in asserting the _regalías_, or royal prerogatives, which in
many ways conflicted with what Rome asserted as its rights. In the
struggles thence arising, valuable assistance was derived from the works
of legists, learned in the imperial jurisprudence and in the fueros, and
these _regalistas_ became especially obnoxious to the Holy See. Rome has
never hesitated to use the powerful aid of the Index in support of
Ultramontanism, and it took special care to condemn and prohibit the
books of the regalistas. It was impossible for a temporal sovereign to
allow the suppression of works written in defence of his sovereignty,
and the Inquisition, at least for a time, willingly supported the crown
in this, not from loyalty, but because it afforded the opportunity of
declaring and maintaining its independence of the hated Congregations of
the Inquisition and of the Index.
When Melchor Cano, in 1555, at the request of Charles V, drew up a
memoir in which he assailed, with the bitterest invective, the
pretensions of the curia, and Paul IV summoned him, as a son of
perdition, to Rome for trial, the Spanish Inquisition sided with the
sovereign and did not put the obnoxious paper in the Index.[1431]
Melchor Cano was forgiven, but the causes of dissension remained. One of
the chief of these was the jurisdiction exercised by the papal nuncio,
bringing in its train a long series of abuses, relief from which was
sought by the _recurso de fuerza_, like the French _appel comme d'abus_,
admitting appeals to the Council of Castile from all ecclesiastical
tribunals. The curia claimed this to be an invasion of clerical
liberty, and the struggle over it was long and envenomed. In 1591 Juan
de Roa printed, with a dedication to the king and the approbation of an
inquisitor, a treatise entitled "Apologia de Juribus principalibus
defendendis," arguing in favor of the royal jurisdiction in such cases,
which excited no little indignation in Rome, where it was promptly
condemned and burnt. Gregory XIV and the Roman Inquisition instructed
the Nuncio Millino to induce Philip II to follow this example, and the
succeeding Nuncio Caietano was ordered to labor with the utmost zeal to
have the very memory of the book obliterated. So far was he from success
that the Inquisition did not censure the work, and Philip rewarded the
author with presentation to a priory worth fifteen hundred ducats per
annum, of which he was promptly deprived by the nuncio, on account of
his unspeakable crimes. So bitter was the quarrel that Cardinal
Baronius, in his Annals, so far forgot the impartiality of an historian
as to introduce an indecent personal attack on Roa in his account of the
Priscillianists of the fifth century. This led to a rumor that his
volume would be condemned by the Spanish Inquisition, whereat he
complained loudly, in a letter to Padre Antonio Talpa, inveighing
against the incredible audacity of the Spanish Inquisition, which placed
on its Index whatever it chose.[1432]
[Sidenote: _INDEPENDENCE OF ROME_]
It was probably this case that led Clement VIII, in the Rules prefixed
to his Index, which have been retained in all succeeding Indexes, to
order the expurgation of whatever was contrary to ecclesiastical
immunity, liberty and jurisdiction. This did not prevent Spanish legists
and theologians from defending the regalías. About 1600, Henrique
Henríquez, one of the most learned doctors of his day, produced his "De
Clavibus Romani Pontificis" in which, like Roa, he maintained the
_recurso de fuerza_. By order of the papal nuncio, this was suppressed
and burnt so successfully that only three or four copies have
survived.[1433] That an organized government should permit within its
territory an antagonistic foreign power to suppress books defending what
it claimed to be its rights was an anomaly which could not be patiently
endured. Rome was immovable, and a clash was inevitable. In 1613
appeared the "Tractatus de cognitione per viam violentiæ" by Gerónimo de
Cevallos and, in 1617, Philip III, on learning that its condemnation was
under consideration in Rome, wrote earnestly to his ambassador to
prevent it, and declared that such condemnation would not be received or
executed in Spain. This may have delayed but did not prevent the adverse
decision, which came December 12, 1624, when Philip IV carried out his
father's threat. The Spanish Inquisition did not condemn the work, but
merely ordered some clauses altered, and its independence in the matter
of censorship was tacitly asserted.[1434]
Rome persisted, and independence was definitely asserted. In February,
1627, the Count of Oñate, ambassador to the Holy See, reported the issue
of a decree condemning books, some of which were in defence of the
regalías. In June, Philip sent this to the Suprema, asking its advice.
It replied that, when the decree should come, it would be examined and
reported to the king without allowing its publication, for no
ecclesiastic or layman in Spain could do so without orders from the
Inquisitor-general and Suprema. If such attempts were made, an
appropriate remedy would be applied.[1435] The issue promptly came. The
decree appeared, April 12, 1628, and one of the books condemned was the
"Tractatus de Regia Protectione," by Salgado de Somoza, President of the
Royal Council and a vigorous upholder of the regalías. When the decree
arrived, the king ordered the inquisitor-general to deliver it to him
and wrote to all the bishops forbidding them to publish it.[1436]
Having thus established its independence, the Inquisition refused to
recognize Roman condemnations of books of all kinds. When one was
received, it caused the book to be examined by its own calificadores and
voted on their report, either to approve or to condemn; whatever was
done was its own act and not that of Rome. Another of the works
condemned in the decree of April 1, 1628, was a book of extravagant
Mariolatry, entitled _Elucidarium Deiparæ_, by the Jesuit Juan Bautista
Poza, which had been current in Spain for a couple of years. Poza wrote
two abusive letters to Urban VIII, asserting that the Roman
Congregations had no jurisdiction in Spain, where its own Inquisition
was supreme, and, in 1632, the Congregation retorted by condemning all
his works. The Nuncio Monte made great efforts to have this published,
but the Suprema had the books examined and only prohibited them until
they should be expurgated. It was not always easy, however, to array the
bishops in opposition to the Holy See, and in Valencia the self-willed
Archbishop Acevedo claimed the right to publish the papal decree, and
the tribunal there was involved in some trouble with the episcopal
officials.[1437]
[Sidenote: _INDEPENDENCE OF ROME_]
This was speedily followed by a similar struggle over a vastly more
important book--the _Dialogo_ of Galileo, on the Copernecan
system.[1438] In a consulta of December 13, 1633, the Suprema
represented to Philip that, under the papal delegations, the Inquisition
had exclusive control over censorship in Spain. In Rome, prohibitions
were issued by the Congregations of Inquisition and Index, which were
similar bodies to the Suprema, and it did not recognize them, but only
the pope, as its superior. The nuncios were always endeavoring to extend
their jurisdiction and required to be watched to avert greater evils.
The inquisitors of Cuenca had just written that, by the nuncio's order,
the provisor had affixed to the church-doors an edict regarding a book
entitled "Galileo Galilei Fiorentino," without having first given notice
to the inquisitor-general. The results of allowing the nuncio to do this
were foreseen when the Count of Oñate reported from Rome the prohibition
of certain books defending the regalías and, as the nuncios were
continually endeavoring thus to invade the exclusive jurisdiction of the
Inquisition in matters of censorship, the king was asked to sign the
accompanying letters to the archbishops and bishops, similar to those
despatched in 1627.[1439] Of course the king signed the letters; whether
the Suprema had Galileo's book examined or not, we have no means of
knowing, but the Inquisition escaped the discredit of condemning him,
and the name of the illustrious Florentine appears nowhere in the
Spanish Indexes.
In the matter of the regalistas, Philip, in a letter of April 10, 1634,
to Cardinal Borja, pointed out the unfairness of suppressing legal works
defending his side of the controversy with the Holy See, in which the
faith was not concerned, and he ordered urgent representations to be
made to Urban VIII, with the intimation that, if Rome continued its
course, he would suppress all books supporting the papal claims.[1440]
Remonstrance was in vain. In 1640, Salgado de Somoza's "Tractatus de
Supplicatione ad Sanctissimum" was condemned; in 1642, Solorzano's
"Disputationes de Indiarum Jure" and, in 1646, six or eight similar
works, for which the nuncio was instructed to demand similar prohibition
in Spain.[1441] Imperious as was this, the act was rendered doubly
offensive by causing the condemnation to be published without
transmitting it through the Inquisition, thus disregarding the
independence claimed by the latter and the courtesy due to a friendly
government. Provocation so extreme could scarce have been ventured but
for the desperate position of Spain, battling at once with France, with
Portugal and with Catalonia. Yet Spain was not sunk so low as to submit.
After deliberation in the various councils, Philip, on October 16th,
sent to the Suprema three consultas which they had presented and ordered
it to advise him. With unusual promptitude it replied, October 20th,
expressing its unreserved adhesion to the regalías claimed by the crown,
which were founded in rights inseparable from sovereignty, in papal
bulls, and in immemorial prescription. The unlawful act of the nuncio
was of the highest prejudice; the books condemned had in no way
transcended proper limits; their authors were pious Catholics and the
works had been circulated in sight of the Inquisition, whose duty it was
to watch over such matters. The consulta ended with a promise to
suppress the papal decree and to make the fact known everywhere, so as
to avert the injury which its publication might have caused.[1442] Thus
supported by the indignation of all his advisers, Philip issued a decree
in November ordering the papal decree to be suppressed; the nuncio was
rebuked and told that the royal indignation would seek other means of
expression; the ambassador at Rome was instructed to represent the deep
resentment which was felt, and to tell the Holy See that this was not a
mere matter of opinion, in which it could interfere and dictate to Spain
about rights coeval with the crown and always uninterruptedly enjoyed.
Opportunity was also taken to reassert emphatically the independence of
the Spanish Inquisition and the nullity, without its approval, of the
acts of the Roman Congregations.[1443] Notwithstanding this, the
progressive decadence of Spain encouraged the curia to make another
attempt, in 1687, when the nuncio sent a decree of the Congregation of
the Inquisition to the bishops, with orders to publish it. The Suprema
lost no time in presenting two earnest consultas to the king, urging him
to take prompt action in repelling this attempt to subject Spain to the
Roman Inquisition.[1444]
The persistence of the curia was fruitless. The established custom,
resulting from these disputes, as described by an experienced
inquisitor, was that, when the nuncio received a brief from the
Congregations, he sent it to the Suprema, which ordered the book to be
examined by its calificadores and, if they pronounced it objectionable,
the Suprema issued a corresponding edict. Twice, he says, the nuncio, in
order to evade these rules, caused edicts to be posted in the court-yard
of his palace, but the Suprema abrogated them, punished those who did
it, and reported to the king in order that he might warn the nuncio to
observe the regulations. Sometimes, however, a brief came directly from
the pope. Then the matter was in the hands of the king, who retained it
and supplicated the pope that it should be published by the Inquisition.
In Sicily, no brief was published without receiving the exequatur of the
viceroy.[1445]
[Sidenote: _USED AGAINST THE CROWN_]
The Inquisition had thus, by supporting the royal jurisdiction against
the papal claims, achieved its independence of Rome, but it was fighting
for its own hand and, when its object was attained, its allegiance to
the Church outweighed its allegiance to the sovereign. When the question
was between its own jurisdiction and that of the crown, its attitude was
most decisive. The condemnation by Pacheco of the arguments of Don Luis
de Gubiel, in the competencia with the Chancellery of Granada, was not
an isolated instance of this. In 1637, there was a bitter controversy
between the Seville tribunal and the royal Audiencia, over the
banishment of a familiar by the latter, in the course of which the
Suprema ordered the suppression of various arguments prepared in support
of the royal jurisdiction, and among them one by Juan Pérez de Lara, the
fiscal of the Audiencia, written in the strict line of his duty. To this
the Council of Castile took exception, in a consulta complaining that it
was of great prejudice to the regalías; the paper contained nothing
contrary to the faith, rendering it liable to the censure of the
Inquisition, wherefore the Council asked that all the documents
suppressed should be examined by disinterested persons, and that the
Suprema be ordered in future not to suppress any paper in favor of the
royal jurisdiction without preliminary notice to the king. To this
temperate expostulation the Suprema replied with lofty disdain. The king
was told that he should answer all remonstrances as Charles V did, May
17, 1519, to the Diputados of Aragon--"as an affair of the Inquisition,
it is not for us to interfere, nor can the fueros of the kingdom impede
what the inquisitor-general does, as it is an ecclesiastical case." It
was astonished that there should be any question as to the power of the
Inquisition, established by papal bulls, decrees of councils and
inviolable custom, while the rule of the Index extends this power
without limitation, at the discretion of the inquisitors. That the
regalías had been threatened was easy of disproof, for the peace and
prosperity of the king's dominions were due to the unity of faith
procured by the watchful care of the Inquisition. The object of the
Council of Castile was to limit the jurisdiction of the Inquisition and
to reduce its censorship to a matter of competencias, but the
Inquisition alone could decide what belonged to it and what did not
belong.[1446]
Such being the temper and spirit of the Holy Office, it is not
surprising that, when it had secured its own emancipation from Rome, it
should no longer prove an ally of the crown in defence of the regalías.
Llorente mentions two authors--Ramos del Manzano and Pedro González de
Salcedo, whose works it condemned for defending the royal
prerogative.[1447] It could not be depended on for suppressing those
which impeached the regalías, and the State, in defending itself, was
obliged to resort to its own censorship, as in case of the work entitled
"Casos reservados à su Santidad," attributed to Doctor Francisco
Barambio, in 1694. It never appeared in the Index, but a royal auto
condemned it as subversive of the regalías and prerogatives of the
crown, and ordered its suppression under pain of half confiscation and
arbitrary penalties.[1448]
[Sidenote: _RESTRICTIONS_]
We have already (Vol. I, pp. 315, 321) seen how, in the eighteenth
century, the Inquisition, in the cases of Macanaz and the works of
Barclay and Le Vayer, and in that of the Catechism of Mesengui, took
sides against the royal prerogative. Although in the former Philip V
weakly yielded, Carlos III in the latter, not only temporarily suspended
Inquisitor-general Bonifaz, but took steps to protect more thoroughly
the crown against papal encroachment, and to limit the censorial powers
of the Inquisition. November 27, 1761, he laid down the basis of
subsequent legislation in instructions to the Council of State to frame
a law adequate to the necessities of the case. In consequence, the
_Pragmática del Exequatur_ of January 18, 1762, ordered that no bull,
brief or papal letter, addressed to any tribunal, junta, judge or
prelate, should be published without having first been presented to the
king for his approval by the nuncio, while those for individuals should
be submitted to the Royal Council to see whether they affected the
Concordat, or prejudiced the regalías or the good customs and usages of
the kingdom. This was followed by a cédula of August 18th imposing
restrictions on inquisitorial censorship, but both of these were
withdrawn by decree of July 15, 1763--a decree obtained by the royal
confessor, Padre Eleta, working on the king's superstition by
representing the loss of Havana as an evidence of divine wrath.[1449]
This respite, however, was not of long duration. At a junta called, in
1768, to consider matters growing out of the expulsion of the Jesuits,
the Counts of Floridablanca and Campomanes presented a memorial calling
attention to the surreptitious introduction of several papal briefs, and
to the disastrous influence of the censorship in flooding the land with
ignorance. The result of the discussion was the re-enactment of the
_Pragmática del Exequatur_, with more enlarged provisions, and a cédula
of June 6th providing that the Inquisition should not prohibit any work
by a Catholic of good repute, without giving him a hearing or, if he
were a foreigner or dead, without appointing for him an advocate of
competent character. The circulation of books was not to be suspended
under pretext that they were undergoing examination; in those to be
expurgated the objectionable passages were to be speedily designated, so
that the current reading of them should not be interrupted, and any
special propositions condemned were to be clearly indicated, so that
they could be expurgated by the owners. Prohibition was to be confined
to errors and superstitions and lax opinions prejudicial to religion and
morality, and no edict was to be published until it had been approved by
the king.[1450]
These reforms were in the spirit of those by which Benedict XIV, in the
bull _Sollicita ac provida_, had endeavored to soften the rigor of the
Roman censorship, but they were largely impracticable. They excited
lively opposition, especially the provision allowing the circulation of
books during the process of examination, and Llorente tells us that, for
the most part, the Inquisition eluded their restrictions. It was of
course impossible for the king to pass judgement on all the condemnatory
edicts which followed each other in rapid succession and were submitted
to him without explanation or record of the author having been heard in
his defence.[1451] This latter provision however seems to have been
observed. In 1775 we find the Suprema sending to Valencia certain
conclusions commencing "Sistema phisicum de hominis generatione,"
together with the papers concerning their condemnation and the cédula of
June 16, 1768, so that the party could be heard in defence.[1452] The
author, however, was not allowed to print and circulate his defence,
though he might have licence for enough copies to supply the members of
the Suprema; in a case in which he distributed them through the
universities they were called in and suppressed, and if he attacked the
witnesses and calificadores, he was liable to the savage penalties of
the bull _Si de protegendis_.[1453] Yet to the end the author was
entitled to a hearing. In a case occurring at Llerena, in 1816, the
Suprema instructs the tribunal to suppress a certain pamphlet in the
next edict, but it is to ask the author, Dr. Martin Batincas, whether he
desires to defend it; if so to furnish him with the censures, but not
the names of the calificadores, when the matter will take its regular
course. The provision for a defender in the cases of deceased and
foreign authors was similarly maintained. In 1816 the Suprema instructed
the Madrid tribunal to take up the case of a book entitled "El Niño
instruido," which had been suspended on account of the troubles; now a
new edition had appeared, which must be seized and a copy of the
censures be furnished to the General of the Barefooted Carmelites; if he
should not desire to put forward a defender, the tribunal was to appoint
a _defensor de oficio_. So scrupulously was this observed that, in 1817,
a single copy of a French book, printed in 1801, entitled "Du Mariage
dans ses rapports avec la Religion et avec les lois nouvelles," found in
possession of Canon Miguel Cortés, was duly condemned by calificadores
when Padre Cento was appointed to defend it and, on his refusal,
proceedings appear to have been dropped.[1454]
* * * * *
[Sidenote: _POLITICALLY EMPLOYED_]
During this later period, the Inquisition and the State were in firm
alliance, against their common enemy the Revolution, and the State made
full use of the Inquisition as a political instrument, although it had
its own elaborate and effective censorship. This employment of the
Inquisition was a new development, for in the earlier time, the
instances in which inquisitorial censorship was called upon for
political service are surprisingly few. In the case of Antonio Pérez, it
was inevitable that the Inquisition should prohibit his writings and
unauthorized accounts of his persecutions. There was less excuse for
suppressing, in 1609, Padre Mariana's volume of essays on account of his
criticism of the ruinous debasement of the coinage.[1455] There was
unworthy complaisance to the Holy See when, in 1606, the Suprema forbade
the possession by any one of the papers and memorials issued by Venice,
in its quarrel with Paul V, on the pretext of their being scandalous to
Christendom, and an even greater misuse of its power when it arrested
and prosecuted Francisco de la Cueva, a lawyer whom the Venetian
ambassador had employed to write in defence of the Republic.[1456] On
the eve of the Catalan revolt, in 1640, the protest of Barcelona to the
king was suppressed as coming under the rules of the Expurgatorio, being
seditious, insulting and scandalous, and this precedent was followed
with all writings on the subject during the revolt.[1457] On the whole,
however, throughout the first three centuries of its existence, the
political use made of the Inquisition, in this and other ways, was
wonderfully small.
It was otherwise when the upheaval came which threatened the stability
of all monarchical institutions, and nothing was more dreaded than
public opinion, which might develop into action. All the agencies at
command of the State were felt to be needed, and Carlos IV hastened to
open the way for the Inquisition by declaring, in an edict of 1789, that
all which contributed to spread revolutionary principles was heresy,
being a doctrinal error, contrary to the teachings of the Apostles Peter
and Paul, and this was speedily reduced to practice by an edict of the
Inquisition ordering the surrender of all papers coming from France and
conveying revolutionary ideas.[1458] Watchfulness on importations,
especially from France, by both royal and inquisitorial officials, was
redoubled, and for years new methods were constantly devised to keep the
population in ignorance of events beyond the Pyrenees.[1459]
It was in vain. French newspapers and books were smuggled across the
frontier, and forbidden speculations on the laws of nature and the
rights of man were widely disseminated. When the crisis came, with the
deportation of the royal family and the Napoleonic invasion, there was a
leaven of liberalism sufficient to find expression in the demand for a
new order of things. The Extraordinary Córtes, elected by universal
suffrage and assembled at Cádiz in 1810, lost no time in framing a law
for the freedom of the press. Yet the tradition of the necessity of
censorship was so strong that the decree of February 22, 1813,
suppressing the Inquisition, transferred to the bishops the jurisdiction
over censorship as well as over heresy. The law on the press had
provided a control by the State over all printing, and works on religion
were subjected to a second episcopal examination, with full power of
condemnation and suppression, while elaborate provisions were made for
an authoritative Index.[1460]
This cumbrous scheme never had vitality, and the Restoration of 1814
restored to the Inquisition its jurisdiction over the press. As soon as
it could spare time, during the labor of reconstruction, it addressed
itself to the suppression of the revolutionary literature of the
previous six years. A carta acordada of October 25, 1814, ordered the
tribunals, as speedily as possible, to notify the Suprema of all
objectionable books, pamphlets and papers that had been written or
printed in their districts, with all details as to authorship and place
of publication. From this was compiled a list of a hundred and
eighty-three prohibited publications, including thirty-five journals,
but an edict of July 22, 1815, described this as incomplete; the
faithful were referred to the rules of the Index as defining whatever
had been omitted, and all such were to be surrendered within six days,
under the traditional penalty of excommunication and two hundred ducats;
all the old regulations and Indexes were declared to be in force and, on
August 3d, each tribunal was ordered to suppress all objectionable
matter printed within its district.[1461]
[Sidenote: _POLITICALLY EMPLOYED_]
The correspondence of the Suprema, at this period, shows minute and
constant watchfulness over the press, and a large part of the labors of
the Inquisition, during its brief resuscitation, was devoted to
censorship, mostly of a political character. The Constitutionalist
refugees, who had fled from the vengeance of the reaction, were busy,
with such slender means as they could command, in propagating their
ideas, as the Protestant refugees had been in the sixteenth century, and
there was the same anxious vigilance to counteract their efforts, while
the danger was greater, for a large part of the population was known to
secretly share their views. Thus, in 1818, circulars were received in
Madrid, announcing the appearance in London of a weekly entitled _El
Español Constitucional_. Immediately the Royal Council sent out orders
to the judicial and military authorities to seize all copies, and the
Juez de Imprentas did the same to his subordinates, all of which
resulted in finding enough of the circulars to show that they had been
widely distributed. Then the aid of the Inquisition was invoked and, on
August 3d, the Suprema ordered the tribunals not only to seize all
copies but to arrest everybody concerned. Then, on September 13th, the
king reported that the wicked refugees in London, who had been, through
lack of funds, obliged to abandon the project, had recently obtained
contributions and had resumed it, wherefore fresh diligence was
enjoined. Two days later the Suprema forwarded this to the tribunals,
with orders to exert themselves in seizing the circulars and periodical
and also the accomplices in the so-called conspiracy. Again, on November
4th, the Suprema called renewed attention to its former letters and
enclosed a royal order stating that the London ambassador reported the
appearance of the second number of the journal, and insisting on every
precaution to prevent its circulation in Spain. There is no trace,
however, of any copy of the mysterious periodical being captured by the
Inquisition, or of the arrest of any one concerned. Simultaneously with
this, on November 5th, the Suprema transmitted another royal order
stating that letters intercepted in the mails contained prospectuses of
a periodical entitled "Gabinete de Curiosidades politicas y literarias
de España y Indias," to be issued in London by Gallardo, former
librarian of the Córtes. The Suprema consequently issued instructions
enjoining the utmost vigilance in seizing the prospectus and copies of
the periodical.[1462] The happy faculty of confusing the spiritual and
the temporal, so valuable to the medieval Church, had evidently not been
lost to the Spanish monarchy.
* * * * *
Although in general the Inquisition carefully abstained from intrusion
in the field of morals, yet in censorship it undertook to guard the
public from that which might contaminate virtue as well as from what
affected faith. This was justified by the rules of the Tridentine Index
as well as of that of Clement VIII, in 1596, where lascivious books and
illustrations were to be prohibited or expurgated.[1463] Literature
however largely escaped, at least until the later period. The
_Celestina_ of Francisco de Rojas, of which more than thirty editions
were printed in the sixteenth century, its popularity leading to its use
as a schoolbook notwithstanding its somewhat crude indecency, escaped
attention, until the Index of 1640 ordered the expurgation of about
fifty lines, and it was not prohibited until that of 1790.[1464]
Art attracted earlier attention, especially when its employment in
sacred subjects lacked dignity, however stimulating it might be to the
piety of the unlettered public. The first allusion I have met to this
function of the Inquisition occurs in 1568, when Inquisitor Moral, in
reporting his visitation of San Sebastian, mentions penancing Gracia de
Caldiere for possessing a _pintura deshonesta_, whereupon the Suprema
told him that he should have sent the picture to it--apparently, as a
matter of censorship, it reserved the decision to itself.[1465] The next
is a carta acordada of 1571, ordering the suppression of some figures on
linen of the Crucifixion and the Trinity, in which the calificadores had
discovered symbols of Lutheran doctrines, and a series of twelve wood
cuts of the Passion, with an epitome on the backs in Latin and
French.[1466] This is emphasized in the Expurgatory Index of Quiroga, in
1583, of which the twelfth rule is directed against all representations
of sacred persons or objects which savor of irrision or
irreverence.[1467] Spanish piety, in fact, occasionally manifested
itself in somewhat grotesque form, as in certain images on linen of the
Christ-child, in military uniforms, the suppression of which was ordered
in 1619.[1468] In 1649, the Suprema was scandalized at the great
irreverence and diabolical indecency, with a savor of sacrilege, of
ribbons which were called "bowels of angels" or "hearts or entrails of
apostles," and, under the customary penalties, it forbade asking for,
buying or selling ribbons with such names. A few weeks later it
prohibited all razors or knives on the handles of which were engraved
images of Christ, the Virgin, the saints or the instruments of the
Passion; all found in the shops were to be seized, and the commissioners
at the ports were to see that none were imported.[1469]
[Sidenote: _MORALS AND ART_]
After the more serious work of the Inquisition was accomplished, in the
elimination of Judaism, Protestantism and Islam, its energies were more
actively employed in this direction. In 1787 we find the Valencia
tribunal prosecuting Francisca Lazaro for indecent songs. In 1803 the
_Caprichos_ of Goya, the leading artist of the period, wounded
inquisitorial sensibilities; he was summoned and his prosecution was
commenced, but he was saved by the intervention of Carlos IV. Two of the
last acts of the Valencia tribunal in 1820 were proceedings against the
"Rime e Prose del Doctor Tomaso Crudeli," which it pronounced to be
obscene and impious, and the condemnation of a book called _Il
Zibaldone_, for lascivious propositions. The theatre also became subject
to inquisitorial censorship. In 1817 a tragedy entitled "La Obstinacion
de un Padre" was presented on the Valencian stage, October 9th and 10th;
it seems to have excited disapproval and, on the 13th, the MS. was
presented to the tribunal for its censure. In Madrid, the Suprema acted
as a preliminary censor; in 1815 we find it ordering the local tribunal
to examine the opera "El hombre de mal genio y buen corazon," and the
comedy "El no de las niñas" and, on the report that the fiscal had no
objection to their representation, it gave its assent. So, in 1819, the
Suprema returns to the Seville tribunal its _calificacion_ of four
_saynetes_, or farces, with orders to put it into more intelligible
shape, to vote on it and return it for final decision.[1470]
Works of art, however, were the principal objects of inquisitorial
Puritanism. In 1793, the Valencia tribunal formed a process concerning a
certain snuff-box with a scandalous picture, supposed to be in
possession of Don Jacinto de Castro, governor of the _sala del crimen_.
Solicitude for the public morals was so acute that, October 2, 1815, the
Suprema approved a decree of the Madrid tribunal, ordering all the
hairdressers of the city to remove from their windows, or alter to
decency, the wax busts which they exhibited as specimens of their
art--apparently because they made too exuberant a display of their
charms. Artists and dealers in pictures were held to a strict
accountability. But a week before the last case, the Suprema had
considered a prosecution by the Seville tribunal of Juan Rodríguez and
Domingo Alvarez of Cádiz, the former for painting and the latter for
exhibiting in his shop a picture called Diana, provocative by its
posture and nudity. They were ordered to appear before the commissioner
of Cádiz, who should reprimand and absolve them from the excommunication
incurred, and warn them that a repetition of the offence would be
visited with the penalties provided by Regla <small>XI of the
Expurgatorio--banishment and five hundred ducats fine. Six months later,
Pasqual Franchini for two _pinturas obscenas_ was fined a hundred ducats
and, as he was ordered to be set at liberty, it is evident that he had
been imprisoned; he pleaded poverty and his fine was kindly reduced.
Three months later, Santiago Schmidt and his son Josef were sentenced,
by the Madrid tribunal, for selling to the Prussian ambassador an
indecent picture for eight thousand reales; for this they were fined two
thousand reales, which the Suprema benignantly reduced to fifty
ducats.[1471]
Doubtless in this case ambassadorial privilege saved the purchaser from
prosecution, for the possession of objects regarded as immoral was
_calidad de oficio_, and the records are full of cases against those who
owned snuff-boxes, watches, packs of cards etc., with indecent figures
or inscriptions, as well as of pictures, engravings and books with
plates that offended the modesty of the censors. No doubt much of what
was condemned was thoroughly vicious and disreputable, but the resultant
purification scarce compensated for the invasion of private life and the
stimulus to the detestable habit of espionage and denunciation, through
which alone such matters could come to the knowledge of the tribunals.
Much good art, moreover, was undoubtedly sacrificed by ignorant censors,
for the objects thus condemned were destroyed. In 1805 at Valencia a
painting on copper of the Adultery of Venus was thus ordered to be
effaced, and when this was done the sheet of copper was delivered to the
alcalde del crimen, to be restored to the owner. Akin to this was the
tearing out of objectionable plates from books, which happens to be
mentioned, in 1819, in the case of Don Luis Monfort, a captain of
artillery.[1472]
* * * * *
[Sidenote: _INFLUENCE_]
Thus the censorship of the Inquisition was all-embracing, from the most
dangerous heresies of Luther and Calvin, the popularization of
Scripture, the relations between Church and State and the liberalism of
the modern era, down to the veriest trifles. It was an engine of
immense power, constantly applied for the furtherance of Obscurantism,
the repression of thought, the exclusion of foreign ideas, and the
obstruction of progress. It was accompanied by a state censorship, based
upon the law of 1558, perfected in innumerable successive regulations,
of a character most vexatious and embarrassing to authorship, and this
duplication of censors exercised a most deplorably depressing influence
on literature and culture. Authorship was discouraged by the uncertainty
whether works, on which perhaps years of labor had been spent, would
secure a licence to print; the business of publication was rendered
extra-hazardous by the fact that a book, printed with due licence from
the state, might at any moment be prohibited by the Inquisition and the
whole edition be seized and destroyed, while purchasers who had bought
such a licensed book were liable to be deprived of it without
compensation. Thus, between the state and the Inquisition, whether
working in unison or at cross-purposes, the intellectual development
which, in the sixteenth century, promised to render Spanish literature
and learning the most illustrious in Europe, was stunted and starved
into atrophy, the arts and sciences were neglected, commercial and
industrial progress was rendered impossible, and the character which
Spain acquired among the nations was tersely expressed in the current
saying that Africa began at the Pyrenees.
APPENDIX.
STATISTICS OF OFFENCES AND PENALTIES.
(See p. 93).
It is manifestly impossible to compile the statistics of inquisitorial
activity during the centuries of its existence and amid its numerous
tribunals, but some fragmentary figures may serve to illustrate the
comparative frequency of the offences with which it had to deal and the
character of the punishments which it inflicted. As regards the latter
it will be remembered that the sentences usually comprised several
penalties.
OFFENCES.
The following summary of cases acted upon by the tribunal of Toledo is
condensed from the "Catálogo de los causas contra la fe seguidas ante el
Tribunal del Santo Oficio de Toledo" (Madrid, 1903) prepared by Padre
Fresca, S. J., and Don Miguel Gómez del Campillo, from the original
records. As the earliest case is of 1483 (p. 192) and the latest of 1819
(p. 81) it would appear to cover the whole activity of the tribunal, but
it is manifestly imperfect, in view of the masses of Judaizers
reconciled and the effigies burnt of the dead and fugitives, in the
early years of the organization (Vol. I, pp. 165-72, 183). In a minor
degree this is also shown by comparison with tables below of portions of
the period from other sources. These latter also have interest as
indicating changes in the character of offences at successive periods.
The classification of Señor Gómez del Campillo is as follows: