History of the Inquisition of Spain. Henry Charles Lea

the Suprema and who early learned that, while it might disapprove of their acts, it always supported them against complaints and, while it might administer rebuke in secret, it hesitated long before it would compromise the asserted infallibility of the Holy Office by dismissal or any other public demonstration. There was no other power to call them to account and they could rely upon its indulgence. This indulgence they extended to their subordinates, over whom, indeed, they had not the power of removal, and the consequence was that the whole body thoroughly earned the detestation of the people by the abuse of their privileges, creating irritation which was none the less exasperating because its causes might be trivial. The situation finds expression in a carta acordada of October 12, 1561, in which the Suprema begs the tribunals, for the love of God, to inflict no wrong or oppression for, since they are accused when they do right, what is to be expected when they give just grounds of complaint?[1251]

      Whether just or not, grounds of complaint were never lacking. The power of the inquisitor had practically scarce any bounds but his own discretion, and the temptation to its abuse was irresistible to the kind of men who mostly filled the position. In the memorial of Llerena to Philip and Juana, in 1506, complaint is made that the officials seized all the houses that they wanted and in one case, when some young orphan girls did not vacate as quickly as ordered, they fastened up the street-door and the occupants were obliged to make an opening in order to leave it.[1252] The same spirit was shown to parties not quite so defenceless in 1642, when its exhibition in Córdova nearly provoked a disastrous tumult. There was a vacant house which Juan de Ribera, one of the inquisitors, talked of renting, but he went to Murcia without taking it. On his return he found that it had been leased to a son of Don Pedro de Cardenas, one of the veinticuatros, or town-councillors. He sent for Cardenas and asked whether he knew that he had engaged the house. Cardenas professed ignorance, adding that, if he had not moved his family into it, he would abandon it. Ribera ordered him to leave it and, on his refusal, the tribunal took up the quarrel by serving on him a notice to quit. As he did not obey, it cited him to appear and forced him to give security. His kinsmen and friends rallied around him and promised to sustain him by force; the matter became town-talk and the tribunal felt its honor engaged to sustain its commands by violence. It assembled the two companies of soldiers which it kept in the alcázar, while the caballeros armed themselves and guarded the house. The corregidor appealed to the tribunal not to drench the city in blood by exposing the poor civic militia to the swords of the gentlemen, and it consented to carry the matter to the king. The Council of Castile ordered that the tenant be maintained in possession, while the Suprema instructed the tribunal not to yield a jot, but to eject him by whatever means it could.[1253] What was the outcome does not appear, but the case illustrates the extent to which the Inquisition magnified its powers and the determination with which it employed them.

      ABUSES

      It was impossible to prevent these lawless abuses. The Suprema might scold and threaten but, as it rarely punished and always protected the offenders, its restraining efforts amounted to little. The visitadores, or inspectors, duly reported disorders, and instructions would be issued to reform them, but to these the inquisitors paid little respect. There is no reason to suppose that the Barcelona tribunal was worse than any other and a series of reports of visitations there gives us an insight into the evils inflicted on the people. In 1544, Doctor Alonso Pérez sent in a report in consequence of which the Suprema roundly rebuked all the subordinates, except the judge of confiscations. All but two were defamed for improper relations with women; all accepted presents; all made extra and illegal charges; all neglected their duties and most of them quarrelled with each other. The fiscal was especially objectionable for his improper conduct of prosecutions and for appropriating articles belonging to the tribunal; he refused to pay his debts; he arrested a candle-maker for not furnishing candles as promptly as he demanded; when a certain party bought some sheep from a peasant and was dissatisfied with his bargain, the fiscal cited the peasant, asserted that the purchase money was his and forced the peasant to take back the sheep and return the money. Yet the Suprema was too tender of the honor of the Holy Office to dismiss a single one of the peccant officials. It ordered them to be severely reprimanded, a few debts to be paid and presents to be returned and uttered some vague threats of what it would do if they continued in their evil courses.[1254]

      The natural result of this indulgence appears in the next visitation by the Licenciado Vaca, in 1549. The same abuses were flourishing, with the addition that the inquisitor, Diego de Sarmiento, had accepted the position of commissioner of the Cruzada indulgence and had appointed as its preachers and collectors the commissioners and familiars of the tribunal, to the great oppression and vexation of the people, whose dread of the Holy Office prevented complaints. Sarmiento was dismissed in 1550, but in 1552 he was reappointed to Barcelona; the fiscal and notary, who were specially inculpated, were suspended for six months and the gaoler, for ill-treatment of prisoners, was mulcted in one month’s wages.[1255] In 1561 another visitation was made by Inquisitor Gaspar Cervantes, whose report was exceedingly severe on the disorders of the tribunal and drew from the Suprema an energetic demand for their reform.[1256] This produced no amendment, the tribunal went on undisturbed until the complaints of the Córtes of 1564 led to another and more searching investigation by de Soto Salazar, in 1566. There were not only abuses of all kinds in the trials of heresy but numerous cases in which, as the Suprema told them, they had no jurisdiction. Apparently they were ready to put their unlimited powers at the disposal of all comers and imprisoned, fined and punished in the most arbitrary manner, gathering fees, commissions and doubtless bribes and selling injustice to all who wanted it, while the dread of their censures prevented opposition or remonstrance. In these cases which were not of faith, the accused were often seized in the churches, where they had sought asylum, as though they were wanted for heresy and the repeated instances in which the Suprema orders their names stricken from the records points to one of the most cruel results of this reckless abuse of jurisdiction, for it inflicted on the sufferer, his kindred and posterity, an infamy unendurable to the Spaniard of the period. The long and detailed missive which the Suprema addressed to the tribunal, as the result of Salazar’s report, gives a most vivid inside view of the abuses naturally springing from unrestrained autocracy, which, by the absolute and impenetrable secrecy of its operations, was relieved from all responsibility to its victims or to public opinion. The Suprema takes every official in turn, from inquisitors down to messengers, specifies their misdeeds and scores them mercilessly, showing that the whole organization was solely intent on making dishonest gains, on magnifying its privileges and on tyrannizing over the community, while the defence of the faith was the baldest pretext for the gratification of greed and evil passions. Yet all this was practically regarded as quite compatible with the duties of the Inquisition. The three inquisitors, Padilla, Zurita and Mexia, were suspended for three years and were then sent to repeat their misdeeds elsewhere and the two former were in addition fined ten ducats apiece.[1257] That an institution possessing these powers and exercising them in such fashion, should be regarded with terror and detestation was inevitable. We shall see hereafter how it shrouded all its acts in inviolable secrecy and how it rightly regarded this as one of the most important factors of its influence, and we can understand the mysterious dread which this inspired, while, at the same time, it released the inquisitor and his subordinates from the wholesome restraint of publicity.

      ABUSES

      The smothered hostility thus excited was always ready for an explosion when opportunity offered to gratify it. In the desire to stimulate the breeding of horses, a royal pragmática, in 1628, prohibited the use of mules for coaches. The inquisitors of Logroño, in the full confidence that no one would venture to interfere with them, persisted in driving with mules and when the corregidor, Don Francisco Bazan, remonstrated and threatened to seize a coach, they told him it would be his ruin. He did not venture, but, in 1633, he procured from the Council of Castile an order that no coaches should be used in Logroño, under pretext that they damaged certain shops projecting on the principal street. The fiscal of the tribunal undertook to meet this by asserting that it had a special privilege from the king concerning coaches, but when Bazan promised to obey, it was not forthcoming. The Suprema took up the quarrel and represented to Philip IV the hardship inflicted on the inquisitors, too old and feeble for the saddle; the compassionate king endorsed on the consulta the customary formula of approval—“I have so ordered”; the Suprema then applied to the Council of Castile for a corresponding order and several communications