History of the Inquisition of Spain. Henry Charles Lea

enjoyed pre-eminence over all other departments of the State and the latter were bound, whenever called upon, to lend it whatever aid was necessary. To refuse to assist it, to criticise it, or even to fail in demonstrations of due respect to those who performed its awful functions, were thus offences to be punished at its pleasure.

      Allusion has already been made (p. 182) to the oath required of officials at the founding of the Inquisition, pledging obedience and assistance, whenever an inquisitor came to a place to set up his tribunal. This was not enough, for feudalism still disputed jurisdiction with the crown, and the inquisitor was directed to summon the barons before him and make them take not only the popular oath but one promising to allow the Inquisition free course in their lands, failing which they were to be prosecuted as rebels.[869] As the tribunals became fixed in their several seats, when a new inquisitor came he brought royal letters, addressed to all officials, from the viceroy down, commanding them, under penalty of five thousand florins, to lend him and his subordinates what aid was necessary and to obey his mandates in making arrests and executing his sentences, and this was published in a formal proclamation, with sound of trumpets, by the viceroy or other royal representative.[870] This was not an empty formality. When, in 1516, the Corregidor of Logroño, the Comendador Barrientos, a knight of Santiago, ventured to assert that the familiars were not to be assisted in making an arrest the inquisitors excommunicated him and ordered him to seek the inquisitor-general and beg for pardon, which was granted only on condition of his appearance in a public auto de fe, after hearing mass as a penitent, on his knees and holding a candle, after which he was to be absolved with stripes and the other humiliations inflicted on penitents.[871] This was not merely an indignity but a lasting mark of infamy, extending to the kindred and posterity.

      OATHS OF OBEDIENCE

      As though this were not sufficient, at a somewhat later period, the officials of all cities where tribunals were established were required to take an elaborate oath to the inquisitors, in which they swore to compel every one within their jurisdiction to hold the Catholic faith, to persecute all heretics and their adherents, to seize and bring them before the Inquisition and to denounce them, to commit no public office to such persons nor to any who were prohibited by the inquisitors, nor to receive them in their families; to guard all the pre-eminences, privileges, exemptions and immunities of the inquisitors, their officials and familiars; to execute all sentences pronounced by the inquisitors and to be obedient to God, to the Roman Church and to the inquisitors and their successors.[872] In this, the clause pledging observance of the privileges and exemptions of the officials was highly important for, as we shall see hereafter, the privileges claimed by the Inquisition were the source of perpetual and irritating quarrels with the royal and local magistrates. It was an innovation of the middle of the sixteenth century, for Prince Philip, in a letter of December 2, 1553, to the tribunal of Valencia, says that he hears it requires the royal officials to swear to maintain the privileges, usages and customs of the Inquisition; this he says is a novelty and, as he does not approve of innovations, he asks what authority it has for such requirement. To this the answer was that every year, when the municipal officials enter upon their duties, they come and take such an oath and the records showed that this had been observed for a hundred years without contradiction. This seems to have silenced his objections and the formula became general. The Valencia Concordia, or agreement of 1554, simply provides that the secular magistrates shall take the accustomed oath and what that was is doubtless shown by the one taken, in 1626, by the almotacen, or sealer of weights and measures, when he came to the Inquisition and swore on the cross and the gospels to observe the articles customarily read to the royal officials and to guard the privileges of the Holy Office and defend it with all his power.[873]

      Even all this was insufficient to emphasize the universal subordination. At all autos de fe, which were attended by the highest in the land as well as by the lowest, and at the annual proclamation of the Edict of Faith, to which the whole population was summoned, a notary of the Inquisition held up a cross and addressed the people: “Raise your hands and let each one say that he swears by God and Santa Maria and this cross and the words of the holy gospels, that he will favor and defend and aid the holy Catholic faith and the holy Inquisition, its ministers and officials, and will manifest and make known each and every heretic, fautor, defender and receiver of heretics and all disturbers and impeders of the Holy Office, and that he will not favor, or help, or conceal them but, as soon as he knows of them, he will denounce them to the inquisitors; and if he does otherwise that God may treat him as those who knowingly perjure themselves: Let every one say Amen!”[874] When the sovereign was present at an auto this general oath did not suffice and he took a special one. Thus, at the Valladolid auto of May 21, 1559, the Inquisitor-general Valdés administered it to the Regent Juana and at that of Madrid, in 1632, Inquisitor-general Zapata went to the window at which Philip IV was seated, with a missal and a cross, on which the king swore to protect and defend the Catholic faith as long as he lived and to aid and support the Inquisition—an oath which was then duly read aloud to the people.[875] Thus the whole nation was bound, in the most solemn manner, to be obedient to the Inquisition and to submit to what it might assert to be its privileges.

      How purely ministerial were the functions of the public officials in all that related to the Inquisition, even under Philip V, was illustrated when, at Barcelona, in an auto de fe, June 28, 1715, a bigamist named Medrano was sentenced to two hundred lashes to be inflicted on the 30th. On the 29th word was sent to the public executioner to be ready to administer them, but the Viceroy, the Marquis of Castel-Rodrigo, forbade the executioner to act until he should give permission, holding that no public punishment should be inflicted until he should be officially notified of the sentence. There were hasty conferences and debates, lasting to nearly midnight, and it was not until 7 A.M. of the 30th that the marquis gave way and the sentence was executed. The tribunal reported the affair to the Suprema, which replied in the name of the king, diplomatically thanking the marquis and rebuking his legal adviser, who was told that it was his duty and that of all officials to be obedient to the Inquisition.[876]

      As a perpetual reminder of this subordination, there appears to have been kept in the royal chancellery the formula of a letter addressed to all viceroys and captains-general. This recited the invaluable services of the Inquisition in clearing the land of infinite heretics and preserving it from the convulsions afflicting other nations, thus rendering its efficiency one of the chief concerns of the crown. Therefore the king charges his representatives emphatically to honor and favor all inquisitors, officials and familiars, giving them all the necessary aid for which they may ask and enforcing the observance of all the privileges and exemptions conceded to them by law, concordias, royal cédulas, use and custom and in any other way, so that the Holy Office may have the full liberty and authority which it has always enjoyed and which the king desires it to retain. A copy of this was sent to all the viceroys in 1603 and, as I have chanced to find it again addressed, in 1652, to the Duke of Montalto, then Viceroy of Valencia, it was presumably part of the regular instructions furnished to all who were appointed to these responsible positions.[877]

      POWER TO CRIPPLE OPPONENTS

      In the interminable conflicts through which the Inquisition established its enjoyment of the powers thus conferred, the inquisitor was armed, offensively and defensively, in a manner to give him every advantage. He could, at any moment, when involved in a struggle with either the secular or ecclesiastical authorities, disable his opponent with a sentence of excommunication removable only by the Holy Office or the pope and, if this did not suffice, he could lay an interdict or even a cessatio a divinis on cities, until the people, deprived of the sacraments, would compel submission. It is true that, in 1533, the Suprema ordered that much discretion should be exercised in the use of this powerful weapon, on account of the indignation aroused by its abuse, but we shall have ample opportunity to see how recklessly it was employed habitually, without regard to the preliminary safeguards imposed by the canons.[878] On the other hand, the inquisitor was practically immune. His antagonists were mostly secular authorities who had no such weapon in their armories and, when he chanced to quarrel with a prelate, he usually took care to be the first to fulminate an excommunication, and then unconcernedly disregarded the counter censures as uttered by one disabled from the exercise of his functions, for the anathema deprived its subject of all official faculties. It had the contingent result, moreover, that he who remained under excommunication for a year could be prosecuted