History of the Inquisition of Spain. Henry Charles Lea

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СКАЧАТЬ were both desirous of the support of the Conversos and thus the question of the Córdovan prisoners attained national importance as one on which all parties took sides. Ximenes, the Duke of Alva and the Constable of Castile, the heads of Ferdinand’s party, held a conference at Cavia and listened to the complaints against Deza, for which they promised to find a remedy. The friends of the prisoners, however, seemed more inclined towards the faction of Maximilian; they offered money to defray the expenses of troops to be sent to Spain to resist Ferdinand’s return and it was currently rumored that four thousand men were gathered in a Flemish port ready to embark. It is not easy to penetrate the secret intrigues culminating in the settlement which gave the regency to Ferdinand, but Ximenes, who represented him, took advantage of the situation, with his usual skill, to further his own ambition, which was to gain the cardinal’s hat and Deza’s position as inquisitor-general.[561] For the former of these Ferdinand had made application as early as November 8, 1505, and had repeated the request October 30, 1506; it was granted in secret consistory, January 4, 1507, and was published May 17th.[562] For the latter, the complaints of the Conversos afforded substantial reasons; we have seen that Córdova had petitioned the pope to commission Ximenes as its judge and his appointment would help to pacify the troubles. Ferdinand at length recognized that Deza’s sacrifice was inevitable, and the way was made easy for him, as he was allowed to resign. On May 18th Ferdinand writes to Ximenes from Naples that he had received Deza’s resignation and had taken the necessary steps to secure for him the succession; he has two requests to make—that he shall foster piety and religion by appointing only the best men and that he shall exercise the utmost care that nothing shall be allowed to impair Deza’s dignity.[563] The commission as inquisitor-general was duly issued on June 5, 1507.

      LUCERO’S VICTIMS RELEASED

      The hatred excited by Lucero had been too wide-spread and the friends of the prisoners were too powerful to be satisfied with the mere substitution of Ximenes for Deza, and there was evidently an understanding that the matter was not to be dropped. As early as May 1st, Peter Martyr writes that it is reported that the imprisoned witnesses, corrupted by Lucero, are to be released and that he will expiate with due punishment his unprecedented crimes.[564] Some such promise was probably necessary for the pacification of the land, but the delay in its performance is significant of protection at the fountain-head of justice. It assumed at first the shape of an action brought by the chapter and city of Córdova before the pope, charging Lucero with the evil wrought by his suborning some witnesses and compelling others by punishment to testify that the plaintiffs were heretics. Julius II commissioned Fray Francisco de Mayorga as apostolic judge to try the case, and, on October 17, 1507, he decreed that Lucero be imprisoned and held to answer at law. Nothing further was done, however, and the impatient citizens addressed a memorial to Queen Juana, asking her to send some one to inform himself about it and report to her.[565] The action of the apostolic judge seems to have been regarded as a mere formality; the months passed away and it was not until May 18, 1508, that the Suprema took independent cognizance of the matter, when Ximenes and his colleagues, except Aguirre, all voted that Lucero should be arrested.[566] Peter Martyr intimates more than once that numbers of the Suprema were suspected of complicity with Lucero and assures us that the Council did not act without thorough investigation of numerous witnesses and interminable masses of documents, revealing an incredible accumulation of impossible and fantastic accusations contrived to bring infamy on all Spain.[567]

      It was apparently the first time that an inquisitor had been thus publicly put on trial for official malfeasance and the opportunity was improved to render the spectacle a solemn one, fitted not only to satisfy the national interest felt in the case but to magnify the office of the accused by the scale of the machinery employed to deal with him. Lucero was carried in chains to Burgos, where the court was in residence, and was confined in the castle under strict guard. Ximenes assembled a Congregacion Católica, composed of twenty-one members besides himself, including a large portion of the Royal Council, the Inquisitor-general of Aragon and other inquisitors, several bishops and various other dignitaries—in short, an imposing representation of the piety and learning of the land.[568] After numerous sessions, presided over by Ximenes, sentence was rendered July 9, 1508, and was published August 1st, at Valladolid, whither the court had removed, in presence of Ferdinand and his magnates and a great concourse assembled to lend solemnity to this restoration of the honor of Castile and Andalusia, which had been so deeply compromised by the pretended revelations extorted by Lucero. This weighty verdict declared that there were no grounds for the asserted existence of synagogues, the preaching of sermons and the assemblies of missionaries of Judaism or for the prosecution of those accused. The witnesses—or rather prisoners—were discharged and everything relating to these fictitious crimes was ordered to be expunged from the records. To complete the vindication of the memory of the victims, Ferdinand ordered the rebuilding of the houses which had been torn down under the provisions of the canon law requiring the destruction of the conventicles of heresy.[569] By implication, the acquittal of the prisoners convicted Lucero, but all this was merely preliminary to his trial.

      REACTION—ESCAPE OF LUCERO

      Ferdinand’s hand had been forced; he had been obliged to yield to public opinion, but his resolve was inflexible to undo as far as he could the results reached by Ximenes. In October he visited Córdova, where he rewarded some officials of the tribunal by grants out of the confiscated estates, which should have been restored when the proceedings were annulled. It is true that the judge of confiscations, Licenciado Simancas, was suspended, but in November, 1509, he was ordered to resume his functions and to act as he had formerly done. We happen to know that, in 1513, the house of the unfortunate Bachiller Membreque was still in possession of the Inquisition. There was no relief for those who had suffered. When the new inquisitor, Diego López de Cortegano, Archdeacon of Seville, revoked Lucero’s sentence on the Licenciado Daza, who had been penanced and his property confiscated, the purchasers who had bought it complained to Ferdinand and he expressed his wrath by promptly dismissing the inquisitor and ordering all the papers in the case to be sent to the Suprema for review and action. The vacancy thus created was not easy to fill, for when, in September, 1509, Ferdinand offered the place to Alonso de Mariana he declined, saying that it would kill him, but he agreed to take the tribunal of Toledo, and it was not until February, 1510, that the Licenciado Mondragon was transferred from Valladolid to take Cortegano’s place. In fact, the interests involved in the confiscations were too many and too powerful for the victims to obtain justice. Martin Alonso Conchina had been condemned by Lucero to reconciliation and confiscation; when the pressure was removed he revoked his confession as having been extorted by threats and fear, whereupon the confiscated property was placed in sequestration awaiting the result. Unluckily for him one of the items, a ground-rent of 9000 mrs. a year had been given, in April, 1506, to the unprincipled secretary Calcena, with the result that one of the new inquisitors, Andrés Sánchez de Torquemada, promptly arrested Conchina, tried him again, convicted him and sentenced him to perpetual imprisonment, so that the confiscation held good and the ground-rent, with all arrears, was confirmed to Calcena by a royal cédula of December 23, 1509. There seems to have still been some obstacle to this reaction in the episcopal Ordinary, Francisco de Simancas, Archdeacon of Córdova for, in February, 1510, Ferdinand wrote to the bishop that, without letting it be known that the order came from the king, he must be replaced with some one zealous for the furtherance of justice and, a month later, this command was peremptorily repeated. It is true that the extravagant wickedness of Lucero was scarce to be dreaded, but, with a tribunal reconstructed under such auspices, the people of Córdova could not hope for justice tempered with mercy and its productive activity is evidenced by the large drafts made, in 1510, on its receiver of confiscations. We may assume that Ximenes looked on this with disfavor for, in a letter to Ferdinand, after his return from the expedition to Oran in 1509, he supplicates that the decision of the Congregation be maintained for he has never infringed it and never intends to do so.[570]

      As for the author of the evil, Lucero himself, he was sent in chains to Burgos with some of his accomplices. Ximenes, as inquisitor-general, had full power, as we have seen, to dismiss and punish them but, for some occult reason, a papal commission for their trial was applied for. This caused delay under which Ferdinand chafed, for he wrote, September 30, СКАЧАТЬ