History of the Inquisition of Spain. Henry Charles Lea

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СКАЧАТЬ law. Until the close of the eighteenth century the tribunal thus successfully defied the Real Junta de Policia, consisting of the captain-general, the regente and other high officials. At length, in 1783, Carlos III issued a royal declaration that no one should be exempt from obedience to orders of police and good government and that all such cases should be adjudicated by the ordinary courts without admitting the competencias with which the Holy Office habitually sought to tire out those who ventured to withstand its aggressiveness. Under this, in 1791, the nuisance in Valencia was abated, when the tribunal apologized to the Suprema for yielding and excused itself in virtue of the royal declaration of 1783. It had held out as long as it could, but times had changed and even the Inquisition was forced to respect the law.[893] Madrid had been earlier relieved from such annoyance, for a royal cédula of 1746, regulating the police system of the capital, has a clause evidently directed at the Inquisition for it declares that no exemption, even the most privileged, shall avail in matters concerning the police, the adornment and the cleanliness of the city.[894]

      INVIOLABILITY

      The lawlessness thus fostered degenerated into an arbitrary disregard of the rights of others, leading to a petty tyranny sometimes exercised in the most arbitrary and capricious manner. Inquisitor Santos of Saragossa was very friendly with the Licenciado Pedro de Sola, a beneficed priest of the cathedral, and Juan Sebastian, who were good musicians and who gathered some musical friends to sing complins with them on Holy Saturday at Santa Engracia, where the inquisitors spent Holy Week in retreat. Santos used to send his coach for them and entertain them handsomely, but when, in 1624, he became Bishop of Solsona, although the singing continued, the coach and entertainment ceased and the musicians went unwillingly. Finally, in 1637, some of them stopped going; the inquisitors sent for them and scolded them which made them all indignant. Then, in 1638, the secretary Heredia was sent to order them to go and when the chapel master excused them, with an intimation that they ought to be paid, Heredia told them the tribunal honored them sufficiently in calling for them. They did not go and, when Easter was over, two of them, beneficed priests, were summoned and, after being kept waiting for three hours, were imprisoned in a filthy little house occupied by soldiers and were left for twelve hours without bedding, food or drink. The next day they managed to communicate with the chapter, but it was afraid to interfere and, after six days of this confinement, they were brought before the tribunal and informed that they had the city for a prison, under pain of a hundred ducats, and were made to swear to present themselves whenever summoned. As they went out they saw two more brought in—the chapel-master and a priest. At last the chapter plucked up courage to address a memorial to the king through the Council of Aragon, which added the suggestion that he should order the inquisitor-general to see to the release of the musicians and the prevention of such extortion. May 11th Philip referred this to the Suprema which, after a month’s delay, replied, June 14th, that, desiring to avoid controversy with the church of Saragossa, it had ordered the tribunal to pay the musicians in future, to release any that were in prison and to return whatever fines had been imposed.[895] When petty tyranny such as this could be practised, especially on the privileged class of priests, we can appreciate the terrorism surrounding the tribunals.

      Another distinction contributed to the supereminence claimed by the Inquisition—the inviolability which shielded all who were in its service. From an early period the Church had sought to protect its members, whose profession was assumed to debar them from the use of arms, by investing them with a sanctity which should assure their safety in an age of violence. Throughout the middle ages no canon was more frequently invoked than Si quis suadente diabolo, which provided that whoever struck a cleric or monk incurred an anathema removable only by personal appearance before the pope and accepting his sentence.[896] More than this was asked for by the Inquisition, for the greater portion of its officials were laymen. They were no more exposed to injury or insult than those of the secular courts, but it was assumed that there was a peculiar hatred felt for them and that their functions in defending the faith entitled them to special security. We shall see hereafter that the Inquisition obtained jurisdiction in all matters connected with its officials, but this, while enabling it to give them special protection, had the limitation that judgements of blood rendered ecclesiastics pronouncing them “irregular.” In cases of heresy this had long been evaded by a hypocritical plea for mercy, when delivering convicts to the secular arm for execution, but it was felt that some special faculties were requisite in dealing with cases of mere assault or homicide and a motu proprio was procured from Leo X, January 28, 1515, empowering inquisitors to arrest any one, even of the highest rank, whether lay or clerical, who strikes, beats, mutilates or kills any minister or official of the Inquisition and to deliver him to the secular arm for punishment, without incurring irregularity, even if it results in effusion of blood.[897] The Holy Office thus held in its own hands the protection of all who served it.

      This was rendered still more efficient by subsequent papal action. Irritated at some resistance offered to the Roman Inquisition, Pius V published, April 1, 1569, the ferocious bull Si de protegendis, under which any one, of whatever rank, who should threaten, strike or kill an officer or a witness, who should help a prisoner to escape or make way with any document or should lend aid or counsel to such act, was to be delivered to the secular judge for punishment as a heretic—that is to say, for burning—including confiscation and the infamy of his children.[898] Although this was intended for Italy, the Spanish Inquisition speedily assumed the benefit of it; it was sent out October 16th and it was annually published in the vernacular on Holy Thursday.[899]

      INVIOLABILITY

      Thus all concerned in the business of the Holy Office were hedged around with an inviolability accorded to no other class of the community. The inquisitors themselves were additionally protected against responsibility for their own malfeasance by the received theory that scandal was more to be dreaded than crime—that there was inherent in their office such importance to religion that anything was better than what might bring that office into contempt. Francisco Peña, in treating of this, quotes the warning of Aquinas as to cardinals and applies it to the punishment of inquisitors; if scandal has arisen, they may be punished; otherwise the danger to the reputation of the Holy Office is greater than that of impunity to the offender.[900] The tenderness, in fact, with which they were treated, even when scandal had arisen, was a scandal in itself. Thus, when the reiterated complaints of Barcelona caused a visitation to be made there, in 1567, by de Soto Salazar, and his report confirmed the accusations, showing the three inquisitors to be corrupt, extortionate and unjust, the only penalty imposed, in 1568, was merely suspension for three years from all office in the Inquisition. Even this was not enforced, at least with regard to one of them, Dr. Zurita, for we chance to meet him as inquisitor of Saragossa in 1570. He does not seem to have reformed, for his transfer thence to Sardinia, the least desirable of the tribunals, can only have been in consequence of persistent misconduct.[901] The tribunals naturally showed the same mercy to their subordinates, whose sole judges they were, and this retention in office of those whom unfitness was proved was not the least of the burdens with which the Inquisition afflicted Spain.

      What rendered this inviolability more aggravating was that it extended to the servants and slaves of all connected with the Holy Office. About 1540 a deputy corregidor of Murcia, for insulting a servant of the messenger of the tribunal, was exposed to the infamy of hearing mass as a penitent.[902] In 1564, we find Dr. Zurita, on circuit through his district, collecting evidence against Micael Bonet, of Palacio de Vicio, for caning a servant boy of Benet Modaguer, who held some office in the Inquisition, and the case was sent to Barcelona for trial, which shows that it was regarded as serious. So, in 1568, for quarrelling with a servant of Micer Complada, who styled himself deputy of the abogado fiscal at Tarragona, the Barcelona tribunal, without verifying Complada’s claims to office, threw into prison Gerónimo Zapata and Antonio de Urgel and condemned Zapata to a fine of thirty ducats and six months’ exile and Urgel to ten ducats and three months.[903] In Murcia, Sebastian Gallego, the servant of an inquisitor, quarrelled with a butcher over some meat, when they exchanged insults. The secular judge arrested both but the tribunal claimed them, prosecuted the butcher and banished him from the town.[904] Such cases were of frequent occurrence and it is easy to conceive how galling was the insolence of despised class thus СКАЧАТЬ