History of the Inquisition of Spain. Henry Charles Lea

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СКАЧАТЬ first registering a protest that it was without prejudice to their privileges and exemptions. This continued until 1668, when suddenly, on June 19th, the fiscal of the tribunal summoned the collectors of the sisa del corte to pass freely, within twenty-four hours, the cloth cut for the garments of Benito Sanguino, the alcalde mayor, under pain of five hundred ducats. On the 21st the syndics of the city and the collectors interjected an appeal to the king, in spite of which the next day the mandate was repeated, this time giving twelve hours for obedience and adding excommunication to the fine. Another appeal was interposed and the regent of the Audiencia applied for a competencia, or orderly method of settling disputes, as provided in the Concordia, but notwithstanding this the next day the excommunications were published and the names of the collectors were affixed to the doors of the cathedral as under the anathema of the Church.[918] The final outcome is of little moment; the interest of the affair lies in its illustration of the persistence of the Inquisition and the violence of its methods.

      In this respect the case is not exceptional. The formularies of the Inquisition contained a full assortment of arbitrary mandates which it employed, in place of seeking the legal courses prescribed in the Concordias, by which the king and the Córtes sought to preserve the peace. One of these, drawn in the name of the tribunal of Llerena, addressed to the governor and magistrates, recites that complaint has been made of the imposition on officials and familiars of a new octroi on meat and proceeds to assert that, by immemorial custom and royal cédulas, the commissioned officials are exempted from paying any taxes, excise, imposts and assessments, whether royal or local or otherwise; the magistrates are commanded within two hours to desist from the attempt, under pain of major excommunication and a fine of a hundred thousand maravedís for the governor or his deputy and of fifty thousand for subordinates, with the threat, in case of disobedience, of prosecution with the full rigor of law. Moreover the secretary or notary of the city is ordered within the two hours to bring to the tribunal and surrender all papers concerning the assessment on the officials, under pain of excommunication and ten thousand maravedís.[919] Such were the peremptory commands habitually employed, the arrogance of which rendered them especially galling.

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      Not only were these fulminations ready for use when the case occurred, but there were formulas drawn up in advance to prevent any attempted infraction of the privileges claimed by the officials. Thus this same collection has one addressed to the corregidor and magistrates of a town where a fair is to be held, reciting that an official of the tribunal proposes to send thither a certain number of cattle bearing his brand, which he swears to be of his own raising and, as he is exempt from paying alcavala, tolls, ferriages, royal servicio and all other assessments and dues and, as he fears that there may be an attempt to impose them, therefore all officials and collectors are ordered, under pain of major excommunication and two hundred ducats, to abstain from all such attempts, with threats of further punishment in case of disobedience.[920] The enormous advantage which the official thus possessed is plain, as well as the door which it opened to fraud. That the claim was groundless appears by a memorial presented to the Suprema in 1623, in response to a call by Inquisitor-general Pacheco on his colleagues for suggestions as to the better government and improvement of the Inquisition—a remarkable paper to which reference will frequently be made hereafter. On this point it states that, in some tribunals, the officials are exempted from paying the alcavala on the products of their estates, while in others they are not. In some, a portion of the officials have dexterously secured exemption, while others have been compelled to pay, by judicial decision, as there is no basis for such claims. If there is no right or privilege of exemption, it is not seen how the officials can conscientiously escape payment, or how the inquisitors can defend them in evading it, besides the numerous suits thence arising which occupy the time of the tribunals. To cure this it is suggested that the king grant exemptions to all, for there are not more than two or three in each tribunal to be thus benefited.[921] This suggestion was not adopted, but the claim was persisted in with its perpetual exasperation and multiplicity of litigation.

      The large numbers of the unsalaried officials, especially the familiars, rendered the question of their exemption of considerably greater importance. They had no claim to it, but they were persistently endeavoring to establish the right and for the most part they were supported by the tribunals in the customary arbitrary fashion. In the futile Concordia of Catalonia in 1599, it was provided that levies and executions for all taxes and imposts could be made on familiars and commissioners by the ordinary officers of justice. In the memorial to Clement VIII asking for the disallowance of this Concordia, the Suprema proved learnedly, by a series of canons from the fourth Council of Lateran down, that the cruce-signati (whom it claimed to correspond with the modern familiars) were exempt. It even had the audacity to cite the Concordia of 1514, which in reality denied their exemption, and it assumed with equal untruth that this was the universal custom in Spain.[922] Yet, in a consulta of December 30, 1633, the Suprema tacitly excluded the unsalaried officials when it argued that there were not, exclusive of ecclesiastics, more than two hundred officials in Spain entitled to the exemption.[923]

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      Still, the Inquisition fought the battle for the unsalaried officials with as much vigor as for the salaried. In 1634 the levying of a few reales on a familiar of Vicalvero, on the occasion of the voyage to Barcelona of the Infante Fernando, was resisted with such violence by the tribunal of Toledo, that finally the king had to intervene, resulting in the banishment and deprival of temporalities of a clerical official and the summoning to court of the senior inquisitor.[924] In 1636, Philip IV, to meet the extravagant outlays on the palace of Buen Retiro, levied a special tax on all the towns of the district of Madrid. In Vallecas the quota was assessed on the inhabitants, among whom was a familiar who refused to pay, when the local alcaldes levied upon his property. He appealed to the Suprema which referred the matter to the tribunal of Toledo and it arrested the alcaldes and condemned them in heavy penalties. Then the Alcaldes de Casa y Corte, the highest criminal court, intervened and arrested the familiar, whereupon the Suprema twice sent to the Sala de los Alcaldes, declaring them to be excommunicated, but the bearer of the censure was refused audience. On this the Suprema, with the assent of the Council of Castile, sent a cleric to arrest the alcaldes and convey them out of the kingdom, and on March 12th, in all the churches of Madrid, they were published as excommunicate and subject to all the penalties of the bull in Cœna Domini.[925] What was the outcome of this the chronicler fails to inform us, but the Council of Castile took a different view of the question when, in 1639, one of its members, Don Antonio Valdés, who had been sent to Extremadura as commissioner to raise troops, was publicly excommunicated by the tribunal of Llerena because, in assessing contributions for that purpose, he had not exempted its officials and familiars. The Council thereupon appealed to Philip, who ordered the decree expunged from the records and that a copy of the royal order should be posted in the secretariate of the tribunal.[926]

      Yet it was about this time that the claim in behalf of unsalaried officials seems to have been abandoned, for, in 1636, 1643 and 1644 the Suprema issued repeated injunctions that in the existing distress the royal imposts and taxes must be paid. In 1646 it ordered the tribunal of Valencia not to defend two familiars in resisting payment and in the same year the Córtes of Aragon gained a victory which subjected them to all local charges.[927]

      With the advent of the Bourbons the salaried officials found a change in this as in so much else. In the financial exigencies of the War of Succession they were subjected to repeated levies. Philip V called upon them for five per cent. of their salaries and then for ten per cent. to which they were forced to submit. In 1712 a general tax was laid of a doubloon per hearth, which was assessed in each community according to the wealth of the individual. There were no exemptions and appeals were heard only by the provincial superintendents of the revenue. The sole concession obtained by the Suprema was that, where officials of the Inquisition were concerned, the local tribunal could name an assessor to sit with the superintendent and it warned the tribunals that any interference with the collection would be repressed with the utmost severity.[928] Salaries, however, were held to be subject only to demands from the crown for, when Saragossa in 1727 endeavored to include them in an assessment for local taxation, Philip, in response СКАЧАТЬ