History of the Inquisition of Spain. Henry Charles Lea

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      For two centuries the Inquisition had been accustomed to obey or to disregard the royal decrees at its pleasure and to tyrannize over the local authorities. The habit was not easily broken and it was hard to conform itself to the new order of things. A formulary of about 1740 contains a letter to be sent to magistrates granting billets on familiars, couched in the old arrogant and peremptory terms and threatening excommunication and a fine of two hundred ducats. Familiars, it says, are not to furnish quarters and beasts of burden, except in extreme urgency when no exemptions are permitted, and this it assumes to be in accordance with the royal decrees, including the latest one of November 3, 1737.[972] I can find no trace of a decree of 1737 and we may assume that it was this obstinacy of the Inquisition that induced Philip, in 1743, to reissue his decree of 1728 with an expression of regret at its inobservance and the disastrous results which had ensued; he added that, when the houses of the non-exempt were insufficient for quartering troops, they could be billeted on hidalgos and nobles.[973]

      BEARING ARMS

      The Inquisition still adhered to its claims, but Carlos III taught it to abandon its comminatory style. When, in 1781, the authorities of Castellon de la Plana billeted troops on familiars, the Valencia tribunal adopted the more judicious method of persuading the captain-general that they were to be classed with hidalgos and he issued orders to that effect. This did not please Carlos III, who brushed aside the claim to exemption by a peremptory order that the familiars of Castellon de la Plana should subject themselves to the local government in the matters of billets and that there should be no change until he should issue further commands.[974]

      This would seem in principle to abrogate all claims to exemption, but Spanish tenacity still held fast to what it had claimed and, in 1800, when José Poris, a familiar of Alcira, complained that the governor had quartered on him an officer of the regiment of Sagunto, the Valencia tribunal took measures for his relief.[975] The times were adverse to privilege, however, and in 1805 the Captain-general of Catalonia sent a circular to all the towns stating that familiars were not exempt. The magistrates accordingly compelled them to furnish quarters and beasts of burden, and, when the tribunal complained to the captain-general and adduced proofs in support of its claims, he responded with the decrees of 1729 and 1743, which he assumed to have abrogated the exemption and he continued to coerce the familiars. The same process was going on in Valencia and, when that tribunal applied to Barcelona for information and learned the result, it ordered its familiars to submit under protest. Then followed a royal cédula of August 20, 1807, limiting strictly what exemptions were still allowed; the Napoleonic invasion supervened and under the Restoration I have met with no trace of their survival.[976]

      Another privilege which occasioned endless debate and contention was the right of officials and familiars to bear arms, especially prohibited ones. This was a subject which, during the middle ages, had taxed to the utmost the civilizing efforts of legislators, while the power assumed by inquisitors to issue licences to carry arms, in contravention of municipal statutes, was the source of no little trouble, especially in Italian cities.[977] The necessity of restriction, for the sake of public peace, was peculiarly felt in Spain, where the popular temper and the sensitiveness as to the pundonor were especially provocative of deadly strife.[978] It would be impossible to enumerate the endless series of decrees which succeeded each other with confusing rapidity and the repetition of which, in every variety of form, shows conclusively how little they were regarded and how little they effected. Particular energy was directed against armas alevosas—treacherous weapons—which could be concealed about the person. In the Catalan Córtes of 1585, Philip II denounced arquebuses, fire-locks and more especially the small ones known as pistols, as unworthy the name of arms, as treacherous weapons useless in war and provocative of murder, which had caused great damage in Catalonia and had been prohibited in his other kingdoms. They were therefore forbidden, not only to be carried but even to be possessed at home and in secret, and against this no privilege should avail, whether of the military class or official or familiar of the Inquisition or by licence of the king or captain-general, under penalty for those of gentle blood of two years’ exile, for plebeians of two years’ galley-service, and for Frenchmen or Gascons of death, without power of commutation by any authority. Three palms, or twenty-seven inches of barrel, was the minimum length allowed for fire-arms in Catalonia and four palms in Castile. Philip IV, in 1663, even prohibited the manufacture of pistols and deprived of exemptions and fuero those who carried them, while as for poniards and daggers, Philip V, in 1721, threatened those who bore them with six years of presidio for nobles and six years of galleys for commoners.[979]

      BEARING ARMS

      These specimens of multitudinous legislation, directed against arms of all kinds, enable us to appreciate how highly prized was the privilege of carrying them. In an age of violence it was indispensable for defence and was equally desired as affording opportunities for offence. That the Inquisition should claim it for those in its service was inevitable and it had the excuse, at least during the earlier period, that there was danger in the arrest and transportation of prisoners and in the enmities which it provoked, although this latter danger was much less than it habitually claimed. The old rules, moreover, were well known under which no local laws were allowed to interfere with such privilege,[980] and the Inquisition had scarce been established in Valencia when the question arose through the refusal of the local authorities to allow its ministers to carry arms. Ferdinand promptly decided the matter in its favor by an order, March 22, 1486 that licences should be issued to all whom the inquisitors might name—for the time had not yet come in which the inquisitors themselves issued licences.[981] Probably complaints arose as to the abuse of the privilege for the instructions of 1498, which were principally measures of reform, provided that, in cities, where bearing arms was forbidden, no official should carry them except when accompanying an inquisitor or alguazil.[982] As indicated by this, policy on the subject was unsettled and it so remained for a while. November 14, 1509, Ferdinand ordered that the ministers of the Sicilian Inquisition should not be deprived of their arms; June 2, 1510, he thanked the Valencia tribunal for providing that its officials should go unarmed, for, by the grace of God, there is no one now who impedes or resists the Inquisition and, if there were, the royal officials or he in person will provide for it; then, in about three months, on August 28th, he wrote to the Governor of Valencia that the salaried officials of the tribunal, with their servants and forty familiars should enjoy all the prerogatives of the Holy Office and were not to be deprived of their arms.[983]

      We see in all this traces of general popular opposition to exempting inquisitorial officials from the laws forbidding arms-bearing. This was stimulated by the difficulty of preventing the exemptions from being claimed by unauthorized persons without limit, leading Catalonia, in the Concordia of 1512, to provide that officials bearing arms could be disarmed, like other citizens, unless they could show a certificate from the tribunal, and further that the number of familiars for the whole principality should be reduced to thirty, except in cases of necessity.[984] Although this Concordia was not observed, Inquisitor-general Mercader, in his instructions of August 28, 1514, admitted the necessity of such regulations by prohibiting the issue of licences to bear arms; by reducing the overgrown number of familiars to twenty-five in Barcelona and ten each in Perpignan and other towns, by permitting the disarmament of those who could not exhibit certificates and by endeavoring to check the fraud of lending these certificates by requiring them to swear not to do so and keeping lists whereby they could be identified.[985]

      The right of arming its familiars, thus assumed by the Inquisition was by no means uncontested. We have seen how the Empress Isabella when in Valencia, in 1524, ordered the arms taken from them and broken, leading to a protest from Inquisitor-general Manrique, who asserted this to be a privilege enjoyed since the introduction of the Inquisition. In spite of this Charles V, by a cédula of August 2, 1539, ordered inquisitors to prohibit the use of arms by familiars.[986] The matter remained a subject of contest for some years more. In 1553 there were quarrels concerning it between the Valencia tribunal and the local authorities, but the Concordia of 1554 admitted the right unreservedly.[987]

      By this time, in fact, it was generally recognized, but СКАЧАТЬ