автордың кітабын онлайн тегін оқу  A History of the Inquisition of Spain; vol. 1

Henry Charles Lea

The condition of the common people can readily be imagined in this perpetual strife between warlike, ambitious and unprincipled nobles, now uniting in factions which involved the whole realm in war, and now contenting themselves with assaults upon their neighbors. The land was desolated; the husbandman scarce could take heart to plant his seed, for the harvest was apt to be garnered with the sword and thrust into castles to provision them against siege. As a writer of the period tells us, there was neither law nor justice save that of arms.[18] In a letter describing the universal anarchy, written by Hernando del Pulgar from Madrid, in 1473, he says that for more than five years there has been no communication from Murcia, where the family of Fajardo reigned supreme—it is, he says, as foreign a land as Navarre.[19] That the roads were unsafe for trade or travel was a matter of course; every petty hidalgo converted his stronghold into a den of robbers, and what these left was swept away by bands of Free Companions.[20] Disorder reigned supreme and all-pervading. The crown was powerless and the royal treasury exhausted. Improvident grants of lands and revenues and jurisdictions, to bribe the treacherous fidelity of faithless nobles, or to gratify worthless favorites, were made, till there was nothing left to give, and then Henry IV bestowed licenses for private mints, until there were a hundred and fifty of them at work, flooding the land with base money, to the unutterable confusion of the coinage and the impoverishment of the people.[21] The Córtes of Madrid, in 1467, and of Ocaña in 1469, called on Henry to resume his improvident grants, and those of Madrigal, in 1476, repeated the urgency to Ferdinand and Isabella, who had been forced to follow his example. To this the sovereigns replied thanking the Córtes and postponing the matter. They did not feel themselves strong enough until 1480, when at the Córtes of Toledo, they resumed thirty million maravedís of revenue which had been alienated during the troubles, and this after an investigation which left untouched the gifts to loyal subjects and only withdrew such as had been extorted.[22] Respect for the crown had fallen as low as its revenues. A story told of the Count of Benavente shows how difficult it was, even after the accession of Isabella, for the nobles to recognize that they owed any obedience to the sovereign. He was walking with the queen when a woman came weeping and begging justice, saying that he had had her husband slain in spite of a royal safe-conduct. She showed the letter which her husband had carried in his breast, pierced by the blow which had ended his life, when the count jeeringly remarked “A cuirass would have been of more service.” Piqued by this Isabella said “Count do you then not wish there was no king in Castile?” “Rather,” said he, “I wish there were many.” “And why?” “Because then I should be one of them.”[23]

With such men at the head of the Church it is not to be expected that the lower orders of the clergy should be models of decency and morality, rendering Christianity attractive to Jew and Moslem. Alonso Carrillo, the archbishop of Toledo, can scarce be regarded as a strict disciplinarian, but even he felt obliged, when holding the council of Aranda in 1473, to endeavor to repress the more flagrant scandals of the clergy. As a corrective of their prevailing ignorance it was ordered that in future none should be ordained who could not speak Latin—the language of the ritual and the foundation of all instruction, theological and otherwise. They were forbidden to wear silk or gaily colored garments. As their licentiousness rendered them contemptible to the people, they were commanded to part with their concubines within two months. As their fondness for dicing led to perjuries, scandals and homicides, they were required thereafter to abstain from it, privately as well as publicly. As many priests disdained to celebrate mass, they were ordered to do so at least four times a year; bishops, moreover, were urged to celebrate at least thrice a year, under pain of severe penalties to be determined at the next council. The absurdities poured forth in their sermons by wandering priests and friars were to be repressed by requiring examinations prior to issuing licenses to preach, and the scandals of the pardon-sellers were to be diminished by subjecting them to the bishops. The bishops were also urged to make severe examples of offenders in the lower orders of the clergy, when delivered to them by the secular courts, and not to allow their enormities to enjoy continued immunity. The bishops, moreover, were commanded to make no charge for conferring ordinations; they were exhorted, and all other clerics were required, not to lead a dissolute military life or to enter the service of secular lords excepting of the king and princes of the blood. As duels were forbidden, both laity and clergy were warned that if slain in such encounters they would be refused Christian burial.[27] That this effort at reform was, as might be expected, wholly abortive is evidenced from the description of the vices of the ecclesiastical body when Ferdinand and Isabella subsequently endeavored to correct its more flagrant scandals.[28] It was wholly secularized and only to be distinguished from the laity by the sacred functions which rendered its vices more abhorrent, by the immunities which fostered and stimulated those vices and by the intolerance which, blind to all aberrations of morals, proclaimed the stake to be the only fitting punishment for aberration in the faith. While powerless to reform itself it yet had influence enough to educate the people up to its standard of orthodoxy in the ruthless persecution of all whom it pleased to designate as enemies of Christ.

One of the most deplorable abuses with which the Church afflicted society was the admission into the minor orders of crowds of laymen who, without abandoning worldly pursuits, adopted the tonsure in order to enjoy the irresponsibility afforded by the claim acquired to spiritual jurisdiction, whether as criminals or as traders. The Córtes of Tordesillas, in 1401, declared that the greater portion of the rufianes and malefactors of the kingdom wore the tonsure; when arrested by the secular officials the spiritual courts demanded them and enforced their claims with excommunication, after which they freely discharged the evil doers. This complaint was re-echoed by almost every subsequent Córtes, with an occasional allusion to the stimulus thus afforded to the evil propensities of those who were really clerics. The kings in responding to these representations could only say that they would apply to the Holy Father for relief, but the relief never came.[48] The spirit in which these claims of clerical immunity were advanced as a shield for criminals and the resolute firmness with which they were met by Ferdinand and Isabella are illustrated by an occurrence in 1486, in Truxillo, where a man committed a crime and was arrested by the corregidor. He claimed to wear the tonsure and, as the officials delayed in handing him over to the ecclesiastical court, some clerics who were his kinsmen paraded the streets with a cross and proclaimed that religion was being destroyed. They succeeded thus in arousing a tumult in which the culprit was liberated. The sovereigns were in Galicia, but they forthwith despatched troops to the scene of disturbance; severe punishment was inflicted on the participants in the riot, and the clerics who had provoked it were deprived of citizenship and were banished from Spain.[49] Less serious but still abundantly obnoxious were the advantages which these tonsured laymen possessed in civil suits by claiming the privilege of ecclesiastical jurisdiction. To meet this was largely the object of the laws in the Ordenanzas Reales described above, and these were supplemented, in 1519, by an edict of Charles V forbidding episcopal officials from cognizance of cases where such so-called clerics engaged in trade sought the spiritual courts as a defence against civil suits. A similar abuse, by which such clerics in public office evaded responsibility for wrong-doing by pleading their clergy, he remedied by reviving an old law of Juan I declaring them ineligible to office.[50] Thus the royal power in Spain asserted its authority over the Church after a fashion unknown elsewhere. We shall see that, so long as it declined to persecute Moors and Jews, Rome could not compel it to do so. When its policy changed under Isabella it was inevitable that the machinery of persecution should be under the control, not of the Church, but of the sovereign. We shall also see that, when the Inquisition inflicted similar wrongs by the immunities claimed for its own officials and familiars, the sovereigns customarily turned a deaf ear to the complaints of the people.

Such was the condition of Castile when the death of the miserable Henry IV, December 12, 1474, cast the responsibility of royalty on his sister Isabella and her husband, Ferdinand of Aragon. The power of the crown was eclipsed; the land was ravaged with interminable war between nobles who were practically independent; the sentiment of loyalty and patriotism seemed extinct: deceit and treachery, false oaths—whatever would serve cupidity and ambition—were universal; justice was bought and sold; private vengeance was exercised without restraint; there was no security for life and property. The fabric of society seemed about to fall in ruins.[51] To evolve order out of this chaos of passion and lawlessness was a task to test to the uttermost the nerve and capacity of the most resolute and sagacious. To add to the confusion there was a disputed succession, although, in 1468, the oath of fidelity had been taken to Isabella, with the assent of Henry IV, in the Contract of Perales, by which he, for the second time, acknowledged his reputed daughter Juana not to be his. He was popularly believed to be impotent, and when his wife Juana, sister of Affonso V of Portugal, bore him a daughter, whom he acknowledged and declared to be his heir, her paternity was maliciously ascribed to Beltran de la Cueva, and she was known by the opposite party as La Beltraneja. Though Henry had been forced by his nobles to set aside her claims in favor of his brother Alfonso in the Declaration of Cabezon, in 1464, and, after Alfonso’s death, in favor of Isabella, in 1468, the latter’s marriage, in 1469, with Ferdinand of Aragon so angered him that he betrothed Juana to Charles Duke of Guienne, brother of Louis XI of France, and made the nobles of his faction swear to acknowledge her. At his death he testified again to her legitimacy and declared her to be his successor in a will which long remained hidden and finally in 1504 fell under the control of Ferdinand, who ordered it burnt.[52] There was a powerful party pledged to support her rights, and they were aided on the one hand by Affonso of Portugal and on the other by Louis of France, each eager to profit by dismembering the unhappy land. Some years of war, more cruel and bloody than even the preceding aimless strife, were required to dispose of this formidable opposition—years which tried to the utmost the ability of the young sovereigns and proved to their subjects that at length they had rulers endowed with kingly qualities. The decisive victory of Toro, won by Ferdinand over the Portuguese, March 1, 1476, virtually settled the result, although the final treaty was not signed until 1479. The Beltraneja was given the alternative of marrying within six months Prince Juan, son of Ferdinand and Isabella, then but two years old, or of entering the Order of Santa Clara in a Portuguese house. She chose the latter, but she never ceased to sign herself Yo la Reina, and her pretensions were a frequent source of anxiety. She led a varied life, sometimes treated as queen, with a court around her, and sometimes as a nun in her convent, dying at last in 1531, at the age of seventy.[53]

In his successful career as a monarch he was well seconded by his queen. Without deserving the exaggerated encomiums which have idealized her, Isabella was a woman exactly adapted to her environment. As we have seen, the muger varonil was a not uncommon development of the period in Spain, and Isabella’s youth, passed in the midst of civil broils, with her fate more than once suspended in the balance, had strengthened and hardened the masculine element in her character. Self-reliant and possessed of both moral and physical courage, she was prompt and decided, bearing with ease responsibilities that would have crushed a weaker nature and admirably fitted to cope with the fierce and turbulent nobles, who respected neither her station nor her sex and could be reduced to obedience only by a will superior to their own. She had the defects of her qualities. She could not have been the queen she was without sacrifice of womanly softness, and she earned the reputation of being hard and unforgiving.[58] She could not be merciful when her task was to reduce to order the wild turmoil and lawlessness which had so long reigned unchecked in Castile, but in this she shed no blood wantonly and she knew how to pardon when policy dictated mercy. How she won the affection of those in whom she confided can be readily understood from the feminine grace of her letters to her confessor, Hernando of Talavera.[59] A less praiseworthy attribute of her sex was her fondness for personal adornment, in which she indulged in spite of a chronically empty treasury and a people overwhelmed with taxation. We hear of her magnifying her self-abnegation in receiving the French ambassador twice in the same gown, while an attaché of the English envoy says that he never saw her twice in the same attire, and that a single toilet, with its jewels and appendages must have cost at least 200,000 crowns.[60] She was moreover rigidly tenacious of the royal dignity. Once when Ferdinand was playing cards with some grandees, the Admiral of Castile, whose sister was Ferdinand’s mother, addressed him repeatedly as “nephew”; Isabella was undressed in an inner room and heard it; she hastily gathered a garment around her, put her head through the door and rebuked him—“Hold! my lord the king has no kindred or friends, he has servants and vassals.”[61] She was deeply and sincerely religious, placing almost unbounded confidence in her spiritual directors, whom she selected, not among courtly casuists to soothe her conscience, but from among the most rigid and unbending churchmen within her reach, and to this may in part be attributed the fanaticism which led her to make such havoc among her people. She was scrupulously regular in all church observances; in addition to frequent prayers she daily recited the hours like a priest, and her biographer tells us that, in spite of the pressing cares of state, she seemed to lead a contemplative rather than an active life.[62] She was naturally just and upright, though, in the tortuous policy of the time, she had no hesitation in becoming the accomplice of Ferdinand’s frequent duplicity and treachery. With all the crowded activity of her eventful life, she found time to stimulate the culture despised by the warlike chivalry around her, and she took a deep interest in an academy which, at her instance, was opened for the young nobles of her court by the learned Italian, Peter Martyr of Anghiera.[63]

Yet I have been led to the conviction that her share in the administration of her kingdom has been exaggerated. The chroniclers of the period were for the most part Castilians who would naturally seek to subordinate the action of the Aragonese intruder, and subsequent writers, in their eagerness to magnify the reputation of Isabella, have followed the example. In the copious royal correspondence with the officials of the Inquisition the name of Isabella rarely appears. To those in Castile as in Aragon Ferdinand mostly writes in the first person singular, without even using the pluralis majestatis; the receiver of confiscations is mi receptor, the royal treasury is mi camera e fisco; the Council of the Inquisition is mi consejo. In spite of the agreement of 1474, the signature Yo la Reina rarely appears alongside of Yo el Rey, and still rarer are Ferdinand’s allusions to la Serenissima Reina, mi muy cara e muy amada muger, while in the occasional letters issued by Isabella during her husband’s absence, she is careful to adduce his authority as that of el Rey mi señor.[73] It is scarce likely that this preponderance of Ferdinand was confined to directing the affairs of the Holy Office.

Great as were the services of the Hermandad in repressing the turbulence of the nobles and rendering the roads safe, its cost was a source of complaint to the communities which defrayed it. This was by no means small; in 1485 it was computed at 32,000,000 maravedís and subsequently it increased greatly; it was met by a tax of 18,000 maravedís on every hundred hearths and the money was not handled by the communities but was paid to the crown.[92] Nominally the organization was in their hands, but virtually it was controlled by the sovereigns, and when, in 1498, Ferdinand and Isabella, with an appearance of generosity, relieved the taxpayers and assumed to meet the expenses from the royal revenues, although they left the election of the alcaldes and quadrilleros in the hands of the local populations, yet the result was inevitable in subjecting it still more closely to the crown.[93] The institution became permanent, and its modern development is seen in the guarda civil. None of the reforms of Ferdinand and Isabella was so efficient in restoring order and none did more to centralize power. It was not only a rudimentary standing army which could be concentrated speedily to suppress disorder, but it carried the royal jurisdiction into every corner of the land and made the royal authority supreme everywhere. It was practically an alliance between the crown and the people against the centrifugal forces of feudalism, without which even the policy of Ferdinand and the iron firmness of Ximenes might have failed to win in the final struggle. When municipal independence likewise perished in the defeat of the Comunidades, the only power left standing in Spain was that of the throne, which thus became absolute and all-pervading. The new absolutism was embodied in the self-effacing declaration of the Córtes of Valladolid, in 1523, to Charles V, that the laws and customs were subject to the king, who could make and revoke them at his pleasure, for he was the living law.[94] How immense was the revolution and how speedily accomplished is seen in the contrast between the time when the Count of Benavente jeered at a royal safe-conduct and the people of Galicia scarce dared to receive a royal commissioner, and some sixty years later when, in the unruly Basque provinces, the people of San Sebastian, in 1536, appealed to the Emperor Charles V to relieve them from local nuisances, and royal letters were gravely issued forbidding the butchers of that town from erecting new stalls or skinning cattle in the streets and restricting the latter operation to places duly assigned for the purpose.[95] Thus the crown had become absolute and its interposition could be invoked for the minutest details of local government. He reads history to little purpose who imagines that this was the work of the Inquisition.

It was impossible that a king so far-seeing and politic as Ferdinand and a queen so pious as Isabella, when reducing to order the chaos which they found in Castile, should neglect the interest of the faith on which, according to medieval belief, all social order was based. There were in fact burning religious questions which, to sensitive piety, might seem even more urgent than protection to life and property. To comprehend the intricacy of the situation will require a somewhat extended retrospect into the relations between the several races occupying the Peninsula.

In view of Spanish abhorrence of Jews and Saracens during the last five or six centuries it is a fact worthy of note that the Spanish nations of the medieval period were the latest to yield to this impulsion of the Church. The explanation of this lies partly in the relations between the several races in the Peninsula and partly in the independent attitude which Spain maintained towards the Holy See and its indisposition to submit to the dictation of the Church. To appreciate fully the transformation which culminated in the establishment of the Inquisition, and to understand the causes leading to it, will require a brief review of the position occupied by the Jew and the Saracen towards the Church and the State.

These forced conversions in Gothia were the first fruits of the change of religion of the Wisigoths from Arianism to Catholicism. The Ostrogoths, Theodoric and Theodatus, had expressly declared that they could not interfere with the religion of their subjects, for no one can be forced unwillingly to believe.[116] The Wisigoths, who dominated southern Gaul and Spain, when adapting the Roman law to suit their needs, had contented themselves with punishing by confiscation the Christian who turned Jew, with liberating Christian slaves held by Jews, and with inflicting the death penalty on Jewish masters who should force Christian slaves to conversion, besides preserving the law of Theodosius II prohibiting Jews from holding office or building new synagogues.[117] This was by no means full toleration, but it was merciful in comparison with what followed the conversion of the Goths to Catholicism. The change commenced promptly, though it did not at once reach its full severity. The third council of Toledo, held in May, 589, to condemn the Arian heresy and to settle the details of the conversion, adopted canons which show how free had hitherto been the intercourse between the races. Jews were forbidden to have Christian wives or concubines or servants, and all children sprung from such unions were to be baptized; any Christian slave circumcised or polluted with Jewish rites was to be set free; no Jew was to hold an office in which he could inflict punishment on a Christian, and this action was followed by some further disabilities decreed by the council of Narbonne in December of the same year.[118] That freedom of discussion continued for some time is manifested by the audacity of a Jew named Froganis, not long afterwards, who, as we are told, in the presence of all the nobles of the court, exalted the synagogue and depreciated the Church; it was easier perhaps to close his mouth than to confute him, for Aurasius, Bishop of Toledo, excommunicated him and declared him anathematized by the Father, Son and Holy Ghost and by all the celestial hierarchy and cohorts.[119]

As apparently the Jews could not be exterminated or the Conversos be trained into willing Christians, the two classes naturally added an element of discontent to the already unquiet and motley population consisting of superimposed layers of Goths, Romans and Celtiberians. The Jews doubtless aided the Gallo-Roman rebellion of Flavius Paulus about 675, for St. Julian of Toledo, in describing its suppression by King Wamba, denounces Gaul in the bitterest terms, ending with the crowning reproach that it is a refuge for the blasphemy of the Jews, whom Wamba banished after his triumph.[124] In spite of the unremitting efforts for their destruction, they still remained a source of danger to the State. At the council of Toledo in 694, King Egiza appealed to his prelates to devise some means by which Judaism should be wiped out, or all Jews be subjected to the sword of justice and their property be appropriated, for all efforts to convert them had proved futile and there was danger that, in conjunction with their brethren in other lands, they would overthrow Christianity. In its response the council alludes to a conspiracy by which the Jews had endeavored to occupy the throne and bring about the ruin of the land, and it decrees that all Jews, with their wives, children and posterity, shall be reduced to perpetual servitude, while their property is declared confiscated to the king. They are to be transferred from their present abodes and be given to such persons as the king may designate, who shall hold them as slaves so long as they persevere in their faith, taking from them their children as they reach the age of seven and marrying them only to Christians. Such of their Christian slaves as the king may select shall receive a portion of the confiscated property and continue to pay the taxes hitherto levied on the Jews.[125]

Yet it was as impossible for the Almohades to retain their fanaticism as it had proved for their predecessors. When, in 1228, on the deposition of the Almohad Miramamolin Al-Abdel, his nephew Yahia was raised to the throne, his brother Al-Memon-Abo-l-Ola, who was in Spain, claimed the succession. To obtain the assistance of San Fernando III, who lent him twelve thousand Christian troops, he agreed to surrender ten frontier strongholds, to permit the erection of a Christian church in Morocco, where the Christians should celebrate publicly with ringing of bells, and to allow freedom of conversion from Islam to Christianity, with prohibition of the converse. This led to the foundation of an episcopate of Morocco, of which the first bishop was Fray Aguelo, succeeded by Fray Lope, both Franciscans.[141] Co-operation of this kind with the Christians meets us at every step in the annals of the Spanish Saracens. Aben-al-Ahmar, who founded the last dynasty of Granada, agreed to become a vassal of San Fernando III, to pay him a tribute of 150,000 doblas per annum, to furnish a certain number of troops whenever called upon, and to appear in the Córtes when summoned, like any other ricohome. He aided Fernando greatly in the capture of Seville, and, in the solemnities which followed the entry into the city, Fernando bestowed knighthood on him and granted him the bearing of the Castilian guidon—gules, a band or, with two serpents, and two crowned lions as supporters—a cognizance still to be seen in the Alhambra.[142]

The Muladíes, or Christian converts to Islam, formed another important portion of the Moorish community. At the conquest, as we have seen, large numbers of Christians apostatized, slaves to obtain freedom and freemen to escape taxation. They were looked upon, however, with suspicion by Arabs and Berbers and were subjected to disabilities which led to frequent rebellions and murderous reprisals. On the suppression of a rising in Córdova, in 814, fifteen thousand of them emigrated to Egypt, where they captured Alexandria and held it until 826, when they were forced to capitulate and transferred their arms to Candia, founding a dynasty which lasted for a century and a half. Eight thousand of them established themselves in Fez, where they held their own and even in the fourteenth century were distinguishable from the other Moslems. In Toledo, after several unsuccessful rebellions, the Muladíes became dominant in 853 and remained independent for eighty years. Together with the Mozárabes they almost succeeded in founding a kingdom of their own in the mountains of Ronda, under Omar ben Hafsun, who embraced Christianity. Indeed, the facility of conversion from one faith to another was a marked feature of the period and shows how little firmness of religious conviction existed. The renegade, Ibn Meruan, who founded an independent state in Merida, taught a mixed faith compounded of both the great religions. Everywhere the Muladíes were striving for freedom and establishing petty principalities—in Algarbe, in Priego, in Murcia, and especially in Aragon, where the Gothic family of the Beni-Cassi became supreme. After the reduction of Toledo by starvation, in 930, they become less prominent and gradually merge into the Moslem population.[143] This was assisted by the fact that they made common cause with their conquerors against the fanatic Almoravides and Almohades. The leader of the Andalusians against the latter was a man of Christian descent, Ibn-Mardanich, King of Valencia and Murcia. He wore Christian dress and arms, his language was Castilian and his troops were mostly Castilians, Navarrese and Catalans. To the Christians he was commonly known as the king Don Lope. Religious differences, in fact, were of much less importance than political aims, and everywhere, as we shall see, Christian and Moslem were intermingled in the interminable civil broils of that tumultuous time. In an attempt on Granada, in 1162, the principal captains of Ibn-Mardanich were two sons of the Count of Urgel and a grandson of Alvar Fañez, the favorite lieutenant of the Cid.[144]

In these alternations of religious indifference and fanaticism, the position of the Jews under Moslem domination was necessarily exposed to severe vicissitudes. Their skill as physicians and their unrivalled talent in administration rendered them a necessity to the conquerors, whose favor they had gained by the assistance rendered in the invasion, but ever and anon there would come a burst of intolerance which swept them into obscurity if not into massacre. When Mahomet I ascended the throne of Córdova, about 850, we are told that one of his first acts was the dismissal of all Jewish officials, including presumably R. Hasdai ben Ishak, who had been physician and vizier to his father, Abderrhaman II.[145] A century later their wealth was so great that when the Jew Peliag went to the country palace of Alhakem, the Caliph of Córdova, it is related that he was accompanied by a retinue of seven hundred retainers of his race, all richly clad and riding in carriages.[146] How insecure was their prosperity was proved, in 1066, when Samuel ha Levi and his son Joseph had been viziers and virtual rulers of Granada for fifty years. The latter chanced to exile Abu Ishac of Elvira, a noted theologian and poet, who took revenge in a bitter satire which had immense popular success. “The Jews reign in Granada; they have divided between them the city and the provinces, and everywhere one of this accursed race is in supreme power. They collect the taxes, they dress magnificently and fare sumptuously, while the true believers are in rags and wretchedness. The chief of these asses is a fatted ram. Slay him and his kindred and allies and seize their immense treasures. They have broken the compact between us and are subject to punishment as perjurers.” We shall see hereafter how ready was the Christian mob to respond to such appeals; the Moslem was no better; a rising took place in which Joseph was assassinated in the royal palace, while four thousand Jews were massacred and their property pillaged.[147] Again they recuperated themselves, but they suffered with the Christians under the fierce fanaticism of the Almohades. Indeed, they were exposed to a fiercer outburst of wrath, for the robbery of the jewels of the Kaaba, which occurred about 1160, was attributed to Spanish Jews, and Abd-el-mumin was unsparing in enforcing his orders of conversion. Numbers were put to death and forty-eight synagogues were burnt. The Sephardim, or Spanish Jews, lost their most conspicuous doctor when, in this persecution, Maimonides fled to Egypt.[148] Still they continued to exist and to prosper, though exposed to destruction at any moment through the whims of the monarch or the passions of the people. Thus, in 1375, in Granada, two men obstructed a street in a violent altercation and were vainly adjured to cease in the name of Mahomet, when Isaac Amoni, the royal physician, who chanced to pass in his carriage, repeated the order and was obeyed. That a Jew should possess more influence than the name of the Prophet was unendurable; the people rose and a massacre ensued.[149]

Nor, with the illustrious example of the Cid before them, had Christian nobles the slightest hesitation to aid the Moors by taking service with them. When, in 1279, Alonso Pérez de Guzman, the founder of the great house of Medina Sidonia, was insulted in the court of Alfonso, he promptly renounced his allegiance, converted all his property into money, and raised a troop with which he entered the service of Abu Jusuf of Morocco. There he remained for eleven years, except a visit to Seville to marry Doña María Coronel, whom he carried back to Morocco. He was made captain of all the Christian troops in Abu Jusuf’s employ and aided largely in the war which transferred the sovereignty of that portion of Africa from the Almohades to the Beni Marin. He accumulated immense wealth, which by a stratagem he transferred to Spain, where it purchased the estates on which the greatness of the house was based. The family historiographer, writing in 1541, feels obliged to explain this readiness to serve the infidel, so abhorrent to the convictions of the sixteenth century. He tells us that at that period the Moors, both of Granada and Africa, were unwarlike and were accustomed to rely upon Christian troops, and that princes, nobles and knights were constantly in their service. Henry, brother of Alfonso X, served the King of Tunis four years and amassed large wealth; Garcí Martínez de Gallegos was already in the service of Abu Jusuf when Guzman went there; Gonzalo de Aguilar became a vassal of the King of Granada and fought for him. In 1352, when Pedro the Cruel began to reduce his turbulent nobles to order, Don Juan de la Cerda, a prince of the blood, went to Morocco for assistance and, failing to obtain it, remained there and won great renown by his knightly deeds till he was reconciled to Pedro and returned to Castile. Examples might be multiplied, but these will suffice to indicate how few scruples of religion existed among the Spaniards of the Middle Ages. As Barrantes says, adventurous spirits in those days took service with the Moors as in his time they sought their fortunes in the Indies.[167]

It is not easy to set limits to the prosperity attainable by the Peninsula with its natural resources developed by a population combining the vigor of the Castilian with the industrial capacity of the Moor. All that was needed was Christian patience and good will to kindle and encourage kindly feeling between the conquering and the subject race; time would have done the rest. The infidel, won over to Christianity, would have become fused with the faithful, and a united people, blessed with the characteristics of both races, would have been ready to take the foremost place in the wonderful era of industrial civilization which was about to open. Unhappily for Spain this was not to be. To the conscientious churchman of the Middle Ages any compact with the infidel was a league with Satan; he could not be forcibly brought into the fold, but it was the plainest of duties to render his position outside so insupportable that he would take refuge in conversion.

The prescriptive spirit which dominated the councils of Zamora and Valladolid was not allowed to die out. That of Tarragona, in 1329, expressed its horror at the friendly companionship with which Christians were in the habit of attending the marriages, funerals and circumcisions of Jews and Moors and even of entering into the bonds of compaternity with the parents at the latter ceremony, all of which it strictly forbade for the future.[230] A few years later, in 1337, Arnaldo, Archbishop of Tarragona, addressed to Benedict XII a letter which is a significant expression of the objects and methods of the Church. In spite, he says, of the vow taken by Jaime I when about to conquer Valencia, that he would not permit any Moors to remain there, the Christians, led by blind cupidity, allow them to occupy the land, believing that thus they derive larger revenues—which is an error, as the Abbot of Poblet has recently demonstrated by expelling the Mudéjares from the possessions of the abbey. There are said to be forty or fifty thousand Moorish fighting men in Valencia, which is a source of the greatest danger, especially now when the Emperor of Morocco is preparing to aid the King of Granada. Besides, many enormous crimes are committed by Christians, in consequence of their damnable familiarity and intercourse with the Moors, who blaspheme the name of Christ and exalt that of Mahomet. “I have heard,” he pursues, “the late Bishop of Valencia declare, in a public sermon, that in that province the mosques are more numerous than the churches and that half, or more than half, the people are ignorant of the Lord’s prayer and speak only Moorish. I therefore pray your clemency to provide an appropriate remedy, which would seem impossible unless the Moors are wholly expelled and unless the King of Aragon lends his aid and favor. The nobles would be more readily brought to assent to this if they were allowed to seize and sell the persons and property of the Mudéjares as public enemies and infidels, and the money thus obtained would be of no small service in defending the kingdom.” The Christian prelate, not content with directly asking the pope to adopt this inhuman proposition, sent a copy of his letter to Jean de Comminges, Cardinal of Porto, and begged him to urge the matter with Benedict, and in a second letter to the cardinal he explained that it would be necessary for the pope to order the king to expel the Moors; that he would willingly obey as to the crown lands, but that a papal command was indispensable as to the lands of others. It was only, he added, the avarice of the Christians which kept the Moors there.[231] We shall see how, two hundred and seventy years later, an Archbishop of Valencia aided in bringing about the final catastrophe, by a still greater display of saintly zeal, backed by precisely the same arguments.

This had no permanent influence on the condition of the Spanish Hebrews. During the long reigns of San Fernando III and Alfonso X of Castile and of Jaime I of Aragon, covering the greater part of the thirteenth century, the services which they rendered to the monarchs were repaid with increasing favor and protection. After Jaime had conquered Minorca he took, in 1247, all Jews settling there under the royal safeguard and threatened a fine of a thousand gold pieces for wrong inflicted on any of them and, in 1250, he required that Jewish as well as Christian testimony must be furnished in all actions, civil or criminal, brought by Christians against Jews. So, when in 1306 Philippe le Bel expelled the Jews from France and those of Majorca feared the same fate, Jaime II reassured them by pledging the royal faith that they should remain forever in the land, with full security for person and property, a pledge confirmed, in 1311, by his son and successor Sancho.[266] In Castile, when San Fernando conquered Seville, in 1244, he gave to the Jews a large space in the city, and, in defiance of the canons, he allotted to them four Moorish mosques to be converted into synagogues, thus founding the aljama of Seville, destined to a history so deplorable. Alfonso X, during his whole reign, patronized Jewish men of learning, whom he employed in translating works of value from Arabic and Hebrew; he built for them an observatory in Seville, where were made the records embodied in the Alfonsine Tables; he permitted those of Toledo to erect the magnificent synagogue now known as Santa María la Blanca, and Jews fondly relate that the Hebrew school, which he transferred from Córdova to Toledo, numbered twelve thousand students.[267] He was prompt to maintain their privileges, and, when the Jews of Burgos complained that in mixed suits the alcaldes would grant appeals to him when the Christian suitor was defeated, while refusing them to defeated Jews, he at once put an end to the discrimination, a decree which Sancho IV enforced with a penalty of a hundred maravedís when, in 1295, the complaint was repeated.[268] Yet Alfonso, in his systematic code known as the Partidas, which was not confirmed by the Córtes until 1348, allowed himself to be influenced by the teachings of the Church and the maxims of the imperial jurisprudence. He accepted the doctrine of the canons that the Jew was merely suffered to live in captivity among Christians; he was forbidden to speak ill of the Christian faith, and any attempt at proselytism was punished with death and confiscation. The murder rite was alluded to as a rumor, but in case it was practised it was a capital offence and the culprits were to be tried before the king himself. Jews were ineligible to any office in which they could oppress Christians; they were forbidden to have Christian servants, and the purchase of a Christian slave involved the death punishment. They were not to associate with Christians in eating, drinking, and bathing and the amour of a Jew with a Christian woman incurred death. While Jewish physicians might prescribe for Christian patients, the medicine must be compounded by a Christian, and the wearing of the hateful distinctive badge was ordered under penalty of ten gold maravedís or of ten lashes. At the same time Christians were strictly forbidden to commit any wrong on the person or property of Jews or to interfere in any way with their religious observances, and no coercion was to be used to induce them to baptism, for Christ wishes only willing service.[269]

Although Castile was slower than Aragon to receive impulses from abroad, in the early fourteenth century we begin to find traces of a similar movement of the Church against the Jews. In 1307 the aljama of Toledo complained to Fernando IV that the dean and chapter had obtained from Clement V bulls conferring on them jurisdiction over Jews, in virtue of which they were enforcing the canons against usury and stripping the Jewish community of its property. At this time there was no question in Spain, such as we shall see debated hereafter, of the royal prerogative to control obnoxious papal letters, and Fernando at once ordered the chapter to surrender the bulls; all action under them was pronounced void and restitution in double was threatened for all damage inflicted. The Jews, he said, were his Jews; they were not to be incapacitated from paying their taxes and the pope had no power to infringe on the rights of the crown. He instructed Ferran Nuñez de Pantoja to compel obedience and, after some offenders had been arrested, the frightened canons surrendered the bulls and abandoned their promising speculation, but the affair left behind it enmities which displayed themselves deplorably afterwards.[283]

When prelates such as Archbishop Rodrigo paid so little heed to the commands of the Church, it is not to be supposed that monarchs were more obedient or were disposed to forego the advantages derivable from the services of these accomplished financiers. How these men assisted their masters while enriching themselves is exemplified by Don Çag de la Maleha, almojarife mayor to Alfonso X. When the king, in 1257, was raising an army to subdue Aben-Nothfot, King of Niebla, Don Çag undertook to defray all the expenses of the campaign in consideration of the assignment to him of certain taxes, some of which he was still enjoying in 1272.[298] It was useless for the people who groaned under the exactions of these efficient officials to protest against their employment and to extort from the monarchs repeated promises no longer to employ them. The promises were never kept and, until the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, this source of irritation continued. There was, it is true, one exception, the result of which was not conducive to a continuance of the experiment. In 1385 the Córtes of Valladolid obtained from Juan I a decree prohibiting the employment of Jews as tax-collectors, not only by the king but also by prelates and nobles, in consequence of which ecclesiastics obtained the collection of the royal revenues, but when they were called upon to settle they excommunicated the alcaldes who sought to compel payment, leading to great confusion and bitterer complaints than ever.[299]

Navarre had the earliest foretaste of the wrath to come. It was then under its French princes and, when Charles le Bel died, February 1, 1328, a zealous Franciscan, Fray Pedro Olligoyen, apparently taking advantage of the interregnum, stirred, with his eloquent preaching, the people to rise against the Jews, and led them to pillage and slaughter. The storm burst on the aljama of Estella, March 1st, and rapidly spread throughout the kingdom. Neither age nor sex was spared and the number of victims is variously estimated at from six to ten thousand. Queen Jeanne and her husband Philippe d’Evreux, who succeeded to the throne, caused Olligoyen to be prosecuted, but the result is not known. They further speculated on the terrible massacre by imposing heavy fines on Estella and Viana and by seizing the property of the dead and fugitive Jews, and they also levied on the ruined aljamas the sum of fifteen thousand livres to defray their coronation expenses. Thus fatally weakened, the Jews of Navarre were unable to endure the misfortunes of the long and disastrous reign of Charles le Mauvais (1350-1387). A general emigration resulted, to arrest which Charles prohibited the purchase of landed property from Jews without special royal license. A list of taxables, in 1366, shows only 453 Jewish families and 150 Moorish, not including Pampeluna, where both races were taxable by the bishop. Although Charles and his son Charles le Noble (1387-1425) had Jews for almojarifes, it was in vain that they endeavored to allure the fugitives back by privileges and exemptions. The aljamas continued to dwindle until the revenue from them was inconsiderable.[301]

When Pedro the Cruel ascended the throne of Castile, in 1350, the Jews might reasonably look forward to a prosperous future, but his reign in reality proved the turning-point in their fortunes. He surrounded himself with Jews and confided to them the protection of his person, while the rebellious faction, headed by Henry of Trastamara, his illegitimate brother, declared themselves the enemies of the race and used Pedro’s favor for them as a political weapon. He was asserted to be a Jew, substituted for a girl born of Queen María whose husband, Alfonso XI, was said to have sworn that he would kill her if she did not give him a boy. It was also reported that he was no Christian but an adherent to the Law of Moses and that the government of Castile was wholly in the hands of Jews. It was not difficult therefore to arouse clerical hostility, as manifested by Urban V, who denounced him as a rebel to the Church, a fautor of Jews and Moors, a propagator of infidelity and a slayer of Christians.[304] Of this the insurgents took full advantage and demonstrated their piety in the most energetic manner. When, in 1355, Henry of Trastamara and his brother, the Master of Santiago, entered Toledo to liberate Queen Blanche, who was confined in the alcázar, they sacked the smaller Judería and slew its twelve hundred inmates without sparing sex or age. They also besieged the principal Judería, which was walled around and defended by Pedro’s followers until his arrival with reinforcements drove off the assailants.[305] Five years later when, in 1360, Henry of Trastamara invaded Castile with the aid of Pedro IV of Aragon, on reaching Najara he ordered a massacre of the Jews and, as Ayala states that this was done to win popularity, it may be assumed that free license for pillage was granted. Apparently stimulated by this example the people of Miranda del Ebro, led by Pero Martínez, son of the precentor and by Pero Sánchez de Bañuelas, fell upon the Jews of their town, but King Pedro hastened thither and, as a deterrent example, boiled the one leader and roasted the other.[306] When at length, in 1366, Henry led into Spain Bertrand de Guesclin and his hordes of Free Companions, the slaughter of the Jews was terrible. Multitudes fled and the French chronicler deplores the number that sought refuge in Paris and preyed upon the people with their usuries. The aljama of Toledo purchased exemption with a million of maravedís, raised in ten days, to pay off the mercenaries but, as the whole land lay for a time at the mercy of the reckless bands, slaughter and pillage were general. Finally the fratricide at Montiel, in 1369, deprived the Jews of their protector and left Henry undisputed master of Castile.[307] What they had to expect from him was indicated by his levying, June 6, 1369, within three months of his brother’s murder, twenty thousand doblas on the Judería of Toledo and authorizing the sale at auction, not only of the property of the inmates, but of their persons into slavery, or their imprisonment in chains with starvation or torture, until the amount should be raised. It was doubtless to earn popularity that about the same time he released all Christians and Moors from obligation to pay debts due to Jews, though he was subsequently persuaded to rescind this decree, which would have destroyed the ability of the Jews to pay their imposts.[308]

If I have dwelt in what may seem disproportionate length on this guerra sacra contra los Judios, as Villanueva terms these massacres,[326] it is because they form a turning-point in Spanish history. In the relations between the races of the Peninsula the old order of things was closed and the new order, which was to prove so benumbing to material and intellectual development, was about to open. The immediate results were not long in becoming apparent. Not only was the prosperity of Castile and Aragon diminished by the shock to the commerce and industry so largely in Jewish hands, but the revenues of the crown, the churches and the nobles, based upon the taxation of the Jews, suffered enormously. Pious foundations were ruined and bishops had to appeal to the king for assistance to maintain the services of their cathedrals. Of the Jews who had escaped, the major portion had only done so by submitting to baptism and these were no longer subject to the capitation tax and special imposts which had furnished the surest part of the income of cities, prelates, nobles and sovereigns.[327] Still the converted Jews, with their energy and intelligence remained, unfettered and unhampered in the pursuit of wealth and advancement, which was to benefit the community as well as themselves. It was reserved for a further progress in the path now entered to deprive Spain of the services of her most industrious children.

The most prominent among the new Conversos was Selemoh Ha-Levi, a rabbi who had been the most intrepid defender of the faith and rights of his race. On the eve of the massacres, which perhaps he foresaw, and influenced by an opportune vision of the Virgin, in 1390, he professed conversion, taking the name of Pablo de Santa María, and was followed by his two brothers and five sons, founding a family of commanding influence. After a course in the University of Paris he entered the Church, rising to the see of Cartagena and then to that of Burgos, which he transmitted to his son Alfonso. At the Córtes of Toledo, in 1406, he so impressed Henry III that he was appointed tutor and governor of the Infante Juan II, Mayor of Castile and a member of the Royal Council. When, in the course of the same year, the king died he named Pablo among those who were to have the conduct and education of Juan during his minority; when the regent, Fernando of Antequera, left Castile to assume the crown of Aragon, he appointed Pablo to replace him, and the pope honored him with the position of legate a latere. In 1432, in his eighty-first year, he wrote his Scrutinium Scripturarum against his former co-religionists. It is more moderate than is customary in these controversial writings and seems to have been composed rather as a justification of his own course.[335]

While San Vicente and Pablo de Santa María were thus engaged in reducing to despair the Jews of Castile, the other great Converso, Gerónimo de Santafé, was laboring in a more legitimate way for their conversion in Aragon. He had been appointed physician to the Avignonese pope, Benedict XIII, who had been obliged to cross the Pyrenees, and who, on November 25, 1412, summoned the aljamas of Aragon to send, in the following January, their most learned rabbis to San Mateo, near Tortosa, for a disputation with Gerónimo on the proposition that the Messiah had come. Fourteen rabbis, selected from the synagogues of all Spain, with Vidal ben Veniste at their head, accepted the challenge. The debate opened, February 7, 1414, under the presidency of Benedict himself, who warned them that the truth of Christianity was not to be discussed but only sixteen propositions put forward by Gerónimo, thus placing them wholly on the defensive. Despite this disadvantage they held their ground tenaciously during seventy-nine sessions, prolonged through a term of twenty-one months. Gerónimo covered himself with glory by his unrivalled dialectical subtilty and exhaustless stores of learning and his triumph was shown by his producing a division between his opponents.[342]

The immediate effect of this policy corresponded to the intentions of its authors, though its ultimate results can scarce have been foreseen. The Jews were humiliated and impoverished. Despite their losses by massacre and conversion, they still formed an important portion of the population, with training and aptitudes to render service to the State but, debarred from the pursuits for which they had been fitted, they were crippled both for their own recuperation and for the benefit of the public. The economic effect was intensified by the inclusion of the Mudéjares in the repressive legislation; commerce and manufactures decayed and many products which Spain had hitherto exported she was now obliged to import at advanced prices.[348]

The nobles had seen the disadvantage of the sternly oppressive laws and disregarded them to their own great benefit, thus raising the envy of the districts obliged to observe them, for the Córtes of 1462 petitioned Henry to restore liberty of trade between Christian and Jew, alleging the inconvenience caused by the restriction and the depopulation of the crown lands for, as trade was permitted in the lands of the nobles, the Jews were concentrating there. When further the Córtes asked that Jews should be permitted to return with their property and trades to the cities in the royal domains from which they had been expelled, it indicates that popular aversion was becoming directed to the Conversos rather than to the Jews.[358] It may be questioned whether it was to preserve the advantage here indicated or to gain popular favor, that the revolted nobles, in 1460, demanded of Henry that he should banish from his kingdoms all Moors and Jews who contaminated religion and corrupted morals and that, when they deposed him, in 1465, at Avila and elevated to the throne the child Alfonso, the Concordia Compromisoria which they dictated, annulled the Pragmática of Arévalo and restored to vigor the laws of 1412 and the bull of Benedict XIII. This frightened the Jews, who offered to Henry an immense sum for Gibraltar, where they proposed to establish a city of refuge, but he refused.[359]

This recrudescence of oppression probably had an influence on the people, for there came a revulsion of feeling adverse to the proscribed race, inflamed by the ceaseless labors of the frailes whose denunciatory eloquence knew no cessation. Under these circumstances the Jews and Moors seem to have had recourse to the Roman curia, always ready to speculate by selling privileges, whether it had power to grant them or not, and then to withdraw them for a consideration. We shall have ample occasion to see hereafter prolonged transactions of the kind arising from the operation of the Inquisition; those with the Jews at this time seem to have been closed by a motu proprio of May 31, 1484, doubtless procured from Sixtus IV by pressure from the sovereigns, in which the pope expresses his displeasure at learning that in Spain, especially in Andalusia, Christians, Moors and Jews dwell together; that there is no distinction of vestments, that the Christians act as servants and nurses, the Moors and Jews as physicians, apothecaries, farmers of ecclesiastical revenues etc., pretending that they hold papal privileges to that effect. Any such privileges he withdraws and he orders all officials, secular and ecclesiastical, to enforce strictly the canonical decrees respecting the proscribed races.[364] Under these impulses the municipalities, which, in 1462, had petitioned to have the prescriptive laws repealed now enforced them with renewed vigor and even exceeded them, as at Balmaseda, where the Jews were ordered to depart. They appealed to the throne, representing that they lived in daily fear for life and property and begged the royal protection, which was duly granted.[365]

The Inquisition had no jurisdiction over the Jew, unless he rendered himself amenable to it by some offence against the faith. He was not baptized; he was not a member of the Church and therefore was incapable of heresy, which was the object of inquisitional functions. He might, however, render himself subject to it by proselytism, by seducing Christians to embrace his errors, and this was constantly alleged against Jews, although their history shows that, unlike the other great religions, Judaism has ever been a national faith with no desire to spread beyond the boundaries of the race. As the chosen people, Israel has never sought to share its God with the Gentiles. There was more foundation, probably, in the accusation that the secret perversity of the Conversos was encouraged by those who had remained steadfast in the faith, that circumcisions were secretly performed and that contributions to the synagogues were welcomed.

The resolute constancy displayed in this extremity was admirable. There were comparatively few renegades and, if Abraham Senior was one of them, it is urged in extenuation that Isabella, who was loath to lose his services, threatened, if he persisted in his faith, to adopt still sharper measures against his people and he, knowing her capacity in this direction, submitted to baptism; he and his family had for god-parents the sovereigns and Cardinal González de Mendoza; they assumed the name of Coronel which long remained distinguished.[403] The frailes exerted themselves everywhere in preaching, but the converts were few and only of the lowest class; the Inquisition had changed the situation and San Vicente Ferrer himself would have found missionary work unfruitful, for the dread of exile was less than that of the Holy Office and the quemadero.

When the fate of the exiles was, for the most part, so unendurable, it was natural that many should seek to return to their native land and, as we have seen from Bernaldez, large numbers did so. At first this was tacitly permitted, on condition of conversion, provided they brought money with them, but the sovereigns finally grew fearful that the purity of the faith would be impaired and, in 1499, an explanatory edict was issued, decreeing death and confiscation for any Jew entering Spain, whether a foreigner or returning exile, even if he asked for baptism, unless beforehand he sent word that he wished to come for that purpose, when he was to be baptized at the port of entry and a notarial act was to be taken. That this savage edict was pitilessly enforced is manifested by several cases in 1500 and 1501. Moreover, all masters of Jewish slaves were ordered to send them out of the country within two months, unless they would submit to baptism.[409] Spain was too holy a land to be polluted with the presence of a Jew, even in captivity.

and this, in view of the diminished number of Jews, as shown by the Repartimiento of 1474 (p. 125) is probably too large an estimate.

The Edict of Expulsion proclaimed to the world the policy which in its continuous development did so much for the abasement of Spain. At the same time it closed the career of avowed Jews in the Spanish dominions. Henceforth we shall meet with them as apostate Christians, the occasion and the victims of the Inquisition.

As soon, therefore, as the Church had gained her new recruits she began to regard them with a pardonable degree of suspicion, although she seems to have made no effort to instruct them in her doctrines after hurriedly baptizing them by the thousand. In 1429 the council of Tortosa indignantly denounced the unspeakable cruelty of the Conversos who, with damnable negligence, permit their children to remain in servitude of the devil by omitting to have them baptized. To remedy this the Ordinaries were ordered, by the free use of ecclesiastical censures, and by calling in if necessary the secular arm, to cause all such children to be baptized within eight days after birth, and all temporal lords were commanded to lend their aid in this pious work.[420] The outlook, certainly, was not promising that the coming generation should be free from the inveterate Jewish errors. How little concealment, indeed, was thought necessary by the Conversos, so long as they exhibited a nominal adherence to Catholicism, is plainly shown by the testimony in the early trials before the Inquisition, where servants and neighbors give ample evidence as to Jewish observances openly followed. Still more conclusive is a case occurring, in 1456, in Rosellon, which, although at the time held in pawn by France, was subject to the Inquisition of Aragon. Certain Conversos not only persisted in Jewish practices, such as eating meat in lent, but forced their Christian servants to do likewise, and when the inquisitor, Fray Mateo de Rapica, with the aid of the Bishop of Elna, sought to reduce them to conformity, they defiantly published a defamatory libel upon him and, with the assistance of certain laymen, afflicted him with injuries and expenses.[421] It was not without cause that, when Bishop Alfonso de Santa María procured the decree of 1434 from the council of Basle, he included a clause branding as heretics all Conversos who adhered to Jewish superstitions, directing bishops and inquisitors to enquire strictly after them and to punish them condignly, and pronouncing liable to the penalties of fautorship all who support them in those practices.[422] The decree, of course, proved a dead letter, but none the less was it the foreshadowing of the Inquisition. When Nicholas V, in 1449, issued his bull in favor of the Conversos, he followed the example of the council of Basle, in excepting those who secretly continued to practise Jewish rites. In the methods commonly employed to procure conversions the result was inevitable and incurable.

What rendered this especially serious was the success of the Conversos in obtaining high office in Church and State. Important sees were occupied by bishops of Jewish blood; the chapters, the monastic orders and the curacies were full of them; they were prominent in the royal council and everywhere enjoyed positions of influence. The most powerful among them—the Santa Marías, the Dávilas and their following—had turned against the royal favorite Alvaro de Luna and, with the discontented nobles, were plotting his ruin, when he seems to have conceived the idea that, if he could introduce the Inquisition in Castile, he might find in it a weapon wherewith to subdue them. At least this is the only explanation of an application made to Nicholas V, in 1451, by Juan II, for a delegation of papal inquisitorial power for the chastisement of Judaizing Christians. The popes had too long vainly desired to introduce the Inquisition in Castile for Nicholas to neglect this opportunity. He promptly commissioned the Bishop of Osma, his vicar general, and the Scholasticus of Salamanca as inquisitors, either by themselves or through such delegates as they might appoint, to investigate and punish without appeal all such offenders, to deprive them of ecclesiastical dignities and benefices and of temporal possessions, to pronounce them incapable of holding such positions in future, to imprison and degrade them, and, if the offence required, to abandon them to the secular arm for burning. Full power was granted to perform any acts necessary or opportune to the discharge of these duties and, if resistance were offered, to invoke the aid of the secular power. All this was within the regular routine of the inquisitorial office, but there was one clause which showed that the object of the measure was the destruction of de Luna’s enemies, the Converso bishops, for the commission empowered the appointees to proceed even against bishops—a faculty never before granted to inquisitors and subsequently, as we shall see, withheld when the new Inquisition was organized.[423] All this was the formal establishment of the Inquisition on Castilian soil and, if circumstances had permitted its development, it would not have been left for Isabella to introduce the institution. The Inquisition, however, rested on the secular power for its efficiency. In Spain, especially, there was little respect for the naked papal authority, while that of Juan II was too much enfeebled to enable him to establish so serious an innovation. The New Christians recognized that their safety depended on de Luna’s downfall; the conspiracy against him won over the nerveless Juan II and, in 1453, he was hurriedly condemned and executed. Naturally the bull remained inoperative, and, some ten years later, Alonso de Espina feelingly complains “Some are heretics and Christian perverts, others are Jews, others Saracens, others devils. There is no one to investigate the errors of the heretics. The ravening wolves, O Lord, have entered thy flock, for the shepherds are few; many are hirelings and as hirelings they care only for shearing and not for feeding thy sheep.”[424]

In fact, when we consider the popular detestation of the Conversos and the invitation to attack afforded by their Judaizing tendencies, the postponement in establishing the Inquisition is attributable to the all-pervading lawlessness of the period and the absence of a strong central power. The people gratified their hatred by an occasional massacre, with its accompanying pillage, but among the various factions of the distracted state no one was strong enough to attempt a systematic movement provoking the bitterest opposition of a powerful class whose members occupied confidential positions in the court not alone of the king but of every noble and prelate. Earnest and untiring as was Fray Alonso’s zeal it therefore was fruitless. In August, 1461, he induced the heads of the Observantine Franciscans to address the chapter of the Geronimites urging a union of both bodies in the effort to obtain the introduction of the Inquisition. The suggestion was favorably received but the answer was delayed, and the impatient Fray Alonso, with Fray Fernando de la Plaza and other Observantines, appealed directly to King Henry, representing the prevalence of the Judaizing heresy throughout the land and the habitual circumcision of the children of Conversos.[435] The zeal of Fray Fernando outran his discretion and in his sermons he declared that he possessed the foreskins of children thus treated. King Henry sent for him and said that this practice was a gross insult to the Church, which it was his duty to punish, ordering him to produce the objects and reveal the names of the culprits. The fraile could only reply that he had heard it from persons of repute and authority, but, on being commanded to state their names, refused to do so, thus tacitly acknowledging that he had no proof. The Conversos were not slow in taking advantage of his blunder and, to crown the defeat of the Observantines, the Geronimites changed their views. Their general, Fray Alonso de Oropesa, who himself had Jewish blood in his veins, was a man deservedly esteemed; under his impulsion they mounted the pulpit in defence of the Conversos and the Observantines for the time were silenced.[436] While the labors of the fiery Fray Alonso were unquestionably successful in intensifying the bitterness of race hatred, their only direct result was seen in the Concordia of Medina del Campo between Henry IV and his revolted nobles in 1464-5. In this an elaborate clause deplored the spread of the Judaizing heresy; it ordered the bishops to establish a searching inquisition throughout all lands and lordships, regardless of franchises and privileges, for the detection and punishment of the heretics; it pledged the king to support the measure in every way and to employ the confiscations in the war with the Moors and it pointed out that the enforcement of this plan would put an end to the tumults and massacres directed against the suspects.[437] Under this impulsion some desultory persecution occurred. In the trial of Beatriz Nuñez, by the Inquisition of Toledo in 1485, witnesses allude to her husband, Fernando González who, some twenty years before, had been convicted and reconciled.[438] More detailed is a case occurring at Llerena in 1467, where, on September 17th, two Conversos, Garcí Fernández Valency and Pedro Franco de Villareal, were discovered in the act of performing Jewish ceremonies. The alcalde mayor, Alvaro de Céspedes, at once seized them and carried them before the episcopal vicar, Joan Millan. They confessed their Judaism and the vicar at once sentenced them to be burnt alive, which was executed the same day; two women compromised in the matter were condemned to other penalties and the house in which the heresy had been perpetrated was torn down.[439] In such cases the bishops were merely exercising their imprescriptible jurisdiction over heresy, but the prelacy of Castile was too much occupied with worldly affairs to devote any general or sustained energy to the suppression of Judaizers, and the land was too anarchical for the royal power to exert any influence in carrying the Concordia into effect; the Deposition of Avila, which followed in the next year, plunged everything again into confusion and the only real importance of the attempt lies in its significance of what was impending when peace and a strong government should render such a measure feasible. Yet it is a noteworthy fact that, in all the long series of the Córtes of Castile, from the earliest times, the proceedings of which have been published in full, there was no petition for anything approaching an Inquisition. In the fourteenth century there were many complaints about the Jews and petitions for restrictive laws, but these diminish in the fifteenth century and the later Córtes, from 1450 on, are almost free from them. The fearful disorders of the land gave the procurators or deputies enough to complain about and they seem to have had no time to waste on problematical dangers to religion.[440]

In fact, when we consider the popular detestation of the Conversos and the invitation to attack afforded by their Judaizing tendencies, the postponement in establishing the Inquisition is attributable to the all-pervading lawlessness of the period and the absence of a strong central power. The people gratified their hatred by an occasional massacre, with its accompanying pillage, but among the various factions of the distracted state no one was strong enough to attempt a systematic movement provoking the bitterest opposition of a powerful class whose members occupied confidential positions in the court not alone of the king but of every noble and prelate. Earnest and untiring as was Fray Alonso’s zeal it therefore was fruitless. In August, 1461, he induced the heads of the Observantine Franciscans to address the chapter of the Geronimites urging a union of both bodies in the effort to obtain the introduction of the Inquisition. The suggestion was favorably received but the answer was delayed, and the impatient Fray Alonso, with Fray Fernando de la Plaza and other Observantines, appealed directly to King Henry, representing the prevalence of the Judaizing heresy throughout the land and the habitual circumcision of the children of Conversos.[435] The zeal of Fray Fernando outran his discretion and in his sermons he declared that he possessed the foreskins of children thus treated. King Henry sent for him and said that this practice was a gross insult to the Church, which it was his duty to punish, ordering him to produce the objects and reveal the names of the culprits. The fraile could only reply that he had heard it from persons of repute and authority, but, on being commanded to state their names, refused to do so, thus tacitly acknowledging that he had no proof. The Conversos were not slow in taking advantage of his blunder and, to crown the defeat of the Observantines, the Geronimites changed their views. Their general, Fray Alonso de Oropesa, who himself had Jewish blood in his veins, was a man deservedly esteemed; under his impulsion they mounted the pulpit in defence of the Conversos and the Observantines for the time were silenced.[436] While the labors of the fiery Fray Alonso were unquestionably successful in intensifying the bitterness of race hatred, their only direct result was seen in the Concordia of Medina del Campo between Henry IV and his revolted nobles in 1464-5. In this an elaborate clause deplored the spread of the Judaizing heresy; it ordered the bishops to establish a searching inquisition throughout all lands and lordships, regardless of franchises and privileges, for the detection and punishment of the heretics; it pledged the king to support the measure in every way and to employ the confiscations in the war with the Moors and it pointed out that the enforcement of this plan would put an end to the tumults and massacres directed against the suspects.[437] Under this impulsion some desultory persecution occurred. In the trial of Beatriz Nuñez, by the Inquisition of Toledo in 1485, witnesses allude to her husband, Fernando González who, some twenty years before, had been convicted and reconciled.[438] More detailed is a case occurring at Llerena in 1467, where, on September 17th, two Conversos, Garcí Fernández Valency and Pedro Franco de Villareal, were discovered in the act of performing Jewish ceremonies. The alcalde mayor, Alvaro de Céspedes, at once seized them and carried them before the episcopal vicar, Joan Millan. They confessed their Judaism and the vicar at once sentenced them to be burnt alive, which was executed the same day; two women compromised in the matter were condemned to other penalties and the house in which the heresy had been perpetrated was torn down.[439] In such cases the bishops were merely exercising their imprescriptible jurisdiction over heresy, but the prelacy of Castile was too much occupied with worldly affairs to devote any general or sustained energy to the suppression of Judaizers, and the land was too anarchical for the royal power to exert any influence in carrying the Concordia into effect; the Deposition of Avila, which followed in the next year, plunged everything again into confusion and the only real importance of the attempt lies in its significance of what was impending when peace and a strong government should render such a measure feasible. Yet it is a noteworthy fact that, in all the long series of the Córtes of Castile, from the earliest times, the proceedings of which have been published in full, there was no petition for anything approaching an Inquisition. In the fourteenth century there were many complaints about the Jews and petitions for restrictive laws, but these diminish in the fifteenth century and the later Córtes, from 1450 on, are almost free from them. The fearful disorders of the land gave the procurators or deputies enough to complain about and they seem to have had no time to waste on problematical dangers to religion.[440]

This was the situation at the accession of Ferdinand and Isabella in 1474. Some years were necessary to settle the question of the succession, disputed by the unfortunate Beltraneja, and to quell the unruly nobles. During this period Sixtus IV renewed the attempt to introduce the papal Inquisition, for, in sending Nicoló Franco to Castile as legate, he commissioned him with full inquisitorial faculties to prosecute and punish the false Christians who after baptism persisted in the observance of Jewish rites.[441] The effort, however, was fruitless and is interesting chiefly from the evidence which it gives of the desire of Sixtus to give to Castile the blessing of the Inquisition. Ferdinand and Isabella, as we have seen, were habitually jealous of papal encroachments and were anxious to limit rather than to extend the legatine functions; they did not respond to the papal zeal for the purity of the faith and even when quiet was to a great extent restored they took no initiative with regard to a matter which had seemed to Fray Alonso de Espina so immeasurably important. In his capacity of agitator he had been succeeded by Fray Alonso de Hojeda, prior of the Dominican house of San Pablo of Seville, who devoted himself to the destruction of Judaism, both open as professed by the Jews and concealed as attributed to the Conversos. The battle of Toro, March 1, 1476, virtually broke up the party of the Beltraneja, of which the leaders made their peace as best they could, and the sovereigns could at last undertake the task of pacifying the land. At the end of July, 1477, Isabella, after capturing the castle of Trugillo, came, as we have seen, to Seville where she remained until October, 1478.[442] The presence of the court, with Conversos filling many of its most important posts, excited Fray Alonso to greater ardor than ever. It was in vain, however, that he called the queen’s attention to the danger threatening the faith and the State from the multitude of pretended Christians in high places. She was receiving faithful service from members of the class accused and she probably was too much occupied with the business in hand to undertake a task that could be postponed. It is said that her confessor, Torquemada, at an earlier period, had induced her to take a vow that, when she should reach the throne, she would devote her life to the extirpation of heresy and the supremacy of the Catholic faith, but this may safely be dismissed as a legend of later date.[443] Be this as it may, all that was done at the moment was that Pero González de Mendoza, then Archbishop of Seville, held a synod in which was promulgated a catechism setting forth the belief and duties of the Christian, which was published in the churches and hung up for public information in every parish, while the priests were exhorted to increased vigilance and the frailes to fresh zeal in making converts.[444] The adoption of such a device betrays the previous neglect of all instruction of the Marranos in the new religion imposed on them.

It was inevitable that there should have been a prolonged struggle in the court before the drastic remedy of the Inquisition was adopted. The efforts of its advocates were directed, not against the despised and friendless Jews, but against the powerful Conversos, embracing many of the most trusted counsellors of the sovereigns and men high in station in the Church, who could not but recognize the danger impending on all who traced their descent from Israel. There seems at first to have been a kind of compromise adopted, under which Pedro Fernández de Solis, Bishop of Cadiz, who was Provisor of Seville, with the Assistente Diego de Merlo, Fray Alfonso de Hojeda and some other frailes were commissioned to take charge of the matter, with power to inflict punishment. This resulted in a report by the commissioners to the sovereigns that a great portion of the citizens of Seville were infected with heresy, that it involved men high in station and power, and that it spread throughout not only Andalusia but Castile, so that it was incurable save by the organization of the Inquisition.[446] The Archbishop Mendoza, doubtless disgusted with the failure of his methods of instruction, joined in these representations and they had a powerful supporter in Fray Thomas de Torquemada, prior of the Dominican convent of Santa Cruz in Segovia, who, as confessor of the sovereigns, had much influence over them and who had long been urging the vigorous chastisement of heresy.[447] At last the victory was won. Ferdinand and Isabella resolved to introduce the Inquisition in the Castilian kingdoms and their ambassadors to the Holy See, the Bishop of Osma and his brother Diego de Santillan, were ordered to procure the necessary bull from Sixtus IV.[448] This must have been shrouded in profound secrecy, for, in July, 1478, while negotiations must have been on foot in Rome, Ferdinand and Isabella convoked a national synod at Seville which sat until August 1st. In the propositions laid by the sovereigns before this body there is no hint that such a measure was desired or proposed and, in the deliberations of the assembled prelates, there is no indication that the Church thought any action against the Conversos necessary.[449] Even as late as 1480, after the procurement of the bull and before its enforcement, the Córtes of Toledo presented to the sovereigns a detailed memorial embodying all the measures of reform desired by the people. In this the separation of Christians from Jews and Moors is asked for, but there is no request for the prosecution of apostate Conversos.[450] Evidently there was no knowledge of and no popular demand for the impending Inquisition.

Sixtus can have been nothing loath to accomplish the introduction of the Inquisition in Castile, which his predecessors had so frequently and so vainly attempted and which he had essayed to do a few years previous by granting the necessary faculties to his legate. If the request of the Castilian sovereigns, therefore, was not immediately granted it cannot have been from humanitarian motives as alleged by some modern apologists, but because Ferdinand and Isabella desired, not the ordinary papal Inquisition, but one which should be under the royal control and should pour into the royal treasury the resultant confiscations. Hitherto the appointment of inquisitors had always been made by the Provincials of the Dominican or Franciscan Orders according as the territory belonged to one or to the other, with occasional interference on the part of the Holy See, from which the commissions emanated. It was a delegation of the supreme papal authority and had always been held completely independent of the secular power, but Ferdinand and Isabella were too jealous of papal interference in the internal affairs of their kingdoms to permit this, and it is an evidence of the extreme desire of Sixtus to extend the Inquisition over Castile that he consented to make so important a concession. There also was doubtless discussion over the confiscations which the wealth of the Conversos promised to render large. This was a matter in which there was no universally recognized practice. In France they enured to the temporal seigneur. In Italy the custom varied at different times and in the various states, but the papacy assumed to control it and, in the fourteenth century, it claimed the whole, to be divided equally between the Inquisition and the papal camera.[451] The matter was evidently one to be determined by negotiation, and in this too the sovereigns had their way, for the confiscations were tacitly abandoned to them. Nothing was said as to defraying the expenses of the institution, but this was inferred by the absorption of the confiscations. If it was to be dependent on the crown the crown must provide for it, and we shall see hereafter the various devices by which a portion of the burden was subsequently thrown upon the Church.

The bull as finally issued bears date November 1, 1478, and is a very simple affair which, on its face, bears no signs of its momentous influence in moulding the destinies of the Spanish Peninsula. After reciting the existence in Spain of false Christians and the request of Ferdinand and Isabella that the pope should provide a remedy, it authorizes them to appoint three bishops or other suitable men, priests either regular or secular, over forty years of age, masters or bachelors in theology or doctors or licentiates of canon law, and to remove and replace them at pleasure. These are to have the jurisdiction and faculties of bishops and inquisitors over heretics, their fautors and receivers.[452] Subsequently Sixtus pronounced the bull to have been drawn inconsiderately and not in accordance with received practice and the decrees of his predecessors, which doubtless referred to the power of appointment and removal lodged in the crown and also to the omission of the requirement of episcopal concurrence in rendering judgment.[453] The creation of inquisitors was in itself an invasion of episcopal jurisdiction, which, from the earliest history of the institution, had been the source of frequent trouble, and where, as in Spain, many bishops were of Jewish blood and therefore under suspicion, the question was more intricate than elsewhere. With respect to this, moreover, it is observable that the bull did not confer, like that of Nicholas V, in 1451, jurisdiction over bishops in any special derogation of the decree of Boniface VIII requiring them, when suspected of heresy, to be tried by the pope.[454] Both of these questions, as we shall see, subsequently gave rise to considerable discussion.

They had not waited for this to organize their tribunal, with Doctor Juan Ruiz de Medina as assessor and Juan Lopez del Barco, a chaplain of the queen, as promotor fiscal or prosecuting officer. To these were added, May 13, 1481, Diego de Merlo, assistente or corregidor of Seville, and the Licentiate Ferrand Yáñez de Lobon as receivers of confiscations—an indispensable office in view of the profits of persecution. All soon found plenty of work. The Conversos of Seville had not been unmindful of the coming tempest. Many of them had fled to the lands of the neighboring nobles, in the expectation that feudal jurisdictions would protect them, even against a spiritual court such as that of the Inquisition. To prevent this change of domicile a royal decree ordered that no one should leave any place where inquisitors were holding their tribunal, but in the general terror this arbitrary command received scant obedience. A more efficient step was a proclamation addressed, on January 2, 1481, to the Marquis of Cadiz and other nobles by the frailes Miguel and Juan. This proved that no error had been made in the selection of those who were to lay the foundations of the Inquisition and that a new era had opened for Spain. The two simple friars spoke with an assured audacity to grandees who had been wont to treat with their sovereigns on almost equal terms—an audacity which must have appeared incredible to those to whom it was addressed, but to which Spain in time became accustomed from the Holy Office. The great Rodrigo Ponce de Leon and all other nobles were commanded to search their territories, to seize all strangers and newcomers and to deliver them within fifteen days at the prison of the Inquisition; to sequestrate their property and confide it, properly inventoried, to trustworthy persons who should account for it to the king or to the inquisitors. In vigorous language they were told that any failure in obeying these orders would bring upon them excommunication removable only by the inquisitors or their superiors, with forfeiture of rank and possessions and the release of their vassals from allegiance and from all payments due—a release which the inquisitors assumed to grant in advance, adding that they would prosecute them as fautors, receivers and defenders of heretics.[457] This portentous utterance was effective: the number of prisoners was speedily so great that the convent of San Pablo, which the inquisitors at first occupied, became insufficient and they obtained permission to establish themselves in the great fortress of Triana, the stronghold of Seville, of which the immense size and the gloomy dungeons rendered it appropriate for the work in hand.[458]

They had not waited for this to organize their tribunal, with Doctor Juan Ruiz de Medina as assessor and Juan Lopez del Barco, a chaplain of the queen, as promotor fiscal or prosecuting officer. To these were added, May 13, 1481, Diego de Merlo, assistente or corregidor of Seville, and the Licentiate Ferrand Yáñez de Lobon as receivers of confiscations—an indispensable office in view of the profits of persecution. All soon found plenty of work. The Conversos of Seville had not been unmindful of the coming tempest. Many of them had fled to the lands of the neighboring nobles, in the expectation that feudal jurisdictions would protect them, even against a spiritual court such as that of the Inquisition. To prevent this change of domicile a royal decree ordered that no one should leave any place where inquisitors were holding their tribunal, but in the general terror this arbitrary command received scant obedience. A more efficient step was a proclamation addressed, on January 2, 1481, to the Marquis of Cadiz and other nobles by the frailes Miguel and Juan. This proved that no error had been made in the selection of those who were to lay the foundations of the Inquisition and that a new era had opened for Spain. The two simple friars spoke with an assured audacity to grandees who had been wont to treat with their sovereigns on almost equal terms—an audacity which must have appeared incredible to those to whom it was addressed, but to which Spain in time became accustomed from the Holy Office. The great Rodrigo Ponce de Leon and all other nobles were commanded to search their territories, to seize all strangers and newcomers and to deliver them within fifteen days at the prison of the Inquisition; to sequestrate their property and confide it, properly inventoried, to trustworthy persons who should account for it to the king or to the inquisitors. In vigorous language they were told that any failure in obeying these orders would bring upon them excommunication removable only by the inquisitors or their superiors, with forfeiture of rank and possessions and the release of their vassals from allegiance and from all payments due—a release which the inquisitors assumed to grant in advance, adding that they would prosecute them as fautors, receivers and defenders of heretics.[457] This portentous utterance was effective: the number of prisoners was speedily so great that the convent of San Pablo, which the inquisitors at first occupied, became insufficient and they obtained permission to establish themselves in the great fortress of Triana, the stronghold of Seville, of which the immense size and the gloomy dungeons rendered it appropriate for the work in hand.[458]

Further arrests and burnings promptly followed, the wealth and prominence of the victims proving that here was a tribunal which was no respecter of persons and that money or favor could avail nothing against its rigid fanaticism. The flight of the terror-stricken Conversos was stimulated afresh, but the Inquisition was not thus to be balked of its prey; flight was forbidden and guards were placed at the gates, where so many were arrested that no place of confinement sufficiently capacious for them could be found, yet notwithstanding this great numbers escaped to the lands of the nobles, to Portugal and to the Moors. The plague now began to rage with violence, God and man seemed to be uniting for the destruction of the unhappy Conversos, and they petitioned Diego de Merlo to allow them to save their lives by leaving the pest-ridden city. The request was humanely granted to those who could procure passes, on condition that they should leave their property behind and only take with them what was necessary for immediate use. Under these regulations multitudes departed, more than eight thousand finding refuge at Mairena, Marchena and Palacios. The Marquis of Cadiz, the Duke of Medina Sidonia and other nobles received them hospitably, but many kept on to Portugal or to the Moors and some, we are told, even found refuge in Rome. The inquisitors themselves were obliged to abandon the city, but their zeal allowed of no respite; they removed their tribunal to Aracena, where they found ample work to do, burning there twenty-three men and women, besides the corpses and bones of numerous deceased heretics, exhumed for the purpose. When the pestilence diminished they returned to Seville and resumed their work there with unrelaxing ardor.[462] According to a contemporary, by the fourth of November they had burnt two hundred and ninety-eight persons and had condemned seventy-nine to perpetual prison.[463]

As novices, it would seem that the zeal of the inquisitors had plunged them into the business of arresting and trying suspects without resorting to the preliminary device, which had been found useful in the earliest operations of the Holy Office—the Term of Grace. This was a period, longer or shorter according to the discretion of the inquisitors, during which those who felt themselves guilty could come forward and confess, when they would be reconciled to the Church and subjected to penance, pecuniary and otherwise, severe enough, but preferable to the stake. One of the conditions was that of stating all that they knew of other heretics and apostates, which proved an exceedingly fruitful source of information as, under the general terror, there was little hesitation in denouncing not only friends and acquaintances, but the nearest and dearest kindred—parents and children and brothers and sisters. No better means of detecting the hidden ramifications of Judaism could be devised and, towards the middle of the year 1481, the inquisitors adopted it.[464] The mercy thus promised was scanty, as we shall see hereafter when we come to consider the subject, but it brought in vast numbers and autos de fe were organized in which they were paraded as penitents, no less than fifteen hundred being exhibited in one of these solemnities. It can readily be conceived how soon the inquisitors were in possession of information inculpating Conversos in every corner of the land. It was freely asserted that they were all in reality Jews, who were waiting for God to lead them out of the worse than Egyptian bondage in which they were held by the Christians.[465] Thus was demonstrated not only the necessity of the Inquisition but of its extension throughout Spain. The evil was too great and its immediate repression too important for the work to be entrusted to the two friars laboring so zealously in Seville. Permission had been obtained only for the appointment of three and application was made to Sixtus IV for additional powers. On this occasion he did not as before allow the commissions to be granted in the name of the sovereigns but issued them direct to those nominated to him by them, whereby the inquisitors held their faculties immediately from the Holy See. Thus by a brief of February 11, 1482, he commissioned seven—Pedro Ocaño, Pedro Martínez de Barrio, Alfonso de San Cebriano, Rodrigo Segarra, Thomás de Torquemada and Bernardo Santa María, all Dominicans.[466] Still more were required, of whose appointments we have no definite knowledge, to man the tribunals which were speedily formed at Ciudad-Real, Córdova, Jaen, and possibly at Segovia.[466a]

The one at Ciudad-Real was intended for the great archiepiscopal province of Toledo, to which city it was transferred in 1485. The reason why it was first established at the former place may perhaps be that the warlike Archbishop Alonso Carrillo, whether through zeal for the faith or in order to assert his episcopal jurisdiction over heresy and prevent the intrusion of the papal inquisitors, had appointed before his death, July 1, 1482, a certain Doctor Thomás as inquisitor in Toledo. To what extent the latter performed his functions we have no means of knowing, the only trace of his activity being the production and incorporation, in the records of subsequent trials by the Inquisition of Ciudad-Real, of evidence taken by him.[467] Be this as it may the Inquisition of Ciudad-Real was not organized until the latter half of 1483. It commenced by issuing an Edict of Grace for thirty days, at the expiration of which it extended the time for another thirty days. Meanwhile it was busily employed, throughout October and November, in making a general inquest and taking testimony from all who would come forward to give evidence. In the resultant trials the names of some of the witnesses appear with suspicious frequency and the nature of their reckless general assertions, without personal knowledge, shows how flimsy was much of the evidence on which prosecutions were based. That the inquest was thorough and that every one who knew anything damaging to a Converso was brought up to state it may be assumed from the trial of Sancho de Ciudad in which the evidence of no less than thirty-four witnesses was recorded, some of them testifying to incidents happening twenty years previous. Much of this moreover indicates the careless security in which the Conversos had lived and allowed their Jewish practices to be known to Christian servants and acquaintances with whom they were in constant intercourse. The first public manifestation of results seems to have been an auto de fe held November 16th, in the church of San Pedro, for the reconciliation of penitents who had come forward during the Term of Grace.[468] Soon after this the trials of those implicated commenced and were prosecuted with such vigor that, on February 6, 1484, an auto de fe was held in which four persons were burnt, followed on the 23d and 24th of the same month by an imposing solemnity involving the concremation of thirty living men and women and the bones and effigies of forty who were dead or fugitives.[469] In its two years of existence the tribunal of Ciudad-Real burnt fifty-two obstinate heretics, condemned two hundred and twenty fugitives and reconciled one hundred and eighty-three penitents.[470]

In 1485 a temporary tribunal was set up at Guadalupe, where Ferdinand and Isabella appointed as inquisitor (under what papal authority does not appear) Fray Nuño de Arevalo, prior of the Geronimite convent there. Apparently to guide his inexperience Doctor Francisco de la Fuente was transferred from Ciudad-Real and, with another colleague, the Licentiate Pedro Sánchez de la Calancha, they purified the place of heresy with so much vigor that, within a year, they held in the cemetery before the doors of the monastery seven autos de fe in which were burnt a heretic monk, fifty-two Judaizers, forty-eight dead bodies and twenty-five effigies of fugitives, while sixteen were condemned to perpetual imprisonment and innumerable others were sent to the galleys or penanced with the sanbenito for life. These energetic proceedings do not appear to have made good Christians of those who were spared for, July 13, 1500, Inquisitor-general Deza ordered all the Conversos of Guadalupe to leave the district and not to return.[475] The same year, 1485, saw a tribunal assigned to Valladolid, but it must have met with effective resistance, for in September, 1488, Ferdinand and Isabella were obliged to visit the city in order to get it into working condition; it forthwith commenced operations by arresting some prominent citizens and on June 19, 1489, the first auto de fe was held in which eighteen persons were burnt alive and the bones of four dead heretics.[476] Still, the existence of this tribunal would seem to have long remained uncertain for, as late as December 24, 1498, we find Isabella writing to a new appointee that she and the inquisitor-general have agreed that the Inquisition must be placed there and ordering him to prepare to undertake it, and then on January 22, 1501, telling Inquisitor-general Deza that she approves of its lodgement in the house of Diego de la Baeza, where it is to remain for the present; she adds that she and Ferdinand have written to the Count of Cabra to see that for the future the inquisitors are well treated.[477] Permanent tribunals were also established in Llerena and Murcia, of the early records of all of which we know little. In 1490 a temporary one was organized in Avila by Torquemada, apparently for the purpose of trying those accused of the murder of the Santo Niño de la Guardia; it continued active until 1500 and during these ten years there were hung in the church the insignias y mantetas of seventy-five victims burnt alive, of twenty-six dead and of one fugitive, besides the sanbenitos of seventy-one reconciled penitents.[478]

At this period they were earnestly engaged in reorganizing the institutions of Castile, centralizing the administration and reducing to order the chaos resulting from the virtual anarchy of the preceding reigns. In effecting this they apportioned, in 1480, with the consent of the Córtes of Toledo, the affairs of government among four royal councils, that of administration and justice, known as the Concejo Real de Castella, that of Finance, or Concejo de Hacienda, the Concejo de Estado and the Concejo de Aragon, to which was added a special one for the Hermandades.[479] These met daily in the palace for the despatch of business and their effect in making the royal power felt in every quarter of the land and in giving vigor and unity to the management of the state soon proved the practical value of the device. The Inquisition was fast looming up as an affair of state of the first importance, while yet it could scarce be regarded as falling within the scope of either of the four councils; the sovereigns were too jealous of papal interference to allow it to drift aimlessly, subject to directions from Rome, and their uniform policy required that it should be kept as much as possible under the royal superintendence. That a fifth council should be created for the purpose was a natural expedient, for which the assent of Sixtus IV was readily obtained, when it was organized in 1483 under the name of the Concejo de la Suprema y General Inquisicion—a title conveniently abbreviated to la Suprema—with jurisdiction over all matters connected with the faith. To secure due subordination and discipline over the whole body it was requisite that the president of this council should have full control of appointment and dismissal of the individual inquisitors who, as exercising power delegated directly from the pope, might otherwise regard with contempt the authority of one who was also merely a delegate. It thus became necessary to create a new office, unknown to the older Inquisition—an inquisitor-general who should preside over the deliberations of the council. The office evidently was one which would be of immense weight and the future of the institution depended greatly on the character of its first chief. By the advice of the Cardinal Archbishop of Toledo, Pero González de Mendoza, the royal choice fell on Thomas de Torqemada, the confessor of the sovereigns, who was one of the seven inquisitors commissioned by the papal letter of February 11, 1482. The other members of the council were Alonso Carrillo, Bishop of Mazara (Sicily) and two doctors of laws, Sancho Velasco de Cuellar and Ponce de Valencia.[480] The exact date of Torquemada’s appointment is not known, as the papal brief conferring it has not been found, but, as Sixtus created him Inquisitor of Aragon, Catalonia and Valencia by letters of October 17, 1483, his commission as Inquisitor-general of Castile was somewhat antecedent.[481]

Torquemada’s commission of 1485 contained the important power of appointing and dismissing inquisitors, but the confirmation of 1486 bore the significant exception that all those appointed by the pope were exempted from removal by him, indicating that in the interval he had attempted to exercise the power and that the resistance to it had enlisted papal support. In fact, at the conference of Seville, held in 1484 by Torquemada, there were present the two inquisitors of each of four existing tribunals; from Seville we find Juan de San Martin, one of the original appointees of 1479, but his colleague, Miguel de Morillo, has disappeared and is replaced by Juan Ruiz de Medina, who had been merely assessor, while but a single one, Pero Martínez de Barrio, of the seven commissioned by Sixtus IV in 1482 appears as representing the other tribunals—the rest are all new men, doubtless appointees of Torquemada.[490] There was evidently a bitter quarrel on foot between Torquemada and the original papal nominees, who held that their powers, delegated directly from the pope, rendered them independent of him, and, as usual, the Holy See inclined to one side or to the other in the most exasperating manner, as opposing interests brought influence to bear. Complaints against Torquemada were sufficiently numerous and serious to oblige him thrice to send Fray Alonso Valaja to the papal court to justify him.[491] He seems to have removed Miguel de Morillo, who vindicated himself in Rome, for a brief of Innocent VIII, February 23, 1487, appoints him inquisitor of Seville, in complete disregard of the faculties granted to Torquemada. Then a motu proprio of November 26, 1487, suspends both him and Juan de San Martin and commissions Torquemada to appoint their successors. Again, a brief of January 7, 1488, appoints Juan Inquisitor of Seville, while subsequent briefs of the same year are addressed to him concerning the business of his office as though he were discharging its duties independently of Torquemada, but his death in 1489 removed him from the scene. The quarrel evidently continued, and at one time Fray Miguel enjoyed a momentary triumph, for a papal letter of September 26, 1491, commissions him as Inquisitor-general of Castile and Aragon, thus placing him on an equality with Torquemada himself.[492] It would be impossible now to determine what part the sovereigns may have had in these changes and to what extent the popes disregarded the authority conferred on them of appointment and removal. There was a constant struggle on the one hand to render the Spanish Holy Office national and independent, and on the other to keep it subject to papal control.

This multiform headship of the Inquisition continued for some years until the various incumbents successively died or resigned. Iñigo Manrique was the first to disappear, dying in 1496, and had no successor. Then, in 1498, followed the Bishop of Avila, who had been transferred to Córdova in 1496. In the same year, as we have seen, Torquemada died, and this time the vacancy was filled by the appointment as his successor of Diego Deza, then Bishop of Jaen (subsequently, in 1500, of Palencia, and in 1505 Archbishop of Seville) who was commissioned, November 24, 1498, for Castile, Leon and Granada, and on September 1, 1499, for all the Spanish kingdoms.[497] In 1500 died Martin Archbishop of Messina—apparently a defaulter, for, on October 26th of the same year, Ferdinand orders his auditor of the confiscations to pass in the accounts of Luis de Riva Martin, receiver of Cadiz, 18,000 maravedís due by the archbishop for wheat, hay, etc., which he forgives to the heirs.[498] From this time forward Deza is reckoned as the sole inquisitor-general and direct successor of Torquemada, but Fuentelsaz, Bishop of Jaen, remained in office, for, as late as January 13, 1503, an order for the payment of salaries is signed by Deza and contains the name of the Bishop of Jaen as also inquisitor-general.[499] He relinquished the position in 1504 and Deza remained as sole chief of the Inquisition until, in 1507, he was forced to resign as we shall see hereafter.

At the time of his retirement the kingdoms of Castile and Aragon had been separated by the death of Isabella, November 26, 1504. Ferdinand’s experience with his son-in-law, Philip I, and his hope of issue from his marriage in March, 1506, with Germaine de Foix, in which case the kingdoms would have remained separate, warned him of the danger of having his ancestral dominions spiritually subordinated to a Castilian subject. Before Deza’s resignation, therefore, he applied to Julius II to commission Juan Enguera, Bishop of Vich, with the powers for Aragon which Deza was exercising. Julius seems to have made some difficulty about this, for a letter of Ferdinand, from Naples, February 6, 1507, to his ambassador at Rome, Francisco de Rojas, instructs him to explain that, since he had abandoned the title of King of Castile, the jurisdiction was separated and it was necessary and convenient that there should be an Inquisition for each kingdom.[500] He prevailed and the appointments of Cardinal Ximenes for Castile and of Bishop Enguera for Aragon were issued respectively on June 6 and 5, 1507.[501] During the lifetime of Ximenes the Inquisitions remained disunited, but in 1518, after his death, Charles V caused his former tutor, Cardinal Adrian of Utrecht, Bishop of Tortosa, who in 1516 had been made Inquisitor-general of Aragon, to be commissioned also for Castile, after which there was no further division. During the interval Ferdinand had acquired Navarre and had annexed it to the crown of Castile, so that the whole of the Peninsula, with the exception of Portugal, was united under one organization.[502]

Among other powers granted to Torquemada was that of modifying the rules of the Inquisition to adapt them to the requirements of Spain.[503] The importance of this concession it would be difficult to exaggerate, as it rendered the institution virtually self-governing. Thus the Spanish Inquisition acquired a character of its own, distinguishing it from the moribund tribunals of the period in other lands. The men who fashioned it knew perfectly what they wanted and in their hands it assumed the shape in which it dominated the conscience of every man and was an object of terror to the whole population. In the exercise of this power Torquemada assembled the inquisitors in Seville, November 29, 1484, where, in conjunction with his colleagues of the Suprema, a series of regulations was agreed upon, known as the Instruciones de Sevilla, to which, in December of the same year and in January, 1485, he added further rules, issued in his own name under the authority of the sovereigns. In 1488 another assembly was held, under the supervision of Ferdinand and Isabella, which issued the Instruciones de Valladolid.[504] In 1498 came the Instruciones de Avila—the last in which Torquemada took part—designed principally to check the abuses which were rapidly developing, and, for the same purpose, a brief addition was made at Seville in 1500, by Diego Deza. All these became known in the tribunals as the Instruciones Antiguas.[505] As the institution became thoroughly organized under the control of the Suprema, consultation with the subordinate inquisitors was no longer requisite and regulations were promulgated by it in cartas acordadas. It was difficult, however, to keep the inquisitors strictly in line, and variations of practice sprang up which, in 1561, the Inquisitor-general Fernando Valdés endeavored to check by issuing the Instruciones Nuevas. Subsequent regulations were required from time to time, forming a considerable and somewhat intricate body of jurisprudence, which we shall have to consider hereafter. At present it is sufficient to indicate how the Inquisition became an autonomous body—an imperium in imperio—framing its own laws and subject only to the rarely-exercised authority of the Holy See and the more or less hesitating control of the crown.

It is no wonder that, as this portentous institution spread its wings of terror over the land, all who felt themselves liable to its animadversion were disposed to seek safety in flight, no matter at what sacrifice. That numbers succeeded in this is shown by the statistics of the early autos de fe, in which the living victims are far outnumbered by the effigies of the absent. Thus in Ciudad-Real, during the first two years, fifty-two obstinate heretics were burnt and two hundred and twenty absentees were condemned.[508] In Barcelona, where the Inquisition was not established until 1487, the first auto de fe, celebrated January 25, 1488, showed a list of four living victims to twelve effigies of fugitives; in a subsequent one of May 23d, the proportions were three to forty-two; in one of February 9, 1489, three to thirty-nine; in one of March 24, 1490, they were two to one hundred and fifty-nine, and in another of June 10, 1491, they were three to one hundred and thirty-nine.[509] If the object had simply been to purify the land of heresy and apostasy this would have been accomplished as well by expatriation as by burning or reconciling, but such was not the policy which governed the sovereigns, and edicts were issued forbidding all of Jewish lineage from leaving Spain and imposing a fine of five hundred florins on ship-masters conveying them away.[510] This was not, as it might seem to us, wanton cruelty, although it was harsh, inasmuch as it assumed guilt on mere suspicion. To say nothing of the confiscations, which were defrauded of the portable property carried away by the fugitives, we must bear in mind that, to the orthodox of the period, heresy was a positive crime, nay the greatest of crimes, punishable as such by laws in force for centuries, and the heretic was to be prevented from escaping its penalties as much as a murderer or a thief. The royal edicts were supplemented by the Inquisition, and it is an illustration of the extension of its jurisdiction over all matters, relating directly or indirectly to the faith, that, November 8, 1499, the Archbishop Martin of Messina issued an order, which was published throughout the realm and was confirmed by Diego Deza, January 15, 1502, to the effect that no ship-captain or merchant should transport across seas any New Christian, whether Jewish or Moorish, without a royal license, under pain of confiscation, of excommunication and of being held as a fautor and protector of heretics. To render this effective two days later Archbishop Martin ordered that suitable persons should be sent to all the sea-ports to arrest all New Christians desiring to cross the sea and bring them to the Inquisition so that justice should be done to them, all expenses being defrayed out of the confiscations.[511] These provisions were not allowed to be a dead-letter, though we are apt to hear of them rather in cases where, for special reasons, the penalties were remitted. Thus, July 24, 1499, Ferdinand writes to the Inquisitors of Barcelona that a ship of Charles de Sant Climent, a merchant of their city, had brought from Alexandria to Aiguesmortes certain persons who had fled from Spain. Even this transportation between foreign ports came within the purview of the law, for Ferdinand explains that action in this case would be to his disservice, wherefore if complaint is lodged with them they are to refer it to him or to the inquisitor-general for instructions. Again, on November 8, 1500, the king orders the release of the caravel and other property of Diego de la Mesquita of Seville, which had been seized because he had carried some New Christians to Naples—the reason for the release being the services of Diego in the war with Naples and those which he is rendering elsewhere. A letter from Ferdinand to the King of Portugal, November 7, 1500, recites that recently some New Christians had been arrested in Milaga, where they were embarking under pretext of going to Rome for the jubilee. On examination by the Inquisition at Seville they admitted that they were Jews but said that they had been forced in Portugal to turn Christians; as this brought them under inquisitorial jurisdiction, the inquisitors were sending to Portugal for evidence and the king was asked to protect the envoys and give them facilities for the purpose.[512] The same determination was manifested to recapture when possible those who had succeeded in effecting their flight. In 1496 Micer Martin, inquisitor of Mallorca, heard of some who were in Bugia, a sea-port of Africa. He forthwith despatched the notary, Lope de Vergara, thither to seize them, but the misbelieving Moors disregarded his safe-conduct and threw him and his party into a dungeon where they languished for three years. He at length was ransomed and, in recompense of his losses and sufferings, Ferdinand ordered, March 31, 1499, Matheo de Morrano receiver of Mallorca to pay him two hundred and fifty gold ducats without requiring of him any itemized statement of his injuries.[513]

It is no wonder that, as this portentous institution spread its wings of terror over the land, all who felt themselves liable to its animadversion were disposed to seek safety in flight, no matter at what sacrifice. That numbers succeeded in this is shown by the statistics of the early autos de fe, in which the living victims are far outnumbered by the effigies of the absent. Thus in Ciudad-Real, during the first two years, fifty-two obstinate heretics were burnt and two hundred and twenty absentees were condemned.[508] In Barcelona, where the Inquisition was not established until 1487, the first auto de fe, celebrated January 25, 1488, showed a list of four living victims to twelve effigies of fugitives; in a subsequent one of May 23d, the proportions were three to forty-two; in one of February 9, 1489, three to thirty-nine; in one of March 24, 1490, they were two to one hundred and fifty-nine, and in another of June 10, 1491, they were three to one hundred and thirty-nine.[509] If the object had simply been to purify the land of heresy and apostasy this would have been accomplished as well by expatriation as by burning or reconciling, but such was not the policy which governed the sovereigns, and edicts were issued forbidding all of Jewish lineage from leaving Spain and imposing a fine of five hundred florins on ship-masters conveying them away.[510] This was not, as it might seem to us, wanton cruelty, although it was harsh, inasmuch as it assumed guilt on mere suspicion. To say nothing of the confiscations, which were defrauded of the portable property carried away by the fugitives, we must bear in mind that, to the orthodox of the period, heresy was a positive crime, nay the greatest of crimes, punishable as such by laws in force for centuries, and the heretic was to be prevented from escaping its penalties as much as a murderer or a thief. The royal edicts were supplemented by the Inquisition, and it is an illustration of the extension of its jurisdiction over all matters, relating directly or indirectly to the faith, that, November 8, 1499, the Archbishop Martin of Messina issued an order, which was published throughout the realm and was confirmed by Diego Deza, January 15, 1502, to the effect that no ship-captain or merchant should transport across seas any New Christian, whether Jewish or Moorish, without a royal license, under pain of confiscation, of excommunication and of being held as a fautor and protector of heretics. To render this effective two days later Archbishop Martin ordered that suitable persons should be sent to all the sea-ports to arrest all New Christians desiring to cross the sea and bring them to the Inquisition so that justice should be done to them, all expenses being defrayed out of the confiscations.[511] These provisions were not allowed to be a dead-letter, though we are apt to hear of them rather in cases where, for special reasons, the penalties were remitted. Thus, July 24, 1499, Ferdinand writes to the Inquisitors of Barcelona that a ship of Charles de Sant Climent, a merchant of their city, had brought from Alexandria to Aiguesmortes certain persons who had fled from Spain. Even this transportation between foreign ports came within the purview of the law, for Ferdinand explains that action in this case would be to his disservice, wherefore if complaint is lodged with them they are to refer it to him or to the inquisitor-general for instructions. Again, on November 8, 1500, the king orders the release of the caravel and other property of Diego de la Mesquita of Seville, which had been seized because he had carried some New Christians to Naples—the reason for the release being the services of Diego in the war with Naples and those which he is rendering elsewhere. A letter from Ferdinand to the King of Portugal, November 7, 1500, recites that recently some New Christians had been arrested in Milaga, where they were embarking under pretext of going to Rome for the jubilee. On examination by the Inquisition at Seville they admitted that they were Jews but said that they had been forced in Portugal to turn Christians; as this brought them under inquisitorial jurisdiction, the inquisitors were sending to Portugal for evidence and the king was asked to protect the envoys and give them facilities for the purpose.[512] The same determination was manifested to recapture when possible those who had succeeded in effecting their flight. In 1496 Micer Martin, inquisitor of Mallorca, heard of some who were in Bugia, a sea-port of Africa. He forthwith despatched the notary, Lope de Vergara, thither to seize them, but the misbelieving Moors disregarded his safe-conduct and threw him and his party into a dungeon where they languished for three years. He at length was ransomed and, in recompense of his losses and sufferings, Ferdinand ordered, March 31, 1499, Matheo de Morrano receiver of Mallorca to pay him two hundred and fifty gold ducats without requiring of him any itemized statement of his injuries.[513]

It shows how strong an impression had already been made by the resolute character of the sovereigns, and how violent was the antagonism generally entertained for the Conversos, that so novel and absolute a tyranny could be imposed on the lately turbulent population of Castile without resistance, and that so powerful a class as that against which persecution was directed should have submitted without an effort save the abortive plots at Seville and Toledo. The indications that have reached us of opposition to the arbitrary acts of the Inquisition in making arrests or confiscations are singularly few. In the records of the town-council of Xeres de la Frontera, under date of August 28, 1482, there is an entry reciting that there had come to the town a man carrying a wand and calling himself an alguazil of the Inquisition; he had seized Gonçalo Caçabé and carried him off without showing his authority to the local officials, which was characterized as an atrocious proceeding and the town ought to take steps with the king, the pope and the Inquisition to have it undone.[514] Doubtless the summary acts of the Holy Office over-riding all recognized law, created such feeling in many places as we may gather from a cédula of Ferdinand, December 15, 1484, forbidding the reception of heretics and ordering their surrender on demand of the inquisitors, and another of July 8, 1487, commanding that any one bearing orders from the inquisitors of Toledo is to be allowed to arrest any person, under a penalty of 100,000 maravedís for the rich and confiscation for others,[515] but complaints were dangerous, for they could be met by threats of punishment for fautorship of heresy. Still it required considerable time to accustom the nobles and people to unquestioning submission to a domination so absolute and so foreign to their experience. As late as the year 1500 there are two royal letters to the Count of Benalcázar reciting that he had ordered the arrest of a girl of Herrera who had uttered scandals against the faith; she was in the hands of his alcaide, Gutierre de Sotomayor, who refused to deliver her when the inquisitor sent for her. The second letter, after an interval of nineteen days, points out the gravity of the offence and peremptorily orders the surrender of the girl. She proved to be a Jewish prophetess whose trial resulted in bringing to the stake large numbers of her unfortunate disciples. There is also an anticipation of resistance in a letter, January 12, 1501, to the Prior of St. John, charging him to see that no impediments are placed in the way of the receiver of the Inquisition of Jaen in seizing certain confiscated property at Alcázar de Consuegra.[516] More indicative of popular repugnance is a letter of October 4, 1502, to the royal officials of a place not specified, reciting that the people are endeavoring to have Mosen Salvador Serras, lieutenant of the vicar, removed because he had spoken well of the Inquisition and had been charged by the inquisitors with certain duties to perform; they are not to allow this to be done and are to see that he is not ill-treated.[517] In 1509 Ferdinand had occasion to remonstrate with the Duke of Alva, in the case of Alonso de Jaen, a resident of Coria, because, when he was arrested, an agent of the duke had seized certain cows and sold them and, when he was condemned and his property confiscated, Alva had forbidden any one to purchase anything without his permission. Ferdinand charges him to allow the sale to proceed freely and to account for the cows, pointing out that he had granted to him a third of the net proceeds of all confiscations in his estates.[518] This grant of a third of the confiscations was made to other great nobles and doubtless tended to reconcile them to the operations of the Inquisition. In this general acquiescence it is somewhat remarkable that, as late as 1520, when Charles V ordered Merida to prepare accommodations for a tribunal, the city remonstrated; everything there was quiet and peaceable, it said, and it feared a tumult if the Holy Office was established there, while if merely a visit was made for an inquest it would lend willing aid. Cardinal Adrian hearkened to the warning in Charles’s absence and in a letter of November 27, 1520, ordered his inquisitors to settle somewhere else.[519]

At the same time it was inevitable that power so irresponsible would be frequently and greatly abused, and it is interesting to observe that, when no resistance was made, Ferdinand was, as a general rule, prompt to intervene in favor of the oppressed. Thus January 28, 1498, he writes to the inquisitors-general that recently some officials of the Inquisition of Valencia went to the barony of Serra to arrest some women who wore Moorish dress and, as they were not recognized, they were resisted by the Moors, whereupon the inquisitors proceeded to seize all the Moors of Serra who chanced to come to Valencia, so that the place was becoming depopulated. He therefore orders the inquisitors-general to intimate to their subordinates that they must find some other method whereby the innocent shall not suffer for the fault of individuals and, not content with this, he wrote directly to the Inquisitor of Valencia, instructing him to proceed with much moderation. In another case where opposition had been provoked he writes, January 18, 1499, “We have your letter and are much displeased with the maltreatment which you report of the inquisitor and his officials. It will be attended to duly. But often you yourselves are the cause of it, for if each of you would attend to his duties quietly and carefully and injure no one you would be held in good esteem. Look to this in the future, for it will displease us much if you do what you ought not, with little foundation.” At the same time he charges the inquisitor not to make arrests without good cause, “for in such things, besides the charge on your conscience, the Holy Office is much defamed and its officials despised.” So in a letter of August 15, 1500, to the inquisitors of Saragossa, he tells them that he has received a copy of an edict which they had issued at Calatayud; it is so sharp that if it is enforced no one can be safe; they must consider such things carefully or consult him; in the present case they will obey the instructions sent by the inquisitors-general and must always bear in mind that the only object of the Inquisition is the salvation of souls. Again, when the inquisitors of Barcelona imperiously placed the town of Perpiñan under interdict, in a quarrel arising out of a censal or ground-rent on Carcella, Ferdinand writes to them, March 5, 1501, that the town is poor and must be gently treated, especially as it is on the frontier, and he sends a special envoy to arrange the matter.[520] The wearing delays, which were one of the most terrible engines of oppression by the Inquisition, were especially distasteful to him. January 28, 1498, he writes to an inquisitor about the case of Anton Rúiz of Teruel, who had been imprisoned for five months without trial for some remarks made by him to another person about the confiscation of the property of Jaime de Santangel, though application had been made repeatedly to have the case despatched. Ferdinand orders that it be considered at once; the prisoner is either to be discharged on bail or proper punishment is to be inflicted. So, January 16, 1501, he reminds inquisitors that he has written to them several times to conclude the case between the heirs of Mossen Perea and the sons of Anton Rúiz and deliver sentence; the case has been concluded for some time but the sentence is withheld; it must be rendered at once or the case must be either delegated to a competent person or be sent to the Suprema. At the same time, whenever there was the semblance of opposition to an injustice, on the part of the secular authorities, he was prompt to repress it. The action of the Inquisition of Valencia, in confiscating the property of a certain Valenzuola, excited so much feeling that the governor, the auditor-general, the royal council and the jurados met to protest against it and in so doing said some things unpleasing to the inquisitors, who thereupon complained to Ferdinand. He wrote to the offenders, March 21, 1499, rebuking them severely; it was none of their business; if the inquisitors committed an injustice the appeal lay to the inquisitor-general, who would rectify it; their duty was to aid the Inquisition and he ordered them to do so in future and not to create scandal.[521] He was more considerate when the frontier town of Perpiñan was concerned, for in 1513, when the deputy receiver of confiscations provoked antagonism by the vigor of his proceedings and the consuls complained that he had publicly insulted Franco Maler, one of their number, Ferdinand ordered the inquisitor of Barcelona to investigate the matter at once and to inflict due punishment.[522]

As early as 1501 there is evidence of hostility between Lucero and the Córdovan authorities. When the receiver of confiscations, accompanied by Diego de Barrionuevo, scrivener of sequestrations, was holding a public auction of confiscated property, the alguazil mayor of the city, Gonzalo de Mayorga, ordered the town-crier, Juan Sánchez, who was crying the auction, to come with him in order to make certain proclamations. The scrivener interposed and refused to let Sánchez go; hot words passed in which Mayorga insulted the Inquisition and finally struck the scrivener with his wand of office, after which the alcalde mayor of the city, Diego Rúiz de Zarate, carried him off to prison. The inviolability of the officials of the Inquisition was vindicated by a royal sentence of September 6th, in which Mayorga, in addition to the arbitrary penance to be imposed on him by Lucero, was deprived of his office for life, was disabled from filling any public position whatever, and was banished perpetually from Córdova and its district, which he was to leave within eight days after notification. Zarate was more mercifully treated and escaped with six months’ suspension from office.[529] This severity to civic officials of high position was a warning to all men that Lucero was not to be trifled with.

The next step of the opponents of Lucero was to recuse Deza as judge and to interject an appeal to the Holy See, leading to an active contest in Rome between Ferdinand and his son-in-law. A letter of the former, April 22, 1506, to Juan de Loaysa, agent of the Inquisition in Rome, described the attempt as an audacious and indecent effort to destroy the Inquisition which was more necessary than ever. Loaysa was told that he could render no greater service to God and to the king than by defeating it; minute instructions were given as to the influences that he must bring to bear, and he was reminded that Holy Writ permits the use of craft and cunning to perform the work of God. The extreme anxiety betrayed in the letter indicates that there was much more involved than the mere defence of Lucero and Deza; it was with Philip and Juana that he was wrestling and the stake was the crown of Castile. On the other hand, Philip, doubtless won by the gold of the Conversos, had fairly espoused their cause and was laboring to obtain for them a favorable decision from the pope. His ambassador, Philibert of Utrecht, under date of June 28th, reported that he had urged Julius II not to reject the appeal of the Marranos but the politic pontiff replied that he must reserve his decision until Ferdinand and Philip had met.[539]

The relief of the sufferers seemed assured, but the situation was radically changed by the sudden death of Philip, September 25, 1506, for although Juana was treated nominally as queen, she exercised no authority. Deza promptly revoked Guzman’s commission, of which the papal confirmation seems not to have been received; he took possession of the prisoners at Toro and sent the Archdeacon of Torquemada to Córdova to do the same, but Francisco Osorio, the representative of Guzman, refused to obey. The people of Córdova were in despair. It was in vain that they sent delegations to Deza and petitioned the queen to save them. Deza was immovable and the queen refused to act in this as in everything else. The chapter, every member of which was an Old Christian, proud of his limpieza, assembled on October 16th to consider the situation. Some of the most prominent dignitaries of the Church had already been arrested by Lucero and had been treated by him as Jewish dogs; he had asserted that all the rest, and most of the nobles and gentlemen of the city and of other places, were apostates who had converted their houses into synagogues; in view of the impending peril, it was unanimously resolved to defend themselves, while the citizens at large declared that they would sacrifice life and property rather than to submit longer to such insupportable tyranny.[552]

The reaction in favor of the Inquisition, led by Ferdinand and Julius II, had evidently been short-lived, for the political situation dominated everything and king and pope found it advisable to yield. Juana was keeping herself secluded with the corpse of her husband and was refusing to govern. The rival factions of the two grandfathers of Charles V, Maximilian I and Ferdinand, each striving for the regency during his minority, 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.

In spite of this urgency the trial dragged on, much delay being caused by the difficulty of finding an advocate willing to undertake Lucero’s defence. The Suprema selected the Bachiller de la Torre, but he declined to serve and Ferdinand, on May 16th, expressed his fear that no one would assume the duty. July 19th he writes that Lucero complains that he still has no counsel and he suggests that, if none of the lawyers of the royal court can be trusted, Doctor Juan de Orduña of Valladolid be called in and his fees be paid by the Inquisition. The suggestion was adopted and, on August 20th, Ferdinand wrote personally to Orduña ordering him to take charge of the defence and see that Lucero suffered no wrong, and at, the same time, he wrote to the University of Valladolid to give Orduña the requisite leave of absence. Under this royal pressure, and considering that the adverse witnesses had been largely burnt or frightened into flight, it is perhaps rather creditable to the Suprema that it ventured to dismiss Lucero, without inflicting further punishment on him. He retired to the Seville canonry, which he had acquired by the ruin of the Archdeacon of Castro, and there he ended his days in peace. In 1514, Ferdinand manifested his undiminished sympathy by a gift of 15,000 mrs. to Juan Carrasco, the former portero of the tribunal of Córdova, to indemnify him for losses and sufferings which he claimed to have endured in the rising of 1506.[573] Yet before we utterly condemn him for his share in this nefarious business we should make allowance for the influence of Lucero’s accomplice, his secretary Calcena, who was always at hand to poison his mind and draft his letters. To the same malign obsession may doubtless also be attributed an order of Charles V, in 1519, requiring the Córdovan authorities to bestow the first vacant scrivenership on Diego Marino, who had been Lucero’s notary.[574]

Yet, however rudely the Inquisition may have been shaken, it was too firmly rooted in the convictions of the period and too energetically supported by Ferdinand to be either destroyed or essentially reformed. When he died, January 23, 1516, his testament, executed the day previous, laid strenuous injunctions on his grandson and successor Charles V—“As all other virtues are nothing without faith, by which and in which we are saved, we command the said illustrious prince, our grandson, to be always zealous in defending and exalting the Catholic faith and that he aid, defend and favor the Church of God and labor, with all his strength, to destroy and extirpate heresy from our kingdoms and lordships, selecting and appointing throughout them ministers, God-fearing and of good conscience, who will conduct the Inquisition justly and properly, for the service of God and the exaltation of the Catholic faith, and who will also have great zeal for the destruction of the sect of Mahomet.”[579]

Ferdinand’s dying exhortation to his grandson was needed. Charles V, a youth of seventeen, was as clay in the hands of the potter, surrounded by grasping Flemish favorites, whose sole object, as far as concerned Spain, was to sell their influence to the highest bidder. During the interval before his coming to take possession of his new dominions, he fluctuated in accordance with the pressure which happened momentarily to be strongest. The Spaniards who came to his court gave fearful accounts of the Inquisition, which they said was ruining Spain, and we are told that his counsellors were mostly Conversos who had obtained their positions by purchase.[582] In his prologue to his subsequent abortive project of reform, Charles says that while in Flanders he received many complaints about the Inquisition, which he submitted to famous men of learning and to colleges and universities, and his proposed action was in accordance with their advice.[583] Ximenes was alive to the danger and it was doubtless by his impulsion that the Council of Castile wrote to Charles that the peace of the kingdom and the maintenance of his authority depended on his support of the Inquisition.[584] A more adroit manœuvre was the advantage which he took of the death, June 1, 1516, of Bishop Mercader, Inquisitor-general of Aragon. It would probably not have been difficult for him to have reunited the Inquisitions of the two crowns under his own headship, but he took the more politic course of urging Charles to nominate his old tutor, Adrian of Utrecht, then in Spain, as his representative, and to secure for him the succession to Mercader’s see of Tortosa. Charles willingly followed the advice; July 30th he replied that in accordance with it he had written to Rome for the commission; November 14th Pope Leo commissioned Adrian as Inquisitor-general of Aragon, and we shall see hereafter how complete was the ascendancy which he exercised over Charles in favor of the Holy Office.[585]

When Charles had returned to Spain and again held the Córtes at Valladolid, in 1523, they repeated the petitions of 1518 and 1520, adding that nothing had been done. They further suggested that inquisitors should be paid salaries by the king and not draw their pay from the proceeds of their functions, and that false witnesses should be punished in accordance with the Laws of Toro. This shows that the old abuses were felt as acutely as ever, but Charles merely replied that he had asked the pope to commission as inquisitor-general the Archbishop of Seville, Manrique, whom he had especially charged to see that justice was properly administered. Again, in 1525, the Córtes of Toledo complained of the excesses of the inquisitors and the disorders committed by the familiars and asked that the secular judges might be empowered to restrain abuses, but they obtained only a vague promise that, if abuses existed, he would have them corrected.[602] It required no little courage for deputies to arraign the Inquisition publicly in the Córtes, and it is not surprising that the hardihood to do so disappeared with the recognition of the fruitlessness of remonstrance.

Allusions in this correspondence to special cases of arrests and fugitives and sequestrations show that Ferdinand was succeeding in moulding the old Inquisition as he desired and that it was actively at work, when suddenly a halt was called. In the general terror it is presumable that the Conversos had recourse to the Holy See and furnished the necessary convincing arguments; it may also be conjectured that Sixtus was disposed, by throwing obstacles in the way, to secure the recognition of his profitable but disputed right to entertain appeals and that he was unwilling, without a struggle, to lose control of the Inquisition of Aragon as he had done with that of Castile. There are traces also of the hand of Cardinal Borgia seeking to recover his episcopal jurisdiction over heresy in Valencia. Whatever may have been the impelling cause, the first move of Sixtus was to cause the Dominican General, Salvo Caseta, to withdraw the commission given to Fray Gaspar Juglar to appoint inquisitors at Ferdinand’s dictation. At this the royal wrath exploded in a letter to the General, April 26, 1482, threatening the whole Order with the consequences of his displeasure; Gualbes and Orts had done their duty fearlessly and incorruptibly, while Fray Francisco Vital—appointed to Catalonia by the Dominican General—had been taking bribes and had been banished the kingdom; he will never allow inquisitors to act, except at his pleasure; even with the royal favor they can accomplish little in the face of popular opposition and without it they can do nothing; meanwhile Gualbes and Orts will continue to act. This heated epistle was followed, May 11th, by one in a calmer mood, asking that Juglar’s commission be renewed or another one be issued, failing which he would obtain papal authority and overslaugh the Dominican Order.[615]

Sixtus seems to have allowed five months to elapse before answering this defiance, but in the meanwhile the Inquisition went on as before. Ferdinand had formed in Valencia a special council for the Holy Office and this body ventured to remonstrate with him about the confiscations and especially the feature of sequestration, by which, as soon as an arrest was made, the whole property of the accused was seized and held; this was peculiarly oppressive and the council represented that it violated the fueros granted by King Jaime and King Alfonso, but Ferdinand replied, September 11th, that he was resolved that nothing belonging to him should be lost but should be rigidly collected, while what belonged to others should not be taken. Another letter of September 6th to the Governor Luis Cabanilles refers to an arrangement of a kind that became frequent, under which the Conversos agreed to pay a certain sum as a composition for the confiscations of those who might be proved to be heretics.[619]

During the interval, prior to this extension of Torquemada’s jurisdiction, there was an incident showing that Sixtus had yielded the appointment of inquisitors, while endeavoring to retain the power of dismissing them. Cristóbal Gualbes, who was acting in Valencia to the entire satisfaction of Ferdinand, became involved in a bitter quarrel with the Archdeacon Mercader for whom, as we have seen, Cardinal Borgia had obtained a papal brief, virtually constituting him an indispensable member of the tribunal—a power which he doubtless used speculatively to the profit of Borgia and himself. It is to the interference of Gualbes with these worthies that we may reasonably attribute the action of Sixtus, who wrote, May 25, 1483, to Ferdinand and Isabella that the misdeeds of Gualbes merited heavy punishment, but he contented himself with removing him and asked them to fill his place with some fitting person on whom he in advance conferred the necessary powers. He evidently felt doubtful as to their acquiescence, for he wrote on the same day to Iñigo Archbishop of Seville, asking him to use his influence to induce the sovereigns to concur in this.[622] Ferdinand was not inclined to abandon Gualbes for, in a letter of August 8th, he orders the Maestre Racional of Valencia to pay to “lo devot religios maestre Gualbes” forty libras to defray his expenses in coming to the king at Córdova and in order that he might without delay return to work.[623] In the final settlement however Gualbes was sacrificed, for when Torquemada was made Inquisitor-general of Aragon, Sixtus expressly forbade him from appointing that son of iniquity Cristóbal Gualbes who, for his demerits, had been interdicted from serving as inquisitor.[624]

In Castile the introduction of the Inquisition had been done by the arbitrary power of the crown; in Aragon the consent of the representatives of the people was felt to be necessary for the change from the old to the new and a meeting of the Córtes was convoked at Tarazona for January 15, 1484. Ferdinand and Isabella arrived there on the 19th and remained until May, when the opening of the campaign against Granada required their presence elsewhere. Torquemada was there ready to establish the tribunals; what negotiations were requisite we do not know, though we hear of his consulting with persons of influence, and an agreement was reached on April 14th. It was not until May 7th, however, that Ferdinand issued from Tarazona a cédula addressed to all the officials throughout his dominions, informing them that with his assent the pope had established the Inquisition to repress the Judaic and Mahometan heresies and ordering that the inquisitors and their ministers should be honored and assisted everywhere under pain of the royal wrath, of deprivation of office and of ten thousand florins.[625]

Still, Valencia was not disposed to allow to the Inquisition the untrammelled exercise of its powers or to render to it the assistance required of all the faithful. The nobles continued for some months to offer resistance and when this was nominally broken down it continued in a passive form. To meet it, Ferdinand, in a letter of August 17, 1485, ordered Mossen Joan Carrasquier, alguazil of the Inquisition, at the simple bidding of the inquisitors, to arrest and imprison any one, no matter how high in station. For this he was not to ask the concurrence of any secular authority, for the whole royal power was committed to him and all officials, under pain of two thousand gold florins, and other arbitrary punishment, were required to lend him active assistance. Even this infraction of the royal oath to respect the liberties of the subject did not suffice, for another letter of January 23, 1486, states that the nobles continued to give refuge in their lands to fugitives from the Inquisition, even to those condemned and burnt in effigy, wherefore they were summoned, under their allegiance and a penalty of twenty thousand gold florins, to surrender to the alguazil all whom he might designate and to aid him in seizing them. About the same time Ferdinand placed the royal palace of Valencia at the service of the Inquisition and ordered to be built in it the necessary prisons. His own officials apparently had by this time been taught obedience for in March, 1487, he writes to the governor warmly praising their zeal.[632] To stimulate this, on July 28, 1487, he issued a safe-conduct, taking under the royal protection all the officials of the Inquisition, their families and goods; all royal officials, from the highest to the lowest, were required, under pain of five thousand florins and the king’s wrath, to assist them and to arrest whomsoever they might designate.[633]

The parent state of Aragon proper seemed at first sight to present an even more arduous problem than Valencia. The people were proud of their ancient liberty and resolute in its maintenance, through institutions sedulously organized for that purpose. The Conversos were numerous, wealthy and powerful, occupying many of the higher offices and intermarried with the noblest houses and, in the fate of their brethren of Castile, they had ample warning of what was in store for them. In the revival of the old Inquisition, Valencia was the scene of action and we hear little of Gualbes and Orts beyond its boundaries. The acceptance, however, by the Córtes of Tarazona, in the Spring of 1484, of Torquemada’s jurisdiction, of course included Aragon; he lost no time in organizing a tribunal in Saragossa, by the appointment, May 4th, as inquisitors of Fray Gaspar Juglar and of Maestre Pedro Arbués, a canon of the cathedral, with the necessary subordinates and, by May 11th, the appointments for a full court were completed, as we learn by an order for the payment of the salaries.[638] The expense was large but it was already provided for; Torquemada must himself have employed his leisure in acting as inquisitor for, on May 10th, an auto de fe was held in the cathedral in which four persons were penanced and subjected to confiscation.[639] Gaspar Juglar in this appointment obtained his reward for the services he had rendered as a nominator of inquisitors, but he did not long enjoy it; he disappears almost immediately, poisoned, as it was said, by the Conversos in some rosquillas or sweet cakes.[640] No time was lost in getting to work. Ferdinand had written from Tarazona, May 10th, that the Edict of Grace which had been resolved upon was not to be published, but that proceedings should go on as if it had been proclaimed and had expired, thus depriving the Conversos of the opportunity of coming forward for confessing, and explaining the absence at Saragossa of the long lists of penitents that we find elsewhere.[641] Thus, although some time must have been required for the members of the tribunal to assemble, by June 3d it was ready for another auto, held in the courtyard of the archiepiscopal palace. This time it was not bloodless, for two men were executed and a woman was burnt in effigy.[642]

The parent state of Aragon proper seemed at first sight to present an even more arduous problem than Valencia. The people were proud of their ancient liberty and resolute in its maintenance, through institutions sedulously organized for that purpose. The Conversos were numerous, wealthy and powerful, occupying many of the higher offices and intermarried with the noblest houses and, in the fate of their brethren of Castile, they had ample warning of what was in store for them. In the revival of the old Inquisition, Valencia was the scene of action and we hear little of Gualbes and Orts beyond its boundaries. The acceptance, however, by the Córtes of Tarazona, in the Spring of 1484, of Torquemada’s jurisdiction, of course included Aragon; he lost no time in organizing a tribunal in Saragossa, by the appointment, May 4th, as inquisitors of Fray Gaspar Juglar and of Maestre Pedro Arbués, a canon of the cathedral, with the necessary subordinates and, by May 11th, the appointments for a full court were completed, as we learn by an order for the payment of the salaries.[638] The expense was large but it was already provided for; Torquemada must himself have employed his leisure in acting as inquisitor for, on May 10th, an auto de fe was held in the cathedral in which four persons were penanced and subjected to confiscation.[639] Gaspar Juglar in this appointment obtained his reward for the services he had rendered as a nominator of inquisitors, but he did not long enjoy it; he disappears almost immediately, poisoned, as it was said, by the Conversos in some rosquillas or sweet cakes.[640] No time was lost in getting to work. Ferdinand had written from Tarazona, May 10th, that the Edict of Grace which had been resolved upon was not to be published, but that proceedings should go on as if it had been proclaimed and had expired, thus depriving the Conversos of the opportunity of coming forward for confessing, and explaining the absence at Saragossa of the long lists of penitents that we find elsewhere.[641] Thus, although some time must have been required for the members of the tribunal to assemble, by June 3d it was ready for another auto, held in the courtyard of the archiepiscopal palace. This time it was not bloodless, for two men were executed and a woman was burnt in effigy.[642]

The rich Conversos offered large amounts to the sovereigns if they would forego the confiscations, but the proposition was rejected. A heavy sum was subscribed to propitiate the curia, but the arrangement by which the land was subjected to Torquemada was too recent to be changed. The lieutenant of the Justicia of Aragon, Tristan de la Porta, was urged to prohibit the Inquisition altogether, but in vain. Then the Four Estates of the realm were called together to deliberate on a subject which involved the liberties of the whole land. To forestall their action Ferdinand, on December 10th, addressed a circular letter to the deputies and to the leading nobles, entreating them affectionately to favor and aid the inquisitors of Saragossa and Teruel, but this had no influence and a solemn embassy was sent to remonstrate with him. To their representations he answered, disposing of their arguments by assuming practically that he was only the agent of the Church in enforcing the well-known principles of the canons. The essence of his answer is embodied in responding to their demand that the Inquisition be carried on as in times past, for in any other way it violated the liberties of the kingdom. “There is no intention” he said “of infringing on the fueros but rather of enforcing their observance. It is not to be imagined that vassals so Catholic as those of Aragon would have demanded, or that kings so Catholic would have granted, fueros and liberties adverse to the faith and favorable to heresy. If the old inquisitors had acted conscientiously in accordance with the canons there would have been no cause for bringing in the new ones, but they were without conscience and corrupted with bribes. If there are so few heretics as is now asserted, there should not be such dread of the Inquisition. It is not to be impeded in sequestrating and confiscating and other necessary acts, for be assured that no cause or interest, however great, shall be allowed to interfere with its proceeding in future as it is now doing.”[646]

The next step of the Inquisition was a decree, October 2, 1484, confiscating to the crown all the offices in Teruel and pronouncing the incumbents incapable of holding any office of honor or profit—a decree which Ferdinand proceeded to execute by stopping their salaries. It was in vain that the Diputados of Aragon interceded with him; he replied curtly that the people of Teruel had nothing to complain of and were guilty of madness and outrage. Then the inquisitors took final action, which was strictly within their competence, by issuing a letter invoking the aid of the secular arm and summoning the king to enable them to seize the magistrates and confiscate their property. To this he responded, February 5, 1485, with an Executoria invocationis brachii sæcularis, addressed to all the officials of Aragon, requiring them and the nobles to assemble all the horse and foot that they could raise and put them at the service of the inquisitors, under a captain whom he would send to take command. Under pain of the royal wrath, deprivation of office, a fine of twenty thousand gold florins and discretional penalties, they were ordered to seize all the inhabitants of Teruel and their property and deliver them to the inquisitors to be punished for their enormous crimes in such wise as should serve for a lasting example. The people of Cella, also, were ordered to deliver their castle to the inquisitors to serve as a prison and to make all repairs necessary for that purpose. Apparently the response of Aragon to this summons was unsatisfactory for Ferdinand, in defiance of the fuero which forbade the introduction of foreign troops into the kingdom, took the extreme step of calling upon the nobles of Cuenca and other Castilian districts contiguous to the border, to raise their men and join in the holy war, while the receiver of confiscations was ordered to sell enough property to meet the expenses. Whether this formidable array was raised or not, the documents do not inform us, nor of the circumstances under which Teruel submitted, but it had braved the royal will as long as it dared and it could not hold out against the forces of two kingdoms. By April 15th Ferdinand was in position to appoint Juan Garcés de Marzilla, the captor of Juan de la Mata, as assistente or governor of Teruel, with absolute dictatorial powers, and the spirit in which he exercised them may be gathered from his declaration that he did not intend to allow fueros or privileges to stand in the way. The lot of the inhabitants was hard. Ferdinand ordered Marzilla to banish all whom the inquisitors might designate, thus placing the whole population at their mercy, and their rule must have been exasperating, for, in January, 1486, Ferdinand reproaches Marzilla because his nephew, who had aided in the capture of la Mata, had recently attempted to slay the alguazil of the Inquisition. Presumably the inquisitorial coffers were filled with the fines and confiscations which could be inflicted at discretion on the citizens for impeding the Inquisition. During the long struggle Teruel had been at the disadvantage that the surrounding country supported the inquisitors, won over through an astute device by which the inquisitors, while at Cella, had guaranteed, on the payment of certain sums, the remission of all debts and the release of all censos or bonds and groundrents, which might be due to heretics who should be convicted and subjected to confiscation in Teruel. All debtors were thus eager for the success of the inquisitors and for the punishment of heresy among the money-lending Conversos of the town.[647]

Like the murder of Pierre de Castelnau in Languedoc, this crime turned the scale. Its immediate effect was to cause a revulsion of popular feeling, which hitherto had been markedly hostile to the Inquisition. The news of the assassination spread through the city with marvellous rapidity and before dawn the streets were filled with excited crowds shouting “Burn the Conversos who have slain the inquisitor!” There was danger, in the exaltation of feeling, not only that the Conversos would be massacred but that the Judería and Morería would be sacked. By daylight the archbishop, Alfonso de Aragon, mounted his horse and traversed the streets, calming the mob with promises of speedy justice. A meeting was at once called of all the principal persons in the city, which resolved itself into a national assembly and empowered all ecclesiastical and secular officials to proceed against every one concerned with the utmost vigor and without observing the customs and fueros of the kingdom.[656] For some days the Conversos continued to flatter themselves that with money they would disarm Ferdinand’s wrath; they had, they said, the whole court with them and the sympathies of all the magnates of the land,[657] but they miscalculated his shrewd resolve to profit to the utmost by their blunder and the consequent weakness of their friends. The royal anger, indeed, was much dreaded and the Diputados, a few days later, wrote to the king reporting what had been done; the criminals had already scattered in flight; the city had offered a reward of five hundred ducats; the judges had written to foreign lands to invoke aid in intercepting the fugitives and both city and kingdom would willingly undergo all labor and expense necessary to avenge the crime. A proclamation was also issued excommunicating all having knowledge of the conspiracy who should not within a given time come forward and reveal what they knew.[658]

The conspirators miscalculated when they imagined that his murder would deter others from taking his place. There was no danger for inquisitors now in Aragon and the tribunal of Saragossa was promptly remanned and enlarged for the abundant harvest that was expected.[665] It was not long in getting to work and on December 28, 1485, an auto was celebrated in which a man and a woman were burnt.[666] The tribunal was removed to the royal palace-fortress outside of the walls, known as the Aljafería, as an evidence that it was under the royal safeguard and Ferdinand proclaimed that he and his successors took it under their special protection.[667] Strict orders were sent to the Estates of the kingdom and to the local officials to suppress summarily all resistance to the confiscations, which were becoming so extensive that the receiver at Saragossa had his hands full and was empowered to appoint deputies throughout the land to attend to the work in their respective districts.[668]

The Inquisition thus had overcome all resistance and Aragon lay at its mercy. How that mercy was exercised is seen in the multitude of victims from among the principal Converso families which were almost extinguished by the stake or by confiscation. The names of Caballería, Sánchez, Santangel, Ram and others occur with wearying repetition in the lists of the autos de fe. Thus of the Santangel, who were descended from the convert Rabbi Azarías Ginillo, Martin de Santangel escaped to France and was burnt in effigy; Luis de Santangel, who had been knighted by Juan II for services in the war with Catalonia, was beheaded and burnt as we have seen. His cousin, Luis de Santangel, Ferdinand’s financial secretary, who advanced to Isabella the 16,000 or 17,000 ducats to enable Columbus to discover the New World, was penanced July 17, 1491. He still continued in the royal service but he must have been condemned again for, after his death, about 1500, Ferdinand kindly made over his confiscated property to his children, including a thousand ducats of composition for the confiscation of Micer Tarancio. There was yet another Luis de Santangel, who married a daughter of Juan Vidal, also a victim of the Inquisition, and who finally fled with her to France, after which he was burnt in effigy. Juan de Santangel was burnt in 1486. Juan Tomás de Santangel was penanced, August 12, 1487. A brother of Juan was the Zalmedina de Santangel who fled to France and was burnt in effigy March 17, 1497. Gabriel de Santangel was condemned in 1495. Gisperte and Salvador de Santangel were reconciled at Huesca in 1499. Leonardo de Santangel was burnt at Huesca, July 8, 1489, and his mother two days afterwards. Violante de Santangel and Simon de Santangel, with Clara his wife, were reconciled at Huesca. Micer Miguel de Santangel of Huesca was reconciled March 1, 1489.[675] To estimate properly this terrible list we must bear in mind that “reconciliation” involved confiscation and disabilities inflicted on descendants which were almost equivalent to extinguishing a family. In 1513 Folsona, wife of Alonso de Santangel, petitioned Ferdinand saying that her husband, Alonso de Santangel, thirty years before, had fled from the Inquisition and his property had been confiscated, leaving her in poverty with four young children; she had withheld eighty libras of his effects and had spent them; now her conscience impelled her to confess this and to sue for pardon which the king graciously granted “with our customary clemency and compassion.” One of these four children seems to be an Augustin de Santangel of Barbastro, son of Alonso, who as late as 1556, obtained relief from the disabilities consequent on his father’s condemnation.[676]

Catalonia had of old been even more intractable than her sister kingdoms and fully as jealous of her ancient rights and liberties. The Capitols de Cort, or fueros granted in the successive Córtes, were ordered to be systematically arranged and fairly written out in two volumes, one in Latin and the other in Limosin; these volumes were to be kept in the Diputacion, secured by chains but open to the public, so that every citizen might know his rights. Whenever the king or his officials violated them by edict or act, the Diputados—a standing committee of the Córtes—were instructed to oppose by every lawful means the invasion of their liberties until the obnoxious measure should be withdrawn.[679]

Innocent VIII yielded at last and, by a brief of February 6, 1486, under pretext that they had been too zealous, he removed all inquisitors holding papal commissions—in Aragon Juan Colivera, Juan de Epila, Juan Franco and Guillen Casells, in Valencia Juan Orts and Mateo Mercader and in Barcelona Juan Comte; he appointed Torquemada as special inquisitor for Barcelona, with power of subdelegation and, apparently to prepare for expected resistance, he authorized the Bishops of Córdova and Leon and the Abbot of St. Emelian of Burgos to suppress all opposition, especially on the part of Juan Comte, while he expressly set aside the privileges of the city.[687] In spite of this formidable missive nearly eighteen months elapsed before Barcelona was reduced to submission, and Torquemada’s final appointee, Alonso de Espina, was able to enter the city. When at last he succeeded, July 5, 1487, we are told that the Lieutenant-general of the Principality, the Bishops of Urgel, Tortosa and Gerona and many gentlemen and citizens sallied forth to greet him, but there is no mention made of the Diputados, or the local magistracy, or the canons joining in the reception, and it was not until July 30th that the municipal officials took the oath of obedience to him.[688]

He probably still found obstacles in his path, for it was not until December 14th that the first procession of penitents took place, consisting only of twenty-one men and twenty-nine women, followed, a week later, by another in which the participants were scourged.[689] The smallness of these numbers, as the result of five months’ work, showed that the Edict of Grace had met an ungrateful response and the first public auto, celebrated January 25, 1488, furnished only four living victims and the effigies of twelve fugitives. As already remarked elsewhere, the fear spread abroad by the advent of the Inquisition, after so long a struggle, caused the greater part of those who had reason for fear to seek safety in flight, in spite of the edicts forbidding expatriation. During the whole of the year 1488 the number of burnings amounted only to seven and in 1489 there were but three. It was doubtless owing to the lukewarmness of the local magistracy that, in the earlier autos, the sufferers were spared the extreme penalty of concremation and were mercifully strangled before the pile was lighted.[690] In fact, a royal cédula of March 15, 1488, ordering afresh all officials to render aid and support to the Inquisition, under penalty of two thousand florins, would seem to argue no little slackness on their part.[691]

It was impossible that such irresponsible power should not be abused and there speedily commenced a series of complaints from the Catalan authorities which, as we shall see hereafter, continued with little intermission until the revolt of 1640. At the present time, however, Ferdinand showed a disposition to curb the abuses inevitable under the system and, in letters of August 16th and 20th and September 3, 1502, to the inquisitors of Barcelona, he enclosed a memorial from the Diputados of Catalonia, accompanying it with a severe rebuke. The chief source of complaint that the receiver of confiscations bought up claims and prosecuted them through the irresistible machinery of the tribunal. In a sample instance Francí Ballester made over to the receiver for 100 libras a debt of 228 due by Juan de Trillo which was then collected through the Inquisition. Ferdinand said that he had frequently forbidden this practice and he ordered the inquisitors to excommunicate the receiver if he persisted in it. The receiver then contented himself with a smaller profit and proceeded, in the case of the confiscated estate of a certain Mahul, to collect from it debts for a commission of ten per cent., whereby the creditors with the weakest claims got most of the money. Again Ferdinand prohibited this, September 9th, ordering all funds to be paid in to the tabla of Barcelona, for equitable distribution among the creditors and all commissions to be refunded.[695] At the same time there was no talk of the only effective way of cutting up these practices by the roots—that of discharging the knavish receiver. This tenderness for official malfeasance continued throughout the career of the Inquisition and prevented any effective reform.

Majorca claimed to be a separate and independent kingdom, governed by its own customs and only united dynastically with Catalonia. In 1439 it complained that its franchises were violated by the queen-regent when she summoned citizens to appear before her on the mainland, for they were entitled to be tried nowhere but at home, and her husband Alfonso V admitted the justice of this and promised its observance for the future.[696] The frequent repetition of this privilege shows how highly it was prized and it rendered necessary a separate tribunal for the Balearic Isles. This had long been in operation under the old institution and the inquisitor at this period was Fray Nicolas Merola who was as inert as his brethren elsewhere. The records of his office show that under him there were no relaxations; that in 1478 there were four Judaizers reconciled; in 1480, one; in 1482, two and in 1486, one. He was probably stimulated to greater energy by the prospect of removal, for in 1487 the number increased to eight.[697]

As usual these proceedings against the dead and absent were productive of abundant confiscations and the fears of descendants were thoroughly aroused lest some aberration of an ancestor should be discovered which would sweep away their fortunes. This gave rise to the expedient of compositions, of which we shall see more hereafter, as a sort of insurance against confiscation. In the present case a letter from Ferdinand, January 28, 1498, to the inquisitor and the receiver announces that these people are coming forward with offers and he orders the officials to make just and reasonable bargains with them and report to him, when he will decide what is most to his advantage. In this and other ways the operations of the tribunal were beginning to bring in more than its expenses, for, February 2, 1499, there is an order given on the receiver Matheo de Morrano to pay to the receiver of Valencia two hundred gold ducats to cancel some debts that were pressing on the royal conscience, followed soon after by other orders to pay four hundred and fifty ducats to the royal treasury and fifty florins to the nunnery of Santa Clara of Calatayud. The confiscating zeal of the officials was stimulated, February 21, 1498, by an allowance to Morrano of three thousand sueldos, in addition to his salary, in reward of his eminent services and another, March 2d, of a hundred libras mallorquines to the notary Pere Prest. It was not always easy to trace the property which the unfortunates naturally sought to conceal and a liberal offer of fifty per cent. was made to informers who should reveal or discover it.[700]

It was as difficult to reconcile the Mallorquins as the Catalans to the new Inquisition. In 1517 the Suprema was obliged to order the viceroy not to maltreat the officials or obstruct them in the performance of their duty, and at the same time, the inquisitors were instructed to proceed against him if he did not cease to trouble them. Apparently he did not heed the warning for, in 1518, the inquisitor was formally commanded to prosecute him. What followed we have no means of knowing, but apparently the viceroy had full popular sympathy, for soon afterwards there was a rising, led by the Bishop of Elna, whose parents had been condemned by the tribunal. The inquisitor fled and the populace was about to burn the building and the records, when the firmness of the Bishop of Majorca, at the risk of his life, suppressed the tumult. It was probably this disturbance that called forth, in 1520, an adjuration from the Suprema to the viceroy and the ecclesiastical and secular authorities, not to permit the ill-treatment of the inquisitor and other officials. It was impossible, however, to preserve the peace and, in 1530, we find the viceroy, his assessor and officials, under excommunication as the result of a competencia or conflict of jurisdiction. Even more significant was the imprisonment and trial, in 1534, of the regent or president of the royal high court of justice, resulting in the imposition, in 1537, of a fine so excessive that the Suprema ordered its reduction.[701] This was but the beginning and we shall see hereafter how perpetual were the embroilments of the tribunal with both the civil and the ecclesiastical authorities.

With more or less resistance the new Inquisition was thus imposed on the various provinces subject to the crown of Aragon. The pretence put forward to secure its introduction, that it in no way violated the fueros and liberties of the land, was soon dropped and, as we have seen, it was boldly pronounced to be superior to all law. For awhile this was submitted to in silence, but the ever-encroaching arrogance of the officials, their extension of their jurisdiction over matters unconnected with the faith and their abuse of their irresponsible prerogatives aroused opposition which at length found opportunity for expression. In 1510 the representatives of Aragon, Catalonia and Valencia were, for the first time, assembled together in the Córtes of Monzon. They came with effusive enthusiasm, stimulated by the conquest of Oran and Algiers and the desire to retrieve the disaster of Gerbes and they voted for Ferdinand the unprecedented servicio or tax-levy of five hundred thousand libras, obtaining in return the abolition of the Santa Hermandad.[702] Yet even this enthusiasm did not prevent murmurs of discontent, and complaints were made that the Inquisition assumed jurisdiction over cases of usury, blasphemy, bigamy, necromancy and the like and that the privileges and exemptions enjoyed by the officials led to their unnecessary multiplication, rendering the tribunals oppressive to those who bore the burdens of the state. Ferdinand eluded reform by promising it for the future and the Córtes were dissolved without positive action.[703] When they next met at Monzon, in 1512, they were in a less confiding mood and it is probable that popular agitation must have assumed a threatening aspect, sufficient to compel Ferdinand to yield to their demands. An elaborate series of articles was drawn up, or rather two, one for Aragon and the other for Catalonia, nearly identical in character, which received the royal assent. It is significant that, with the exception of a clause as to appeals, these articles do not concern themselves with the prosecution of heresy but are confined to the excesses with which the tribunals and their underlings afflicted the faithful.

The independence of the Inquisition, as an imperium in imperío, is exhibited in the fact that its acceptance was deemed necessary to each individual article, an acceptance expressed by the subscription to each of Plau a su Reverendissima senyoria, the senyoria being that of Inquisitor-general Enguera. To confirm this he and the inquisitors were required to swear in a manner exhibiting the profound distrust entertained of them. The oath was to observe each and every article; it was to be taken as a public act before a notary of the Inquisition, who was to attest it officially and deliver it to the president of the Córtes, and authentic copies were to be supplied at the price of five sueldos to all demanding them. All future inquisitors, whether general or local, were to take the same oath on assuming office and all this was repeated in various formulas so as to leave no loop-hole for equivocation. Ferdinand also took an oath promising to obtain from the pope orders that all inquisitors, present and future should observe the articles and also that, whenever requested by the Córtes, the Diputados or the councillors of Barcelona, he would issue the necessary letters and provisions for their enforcement.[704] This was the first of the agreements which became known as Concordias—adjustments between the popular demands and the claims of the Holy Office. We shall have frequent occasion to hear of them in the future, for they were often broken and renewed and fresh sources of quarrel were never lacking. The present one was not granted without a binding consideration, for the tribunal of Barcelona was granted six hundred libras a year, secured upon the public revenues.[705]

If the Catalans distrusted the good faith of king and inquisitor-general they were not without justification, for the elaborate apparatus of oaths proved a flimsy restraint on those who would endure no limitation on their arbitrary and irresponsible authority. At first Ferdinand manifested a desire to uphold the Concordia and to restrain the inquisitors who commenced at once to violate it. The city of Perpignan complained that the prescription of time was disregarded and that the duplicate payment of old debts was demanded, whereupon Ferdinand wrote, October 24, 1512, sharply ordering the strict observance of the terms agreed upon and the revocation of any acts contravening them.[706] Before long however his policy changed and he sought relief. For potentates who desired to commit a deliberate breach of faith there was always the resource of the authority of the Holy See which, among its miscellaneous attributes, had long assumed that of releasing from inconvenient engagements those who could command its favor, and Ferdinand’s power in Italy was too great to permit of the refusal of so trifling a request. Accordingly on April 30, 1513, Leo X issued a motu proprio dispensing Ferdinand and Bishop Enguera from their oaths to observe the Concordia of Monzon.[707]

Subsequent Córtes were held at Monzon and Lérida, where the popular dissatisfaction found expression in further complaints and demands, leading to some concessions on the part of Ferdinand. The temper of the people was rising and manifested itself in occasional assaults, sometimes fatal, on inquisitorial officials, to facilitate the punishment of which Leo X, by a brief of January 28, 1515, authorized inquisitors to try such delinquents and hand them over to the secular arm for execution, without incurring the “irregularity” consequent on judgements of blood.[709] Ferdinand was too shrewd to provoke his subjects too far; he recognized that the overbearing arrogance of the inquisitors and their illegal extension of their authority gave great offence, even to the well-affected, and he was ready to curb their petulance. A case occurring in May, 1515, shows how justifiable were the popular complaints and gave him opportunity to administer a severe rebuke. It was the law in Aragon that, when the Diputados appointed any one as lieutenant to the Justicia, if he refused to serve they were to remove his name from the lists of those eligible to public office. A certain Micer Manuel, so appointed, refused to serve and to escape the penalty procured from the inquisitors of Saragossa letters prohibiting, under pain of excommunication, the Diputados from striking off his name. This arbitrary interference with public affairs gave great offence and Ferdinand sharply told the inquisitors not to meddle with matters that in no way concerned their office; the Diputados were under oath to execute the law and the letters must be at once revoked.[710] Finally he recognized that the demands of the Córtes of Monzon had been justified and that he had done wrong in violating the Concordia of 1512. One of his latest acts was a cédula of December 24, 1515, announcing to the inquisitors that he had applied to the Holy See for confirmation of the agreements made and sworn to in the Córtes of Monzon and Lérida; there was no doubt that this would speedily be granted, wherefore he straitly commanded, under pain of forfeiture of office, that the articles must not be violated in any manner, direct or indirect, but must be observed to the letter; the inquisitor-general had agreed to this and would swear to comply with the bull when it should come.[711]

Ferdinand died January 23, 1516, followed in June by Inquisitor-general Mercader. Leo X probably waited to learn whether the new monarch Charles desired to continue the policy of his grandfather. It is true that he had dispensed Ferdinand and Enguera from their oaths in view of the great offence to God and danger to conscience involved in the observance of the Concordia, but a word from the monarch was sufficient to overcome his scruples. What Ferdinand had felt it necessary to concede could not be withheld when, in the youth and absence of Charles, his representatives could scarce repress the turbulent elements of civil discord. Accordingly Leo confirmed all the articles of both the Catalan and Aragonese Concordias by the bull Pastoralis officii, August 1, 1516, in which he declared that the officials of the Inquisition frequently transgressed the bounds of reason and propriety in their abuse of their privileges, immunities and exemptions and that their overgrown numbers reduced almost to nullity the jurisdiction of the ordinary ecclesiastical and secular courts. This action, he says, is taken at the especial prayer of King Charles and Queen Juana and all inquisitors and officials contravening its prescriptions, if they do not, within three days after summons, revoke their unlawful acts, are subject to excommunication latæ sententiæ, deprivation of office and perpetual disability for re-employment, ipso facto. Moreover the Archbishops of Saragossa and Tarragona were authorized and required, whenever called upon by the authorities, to compel the observance of the bull by ecclesiastical censures and other remedies without appeal, invoking if necessary the secular arm.[712]

Thus, after four years of struggle, the Concordias of 1512 were confirmed in the most absolute manner and the relations between the Inquisition and the people appeared to be permanently settled. The inquisitors however, as usual, refused to be bound by any limitations. They claimed, and acted on the claim, that the papal bull of confirmation was surreptitious and not entitled to obedience and that both the Concordias and the Instructions of Bishop Mercader were invalid as being restrictions impeding the jurisdiction of the Holy Office.[713] On the other hand the people grew more restive and increased their demands for relief. The occasion presented itself when Charles came to Spain to assume possession of his mother’s dominions. At Córtes held in Saragossa, May, 1518, he received the allegiance of Aragon and swore to observe the fueros of the Córtes of Saragossa, Tarazona and Monzon. Money was soon wanted to supply the reckless liberality with which he filled the pouches of his greedy Flemings, and towards the end of the year he summoned another assembly to grant him a subsidio. It agreed to raise 200,000 libras but coupled this with a series of thirty-one articles, much more advanced than anything hitherto demanded in Aragon—in fact copied with little change from those agreed to in Castile by Jean le Sauvage and abandoned in consequence of his death—articles which revolutionized inquisitorial procedure and assimilated it to that of the secular criminal courts. Charles, in these matters was now wholly under the influence of his former tutor and present inquisitor-general Cardinal Adrian. He wanted the money, however, and he gave an equivocal consent to the articles; it was, he said, his will that in each and all the holy canons should be observed, with the decrees of the Holy See and without attempting anything to the contrary. If doubts arose the pope should be asked to decide them; if any one desired to accuse inquisitors or officials, he could do so before the inquisitor-general, who would call in counsellors and administer justice, or, if the crime appertained to the secular courts, he would see that justice was speedy. This declaration, with the interpretation to be put on each and every article by the pope, he promised under oath to observe and enforce and he further swore not to seek dispensation from this oath or to avail himself of it if obtained.[714] The people were amply justified in distrusting their rulers, for Charles subsequently instructed the Count of Cifuentes, his ambassador at Rome, to procure the revocation of the articles and a dispensation from his oath to observe them.[715]

Charles meanwhile had been growing more and more impatient for the servicio so long withheld; he had written to Adrian and also to the inquisitors, ordering that the Concordia of Monzon (1512) and that of Saragossa, according to his version, should be strictly obeyed, so that the abuses thus sought to be corrected should cease and the people should pay the impost. The inquisitors dallied and seem to have asked him what articles he referred to for he replied, September 17th, explaining that they were those of Monzon and Saragossa, the latter as expressed in the paper signed by Adrian and Gattinara. When, therefore, he received the papal confirmation of December 1st he lost no time in writing, December 18th, to Adrian and the inquisitors announcing it and ordering the articles to be rigidly observed without gloss or interpretation, so that the abuses and disorders prohibited in them may cease, but he was careful to describe the articles as those agreed upon at Monzon and lately confirmed at Saragossa in the form adopted by Adrian and Gattinara.

Meanwhile the obstinacy of the Catalans, which detained the impatient Charles in Barcelona throughout the year 1519, secured, nominally at least, the formal confirmation by both Charles and Adrian, of the Monzon Concordia of 1512 with additions. One of these provided that any one who entered the service of the Holy Office while liable to a civil or criminal action, should still be held to answer before his former judge, and that criminal offences, unconnected with the faith, committed by officials should be exclusively justiciable in the civil courts. This struck at the root of one of the most serious abuses—the immunity with which the Inquisition shielded its criminals—and scarcely less important to all who had dealings with New Christians was another article providing that property acquired in good faith, from one reputed to be a Christian, should be exempt from confiscation in case the seller should subsequently be convicted, even though the thirty years’ prescription should still exist.[719]

Ferdinand’s control over the Inquisition rested not only on the royal authority, the power of appointment, his own force of character and his intense interest in its workings, but also on the fact that he held the purse-strings. He had insisted that the confiscations should enure to the crown, and he subsequently obtained the pecuniary penances. The Inquisition had no endowment. One could easily have been provided out of the immense sums gathered from the victims during the early years of intense activity but, although some slender provision of the kind was at times attempted, either the chronic demands of the royal treasury or a prudent desire to prevent the independence of the institution rendered these investments fragmentary and wholly inadequate. Thus the expenses of the tribunals and the salaries of the officials were in his hands. Nothing could be paid without his authorization and the accounts of the receivers of confiscations, who acted as treasurers, were scrutinized with rigid care. He regulated the salary of every official and his letter-books are full of instructions as to their payment. Besides this, it was the Spanish custom to supplement inadequate wages with ayudas de costa, or gifts of greater or less amount as the whim of the sovereign or the deserts of the individual might call for. In time, as we shall see, this became a regular annual payment, subject to certain conditions but, under Ferdinand, it was still an uncertainty, dependent upon the royal favor and the order of the king was requisite in each case, even including the Suprema and its officials.[737] The crown thus held the Holy Office at its mercy and the recipients of its bounty could not resent its control.

These apparently trivial details are of interest as revealing the basis on which the Inquisition was established and from which it developed. They also throw light on the character of Ferdinand, whose restless and incessant activity made itself felt in every department of the government, enabling his resolute will to break down the forces of feudalism and lay the foundation of absolute monarchy for his successors. It would be doing him an injustice, however, to dismiss the subject without alluding to his anxiety that the Inquisition should be kept strictly within the lines of absolute justice according to the standard of the period. Trained in the accepted doctrine of the Church that heresy was the greatest of crimes, that the heretic had no rights and that it was a service to God to torture him to death, he was pitiless and he stimulated the inquisitors to incessant vigilance. He was no less eager in gathering in every shred of spoil which he could lawfully claim from the confiscation of the victims, but, in the distorted ethics of the time, this comported with the strictest equity, for it was obedience to the canon law which was the expression of the law of God. There can have been no hypocrisy in his constant instructions to inquisitors and receivers of confiscations to perform their functions with rectitude and moderation so that no one should have cause to complain. This was his general formula to new appointees and is borne out by his instructions in the innumerable special cases where appeal was made to him against real or fancied injustice. His abstinence from intrusion into matters of faith limited such appeals to financial questions, but these, under the cruel canonical regulations as to confiscations, were often highly complicated and involved the rights of innocent third parties. His decisions in such cases are often adverse to himself and reveal an innate sense of justice wholly unexpected in a monarch who ranked next to Cesar Borgia in the estimation of Machiavelli. An instance or two, taken at random out of many, will illustrate this phase of his character. July 11, 1486, he writes to his receiver at Saragossa “Fifteen years ago, Jaime de Santangel, recently burnt, possessed a piece of land in Saragossa and did not pay the ground-rent on it to García Martinez. By the fuero of Aragon, when such rent is unpaid for four years the land is forfeited. You are said to hold the land as part of the confiscated estate of Santangel and for the above reason it is said to belong to Martínez. You are therefore ordered to see what is justice and do it to Martínez without delay and if you have sold the land, the matter must be put into such shape that Martínez may obtain what is due.” In a similar spirit, when Caspar Roig, of Cagliari, deemed himself aggrieved in a transaction arising out of a composition for confiscation, Ferdinand writes to the inquisitor of Sardinia, March 11, 1498, “As it is our will that no one shall suffer injustice, we refer the case to you, charging you at once to hear the parties and do what is just, so that the said Gaspar Roig shall suffer no wrong.... You will see that the said Gaspar Roig shall not again have to appeal to us for default of justice.”[743]

So far as I am aware, Philip II never interfered with this exercise of the appointing power. That he threw the whole responsibility on the inquisitor-general and disclaimed any concurrence for himself is apparent in a series of instructions, May 8, 1595, to the new inquisitor-general, Geronimo Manrique. He orders him to observe the utmost care to select fit persons for all positions without favoritism and, although it is his duty to appoint inquisitors and fiscals, he should communicate his selections in advance to the Suprema, as his predecessors had always done, because some of the members may be acquainted with the parties and prevent errors from being made.[748] That a supervisory power, however, was still recognized in the crown is seen in a consulta of June 21, 1600, presented to Philip III, by Inquisitor-general Guevara, lamenting the unfitness of many of the inquisitors. With the habitual tenderness manifested to unworthy officials he did not propose to dismiss them but to make a general shifting by which the best men should be made the seniors of the tribunals. To this the king replied with a caution about discrediting the Inquisition and a suggestion that the parties shifted should be made to ask for the change; he also called for their names and the reasons, because he ought to be informed about all the individuals.[749]

Philip IV, in 1626, on the death of Inquisitor-general Pacheco, asked the Suprema to suggest the instructions to be given to the new incumbent and was advised to repeat those of 1608. He virtually admitted the power of appointment to be vested in that office when, in the same year, the Córtes of Barbastro petitioned that in Aragon all the officials of the tribunals should be Aragonese and he replied that he would use his authority with the inquisitor-general that a certain portion of them should be so.[753] Notwithstanding his habitual subservience to the Inquisition, however, he reasserted his prerogative, in 1640, by appointing the Archdeacon of Vich as Inquisitor of Barcelona and he followed this, in 1641 and 1642, by several others, even descending to the secretaryship of Lima which he gave to Domingo de Aroche.[754] This brought on a struggle, ending in a compromise in which the inquisitor-general was sacrificed to the Suprema. Papal intervention was deemed to be necessary and a brief was procured in March, 1643, under which Philip, by decree of July 2, ordered that in future, in all vacancies of positions of inquisitor and fiscal, the inquisitor-general and Suprema should submit to him three names from which to make selection. The Suprema thus recognized was satisfied, but Sotomayor, the inquisitor-general, was obstinate. In June, Philip had called for his resignation, which he offered after some hesitation and expressed his feelings in a protest presenting a sorry picture of the condition of the Holy Office. The present disorders, he said, had arisen from the multiplication of offices, whereby their character had depreciated and, as the revenues were insufficient for their support, they were led to improper devices. The Suprema had been powerless for, on various occasions, the king had rewarded services in other fields by the gifts of these offices, when no consideration could be given to character, and he had also been forced to make appointments by commands as imperative as those of the king—an evident allusion to Olivares.[755]

Sotomayor’s successor, Arce y Reynoso, conformed himself to these new rules and, until his death in 1665, he submitted all appointments and transfers to the king. Philip survived him but three months and, under the regency which followed and the reign of the imbecile Carlos II, the inquisitor-general resumed the power of appointment without consultation. So completely was the royal supervision forgotten that the instructions to Inquisitor-general Rocaberti, in 1695, repeat the old formula of 1608.[756] In this, the injunction of consulting the Suprema was displeasing to the Holy See, after its intervention in the affair of Froilan Díaz (of which more hereafter) had caused it to take sides in the quarrel over the respective powers of the inquisitor-general and the Suprema. As the commission of the former was a papal grant, it held that no restriction could be placed on him and, when Vidal Marin was appointed, Clement XI sent to him August 8, 1705, urgent instructions to uphold the dignity of his office which had exclusive authority in the premises.[757]

The records afford no indication of any question subsequently arising as to the power of the crown to select the inquisitor-general. It was never, however, officially recognized by the popes, whose commissions to the successive nominees bore the form of a motu proprio—the spontaneous act of the Holy See—by which, without reference to any request from the sovereign, the recipient was created inquisitor-general of the Spanish dominions and was invested with all the faculties and powers requisite for the functions of his office.[761] No objection seems to have been taken to this until Carlos III exercised a jealous care over the assertion and maintenance of the regalías against the assumptions of the curia. The first appointment he had occasion to make was that of Felipe Bertran, Bishop of Salamanca, after the death of Inquisitor-general Bonifaz. December 27, 1774, was despatched the application to the papacy for the commission, carefully framed to avoid attributing to the latter any share in the selection or appointment and merely asking for a delegation of faculties, accompanied with instructions to the ambassador Floridablanca to procure for Bertran a dispensation from residence at his see during his term of office. Clement XIV had died, September 22, 1774, and the intrigues arising from the suppression of the Jesuits delayed the election of Pius VI until February 15, 1775, but on February 27th the commission and dispensation were signed. March 25th, Carlos sent the commission to the royal Camara for examination before its delivery to Bertran and the Camara reported, April 24th, that its fiscal pronounced it similar to that granted to Bonifaz in 1755, but that it did not express as it should the royal nomination and had the form of a motu proprio; he also objected to its granting the power of appointment and further that some of the faculties included infringed on the royal and episcopal jurisdictions, while the clauses on censorship conflicted with the royal decrees. Under these reserves the brief was ordered to be delivered to Bertran; whether or not a protest was made to the curia does not appear, but if it was it was ineffective for the same formula was used in the commission issued to Inquisitor-general Agustin Rubin de Cevallos, February 17, 1784.[762]

Valladares had received his appointment September 15, 1669. It was not until 1677 that he resigned his see of Plasencia and he held the inquisitor-generalship until his death, January 29, 1695. He was succeeded by Juan Thomás de Rocaberti, Archbishop of Valencia, for whom Innocent XII, at the request of Carlos II, granted a dispensation from residence, conditioned on his making proper provision for the spiritual and temporal care of his see.[781] He died June 13, 1699, and his successor, Alfonso Fernández de Aguilar, Cardinal of Córdova, followed him September 19th, the very day that his commission arrived, after a brief illness and not without grave suspicions of poison.[782] The choice then fell on Balthasar de Mendoza y Sandoval, Bishop of Segovia, who became involved, as we shall see, in a deadly quarrel with his colleagues of the Suprema over the case of Fray Froilan Díaz. In the confusion of the concluding months of the disastrous reign of Carlos II, who died November 1, 1700, Mendoza made the mistake of embracing the Austrian side; his arbitrary action, in the case of Froilan Díaz, served as a sufficient excuse for his removal and Philip V, apparently in 1703, ordered him to return to his see. He is generally said to have resigned in 1705 but, in the papal commission, March 24, 1705, for his successor Vidal Marin, Clement XI states that he has seen fit to relieve Mendoza of the office because his presence is necessary at Segovia.[783] Vidal Marin served till his death in 1709 and so did his successor Riva-Herrera, Archbishop of Saragossa, who, however, enjoyed his dignity for little more than a year.

Thenceforth he led a life of wandering exile, so peculiar that it is explicable only by the character of Philip. He was in constant correspondence with high state officials and was frequently entrusted with important negotiations. Sometimes he was under salary, but it was irregularly paid and for the most part he had to struggle with poverty. When the Infanta María Ana Vitoria was sent back to Spain from France, in 1725, he was commissioned to attend her to the border and from there he went as plenipotentiary to the Congress of Cambray, with the comforting assurance that the king was endeavoring to put an end to the affair of the Inquisition—an effort apparently frustrated by the influence of Père Daubenton.[791] It was possibly with a view to overcome this fatal enmity that he occupied his leisure, between 1734 and 1736, in composing a defence of the Inquisition from the attacks of Dr. Dellon and the Abbé Du Bos. In this he had nothing but praise for its kindliness towards its prisoners, its scrupulous care to avoid injustice, the rectitude of its procedure and the benignity of its punishments. Beyond these assertions, the defence reduces itself to showing that, from the time when the Church acquired the power to persecute, it has persecuted heretics to the death and that the heretics in their turn have been persecutors—propositions readily proved from his wide and various stores of learning and sufficient to satisfy a believer in the semper et ubique et ab omnibus.[792] Ten years later, when Fernando VI ascended the throne in 1746, Macanaz addressed him a memorial on the measures requisite to relieve the misery of Spain and in this he superfluously urged the maintenance of the Inquisition in all its lustre and authority.[793] In spite of all this it was unrelenting and his entreaties to be allowed to return were fruitless.

Carlos III had no further occasion to exercise his prerogatives but it was otherwise with Carlos IV. His first appointee, Manuel Abad y la Sierra, Bishop of Astorga, who assumed office May 11, 1793, had but a short term, for he was requested to resign in the following year. His successor, Francisco Antonio de Lorenzana, Archbishop of Toledo, who accepted the post September 12, 1794, was not much more fortunate, although his enforced resignation, in 1797, was decently concealed under a mission to convey to Pius VI the offer of a refuge in Majorca. He was followed by Ramon José de Arce y Reynoso, Archbishop of Saragossa, who resigned March 22, 1808, four days after the abdication of Carlos IV in the “tumult of lackeys” at Aranjuez, probably to escape his share of the popular odium directed against the favorite Godoy.[797] During the short-lived revival of the Inquisition under the Restoration, its dependence on the royal power was too great for differences to arise that would provoke assertions of the prerogative.

The royal power of appointment was not uncontested and gave rise to frequent debates. Philip IV sometimes yielded and sometimes persisted; occasionally the question was complicated and papal intervention was hinted at.[805] A decisive struggle came in 1640, in which the Suprema chose its ground discreetly. It suited Olivares to appoint Antonio de Aragon, a youthful cleric and the second son of the Duke of Cardona. Anticipating resistance, Philip announced the nomination imperiously; Don Antonio must be admitted the next day as he was about to start for Barcelona and any representations against it could be made subsequently. The Suprema replied that the inquisitor-general could not make the appointment and if he did so it would be invalid; Don Antonio was less than thirty years old; the canons require an inquisitor to be forty, although Paul III had reduced for Spain, the age to thirty; members of the Suprema were inquisitors and it was only as such that they sat in judgement without appeal in cases of faith. To this Philip rejoined that Olivares would report the efforts he had made to quiet his conscience in view of the great public good to result from the appointment, wherefore he expected that possession would be given to Don Antonio without delay. Matters went so far that the Duchess of Cardona wrote to her son to abandon the effort but the royal command prevailed; he obtained the position and in the following year he was made a member of the Council of State; he was already a member of the Council of Military Orders and the whole affair gives us a glimpse of how Olivares governed Spain.[806] Having thus asserted his prerogative, Philip, in 1642 and the early months of 1643, made four appointments without consultation. The remonstrances of the Suprema must have been energetic for Philip yielded and, in a decree of June 26 (or July 2), 1643, he agreed that the old custom of submitting three names should be renewed, with the innovation that the Suprema should unite in making the recommendations. Against this the inquisitor-general protested, but in vain. It was probably to make an offset to these royal nominees that, November 10, 1643, the inquisitor-general and Suprema asked that their fiscal should have a vote, which Philip refused.[807] The rule continued of submitting three names for selection, but the participation of the Suprema in this seems to have been dropped. The royal control, moreover asserted itself in the case of Froilan Díaz when, by decree of November 3, 1704, Philip V reinstated three members, Antonio Zambrana, Juan Bautista Arzeamendi and Juan Miguélez, who had been arbitrarily ejected and jubilado by Inquisitor-general Mendoza, ordering moreover that they should receive all arrears of salary.[808]

This case may have been mere jugglery and collusion, but in general it by no means followed that royal decrees sent to the Suprema for transmission were forwarded. If it objected, it would respond by a consulta arguing their impropriety or illegality, and this would, if necessary, be repeated three or four times at long intervals until, perhaps, the matter was forgotten or dropped or some compromise was reached. The privilege that all instructions must be transmitted through the Suprema was therefore one of no little importance and it was insisted upon tenaciously. There was a convenient phrase invented which we shall often meet—obedecer y no cumplir—to obey but not to execute, which was very serviceable on these occasions. In 1610 the Suprema argued away a cédula of Philip III as invalid because it had been despatched through the Council of State and the king was repeatedly told to his face that the laws required his cédulas to be countersigned by the Suprema in order to secure their execution. This was done to Philip IV, in 1634, when he intervened in a quarrel and, in 1681 to Carlos II when there were difficulties threatened with foreign nations arising from abuses committed in examining importations in search of forbidden books.[814] As the questions calling for royal interposition as a rule affected only the wide secular and not the spiritual jurisdiction of the Inquisition, this created conditions unendurable in any well-organized government.

To perfect the absolute control of the confiscations, thus gradually assumed, it was necessary to keep the crown in ignorance of their amount. Its right to them was incontestable, and the Inquisition deliberately abused the confidence reposed in it when their collection was left in its hands. The less the king was allowed to know, the less likely he was to claim his share and the policy was adopted of deceiving him. As early as 1560 we have evidence of this in a letter to the inquisitors of Sicily instructing them, when reporting autos de fe to the king, to suppress all statements as to the confiscations, but to report them to the Suprema so that it may determine how far to inform him. This was doubtless a general mandate to all the tribunals; it was repeated in instructions of 1561 and we shall see that it became a settled practice.[824] This systematic concealment was the more indefensible from the fact that the Inquisition was now obtaining funds from other sources than confiscations. We shall see hereafter how it utilized the scare caused by the discovery of Protestantism in Valladolid and Seville in 1558, with the plea of additional expenses thus caused, to obtain from Paul IV a levy of a hundred thousand gold ducats on the revenues of the clergy and the more permanent endowment of a canonry to be suppressed for its benefit in every cathedral and collegiate church. A large portion of the inquisitors, moreover already held canonries and other benefices for which, under a brief of Innocent VIII, February 11, 1485, they were dispensed for non-residence.[825] The burden of the Holy Office was thus thrown largely on the ecclesiastical establishment, which remonstrated and resisted but was compelled to submit. It could thus look with equanimity on the shrinkage of the confiscations. In Valencia, an agreement was reached, in 1571, by which the Moriscos compounded for them with an annual payment to the tribunal of twenty-five hundred ducats.[826] The Judaizing heretics had been largely eliminated, especially the more wealthy ones, and it was not until some years after the conquest of Portugal, in 1580, that the influx of Portuguese New Christians brought a new and profitable harvest.

Yet, in the ever-increasing distress of the crown, demands were made upon the Inquisition, as on all other departments of government, demands which it was forced to meet. Thus, for the ten years, 1632 to 1641 inclusive, an annual sum of 2,007,360 mrs. was required of it, to aid in defraying the cost of garrisons and fleet, and a statement of October 11, 1642, shows that it had paid the aggregate of 11,583,110 in vellon and 18,700 in silver, leaving a balance still due of 8,474,790.[830] Evidently there was good reason for concealing its revenues. In the frightful confusion of the finances which followed the revolution of Portugal and the revolt of Catalonia, in 1640, while Spain was heroically battling for existence against France and its rebellious subjects, the demands were varied and incessant—sometimes for sums so small as to reveal the absolute penury of the State—and Philip’s impatient urgency, as he chafed under the dilatoriness of the responses, shows the desperate emergencies in which he was involved. In 1643 a royal decree of February 16th ordered all officials to send their silver plate to the mint, a watch being kept and a report made so as to see that each sent a quantity proportioned to his station. To a complaint of delay in performance the Suprema replied that those who had sent in their silver could get no satisfaction from the mint—the delays were such that the promptitude required by the king was impossible.[831]

The secretiveness so carefully observed undoubtedly had its advantages or it would not have been so persistently claimed as a right. In a consulta of 1696 the Count of Frigiliana states that, when he was viceroy of Valencia, he had in vain endeavored to get from the tribunal a statement of its affairs and he asked the king whether or not the Inquisition possessed the privilege of rendering no account of its assets and income.[838] At length the quarrel between Inquisitor-general Mendoza and his colleagues, in the case of Froilan Díaz, and his banishment to his see in 1703, gave opportunity for royal intervention and investigation. The War of Succession had deranged the finances of the Inquisition and it had appealed to the king for help. He required a statement of the pay-rolls, investments and revenues of all the tribunals, which was furnished March 9, 1703, after which, on May 27th, he issued a decree declaring that he must put an end to the abuses and disorders which had crept into the administration and disbursement of its property, in order to relieve the embarrassment of which it complained. He therefore annulled all commissions and appointments without obligation of service, granted by the inquisitor-general, whether within or outside of Spain. The papers of all jubilations, new places and gratuities created or granted since the time of Valladares (1695) were to be placed in his hands. In no case thereafter should the inquisitor-general jubilate any official of the Suprema or local tribunal without consulting him, and any such act issued without a previous royal order was declared void. No ayuda de costa or grant exceeding thirty ducats vellon, for a single term, was to be made without awaiting his decision and this decree was to be placed in the hands of all receivers or treasurers for their guidance. It was so transmitted June 8th, with strict orders for its observance. This was a resolute assertion of the royal control over the finances of the Inquisition and it held good, in theory at least, however much it may have been eluded in practice. About the middle of the eighteenth century a systematic writer describes it as still in force and states that no salaries can be increased without the royal approval. It so continued to the end and, under the Restoration, an order from the king, countersigned by the Suprema, was requisite for any extraordinary disbursement.[839]

Philip also reasserted and made good the right of the crown to the confiscations, by claiming a percentage of the rentals of all confiscated property, but he listened to appeals from the tribunals and, in 1710, we hear of Saragossa and Valencia being practically restored to their enjoyment, a liberality which was doubtless followed with regard to the others. In 1725 Valencia expressed its fear that the alliance with Austria against England, France and Prussia would result in its having to restore the confiscations, and the blow seems to have fallen for, in 1727, the suprema, in a consulta of December 9th, describing the poverty of Saragossa, attributes it to the king having taken away the confiscations which he had granted. With the gradual amelioration in the Spanish finances, this source of revenue must have been restored, for, in 1768, the Inquisition is described as enjoying the confiscations which the pious liberality of the monarchs had bestowed.[840]

There is virtually no trace of any interference subsequently by the crown, and the Inquisition found itself in possession of an independent and by no means inconsiderable source of revenue which it could levy, almost at will, from those who fell into its hands. The only exception to this that I have met is that Philip IV, in his financial distress, by a decree of September 30, 1639, claimed and collected twenty-five per cent. of fines, but he scrupulously limited this to those inflicted in cases not connected with the faith—that is, in the exercise of the royal jurisdiction, civil and criminal, enjoyed by the Inquisition in matters concerning familiars and other officials.[848]

We shall see hereafter the use made of this by the Inquisition in its daily quarrels with all the other jurisdictions, but a single case may be cited here to indicate how it utilized this position to render itself virtually independent. There was a long-standing debate over canonries in the churches of Antequera, Málaga and the Canaries, which it claimed to be suppressed for its benefit under the brief of January 7, 1559, but which the royal Camara asserted to belong to the patronage of the king, whose rights of appointment were not curtailed by the brief. A suit on the subject, commenced in 1562, was not yet decided when, about 1611, the king filled vacancies in Málaga and the Canaries. This provoked a discussion, during which, without awaiting settlement, the inquisitors excommunicated the appointees—and an inquisitorial excommunication could be removed only by him who had fulminated it, by the inquisitor-general or by the pope. In 1611 the king ordered the appointees to be absolved and mandates signed by him to that effect were addressed to the inquisitors of Málaga and the Canaries. The Suprema complained loudly of this as an unheard of violation of the rights of the Holy Office and refused obedience. In 1612 it declared that, when the appointees abandoned the prebends which they had usurped, they should be absolved and not before. On February 12th, in a consulta to the king, it argued that its power had always been so great and so independent of all other bodies in the State that the kings had never allowed them to interfere with it, directly or indirectly; it determined for itself everything relating to itself, consulting only with the king and permitting no interference of any kind. Its determination prevailed over the weakness of the king who ordered the Camara to desist from its pretensions and not to despoil the Holy Office.[855]

In this paper the Suprema asserted that the civil and political jurisdiction is inferior to the spiritual and ecclesiastical, which can assume by indirect power whatever is necessary for its conservation and unimpeded exercise, without being restricted by secular princes. The royal prerogative is derived from positive human law or the law of nations; the supreme power of the Inquisition is delegated by the Holy See for cases of faith with all that is requisite, directly or indirectly, for its untrammelled enjoyment; this is of divine law and, as such, is superior to all human law, to which it is in no way subject. The very least that can be said is that princes are bound to admit this, and though they have a right to concede no more than is requisite, the decision as to what is requisite rests with the ecclesiastical authority, which is based on divine law. Any departure from these principles, under the novel pretext that the king is master of this jurisdiction, with power to limit or abrogate, is dangerous for the conscience and very perilous as leading to the gravest errors.[865] It would be difficult to enunciate more boldly the theory of theocracy, with the Inquisition as its delegate and the crown merely the executor of its decrees.

Under the imbecile Carlos II and his incapable ministers, the domineering arrogance of the Inquisition increased and, as we shall see hereafter, it successfully eluded a concerted movement, in 1696, of all the other councils, represented in the Junta Magna, to reduce its exuberance. With the advent of the House of Bourbon, however, it was forced to recognize its subordination to the royal will in temporal matters, in spite of the temporary interference of Elisabeth Farnese in favor of Inquisitor-general Giudice. We have already seen indications of this and shall see more; meanwhile a single instance will suffice to show how imperiously Philip V, under the guidance of Macanaz, could impose his commands. In 1712 there was an echo of the old quarrel over the so-called suppressed canonries of Antequera, Málaga and the Canaries (p. 342). The suit, commenced in 1562, had never been decided and had long been suspended. The trouble of 1612 had been quieted by allowing the Inquisition to enjoy the canonries, not as a right, but as a revocable grant from the crown; excesses committed by the inquisitors in collecting the fruits led to the resumption of the benefices and then, by a transaction in 1622, they were restored under the same conditions. Such was the position when a violent quarrel arose in the Canaries between the tribunal and the chapter. The former questioned the accuracy of the accounts rendered to it and demanded the account books. This the chapter refused but offered to place the books in the accounting room of the cathedral, allowing the officials of the tribunal free access and permission to make what copies they desired. There was also a subsidiary quarrel over the claim that, when the secretary of the tribunal went to the chapter, he should be entitled to precedence. With their customary violence the inquisitors publicly excommunicated and fined the dean and treasurer of the chapter and moreover they took under their protection the Dominican Joseph Guillen, Prior of San Pedro Martir, who was a notary of the tribunal. He circulated a defamatory libel on the chapter which laid a complaint before his superior, the Provincial; the latter commenced to investigate, when the tribunal inhibited him from all cognizance of the matter. Then there came a mandate from the Dominican General to the Provincial, relegating Fray Guillen to a convent and ordering a president to be appointed for San Pedro Martir, whereupon the tribunal required the Provincial to surrender this mandate and all papers concerning the affair, under pain of excommunication and two hundred ducats. The sub-prior of San Pedro Martir was forced to assemble the brethren, whom the inquisitors ordered to disobey the commands of the General and not to acknowledge the president appointed under his instructions, thus violating the statutes of the great Dominican Order and the principle of obedience on which it was based. They further excommunicated the Provincial in the most solemn manner; they took by force Fray Guillen from the convent and paraded the streets in his company; the whole community was thrown into confusion and to prevent recourse to the home authorities they forbade, under heavy penalties, the departure of any vessel for Teneriffe, through which communication was had with Spain. In all this there was nothing at variance with the customary methods of asserting the lawless supremacy of the Inquisition over the secular and spiritual authorities, but Philip V ordered Giudice, September 30, 1712, to put an end to these excesses and, on October 11th, the Suprema reported that it had ordered the inquisitors to desist. If it did so, they paid no attention to its commands. Then, June 11, 1713, he addressed a peremptory order to Giudice to revoke all that had been done in the Canaries, to recall the inquisitors, to dismiss them and give them no other appointments. The Suprema replied, July 18th, enclosing an order which it proposed despatching; this displeased him as not in compliance with his commands and he insisted on their complete fulfilment. Still there was evasion and delay and when, in July, 1714, the Canary chapter presented to the tribunal royal orders requiring the removal of the excommunications and the remission of the fines, the inquisitors not only refused obedience but commenced proceedings against the notaries who served them. The Suprema professed to have sent orders similar to those of the king, but it evidently had been playing a double game. Philip therefore, November 1, 1714, addressed the inquisitor-general, holding the Suprema responsible for the prolonged contumacy of the inquisitors; he ordered it to deliver to him the originals of all the correspondence on the subject and required the inquisitor-general to issue an order for the immediate departure from the islands of the inquisitors and fiscal, without forcing the governor to expel them, as he had orders to do so in case of disobedience. Moreover, if the Suprema should not, within fifteen days, deliver all the documents, so that the king could regulate matters directly with the tribunal, the old suspended suit would be reopened and such action would be taken as might be found requisite. This was a tone wholly different from that to which the Inquisition had been accustomed under the Hapsburgs; the evasions and delays of the Suprema, which had so long been successful, proved fruitless. The struggle was prolonged, but the royal authority prevailed in the end, although, when the inquisitors reached Spain, in the summer of 1715, Giudice had been restored to office and Philip weakly permitted them to be provided for in other tribunals and to curse fresh communities with their lawless audacity.[868]

We shall hereafter have occasion to see how, under the House of Bourbon, with its Gallican ideas as to royal prerogative, the subordination of the Inquisition became recognized, while its jurisdiction was curtailed and its influence was diminished.

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 for suspicion of heresy.[879]

It was an inevitable inference from this that there was no direct appeal from whatever a tribunal might do except to the Suprema, which, though it might in secret chide its subordinates for their excesses, customarily upheld them before the world. The sovereign, it is true, was the ultimate judge and, in occasional cases, he interposed his authority with more or less effect, but the ordinary process was through a competencia, a cumbrous procedure through which, as we shall see, the Inquisition could wrangle for years and virtually, in most cases, deny all practical relief to the sufferers.

That the inquisitor should assume to be superior to all other dignitaries was the natural result of the powers thus concentrated in him. Páramo asserts that he is the individual of highest authority in his district, as he represents both pope and king; and the Suprema, in a consulta addressed to Philip V, in 1713, boasted that its jurisdiction was so superior that there was not a person in the kingdom exempt from it.[883] The haughty supremacy which it affected is seen in instructions issued in 1578 that inquisitors, when the tribunal is sitting, are not to go forth to receive any one, save the king, the queen or a royal prince and are not, in an official capacity, to appear in receptions of prelates or other public assemblies, and this was virtually repeated in 1645, when they were told not to visit the viceroy or the archbishop or accept their invitations, for such demonstrations were due only to the person of the king.[884] Exception however, was probably taken to this for a carta acordada of March 17, 1648, lays down less stringent rules and specifies for each tribunal, according to the varying customs of different places, the high officials whom the inquisitor is permitted to visit on induction into office and on occasions of condolence or congratulation.[885]

The persistence with which the Inquisition maintained any claim once advanced is illustrated by its endeavor to introduce change in the ritual of the mass favorable to its assumption of superiority. It was the custom that the celebrant should make a bow to the bishop, if present, and in his absence, to the Eucharist. In 1635, at Valladolid, the inquisitors required that when the Edict of Faith was read the bow should be made to them and, on the refusal of the officiating canon, they arrested him and the dean who upheld him and held them under heavy bail. This aroused the whole city and brought a rebuke from the king, who ordered them to discharge the bail and not to abuse their jurisdiction. Unabashed by this the effort was made again at Compostella, in 1639, and duly resisted; the king was again obliged to examine the question and, after consultation with learned men, decided that the chapter was in the right and that the inquisitors had the alternative of absenting themselves from the reading. Two rebuffs such as this should have sufficed but, in 1643, after careful preparation, another attempt was made at Córdova, which produced a fearful scandal. Neither side would yield; the services were interrupted; the inquisitors endeavored to excommunicate the canons, but the latter raised such a din with howls and cries, the thunder of the organ, the clangor of bells and breaking up the seats in the choir, that the fulmination could not be heard. Even the inquisitors shrank from the storm and left the church amid hisses, with their caps pulled down to their eyes, but they lost no time in commencing a prosecution of the canons, who appealed to the king, in a portentous document covering two hundred and fifty-six folio pages. Philip and his advisers at the moment had ample occupation, what with the dismissal of Olivares, the evil tidings from Rocroy and the rebellions in Catalonia and Portugal, but they had to turn aside to settle this portentous quarrel. A royal letter of June 16, 1643, ordered the inquisitors to restore to the canons certain properties which they had seized and to remove the excommunications, while reference to similar decisions at Compostella, Granada and Cartagena shows how obstinate and repeated had been the effort of the Holy Office. Notwithstanding this the tribunal of Córdova refused obedience to the royal mandate and a second letter, of September 28th from Saragossa, where Philip was directing the campaign against Catalonia, was required. This was couched in peremptory terms; the excommunications must be removed and, for the future, the Roman ceremonial must be observed, prescribing that in the absence of the bishop, the reverence must be made to the sacrament.[888]

It will be seen from these cases that the only appeal from inquisitorial aggression lay to the king and that, even when the inquisitors were wholly in the wrong and the royal decision was against them, no steps were taken to keep them within bounds for the future. The altered position of the Holy Office under the Bourbons was therefore significantly indicated by a decision of Fernando VI in 1747. At the celebration in Granada, on September 11th, of his accession, the chancillería, or great high court of New Castile, observed that the archbishop occupied a chair covered with taffety, outside of his window overlooking the plaza, and that the inquisitors had cushions on their window-sills. It sent messengers to request the removal of these symbols of pre-eminence and, on receiving a refusal in terms of scant respect, it stopped the second bull-fight and put an end to the ceremonies. The matter was referred to the king, when the Suprema, in a memorial of solemn earnestness, argued that the Inquisition had for centuries been in the uncontested enjoyment of the privilege of which it was now sought to be deprived. It was the highest tribunal, not only in Spain but in the world, as it had charge of the true religion, which is the foundation of all kingdoms and republics. The time had passed for this swelling self-assertion. Full discussion was devoted to the momentous question and, on October 3d, Fernando issued a decree which proclaimed to Spain that the Holy Office was no longer what it had been. This was to the effect that, as the chancillería represented the royal jurisdiction, and thus indirectly the king himself, it was entitled to pre-eminence in all such celebrations and in those of the royal chapel; it was justified in its action and thereafter no such signs of dignity as canopies, cushions, ceremonial chairs and the like should be used in its presence. In case of attempts to do so, one of the alcaldes del crimen with his officers should remove them and punish any workmen in setting them up.[890]

The Inquisition and its members were protected in every way from subjection to local laws and regulations. An edict of Charles V, in 1523, forbade all municipalities or other bodies from adopting statutes which should in any way curtail their privileges or be adverse to them and, if any such should be attempted he declared them in advance to be null and void.[891] This in fact, was only expressing and enforcing the canon laws enacted in the frenzied efforts to suppress heresy in the thirteenth century and still in vigor. A constitution of Urban IV (1261-5) declares invalid the laws of any state or city which impede, directly or indirectly, the functions of the Inquisition, and the bishop or inquisitor is empowered to summon the ruler or magistrates to exhibit such statutes and compel him by censures to revoke or modify them.[892] While this was designed to prevent the crippling of the Inquisition by hostile legislation, it inferred a superiority to law and was construed in the most liberal way, as was seen in a struggle in Valencia which lasted for nearly two centuries. A police regulation for the improvement of the market-place ordered the removal of all stands for the display of goods under the arcades of the houses. One house belonged to the tribunal; its tenant was the worst offender, and he obstinately kept his stand and appealed to the tribunal for protection against the law. This protection was accorded with such vigor in 1603, that the saintly Archbishop, Juan de Ribera, who was also captain-general, vainly endeavored to secure obedience to the 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]

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.

When the honor of slaves was thus vindicated inquisitors were not apt to condone any failure, real or imaginary, in the respect which they held to be their due, and the offender was made to feel the awful authority which shrouded the tribunal and its judges. As their powers were largely discretional, with undefined limits, the manner in which they were exercised was sometimes eccentric. In 1569, for instance, the Jesuits of Palermo prepared for representation in their church a tragedy of St. Catherine and, on October 4th, they gave a private rehearsal to which were invited the viceroy and principal dignitaries. The inquisitor, Juan Biserra, came as one of the guests and finding the door closed knocked repeatedly without announcing himself or demanding admittance. The janitor, thinking it to be some unauthorized person, paid no attention to the knocking and Biserra departed, highly incensed. When the Jesuits heard of it, the rector and principal fathers called on him to apologize, but, after keeping them waiting for some time he refused to see them. The public representation was announced for October 8th; the church was crowded with the nobility awaiting the rising of the curtain, when a messenger from Biserra notified the Jesuits that he forbade the performance, under pain of excommunication and other penalties at his discretion, until after the piece should have been examined and approved by him. The audience was dismissed and the next day the MS. was sent to Biserra who submitted it to Dominican censors. Although they returned it with their approval he discovered in it two objectionable points, so absurdly trifling as to show that he wanted merely to make a wanton exhibition of his power. The censors replied to his criticism and he finally allowed the performance to proceed. We may not unreasonably assume that this may have been one of the freaks for which Biserra was suspended in 1572, on the report made of him by the visitor Quintanilla. Then, with customary tenderness, he was employed in the responsible post of visitor at Barcelona, where he died soon afterwards.[905]

We have seen that Ferdinand, in 1508, prohibited the issue of orders to pass goods free, but nevertheless it continued. When, in 1540, Blas Ortiz went to take possession of his office as inquisitor of Valencia, the Suprema furnished him with a pass addressed to all customs officials permitting him to cross the frontiers with three horses and four pack-mules; he could be required to swear that what he carried was his private property and was not for sale, but all further interference was hidden under pain of excommunication and a hundred ducats.[932] It was not only on such occasions, however, that the customhouses were thus eluded. Before the introduction of regular posts, the constant communications between the tribunals and with the Suprema were carried by couriers or by muleteers, and the mysterious secrecy which shrouded all the operations of the Holy Office furnished an excuse for preventing any risk that these sacred packages should be examined. All bearers of letters therefore, even when they had loaded mules, were furnished with passes forbidding, under excommunication and fine, any unpacking or investigation of what they carried.[933] The facilities thus offered for contraband trade are obvious and their value can only be appreciated through a knowledge of the elaborate system of import and export duties and prohibitions of import and export which characterize the policy of the period.[934] Complaints were fruitless, for when the Council of Hacienda issued letters against certain familiars in the Canaries, detected in importing prohibited goods, Philip II, February 11, 1593, ordered the letters to be recalled and that no more should be issued.[935]

This narrative is instructive in more ways than one. The pretence of necessity in the service of God was as fraudulent as the claims put forward. The whole business was purely speculative and the licences were doubtless sold to the highest bidder through all these years. The Valencian tribunal was at no time in need of wheat from Aragon or Castile, for it had ample privileges at home for all its wants and it was working these local privileges for a profit to some one. Among other public-spirited acts of Ximenes was the founding, in 1512, of an alhondiga, or public granary, in Toledo so that, as we are told in 1569, in times of scarcity the citizens could procure supplies at moderate prices.[939] It was probably owing to this that other cities, including Valencia, formed establishments of the kind, monopolizing the traffic in wheat, to which the citizens resorted day by day for their provision. When a loss occurred in the business, from a surplus over the demand or from spoiling of the grain, it was assessed upon the citizens, under the name of pan asegurado, but, in 1530, the magistrates relieved the officials of the tribunal from sharing this burden and the exemption is enumerated, in 1707, as still among its privileges.[940] Another privilege, which it shared with the viceroy and the archbishop, was that the baker who served it was the second one allowed every morning to enter the granary and select a sack of wheat (trigo fuerte) of five and a half bushels and every week a cahiz (3½ bushels) of trigo candeal, without payment save a small tax known as murs y valls—evidently for the maintenance of the city defences. This he baked and distributed the bread among the officials and to the prison, in allotted portions, and what was over he sold—showing that the tribunal not only got its wheat gratuitously but more than it needed, to somebody’s profit. The amount must have been considerable, for the bakers complained of the unfair competition of the favored baker and, in 1609, the city endeavored to put an end to the abuse, but without success. The matter slumbered until 1627, when the city obtained a royal cédula abolishing the privilege of taking the wheat, but obedience to this was refused because it had been issued without preliminary notice to the other side and without a junta or conference between the Suprema and the Council of Aragon. Then the city ordered the baker no longer to go to the granary for wheat and the aggrieved Suprema complained loudly to the king, urging him to consider the services to God and the tonsure of the inquisitors and not to allow these holy labors to be interrupted by the necessity of going personally to the granary. To this Philip replied by ordering the fueros to be observed, which was virtually a confirmation of his cédula, but this seems to have been similarly disregarded, for, in 1628 we find the city again endeavoring to put an end to the collateral abuse of the sale of the surplus bread and the tribunal busily engaged in gathering testimony to prove that this had publicly been the custom from time immemorial. In proving this, however, it also proved unconsciously how fraudulent had been the claim that it had been in need of wheat from Aragon.[941]

This narrative is instructive in more ways than one. The pretence of necessity in the service of God was as fraudulent as the claims put forward. The whole business was purely speculative and the licences were doubtless sold to the highest bidder through all these years. The Valencian tribunal was at no time in need of wheat from Aragon or Castile, for it had ample privileges at home for all its wants and it was working these local privileges for a profit to some one. Among other public-spirited acts of Ximenes was the founding, in 1512, of an alhondiga, or public granary, in Toledo so that, as we are told in 1569, in times of scarcity the citizens could procure supplies at moderate prices.[939] It was probably owing to this that other cities, including Valencia, formed establishments of the kind, monopolizing the traffic in wheat, to which the citizens resorted day by day for their provision. When a loss occurred in the business, from a surplus over the demand or from spoiling of the grain, it was assessed upon the citizens, under the name of pan asegurado, but, in 1530, the magistrates relieved the officials of the tribunal from sharing this burden and the exemption is enumerated, in 1707, as still among its privileges.[940] Another privilege, which it shared with the viceroy and the archbishop, was that the baker who served it was the second one allowed every morning to enter the granary and select a sack of wheat (trigo fuerte) of five and a half bushels and every week a cahiz (3½ bushels) of trigo candeal, without payment save a small tax known as murs y valls—evidently for the maintenance of the city defences. This he baked and distributed the bread among the officials and to the prison, in allotted portions, and what was over he sold—showing that the tribunal not only got its wheat gratuitously but more than it needed, to somebody’s profit. The amount must have been considerable, for the bakers complained of the unfair competition of the favored baker and, in 1609, the city endeavored to put an end to the abuse, but without success. The matter slumbered until 1627, when the city obtained a royal cédula abolishing the privilege of taking the wheat, but obedience to this was refused because it had been issued without preliminary notice to the other side and without a junta or conference between the Suprema and the Council of Aragon. Then the city ordered the baker no longer to go to the granary for wheat and the aggrieved Suprema complained loudly to the king, urging him to consider the services to God and the tonsure of the inquisitors and not to allow these holy labors to be interrupted by the necessity of going personally to the granary. To this Philip replied by ordering the fueros to be observed, which was virtually a confirmation of his cédula, but this seems to have been similarly disregarded, for, in 1628 we find the city again endeavoring to put an end to the collateral abuse of the sale of the surplus bread and the tribunal busily engaged in gathering testimony to prove that this had publicly been the custom from time immemorial. In proving this, however, it also proved unconsciously how fraudulent had been the claim that it had been in need of wheat from Aragon.[941]

The Saragossa tribunal had a still more prolonged and bitter dispute with the city over the bake-oven of the Aljafería. This belonged to the crown and, at some time prior to 1630, Philip IV made it over to the tribunal which was pleading poverty. Its use of the privilege soon brought it into conflict with the city, but a complicated arrangement respecting it was included in the agreement of December 7, 1631, requiring the baker to purchase at least seventy bushels of wheat per month from the public granary, with certain restrictions as to the places whence he could procure further supplies. In 1649 we chance to learn that the oven was farmed out for six thousand reales per annum and in 1663, a lively conflict arose because the tribunal had granted a lease which was not subject to the restrictions of 1631. Then again, in 1690, the trouble broke out afresh, each side accusing the other of violating the agreement. All the authorities, from the king and viceroy down, were invoked to settle it; there were fears of violence but, May 1, 1691, the tribunal reported to the Suprema that a compromise had been reached on satisfactory terms.[945]

Few of the privileges claimed by the Inquisition gave rise to more bickering and contention than its demand that all connected with it should be exempt from the billeting of troops and the furnishing of bagages or beasts of burden for transportation. The subject is one of minor importance, but it furnishes so typical an illustration of inquisitorial methods that it is worthy of examination somewhat in detail. Under the old monarchy the yantar or droit de gîte, or right to free quarters, was an insufferable burden. Almost every Córtes of Leon and Castile, from the twelfth century complained of it energetically, for it was exercised, not only by the royal court in its incessant peregrinations, but by nobles and others who could enforce it, and it was accompanied by spoliation of every kind, while the impressment of beasts of burden was an associated abuse and even the lands of the Church were not exempt.[952] The more independent Aragonese were unwilling to submit to it, and a fuero of the Córtes of Aleañiz, in 1436, provided that the courtiers and followers of the king should pay all Christians in whose houses they lodged.[953] When the Inquisition was founded and was to a great extent peripatetic, its officials apparently claimed free quarters, for a clause in the Instructions of 1498 provides that where a tribunal was set up they should pay for their accommodations and provide their own beds and necessaries.[954] When travelling, a decree of Ferdinand, October 21, 1500, repeated in 1507, 1516, 1518, 1532, and 1561, provided that they should have gratuitous lodging and beds, with food at moderate prices.[955] The frequent repetition of this indicates that it aroused opposition and, in 1601, when the inquisitor of Valencia was ordered to go at once on a visitation of Tortosa, he was told not to oppress the city by demanding free quarters but to lodge decently in a monastery or in the house of some official.[956]

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]

Several cases in the earlier years of Philip V seem to indicate that this matter was an exception to the general limitation of the privileges of the Holy Office and that there was a tendency to admit its claims.[1001] Their final extinction, however, was not far off. In 1748, Fernando VI prohibited all officials of tribunals, including the Inquisition, from carrying cut-and-thrust weapons any kind; exclusive jurisdiction in the enforcement of this was reserved for the secular courts and all claims to fuero were abolished. He confirmed and extended this by proclamations of 1749, 1751 and 1754, with penalties of six years in the mines for commoners and six years service in presidio for nobles. In another of 1757 he regretted the non-observance of these laws and ordered their irremissible enforcement without privilege of fuero. This legislation was supplemented by Carlos III, in 1761, who included in the prohibition all fire-arms of less than four palms length of barrel, although he conceded to gentlemen the use of holster pistols when on horseback but not when on mule-back.[1002] Yet the Inquisition continued to issue the old form of commissions granting unlimited license, until the magistrates of Seville and Alcalá la Real refused to recognize them when, in 1777, it admitted its altered position by a modification which granted the right to carry non-prohibited weapons, but only when on duty for the Holy Office, and contented itself with exhorting the secular authorities not to interfere with this.[1003]

The Suprema carried its point that those exempted should not contribute to those conscripted and the arrangement remained in force. It was repeated in a carta acordada of January 14, 1668, and, when, in 1681, a question arose in Tembleque, the Suprema cautioned the Toledo tribunal not to issue more letters of exemption than the settlement permitted, in order to avoid competencias which only serve to render the Holy Office hateful and to imperil its other privileges.[1012] Carlos III seems to have been more liberal when, in 1767, he included, in an elaborate list of those exempt from military service, the ministers and dependents of the Inquisition who were relieved from billets under the decree of May 26, 1728, which, it will be remembered, granted the privilege to the number of familiars allowed under the old Concordias. Carlos IV was more exacting for, in 1800, when regulating the conscription in minute detail, he granted exemption only to the titular officials and took special care to exclude familiars and other dependents.[1013] This continued to the end. September 14, 1818, the Suprema communicated to the tribunals a decision of the king that, in order to secure exemption from conscription, it was not necessary to exhibit a royal commission, but one from the inquisitor-general or Suprema sufficed.[1014] Evidently the local tribunals were no longer allowed to issue certificates of exemption.

It would be superfluous to follow out in detail the vicissitudes of this matter in the other provinces of Spain, where it gave abundant occasion for quarrels conducted with customary vehemence. It seems to have settled itself into the rule that officials and familiars were eligible to public office but that, during their terms of service, they were not entitled to the jurisdiction of the Inquisition. Such, we are told in 1632, was the practice in Castile, Aragon and Valencia.[1029] Yet still there were disputes for, about the middle of the seventeenth century, a formula is given for use when a familiar is prevented from taking office. This sets forth at much length that, if familiars are refused office, no one will take the position, which will inflict great detriment on the faith; it cites the royal cédulas, it sets aside opposing arguments by showing that for all malfeasance in office the familiar will be subject to the royal jurisdiction and finally it orders his immediate induction in his post under penalty of excommunication and of five hundred ducats; no further notice will be given and all further action will be published in the halls of the Inquisition, which will be full legal notice to all parties concerned.[1030] I have met with no further legislation on the subject and presumably some arrangement of this kind was in force to the end.

There is no allusion to this in the earlier Concordias and no specific grant that I have been able to find. It seems to have been merely a gratuitous assumption on the part of the Inquisition, asserted with its customary persistence. A noteworthy case growing out of it occurred, in 1622, in the town of Lorca (Murcia) where a familiar refused to serve in the office of collector of the alcavala, or tax on sales, and was imprisoned for contumacy. The inquisitors of Murcia demanded his liberation and excommunicated the alcalde mayor for refusing to obey. This failing, they prepared to arrest him and called upon the corregidor of Murcia, Pedro de Porres, for assistance. On his refusal they excommunicated him and then laid an interdict on the city of Murcia. The citizens appealed to their bishop, Fray Antonio Trejo, who remonstrated with the tribunal and, finding this unavailing, issued an edict declaring the interdict invalid. Bishops were not subject to inquisitorial jurisdiction, even for heresy, without special papal faculties, but the inquisitor-general, Andres Pacheco, was the most audacious and inexorable assertor of inquisitorial omnipotence and he did not hesitate to condemn the episcopal edict, to publish the condemnation in all the churches, to fine the bishop in eight thousand ducats and to summon him, under pain of four thousand more, to appear within twenty days and answer to the action brought against him by the fiscal as an impeder of the Inquisition. The bishop and chapter sent the dean and a canon to represent them, but, without a hearing, they were thrown incomunicado into the secret prison, excommunicated and the censure published in all the churches. The inquisitors imprisoned the parish priest of Santa Catalina for disregarding the interdict and the whole ecclesiastical body of Murcia became involved. Finally, through the intervention of the king and the pope, the bishop was absolved, but the Inquisition reaped a rich harvest of fines. Those of the bishop, dean and some of the canons were kept by the Suprema, while the local tribunal, in addition to inflicting terms of exile, of from one to eight years, secured from José Lucas, the episcopal secretary, a thousand ducats, from Alonso Pedriñan, the fiscal, eight hundred and, from thirteen other priests and dignitaries of the church, sums ranging from fifty to one hundred and fifty—in all, an aggregate of 3272 ducats.[1031]

Yet the marked aversion in Spain to ecclesiastical encroachment led to repeated enactments restraining spiritual jurisdiction within strict limits. In a series of laws, dating from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century, Henry II, Juan II, Henry IV, Ferdinand and Isabella and Charles V endeavored by the severest penalties to repress its inevitable tendency to extend itself, whether by seizure of the persons or property of the laity or by entertaining cases between laymen. Ferdinand and Isabella, in 1493, even threatened half confiscation and perpetual exile from Spain for all who, under any pretext, aided ecclesiastical judges in taking prisoners from secular officials or who assisted them in any way.[1051] In addition to this was the recurso de fuerza through which appeal lay to the royal courts or to the Sala de Gobierno whenever the spiritual courts refused an appeal or heard secular cases or those in which laymen were concerned.[1052] It is necessary to bear in mind this tendency and these restrictions on ecclesiastical jurisdiction to estimate properly the latitude obtained by the Inquisition in purely secular affairs.

These were questions which had to be decided. It would seem that the inquisitors construed their powers in the most liberal fashion, giving rise to abuses which called for repression and a limitation of their jurisdiction. The reformatory Instructions of 1498, accordingly, order them not to defend officials and their servants in civil cases and only officials in criminal actions, a rule repeated in a carta acordada of May 4th of the same year.[1054] This excluded servants wholly and deprived officials of the fuero in civil matters, but it was soon modified by Ferdinand, in a letter of January 12, 1500, to the Catalonia tribunal, ordering it not to interfere with the royal court in a certain suit, and expressing the rule that the plaintiff must seek the court of the defendant.[1055] It was impossible however to restrain inquisitors from exceeding their jurisdiction and he was obliged, August 20 1502, to repeat his injunctions to the same tribunal, in consequence of complaints from the Diputados. The inquisitors were roundly taken to task for lending themselves to the schemes of the receiver in buying up debts and claims and then collecting them through the tribunal; they were told that they must defend none but salaried officials actually in service; if they are plaintiffs in civil suits they must apply to the court of the defendants, while if they are defendants the plaintiffs must seek the tribunal. To evoke other cases, he says, causes great scandal and will lead to troubles which must be prevented. A fortnight later he emphasized this about a civil case which they had evoked from the royal court; they must remit it back and not have to be written to again as he would not tolerate such proceedings.[1056] Thus familiars and servants were not entitled to the fuero, or inquisitorial jurisdiction, while salaried officials enjoyed it, active and passive, in criminal actions and only passive in civil suits.

Unduly favorable as was this to the Inquisition, the tribunals paid no attention to its limitations; they welcomed all who sought their judgement seat, and the desire for it of those who had no claim on it shows that they had a reputation of selling justice. One or two cases will exemplify this and show how good were the grounds of complaint by the people. There was a certain Juan de Sant Feliu of Murviedro, whose father and mother-in-law had been condemned for heresy, and to whom Ferdinand had kindly granted their confiscations, including the dowry of his wife. In 1505 the town of Murviedro farmed out to him and his wife the impost on meat for 11,100 sueldos a year; he died and, in the settlement of his account, he was found to owe the town a hundred and fifty libras, which it proceeded to collect from his sons in the court of the governor. Under pretext that his property had been confiscated and restored, they appealed in 1511 to the tribunal of Valencia, which promptly evoked the case and inhibited the court from further action, whereupon the town complained to Ferdinand who ordered the case remitted to the governor. Unabashed by this, in 1513, Sant Feliu’s heirs on the same pretext obtained the intervention of the tribunal in another case, in which Doña Violante de Borja had sued them for 7500 sueldos which she had entrusted to him to invest in a censo of the town of Murviedro; the censo had been paid off and he had concealed the fact and kept the money. Judgement was given against them, when the inquisitors interposed and prohibited the royal court from further action. Ferdinand expressed much indignation at their interference with justice in a matter wholly foreign to their jurisdiction and ordered the prohibition to be withdrawn. Even more arbitrary was the action, in 1511, of the Majorca tribunal, when Pedro Tornamirandez sued the heirs of Francisco Ballester for some cattle and obtained judgement in the court of the royal lieutenant, whereupon the heirs appealed to the inquisitor who evoked the case and forbade further proceedings in the secular court. None of the parties had any connection with the Inquisition and there was not even the pretext of confiscation; it was a mere wanton interference with the course of justice, only explicable by some illicit gain, and when Ferdinand’s attention was called to it he ordered the inquisitor to revoke his action.[1057] If, under Ferdinand’s incessant vigilance the Inquisition thus boldly prostituted its powers, we can appreciate how well-founded, under his careless successors, were the complaints of those who suffered under wrongs perpetrated under the pretence of serving God.

Unduly favorable as was this to the Inquisition, the tribunals paid no attention to its limitations; they welcomed all who sought their judgement seat, and the desire for it of those who had no claim on it shows that they had a reputation of selling justice. One or two cases will exemplify this and show how good were the grounds of complaint by the people. There was a certain Juan de Sant Feliu of Murviedro, whose father and mother-in-law had been condemned for heresy, and to whom Ferdinand had kindly granted their confiscations, including the dowry of his wife. In 1505 the town of Murviedro farmed out to him and his wife the impost on meat for 11,100 sueldos a year; he died and, in the settlement of his account, he was found to owe the town a hundred and fifty libras, which it proceeded to collect from his sons in the court of the governor. Under pretext that his property had been confiscated and restored, they appealed in 1511 to the tribunal of Valencia, which promptly evoked the case and inhibited the court from further action, whereupon the town complained to Ferdinand who ordered the case remitted to the governor. Unabashed by this, in 1513, Sant Feliu’s heirs on the same pretext obtained the intervention of the tribunal in another case, in which Doña Violante de Borja had sued them for 7500 sueldos which she had entrusted to him to invest in a censo of the town of Murviedro; the censo had been paid off and he had concealed the fact and kept the money. Judgement was given against them, when the inquisitors interposed and prohibited the royal court from further action. Ferdinand expressed much indignation at their interference with justice in a matter wholly foreign to their jurisdiction and ordered the prohibition to be withdrawn. Even more arbitrary was the action, in 1511, of the Majorca tribunal, when Pedro Tornamirandez sued the heirs of Francisco Ballester for some cattle and obtained judgement in the court of the royal lieutenant, whereupon the heirs appealed to the inquisitor who evoked the case and forbade further proceedings in the secular court. None of the parties had any connection with the Inquisition and there was not even the pretext of confiscation; it was a mere wanton interference with the course of justice, only explicable by some illicit gain, and when Ferdinand’s attention was called to it he ordered the inquisitor to revoke his action.[1057] If, under Ferdinand’s incessant vigilance the Inquisition thus boldly prostituted its powers, we can appreciate how well-founded, under his careless successors, were the complaints of those who suffered under wrongs perpetrated under the pretence of serving God.

The privilege of the fuero was not confined to servants but was extended in whatever direction the ingenuity and perseverance of the tribunal could enforce it. Penitents who were fulfilling their terms of penance were claimed and the claim was confirmed, in 1547, by Prince Philip. In Valencia and Barcelona the workmen employed on the buildings of the Inquisition were given nominal appointments under which they claimed immunity. In Lima the tribunal complained to the viceroy of the arrest of a bricklayer who was working for it, but it got no satisfaction. In Barcelona the tribunal granted inhibition with censures on the civil court, in which the brother of a familiar was suing a merchant on a protested bill of exchange.[1066]

The Inquisition did not acquiesce tamely in this defeat, which was aggravated by the secular courts interpreting it as giving them jurisdiction over officials as well as familiars. It protested and resisted and showed so little obedience that the Córtes of Valladolid, in 1548, asked that it should be compelled to confine itself to its proper functions in matters of faith.[1070] Quarrels and recursos de fuerza continued and finally the whole question was referred to a junta consisting of two members each from the Suprema and Council of Castile. The representatives of the Inquisition conceded that it had been in fault in appointing too many familiars and in claiming for them all the exemptions of salaried officials; those of the Council admitted that the courts had erred in interfering with civil and criminal cases properly appertaining to the Holy Office. Mutual concessions were made, resulting in what was known as the Concordia of Castile, March 10, 1553—an agreement which the Inquisition admitted, a century later, that neither side had observed.[1071]

With these trivial exceptions the Concordia remained the law in Castile. In 1568 Philip II issued a cédula stating that it had not been observed, wherefore he ordered strict compliance with it and, as late as 1775 Carlos III treats it as being still in force and to be respected by all parties.[1075] If Philip, however, expected peace between the rival and jealous jurisdictions, as the result of the Concordia, he deceived himself. Both were eager for quarrel and opportunities to gratify combative instincts were not lacking. The secular courts resented the intrusion of the Inquisition, which was careful to keep antagonism active by the insulting arrogance of its methods, whenever a question arose between them. There was ample field for contention, for not only were the excepted crimes loosely defined, giving rise to many nice questions, but the Inquisition acutely argued that before the royal courts could assume possession of a case the crime must be fully proved, for the familiar was entitled to the fuero until his guilt was ascertained, thus keeping in its own hands all the vital parts of the process and excluding the secular justices.[1076] Then the circle of excepted cases was enlarged, not only for familiars but for salaried officials, by various edicts from time to time, as we have seen with regard to pistols and discharging fire-arms. Another instance was a cédula of Philip II, in 1566, including among exceptions the violation of royal pragmáticas, which was put to the test, in 1594, when the Chancellery of Granada prosecuted a notary of the tribunal for wearing a larger ruff than was allowed by a sumptuary pragmática; the tribunal excommunicated the judges but, when the case was carried up to the Suprema and Council of Castile, the Chancellery was justified.[1077] In the frenzied efforts to maintain the value of the worthless vellon coinage, Philip IV, by repeated edicts between 1631 and 1660, deprived familiars and salaried officials of the fuero in cases of demanding more than the legal premium for the precious metals or of counterfeiting or importing base money.[1078] Frauds on the revenue from tobacco also deprived all offenders of exemptions, by a pragmática of 1719, but it was difficult to enforce and had to be repeated in 1743, after which at last Inquisitor-general Prado y Cuesta, in 1747, ordered the tribunals to obey it.[1079]

Although Navarre was under the crown of Castile, the Concordia of 1553 was not extended to it until 1665, by a royal cédula of May 9th. The questions which agitated the rest of Spain seem to have rarely presented themselves there, for we hear little of them in that quarter, although, in 1564, the tribunal of Logroño complained of the intrusion of the secular courts on its jurisdiction and there were, as we shall see hereafter, occasional collisions on the subject of witchcraft, which was mixti fori.[1080]

This resulted in a junta of the members of the Suprema and of the Council of Aragon, who agreed upon a Concordia, published by Prince Philip, May 11, 1554. In this he recited that, in consequence of the great numbers of familiars and their endeavoring to have all their cases, civil and criminal, tried by the tribunal, which sought to protect them in this against the claims of the royal judges, there had arisen many contentions in which the whole of the Audiencia had been excommunicated. To put an end to this unseemly strife he had caused the junta to be held, with the result of the following articles, which he ordered both sides to observe, the royal officials under pain of a thousand florins, and the inquisitors as they desired to please him and the emperor. In this the first point was the reduction of the excessive number of familiars; in the city of Valencia they were not to exceed one hundred and eighty; in towns of more than a thousand hearths there might be eight, in those of over five hundred six, in smaller places four, except that in the coast towns there might be two more. Lists of all appointees were to be furnished to the magistrates, both to check excess and to identify individuals. In civil suits they were to enjoy the passive fuero but not the active; if in contracts they renounced this privilege the condition held good, while, if the other party agreed to accept the jurisdiction of the Inquisition, he could not be cited before it. In criminal cases, the Inquisition had sole cognizance with respect to officials, their servants and families and to familiars but not to their wives, children and servants. When contests arose with secular courts, mild measures were to be used and excommunication be avoided as far as possible. When a familiar entered into a treaty of peace and truce, it was to be executed before an inquisitor and, if it contained a condition of death for violation, the inquisitor, in case of such violation, was to relax the culprit to the secular arm to be put to death. Familiars who were in trade were not to enjoy the fuero for frauds or violations of municipal laws and officials holding public office were liable to the secular courts for malfeasance therein.[1083]

This would appear to grant to the Inquisition all that it had any excuse for asking, but it was impossible to bind the inquisitors to any compact, or to observe any rules. A letter to them from the Suprema, in September, 1560, reminds them that it had already ordered them, in the case of Juan Sánchez, to deprive him of his familiarship, to withdraw their inhibitions and censures, and to remit the affair to the secular judge, in spite of which they had gone forward and rendered sentence; now, as Sánchez is not a familiar, they must positively send the case back to the ordinary courts.[1084] When such persistence in injustice existed, it is not surprising that, at the Córtes of Monzon, in 1564, the deputies of Valencia, like those of Aragon and Catalonia, presented a series of complaints, bearing chiefly on abuses of jurisdiction. We happen to have a view of the situation by an impartial observer, the Venetian envoy, Giovanni Soranzo, in his relation of 1565, which is worth repeating, although we must bear in mind that it was impossible for a Venetian statesman to give Philip II credit for the honest fanaticism which underlay his character. After alluding to the privileges of the Aragonese kingdoms, he proceeds “The king uses every opportunity to deprive them of these great privileges and, knowing that there is no easier or more certain method than through the Inquisition, he is continually increasing its authority. In these last Córtes the Aragonese prayed that the Inquisition should take cognizance of no cases save those of religion and said that they grieved greatly that it embraced infinite things as distant as possible from its jurisdiction and they presented many cases not pertaining in any way to its duties. In truth at present the Inquisition interposes in everything, without respect to any one of whatever rank or position, and we may say positively that this tribunal is the real master which rules and dominates all Spain. The king replied that the Inquisition was not to be discussed in the Córtes, when they all arose and threatened to depart without finishing any other business, if the king did not wish them to discuss a matter of so much importance to them. The king quieted them by promising that, when he returned to Castile, he would listen to their complaints and would not fail to grant the appropriate relief. But undoubtedly he did this so that the Córtes should end without a revolt, his intention being to increase rather than to diminish the importance of the Inquisition, clearly recognizing it as the means of maintaining his reputation and of keeping the people in obedience and terror.”[1085]

After protracted effort the Valencians had thus obtained promise of substantial relief, but as usual it was a promise only made to be broken. How little intention there was of enforcing the reform was promptly revealed for, when the authorities naturally ordered the new Concordia to be printed so that the courts and rural magistrates could be guided by it in their dealings with the officials and familiars, the inquisitors at once ordered the printers to suspend work and appealed to the king, who commanded that all copies should be surrendered.[1089] Although the settlement was permanent and remained in force until the end, it apparently never was published for general information. At the moment it was regarded as greatly limiting the secular jurisdiction of the tribunal, and the worthy Valencian inquisitor, Juan de Rojas, says that he is ashamed to allude to its depressed and weakened condition, which has worked great injury to the faith.[1090] His grief was superfluous; the tribunal was not accustomed to be bound by law and its methods of enforcing its assumed prerogatives were difficult to resist. In 1585 the Córtes had a fresh accumulation of grievances which, by order of the king, the Suprema sent to the inquisitors with orders to report the method of meeting them most advantageous to the Holy Office.[1091]

Aragon was a source of greater trouble than Valencia. The popular spirit was more independent, it had resisted the introduction of the Inquisition until the murder of San Pedro Arbués had rendered further opposition impossible, it had been cheated of the fruits of the tenacity of Juan Prat and it possessed an institution peculiar to itself, designed to limit the encroachments of the sovereign power and well adapted to restrain the arrogance of anything less formidable than the mingled spiritual and temporal jurisdiction of the Holy Office.

So far as we are concerned, the power of the court was exercised through two processes, the manifestacion and the firma. The former was a kind of habeas corpus, under which a person had to be produced before it, either to be liberated on bail or to be confined in the carcel de manifestados—a special prison over which even the king had no jurisdiction. The summons of a manifestacion had to be obeyed, even if the subject were on the gallows with the halter around his neck, or if it was addressed to the highest secular or spiritual court of the land. It was a privilege to which every citizen was entitled; when, in 1532, Charles V sent orders that Don Pedro de Luna should be deprived of it, he was not obeyed, and a special envoy was sent to him in Germany, asking the prompt withdrawal of the command as, until the return of the messenger, the land would be in great suspense. The firma was of various kinds, but in general it was of the nature of an injunction, stopping all proceedings and summoning the parties before the court of the Justicia, where their cases would be determined, and it was especially useful in preventing arbitrary arrests and seizure of property. Failure to obey a firma was promptly followed by seizure of temporalities and, under a fuero of King Martin, it could be served on the king himself. One was served on Charles V, at Valladolid, and again one on the papal nuncio and, when the latter disregarded it, his temporalities were sequestrated. Such a jurisdiction could not fail to come into collision with the Inquisition, against which its powers were frequently invoked, and the favorite device of the tribunal, of evading service by closing its doors, was unavailing, for attaching the firma to the gates was held to be legal service. In 1561, the Justicia granted a manifestacion to Don Juan Francés del Ariño, in a case not of faith; the tribunal prepared to answer by fulminating excommunications, but the court issued a monitorio against it, when a settlement was reached which both parties considered satisfactory. In the same year, when the inquisitors arrested Bartolomé Garate, secretary of the court, it served a monitorio upon them and, in 1563, it did the same for the censures issued against Augustin de Morlanes, of the criminal council of the Audiencia. In 1626, when Pedro Banet, secretary of the tribunal, was accused of the murder of Juan Domingo Serveto, the action of the inquisitors led to the issue against them of a firma and monitorio, under which their temporalities were seized and this was followed by another firma, prohibiting the use of excommunication.[1100]

Thus it went on until, in 1626, the Córtes were again assembled. It was known that demands for relief would be made and the Suprema asked Philip to submit to it whatever articles were proposed, in reply to which he assured it that there should be no change to its prejudice, but that he would procure its increase of privilege.[1108] The chief business of the Córtes was the questions connected with the Inquisition. Philip was not present and his representative, the Count of Monterrey, did not feel empowered to grant the demands made. The only absolute action taken was to adopt as a fuero or law the Concordia of 1568, which hitherto had only the authority of the orders of the king and inquisitor-general. As regards reform, it was left to a commission, consisting on one side of royal appointees and on the other of four delegates named by each of the four brazos or estates. The commission framed a series of fourteen articles, by no means radical in their character, but Philip procrastinated in confirming or rejecting them; the Suprema, in 1627, appealed to Rome to withhold papal sanction and they were quietly allowed to drop, on the pretext that the Concordia of 1568, now erected into law, would suffice to prevent future grounds of complaint. How futile this was is apparent from a conflict which occurred during the sitting of the commission. The assessor of the governor, as was his duty, entered the house of the secretary of the tribunal, flagrante delicto, for a most treacherous murder attributed to him. Although his obligation to do this was notorious, arrest of subordinates followed on both sides and the indignant people were with difficulty restrained from a tumult. The royal officials at once took steps to form a competencia, in conformity with the Concordia which had just been erected into a law; this required all proceedings to be suspended but the inquisitors excommunicated the assessor, refusing to join in the competencia because, as they asserted, the case was an evident one, thus assuming that they could set aside all law by merely declaring that a case was evident.[1109]

In these conditions there was nothing affecting the faith or restricting the persecution of heresy; nothing save a prudent regard for the peace and protection of society from the intolerable burden of gangs of virtual bandits clothed in inviolability. Yet Philip resisted to the last extremity these reasonable concessions, which merely placed Aragon on the same footing as Castile. We are told that he declared that he cherished the Inquisition as the apple of his eye and that he exhausted every means to preserve its privileges. He offered to concede everything else that was asked; he endeavored to win the Aragonese by bribing them with royal grants and graces, of which three hundred and sixty were published in a single day, with the names of the recipients, but nothing could overcome the hatred felt for the Holy Office and the brazos were immovable. In his perplexity he appealed to his usual counsellor, the mystic Sor María de Agreda, affirming his determination to uphold the Inquisition, and he must have been surprised when that clear-sighted woman advised him to compromise, for a quarrel with Aragon might turn it to the side of Catalonia and lead to the permanent disruption of the monarchy. Even this failed to move him. He endeavored to depart for Madrid, but deputation after deputation was sent to the convent of Santa Engracia where he was lodged, insisting on his confirmation of the articles and detaining him for two or three days while his coach stood ready at the gate, until at last he yielded, seeing that there was no alternative. The writer who records this adds that the people rejoiced and since then in Aragon, where the Inquisition had stood higher than elsewhere, for an inquisitor was regarded with more reverence than an archbishop or a viceroy, it has so fallen in estimation that some say that all is over with it. The officials and familiars feel this every day in the withdrawal of their privileges and exemptions, and it is palpable that in all that does not concern the faith, the ancient powers of the tribunal of Aragon are prostrated.[1116]

The legislation of 1646 remained a finality. As late as 1741 the Suprema remonstrated against the Audiencia of Saragossa for impeding the jurisdiction of the tribunal by employing the firma, which, with customary disingenuousness, it characterized as an innovation.[1121]

The articles of 1512 thus were a compact in which the Catalans, the king, the Inquisition and the pope all joined in the most solemn manner, pledging all future inquisitors to swear to them. For a while this latter clause was observed. Fernando Loazes, who was inquisitor of Barcelona for twenty years from about 1533, took the oath, but he was promptly involved in a quarrel with the magistrates in which Juan de Cardona, Bishop-elect of Barcelona, was induced, as papal commissioner, to prosecute him for perjury, and after that no inquisitor took the oath.[1126] In this they were wise for they emancipated themselves completely from the Concordia. The Córtes of 1547 complained of the inordinate multiplication of familiars, over the thirty allowed by it, and of the neglect to furnish lists or other means for their identification, together with other infractions, but Prince Philip replied that he would consult the Suprema and would reach appropriate conclusions, which of course ended the matter.[1127] How completely the provisions of the Concordia were ignored is manifest in 1551, when Catalina Murciana asked relief in the veguer’s court from suits brought against her in the Inquisition by the fiscal, the Abbot of Besalú, when she was entitled to her own court. On refusal of redress by the inquisitor, Juan Arias, a monitorio was obtained from the Banch Reyal, whereupon Arias threw the officials of the veguer’s court into prison and kept them there. The matter was carried up to the Royal Councils with the result that the judges of the Audiencia were ordered to erase all record of the affair from their dockets and appear in person before the inquisitor to report to him that it was duly expunged.[1128]

That the Córtes of Monzon, in 1563-4, should protest energetically against these abuses was natural. Indeed, a Catalan named Gaspar Mercader carried the protest so far as to say, among other odious things, that the Inquisition had been introduced only for a limited time which had expired and that it should be abolished, for which the tribunal arrested, tried and punished him.[1130] In spite of this interference with the freedom of debate, the general disaffection, as we have seen, led to the visitation of de Soto Salazar. In Barcelona he found that not the slightest attention had been paid to the orders of the Suprema based on the report of Cervantes. Advocates, familiars and commissioners continued to be appointed in profusion, without investigation as to fitness. When an inquisitor visited his district he carried with him blank commissions which he distributed at will. All these, with their families, were protected and defended by the tribunal in civil and criminal cases, nor was this all, for it would seem that any one who claimed the fuero, whether he was entitled to it or not, was admitted and, in the absence of lists filed with the magistrates, the latter had no means of resisting the arrogant and peremptory demand of the tribunal to surrender cases. Instances were given which showed that the tribunal was a court where justice—or rather injustice—was bought and sold and there had been no reform in the excessive fees which had scandalized Cervantes.[1131]

This attitude of mutual defiance was not conducive to peace. In 1570, there arose a quarrel so bitter that the Diputados invoked the protection and interposition of Pius V, and he urged Philip II to come to some understanding with them, in view of possible serious consequences. Philip took the position that they were so excited and so obstinate that any concessions would lead only to further demands, but he asked the pope to dismiss the envoys, referring them to him with recommendation for favorable consideration, so that anything that he might yield would be to the Holy See and not to recalcitrant subjects. The situation was critical; the rebellion of Granada was exhausting his resources, there was acute apprehension of attack by a Turkish fleet and the Catalans were soon afterwards called upon to contribute to the defence of the coasts, but if any concessions were enforced on the Inquisition they have left no traces. In fact, the Venetian envoy, Leonardo Donato, in his relation of 1573, states that, after the Catalans had spent a hundred thousand ducats in these efforts, the Inquisition imprisoned those who had been most active in the matter and that they subsequently refused to leave the prison without a formal declaration that they had not been arrested for heresy.[1135] Dissension naturally continued. In 1572 we hear of a demand from the Diputados that the inquisitors should show them their commissions and take an oath to obey the constitution of Catalonia, because they held rents on the Diputacion; the inquisitors acceded to the first of these and were rebuked by the Suprema because it was a demand that had been persistently refused before and they must not do it again. Then, in 1574, there came a complaint from all the cities that familiars refused obedience to the local laws respecting prices, pasturage and other matters as required under the Concordia, to which the Suprema superciliously replied by instructing the inquisitors that, as the people had rejected the Concordia, they need not observe it.[1136] Then, in 1585, as we have seen (p. 416) the Córtes obtained an advantage in excluding familiars and officials from public offices.

In this spirit of undisguised hostility both sides were aligned for a decisive struggle in the Córtes of 1599, under the new royalty of the youthful Philip III. As the Catalan efforts failed and the Inquisition was left in possession of its usurped powers, the details of the contest have no interest except as an exhibition of shameless duplicity, by which the king tricked his vassals. They hoped to win favor by a subsidio of a million libras to the king and a hundred thousand to his bride, besides shrewdly granting ten thousand to the Marquis of Denia (soon to become Duke of Lerma) and six thousand to the Vice-chancellor of Aragon,[1137] but they reaped nothing but deceit. Long discussions resulted in a series of articles, divided into two categories, to one of which Philip gave unqualified assent and to the other his assent as far as concerned himself, with a promise to procure that of the inquisitor-general and pope. It was proposed to withhold the pension of six hundred libras granted in 1520, if the papal confirmation were not procured within a year, but Philip declared that no such guarantee was necessary, for the letters which he had ordered to be written to the pope were so strong that no influence could counteract them. His despatches to his ambassador were sent through the Diputados in order to satisfy them, but they assuredly were not allowed to see others which instructed the ambassador to be circumspect in urging the matter. He also sent word to the inquisitor-general that the delivery of these despatches had been delayed in order to give him time to express his views. The Suprema, in appealing to Clement VIII to withhold confirmation, did not hesitate to say that Philip had endeavored to escape under cover of the inquisitor-general and pope and had finally signed only in so far as concerned himself. Indeed, in a subsequent official paper, it was unblushingly asserted that he had done so only to get rid of the Catalans. Under these influences it is needless to say that the confirmation never came and the subsidio was the only practical result of the labors of the Córtes.[1138]

The Inquisition, as usual, had triumphed, but peace was impossible between the incompatible claims of rival jurisdictions. In 1637 the Suprema complained of the continuous series of troubles and of the disregard of the Concordia of Zapata. This time the offender was the viceroy, the powerful Duke of Cardona, who had imprisoned a familiar for carrying a pistol and refusing to surrender it, and had arrested two servants of the receiver, fining one and discharging the other. When the tribunal sent to him a priest bearing a monitorio with excommunication, he shut the priest up, incomunicado, in a room of the palace. Then he invited to dinner the fiscal of the tribunal and shut him up likewise. He ordered the inquisitor to withdraw the excommunication and, on his refusal, he pronounced sentence of banishment, posted four hundred men around the Inquisition and made ready a vessel to carry him to Majorca. The inquisitor assembled five bishops who declared that Cardona had incurred the excommunication of the bull Si de protegendis and the inquisitor so declared him, though for the avoidance of scandal he forbore to publish it. Under the intervention of the bishops the sentences of banishment and excommunication were mutually withdrawn, and the viceroy released the priest and fiscal, boasting that he had carried his point. Thereupon the Suprema asked the king to execute on Cardona the penalties of the Concordia of Zapata and greater ones in view of his unprecedented acts and also that the ipso facto censures of the canon Si quis suadente and the bull Si de protegendis be published in order that he might seek the salvation of his soul. To this the weary king could only reply by deprecating these unseemly quarrels and ordering that viceroys should not try the cases of familiars—Cardona apparently having undertaken to do this only because there was no other authority that ventured to do so, although the offence was one which forfeited the fuero.[1145] Soon after this, in 1639, a still more serious trouble broke out in Tortosa, in which the magistrates were involved and the people rose against the Inquisition, but while this was in progress the Catalan rebellion broke out and prudence counselled abstention from severe measures of repression.[1146]

When the Inquisition took such pains to make itself detested, one is scarce surprised to learn, from a complaint of the Suprema in 1677, that in Barcelona it had so fallen in public esteem that it was able to procure but one familiar and that the alguazil mayor had asked to be relieved from carrying his wand of office, for no noble was willing to be seen walking with him when he bore it.[1163] This hostility it continued carefully to cultivate. In December, 1695, the Diputados and judges addressed to Carlos II a complaint of the multiplied excesses of the tribunal, which trampled on the laws and liberties of the land, causing such scandals that they could no longer be endured in silence. This had been especially the case since Bartolomé Antonio Sans y Muñoz had been inquisitor, whose methods can be appreciated by a single example. Captain-general Marquis of Gastañara, had imprisoned a Frenchman named Jaime Balle, on a matter of state, Spain being at the time at war with France, with strict orders to keep him incomunicado. Muñoz suddenly demanded an opportunity of taking testimony of him. Gastañara was absent and no one had authority to violate his instructions, but the regent of the royal chancery and the gaoler offered, if Muñoz would declare it to be a matter of faith, to endeavor to find some means of compliance. This assurance he refused to give, even verbally, and he threatened the regent with excommunication. The Audiencia invited him to a conference, which he refused and it then cited him before the Banch Reyal, with the customary warning of banishment and seizure of temporalities. Muñoz responded, December 29th, with a mandate to the regent ordering him, under pain of excommunication, to allow the deposition of the prisoner to be taken and he followed this, within an hour, with an excommunication published in all the pulpits and affixed to all the church-doors. The next day this was re-aggravated and the regent was publicly cursed with the awful anathema formulated for hardened and impenitent sinners. The Audiencia rejoined with the decree of banishment and seizure of temporalities, under the customary term of fifteen days. The tribunal answered this with a threat of interdict on the city; it convoked all the superiors of the religious Orders and arranged with the clergy for a great procession when it should take its departure. It kept its doors closed and even refused to receive the messengers of Gastañara, who had hastened back to Barcelona, but he delayed further action until he should communicate with Madrid and receive the royal orders. When they came, on January 11, 1696, he was at Montealegre, a couple of leagues from the city; they were sent to him by a special courier and he returned the next morning and made secret arrangements for their execution. At 2 P.M. he sent word to Muñoz that he wished to see him on the king’s service. At 4.30 P.M. Muñoz came, bringing the fiscal with him. A scrivener was introduced who read to him the king’s order, which he said he was ready to obey. Gastañara told him that he must start at once; a coach was at the door to which he was escorted with all honor; lackeys with flambeaux were ready and a guard of twenty-five musketeers. Gastañara gave him money and he was provided with all comforts, even to a courteous gentleman as a companion to enforce all proper respect for him. As he was leaving the palace, his violent temper burst forth in regrets that he had not been allowed time to cast the interdict on the city. He was driven to the embarcadero, placed on board a vessel that had been made ready and was conveyed to the nearest Valencian port. It is symptomatic of Spanish conditions that in war-time the captain-general was obliged to abandon all other duties and devote a day to kidnapping a troublesome priest, and this is emphasized by the fact that the inquisitor-general rewarded the conduct of Muñoz by appointing him to one of the most desirable tribunals of Spain.[1164] Possibly this affair may have influenced Carlos II in reissuing, in 1696, his father’s injunction of 1661 to observe the Concordias exactly and to be more sparing of excommunications.[1165]

Philip V was scarce seated on the throne when he found himself confronted with the eternal question of Catalan hostility towards the tribunal. A consulta of the Suprema, October 16, 1701, warns him that the inquisitors of Barcelona report that, in the Córtes about to assemble, efforts will be made to limit its usefulness and he is exhorted to follow the example of his predecessors.[1166] Whatever was done was of little consequence for, in the war which broke out soon afterwards, Catalonia enthusiastically acknowledged the Archduke Charles as Carlos III and became the stronghold of the Austrian party. The situation of the rebellion of 1640-52 was duplicated. The tribunal was withdrawn, but seems to have been replaced by a local organization, for an article of the Córtes of 1706, duly approved by the Austrian Carlos, regulating the insaculacion for public office, recognizes its certificates respecting its officials.[1167] Of course it could exercise no jurisdiction over the heretic English allies; it has left no traces of its activity and was replaced by a revival of the episcopal cognizance of heresy. As to places beyond the control of the Austrian party, a provision of the Suprema, March 16, 1706, extended the jurisdiction of the Saragossa tribunal over all that should be recovered from the enemy until such time as the Inquisition of Barcelona should be re-established.[1168] The desperate resistance of the Catalans postponed this until 1715, and when the tribunal was reinstated it found in the secret prison two captives, Juan Castillo a bigamist and Mariana Costa accused of sorcery, both of them confined by order of the vicar-general of the diocese.[1169] As all the liberties and privileges of Catalonia were abolished by the conquerors, its subsequent relations with the Inquisition offer no special characteristics.

Majorca had no Concordia and its tribunal was free to claim what extent of jurisdiction it saw fit, limited only by the resistance of the civil authorities, which, as we have seen, was energetically expressed at an early period. As defined by Portocarrero, in 1623, in practice it asserted complete jurisdiction, active and passive, in civil and criminal cases, over its salaried and commissioned officials and their families; over familiars, in criminal matters, active and passive; in civil, passive only, with exclusion of their families.[1170] The occasion of his book was a violent struggle between the viceroy and the tribunal, which presents the ordinary features of these contests for supremacy between rival departments of the government. In a search for arms in the house of Juan Zuñez, receiver of confiscations, some were found. The viceroy at once arrested him, sentenced him to leave the island within twenty-four hours and shipped him away. The inquisitor promptly excommunicated the viceroy; the royal fiscal appealed; the viceroy and royal judges summoned the inquisitor to a conference preparatory to a competencia or to appear in the Banch Reyal and defend his proceedings. On his refusal the Banch Reyal pronounced sentence of banishment and seizure of temporalities, which was published with sound of drum and trumpet. They also issued an edict declaring the censures null and void and ordering the clergy to disregard them; they refused to consider themselves excommunicated, they attended mass and apparently had the support of the people and clergy, for no attention was paid to the interdict cast on the city by the inquisitor.[1171] What was the final result does not appear, nor does it much matter; the significance in these affairs is the spectacle presented to the people of lawless collisions between the representatives and exponents of the law.

There was another direction in which the Holy Office sought to interfere with the administration of justice. So complete is the independence of secular authority claimed by the Church for those in holy orders, that a licence from a bishop is held to be necessary before a cleric can obey a summons to appear as a witness in a lay court, even in civil cases.[1182] The Inquisition included this among the exemptions of all connected with it, whether lay or clerical, and even extended it to familiars. The privilege seems generally to have been conceded, as respects the salaried officials but, as applied to familiars, it was too grotesque not to excite opposition. The Concordia of 1568, as we have seen, provided that familiars should testify before secular judges without requiring licence from inquisitors and that the latter should not prohibit them from so doing, which infers that it was an abuse requiring correction and also that officials were conceded to enjoy the exemption. The power to summon a witness necessarily includes that of coercing him to testify, and this was exercised by imprisoning recalcitrants, which came to be regarded as an infraction of privilege. In 1649, in the case of Claudio Bolano, a familiar imprisoned for refusing to give evidence, the tribunal of Valencia formed a competencia, pending which he was released under bail to both jurisdictions. The question was of difficult solution and the competencia dragged on for ten years without settlement. Then, in 1659, the same thing occurred and another competencia was formed, in which the most that the Inquisition would concede was that, when the evidence was indispensable, a notary should be sent to the familiar’s house to take it in secret, basing this upon the danger to which witnesses were exposed in the violent factions of the time.[1183] The question, however, was settled, in 1699, in the case of Felipe Bru. At Játiva, on August 14, 1698, Don Luis Salzedo, Lord of Pamis, was shot and killed when standing at a window of his house. Don Vicente Monserrat, judge of the Audiencia of Valencia, found Bru, who was a familiar, a contumacious witness. He was first given the town as a prison, then his house, and finally was confined in chains. He appealed to the tribunal, which ordered his release within three days, under pain of excommunication and five hundred ducats. A competencia was formed which, in November, 1699, was decided in favor of the royal jurisdiction. It was probably in consequence of this discussion that, on July 15th, a royal decree was issued compelling familiars to give evidence in secular courts. Even this did not abate the pretensions of the Inquisition for when, in 1702, Joseph Pérez of Montesa, a familiar, was ordered, under penalty of a thousand ducats, not to leave that town because a deposition was wanted from him, he appealed to the tribunal of Valencia which, with the usual threats, commanded the revocation of the order. On this being refused, Pérez went to Valencia and had himself incarcerated in the secret prison, where he was inaccessible. The Audiencia pursued the matter, there was considerable correspondence and preparations for a competencia, but finally the affair was settled by sending Pérez to the house of the regent of the Audiencia, where he made his deposition. To the end, however, the tribunal maintained the position that, if any constraint was used, it would resist and protect the familiar unless a competencia decided to the contrary.[1184]

Thus it was admitted on all hands that the fault lay with the tribunals, yet the wrong committed by that of Córdova remained unredressed and unpunished. Philip permitted himself, in spite of his better judgement, to be persuaded to cut off all recourse to the court of last resort in Rome, and some nominal relief must be offered to the oppressed churches and prelates. The memorial from Córdova had concluded with a prayer for some law to prevent these discords and to maintain the episcopal jurisdiction over the clergy, as the king had promised in a letter transmitted through the Council of Castile. The promise was kept after a fashion, though not until after a delay which shows how prolonged was the resistance encountered. In a carta acordada of November 28, 1612, the tribunals were informed that in order that the ministers of the Inquisition may not sin through confidence of impunity, and to prevent the conflicts which disturb the peace, the Suprema has resolved that in the cases of unsalaried clerical officials, the episcopal ordinaries shall have exclusive jurisdiction over offences relating to clerical duties and offices, to simony and spiritual matters, while inquisitors shall have cumulative jurisdiction with the ordinaries, depending on priority of action, in public and scandalous offences, such as incontinence, usury, gambling and the like.[1192] This remained in force nominally at least, until the last, but the allusion to the perpetual troubles arising from this source, in the project presented to the Suprema in 1623, shows how futile it was in curbing the aggressions of the tribunals.

The Inquisition was not accustomed to defeat and it chafed under this, as was shown when, in 1690, a quarrel arose because a priest of Minorca, named Juan Bruells, used insulting words to the commissioner, Rafael Pons. For this he was prosecuted and the case threw all the islands into confusion. The viceroy, the Audiencia and the clergy all united against the Inquisition. The Ordinary of Minorca, as executor of the brief of 1642, forcibly released Bruells, forbade the inquisitor to proceed and, on his disobeying, excommunicated him. About this time the Mallorquin tribunal had claims to consideration arising from its vigorous proceedings against Judaizers and the large resultant confiscations. The Suprema espoused its cause with the usual energy and, in repeated consultas to Carlos III, denounced the papal briefs as surreptitious and invalid, full of defects and nullities. The feeble king issued repeated commands for the prosecution of Bruells and the surrender of the briefs, but no one paid attention to them. The Mallorquin clergy procured from the Congregation of the Inquisition a decree validating the censures pronounced by the Ordinary and annulling those of the inquisitor; the pope confirmed this but subsequently suspended it at the earnest solicitation of the Spanish ambassador, at the same time ordering his nuncio to make the king understand that the Congregation had supreme power to decide all questions of jurisdiction. The affair did not result to the satisfaction of the Inquisition for the last we hear of it is a bitter complaint by the Suprema, March 11, 1693, of the contumacious Mallorquins and the miserable condition to which they had reduced the Inquisition. In Minorca, the clergy and their dependents were so hostile that Pons could not find a church in which to celebrate mass, while the officials were shunned as excommunicated heretics.[1198]

Another jurisdiction with which there were occasional quarrels was that of the army, for soldiers were exempt from the secular courts. In such competencias settlements were made by a junta of two members each of the Suprema and the Council of War, with final reference to the king in case of disagreement. I have happened to meet with but few cases of this and they seem never to have attained the importance of those with the secular and ecclesiastical courts. One occurred in 1629, arising from disputes with the garrison that had occupied the Aljafería since the troubles of 1591. A somewhat curious case was that of Don Fernando Antonio Herrera Calderon, of Santander, who was alguazil and familiar and who resigned, in 1641, from his military company, although warned that, by so doing during hostilities, he would be tried by the Council of War. It naturally claimed him and the Suprema endeavored to protect him.[1199] It would seem that, towards the end of the eighteenth century, the exemption of the military was causing special troubles, for a royal cédula of February 9, 1793, declares that, to put an end to them, in future the military judges shall have exclusive cognizance of all cases, civil and criminal, in which soldiers are defendants, except inheritances, and that no tribunal or judge of any kind shall form a competencia concerning them under any pretext.[1200]

The project may seem to us too wild to merit a thought, but it responded so perfectly to the temper of the time that it was enthusiastically adopted by the provinces of Castile, Leon, Biscay, Navarre, Aragon, Valencia, Catalonia, Asturias and Galicia. Procurators from these provinces submitted it to Philip for his approval and were supported by representatives of forty-eight noble houses and of the archiepiscopal sees of Toledo, Santiago, Seville, Saragossa, Valencia, Tarragona and Granada. It was debated earnestly and at much length, but the argument of Pedro Vinegas de Córdova decided its fate. He pointed out the troubles which were already arising on the subject of limpieza, causing jealousies, hatreds and contentions, to be increased enormously if the population was thus to be divided into two classes; also the fact that the royal courts would have left to their jurisdiction only the New Christians, while the Old Christians would have their special judges and, if the comparatively few existing familiars caused such all-pervading troubles, what the effect would be of increasing without limit the number of the exempt. On the one hand the ambitious and able men among the New Christians, being thus cast out, would foment disaffection and disturbance; on the other, if the old Military Orders had been a source of danger to the monarchy, what would be the effect of creating a new one, united and vastly more numerous and subject as vassals to an inquisitor-general, whose power was already so great, and who would control the property and have jurisdiction over all members, while in case of rebellion the frontiers and strongholds would be in his hands? This reasoning was unanswerable; Philip ordered all papers connected with the project to be surrendered; he imposed perpetual silence on its advocates and wrote to the ecclesiastical and secular bodies to abandon it, for justice and protection would never be lacking.[1205]

The natural result of this was that unprofitable business was neglected for profitable, and the suppression of heresy was postponed to the trial of civil and criminal cases which yielded fees. We have seen how Cervantes reported that in Barcelona this seemed to be the real duty of the tribunal and that there was nothing else to be attended to; his animadversions produced no amendment and, in 1567, de Soto Salazar repeated the complaint.[1206] This continued unchecked. The project of reform presented to the Suprema, in 1623, expresses the wish that other tribunals would follow the example of Saragossa, where one of the inquisitors was delegated every four months to conduct this business, so that prisoners on trial for heresy could have their cases despatched and not be kept languishing interminably in prison, which, as we shall see, was one of the sorest abuses inflicted on them.[1207] This pious wish was fruitless and the records of the Inquisition for the following century show how large a portion of its activity was devoted to these cases and to the competencias incessantly springing from them.

The Council of Castile, the highest tribunal in the land, in a consulta of 1631, represented forcibly the existing evils, especially the prodigal use of censures under which corregidores and other magistrates lay under excommunication for months together, while individuals were impoverished by the long delays in settling competencias. It urged the remedy of permitting appeals to the Council por via de fuerza, in cases not of faith and this it repeated in 1634, 1669 and 1682.[1210] More outspoken was a memorial presented, in 1648, to Philip by a member of the Council, on the abuses of the criminal jurisdiction, those in civil cases being treated in a separate paper. The writer alludes to having repeatedly made the same representations orally and in writing; he dwells upon the interminable delays and other obstacles which impede justice and discourage sufferers from seeking it. The resultant immunity creates audacious criminals; the number of familiars and of soldiers who never serve in the field has increased so greatly that nothing is seen but crimes and the offenders are unpunished. Everywhere men of the most dissolute type and the largest fortunes seek appointment so as to enjoy immunity; the royal revenues are defrauded and prohibited goods are imported, while no corregidor or alcalde dares to curb them, for they are at once excommunicated by the inquisitors, even to casting interdicts over whole communities. Those who suffer remain without redress, so that those who are able are led to take it into their own hands, for they can get it nowhere else. Justice is trampled under foot; there is no alguazil who dares to make an arrest, or scrivener to draw up papers, so many have been slain or wounded for so doing and the death of an alguazil is held at naught, as though the officers of justice were common enemies. If the king would re-establish the jurisdiction of the royal courts there would be an end to the excommunications with which the inquisitors defend their delinquents, as though they were vessels of the Temple; the time of the Councils and of the king would not be consumed by these perpetual competencias and the plagues would cease wherewith God afflicts these kingdoms for the injustice, the violence and the dissolute life of the people.[1211]

This narrow escape did not teach moderation. In 1702 the Valencia tribunal refused even to join in a competencia over a case in which it entertained a suit brought to collect the interest on a censo, by the widow of an alguazil mayor as guardian of her children. It was in vain that the regent of the Audiencia pointed out that, under the Concordia of 1568, the widow of an official only enjoyed the fuero as defendant and not as plaintiff and that the children had no claim whatever, and cited precedents that had been so decided; the tribunal was stubborn and would not even admit that the question could be carried up to the Suprema and Council of Aragon for decision.[1216] It was not long after this, however, that the Suprema was obliged to admit that reforms in the methods of the Holy Office were essential. In its carta acordada of June 27, 1705, is embodied a rebuke of the recklessness with which the tribunals undertook the defence of their officials, resulting in the universal complaints of the abuse of its jurisdiction, so that it was popularly said that everything was made a caso de Inquisicion, to the disrepute of its officials and their families. Therefore, unless the jurisdiction was indisputable, the Suprema must be consulted before assuming the defence, amicable adjustments must always be sought and friendly relations be maintained with the royal officials, thus avoiding competencias which ordinarily arose from passionate conflicts over trifles.[1217]

It was difficult for the Inquisition to reconcile itself to the tendencies of the age and several cases, about this time, in which the tribunal of Valencia refused even to admit competencias, asserting that its combined ecclesiastical and royal jurisdictions rendered it the sole judge of all that concerned its officials, show that the old spirit still lingered and found expression whenever it dared.[1223] Carlos III, however, was even more assertive of the royal prerogative than his brother Fernando. We have seen his orders of 1763 concerning municipal and police regulations which included the prohibitions of carrying concealed weapons and exporting money, in all of which familiars were wholly removed from the jurisdiction of the Inquisition, and in 1775 a competencia in Córdova caused him emphatically to order the inviolable observance of this decree.[1224] All this led to the change in the commissions of familiars as regards carrying arms, which was brought about, in 1777, by the authorities of Alcalá la Real and Seville refusing to register commissions issued by the tribunals of Toledo and Seville, because they were not in accordance with the new regulations. In place, as of old, of blustering and coercing the magistrates, the Suprema collected from all the tribunals the formulas employed by them and framed a new one, phrased in a very different spirit and in accordance with the royal edicts.[1225]

In addition to the gratification of thus humiliating the magistrates, there was also in this truculence the object of rendering the process so offensive as to make them shrink from resisting the encroachments of the Inquisition. When this failed the tribunal had abundant sources of annoyance in raising interminable questions of precedence and formalities, which were sometimes fought so bitterly and long as virtually to supersede the original case. The points that could be raised were endless. In 1602, the Count of Benavente, then Viceroy of Valencia, issued letters ordering a conference over the arrest of Gerónimo Falcon; the tribunal surrendered him, admitting that the case did not pertain to it, but demanded that the viceroy and chancellery should cancel the letters on their records and, on refusal, it excommunicated the regent. The matter was carried up to the Suprema and Council of Aragon, when the king decided that the letters must be expunged and it was done in presence of a secretary of the Inquisition. The same humiliation had been inflicted on the count’s father, when he was viceroy, and also on the Duke of Segorbe.[1231]

While this doubtless diminished the exasperation of these conflicts, it did not check their frequency. They continued to be a constant source of trouble and it was from a desire to diminish this, as well as to extend its authority, that the Suprema, in 1806, forbade the tribunals from instituting them without submitting the case to it and receiving its approval.[1233] When, under the Restoration, the Inquisition was revived, in 1814, the officials naturally claimed the fuero, active and passive, civil and criminal, and Fernando VII, in the decision of a case carried up to him from Seville, announced, February 15, 1815, in no uncertain tones, that they should be protected in its enjoyment, but the cases appear to be rare and the aggressive spirit had disappeared.[1234] When, in Seville, the creditors of Francisco de Paula Esquivol complained of him to the tribunal, in place of defending him, it promptly dismissed him, June 27, 1815, an action which was confirmed by the Suprema.[1235] Even more significant was a case, in 1816, when in Seville Lorenzo Ayllon abused a priest while celebrating mass and endeavored to seize the sacrament, and the secular authorities arrested and proceeded to try him. In such a case there could be no question as to the jurisdiction of the Inquisition, but there was no disturbance, and when the tribunal claimed his transfer to the secret prison the Suprema interposed and ordered that he should be allowed to remain in the public gaol, a detainer being lodged to prevent his discharge during his trial—a concession to the royal jurisdiction which would have petrified Pacheco or Arce y Reynoso.[1236]

The Inquisition evidently aggravated as far as it could the public distress as a means of establishing its claims. In an effort to limit the abuse of refusing competencias, there was a junta formed, in 1679, from the Suprema and Council of State with the assistance of some theologians. This admitted that there could be no competencia in the cases of salaried officials, except when they held public office and were prosecuted for malfeasance, but it laid down the rule that, when the Suprema refused a competencia, the Council of State could appeal to the king who could appoint a junta to decide this secondary question. A limited time was allowed to the Suprema to state its reasons for refusal and during a competencia the accused was to be liberated on bail and all censures were to be raised.[1243] This removed some of the hardships, but the Suprema seems to have sought to evade it by sullenly refusing to form the juntas with the Royal Councils, for another decree of Carlos II ordered it to attend when summoned so that these affairs might be settled.[1244] It was in vain that, in 1730, the Council of Castile urged that competencias be admitted in all cases, for Philip V decided that the agreement of 1679 should stand.[1245] Probably not much was gained in the latest attempt to settle these perennial quarrels by Carlos IV in 1804, who ordered that when a conflict arose between a royal court and a tribunal, in a matter not of faith concerning an official, the court should refer the case to the governor of the Royal Council and the tribunal to the Suprema. These should then select an examiner who was to report to the Secretaría de Gracia y Justicia for the royal decision.[1246]

I have dwelt thus in detail on this subject, not only because it absorbed so large a portion of the activity of the Inquisition, but because of its importance in the relations between the Holy Office and the other institutions of Spain and in explaining the detestation which the Inquisition excited. If the people regarded it as a whole with awe and veneration, as the bulwark of the Catholic faith, their hatred was none the less for its members, and the perpetual struggle against the tremendous odds of its power, supported by the unflinching favor of the Hapsburgs, bears equal testimony to the tenacity of the Spanish character and to the magnitude of the evils with which the Inquisition afflicted the nation.

Whether just or not, grounds of complaint were never lacking. The power of the inquisitor had practically scarce any bounds but his own discretion, and the temptation to its abuse was irresistible to the kind of men who mostly filled the position. In the memorial of Llerena to Philip and Juana, in 1506, complaint is made that the officials seized all the houses that they wanted and in one case, when some young orphan girls did not vacate as quickly as ordered, they fastened up the street-door and the occupants were obliged to make an opening in order to leave it.[1252] The same spirit was shown to parties not quite so defenceless in 1642, when its exhibition in Córdova nearly provoked a disastrous tumult. There was a vacant house which Juan de Ribera, one of the inquisitors, talked of renting, but he went to Murcia without taking it. On his return he found that it had been leased to a son of Don Pedro de Cardenas, one of the veinticuatros, or town-councillors. He sent for Cardenas and asked whether he knew that he had engaged the house. Cardenas professed ignorance, adding that, if he had not moved his family into it, he would abandon it. Ribera ordered him to leave it and, on his refusal, the tribunal took up the quarrel by serving on him a notice to quit. As he did not obey, it cited him to appear and forced him to give security. His kinsmen and friends rallied around him and promised to sustain him by force; the matter became town-talk and the tribunal felt its honor engaged to sustain its commands by violence. It assembled the two companies of soldiers which it kept in the alcázar, while the caballeros armed themselves and guarded the house. The corregidor appealed to the tribunal not to drench the city in blood by exposing the poor civic militia to the swords of the gentlemen, and it consented to carry the matter to the king. The Council of Castile ordered that the tenant be maintained in possession, while the Suprema instructed the tribunal not to yield a jot, but to eject him by whatever means it could.[1253] What was the outcome does not appear, but the case illustrates the extent to which the Inquisition magnified its powers and the determination with which it employed them.

The natural result of this indulgence appears in the next visitation by the Licenciado Vaca, in 1549. The same abuses were flourishing, with the addition that the inquisitor, Diego de Sarmiento, had accepted the position of commissioner of the Cruzada indulgence and had appointed as its preachers and collectors the commissioners and familiars of the tribunal, to the great oppression and vexation of the people, whose dread of the Holy Office prevented complaints. Sarmiento was dismissed in 1550, but in 1552 he was reappointed to Barcelona; the fiscal and notary, who were specially inculpated, were suspended for six months and the gaoler, for ill-treatment of prisoners, was mulcted in one month’s wages.[1255] In 1561 another visitation was made by Inquisitor Gaspar Cervantes, whose report was exceedingly severe on the disorders of the tribunal and drew from the Suprema an energetic demand for their reform.[1256] This produced no amendment, the tribunal went on undisturbed until the complaints of the Córtes of 1564 led to another and more searching investigation by de Soto Salazar, in 1566. There were not only abuses of all kinds in the trials of heresy but numerous cases in which, as the Suprema told them, they had no jurisdiction. Apparently they were ready to put their unlimited powers at the disposal of all comers and imprisoned, fined and punished in the most arbitrary manner, gathering fees, commissions and doubtless bribes and selling injustice to all who wanted it, while the dread of their censures prevented opposition or remonstrance. In these cases which were not of faith, the accused were often seized in the churches, where they had sought asylum, as though they were wanted for heresy and the repeated instances in which the Suprema orders their names stricken from the records points to one of the most cruel results of this reckless abuse of jurisdiction, for it inflicted on the sufferer, his kindred and posterity, an infamy unendurable to the Spaniard of the period. The long and detailed missive which the Suprema addressed to the tribunal, as the result of Salazar’s report, gives a most vivid inside view of the abuses naturally springing from unrestrained autocracy, which, by the absolute and impenetrable secrecy of its operations, was relieved from all responsibility to its victims or to public opinion. The Suprema takes every official in turn, from inquisitors down to messengers, specifies their misdeeds and scores them mercilessly, showing that the whole organization was solely intent on making dishonest gains, on magnifying its privileges and on tyrannizing over the community, while the defence of the faith was the baldest pretext for the gratification of greed and evil passions. Yet all this was practically regarded as quite compatible with the duties of the Inquisition. The three inquisitors, Padilla, Zurita and Mexia, were suspended for three years and were then sent to repeat their misdeeds elsewhere and the two former were in addition fined ten ducats apiece.[1257] That an institution possessing these powers and exercising them in such fashion, should be regarded with terror and detestation was inevitable. We shall see hereafter how it shrouded all its acts in inviolable secrecy and how it rightly regarded this as one of the most important factors of its influence, and we can understand the mysterious dread which this inspired, while, at the same time, it released the inquisitor and his subordinates from the wholesome restraint of publicity.

Trivial quarrels such as this, developed until they distracted the attention of the king and his advisers, were constantly breaking out and bear testimony to the antagonistic spirit which was all-pervading. A long-standing cause of dissension in Logroño may be taken as a type of what was occurring in many other places. Local officials there, as elsewhere, had a perquisite in the public carnicería, or shambles, of dividing among themselves the vientres or menudos—the chitterlings—of the beasts slaughtered. It was not unnatural that the inquisitors and their subordinates should seek to share in this, but the claim was grudgingly admitted, as it diminished the portions of the town officers, and it led to bickerings. In 1572 Logroño complained to the Suprema that, while it was willing to give to each inquisitor the menudo of a sheep every week, the inferior officials, down to the messengers, claimed the same and, when there was not enough to go round, they caused the slaughter of additional sheep, in order to get their perquisite. As the population was poor, living mostly on cow-beef, and meat would not keep in hot weather, this caused much waste, wherefore the town begged that during the four hot months the inferior officials should be content with what the town officers received and during the other eight months it would endeavor to give them more. To this the Suprema graciously assented, but, in 1577, there was another outbreak, to quiet which the Suprema ordered the enforcement of the agreement. In 1584 trouble arose again and still more in 1593 and in 1601 it reached a point at which the tribunal summoned all the staff of the carnicería and scolded them roundly, giving rise to great excitement. Then in 1620 there was a worse outbreak than ever, owing to the refusal of the regidor to give to one of the inquisitors two pairs of sheep’s stones asked for on the plea that he had guests to breakfast. The angry inquisitor, thus deprived of his breakfast relish, induced the tribunal to summon the regidor before it and severely reprimand him, thus not only inflicting a grave stigma on him, but insulting the town, of which it complained loudly to the Suprema.[1259] It is easy to understand how trifles of the kind kept up a perpetual irritation, of which only the exacerbations appear in the records.

The privileges of the markets, in fact, were a source of endless troubles. It was recognized that both secular and ecclesiastical officials were entitled to the first choice and to be served first. Those of the Inquisition claimed the same privilege, not only in cities where there was a tribunal, but also where the scattered commissioners and notaries resided. That this was frequently resisted is shown by the formula of mandate to be used in such cases, addressed to the corregidor or alcaldes, setting forth that the rights in this respect of the aggrieved party had not been respected and that in future he should have the first and best (after the secular and ecclesiastical officials had been served) of all provisions that he required, at current prices, and this under penalty of twenty thousand maravedís, besides punishment to the full rigor of the law.[1260] It does not appear that there really was any legislation entitling the Inquisition to this privilege, but in the frequent troubles arising from its assertion, the inquisitors acted with their customary truculence. A writer, in 1609, who deprecates these quarrels, suggests as a cure that the king issue a decree that the representatives of the Inquisition shall have preference in purchasing and, at the same time, he tells of a case in Toledo where a regidor, who told the steward of the tribunal to take as many eggs as he wanted, but no more, was arrested and prosecuted, and of another in Córdova, where a hidalgo, who had bought a shad and refused to give it up to an acquaintance of a servant of an inquisitor, was punished with two hundred lashes and sent to the galleys.[1261] In 1608 the Suprema issued an injunction that purveyors of inquisitors should take nothing by force, the significance of which lies rather in the indication of existing abuses than in its promise of their removal.[1262] The claim of preference was pushed so far that in Seville, in 1705, there arose a serious trouble because the servant of an inquisitor detained boat-loads of fish coming to market, in order to make his selection, and it required a royal cédula of March 26, 1705, forbidding inquisitors to detain fish or other provisions on the way, or to designate by banderillas the pieces selected for themselves.[1263] When we consider the character of the slaves and servants thus clothed with authority to insult and browbeat whomsoever they chose, in the exercise of such functions, we can conceive the wrath and indignation stored up against their masters in the thousands of cases where fear prevented an explosion. It is true that the Suprema issued instructions that all purveyors should behave themselves modestly and give no ground of offence and that no one should be summoned or imprisoned for matters arising out of provisions, but as usual these orders were disregarded. Insolence would naturally elicit a hasty rejoinder which, as reported by the servant to his master, would imply disrespect towards the Holy Office, and severe punishment would be justified on that account.

As regards the great army of familiars, it was of course impossible to prevent them from trading. In fact traders eagerly sought the position in view of the advantages it offered of having the Inquisition at their backs, whether to escape payment of debts or to collect claims or to evade customs dues, or in many other ways, not recognized by the Concordias but allowed by the tribunals. The Suprema occasionally warned the inquisitors not to appoint men of low class, such as butchers, pastry-cooks, shoemakers and the like, or traders whose object was protection in their business,[1267] but no attention was paid to this; a large portion of the familiars was of this class, and the space occupied in the formularies by forms of levy and execution and sale and other similar matters shows how much business was brought to the tribunals by the collection of their claims.[1268] The opportunities thus afforded for fraudulent dealings, for evading obligations and for enforcing unjust demands were assuredly not neglected and may be reckoned among the sources of the animosity felt for everyone connected with the Holy Office.

Matters did not improve, for the Suprema always defended the tribunals from all complaints, and its tenderness towards delinquents assured them of virtual impunity. At length, as we have seen, in 1703, Philip V made an attempt at reform. It was probably owing to this pressure that, in 1705, the Suprema issued a carta acordada prohibiting a number of special abuses and pointing out that, in regard to the proprieties of life, neither inquisitors nor officials obeyed the Instructions, consorting with improper persons and intervening in matters wholly foreign to their duties, thus rendering odious the jurisdiction of the Holy Office.[1270] From various incidents alluded to above it is evident that this produced little amendment but, when the vacillation of Philip V was succeeded by the resolute purpose of Carlos III and his able ministers, the power of the Inquisition to oppress was greatly curbed.

A still more serious cause of complaint, to which the nobles were fully alive, was the release of their vassals from jurisdiction by appointment to office. In 1549, the Countess of Nieva appealed to Valdés, setting forth that Arnedo was a place belonging to the count; it was within three leagues of Calahorra and there had never been a familiar there until recently Inquisitor Valdeolivas had appointed some peasants in order to enfranchise them from the jurisdiction of their lord. It was not just that, while the count was absent from the kingdom on the king’s service, his peasants should be thus honored in order that they might create disturbance in the villages and interfere with the feudal jurisdiction.[1272] It may well be doubted whether her request for the revocation of the commissions was granted, but that her prevision of trouble was justified is seen in a case before the tribunal of Barcelona, in 1577, in which Don Pedro de Queral, lord of Santa Coloma, a powerful noble of Tarragona, endeavored to secure the punishment of two of his vassals, Juan Requesens, a miller, and his cousin Vicente. They were both familiars and seem to have been the leaders of a discontented opposition which rendered Don Pedro’s life miserable. The trees in his plantations were cut down, his arms, over the door of his bayle in Santa Coloma, were removed and defaced, libellous coplas against him were scattered around the streets, but the cousins, being familiars, were safe from his wrath. Don Pedro died but the trouble continued between his widow, the Countess of Queral and a new generation of Requesens, who succeeded to their fathers’ office of familiars. Finally, in 1608, she succeeded in convicting Juan Requesens of malicious mischief, but her only satisfaction was that he was reprimanded, warned and sentenced to pay the costs, amounting to 115½ reales.[1273] Such a case shows how feudalism was undermined and we can conceive how nobles must have writhed under the novel experience of rebellious vassals clothed with inviolability.

Xeres. In 1495, Rodrigo Lucero is described as Inquisitor of Xeres. In 1499 the sovereigns appointed Alonso de Guevara Inquisitor of Cadiz and Xeres. The tribunal continued there for some time. In 1515 Ferdinand alludes to Luis de Riba Martin “our late receiver in the Inquisition of Xeres,” who in dying had left to the treasury a legacy of 30,000 mrs. for the relief of his conscience.[1333] I have met no later reference to it and probably it was soon afterwards merged into the tribunal of Seville.

The old cruzado of Portugal, to which reference sometimes occurs, was virtually the same as the Spanish ducat.

[1] Romancero del Cid, pp. 12, 74, 77, 79, 87, 88, etc. (Frankofurto, 1828).—Crónica de Alfonso VII, 138-141 (Florez, España Sagrada, XXI, 403)—

[2] Fuero Viejo de Castiella, Lib. I, Tit. iii, § 3. Cf. Partidas, P. IV, Tit. xxv, ley 7.

[3] See, for instance, the charter granted by Raymond Berenger IV of Barcelona, in 1108, to Olerdula, after a devastating Saracen inroad, and the charter of Lérida in 1148, after its capture from the Moors.—Marca Hispanica, pp. 1233, 1305. The same causes were operative in Castile.

[4] The cities entitled to send procurators to the Córtes were Burgos, Leon, Ávila, Segovia, Zamora, Toro, Salamanca, Soria, Murcia, Cuenca, Toledo, Seville, Córdova, Jaen, Valladolid, Madrid and Guadalajara.—Pulgar, Crónica, P. II, cap. xcv.

[5] Marina, Teoria de las Córtes, P. I, cap. xvi, xx. (Madrid, 1820.)—Siete Partidas, P. II, Tit. xvi, ley 4.—Modesto de Lafuente, Hist. Gen. de España, IX, 34.—J. Bernays, Zur inneren Entwicklung Castiliens (Deutsche Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft, 1889, pp. 381 sqq.).

[6] Crónica de Don Alfonso X, cap. clxxvi.—Barrantes, Ilustraciones de la Casa de Niebla, Lib. I, cap. xiv (Memorial histórico español, VIII).

[7] Crónica de Don Alfonso XI, cap. lxxx.—Barrantes, op. cit. Lib. I, cap. xxvi, lxxx.

[8] Ayala, Crónica de Pedro I, año XVII, cap. vii.

[9] Córtes de los antiguos Reinos de Leon y de Castilla, II, 330 (Madrid, 1863).

[10] Seguro de Tordesillas, Madrid, 1784.

[11] Castillo, Crónica de Enrique IV, cap. lxxiv.—Valera, Memorial de diversas Hazañas, cap. xxviii.—Pulgar, Crónica, p. 3 (Ed. 1780).

[12] Maldonado, Hechos de Don Alonso de Monrroy (Memorial histórico español, T. VI, p. 14).

[13] Juan de Pineda, El Libro del Passo Honroso, Madrid, 1784.—Pulgar, Claros Varones, Tit. xiv.

[14] Barrantes, Ilustraciones de la Casa de Niebla, Lib. VIII, cap. xxiv.

[15] Valera, Memorial de diversas Hazañas, cap. xix., xl.—Amador de los Rios, Historia de los Judíos, III, 205.

[16] Maldonado, Hechos de Don Alonso de Monrroy, pp. 17-19.

[17] Maldonado, op. cit. pp. 65, 71, 72, 83.—Barrantes, Ilustraciones de la Casa de Niebla, Lib. VIII, cap. iii.—Hazañas valerosas de Pedro Manrique de Lara (Memorial histórico español, T. VI, pp. 123, 126).—Hernando del Pulgar, Crónica, P. I, cap. lxxxiii.

[18] Maldonado, op. cit., pp. 23, 52, 71, 73.

[19] Clemencin, Elógio de Doña Isabel, p. 127.

[20] Castillo, Crónica de Enrique IV, cap. cliii.

[21] Pulgar, Claros Varones de España (Elzevir, 1670, p. 6).—Castillo, op. cit. cap. cxliii.—Saez, Monedas de Enrique IV, pp. 3, 7, 23 (Madrid, 1805). At the Córtes of Segovia, in 1471, Henry ordered the destruction of all the private mints, but it is not likely that he was obeyed (Córtes de Leon y de Castilla, III, 830, Madrid, 1866). Garcia López de Salazar, a contemporary, tells us that the gold Enriques were originally 23½ carats fine, but those struck in the royal mints gradually fell to seven carats, while the private mints made them what they pleased.—Saez, p. 418.

[22] Córtes de los antiguos Reinos de Leon y de Castilla, IV, 59-68.—Novisima Recopilacion, Lib. III, Tit. v, ley 10, 11.—Barrantes, Ilustraciones de la Casa de Niebla, Lib. VIII, cap. xxii.—Garibay, Compendio Historial, Lib. XVIII, cap. xvi.—Don Clemencin (op. cit. p. 146).

[23] Miscelánea de Zapata (Mem. hist. español, T. XI, p. 332).

[24] L. Marinæus Siculus de Reb. Hispan. (R. Beli Rer. Hispan. Scriptt, p. 774).—Damiani a Goes Hispania (Ibid. p. 1237).

[25] Pulgar, Claros Varones, Tit. xx; Letras No. iii.—Fléchier, Histoire du Cardinal Ximenes, II, 291 (Ed. 1693).

[26] Francisco de Medina, Vida del Cardenal Mendoza (Mem. hist. español, T. VI, pp. 156, 190, 193-4, 255, 293-4, 297, 304).

[27] Concil. Arandens. ann. 1473, cap. 3, 6, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 20, 25 (Aguirre, V, 344-50).

[28] L. Marinæi Siculi de Rebus Hispan. Lib. XIX.—Raynald. Annal. ann. 1483, n. 15; ann. 1485, n. 26.

[29] History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, Vol. II, pp. 180 sqq.

[30] Romancero del Cid, pp. 245, 269 (Francofurto, 1828).

[31] Ordenanzas Reales, Lib. VI, Tit. ix, ley 21.—Villanueva, Viage Literario, XVII, 256.

[32] Constitutions de Cathalunya, Lib. I, Tit. v, cap. 1 (Barcelona, 1588, p. 18). Similar laws adopted in 1534 and 1537 show that meanwhile it had been impossible to prevent papal encroachments.—Ib. cap. 3, 4.

[33] Ayala, Crónica de Don Juan I, año X, cap. vii.—Crónica de Don Enrique III, año III, cap. xvi.

[34] Alvar Gomez, De Rebus gestis a Francisco Ximenio, fol. 3 (Compluti, 1569).—Robles, Vida del Cardenal Ximenes, pp. 38-41.

[35] Castillo, Crónica de Enrique IV, cap. cv.

[36] Memorial histórico español, T. I, p. 236; II, 22, 25.—Gomez de Rebus gestis a Fran. Ximenio, fol. 9-11.

[37] Zurita, Añales de Aragon, Lib. XX, cap. xxii.—Mariana, Historia de España, Lib. XXIV, cap. xvi.

[38] Pulgar, Crónica de los Reyes Catolicos, Lib. II, cap. civ.

[39] Francisco de Medina, Vida del Cardenal de Mendoza (Memorial histórico español, T. VI, p. 244).

[40] Boletin de la R. Acad. de la Historia, T. XXII, pp. 220, 227.

[41] Coleccion de Privilegios etc. T. VI, p. 117 (Madrid, 1833).

[42] Archivo de Sevilla, Seccion primera, Carpeta IV, fol. 85, § 3 (Sevilla, 1860).

[43] Ordenanzas Reales, Lib. III, Tit. i, leyes 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10.—Novís. Recop. Lib. IV, Tit. i, leyes 3, 4, 5.

[44] Novísima Recop. Lib. XII, Tit. xxvi, leyes 3-5.

[45] Coleccion de Cédulas, III, 113 (Madrid, 1829)

[46] Coleccion de Cédulas, I, 246.

[47] Concil. Arandens. ann. 1473, cap. xxiv (Aguirre, V, 350).

[48] Córtes de Leon y de Castilla, II, 539; III, 33, 57, 122, 172, 192-6, 287, 328, 408.

[49] Pulgar, Crónica, III, lxvi.

[50] Coleccion de Cédulas, II, 49, 50 (Madrid, 1829).

[51] La Puente, Epit. de la Crónica de Juan II, Lib. V, cap. xxxiii.—L. Marinæi Siculi de Rebus Hispan. Lib. XIX.—Pulgar, Crónica, P. II, cap. li.—Bernaldez, Historia de los Reyes Católicos, cap. i (Sevilla, 1869).

[52] Galindez de Carvajal (Coleccion de Documentos para la Historia de España, XVIII, 254).

[53] Zurita, Añales de Aragon, Lib. XVIII, cap. 20, 21.—Castillo, Crónica de Enrique IV, cap. cxxiv.—Valera, Memorial de diversas Hazañas, cap. xx.—Pulgar, Crónica P. I, cap. ii; P. II, cap. xci.—Maldonado, Hechos de Don Alonso de Monrrey (Mem. hist. español, T. VI, p. 94).—Barrantes, Ilustraciones de la Casa de Niebla, Lib. VIII, cap. xxi.

[54] Castillo, Crónica de Enrique IV, cap. cxxxvii.—Clemencin, Elógio de la Reina Isabel, Append. I.

[55] Pulgar, Crónica, P. II, cap. ii; Letra xii.—L. Marinæi Siculi de Reb. Hisp. Lib. XIX.

[56] Machiavelli’s judgement was as usual correct when he remarked (Il Principe, cap. xvi) “Il Re di Spagna presente se fusse tenuto liberale non avrebbe fatto nè vinto tante imprese.”

[57] Archivo Gen. de Simancas, Consejo de la Inquisicion, Libro II, fol. 22

[58] “Con gran dificultad perdonava los yerros que se le hazian.”—Barrantes, Ilustraciones etc., Lib. VIII, cap. xii.

[59] Palafox y Mendoza, Obras, T. VII, p. 333 (Madrid, 1762).—Ochoa, Epistolario Español, II, 14.

[60] Bergenroth, Calendar of Spanish State Papers, I, xxxiv-v. The value of the gold crown of the period was 4s. 6d. sterling (Ibid. p. 4) and 200,000 scudos was the marriage-portion of Katharine of Aragon when wedded to Prince Arthur of England (Ibid, p. lxiv), which is the equivalent of about £500,000 of modern money. For the oppression of the people see Gonzalo de Ayora (Boletin de la R. Acad., XVII, 447-8). Cf. Clemencin, p. 185.

[61] From the Notables of Cristóbal Núñez, printed by Padre Fidel Fita in the Boletin, XVI, 561.

[62] L. Marinæi Siculi de Rebus Hisp. Lib. XXI.

[63] Pet. Martyr. Angler. Lib. V, Epist. cxiv.

[64] Colmeiro, Córtes de Leon y de Castilla, II, 43 sqq.

[65] Pulgar, Crónica, P. II, cap. lxx.—Æl. Anton. Nebriss. Decad. I, Lib. vii, cap. 6.—Barrantes, Ilustraciones etc. Lib. VIII, cap. xv.—José Grestoso y Pérez, Los Reyes Católicos en Sevilla (Sevilla, 1891).—Zuñiga, Añales de Sevilla, ann. 1477, n. 5.

[66] Pulgar, Crónica, P. II, cap. xcv.

[67] Ferreiro, Fueros Municipales de Santiago, II, 65 (Santiago, 1896).

[68] Ibidem, II, 314.

[69] L. Marinæi Siculi Lib. XIX, XXI.—Pulgar, Crónica, P. II, cap. xxvii, lxxviii, xcvi, xcvii, xcviii; P. III, cap. xxxix, lxvi, c, cxxvii.—Capitulos hechos por el rey y la reyna en Sevilla a ix de Junio de M. y d. (sine nota).

[70] Galindez de Carvajal (Coleccion de Documentos para la Historia de Españe, XVIII, 236).

[71] Bernaldez, cap. xlii.

[72] Pet. Martyr. Angler. Lib. V, Epist. cviii. As Cardinal Ximenes says in his letter of advice to Cardinal Adrian as to the conduct of Charles V in taking possession of his inheritance, “por lo qual fue ella tan poderosisima en su reyno, que todos del mayor á el menor temian virgam ferream de su justicia, y asi destruyó toda la tirannia.” (Valladares, Semanario Erúdito, XX, 237).

[73] Archivo Gen. de Simancas, Inquisicion Libros I, II.

[74] The limitations on the royal jurisdiction are exemplified by the unseemly contest at Alcalá de Henares, in 1485-6, between Isabella and the Archbishop González de Mendoza, respecting her right to administer justice within his province. It lasted from December till the time for opening the campaign against Granada, when she removed to Córdova without having established her claim.—Francisco de Medina, Vida del Cardenal Mendoza (Mem. hist, español, VI, 264).

[75] Memorial histórico español, T. II, pp. 68, 72, 86, 94, 102.

[76] Benavides, Memorias de Fernando IV, Coleccion Diplomática, T. II, pp. 3, 7, 46, 75, 81, 178 (Madrid, 1860).—Vicente Santamaria de Paredes, Curso de Derecho Político, p. 509 (Madrid, 1883).—Córtes de los antiguos Reinos de Leon y Castilla, I, 247, 300 (Madrid, 1861).

[77] Benavides, op. cit. II, 363.

[78] Ferreiro, Fucros Municipales de Santiago, III, 44.

[79] Coleccion de Privilegios, T. VI, p. 327 (Madrid, 1833).

[80] Crónica de Don Juan II, año XXXVII, cap. i.

[81] Córtes de Leon y de Castilla, III, 795.

[82] Castillo, Crónica de Don Enrique IV, cap. lxxxvii, xc.—Barrantes, Ilustraciones etc. Lib. VII, cap. xxviii.—Garibay, Compendio Historial, Lib. XVII, cap. xxxi.—Coleccion de Cédulas, III, 103 (Madrid, 1829).—Bienvenido, Oliver y Esteller (Boletin, XIV, 382).

[83] Pulgar, Crónica, P. II, cap. li.—L. Marinæi Siculi de Reb. Hisp. Lib. XIX.—Æl. Anton. Nebriss. Decad. I, Lib. VI, cap. 1-3.—Garibay, Comp. Historial, Lib. XVIII, cap. viii.

[84] Zuñiga, Añales de Sevilla, ann. 1477, No. 1.

[85] Zurita, Hist, del Rey Hernando, Lib. VIII, cap. V.—Galindez de Carvajal (Coleccion de Documentos para la Historia de España, XVIII, 319).

[86] Barrantes, Ilustraciones etc. Lib. VIII, cap. xx.

[87] Coleccion de Cédulas, I, 70, 124, 143, 183; III, 103.

[88] Pulgar, Crónica, P. III, cap. xcv.—Palafox, Obras, VII, 338 (Madrid, 1762).—Fueros de Aragon, fol. 13 (Saragossa, 1624).

[89] Coleccion de Cédulas, IV, 89.

[90] Pulgar, Crónica, P. III, cap. xii.

[91] Novís. Recop. Tit. xxv, Lib. XII.—Barrantes, Ilustraciones etc. Lib. VIII, cap xiii.—Coleccion de Cédulas, IV, 295.—See also the description of the perfected system which excited the admiration of the Venetian ambassador, Paolo Tiepolo, in 1563 (Relazioni, Serie I, T. V, p. 21).

[92] Clemencin, p. 139.

[93] Coleccion de Cédulas, IV, 136, 164, 173, 185, 336, 338; V, 669; VI, 425.—Novís Recop. Tit. xxxv, Lib. XII, ley 18.

[94] Córtes de los antiguos Reinos, IV, 356 (Madrid, 1882)—“E las leyes e costunbres son sujetas alos Reys, que las pueden hazer e quitar a su voluntad, e vuestra Alteza es ley viba e animada en las tierras.”

[95] Coleccion de Cédulas, IV, 333.

[96] Mariana, Lib. XXVIII, cap. xi; Tom. IX, Append. p. xix.—Giustiniani, Historie degl’Ordini Militari, pp. 386, 425, 460 (Venezia, 1692).

[97] Cartas de Ximenes de Cisneros, pp. 120, 131, 181 (Madrid, 1867).—Wadding, Annales Minorum, ann. 1516, n. 12.—Gachard, Correspondence entre Charles-Quint et Adrien VI, p. cxi (Bruxelles, 1859).

[98] Thus Father Gams attributes the Spanish Inquisition to the national peculiarity of the Spaniard, who requires that the State should represent God on earth, and that Christianity should control all public life; he demands unity of faith and not freedom of faith. The Inquisition is an institution for which the Church has no responsibility.—P. Pius Gams, O. S. B., Die Kirchengeschichte von Spanien, III, II, 7, 8, 11, 12.

[99] Septimi Decretal. Lib. V, Tit. i, cap. 5.

[100] Paramo de Orig. Offic. S. Inquisitionis, p. 164.

[101] Fortalicium Fidei, fol. 147^b (Ed. 1494).

[102] Canon. Apostol. n. 69, 70.

[103] Concil. Eliberitan. cap. 16, 49, 50, 78.

[104] S. August, de Adult. Conjug. Lib. I, cap. xviii.

[105] S. Ambros. Epist. XL, n. 26.

[106] S. Joh. Chrysost. adv. Judæos Orat. I, n. 3, 4, 6. Chrysostom’s indignation was especially aroused by the popular belief among Christians in the peculiar sanctity of the synagogues, which rendered oaths taken in them more binding than in a church.

[107] Socrat. H. E. VII, xiii.

[108] Lib. XVI, Cod. Theodos. Tit. viii, Ll. 6, 9, 12, 21, 22, 25, 26, 27; Tit. ix, Ll. 2, 3, 4, 5.

[109] Novell. Theodos. II, Tit. iii.

[110] Edict. Theoderici, cap. 143.—Cassiodori Variar. IV, 33, 43; v, 37. Cf. III, 45.

[111] Concil. Agathens. ann. 506, cap. 40. This was embodied in the canon law (Gratian. Decr. Caus. XXVIII, Q. i, cap. 14). The apologetic tone in which Sidonius Apollinaris, Bishop of Clermont, speaks of Jews whom he likes and who “solent hujusmodi homines honestas habere causas” shows that the more enlightened churchmen felt that any favor shown to the proscribed race exposed them to animadversion (Epistt. Lib. III, Ep. 4; Lib. IV, Ep. 5).

[112] Concil. Quinisext. cap. 11 (Decr. Caus. XXVIII, Q. i, cap. 13).

[113] Gregor. PP. I. Epistt. XIII, 12 (Decreti Dist. XLV, cap. 3).

[114] Ejusd. Epistt. I, 10, 35; II, 32; V, 8; VIII, 27; IX, 6; XIII, 12. It is true that Gregory strongly upheld the rule that Jews should hold no Christian slaves, but he permitted Christians to labor on their lands (Ibid, IV, 21).

[115] Ibid, I, 47.—Venantii Fortunati Miscell. Lib. V, cap. 5.

[116] Cassiodor. Variar. II, 27; X, 26.

[117] Lex Roman. Visigoth. Lib. XVI, Tit. iii, iv; Novell. Theodos. II, Tit. iii (Ed. Haenel, pp. 250, 256-8).

[118] Concil. Toletan. III, ann. 589, cap. xiv.—Concil. Narbonn. ann. 589, cap. iv, ix.

[119] Gotth. Heine, Biblioth. Vet. Monumentt. Ecclesiasticor. p. 118 (Lipsiæ, 1848).

[120] S. Isidori Hispalens. de Fide Cathol. contra Judæos Lib. I, cap. 28; Lib. II, cap. 5, 9.

[121] S. Isidori Chron. n. 120; De Regibus Gothorum, n. 60; Sententt. Lib. III, cap. 51, n. 4.

[122] Concil. Toletan. IV, ann. 633, cap. 57—adopted into the canon law (Decr. cap. 5, Dist. XLV)—as well as a decretal of Gregory IV—“Judæi non sunt cogendi ad fidem, quam tamen si invite susceperint, cogendi sunt retinere” (Ibid. cap. 4). See also Ll. Wisigoth. Lib. XII, Tit. ii, l. 4 (Recared I), continued in Fuero Juzgo, XII, ii, 4.

[123] Concil. Toletan. IV, ann. 633, cap. 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66; Conc. VI, ann. 638, cap. 3; Conc. VIII, ann. 653, cap. 12; Conc. IX, ann. 655, cap. 17; Conc. X, ann. 656, cap. 7; Conc. XII, ann. 681, cap. 9; Conc. XIII, ann. 683, cap. 9; Conc. XVI, ann. 693, cap. 1.

[124] S. Juliani Toleti Vit. Wambæ, n. 5, 28 (Florez, España Sagrada, VI, 536, 556).

[125] Concil. Toletan. XVII, ann. 694, cap. 8.

[126] Roderic. Toletan. de Rebus Hispan. Lib. III, cap. xvi.—Morales, Corónica General, T. VI, p. 361. Isidor of Beja, however, is the best authority for the period, and he speaks of Witiza in terms of high praise (Isidor. Pacens. Chron. n. 29, 30). See also Dozy, Recherches sur l’Histoire et la Littérature de l’Espagne, I, 16-17 (3^e Éd. Leipzig, 1881).

[127] Rod. Toletan. op. cit. Lib. III, cap. xxii, xxiii.—Dozy, I, 49, 52.

[128] Dozy, I, 17, 44, 53, 54, 56, 72, 74-5, 79, 350-1.

[129] An interesting instance of Moslem toleration is seen in the Farfanes—Christians of Morocco who claimed to be the descendants of Goths deported at the conquest at the request of Count Julian. In 1386 they sent Sancho Rodríguez, one of their number, to Juan I to ask to be received back in Spain. Juan obtained from the King of Morocco permission for their departure, and promised to provide for them lands and support. In 1390 they came, numbering fifty cavaliers with their wives and children, and bringing a letter from the Moslem ruler speaking of them as nobles descended from the Goths and praising greatly their loyalty and valor. It was in riding out from Burgos to welcome them that Juan’s horse fell and caused his death. In 1394 Henry III gave them a confirmation of their ancient nobility, and in 1430 and 1433 we still find them recognized in Seville as a distinct class.—Ayala, Crón. de Juan I, año X, cap. xx.—Zuñiga, Annales de Sevilla, Lib. VIII, año 1386, n. 2; año 1390, n. 3; Lib. IX, año 1394, n. 1.—Archivo de Sevilla, Seccion primera, Carpeta clxxiv, n. 4, 8.

[130] Francisco Fernández y González, Estado de los Mudéjares de Castilla, pp. 14-18 (Madrid, 1866).—S. Eulogii Memorialis Sanctorum Lib. II, cap. xvi; Lib. III, cap. i (Migne’s Patrologia, CXV, 787, 800).

[131] Florez, España Sagrada, XI, 309 sqq.; V, Append. x.—Samsonis Abbatis Cordubensis Apolog. Lib. II (Ib. XI, 388 sqq.).—Alvari Cordubens. Epist. vii, viii (Ibid. XI, 147 sqq.).—Hostegesis was Bishop of Málaga, and the free exercise of discipline in the Mozárabic church is shown in the complaint of the cruelty with which he exacted the tercia or tribute due to him, causing delinquents to be paraded through the streets with soldiers scourging them and proclaiming that all defaulters should be similarly treated.—Florez, XII, 326.

[132] S. Eulogii Epist. iii (Migne, CXV, 845-9).—Alvari Cordubens. Vit. S. Eulogii (Ibid. 712).—The description by Alvar of his education with S. Eulogio shows that the Christian schools of Córdova were flourishing and active (Ibid. cap. i, p. 708).

[133] Alvari Cordubens. Vit. S. Eulogii, cap. iv, v.—Eulogii Memorialis Sanctorum Lib. II; Lib. III, cap. ii, iii, v, viii, xvii.—Ejusd. Vit. et Passio SS. Floræ et Mariæ.—Ejusd. Lib. Apologet. Martyrum.

[134] Aimoini Translatio SS. Georgii, Aurelii et Nathaliæ, Lib. I; Lib. II, cap. xxviii.

[135] Liutprandi Antopodosis, Lib. II, cap. i.

[136] Dozy, Recherches, II, 178.

[137] Fernández y González, p. 57.

[138] Dozy, Recherches, I, 265, 269, 349, 352-61.—Orderici Vital. Hist. Eccles. P. III, Lib. xiii, cap. 2.

[139] Crónica de Alfonso VII, cap. 46, 101 (España Sagrada, XXI, 360, 398).

[140] Dozy, Recherches, I, 370-1.—Fernández y González, p. 19.—See also an essay on the Mozárabes of Valencia by Don Roque Chabás, in the Boletin de la Real Academia de la Historia, XVIII, 19.

[141] Fernández y González, pp. 86-7, 93. The term Miramamolin, so often used by Christian writers as a personal name, is Amir-el-Momenin, or Prince of the Faithful, a title frequently assumed by Moorish rulers.

[142] Fernández y González, pp. 92, 96.

[143] Menéndez y Pelayo, Heterodoxos Españoles, I, 640-5.

[144] Dozy, Recherches, I, 365-7, 372-9.

[145] S. Eulogii Memorialis Sanctorum Lib. III, cap. iv.—Lindo’s History of the Jews of Spain, p. 44 (London, 1848).

[146] Lindo, p. 46.

[147] Dozy, Recherches, I, 285-9.

[148] Lindo, p. 62.

[149] Lindo, pp. 156-7.

[150] In the ballads the Moors are almost always represented as chivalric enemies. Even when celebrating their defeats, down to the capture of Granada, there is no contempt manifested and nowhere is to be seen a trace of religious acerbity. Many ballads have Moors as their heroes, as in those which celebrate the deeds of Bravonel and Reduan, and there is nothing to distinguish their treatment from that of Christians. Bravonel and Bernardo del Carpio are represented as companions in arms. When Bernardo is banished by his king he betakes himself forthwith to Granada to participate in a tournament, where

[151] Villanueva, Viage Literario, XVI, 159.

[152] Dozy, Recherches, II, 203, 233.

[153] Dozy, II, 109, 111.—Edélestand du Meril, Poésies populaires Latines, pp. 312-13.

[154] Chron. Sampiri Asturicens, n. 3, 22, 26 (España Sagrada, XIV, 439, 452, 455).

[155] Chron. Pelagii Ovietens. (España Sagrada, XIV, 468, 472).

[156] Fernández y González, pp. 34, 48, 114.

[157] Crónica de Don Alfonso X, cap. xix-lviii.

[158] Ibidem cap. lxxvi.—Barrantes, Ilustraciones, Lib. I, cap. vi, xi (Memorial hist. español, IX, 72-9, 92-8).

[159] Crónica de Don Alfonso XI, cap. lvii, cxi, cxxv.

[160] Ayala, Crónica de Don Pedro I, año XVII, cap. iv; año XIX, cap. iv, v; año XX, cap. vi.

[161] Barrantes, Ilustraciones, Lib. VII, cap. xxii.

[162] Memorial histórico español, I, 159.

[163] Ibidem III, 151.

[164] Coleccion de Documentos inéditos de la Corona de Aragon, I, 25.

[165] Concil. Lateran. IV, ann. 1216 ad calcem (Harduin. VII, 75).—Cap. 6, 17, Extra, Lib. V, Tit. vi.—Concil. Lugdunens. I, ann. 1245, cap. xvii (Harduin. VIII, 394).—Concil. Ilerdens. ann. 1246 (Aguirre, VI, 318).—Concil. Vallisolet. ann. 1322, cap. xxii (Aguirre, V, 251).—Cap. 1 Extrav. Commun. Lib. V, Tit. ii.—Urbani PP. V, Bull. Apostolatus, 1364 (Bullar. Roman. Ed. Luxemburg. I, 261).—Nicholai PP. V, Bull. Olim, 1450 (Ibid. I, 361), and finally in the standard anathema of the bull in Cœna Domini.

[166] Bullar. Roman. I, 263.—Eymerici Direct. Inquisit. p. 351(Ed. Venet. 1607).

[167] Barrantes, Ilustraciones, etc., Lib. I, cap. iv, xiii, xiv, xx, xxi.—Ayala, Crónica de Don Pedro I, año III, cap. iii.

[168] Chron. Sampiri Asturicens. n. 16, 24, 25 (España Sagrada, XIV, 447, 454, 455).—Marca Hispanica, p. 1232.

[169] Partidas, P. IV, Tit. xxi, leyes 6, 8; Tit. xxii, ley 3. In the Fuero Real de España the only allusion to Moors is as slaves (Lib. IV, Tit. xi, ley 3; Tit. xiv, ley 1). It is virtually the same in the old Fuero of Madrid (Memorias de la R. Acad. de la Historia, VIII, 40).

[170] Partidas, P. IV, Tit. xxi, ley 7.

[171] Fernández y González, pp. 21, 24-5.

[172] Dozy, Recherches, I, 124-6.

[173] Fernández y González, p. 28.

[174] Ayala, Crónica de Don Pedro I, año II, cap. xvii.

[175] Fernández y González, pp. 39, 45-6, 58.

[176] Mondexar, Memorias de Alonso VIII, cap. cv, cviii.—Roderici Toletani de Rebus Hispan. Lib. VIII, cap. xii.

[177] Villanueva, Viage Literario, XXI, 131.

[178] Fernández y González, p. 97.

[179] See the capitulation of Valencia in 1232 (Villanueva, XVII, 331); also the Constitutiones Pacis et Treugæ of Catalonia, in 1214, 1225, and 1228 (Marca Hispanica, pp. 1402, 1407, 1413), and also that of Rosellon, in 1217 (D’Achery, Spicileg. III, 587). In 1279 Pedro III of Aragon issues letters “to all his faithful Moors of the frontier of Castile and Viar,” inviting them to come and populate Villareal, offering them the vacant lands there and pledging them security for all their goods (Coleccion de Documentos de la Corona de Aragon, VIII, 151).

[180] Coleccion de Cédulas, V, 571, 573, 584, 600, 608, 622, 632; VI, 93, 106, 112, 220, 292, 308, 326, 385, 455. A charter of San Fernando III, in 1246, selling certain lands to the city of Toledo, says “vendo á vos, concejo de Toledo, á los caballeros é al pueblo, é á cristianos é á moros é á judios, á los que sodes é á los que han de ser adelant, todos aquellos terminos, etc.”—Fernández y González, p. 319.

[181] Fernández y González, pp. 117, 122, 123.—Memorial histórico español, I, 285.

[182] Coleccion de Cédulas, V, 29.—Fernández y González, p. 294. In the charter of Hinestrosa (1287) the wergild for homicide is 500 sueldos. In that of Arganzon (1191) allusion is made to the wergild of 500 sueldos, but the special privilege is granted that the murderer shall pay only 250, the other 250 being remitted “for the sake of the king’s soul.” In the charter of Amaya (1285) the wergild is sixty maravedís.—(Coleccion de Cédulas, V, 222, 112, 205.)

[183] Memorias de la Real Academia de la Historia, VIII, 39.

[184] Leyes de Estilo, 83, 84.

[185] Coleccion de Cédulas, V, 413.

[186] Fernández y González, pp. 407, 409. By a confirmation of Pedro IV of Aragon, in 1372, to the aljama of Calatayud it appears that the Moors of the cities were accustomed to have special shambles where their meat was slaughtered and marked “secundum eorum ritum sive çunam.”—Ibid. p. 384.

[187] Coleccion de Documentos de la Corona de Aragon, IV, 130; VI, 145.—Fernández y González, pp. 286, 290, 386, 389.

[188] Fernández y González, pp. 92, 94-5, 102.

[189] Archivo de Sevilla, Seccion Primera, Carpeta I, n. 49.—Fernández y González, pp. 351, 353, 363.—Ordenanzas Reales, VIII, iii, 31.—Memorial histórico español, I, 81, 152.

[190] Fernández y González, pp. 221, 286.—Coleccion de Documentos de la Corona de Aragon, VI, 157, 196.—Córtes de los antiguos Reinos, II, 309.

[191] Aguirre, V, 225, 227; VI, 369.—Cap. 5 Extra v, vi.—Cap. 2 Extrav. Commun. v, ii.—Tratados de Legislacion Musulmana, p. 216 (Madrid, 1853).—Partidas, P. VII, Tit. xxv, leyes 2, 3.—Constitutions de Cathalunya, Lib. I, cap. 3, 4 (Barcelona, 1588).—Concil. Tarraconens. ann. 1245 (Aguirre, VI, 306).

[192] Fernández y González, pp. 107-8, 120, 286, 359.—Memorial histórico español, I, 285.—For the manner in which the houses of conquered towns were distributed see the Repartimiento de Jerez de la Frontera by Alfonso X in this same year 1266, printed by Padre Fidel Fita (Boletin, Junio, 1887, pp. 465 sqq.).

[193] Fernández y González, p. 346.

[194] Coleccion de Documentos de la Corona de Aragon, VI, 255.—Partidas, P. VII, Tit. xxv, ley 10.

[195] Tratados de Legislacion Musulmana, p. 7 (Madrid, 1853). In this collection the Leyes de los Moros probably date from about the year 1300. Ice Gebir’s Suma de los principales Mandamientos was written in 1462. It would not be easy to find a more practical moral code than that presented in the short precepts assembled in Ice Gebir’s first chapter (pp. 250 sqq.). It is somewhat surprising to learn that in the alchihéd, or holy war against Christians, it was forbidden to slay non-combatants—women, children, old men and even monks and friars unless they defended themselves by force (cap. xxxv, p. 333). Even harmless things, such as ants and frogs, are not to be deprived of life (cap. clvii, p. 400). The vital reproach to be brought against Islam is the position assigned to woman—her degradation in her relations to man, and her scant recognition as a human being. In a classification of society into twelve orders, the eleventh is that of baldios or robbers, sorcerers, pirates, drunkards, etc., and the twelfth and lowest is woman (Ib. cap. lx, pp. 412, 415).

[196] The ballad chronicler relates how—

[197] Crónica de Juan II, año IV, cap. 26.

[198] Coleccion de Documentos de la Corona de Aragon, VIII, 53.—Memorial histórico español, I, 239, 263; III, 439.

[199] Fernández y González, p. 389.

[200] Ibid. pp. 382, 386.

[201] Janer, Condicion Social de los Moriscos de España, pp. 47-9, 161, 162 (Madrid, 1857).

[202] Fernández y González, pp. 294, 321, 367. Cf. Concil. Vallisolet. ann. 1322, cap. xxii; C. Toletan. ann. 1324, cap. viii (Aguirre, V, 251, 259); Concil. Parisiensis, ann. 1212, Addend, cap. i (Martene Ampliss. Collect. VII, 1420).

[203] Concil. Lateran. IV, ann. 1216, cap. lxviii (cap. 15, Extra, v, vi). This device originated among the Saracens of the East, who, in the eleventh century, required Jews and Christians to wear distinctive badges (Fernández y González, p. 16). The earliest trace of it in the West is found in the charter of Alais, in 1200, which prescribes distinctive vestments for Jews (Robert, Les Signes d’Infamie au Moyen Age, p. 7). In Italy, Frederic II obeyed the Lateran decree by ordering, in 1221, all Jews to wear distinguishing garments (Richardi de S. German. Chron. ap. Muratori, S. R. I., VII, 993), but he did not insert this in the Sicilian Constitutions or include his Saracen subjects. In 1254 the council of Albi prescribed for Jews a circle, a finger-breadth in width, to be worn upon the breast, and that of Ravenna, in 1311, a yellow circle (Harduin. VII, 458, 1370). In the fifteenth century, the Neapolitan Jews were required to wear as a sign the Hebrew letter Tau (Wadding, Annal. Minor. T. III, Regest. p. 392).

[204] Raynald. Annal. ann. 1217, n. 84.—Amador de los Rios, Hist. de los Judíos de España, I, 361-2, 554.

[205] Amador de los Rios, I, 362, 364.

[206] Partidas, P. VII, Tit. xxiv, ley 11.

[207] Córtes de los antiguos Reinos, I, 227.

[208] Concil. Tarraconens. ann. 1238, cap. iv; ann. 1282, cap. v (Martene Ampliss. Collect. VIII, 132, 280).—Fernández y González, p. 369.—Constitutions de Cathalunya superfluas, Lib. I, Tit. v, cap. 12 (Barcelona, 1589, p. 8).

[209] Ayala, Crónica de Enrique II, año VI, cap. vii.—Córtes de los antiguos Reinos, II, 281.

[210] Ripoll Bullar. Ord. FF. Prædic. I, 479. It was apparently in return for a tithe of ecclesiastical revenues that Jaime pledged himself to the pope to expel the Moors, but he was too wise a statesman to do so, and as late as 1275 he invited additional settlers by the promise of a year’s exemption from taxation. On his death-bed in 1276, however, partly, no doubt in consequence of a dangerous Moorish revolt, and partly owing to the awakened fears shown by his taking the Cistercian habit, he enjoined his son Pedro to fulfil the promise, and in a codicil to his will he emphatically repeated the request (Danvila y Collado, La Expulsion de los Moriscos, p. 24.—Swift, James the First of Aragon, pp. 140, 253, 290), but Pedro was obdurate.

[211] Fernández y González, p. 109.

[212] Constitt. Valentin. (Aguirre, V, 206).

[213] Cap. 1 Clementin. Lib. V, Tit. ii.

[214] Concil. Tarraconens. ann. 1329 (Aguirre, VI, 370).

[215] Concil. Dertusan. ann. 1429, cap. xx (Aguirre, V, 340).—Raynald. Annal. ann. 1483, n. 45.

[216] Cap. 1 Clementin. Lib. II, Tit. viii; Lib. V, Tit. v.

[217] Although the acts of the council of Zamora were fully confirmed by the Córtes of Palencia in 1313 (Córtes de los antiguos Reinos, I, 227, 240-1), it seemed impossible to enforce them. In 1331 the Córtes of Madrid ineffectually petitioned that Christians denying debts to Jews could offer another Christian as a witness and not be obliged to have a Jew. The Fuero Viejo de Castiella, as revised in 1356, however, grants the privilege (Lib. III, Tit. iv, ley 19). The editors of the Fuero, Asso and Manuel (Ed. 1847, p. 83) say that the practice varied, and that Henry III, in the Córtes of Madrid, in 1405, again granted the privilege. As early as 1263 Alfonso X had enacted that in mixed suits a Jew could not demand that his opponent should produce as witnesses a Christian and a Jew, but that the evidence of two good Christians should suffice.—Memorial histórico español, I, 207. The point has interest as an evidence of the desire to protect Jews from imposition.

[218] Amador de los Rios, II, 561-5.

[219] Concil. Vallisolet. ann. 1322, cap. xxii (Aguirre, V, 250).

[220] Innocent. PP. III, Regest. X, 69; XII, post Epist. 107.—Concil. Lateran. IV, cap. lxix (cap. 16, Extra, v, vi).

[221] Fernández y González, p. 289.—Coleccion de Privilegios, VI, 97.—Partidas, P. VII, Tit. xxiv, ley 3.

[222] Annal. Novesiens. ann. 846 (Martene Ampliss. Collect. IV, 538). Cf. Gest. Episc. Leodiens. Lib. II, cap. 41.—Hist. Treverens. (D’Achery Spicileg. II, 222).

[223] Concil. Quinisext. cap. xi.—Gratian. cap. 13, Caus. xxviii, Q. 1.

[224] Cap. 13, Extra, V, xxxviii.

[225] Concil. Salmanticens. ann. 1335, cap. xii (Aguirre, V, 269).

[226] Ordenamiento de Doña Catalina, n. 10.

[227] Fortalicium Fidei, fol. 147^a (Ed. 1494).

[228] Mariana, Hist. de España, VIII, 69 (Ed. 1790).

[229] Ordenanzas Reales, VIII, iii, 18.—Ripoll Bullar. Ord. FF. Prædic. IV, 44. As recently as 1580 Gregory XIII recited the prohibitions of employing Jewish physicians uttered by Paul IV and Pius V and deplored their inobservance which precipitated many souls to damnation, to prevent which he ordered their strict enforcement.—Septimi Decretal. Lib. III, Tit. vi, cap. 2.

[230] Concil. Tarraconens. ann. 1329 (Aguirre, VI, 371).

[231] Aguirre, V, 286-7. Pedro el Ceremonioso, the King of Aragon, was then only a boy of eighteen, who had ascended the throne in January, 1336.

[232] Córtes de los antiguos Reinos, II, 311, 322-8.

[233] Ordenanzas Reales, VIII, iii, 6.

[234] Concil. Palentin. ann. 1388, cap. v, vi (Aguirre, V, 300).

[235] Ordenamiento de Valladolid, i, xi (Fortalicium Fidei, fol. 176).—Fernández y González, pp. 400, 402.

[236] Ordenanzas Reales, VIII, iii, 10, 19.

[237] Padre Fidel Fita, Boletin, IX, 270-84, 289, 292.—It was not until 1555 that Paul IV adopted the same policy in Rome and established the Ghetto, or Jewish quarter.—Septimi Decretal. Lib. V, Tit. I, cap. 4

[238] For a series of these capitulations see Coleccion de Documentos para la Historia de España, T. VIII, pp. 403 sqq.

[239] S. Agobardi de Judaicis Superstitionibus; Ejusdem de cavenda. Societate Judaica.—Amulonis Episc. Lugdunens. Lib. contra Judæos ad Carolem Regem.

[240] Stephani PP. VI, Epist. 2.

[241] Cap. 7, 9, Extra, Lib. V, Tit. vi.

[242] Concil. Paris, ann. 1212, P. V, cap. 2 (Martene Ampliss. Collect. VII, 102).

[243] Innocent. PP. III, Regest. X, 190. Cf. Epistt. Select. Sæc. XIII, T. I, p. 414 (Pertz).

[244] Cæsar. Heisterb. Dial. Mirac. Dist. II, cap. xxiv, xxv.—Bernaldez, Hist. de los Reyes Católicos, cap. xliii.—Vicente da Costa Mattos, Breve Discurso contra a heretica Perfidia do Judaismo, fol. 131, 132, 134 (Lisboa, 1623).—Bodleian Library, MSS. Arch. S. 130.

[245] P. de Alliaco Canon. Reformat, cap. xliii (Von der Hardt, Concil. Constant. I, VIII, 430-1)

[246] Chron. Turonens. ann. 1009.

[247] Berthold. Constant, ann. 1096.—Otton. Frisingens. de Gest. Frid. I, Lib. I, cap. 37.—Vitoduran. Chron. ann. 1336.—Gesta Treviror. Archiepp. ann. 1337.

[248] Rigord. de Gest. Phil. Aug. ann. 1182—Vaissette, Hist. Gen. de Languedoc, VIII, 1191-2 (Ed. Privat).—Nich. Trivetti Chron. ann. 1189.—Guill. Nangiac. Contin. ann. 1306.—Matt. Paris. Hist. Angl. ann. 1210.—Matt. Westmonast. ann. 1290.

[249] Fuero Juzgo, Lib. XII, Tit. ii, ley 18.

[250] Marca Hispanica, p. 1439.

[251] Coleccion de Privilegios, VI, 96 (Madrid, 1833).—Memorial hist, español, I, 38, 124; II, 71.

[252] Amador de los Rios, I, 185-6, 189.

[253] Contin. Gerardi de Fracheto, ann. 1285 (Dom Bouquet, XXI, 7).

[254] Amador de los Rios, II, 67.—Benavides, Memorias de Fernando IV, II, 331.

[255] Concil. Roman. V, ann. 1078 (Migne’s Patrologia, CXLVIII, 799).—Gregor. PP. VII, Regest. IX, 2.

[256] Amador de los Rios, I, 28-9.

[257] Ibidem, II, 58.

[258] Amador de los Rios, II, 74-5.

[259] Leyes de Estilo, 89-90.

[260] El Fuero Real, Lib. IV, Tit. iv, ley 7.—Partidas, VII, xxiv, 5. In 1322 Jaime II of Aragon forbids the molestation of Strogo Mercadell, a Jew, for taking a second wife.—Coleccion de Documentos de la Corona de Aragon, VI, 240.

[261] El Fuero Real, Lib. IV, Tit. ii, leyes 1, 2, 3.

[262] Lucæ Tudens. de altera Vita III, 3.

[263] Alex. PP. II, Epist. 101 (Decreti Consid. XXIII, Q. viii, cap. 11).

[264] Amador de los Rios, I, 189-90.

[265] Roderici Toleti de Rebus Hispan. VIII, 2, 6.—Malo, Histoire des Juifs, p. 267 (Paris, 1826).

[266] Villanueva, Viage Literario, XXII, 328, 329, 333.

[267] Amador de los Rios, I. 370, 447-51.—Lindo’s History of the Jews of Spain, P. 88.

[268] Leyes nuevas, Núm. XII, XIII. Cf. Ley 7 (Alcubilla, Códigos antiguos, I, 182).

[269] Partidas, P. VII, Tit. xxiv. The provision punishing with death male Jews for intercourse with Christian women only expressed existing legislation, even when the woman was a prostitute.—Benavides, Memorias de Fernando IV. II, 210.

[270] Villanueva, Viage Literario, XIII, 332.—R. Nachmanidis Disputatio (Wagenseilii Tela Ignea Satanæ).—Coleccion de Documentos de la C. de Aragon, VI, 165.

[271] Bulario de la Orden de Santiago, Lib. III, fol. 546 (Archivo hist, nacional de Madrid).

[272] Coleccion de Documentos, VI, 167.—Villanueva, XIII, 336.—Ripoll Bullar Ord. Predic. I, 479.

[273] Aguirre, VI, 369.

[274] Coleccion de Documentos, VI, 170.

[275] Amador de los Rios, I, 438.

[276] Florez, España Sagrada, XLIV, 298.

[277] Septimi Decretal. Lib. V, Tit. i, cap. 2.

[278] Florez, op. cit., XLIV, 297-99.

[279] Bernard d’Esclot, Cronica del Rey en Pere, cap. clii.

[280] Coleccion de Documentos, VI, 194.

[281] Villanueva, XXI, 165, 303.

[282] Archivo gen. de la Corona de Aragon, Regist. 208, fol. 72; Regist. 229, fol. 239.

[283] Amador de los Rios, II, 98-102.

[284] Coleccion de Privilegios, VI, 129 (Madrid, 1833).—Benavides, Memorias de Fernando IV, II, 374.

[285] Amador de los Rios, II, 90-4.

[286] Córtes de los antiguos Reinos, I, 247.—Cap. 1, Clement. Lib. V, Tit. v.

[287] Lindo’s History of the Jews of Spain, p. 180.

[288] Graetz, Geschichte der Juden, VIII, 327 (Ed. 1890).

[289] Decreti P. II, Caus. xiv, Q. 3, 4, 5, 6.—Cap. 1, § 2 Clement. Lib. V, Tit. v.

[290] Cap. 12, Extra, Lib. V, Tit. xix.—Concil. Lateran. IV, cap. 67.—Concil. Lugdunens. II, ann. 1274, cap. 26.—Cap. 1 Clement. Lib. V, Tit. v.—Concil. Pennafidelens. ann. 1302, cap. 9.

[291] Marca Hispanica, pp. 1415, 1426, 1431.—Constitutions de Cathalunya superfluas, Lib. I, Tit. v, cap. 2.—Villanueva, Viage Literario, XXII, 301.—El Fuero Real, Lib. IV, Tit. ii, ley 6.

[292] Marca Hispanica, pp. 1433, 1436.—Coleccion de Documentos de la C. de Aragon, VI, 170.—Córtes de los antiguos Reinos, I, 127, 227, 281.—Amador de los Rios, I, 393, 421, 587; II, 63, 69, 89, 121, 148.—Coleccion de Privilegios, VI, 111, 113.

[293] Amador de los Rios, II, 139.

[294] Córtes de los antiguos Reinos, II, 234.

[295] Yanguas y Miranda, Diccionario de Antigüedades del Reino de Navarro, II, 93.

[296] Ordenamiento de Alcalá, Tit. XXIII, ley 2. Cf. Ordenanzas Reales, Lib. VIII, Tit. ii, leyes 1-8.

[297] Padre Fidel Fita, Boletin, XI, 404.

[298] Amador de los Rios, I, 488.

[299] Córtes de los antiguos Reinos, II, 325.—Amador de los Rios, II, 320.

[300] Villanueva, XVII, 247.

[301] Zurita, Añales de Aragon, Lib. VI, cap. lxxviii.—Amador de los Rios, II, 175-9, 284-5, 289-91.

[302] Zurita, Lib. VIII, cap. xxvi, xxxiii.—Amador de los Rios, II, 260, 263, 299-300.

[303] Raynald, Annal. ann. 1348, n. 83.

[304] Guill. Nangiac. Contin. ann. 1366.—Quarta Vita Urbani V (Muratori, S. R. I., III, II, 641).

[305] Ayala, Crónica de Pedro I, año VI, cap. vii.

[306] Ibidem, año IX, cap. vii, viii.

[307] Guill. Nangiac. Contin. ann. 1366.—Ayala, año XVII, cap. viii.

[308] Amador de los Rios, II, 571-3.—Boletin, XXIX, 254.

[309] Ayala, Crónica de Juan I, año I, cap. iii.

[310] Zuñiga, Annales de Sevilla, año 1395, n. 2; año 1404, n. 4.

[311] Amador de los Rios, II, 338-9, 579-89.—We have seen the prohibition, in the imperial jurisprudence, to erect new synagogues, and this was sedulously preserved in the canon law.—Cap. 3, 8, Extra, V, vi.

[312] Zuñiga, Annales de Sevilla, año 1379, n. 3; año 1388, n. 3.

[313] Amador de los Rios, II, 592-4.

[314] Acta capitular del Cabildo de Sevilla, 10-15 de Enero de 1391 (Bibl. nacional, MSS., Dd, 108, fol. 78).

[315] Amador de los Rios, II, 613.

[316] Acta capitular, ubi sup.

[317] Zuñiga, Annales de Sevilla, año 1391, n. 1, 2, 3.—Ayala, Crónica de Enrique III, año I, cap. v, xx.—Barrantes, Ilustraciones de la Casa de Niebla, Lib. V, cap. xx.—Archivo de Sevilla, Seccion primera, Carpeta II, n. 53.

[318] Ayala, Crónica de Enrique III, año 1391, cap. xx.—Mariana, Hist. de España, Lib. XVIII, cap. xv.—Colmenares, Hist. de Segovia, cap. xxvii, § 3.—Fidel Fita, Boletin, IX, 347.—Amador de los Rios, II, 360-3, 370-1, 382, 389, 391.—Zuñiga, Annales de Sevilla, año 1391, n. 2; año 1404, n. 4.—Archivo de Sevilla, Seccion primera, Carpeta CVII, n. 1.

[319] Amador de los Rios, II, 595-601.

[320] Amador de los Rios, II, 372-77, 398.—Bofarull y Broca, Hist. de Cataluña, V, 35.

[321] História general de Mallorca, II, 319 (Ed. 1841).—Loeb, Revue des Études Juives, 1887, p. 172.—Villanueva, XXI, 224.

[322] Revue des Études Juives, 1887, pp. 261-2.

[323] Amador de los Rios, II, 392-4.—Coleccion de Doc. de la Corona de Aragon, VI, 430.

[324] Coleccion de Documentos, VI, 436, 438, 441, 454.

[325] José Fiter y Ingles, Expulsion de los Judíos de Barcelona, pp. 8-14 (Barcelona, 1876). This edict was renewed in 1479, 1480 and 1481 (Ibid. pp. 15-19).

[326] Viage literario, XVIII, 20.

[327] Amador de los Rios, II, 382-5.

[328] Amador de los Rios, II, 400-2, 445, 599-604.—Zurita, Añales de Aragon, Lib. X, cap. xlvii.

[329] Bernaldez, Hist. de los Reyes Católicos, cap. xliii.—The Jews likewise attributed their sufferings to this “Friar Vincent, from the city of Valencia, of the sect of Baal Dominic.”—Chronicles of Rabbi Joseph ben Joshua ben Meir, I, 265-7.

[330] Chron. Petri de Areniis, ann. 1408 (Denifle, Archiv für Litt. und Kirchengeschichte, 1887, p. 647).—Coleccion de Doc. de la Corona de Aragon, I, 118.—Chron. Magist. Ord. Prædic. cap. xii (Martene, Ampliss. Collect. VII, 387).—Salazar, Anamnesis Sanctt. Hispan. II, 513.—Tournon, Hommes Illustres de l’Ordre de S. Dominique, III, 37.—Mariana, Hist. de España, VI, 423 (Ed. 1790).—Alban Butler, Vies des Saints, 5 Avril.

[331] Rabbi Sam. Marrochiani de Adventu Messiæ (Mag. Bib. Patrum, Ed. 1618, T. XI, p. 421).—Jo. Chr. Wolfii Biblioth. Hebrææ, I, 1099.—This tract was translated from Arabic to Latin in 1338 by the Dominican Alfonsus Bonihominis and was reprinted so recently as 1742, at Cassano by the Jesuits.

[332] Mag. Bibl. Patrum, T. XII, P. II, p. 358. For the zeal of the convert to induce his brethren to follow him, see Hermanni Opusc. de Conversione sua, cap. xvi (Migne’s Patrol. Lat. T. CLXX, p. 828).

[333] D’Argentré, Collect. Judic. de novis Erroribus, I, I, 132.

[334] Pugionis Fidei P. III, Dist. iii, cap. 21, 22.

[335] Scrutinii Scripturarum P. II. See Graetz (VIII, 79) for a full account of Selemoh Ha-Levi and of the controversies to which his apostasy gave rise.

[336] Amador de los Rios, II, 447; III, 108-9.—P. de la Caballería, Zelus Christí contra Judæos (Venetiis, 1592).—Libro Verde de Aragon (Revista de España, Tom. CV, p. 571).

[337] Amador de los Rios, II, 413-16, 419-22.—Córtes de los antiguos Reinos, II, 544.

[338] Fortalicium Fidei, fol. clxxii-iii.—Colmenares, Historia de Segovia, cap. xxviii.—Garibay, Compendio historial de España, Lib. XV, cap. 58.—Rodrigo, Historia verdadera de la Inquisicion, II, 44.—Padre Fidel Fita (Boletin, IX, 371).

[339] Crónica de Juan II, año V, cap. xxii.

[340] Fortalicium Fidei, fol. clxxvi-viii.—Amador de los Rios, II, 496-502.—Fernández y González, Estado de los Mudéjares, pp. 400-5.

[341] Amador de los Rios, II, 503, 515.—Villanueva, XXII, 258.

[342] The Spanish historians claim that all the rabbis, except Joseph Albo and Vidal Ferrer, acknowledged the truth of Christianity and abjured the errors of Judaism (Amador de los Rios, II, 438-42; Zurita, Añales de Aragon, Lib. XII, cap. xlv), but Graetz (Geschichte der Juden, VIII, 120-1) states with greater probability, that the only concession made by the twelve was that the Haggadah passages of the Talmud are of no authority and even from this Ferrer and Albo dissented.

[343] Zurita, Añales, Lib. XII, cap. xlv.

[344] Amador de los Rios, II, 627-53; III, 38.

[345] Concil. Basiliens. Sess. XIX, cap v, vi (Harduin. VIII, 1190-3).

[346] Raynald. Annal, ann. 1442, n. 15.—Wadding, Annal. Minor, ann. 1447, n. 10.

[347] Villanueva, XIV, 30.

[348] Amador de los Rios, III, 12.

[349] Libro Verde de Aragon (Revista de España, CVI, 257, 269).

[350] Caballero, Noticias del Doctor Alonso Díaz de Montalvo, p. 251.

[351] Pulgar, Claros Varones, Tit. XVIII.

[352] Tristan. Caraccioli Epist. de Inquisit. (Muratori, S. R. I., XXII, 97).

[353] Crónica de Juan II, año XIV, cap. ii.

[354] Amador de los Rios, III, 583-9.

[355] Raynald. Annal. ann. 1451, n. 5.

[356] Amador de los Rios, III, 115-16.

[357] Boletin, XXVI, 468-72.

[358] Córtes de los antiguos Reinos, III, 717.

[359] Colmenares, Hist. de Segovia, cap. XXXI, § 9.—Amador de los Rios, III, 164-7.—Fernández y González, p. 213.

[360] Concil. Arandens. ann. 1473, cap. vii (Aguirre, V, 345).

[361] Coleccion de Cédulas, I, 45.

[362] Ordenanzas Reales, VIII, iii, 1-41.

[363] Archivo general de la C. de Aragon, Regist. 3684, fol. 10, 33.

[364] Padre Fidel Fita, Boletin, XV. 443.

[365] Amador de los Rios, III, 288-90.—Coleccion de Cédulas, I, 134.

[366] Amador de los Rios, III, 170-1.—Merchan, La Judería y la Inquisicion de Ciudad-Real, I, 647.

[367] Amador de los Rios, III, 88-9, 116-17, 206-10, 213-15, 217-18.

[368] Amador de los Rios, III, 118-24.—Crónica de Juan II, año XLII, cap. ii, v.—Crónica de Alvaro de Luna, Tit. lxxxiii.

[369] Merchan, La Judería y la Inquisicion de Ciudad-Real, I, 541-63.

[370] Raynald. Annal. ann. 1449, n. 12.

[371] Amador de los Rios, III, 125, 494.—Raynald. ann. 1451, n. 5.

[372] Nic. Antonio, Bibl. vetus Hispan., II, n. 565.

[373] In this I have chiefly followed a MS. account, evidently by a contemporary, preserved in the Bibl. nacional, MSS., G. 109. See also Amador de los Rios, III, 145-51; Valera, Memorial de diversos Hazañas, cap. xxxviii; Castillo, Crónica de Enrique IV, cap. xc, xci.

[374] Merchan, op. cit., I, 641-3.

[375] Castillo, op. cit., cap. cxlvi.—Mariana, Lib. XXIII, cap. xv.

[376] Castillo, op. cit., cap. clx.—Valera, Memorial de diversas Hazañas, cap. clxxxiii.—Memorial hist. español, VIII, 507.

[377] Valera, cap. lxxxiii-iv.—Castillo, cap. clx.—Memorial hist. español, VIII, 508.—Barrantes, Ilustraciones de la Casa de Niebla, Lib. VIII, cap. vi.—Amador de los Rios, III, 159-60.

[378] Amador de los Rios, III, 234.

[379] Pulgar, Crónica de los Reyes Católicos, II, lxxvii.

[380] Padre Fidel Fita, Boletin, XV, 323-5, 327, 328, 330; XXIII, 431.

[381] Historia de los Reyes Católicos, cap. cxi.

[382] As this measure seems to have hitherto escaped attention, I give the text of the document—a passage in a letter from Ferdinand, May 12, 1486, to the inquisitors of Saragossa. “Devotos padres. Porque por esperiencia parece que todo el daño que en los cristianos se ha fallado del delicto de la heregia ha procedido de la conversacion y practica que con los judios han recebido las personas de su linage, ningun tan comodo remedio hay como apartarlo dentre ellos de la manera que se ha fecho en el arzobispo de Sevilla e obispados de Córdova e de Jaen, e pues en essa ciudad tanto e mas que en ninguna otra han dañado, es nuestra voluntad que los judios dessa ciudad luego sean desterrados dessa dicha ciudad e de todo el arzobispado de Çaragoça e obispado de Santa María de Albarracin como por el devoto padre Prior de Santa Cruz vos sera escrito e mandado.”—Archivo gén. de la C. de Aragon, Regist. 3684, fol. 96.

[383] Zurita, Hist. del Rey Hernando, Lib. I, año 1492.—Mariana, Lib. XXIV, cap. xviii.—Páramo de Orig. Officii S. Inquisitionis, pp. 144, 156, 163 (Madriti, 1598).—Garibay, Comp. Hist. Lib. XIX, c. iv.

[384] An account of the expulsion at the end of the Libro Verde de Aragon states this to be the cause (Revista de España, CVI, 567-8). Ribas Altas, however was burnt some years earlier, for in the Saragossa auto de fe of March 2, 1488, his mother Aldonça was burnt and the report alludes to his previous burning and relates the story.—Memoria de Diversos Autos, Auto 29 (see Appendix).

[385] Barrantes, Aparato para la Historia de Extremadura, I, 458.

[386] Revista de España, CVI, 568-70. This correspondence was long used as a weapon against the New Christians. See Vicente da Costa Mattos, Breve Discorso contra a heretica Perfidia do Judaismo, fol. 55-7, 166 (Lisboa, 1623). Rodrigo prints it (Historia verdadera de la Inquisicion, II, 47).

[387] I have considered this notable case at some length in “Studies from the Religious History of Spain,” pp. 437-68. It can be studied with accuracy in the records of the trial of one of the accused, Jucé Franco, printed by Padre Fidel Fita (Boletin, XI, 1887) with ample elucidations. The Catalan version of the sentence is in Coleccion de Documentos de la Corona de Aragon, XXVIII, 68. For the legend and cult of the Santo Niño see Martínez Moreno, Historia del Martirio del Santo Niño de la Guardia, Madrid, 1866.

[388] Páramo (p. 144) seems to be the earliest authority for this story and, as he tells it, it seems rather applicable to an attempt of the Conversos to buy off the Inquisition, but modern writers attribute it to the Jewish expulsion. See Llorente, Hist. Crít. cap. VIII, Art. 1, n. 5; Hefele, Der Cardinal Ximenes, XVIII; Amador de los Rios, III, 272-3.

[389] Manuel de novells Ardits vulgarment appellat Dietari del Antich Consell Barceloni, III, 94 (Barcelona, 1894).

[390] Nueva Recopilacion Lib. VIII, Tit. ii, ley 2.—Novísima Recop., Lib. XII, Tit. i, ley 3.—Zurita, Hist. del Rey Hernando, Lib. I, año 1492.—Amador de los Rios, III, 603-9.—Boletin, XI, 425, 512.

[391] Zurita, loc. cit.

[392] See Appendix.

[393] Páramo, p. 167.—Ilescas, Historia Pontifical, P. II, Lib. vi, cap. 20, § 2.

[394] Amador de los Rios, III, 403.

[395] Llorente, Hist. crít., Append, VI.—Archivo de Simancas, Inquisicion, Lib. 1; Lib. 3, fol. 87.

[396] Bergenroth, Calendar of Spanish State Papers, I, 51.

[397] Zurita, loc. cit.—Páramo, p. 166.

[398] Graetz VIII, 348.—Bernaldez, cap. CXII.—The cruzado of Portugal was worth 365 maravedís, the same as the dobla de la banda. The ducat was worth 374.

[399] Lindo, History of the Jews, p. 287.—Chronicle of Rabbi Joseph ben Joshua ben Meir, I, 327.

[400] Graetz, VIII, 349.

[401] Bernaldez, cap. cx.—Barrantes, Ilustraciones de la Casa de Niebla, P. IX, cap. 2.—Amador de los Rios, III, 311.—Lindo, p. 292.

[402] Amador de los Rios, III, 312.—Boletin, IX, 267, 286; XI, 427, 586.

[403] Graetz, VIII, 348.—Chrónicon de Valladolid (Coleccion de Documentos, XIII, 195).

[404] Bernaldez, cap. CXII, CXIII.

[405] Damiāo de Goes, Chronica do Rei D. Manoel, P. I, cap. cii, ciii.

[406] Chronicles of Rabbi Joseph ben Joshua ben Meir, I, 328.—Amador de los Rios, III, 332-3.

[407] Amador de los Rios, III, 320.—Zurita, loc. cit.

[408] Archivo de Simancas, Inquisicion, Libro 927, fol. 124.—Isidore Loeb (Revue des Études Juives, 1887, p. 179).—Ilescas, Historia Pontifical, P. II, Lib. vi, cap. 20, § 2.—Kayserling, Biblioteca Española-Portugueza-Judaica, p. xi (Strasbourg, 1890).

[409] Nueva Recopilacion, Lib. VIII, Tit. ii, ley 3.—Novís. Recop., Lib. XII, Tit. i, ley 4.—Archivo de Simancas, Inquisicion, Lib. 1.

[410] Bernaldez, cap. CXI.

[411] Arnaldin. Albertinus de Hæreticis, col. lix (Valentiæ, 1534).

[412] Zurita, loc. cit.—Mariana, Tom. VIII, p. 336 (Ed. 1795).—Páramo, p. 167.

[413] Revue des Études Juives, 1887, p. 182.

[414] Chronicles of Rabbi Joseph ben Joshua ben Meir, I, 323-4.

[415] Pet. Martyr. Angler. Lib. VIII, Epist. 157.

[416] Joan. Pici Mirandulæ in Astrologiam, Lib. V, cap. xii.

[417] Il Principe, cap. xxi.

[418] Arnald. Albertinus de Hæreticis, col. lix.

[419] Censura et Confutatio Libri Talmud (Boletin, XXIII, 371-4).

[420] C. Dertusan. ann. 1429, c. ix (Aguirre, V, 337).

[421] Ripoll Bullar. Ord. FF. Prædic. III, 347.

[422] C. Basiliens. Sess. XIX, c. vi (Harduin. VIII, 1193).

[423] Raynald. Annal. ann. 1451, n. 6.

[424] Fortalicium Fidei, Prolog. (Ed. 1494, fol. ii^a). The date of the Fortalicium is commonly assigned to 1459, the year which it bears upon its rubric, but on fol. lxxvii^b the author speaks of 1460 years having elapsed since the birth of Christ and, as this is at nearly the first third of the book, it may not have been completed for a year or two later.

[425] Nicol. Anton. Bibl. Vet. Hispan. Lib. X, cap. ix.

[426] Amador de los Rios, III, 60, 136.—Valera, Memoria de diversas Hazañas, cap. iv.

[427] Fortalicium Fidei, fol. cxlvi.

[428] Colmenares, Hist. de Segovia, cap. xxxi, § 3.—Valera, loc. cit.

[429] All recent Spanish authorities, I believe, assume that Fray Alonso was a Converso, but the learned Nicolás Antonio (loc. cit.) says nothing about it, and Jo. Chr. Wolff (Bibl. Hebrææ II, 1123) points out that he nowhere alludes to his own experience as he could scarce have failed to do when accusing the Jews of matters which they denied. He cites (fol. cxlix^a) Pablo de Santa María, Bishop of Burgos, for their prayers against Christians and another learned Converso as to a secret connected with the Hebrew letters (fol. xciv^a). His knowledge concerning the Jews was thus wholly at second hand and his assaults on the Judaizing of the Conversos have every appearance of emanating from an Old Christian.

[430] The prayers attributed to the Jews were the subject of repeated repressive legislation. See Ordenanzas Reales, VIII, iii, 34.

[431] Fortalicium Fidei, fol. cxlii-ix, clxxxi-iii.

[432] Fuero Juzgo, XII, iii, 27.—Fuero Real, IV, i, 1.—Partidas, VII, xxiv, 7. In fact, these laws seem to have been a dead letter almost from the first. I have not met with an instance of their enforcement.

[433] Fortalicium Fidei, fol. liii-liv, lxxv-vi, clxxviii-ix.

[434] Bernaldez, Historia de los Reyes Católicos, cap. xliii. See also Páramo de Orig. Officii S. Inquisit., p. 134.

[435] Amador de los Rios, III, 142.

[436] Castillo, Cróníca de Enrique IV, cap. liii.—Mariana Historia de España, Lib. XXIII, cap. vi.

[437] Modesto Lafuente, Hist. Gen. de España, IX, 227.

[438] Boletin, XXIII, 300-1.

[439] Vicente Barrantes, Aparato para la Historia de Extremadura, II, 362.

[440] Córtes de los Antiguos Reinos de Leon y de Castilla, Madrid, 1861 sqq.