 Book 2, Chapter 1, Part 6 of History of the Inquisition of Spain, Volume 1. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. History of the Inquisition of Spain, Volume 1 by Henry Charles Lee. Book 2, Chapter 1. Relations with the Crown. Part 6. Though, as we have seen, the independence of the Inquisition as a self-centered and self-sustaining institution in the state varied with the temper and the necessities of the sovereign. There was a time for when it seemed as though it might throw off all subjection and become dominant. But for the prudence of Ferdinand in insisting upon the power of appointment and dismissal, this might have happened in the temper of the Spanish people, trained to an exaltation of detestation of heresy which to us may well appear incomprehensible. There is no question that, under the canon law, kings, like their subjects, were amenable to the jurisdiction of the Inquisition, and that they held their kingdoms on the tenure not only of their own orthodoxy, but of purging their lands of heresy and heretics. The principles which had been worked so effectually for the destruction of the Houses of Toulos and of Hohenstaufen, and under which Pius V released the subjects of Queen Elizabeth from their allegiance in 1570, were fully recognized in Spain as vital to the faith. But beyond this, the Spaniards, in their exuberance of their religious ardor, boasted that their national institutions conditioned orthodoxy as necessary to their kingship. Even when the 17th century was well advanced, a learned and loyal jurist consult tells us that, from the time of the 6th Council of Touledo in 638, their monarchs had imposed on themselves the law that, if they fell into heresy, they were to be excommunicated and exterminated. That Ferdinand, in 1492, had renewed this law, and that he had instituted that most severe tribunal, the Inquisition, and had sanctioned that, in view of the Touladen canon, all kings in future should be subject to it. Even Spanish loyalty could not have been relied upon to sustain a king's suspect of heresy, against the claims of the Holy Office to try him in secret, and suspicion of heresy was a very elastic term. Impeding the Inquisition came within its definition, and any effort to curb the arrogant extension of its powers could readily be so construed as Macanas found to his sorrow. The fact that the Inquisition possessed such power must have had its influence more than once on the mind of the sovereign when engaged in debate with his too powerful subject, and perhaps explains what appears to us occasionally a pusillanimous yielding. The monarchs had guarded the Inquisition against all supervision and all accountability to the other departments of the government. Within its own sphere it was supreme and irresponsible, and its sphere, owing to the exemption from the secular courts accorded to all connected with it in however remote a degree, covered a large area of civil and criminal businesses, besides its proper function of preserving the purity of the faith. In this self-centered independence it stood alone. Even the spiritual jurisdiction of the church, so jealously guarded, had become subject to the Recurso de Fuerza, which, like the French, appeal as from an abuse, gave to those who suffered wrong an appeal to the Council of Castile. But even from this the Inquisition was exempt. A decree of Prince Philip in 1553 was its aegis and was constantly invoked. This was addressed to all the courts and judicial officers of the land and affirmed, in the most positive terms, the sole and exclusive jurisdiction of the Inquisition in all matters within its competence, civil or criminal, concerning the faith or confiscations. And faith was a convenient term covering the impeding of the Inquisition in all that it wanted to do. Philip recited that repeated sayjulas of Ferdinand and Isabella and of Charles V had asserted this, and now he reaffirmed and enforced it. No appeals from its tribunals were to be entertained, for the only appeal laid to the Suprema, which would redress any wrong, for it, by delegation from the Crown and the Holy See, had exclusive cognizance of such matters. If, therefore, anything concerning the Inquisition should be brought before them, they must decline to entertain it, and must refer it back to the Holy Office. The Inquisition was not content to enjoy these favors as a revocable grace from the Crown, but in a consulta of December 22, 1634, it advanced the claim that this decree was a bargain or compact between two powers which could not be in any way modified without mutual consent. This was emphasized in a printed argument in 1642, asserting that the transaction could only become of binding force by the consent of both parties, the King and the Inquisitor General, and the King had no power to change it of his own motion, as it was an agreement. Even where it admitted to be a concession granted by the Crown, this would make no difference, for a privilege conceding to one who is not a subject as the Inquisition in the present case, and accepted by the latter becomes a contract which the Prince cannot revoke. 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 canonaries in the churches of Antiquera, Malaga, and the Canaries, which it claimed to be suppressed for its benefit under the brief of January 7, 1559, but which the royal camera 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 Malaga 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 Malaga and the Canaries. The Supremah 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 pre-bends 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 Camero to desist from its pretensions, and not to despoil the Holy Office. These somewhat audacious assertions of independence were chiefly stimulated by the perpetual quarrels arising from the exclusive jurisdiction. Civil and criminal exercised by the Inquisition over its thousands of employees and familiars and their families, which kept the land in confusion. This is a subject which will require detailed consideration hereafter, and is only referred to here because of its development into the exaggerated pretensions of the Inquisition to emancipate itself from all control. When Ferdinand granted this fuero, it was understood on all hands to be a special deputation of the royal jurisdiction, and as such liable at any time to modification or revocation. Ferdinand himself, in a Sedgula of August 18th, 1501, alluded to it as such. The Inquisitors enjoyed it just as the Corregators did. So, in the Concordia of Castile in 1553, defining the extent of this jurisdiction, the Inquisitors are specially described as holding it from the King, and Philip II, Philip III, and Philip IV repeatedly alluded to it as held during the royal pleasure. There was no thought of disputing this until the 17th century was well advanced. The Suprema itself, in papers of 1609, 1619, 1637, and 1639, freely admitted that its temporal jurisdiction was a grant from the King, while its spiritual was a grant from the Pope. Apparently, the earliest departure from this universally conceded position was made, in 1623, by Porto Carrero in an argument on a clash of jurisdictions in Mahorca, wherein he sought to prove that the civil and criminal jurisdiction of the Inquisition over the subordinates was ecclesiastical and derived from the Pope. About the same time, in an official paper, a similar claim was advanced, based on the papal briefs authorizing Torquemata and his successors to appoint, dismiss, and punish their subordinates. These were mere speculations, and attracted no attention at the time. We have just seen that, as late as 1639, the Suprema made no claims of the kind, but two years later, in 1641, it suddenly adopted them in the most offensive fashion. There was a competencia, or conflict of jurisdiction, between the Tribunal of Boyadolid and the Chanciaria, or High Royal Court. The Council of Castile had occasion to present several consultas to the King, in one of which it said that the jurisdiction exercised in the name of the King by the Inquisition was temporal, secular, and precarious, and could not be defended by excommunication. Thereupon, the Suprema assembled its theologians, who pronounced these propositions to be false, rash, and akin to heretical error. Armed with this opinion, the fiscal, or prosecuting officer, accused the whole Council of Castile, demanding that its consulta be suppressed, and that its authors be prosecuted. Theoretically, there was nothing to prevent such action, which would have rendered the Inquisition the dominating power in the land. But the Suprema lacked hardyhood. Even the habitual subservience of Philip IV was revolted, and he told the Inquisitor General that he had done ill to lend himself to a question contrary to the sovereignty of the monarch, and to the honor of the highest Council in the nation. In spite of this rebuff, having once asserted the claim that its temporal jurisdiction was spiritual and not secular, the Inquisition adhered to it. The prize was worth a struggle, for it would have put the whole nation at its mercy. It would have deprived the king of powers to check aggression and to protect his subjects from oppression for, as Porto Carrero had pointed out. Although princes have authority to relieve their subjects when aggrieved by other secular subjects, they have none when the oppressors are ecclesiastics, exempt by divine law from their jurisdiction. To win this, the Inquisition persisted in its claim. In 1642, on the occasion of a competencia in Granada, there appeared, under its authority, a printed argument to prove that the temporal jurisdiction of the Holy Office was a grant from the Holy See, which had power to intervene in the internal affairs of states, and that it had merely been acquiesced in and confirmed by the kings. Again, in a notorious case occurring in Swenka in 1645, the Inquisitors argued that their temporal jurisdiction was ecclesiastical and papal, with which the king could not interfere. But the audacity with which these pretensions were pushed culminated in a consulta presented by the Suprema, March 31, 1646, to Philip IV, when he was struggling against the determination of the Cortes of Aragon to curb the excesses of the Inquisition. In this paper, the Suprema asserted that the civil and political jurisdiction is inferior to the spiritual and ecclesiastical, which can assume any 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 untrammeled 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. 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. The pretensions were not realized and the king was not reduced to insignificance, but his power was seriously trampled by the bureaucracy of which the suprema was the foremost and most aggressive representative. Its quasi-independence led to emulation by the other great departments of the state, and, though their success was not so marked, it was sufficient in all to render the government incredibly cumbersome and inefficient, and to paralyze its action by wasting its strength in efforts to keep the peace between the rival and warring bodies. In these bickering and dissensions, the power of the crown decreased, and the theoretically autocratic monarch found himself unable to enforce his commands. Philip IV recognized this fatal weakness, but his efforts to overcome the evil were purile and inefficient. October the 15th, 1633, he sent to the suprema and, presumably to the other councils, a decree setting forth emphatically that the slackness of obedience and disregard to the royal commands had been the cause of irreparable damage to the state and must be checked if the monarchy were to be preserved from ruin. It was his duty, under God, to prevent this. He had unavailingly represented it repeatedly to his councilors, and now he proposed to make out a schedule of penalties to be incurred through disobedience, scaled accordingly to the gravity of each offense. This was to be completed within 30 days, and he called upon the suprema to give him the necessary information that should enable him to tabulate the matters coming within its sphere of action. This grotesque measure, calling upon offenders to define their offenses for the purpose of providing condine punishment, was received by the suprema with a cool indifference, showing how lightly it regarded the royal indignation. There was nothing, it said in reply, within its jurisdiction which imperiled the monarchy, for its function was to preserve the monarchy by preserving the unity of religion. As for obedience, it was of the highest importance that the royal commands should be obeyed, and the laws provided punishments for all disobedient vessels. But the canon and imperial laws, and those of Spain, deprived of their places judges, who executed royal cedulas issued against justice and the rights of parties. For it was assumed that such could not be the royal intention, and that they were decreed in ignorance, so that they were suspended until the prince, better informed, should provide justice. Therefore, when counselors opposed cedulas, which would work great injury to the jurisdiction and immunities of the holy office, it was only to prevent innovation, and it was to the discharge of duty that this was represented to the king. The suprema therefore prayed him that, before determining matters proposed by other councils, they should be submitted to it as here to fore so that, after hearing the reasons of both sides, he might determine according to his pleasure. Thus, with scarcely veiled contempt, the suprema told him that it would continue to do so as it had done, and the very next year, as we have seen, it boldly informed him that none of his commands respecting the inquisition would be obeyed until it should have confirmed them. Commands, Beatry remembered, that in no case affected its action in matters of faith, for all the trouble arose from its encroachments on secular affairs. The character of Philip IV ripened and strengthened under adversity, and, in the exigencies of the struggle with Catalonia and Portugal, he developed some traits worthy of a sovereign. Although he meekly endured the insolence of the suprema in 1646, and labored strenuously with the Cortes of Aragon to prevent the reform of abuses, he yet, as we have seen, insisted on the right to supervise appointments. He doubtless asserted his authority in other ways, for the suprema abated its pretensions that its civil and criminal jurisdiction was spiritual and papal. In an elaborate consulta of March 12, 1668, during a long and dreary contest in which the tribunal of Mahorca was involved, it repeatedly refers to its enjoying the royal jurisdiction from the king, showing that it had abandoned the attempt to render itself independent of the royal authority. Under the imbecile, Carlos II, and his incapable ministers, the domineering arrogance of the inquisition increased, and, as we shall see hereafter, it successfully alluded 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 Berbon, however, it was forced to recognize its subordination to the royal will in temporal matters, in spite of the temporary interference of Elizabeth Farnes 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 Macanus, could impose his commands. In 1712, there was an echo of the old choral over the so-called suppressed canonries of Antiguera, Malaga, and the Canaries. 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 benefits, and then, by a transaction in 1622, they were restored under the same conditions. Such was the position when a violent choral arose in the canaries between the tribunal and the chapter. The former questioned the accuracy of the accounts rendered to it by demanding 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 choral 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 Friac Guillen to a convent and ordering a president to be appointed to San Pedro Martir, whereupon the tribunal required the Provincial to surrender this mandate and all papers concerning the affair under pain of excommunication and 200 Ducats. The sub-frior 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 is based. They further excommunicated the Provincial in the most solemn manner. They took by force Friac 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 Tenerife, through which communication was had through 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 to disay, September 30th, 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, in June 11th, 1713, he addressed a preemptory order to disay, 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, and closing an order which it proposed dispatching. This displeased him as not in compliance with his commands, and he insisted on their complete fulfillment. 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 excommunicants 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 1st, 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 fiscals 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 Hasburgs. 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, Giordice had been restored to office, and Philip weekly permitted them to be provided for in other tribunals and to curse fresh communities with their lawless audacity. We shall hereafter have occasion to see how, under the House of Barabón, with its Galican ideas as to royal prerogative, the subordination of the inquisition became recognized, while its jurisdiction was curtailed and its influence was diminished. And of Book 2, Chapter 1, Part 6 Supereminence Part 1 When the inquisition, as we have seen, erogated to itself almost an equality with the sovereign, it necessarily assumed supremacy over all other bodies in the state. Spain had been one to the theory, assiduously taught by the medieval church, that the highest duty of the civil power was the maintenance of the faith in its purity and the extermination of heresy and heretics. The institution to which this duty was confided, therefore, enjoyed preeminence over all other departments of the state, and the latter were bound, whenever called upon, to lend it whatever aid was necessary. To refuse to assist it, to criticize it, or even to fail in demonstrations of due respect to those who performed its awful functions, were thus offenses to be punished at its pleasure. Illusion has already been made to the oath required of officials at the founding of the inquisition, pledging obedience and assistance whenever an inquisitor came to a place to set up his tribunal. This was not enough, for feudalism still disputed jurisdiction with the crown, and the inquisitor was directed to summon the barons before him and make them take not only the popular oath, but one promising to allow the inquisition free course in their lands, failing which they were to be prosecuted as rebels. As the tribunals became fixed in their several seats, when a new inquisitor came, he brought royal letters addressed to all officials from the visory down, commanding them under penalty of 5,000 florins, to lend him and his support in its what aid was necessary, and to obey his mandates in making arrests and executing his sentences. And this was published in a formal proclamation with sound of trumpets by the visory or other royal representative. This was not an empty formality, when, in 1516, the Corregidor of Logroño, documentador barrientes, a knight of Santiago, ventured to assert that the familiars were not to be assisted in making an arrest. The inquisitors excommunicated him, and ordered him to seek the inquisitor general and beg for pardon, which was granted only on condition of his appearance in a public autudefe, after hearing mass as a penitent on his knees and holding a candle, after which he was to be absolved with stripes and the other humiliations inflicted on penitents. This was not merely an indignity, but a lasting mark of infamy, extending to the kindred and posterity. As though this were not sufficient, at a somewhat later period, the officials of all cities where tribunals were established were required to take an elaborate oath to the inquisitors, in which they swore to compel everyone within their jurisdiction to hold the Catholic faith, to persecute all heretics and their inherents, to seize and bring them before the inquisition and to denounce them, to commit no public office to such persons, nor to any who were prohibited by the inquisitors, nor to receive them in their families, to guard all the preeminences, privileges, exemptions, and immunities of the inquisitors, their officials, and familiars, to execute all sentences pronounced by the inquisitors, and to be obedient to God, to the Roman Church, and to the inquisitors and their successors. In this, the clause pledging observance of the privileges and exemptions of the officials was highly important for, as we shall see hereafter, the privileges claimed by the inquisition were the source of perpetual and irritating quarrels with the royal and local magistrates. It was an innovation of the middle of the 16th century, for Prince Philip, in a letter of December 2, 1553, to the tribunal of Valencia, says that he hears it requires the royal officials to swear to maintain the privileges, usages, and customs of the inquisition. This, he says, is a novelty, and, as he does not approve of innovations, he asks what authority it has for such a requirement. To this, the answer was that every year, when the municipal officials enter upon their duties, they come and take such an oath, and the records showed that this had been observed for a hundred years without contradiction. This seems to have silenced his objections, and the formula became general. The Valencia Concordia, or Agreement of 1554, simply provides that the secular magistrates shall take the accustomed oath, and what that was is doubtless shown by the one taken, in 1626, by the Almonte Sen, or Sealer of weights and measures, when he came to the inquisition and swore on the cross and the Gospels to observe the articles customarily read to the royal officials, and to guard the privileges of the Holy Office and defend it with all his power. Even all this was insufficient to emphasize the universal subordination. At all Autus de Fe, which were attended by the highest in the land as well as by the lowest, and at the annual proclamation of the Edict of Faith, to which the whole population was summoned, a notary of the inquisition held up a cross and addressed the people. Raise your hands and let each one say that he swears by God and Santa Maria and the cross and the words of the Holy Gospels, that he will favor and defend and aid the Holy Catholic Faith and the Holy Inquisition, its ministers and officials, and will manifest and make known each and every heretic, foutor, defender and receiver of heretics, and all disturbers and impedors of the Holy Office, and that he will not favor or help or conceal them, but as soon as he knows of them, he will denounce them to the inquisitors, and if he does otherwise, that God may treat him as those who knowingly perjure themselves. Let everyone say Amen. Amen. When the sovereign was present at an auto, this general oath did not suffice and he took a special one. Thus, at the Valladolid Auto of May 21st, 1559, the inquisitor general Valdez administered to it the Regent Juana, and at that of Madrid in 1632, inquisitor general Zapata went to the window at which Philip IV was seated with a missile and a cross, on which the king swore to protect and defend the Catholic Faith as long as he lived and to aid and support the Inquisition, an oath which was then duly read aloud to the people. Thus, the whole nation was bound, in the most solemn manner, to be obedient to the Inquisition and to submit to what it might assert to be its privileges. How purely ministerial were the functions of the public officials in all that related to the Inquisition, even under Philip V was illustrated when, at Barcelona, in an Auto de Fe of June 28th, 1715, a bigamest named Medrano was sentenced to 200 lashes to be inflicted on the 30th. On the 29th, word was sent to the public executioner to be ready to administer them, but the visory, the Marquis of Castel Rodrigo, forbade the executioner to act until he should give permission, holding that no public punishment should be inflicted until he should be officially notified of the sentence. There were hasty conferences and debates lasting till nearly midnight, and it was not until 7am of the 30th that the Marquis gave way and the sentence was executed. The tribunal reported the affair to the Suprema, which replied in the name of the King, diplomatically thanking the Marquis and rebuking his legal advisor, who was told that it was his duty and that of all officials to be obedient to the Inquisition. As a perpetual reminder of this subordination, there appears to have been kept in the Royal Chancellery the formula of a letter addressed to all visories and captains-general. This recited the invaluable services of the Inquisition in clearing the land of infinite heretics and preserving it from the convulsions afflicting other nations, thus rendering its efficiency one of the chief concerns of the Crown. Therefore the King charges his representatives emphatically to honor and favor all Inquisitors, officials, and familiars, giving them all the necessary aid for which they ask, and enforcing the observance of all the privileges and exemptions conceded to them by law, concordias, orilsedulas, use and custom, and in any other way, so that the Holy Office may have the full liberty and authority which it has always enjoyed, and which the King desires it to retain. A copy of this was sent to all the visories in 1603, and, as I have chanced to find it again addressed in 1652, to the Duke of Montalto. Then, visory of Valencia, it was presumably part of the regular instructions furnished to all who were appointed to these responsible positions. 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 cesatio ad 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 cannons. On the other hand, the Inquisitor was practically immune. His antagonists were mostly secular authorities who had no such weapons in their armories, and, when he chanced to quarrel with a prelate, he usually took care to be the first to fulminate in excommunication, and then unconcernedly disregarded the countersentures 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. There was another provision which rendered it even more formidable as an antagonist. In matters of faith and all pertaining directly or indirectly thereto, its jurisdiction was exclusive. In the extensive field of civil and criminal business, of which it obtained cognizance through the immunities of its officials, and, in the frequent quarrels arising from questions of ceremony and precedence, no court, whether secular or spiritual, had any power to inhibit any action which it might see fit to take. By special papal favor, however, it had power to inhibit their action, and thus to cripple them on the spot. This extraordinary privilege, with power to sub-delegate, appears to have been first granted in the commissions issued in 1507. To Jiménez and Enguera, as Inquisitors General respectively, of Castile and Aragon, and was repeated in those of Luis Mercader and Pedro Juan Faúl in 1513. For a considerable time, this clause disappears from the commissions, but towards the close of the century, it again finds its place, in a more detailed and absolute form in that granted to Manrique de Lara, after which it continued in those of his successors to the end. It confers the power of inhibiting all judges, even of archipiscopal dignity, under pecuniary penalties and censures, to be enforced by the invocation of the secular arm, and of absolving them after they shall have submitted and obeyed. This proclaimed to the world that the Inquisition outranked all other authorities in church and state, and the power was too often exercised for its existence to be ignored or forgotten. This superiority found practical expression in the rule that, in the innumerable conflicts of jurisdiction, all secular and ecclesiastical judges must answer communications from Inquisitors in the form of petition and not by letter. If they replied to commands and combinations by letter, they were to be fined, and proceedings were to be commenced against them and their messengers, and they were required to withdraw and erase from their records all such letters which were held to be disrespectful to the superiority of the Holy Office. 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 copentencia or cumbra's 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. Another weapon of tremendous efficacy was the power of arrest, possessed at will by Inquisitors during the greater portion of the career of the Inquisition. Even to gratify mere vindictiveness by simply asserting that there was a matter of faith, the Inquisitor could throw anyone into the secret prison. The civil magistrate might thus abuse his authority with little damage to the victim, but it was otherwise with the Inquisition. In the insane estimate placed on Limpieza de Sangre, or Purity of Blood, the career of a man and his descendants was fatally narrowed by such a stain on his orthodoxy. It mattered little what was the outcome of the case. The fact of imprisonment was remembered and handed down through generations, while the fact of its being causeless was forgotten. In the latter period, when the Suprema supervised every act of the tribunals, the opportunities for this were greatly restricted, but during the more active times, the ill-will of an Inquisitor could at any moment inflict this most serious injury, and the power was often recklessly abused in the perpetual conflicts with the secular authorities. The ability, thus, to destroy at a word the prospects in life of any man was a terrible weapon which goes far to explain the awe with which the Inquisitor was regarded by the community. That the Inquisitor should assume to be superior to all other dignitaries was the natural result of the powers thus concentrated in him. Paramo 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, 1713, boasted that its jurisdiction was so superior that there was not a person in the kingdom exempt from it. The Hathi 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 anyone, save the king, the queen, or a royal prince, and are not, in any 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 Visory, or the Archbishop, or accept their invitations, for such demonstrations were due only to the person of the king. Exception, however, was probably taken to this, for a Carta Accordada of March 17th, 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. In the social hierarchy, the Visories and captains general stood next to the king as representing, in their respective governments, the royal person. The rank these exalted personages was not beyond inquisitorial ambition. In 1588, there was a great scandal in Lima, when the Inquisitors claimed precedence over the Count of Villar, the Visory of Peru, and carried their point by excommunicating him. But Philip II, in a Sedgula of March 8th, 1589, took them severely to task for their arrogance, and added that the Visory was equally to blame for yielding, as he represented the royal power. This lesson was ineffectual, and some years later, another method was tried of asserting superiority. In 1596, the Captain General of Aragon complained to the king that, in the recent Autudefe, the Inquisitors had refused to give him the title of Excellency. To this, Philip replied, February 6th, 1597, that it was unreasonable for them, thus, to affect equality with his personal representative. They must either concede to him the title of Excellency, or themselves be treated as Vuest America, in place of Muy Elestres or Señoría, and therefore he could attend the next auto. This asserted superiority of the Inquisition was very galling to the bishops, who argued that the Holy Office had been founded only 400 years before, as an aid to their jurisdiction, and they resented bitterly the efforts of the Resolute Upstarts to claim higher privileges and precedents. The Inquisition, however, was an organized whole, with sharp and unsparing methods of enforcing its claims, and protected in every way from assault, while the Episcopate was a scattered and unwieldly body. Acting individually, and, for the most part, powerless to defend the officials through whom it acted, from those who claimed that everything concerning themselves was a matter of faith, of which they had exclusive cognizance. The serious conflicts over jurisdiction will be considered in a subsequent chapter. Here, we are concerned merely with the questions of etiquette and ceremonial. Seen through the perspective of the centuries, the quarrels, which were conducted with frantic eagerness, seemed trivialities unworthy of record, but their significance was momentous to the party's concern, as they involved superiority and inferiority. The hundred years' quarrel over precedence in Rome, between the ambassadors of France and Spain, which was not settled until 1661 by the triumph of France, had a meaning beyond a mere question of ceremony. In Spain, these debates often filled the land with confusion. All parties were tenacious of what they conceived to be their rights, and were ready to explode in violence on the smallest provocation. The enormous mass of letters and papers concerning the seats and positions of the inquisitors and their officials at all public functions, whether seats should be chairs or benches, or whether they were to have canobies or cushions or carpets, chose that these were regarded as matters of the highest moment, giving rise to envenomed quarrels with the ecclesiastical and secular dignitaries, requiring for their settlement the interposition of the royal authority. The inquisitors were constantly aerogating to themselves external marks of superiority, and the others were disputing it with such avihements that elevated the most trivial affairs into matters of national importance. And the attention of the king and the highest ministers was diverted from affairs of state to pacify obscure quarrels in every corner of the land. It would be futile to enter into the details of these multitudinous squabbles, but one or two subjects in dispute may be mentioned to illustrate the ingenuity with which the inquisition pushed its claims to superiority. Towards the middle of the 17th century, it demanded that, when there was an Episcopal letter or mandate to be published in the churches and also an edict or letter of the inquisition, the latter should have presidents in the reading. This was naturally regarded as an effort to show that the inquisitorial jurisdiction was superior to the Episcopal, and it led to frequent scandals. In 1645, at Valencia, on Passion Sunday, a secretary of the tribunal endeavored to read letters of the inquisition before one of the archbishops. But, by the latter's order, the priest refused to give way, whereupon the inquisitors arrested him. The matter was carried up to the king, who ordered the priest to be discharged in such wise that there should be no record of his prosecution and that his good fame should be restored. Soon after this, in Saragossa, on a feast day in the cathedral, a priest commenced to read an archepiscopal letter, but before he had finished more than a few lines, a secretary of the inquisition mounted the other pulpit and began reading a letter of the inquisition. The priest was so disturbed that he stopped, whereupon the archbishop, Juan Cebrian, ordered his arrest, but he pleaded his surprise and confusion and the archbishop relented. In 1649, a more determined effort was made by the Saragossa tribunal. August 15th, the parish priest of the cathedral read certain archepiscopal letters at the accustomed time and was followed by the secretary of the inquisition with others of the inquisitors. Two days later, the priest was summoned before the tribunal and was made to swear secrecy as to orders given to him. The result showed what were his instructions. For the next Sunday, having archepiscopal letters to read, he waited until the secretary read those of the inquisitors. Some days later, similar secret orders were given to the priest of Nuestra Señora del Pilar, and when, on October 11th, he commenced reading an archepiscopal letter, an officer of the inquisition seized him by the arm and forced him to read first those of the tribunal. Archbishop Sidrián addressed memorials to the king September 7th and 21st and October 12th, asking his protection to preserve the archepiscopal jurisdiction. The council of Aragón presented a consulta supporting him, on which the wearied monarch made an endorsement, deploring the evil results of such conflicts and telling the council to write to the archbishop not to proceed to extremities. And to seek some adjustment similar to that by which, a short time before, Cardinal Moscoso in Toledo had caused an inquisitorial letter to be read on a different day, to which the tribunal must be made to conform. End of Book 2, Chapter 2, Part 1 Book 2, Chapter 2, Part 2 of History of the Inquisition of Spain, Vol. 1 This is a Librivox recording. These recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librivox.org. History of the Inquisition of Spain, Vol. 1 by Henry Charles Lee Book 2, Chapter 2, Supereminence Part 2 The persistence with which the Inquisition maintained any claim once advanced is illustrated by its endeavor to introduce a 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 Compostela 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 Cordova, which produced a fearful scandal. Neither side would yield, the services were interrupted, and the inquisitors endeavored to excommunicate the canons. But the latter raised such a din with howls and cries, the thunder of the organ, the clanger 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 who appealed to the king in a portentous document covering 256 folio pages. Philip and his advisors at the moment had ample occupation, what with the dismissal of Olivares, the evil tidings from Rosroy, and the rebellions of 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 Compostela, Grenada, and Cartegena shows how obstinate and repeated had been the effort of the Holy Office. Notwithstanding this, the tribunal of Cordova refused obedience to the royal mandate and a second letter of September 28 from Saravosa where Philip was directing the campaign against Catalonia was required. This was couched in preemptory 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. While thus steadily endeavoring to encroach on the rights of others, the position was super-sensitive as to anything that might be reckoned as an attempt by other bodies to assert superiority and it vindicated what it held to be its rights with customary violence. When the funeral solemnities of Queen Anna of Austria were celebrated in Seville in 1580, a bitter quarrel about precedence in seats arose between the tribunal, the Royal Audiencia or High Court of Sequise. When the former arbitrarily suspended the obsequies until consultation could be had with Philip II, then in Lisbon, engaged in the absorption of Portugal, he regulated the position which each of the contending parties should occupy and the postponed honors were duly rendered. Matters remained quiescent until a similar function became necessary after the death of Philip in 1598. These spent weeks in costly preparations and the catafalque erected in the cathedral was regarded as worthy of that magnificent building. November the 29th was fixed for the ceremonies on the vigil, the regent, or presidential judge of the Audiencia, sent a chair from his house to the place assigned to him, but the chapter protested so vigorously against the innovation that he was obliged to remove it. The following morning, when the various bodies entered the church at half past nine, the benches assigned to the judges and their wives were seen to be draped in mourning. This was at once regarded as an effort on their part to establish preeminence and excited great indignation. The services commenced, and during the mass the inquisitors sent word to the Cabildo, or city magistracy, that it should order the mourning removed. After some demure, the Cabildo sent its procurator mayor, Pedro de Escobar, with a notary, and some aguasiles, to the Audiencia, bearing a message to the effect that if the drapery were not removed, the inquisitors and the church authorities were agreed that the ceremonies should be suspended. He was told not to approach, and on persisting, he and his followers were arrested and thrown into the public jail. The inquisitors then sent their secretary with a message, but he too was kept at a distance when he mounted the steps of the Catafalque and cried out that the tribunal excommunicated the three judges, Vallejo, Lorenzana, and Guerra, a second time he came with a message, which he was not allowed to deliver, and again he mounted the steps to declare all the judges excommunicated and that they must leave the church in order that the services might proceed, for the presence of excommunicates was a bar to all public worship. This was repeated again by the fiscal, when the Audiencia drew up a paper declaring the acts of the tribunal to be null and void, and ordering it to remove the censure under pain of forfeiting citizenship and temporalities, but the scrivener sent to serve it was refused a hearing and on his persisting was threatened with a pillory. The allocate of the city endeavored to calm the inquisitors, but inquisitor Zapata replied furiously that if St. Paul came from heaven and ordered them to do otherwise they would refuse if it cost them their souls. Meanwhile, there were similar trouble and complications among the church authorities. The vicar general, Pedro Ramirez de Leon, ordered the services resumed under pain for the dean and officiating priest of excommunication and of a thousand duquettes. The pre-center and cannons appealed to the pope, but the vicar general published them in the choir as excommunicates. The celebrant, Dr. Negrón, was sought for, but he had prudently disappeared in the confusion and could not be found. It was now half past twelve and the cannons sent word to the audiencia that they were going and it could go. To leave the church, however, would seem like an admission by the judges that they were excommunicate and they grimly kept their seats. The cabildo of the city and the tribunal were not to be outdone and the three hostile groups sat glaring at each other until four o'clock when the absurdity of the situation grew too strong and they silently departed. Meanwhile the candles had been burning until five hundred duquettes worth of wax was uselessly consumed. So complicated a quarrel could, of course, only be straightened out by the king to whom all parties promptly appealed. The judges proved that they had not draped their benches as a sign of preeminence but had proposed that the same be done by the cabildo and the tribunal. As far as regards the latter the royal decision was manifested in two sedulas of December 22nd. One of these told the inquisitors that they had exceeded their jurisdiction in excommunicating the judges whom they were to absolve at Cautelam and they also had to pay wasted wax. The other ominously ordered the inquisitors Blanco and Zapata to appear at the court within fifteen days and not to depart without license. At the same time on December 21st the suspended upsequies were duly celebrated. It will be seen from these cases that the only appeal from inquisitorial aggression lay to the king 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 Borbans was therefore significantly indicated by a decision of Fernando the 6th in 1747. At the celebration in Grenada on September 11th of his ascension the Chanciaria Court of New Castile observed that the archbishop occupied a chair covered with taffety outside 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 preeminence and on receiving a refusal in terms of scant respect it stopped the second bullfight 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 privileges 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 the swelling self-assertion. Full discussion was devoted to the momentous question and on October the 3rd 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 Chanciaria represented the royal jurisdiction and thus indirectly the king himself it was entitled to preeminence 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 Cremain with his officers should remove them and engage in setting them up. 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 then in advance to be null and void. This in fact was only expressing and enforcing the canon laws enacted in the frenzied efforts to suppress heresy in the 13th century and still in vigor. A constitution of Urbane IV from 1261 to 1265 declares invalid the laws of any state or city which impede directly or indirectly 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. While this was designed to prevent the crippling of the Inquisition by hostile legislation it inferred a superiority to law and it was construed in the most liberal way as was seen in a struggle in Valencia this regulation for the improvement of the marketplace 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 Ribeira who was also captain general vainly endeavored to secure obedience to the law until the close of the 18th century the tribunal thus successfully defied the real Junta de Policia consisting of the captain general the regent 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 of Valencia was abated when the tribunal apologized to the Suprema for shielding and excusing 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 Madrid had been earlier relieved from such annoyance for a royal sedula 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 the lawlessness thus fostered degenerated into an arbitrary disregard for 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 benefaced priest of the cathedral and Juan Sebastián who were good musicians and who gathered some musical friends to sing complements with them on Holy Saturday at Santa Ingracia 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 the 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 benefaced 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 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 duquettes 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 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 on 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 when petty tyranny such as this could be practiced especially on the privileged class of priests we can appreciate the terrorism surrounding the tribunals another distinction contributed to the super eminence claimed by the inquisition was the possibility which shielded all who were in its service from an early period the church had sought to protect its members whose profession was assumed to debar them from the use of arms by investing them with a sanctity which should assure their safety in an age of violence throughout the middle ages no canon was more frequently invoked than Siquis Swadente Diablo which provided whoever struck a cleric or monk incurred an anathema removable only by personal appearance before the pope and accepting his sentence more than this was asked for by the inquisition for the greater portion of the officials were laymen they were no more exposed to injury or insult than those of the secular courts but it was assumed that there was a peculiar hatred felt for them and their faith entitled them to special security we shall see hereafter that the inquisition obtained jurisdiction in all matters connected with its officials but this while enabling it to give them special protection had the limitation that judgments of blood rendered ecclesiastics pronouncing them irregular in cases of heresy this had long been evaded by a hypocritical plea for mercy delivering convicts to the secular arm for execution but it was felt that some special faculties were requisite in dealing with cases of mere assault or homicide and a motu proprio was procured from Leo X January 28, 1515 empowering inquisitors to arrest anyone even of the highest rank whether lay or clerical who strikes, beats, mutilates or kills any minister or official of the inquisition and to deliver him to the secular arm for punishment without incurring irregularity even if it results in effusion of blood the holy office thus held in its own hands the protection of all who served it this was rendered still more efficient by subsequent papal action irritated at some resistance offered to the Roman inquisition pious the fifth published April 1, 1569 the ferocious bull see they protogendis under which anyone of whatever rank who should threaten, strike or kill an officer or a witness who should help a prisoner to escape or make way with any document or should lend aid or counsel to such act was to be delivered to the secular judge for punishment as a heretic that is to say for burning including confiscation and the infamy of his children although this was intended for Italy the Spanish inquisition speedily assumed the benefit of it it was sent out October 16 and it was annually published in the vernacular on holy Thursday thus all concerned that the business of the holy office were hedged around with an inviolability accorded to no other class of the community the inquisitors themselves were additionally protected against responsibility for their own maleficence by the received theory that scandal was more to be dreaded than crime that there was inherent in their office such importance to religion Francisco Peña in treating of this quotes the warnings of Aquinas as to cardinals and applies to the punishment of inquisitors if scandal has arisen they may be punished otherwise the danger to the reputation of the holy office is greater than that of impunity to the offender the tenderness in fact with which they were treated even when scandal had arisen thus when the reiterated complaints of Barcelona caused a visitation to be made there in 1567 by Desolto Salazar and his report confirmed the accusations showing the three inquisitors to be corrupt extortionate and unjust the only penalty imposed in 1568 was merely suspension for three years even this was not enforced at least with regard to one of them Dr. Zurita for we chance to meet him as inquisitor of Saragossa in 1570 he does not seem to have reformed for his transfer thence to Sardinia the least desirable of the tribunals can only have been in consequence of persistent misconduct the tribunals naturally showed the same mercy to their subordinates whose sole judges they were and this retention in office of those whom unfitness was proved was not the least of the burdens with which the inquisition afflicted Spain what rendered this inviolability more aggravating was that it extended to the servants and slaves of all connected with the holy office about 1540 a deputy corregidor of Murcia for insulting a servant of the messenger of the tribunal was exposed to the infamy of hearing mass as a penitent in 1564 we find Dr. Zurita on circuit through his district collecting evidence against Micael Bonnet of Palacio de Vicio for canning a servant boy of Benet Maudiguer who held some office and the case was said to Barcelona for trial which shows that it was regarded as serious so in 1568 for quarreling with a servant of Miser Complada who styled himself deputy of the abogado fiscal at Tarragona the Barcelona tribunal without verifying Complada's claims to office threw into prison and Antonio de Ergel and condemned Zapata to a fine of 30 Ducats and 6 months exile and Ergel to 10 Ducats and 3 months in Murcia Sebastián Gallego the servant of an inquisitor quarreled with a butcher over some meat when they exchanged insults the secular judge arrested both but the tribunal claimed them from the town the cases were of frequent occurrence and it is easy to conceive how galling was the insolence of a despised class thus enabled to repay the contempt with which it was habitually treated when the honor of slaves was thus of indicated inquisitors were not apt to condone any failure real or imaginary in the respect which they held to be their due 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 Saint Catherine and on October the 4th the Janitor invited the viceroy and principal dignitaries the inquisitor Juan Pizarra 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 Pizarra departed highly incensed when the Jesuits heard of it the janitor 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 the 8th the church was crowded with nobility awaiting the rising of the curtain when a messenger from Pizarra notified the Jesuits that he forbade the performance under pain of excommunication and other penalties and he had his discretion until after the price should have been examined and approved by him the audience was dismissed and the next day the minister was sent to Pizarra 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 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 Pizarra 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 the sensitiveness to disrespect and the terrorism which it's arbitrary punishment diffused through the community were well illustrated when in 1617 Fri Diego Vinaigas preached the Lenten sermons in the hospital of North Senhora de la García of Zaragoza he was a distinguished Benedictine who had held high offices in his order and his eloquence on this occasion was amounting to 8000 crowns on January 21st the inquisitors sent him a message to come to them the next day at 2pm to which he replied in writing that he was indisposed and closely occupied with his sermons if they wished to order him to preach the edict of faith he held himself already charged to do so and beg them to excuse his coming a second message told him to come at the same hour another day when he would be told what was wanted of him to which he answered that he would come but that if it was only to order him to preach the sermon he would return at once to Castile without again mounting the pulpit whether anything underlay this somewhat mysterious action does not appear the significance of the affair lies in the fact that it at once became a matter of general public concern when that same night the governor of the hospital heard of it he recognized the injury that would accrue to the institution and to the whole city and forthwith reported it to the visory who commissioned the Lisentiate Balthasar Navarro to undo the mischief the result of his labors was that the inquisitors declared that as Frey Vinegas pleaded in disposition they would excuse him for preaching the edict of faith the affair appeared to be settled and Vinegas begged permission to call on the two inquisitors Santos and Salcedo and pay them the Easter compliments they graciously acceded and on Easter Monday he waited on them exculpated himself and begged their pardon for having been prevented by in disposition from preaching the edict all of which they accepted with great courtesy the community breathed freer for some vindication of the honor of the inquisition had been expected the inquisitors however had been consulting the Suprema and vengeance was at hand the next day, Tuesday was the last of the series of sermons Vinegas preached successfully to a crowded church when, on descending from the pulpit he was arrested by an Alguazil of the inquisition through the crowd like a heresy arc attempting escape thrown into a coach and carried to the Alhaferria there he was placed on a bench like a criminal interrogated as one and then without being listened to was sentenced to perpetual deprivation of the honors of the inquisition such as preaching at autos the edicts etc and reprimanded with the utmost severity the infamy thus inflicted was indelible and the scandal was immense the people flocked in crowds to the visory in the greatest excitement and he had much adieu to quiet them by promising that it should be remedied Vinegas applied for the reinstatement of his honor to the council of Aragon which replied that it had no jurisdiction then he applied to the Suprema who refused to hear him he sent a memorial to the king who referred it to the council of Aragon and he continued his efforts for more than a year but it does not appear that he ever obtained relief as a rule any criticism of the justice of the inquisition and any complaint by one who had passed through its hands were offenses to be punished with more or less severity to this however there was an exception in a case the singularity of which deserves mention perhaps the most distinguished Franciscan theologian of his day was Miguel de Medina he fell under suspicion of Lutheranism was arrested and tried and died during trial May 1st 1578 in the secret prison of Toledo after four years of detention another Franciscan Francisco Ortiz espoused his cause so zealously that in a public sermon in 1576 he pronounced the trial to be unjust for it was the work of a conspiracy among his brother's friales the arrest was a mortal sin as though it were Saint Jerome or Saint Augustine and the inquisitor general Espinosa who had signed the warrant for the trial unless he had repented the inquisitors were ashamed and were seeking to avert the disgrace from themselves when they ought to be punishing the perjury of those who had testified this was flat blasphemy against the holy office and it is not easy to understand why the daring friale escaped when tried by the tribunal of Toledo with a reprimand administered privately in the audience chamber and a prohibition to enter Madrid without permission a sentence which is duly confirmed by the suprema we shall see hereafter that another fri Francisco Ortiz for a similar offense did not escape so easily these were the defenses thrown around the inquisition to secure its effectiveness in its supreme function of maintaining religious unity and these were the efforts which it made to secure the recognition of the supremacy to which it aspired it was an institution suddenly introduced into an established ecclesiastical and secular hierarchy which regarded the intruder with natural jealousy and dislike and resented its manifest resolve to use its spiritual authority for their humiliation its arrogant self assertion led it to frequent mistakes in which even its royal protectors could not justify it but it gradually won its way under the Habsburgs the advent of the border buns brought into play a new theory as to the relations between church and state and the civil authorities were able in time to vindicate their equality and independence we shall have the opportunity of following this struggle in which religion was in no way concerned for the defense of the faith was a pretext under which the holy office sought to irrigate to itself control over a constantly widening area of secular affairs while claiming release from secular obligations end of book two chapter two part two