 Book 2 Chapter 4, Part 4 of History of the Inquisition of Spain, Volume 1. But Concordia of 1553 was applicable to Castile alone, and that of 1554 to Valencia. Aragon remained without the slender alleviation provided for in the latter, for the adjustments of 1512 and 1521 were treated as non-existent. At the Cortes of 1563 and 4 the complaints were so vivacious that, as we have seen, Philip promised investigation which resulted in the Concordia of 1568. The formula for Aragon was virtually the same as the combined Valencia Concordias of 1554 and 1568, the evils with which the two kingdoms were afflicted being virtually the same. As usual, familiars were the class that excited the bitterest hostility. Their commissions were all to be called in, and then sixty were to be appointed for Saragossa, while the other towns were assigned from eight to one or two according to population. Their character was to be closely scrutinized, and all bandits, homicides, criminals, powerful nobles, friars and clerics were to be excluded, and no one was to enjoy the fuero whose name was not on lists presented to the magistrates. They were to have, in criminal matters, the active and passive fuero, but in civil suits only the passive. It was the same with servants of officials, while officials themselves had active and passive in both civil and criminal. The utmost caution and moderation was prescribed in the employment of inhibitions and ex-communications of the royal judges, and the royal aguacils were not to be arrested, save in cases of grave and notorious infraction of inquisitorial rights. The Concordia did not bring Concord. In 1571 there arose a bitter dispute between the Tribunal and the Court of the Justicia, in which ex-communications were freely used and, in December, the Diputados appealed to Pius V to evoke the case and remove the censures, but he told them to go to the inquisitor general. After the death of Pius the kingdom insisted with Gregory XIII, and, in December 1572, obtained from him a brief committing the case to the Suprema, or to Ponce de Leon, the new inquisitor general. But at the same time he ordered that some remedy be found to prevent the inquisitors from abusing the privileges conceded to them by the cannons and the popes. The next year, 1573, formal complaints were made by the kingdom of infractions of the Concordia, and by 1585 aggravation had reached a point that the Cortes asked for a new Concordia. Philip promised to send a person to Saragossa to gather information as to grievances alleged against certain inquisitors and officials, after which arrangements were made for the drafting and acceptance or rejection of a new agreement, but there is no trace of any resultant understanding. Quaraling necessarily continued with little intermission. In 1613 the removal of the name of Juan Porquete, a familiar from Insaculación by the Royal Commissioner of Tamarit, gave rise to a great disturbance which was long remembered, and in 1619 there was a clash between the Tribunal and the Captain-General, which caused much scandal, resulting in the Governor being summoned to Madrid where he was kept for four years. Thus it went on until, in 1626, the Cortes 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. The chief business of the Cortes 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 was to adopt as afuero, or law, the Concordia of 1568, which hitherto had only the authority of the orders of the King and the 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 new commission. The assessor of the Governor, as was his duty, entered the house of the Secretary of the Tribunal, flagrante delicio, 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. The inquisition had never been restrained by the Concordia, and now that it had again baffled the Cortes it was still less inclined to submit to restraint. Quorals continued as virulent as before, a single example of which will illustrate its invincible tendency to extend its jurisdiction on all possible pretexts. Perenguer de San Vicente of Huesca, in 1534, had founded in that city the College of Santiago, and when, in 1538, the municipality added an endowment of more than six thousand ducats. He made the magistrates its patrons. In 1542 he procured from Charles V, a cédula, confirmed by the Pope, making the inquisitors of Aragon visitors or inspectors of the College, during the royal pleasure and so long as they should perform their functions loyally and well. This supervisory function they stretched in course of time to bring the College and all its members under their jurisdiction, though in 1643 it was asserted that the last visitation had been made in 1624. This power they exercised in a most arbitrary fashion. When an attempt was made to burn the College and the town offered a reward for the detection of the incendiary, they interposed with the threat of an interdict and frightened the citizens into submission. In 1643 a Pascuanade against some of the inhabitants led to the prosecution of the rector of the College, Dr. Juan Lorenzo Salas, who promptly procured letters from the tribunal inhibiting further proceedings and demanding all the papers. The patience of Huesca was exhausted. It declared its position to be intolerable, for the students appealed to the Fuero in all disputes with the townsmen and the result of the stimulus thus given to that turbulent element was driving away the population and everyone lived in apprehension of some terrible event. To gain relief it applied to the audiencia for a competencia, but it was told that this was impossible, whereupon it obtained from the court of the Justicia of Fyrma prohibiting the inquisitors from acting. They refused to allow it to be served when it was put on the gate of the Aljaferia with notice that if answer was not made within thirty days it would be followed with exile and seizure of temporalities. The Suprema ordered the inquisitors to answer by excommunicating all concerned. Philip was then in Saragossa on his way to Catalonia to put himself at the head of his army, for the disgrace of Olivares had forced him to govern as well as to he was compelled to distract his thoughts with these miserable squabbles. The Council of Aragon appealed to him to require the inquisitors to show cause why they should not be deprived of the visitation and to impose silence on all until he should reach a decision. The audiencia rendered an opinion that the court of the Justicia could not refuse to issue the firma, and if the complainant insisted on its service it must be served if the whole power of the kingdom had to be called upon. On the other hand the Suprema declared that the service of the firma was unexampled and urged the king to support the inquisition in a matter on which depended the ruin or the preservation of the monarchy, for it would be better to close the holy office than to expose its jurisdiction to such disgrace, while in these calamitous times favor shown to the inquisition would placate God and ensure the success of his arms. Philip's reply was long and wandering, a resolute between his reverence for the inquisition and his fear of alienating in his extremity the Aragonese by violating their most cherished privileges. If Wesca would desist from the service of the firma he would order the tribunal to form a competencia. Wesca, however, was intractable. Its very existence, it asserted, was at stake and it begged the king not to interfere with the legal remedies to which it had been forced, and, in conveying this reply to the king, the Council of Aragon warned him that it could not prevent Wesca from serving the firma, as this would be a notorious violation of the law, on the point regarded by the kingdom as most essential. Yet after all the question was evaded by the device of appointing as visitor of the college the inquisitor Juan Llano de Valdez, who succeeded in reaching an agreement with the city. It would seem that thereafter special visitors were nominated for, in 1665, we hear of such an appointment issued to inquisitor Carlos de Loya, and it may be doubted whether Wesca gained much. These disturbances mark the highest point reached by the inquisition in Aragon as regards its temporal jurisdiction. How little cause of complaint it really had, and how Aragon, in spite of its sturdy independence, had endured greater abuses than those permitted in Castile, is evinced in a suggestion made by the Suprema, February 11, 1643, in response to a demand from the king to devise some new source of raising money for the bankrupt treasury. This was that if he would grant to the familiars of Castile the same privileges of active and passive fuero enjoyed by those of Aragon, they would cheerfully contribute to a considerable assessment, with the added advantage of diminishing the competencias which caused so much trouble and loss of time. Such a proposal affords the measure of the wrongs inflicted on society by those who profited by their exemption from the secular courts. For even the more limited privileges of the Castilian familiars rendered the position one to be eagerly sought, in spite of the considerable cost of proving the conditioned precedent of limpieza, or purity of blood. These evils were vastly aggravated by the fact, as we shall see hereafter, that the tribunals never regarded the limitation on numbers prescribed by the Concordias, but filled the land with these privileged persons who, for the most part, turned to the best account the protection of the Holy Office. That Aragon should be permanently restive under this adverse discrimination was inevitable, and the time had come when it could dictate in place of supplicating. Since the Cortes of 1626, twenty years elapsed before Philip found himself constrained to assemble them again. The situation was desperate. The Catalan rebellion bade fair to end in the permanent alienation of the Principality to France, and it was not wise to impose too severe a strain on the loyalty of Aragon when the Cortes met September 20, 1645, for a session of fifteen months. In preparation for the struggle, the Suprema presented to the King September 30, an elaborately argued memorial in which it told him that the calamities of the war should lead him to greater zeal in fortifying the Inquisition with new graces and privileges, so as to win the favour of God, whose cause they served and from whom alone was relief to be expected. It was therefore asked that whatever demands on the subject should be presented should be reserved for discussion with the Inquisitor General and Suprema. Philip doubtless made the desired promise, but the Aragonese had too often found their hopes frustrated in this matter to submit to it again under existing circumstances. The Cortes lost no time in presenting their petition on the subject, which asked for a radical reform in all the Aragonese kingdoms. The jurisdiction of the Inquisition was to be confined to cases of faith and to civil and criminal actions between its officials. If certain mixed cases, such as bigamy, unnatural crime, sorcery, solicitation, and censorship, it should have jurisdiction cumulative with the appropriate secular and spiritual courts. A number of minor points were added, including a demand that all inquisitors and officials should be natives, and it was significantly stated that the petition was presented thus early in order that it might be granted, so that the Cortes could proceed more heartily with the Servicio that was asked for. This paper was submitted to the Suprema, which replied in a long consulta, March 31, 1646, arguing that the Inquisition had been introduced into Aragon without law and was independent of all law. It proceeded to demonstrate, as we have seen, that its temporal jurisdiction was inalienable and that the Concordias were compacts which could not be modified without its consent. The officials were so abhorred that it would be impossible for them to perform their duties if they were not thus protected. If the Cortes should stubbornly insist, the king was urged, like Charles V in 1518, to remember his soul and his conscience and to prefer the loss of part of his dominions rather than consent to anything contrary to the honor of God and the authority of the Inquisition. The policy of the Suprema was to carry the war into Africa, and it followed this manifesto with another, demanding that the court of the Justicia should be prohibited from issuing firmas and manifestaciones in cases concerning the Inquisition. Both sides asked for more than they expected to get, and when the Cortes answered these papers, June 20, after numerous citations to disprove the arguments of the Suprema and an exposition of the hardships caused by the existing system, they opened the way to a compromise by pointing out that Castile, for nearly a hundred years, had enjoyed what Aragon had vainly prayed for, and concluded by suggesting that the best settlement would be to confer on Aragon the Concordia of Castile which had been thoroughly discussed by lawyers and its practical working determined and understood. Finally the demands of the Cortes were formulated in a series of twenty-seven articles which were prudently declared to be law whether confirmed or not by the Inquisitor General. Of these the essential ones deprived familiars of the active and passive fuero in civil suits, of the active in criminal cases, and accepted certain specified crimes in the passive. Servants of salaried officials were put on the same footing in criminal matters. The number of both familiars and salaried officials was limited to 450 in the whole kingdom, and those who held office were deprived of the fuero for official malfeasance. In cases not of faith the use of torture was prohibited as well as confinement in the secret prison. All cases, whether civil or criminal, were to be concluded within two years, fraudulent alienation of property to officials so as to place it under the fuero was declared invalid. All persons or bodies, in case of violation of these provisions, had the right to avail themselves of all remedies known to the laws of the land, while to the tribunal was reserved the power to employ censures and other legal processes. A concession was made by granting to both officials and familiars the right of asylum in their houses, relief from billeting, exemption from arrest for debt, capacity to hold office and freedom from tolls, farages, et cetera. In return for this the Cortes were liberal with the Servicio, agreeing to keep in the field 2,000 foot and 500 horse for four years, paying them two reales a day, while the king should find them in food, arms, and horses. 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 360 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 counselor, the Mystic Sor Maria de Agreda, affirming his determination to uphold the Inquisition, and he must have been surprised when that clear-sided 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 Ingracia 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 an 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. It was not long before the sullen yielding of the Inquisition to the changed situation was manifested in a case which did not tend to restore it to reverence. Inquisitor Lasaeta was involved in an intrigue with a married woman of San Andorri whose husband, a Catalan named Miguel Chauvet, grew suspicious and pretended to take a journey. Lasaeta fell into the trap. October 27, 1647 he went to the house at nightfall, leaving his coach in hiding behind the shambles. The coachman waited for him in vain, for the injured husband had entered by a side door and given him a sword thrust of which he died in the street while stumbling forward in search of his coach. The woman escaped and Chauvet disappeared, but some demonstration was necessary and the tribunal arrested Juan Francisco Arnal as an accessory. The court of the Justicia issued a manifestación in his favor when the Inquisitors complained of the interference with their functions of such orders and that the tribunal could not be maintained if they were to be banished and their temporalities be seized whenever they judged that a case was not comprehended within the fueros. To this the Council of Aragon replied that the court of the Justicia always acted with great caution and that in the present case Arnal had renounced the manifestación and had been returned to the tribunal which had found him innocent and had discharged him. The Suprema insisted that it would be better to remove the tribunal from Aragon than to have it subjected to such insults, to which the Council rejoined that there was no admission of firmas and manifestaciones except in matters not of faith. If the Inquisitors would keep within their just limits such troubles would be avoided, while if they exceeded them the kingdom must avail itself of the remedies provided by the laws. Now in this case the tribunal was strictly within its rights under the Concordia and its abstention from excommunication and interdict indicates how thoroughly it was humbled. Another grievance of the Inquisition shows how completely the tables were turned. September 23, 1648 the Suprema represented in a consulta that the tribunal had been notified to reduce the number of its officials and familiars to the prescribed 450 which had not been done under the plea that the number was insufficient, that the Concordia did not order the dismissal of the Overplus and that the incumbents could not be deprived of their rights. Still there was little doubt that persistent refusal would lead the Diputados to obtain a firma compelling a selection and until this was done no familiar would be allowed to enjoy their privileges. In fact a number of towns had already assumed this position and others were taking steps to obtain firmas. The Suprema endeavored to show the illegality of this on the ground that the Concordia of 1646 was not valid in the absence of confirmation by the Inquisitor General. Philip submitted this to the Council of Aragon and merely transmitted its answer in non-committal fashion to the Suprema for its information. This took the ground that only the secular and royal jurisdiction was concerned. The king had confirmed the laws which provided that the acquiescence of the Inquisitor General was unnecessary. If parties were aggrieved they could apply to the Court of the Justicia. Under these conditions the laws of 1646 by restricting the tribunal to its proper functions were a severe blow to its predominance, diminishing the terror which it inspired and affecting in some degree its finances. The continual suits brought before it had afforded a rich harvest of fees for its officials, and the fines imposed had been a resource to its treasury. All this fell off greatly, and in 1649 the Suprema reminded Philip that in 1646 it had predicted this result and he had promised indemnification by a fixed income to be paid by Aragon or by the royal treasury, although it did not regard the laws as binding in the absence of confirmation by the Inquisitor General and had resisted their execution in every way. Still they were executed and the officials were suffering keenly from their diminished fees, wherefore it asked the king to grant the four notaries and messengers eight hundred ducats a year out of the fund for the Catalan refugees. This demand and the impudent assertion of the nullity of the laws which he had approved provoked Philip into one of his rare assertions of kingship. The Catalan fund, he replied, could not be touched. He would listen to other suggestions for the relief of the incumbents, but not of their successors. He was master of the secular jurisdiction granted to the Inquisition for his service, and could make laws and abrogate them at his pleasure. History of the Inquisition of Spain. Volume 1. This is the Libovarx Recording. All Libovarx recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Libovarx.org. Recording by Bill McGilvery. History of the Inquisition of Spain. Volume 1 by Henry Charles Lee. Book 2, Chapter 4. Conflicting Jurisdictions. Part 5. Philip had learned a lesson, and the laws of 1646 were duly executed. When in 1677 there was another convocation of the Cortez of Aragon, the Suprema in a supple and tone, contrasting strongly with its former arrogance, begged Carlos II to influence them to condescend to a modification. He gave the most dolerous account of the condition of the Saragossa Tribunal, resulting from that legislation. It forbore to discuss whether the officials had given just cause of complaint, but the total destruction of the Inquisition was curing one malady by introducing a worse one, and the Inquisition of Aragon had been destroyed. The number of officials was reduced below that at the time of its foundation, and its poverty was so great that wages were unpaid and the Tribunal would probably have to be abandoned. The treasurer was compelled to collect its income and debts through the court of the Hustizia, where it was impossible for him to carry on so many suits, so that only those paid whose conscience compelled them. The reduction of the officials impeded its youthfulness. Possibly there were fewer culprits, but certainly there were fewer convictions, less in Aragon than in other provinces, and a single one who escaped correction was a matter of greater consequence to God than the enjoyment of the Furo by 500 persons. It was impossible to fill the allotted number of families, for the Furo in criminal matters left to them was rather a disadvantage, for they died in prison owing to the interminable delays in setting the numerous competencies, while other defendants were released on bail. At the same time, the deprivation of the active Furo exposed them to the effects of the general hatred felt for them. It was inconceivable that, in so pious a nation, this hatred could be caused by their functions, but its existence was a matter of experience, and in the absence of protection, the risk to which it exposed them prevented men from seeking position. The Inquisition did not desire jurisdiction, but it could not exist without revenue and officials, and it therefore prayed the King that proper measures of relief be discussed in the Cortes, or a Hunter could be formed from both parties, and a new Concordia be framed. Even allowing for customary exaggeration, this paper shows how greatly the Inquisition had outgrown the functions for which it had been imposed upon the people. The concessions asked were singularly moderate, that the treasurers should not be required to make collections through the court of the Justizia that more familiars be allowed, though it had just been said that they could not be had, that they be admitted to bail during competencies, and a timid suggestion respecting the firmer and the manifestacion. The time, however, was not propitious even for demand so modest. The youthful Carlos II had just relegated his mother to a convent, and her favorite, Valenzuela, to the Philippines. All power was in the hands of Don Juan of Austria, who held the Inquisitor General, Valadarez, to be his personal enemy. The appeal of the Supremo was received unsympathetically, and it seems to have gained nothing. That the Aragonese were content with the situation appears from the fact that the only complaint made by the Cortes regarded the non-observance of a law of 1646, prescribing the number of natives to be employed by the Tribunal. And this arose merely from greed of office, for they suggested that for each foreigner appointed in Aragon, an Aragonese should have a corresponding birth in a tribunal elsewhere. The legislation of 1646 remained a finality. As late as 1741, the Supremo remonstrated against the Odentia of Saragossa for impeding the jurisdiction of the Tribunal by employing the firmer, which with customary disingenuousness it characterized as an innovation. Catalonia was as intractable as Aragon, while its more pronounced spirit of independence rendered it particularly troublesome. Although it lacked the institution of the Hustesia, it had a somewhat imperfect substitute in the Banche Real, or King's Bench, which was used in the appeals por via de fiorza from the spiritual courts. The Odentia summoned the ecclesiastical judge before it, and his disregard of the summons was followed by a decree of banishment and seizure of temporalities. The inquisitors denied their liability to this, the Catalans asserted it, and the endeavor to enforce it was a serious cause of quarrel. It was not without influence. For a memorial in 1632 from the inquisitors complains that the Duke of Marquara, when Viceroy in 1592 had employed it against the Tribunal, since when the veneration felt for the latter had greatly declined, and a complaint of the Catalan authorities to Carlos II in 1695 describes it as the sole refuge and protection of the people from the oppression of the inquisitors and ecclesiastical judges. We have already seen the Concordia reached in 1512 abolishing most of the then existing abuses, how it was sworn to by King, inquisitor general and inquisitors, and how a similar oath was to be taken by all future inquisitors, how Leo the Tenth obligingly released them all from their oaths, how Ferdinand, just before his death, accepted the conditions in December 1515, and the complacent Pontiff and the bull Pastorialis Ophisi confirm them, and how Barcelona in return bound itself to a yearly subvention of 600 duquets. It is well to recall these facts in view of the bear-faced denials with which subsequently the Catalan complaints of non-observants were persistently met. Even while the papal dispensation from the oath was still in force, the instructions issued by inquisitor general Mercader in 1514 prescribe rules which if observed would have removed the leading cause of complaint. Any official or familiar committing a crime deserving of corporal punishment was to be denounced to him when he would dismiss the culprit and punish the inquisitor who tolerated it. The civil suits of officials were to be brought in the court of the defendant if the official was plaintive. All proceedings before an inquisitor were pronounced invalid and both official and inquisitor were to be punished. Even when both parties to a contract agreed to accept the form of the tribunal, inquisitors were forbidden under pain of punishment to entertain the case. Secular officials could arrest familiars caught in the act. Officials were forbidden to engage in trade even though third parties and were deprived of the furor for all matters dense arising and similarly if they purchased claims subject to suits now could they employ other officials to collect debts connected with their private estates. Although these instructions were enforced for only a year or two they have interest as manifesting Ferdinand's purpose that the Holy Office should not be distracted from its legitimate functions or be used to oppress his subjects or to minister to private greed. He could at the same time believe that it required special privileges for it did not as yet inspire awe in so turbulent a population. In that same year 1514 at Lareda the inquisitor cannon and teased was besieged in his house and the assailants were with difficulty beaten off after which they defiantly walked the streets uttering challenges to his defenders. A further victory was gained by the Catalan's at the Cortes of Manzun in 1520 when on December 28 Cardinal Adrian in the most solemn manner not only swore to observe the articles of 1512 but presented for attestation a document from Queen Wana and Charles V promising investigation and redress of charges brought against certain officials and enacting that to prevent such abuse for the future all offenses disconnected with the faith committed by officials should be tried by the ordinary courts thus depriving them of the much prized criminal passive furrow. This too Adrian swore to observe when the necessary people confirmation should be obtained a confirmation which the inquisition probably had sufficient influence to prevent as there appears to be no further trace of it. The articles of 1512 thus were a compact in which the Catalan's 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 Loez who was inquisitor of Barcelona for 20 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. In this they were wise for they emancipated themselves completely from the Concordia. The Cortes of 1547 complained of the inordinate multiplication of familias over the 30 allowed by it. End 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. How completely the provisions of the Concordia were ignored is manifest in 1551 when Catalina Marciana asked relief in the Vegas court from suits brought against her in the inquisition by the fiscal, the abbot of Bessal, when she was entitled to her own court. On refusal of redress by the inquisitor Juan Arias, a monitorio, was obtained from the Banque Real whereupon Arias threw the officials of the Vegas court into prison and kept them there. The matter was carried up to the royal councils with the result that the judges of the adencia 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. Thus supported by the monarch the tribunal exercised its power at discretion without regard to compacts. The report in 1561 by inquisitor Gaspar Cervantes of the visitation which he had just completed describes the disorders which had long reigned in all departments. The last visitation had been made in 1550 and its recommendations had been wholly ignored. It had ordered a reduction in the number of familias and that list of them to be sent to the Supremo which had not been done. In fact, the tribunal itself had kept no correct register. It had 108 names recorded for Barcelona but when they were ordered to present their papers under penalty of being dropped only 68 of these came forward while there were 31 who were not registered. The number he said should be reduced and more care be exercised in the selection. Many of the laymen were bandits and the clerics were men of bad character who sought the office to obtain exemption from their prelates. All this resulted in so much secular business that it seems to be the real duty of the tribunal and that nothing else was attended to. In fact, there was so little to do in matters of faith that the inquisitors could well be spared from Barcelona and employ themselves in visiting their district. All this is explicable by the exorbitance of the fees charged about which there was much complaint. There was no authorized fee bill. In civil cases the inquisitive charged from two and a half to 10% on the amount at issue depending on its magnitude with a maximum of 75 Libras. In criminal cases they received nothing but had the opportunity of inflicting fines. The officials had fees for every act drawing and copying papers serving notices summoning witnesses levying executions etc etc and there was a standing quarrel between the notaries of the three departments of the secreto or tribunal of faith of sequestration and of the juzgado or court of confiscation as to which should have the business that the Cortes of Monzón in 1563-1564 should protest energetically against these abuses was natural. Indeed a Catalan named Gaspard Mercadar 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. 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 filed 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. Now was this all for it would seem that anyone who claimed the funeral 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 preemptory demand of the tribunal to surrender cases. Instances were given which show 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. That it should be hated was inevitable. In 1566 Govila Bishop of Elna defending himself for acts committed when he was inquisitor of Barcelona declared that the inquisition was even more odious in Catalonia than elsewhere. This hatred sometimes expressed itself more forcibly than by complaints. In 1567 the evocation of a case which the local authorities claimed as their own led to the fiercest excitement which the viceroy fruitlessly sought to ally and appealed to Philip II for his immediate interposition. Disregarding the invaluable secrecy of the inquisition the Diputados with the Vuega forced their way into the palace penetrated to the audience chamber where the inquisitors were trying a case and inventoryed and sequestered everything even to the private property of the inquisitor Padela in his apartments apparently a seizure of temporalities under the order of the Banque Rial. Even more flagrant was the insult committed when the messenger and the secretary were conveying from Perpignan to Barcelona to government officials accused of impeding the inquisition and also a prisoner under a charge of heresy. Nergerona one of the Diputados at the head of an armed band seized the whole party and carried them back to Perpignan where they were paraded through the streets with Blair of Trumpets as though criminals on the way to execution and were then cast into prison where they lay until discharge without accusation. This was the most serious assault on the dignity of the Holy Office and even worse was permitting the escape of the heretic but it was obligated to submit without vindicating its authority. Such being the temper of the Catalans in such the provocation to meet lawlessness was lawlessness. It is not surprising that when the Concordia of 1568 was prepared for the three kingdoms Catalonia would have none of it when in September it was submitted to the Diputados. They were incensed and proposed to send envoys to the king to remonstrate against it. There was a universal outcry that it was contrary to the Constitution and privileges of the land. They would observe it in so far as it was their favor but as to the rest they were ready to lose life, property and children rather than to submit to it. In February 1569 the inquisitors wrote that the people would not be content until they had driven the Inquisition from the land. As for themselves they proposed to go on as they had previously done until the Concordia should be accepted to which the supreme cordially assented. 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 they were so excited and so obstinate that any concessions would lead only to further demands but he asked the pope to dismiss the envoy referring them to him with recommendation for favorable consideration so that anything 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 was soon afterwards called upon to contribute to the defense 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 in 1573 states that after the Catalans had spent a hundred thousand dukets in these efforts the Inquisition imprisoned those who had been most active in the matter and they subsequently refused to leave the prison without a formal declaration that they had not been arrested for heresy. Descension 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 the Catalonia because they held rents on the Diputación. The Inquisitors exceeded 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, pastureage and other matters as required under the Concordia to which the Suprema supercellously replied by instructing the Inquisitor that as the people had rejected the Concordia they need not observe it. Then in 1585 as we have seen the Cortes 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 Cortes of 1599 under the new royalty of the useful 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 Libers to the King and 100,000 to his bride besides truly granting 10,000 to the Marquis of Diana soon to become Duke of Lerma and 6,000 to the Vice Chancellor of Aragon 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 600 Libers granted in 1520 if the people 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 dispatches to his ambassador were sent through the deep potatoes in order to satisfy them but they assuredly were not allowed to see others which instructed the ambassador to be circumspect in urging a matter. He also sent word to the Inquisitor General that the delivery of these dispatches had been delayed in order to give him time to express his views. The Suprema in appealing to Clement the Eighth 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 insofar 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 Cortes. End of Book Two, Chapter Four, Part Five Recording by Bill McGilvery of Hengham, Massachusetts Book Two, Chapter Four, Part Six of History of the Inquisition of Spain, Volume One This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by David Cole History of the Inquisition of Spain, Volume One by Henry Charles Lee Book Two, Chapter Four, Conflicting Jurisdictions, Part Six One of the articles required the execution of the Concordia of 1520 which embraced that of 1512 the fulfilment of which the Catalans had never ceased to demand and the manner in which the solemn compacts were argued away is instructive. In 1566 Govila, Bishop of Elna who had been Inquisitor of Barcelona calmly asserted that the articles of 1512 had been revoked as prejudicial to the free exercise of the Inquisition. The Supremia, in urging Clement VIII to refuse confirmation of the new Concordia of 1599 argued that the transactions of 1512 and 1520 were invalid through cimony as the Cortes had obtained the Ascent of Ferdinand in 1516 Seek and of Charles in 1520 by conditioning subsidios on it. Leo's bull of condemnation in 1513 was relied upon and that of confirmation in 1516 was dismissed as ob repetitious and surreptitious. So Cardinal Adrian's action in 1520 was represented as conditional on confirmation by the Holy See and as in no way binding on the Inquisition. So in 1632 the Barcelona Tribunal drew up a statement to be laid before Philip IV by the Supremia adroitly mixing up the affairs of Aragon and Catalonia and telling him that the Cortes of 1518 demanded the revival of the articles of 1512 that Charles refused to swear to them that Juan Pratt interpolated others for which he was imprisoned and that the effort failed. In transmitting this the Supremia added that the fact that the Cortes never ceased to demand the enforcement of the articles showed that they had never been observed. From first to last it was a history of deception in which kings conspired with inquisitors to betray their subjects without even the excuse that the faith was concerned in these details of secular jurisdiction. The Catalan temper was not soothed by the disappointment of 1599 and the refusal of redress prompted resort to forcible measures. There was a contest in 1608 in which the Barge Real uttered a sentence of banishment against the inquisitors. A vessel was made ready for their deportment but when the day came they barred their door and hung over it a portier of black velvet to which was attached a crucifix. The city showed its piety by placing candles in front of the sacred emblem and the chapter sent priests to pray before it. No one ventured to disturb it. The Dipudardos the chapter and the city authorities interposed and an accommodation was reached. A more savage quarrel arose in 1611 in consequence of the Vigua disarming the coachmen of an inquisitor. The city authorities seized the temporalities laid siege to the palace of the inquisition sentenced the inquisitors to banishment and proclaimed it with trumpets through the streets. This they justified to the king by telling him that the holy office had been instituted for a limited term which had expired so that it should be abolished in Catalonia and the cognizance of matters of faith were restored to the Episcopal wall courts all of which we are told gave his majesty much concern. Mutual detestation did not diminish and when the courtiers of 1626 were approaching the inquisitors anxiously urged the Supremer to impress upon the king that the peace and preservation of Catalonia depended upon the maintenance of their temporal jurisdiction. The deputies, they said, were holding daily hunters and accumulating stores of documents from the archives asserting that the time had expired for which the inquisition was instituted and if they accomplished their intention they will destroy it wholly. That they were really alarmed is visible in their asking the Supremer to secure some compromise. The Supremer duly represented the danger to Philip IV who, in reply, gave assurance that no prejudicial change would be approved for his unceasing desire was to promote the exaltation of the inquisition. After the courtiers had assembled the tribunal reported, June 27th, that they had drawn up a series of articles effectually disabling the jurisdiction of the inquisition and that they declared that they will not vote a subsidio until the king shall have confirmed them. The articles deemed so obnoxious scarce amounted to more than the Concordia of Castile so long in force save provisions that the inquisitors should be Catalans and should take an oath to obey the laws and that disputes of jurisdiction should be resettled by a hunter consisting of an inquisitor. Adjudicative of the Audiencia and the Bishop of Barcelona Moderate as they were, Philip kept his promise and referred them, September 23rd, to Diego de Guzman, Archbishop of Seville, acting head of the Supremer in the vacancy of the inquisitor-generalship so that on the adjournment of the courtiers the whole matter remained suspended. An attempt at compromise was made in what was known as the Concordia of Cardinal Zapata, arranged December 24th, 1630, between him as inquisitor-general and the Council of Arrogant. This made no substantial change in the jurisdiction of the inquisition, but was directed chiefly to restraining the misuse of excommunication on the one side and the recourse to the Bancher Real on the other by providing that all disputed cases should be settled by competencies conducted according to the received form of procedure, under penalty for a first defense of five hundred ducats on the tribunal refusing and suspension from office for a second. This left untouched the roots of trouble and accomplished little, in consequence it is said, of the delays and evasions of the inquisitors and frequent recourse continued to the Bancher Real, especially by creditors. The courtiers of 1626 had not been dissolved and they met again in 1632 to conclude their unfinished business. As usual the tribunal and the suprema prepared for the struggle by earnest appeals to Philip who responded with assurances of special care in all that concern the inquisition. The suprema had the hardyhood to tell him that the Concordia of 1512 on which the Catalan's based their claims had never been confirmed, but it was within the truth when it said that he had never been observed. It declared moreover that the articles framed by the courtiers would so prostrate the tribunal that it would have to cease its functions. A memorial by the secretary of the tribunal, Miguel Rodriguez, gives a deplorable account of the social condition of Catalonia, where the barons and gentlemen, the cities and church foundations, he says, possessed excessive powers and where the bishops were also barons. The hostility of the nobles and cities to the familiars was manifested by the daily murders committed on them and their children and the burning of their houses. But for the protection of the inquisition they would be exterminated. For its jurisdiction was the only one respected. Fathers enjoyed the murder of their sons, sons that of their fathers and wives that of their husbands, for fear of greater evils and, in addition to this, was the turbulent temper of the population. The viceroy's had nominal power, but it was exorcised only on the common folk and not on the powerful, whom no one dared to accuse or to bear witness against. All this busy preparation was superfluous. The Cortes was dissolved without gaining their object. The inquisition, as usual, had triumphed, but peace was impossible between the incompatible claims of rival jurisdictions. In 1637 the Supremer 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, finding one and discharging the other. When the tribunal sent to him a priest bearing a monitorio with excommunication, he shut the priest up in Communicardo, 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 Mallorca. The inquisitor assembled five bishops who declared that Cardona had incurred the excommunication of the bull Sidae Protogendis, and the inquisitor so declared him, though for the avoidance of scandal he forebore 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 Supremer 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, Seque Suadente, and of all Sidae Protogendis, be published in order that he might seek the salvation of his soul. To this the weary king could only repie by deprecating these unseemly quarrels, and ordering the viceroys should not try the cases of familiars. Cardona, apparently having undertaken to do this, only because there was no other authority the adventure to do so, although the offence was one that forfeited the fuero. 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 counseled abstention from severe measures of repression. Whatever share the inquisition may have had in stimulating the disaffection that led to the rebellion. The unredressed grievances which so excited the Cortes nowhere appear on the surface. The proximate cause, as has been stated above, was the burning of the churches of Monteiro and Rio de Arenas by the Neapolitan troops courted on the people. Some consecrated hosts were found reduced to coals, and the peasants, who had suffered from the outrages of the unpaid soldiery, rose in arms, cut them off in detail, styled themselves the exerquate Christia, and bore on their banners the venerable sacrament, with a legend, Senya Yudhikau Vastrakhosa, and claimed that their object was to protect the people and defend the Catholic faith. In fact, the inquisition was invited to prosecute the guilty authors of the sacrilege and undertook to do so, but of course the culprits could not be identified, and it was reduced to excommunicating them in bulk. It was against the representatives of the king that the initial riots of June 7 and 8, 1640, were directed. When the judges of the royal Audencia, and the viceroy, the Count of Santa Coloma, were murdered, the inquisitors at once proffered their services to Dipudardas, and at the request of the latter, they wrote to the king and inquisitor general, praising the efforts of the Dipudardas to preserve peace, not knowing that for months they had been organising the rebellion in correspondence with France. When, too, in September, a tax was laid to put the land in a state of defence, the assent of the tribunal was asked, after levying it on familiars. There was thus no open hostility towards the inquisition, but at the same time there was no respect for its inviolability. When the mob rose again on Christmas Day to put to death all Castilians, there was a report that two thousand of them were concealed in the inquisition. Led by a coachman of one of the inquisitors, the people broke into the inquisition, maltreated the officials, hanged some of them, emptied the money chests, and found in the secret prison a solitary Castilian on trial for heresy. Him they carried to the town council, who returned him to the tribunal, and garreted the coachman. When, on January 23, 1641, terms of submission to France were concluded, the inquisition was provided for. Having cut loose from Spain, it was impossible to permit the tribunal to remain subject to the Supremes in Madrid, and the clause respecting it was that all inquisitors and officials should be Catalan's. Jurisdiction should be predicted to matters of faith, and it should be directly under the Roman congregation of the Holy Office. Still the inquisitors remained at their posts. For five months they had had no word from the Supremes. They expected to be called upon to take the oath of allegiance to King Louis, and they sent their secretary, Juan de Arezo, to Madrid for instructions, suggesting that they had better move to Tarragona or Tortosa. Philip ordered them to remain, and they resolutely obeyed, but the situation grew constantly worse, and on November 7 they made another appeal, representing their danger, their destitution, their inability to perform their functions, and their expectation that they would be forced to kiss the hands of the Marshal de Breze, the approaching French governor. This was confirmed by Don Antonio de Aragon, who had just returned from Barcelona. On two occasions the Marlpets had fired at the inquisition, and heresy was rampant, for many of the French troops were Calvinists, and Calvinism was openly preached. The Supremes characteristically debated the question under four heads. Shall the inquisition be removed to Tarragona or Tortosa? Shall the inquisitors kiss the hands of the French governor? Does their lack of means to prosecute relieve them from prosecuting native or French heretics? Shall testimony against such heretics be taken in Madrid and action be based on it? After elaborate discussion the fourth question was decided the affirmative, and the other three in the negative. Juan de Man Oscar was appointed to gather testimony in Madrid, and the inquisitors were told to stand their ground and do their duty, using censures and interdictive necessary. If driven from the town they were to carry with them the records, so as to be able to work elsewhere. One of the inquisitors, Dr. Cortona, had left Barcelona for his home in Mallorca, the other two with most of the officials stood to their post, and in August 1643 they were called upon to utter fearful curses on unknown parties, supposed to have committed a sacrilegious theft of consecrated hosts. Towards the end of September, however, they were expelled to give place to a native tribunal, and it was done with a refinement of cruelty. There were ten in all, seven subordinates and the son of one of them, besides the two inquisitors, who had stood faithful to their duty. They were put on board a vessel, with orders to land them in Portugal, which like Catalonia was in revolt against Spain. Although the crew consisted of Catalans and Frenchmen, they were persuaded to put into Cartagena, with a promise of being allowed to sell their cargo there. The reception of the refugees was most inhospitable. The vessel was seized, and the cargo and effects of passengers and crew were embargoed. Much red tape had to be cut, and it was not until December that the conclusion was reached, that the crew had rendered an essential service exposing them to punishment by the rebels. Wherefore, the vessel was released, and they were allowed to dispose of the cargo. The refugees were without salaries or resources, and it was not without difficult in delay that their Supremar, professing its own inability to help them, secured from Philip some moderate aeudas de Costa to keep them alive. Then, in March 1644, it ordered them to open a tribunal at Tarragona, at the same time representing to the King that this would cost 4,500 dockets in silver for the first year, and 4,000 annually thereafter, which might be supplied from the two millions of Matavedes, coming from the tribunal of Cartagena. Apparently some recent large confiscation, as otherwise they would die of starvation. They were doubtless thus provided for, and did what they could to restore the old-time dread of the Holy Office. It had sadly diminished in these evil days, for in the same year, 1644, in the neighboring town of Tortosa, inquisitor Roig of Valencia complained that on reaching there during his visitation, the magistrates did not come to receive him, they assigned him no lodgings, and they refused to publish his proclamation. Meanwhile, in accordance with the terms arranged with France, the Catalanes organized a national inquisition. Dr. Paolo Fran and Dr. Joseph Pla were appointed, and application was made for the usual papal faculties. These were granted, and when the briefs were received, September 26, 1643, they were installed, and the Castilians were expelled. The new tribunal had not much to do. It did not meddle with the Calvinists and the French armies, but it vindicated its authority by an auto-defei, celebrated February 23, 1644, in which one victim was grotted and burnt, and there were two penitents. There was another, November 7, 1647, in which there was an execution for unnatural crime, and six men and five women penitents, mostly for bigamy and sorcery. The only other evidence of activity that I have met is an investigation ordered by Pla at the request of the parish priest of Pineda, resulting in the trial of Antonio Morrill. When the troubles of the front compel Mazaran to withdraw the French armies, the rebellion collapsed in spite of the obstinate determination of the Catalanes to several relations with Castile. When Barcelona surrendered October 11, 1652, Catalonia was left at the mercy of the Conqueror, but Philip, with true statementship, restored it to its ancient privileges and liberties, saved a few exceptions which have no bearing on our subject. Inquisitor Pla had lingered at Garona, continuing his functions in virtue of his papal brief. He was found there by the Marquis of Olías Immotora, who only ventured to suspend him and wrote to the king, October 12, 1652, for instructions, adding that the prompt re-establishment of the Inquisition would conduce greatly to the pacification of the land. The Council of Aragon, November 16, approved of this and the next day Philip instructed the Inquisitor General to make the appointments and dispatch the Inquisitors at once. There were financial difficulties, however. January 18, 1653, the Supremer reported the appointments. The infection of heresy by the French promised much work, but there was not a lack of money. The tribunal would cost six thousand ducats a year, while its resources were but two thousand. For the separation of Rusilon lasted a thousand and it had two thousand more in Barcelona, loans which were uncollectable. There was prospect, however, of large confiscations, for many Catalan's had fled to France, who would be prosecuted, and on the strength of this the king was asked for four thousand a year. The adjustment of these questions probably required time, for it was not until August 2 that the new inquisitors took possession of their office, riding straight through the city, with drums and trumpets and the standard of the Holy Office, followed by all the familiars and officials of Barcelona, and making public proclamation in the customary places. The next day Sunday, the Edict of Faith was read, and on Monday they commenced their functions. Of the Catalan inquisitors, Pla died within a few days, and Ferran was arrested at night, as were many others, some of whom were sent to France, and others were deported to Mallorca. Apparently their official acts were not recognised, for familiars of their appointment continued for some years to apply for reinstatement. No sooner was the tribunal re-established than the old troubles recommenced. Abuses must have been flagrant to call for from Philip, June 2, 1661, at Cadulla, ordering the exact observance of the Concordias, and restraining the excessive use of excommunication. The quarrels which arose were prolonged and complicated by every possible device. On February 15, 1664, Juan Mateur, actual receiver and acting Alguazal Mayor of the Tribunal, was murdered. On most slender suspicion the next day, it arrested Joseph Grimart and Joseph Mazat. The Audencia claimed the case, and the Tribunal refused to enter into a competencia, until the Bancher Al threatened the inquisitors with banishment. Then they averted the preliminary conference by questions of etiquette, repeatedly disregarding the orders of the Supremera, until the intervention of the Queen Regent enforced obedience. The conference was as last held, and the papers were transmitted to the Supremera and the Council of Aragon to decide as to the jurisdiction. While this was pending the inquisitors started another trouble. They had confined the prisoners in the secret prison as though guilty of heresy. This was a grievous hardship, and the Queen ordered them transferred to the common prison. The inquisitors reported that this had been done, and then, on pretextive information as to a plot to escape, brought them back to the secret prison. When the Supremera heard of this it wrote in a tone of mingled anger and fear, lest it should be discovered by the Council of Aragon. The prisoners must be moved back again. The affair had become too important. The Council of Aragon had made too many efforts, and the Queen imputed it all to the Supremera, as they would see by her enclosed order. Then the competencia was suspended by the escape of the prisoners, March 9th, 1666. And the last we hear of the matter is their negotiation for pardon in 1668, on terms of which the viceroy advised the acceptance in order to avoid decision of the competencia. It was doubtless so settled, for competing jurisdictions had brought the administration of justice into such shape that it was better to let criminal accusations remain untried than to decide between the rival claims. These quarrels were not merely occasional, but were continuous and perpetual. A letter of June 18th, 1667, happens to mention that there were then four or five competencias delayed by the question whether in the conferences the royal judge should bring his own notary. Perverted ingenuity was constantly devising new points over which strife could be created. Prisoners on trial in the royal jails were sometimes borrowed by the tribunal to be prosecuted for blasphemy or other trivial offence against the faith. In 1666 a case of this kind gave rise to a question as to the exact form of receipt to be given for the body of the culprit. When it was pushed to such a point that the Supremar ordered the excommunication of all the judges of the Audiencia, and the Council of Aragon complained to the Queen Regent about the oppressive abuse of censures, and has to provide that for the future the mutual obligations of the two tribunals should be equal and reciprocal. When the inquisition took such pains to make itself detested, one is scarce surprised to learn, from a complaint of the Supremar 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. This hostility it continued carefully to cultivate. In December 1695 the Diputadas and judges arrested 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 it could no longer be endured in silence. This had been especially the case since Bartolome Antonio Sanz Imornas had been inquisitor, whose methods can be appreciated by a single example. Captain General Marquis of Gastonara had imprisoned a Frenchman, named Jaime Bell, on a matter of state, Spain being at the time at war with France, with strict orders to keep him in comunicado. Munas suddenly demanded an opportunity of taking testimony of him. Gastonara was absent, and no one had authority to violate his instructions, but the Regent of the Royal Chancery and the Jailer offered, if Munas would declare it to be a matter of faith, to endeavour 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 banished royal, with a customary warning of banishment and seizure of temporalities. Munas responded December 29th, with a mandate to the Regent ordering him underpain of excommunication, to allow the deposition of the prisoner to be taken, and he followed this within an hour, with an excommunication publishing 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 hard and impenitent sinners. The Audiencia rejoined with the decree of punishment 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 for the clergy for a great procession when it should take its departure. It kept its doors closed and even refused to receive the messages of Gastonara, 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 11th, 1696, he was at Montel Agrae, 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 two p.m. he sent word to Munas that he wished to see him on the King's service. At 4.30 p.m. Munas 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. Gastonara told him that he must start it once. A coach was at the door, to which he was escorted with all honour. Lackies with flambeau were ready, and a guard of twenty-five musketeers. Gastonara 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 wartime the captain general was obliged to abandon all of the duties, and he voted day to kidnapping a troublesome priest. And this is emphasised by the fact that the inquisitor general rewarded the conductor Munas by appointing him to one of the most desirable tribunals of Spain. 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. Philip V. was scare-seated on the throne when he found himself confronted with the eternal question of Catalan hostility towards the tribunal. A consultant of the Supremare, October 16, 1701, warns him that the inquisitors of Barcelona report that, in the Cortes about to assemble, efforts will be made to limit its usefulness, and he is exhorted to follow the example of his predecessors. Whatever was done was a 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 to 1652 was duplicated. The tribunal was withdrawn, but seemed to have been replaced by a local organisation for an article of the Cortes of 1706, duly approved by the Austrian Carlos, rein-dilating the encyclassion for public office, recognised its certificate respecting its officials. 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 Episcual Cognizance of Heresy. As to places beyond the control of the Austrian party, a provision of the Supremia, March 16, 1706, extended the jurisdiction of the Saragossa Tribunal, of all that should be recovered from the enemy, until such time as the Inquisition of Barcelona should be re-established. The desperate resistance to the Catalan's bespelled this until 1715, and when the tribunals reinstated, it found in the secret prison two captives, Juan Destilo Abigamist and Mariana Costa, accused of sorcery, both of them confined by order of the vicar general of the diocese. As all the liberties and privileges of Catalonia were abolished by the conquerors, its subsequent relations with the Inquisition offer no special characteristics. End of Book 2, Chapter 4, Part 6, Recording by David Cole, Medway, Massachusetts Book 2, Chapter 4, Part 7, 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 4, Conflicting Jurisdictions, Part 7. Mahorca 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 Porto Carrero 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 the exclusion of their families. The occasion of his book was a violent struggle between the visceroi 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 Zunez, receiver of confiscations, some were found. The visceroi at once arrested him, sentenced him to leave the island within 24 hours, and shipped him away. The Inquisitor promptly excommunicated the visceroi, the royal fiscal appealed. The visceroi and royal judges summoned the Inquisitor to a conference, preparatory to a competencia, or to appear in the banche real, and defend his proceedings. On his refusal, the banche real pronounced sentence of banishment and seizure of temporalities, which was published with sound of drum and trumpet. They also issued an edict, declaring the censure to 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. 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. In Mallorca, the most impressive cases of this kind occurred between the Inquisition and the ecclesiastical courts, and will be considered hereafter. It suffices here to say that, broils with the secular authorities were constant, and contributed their share to occupy and distract the attention of the central government. It would be superfluous to enumerate those of which the details have chance to reach us. They would merely prove that, considering their small size and scanty population, the Balearic Isles were not behind their continental sisters of Aragon, in adding to the perplexities of the monarchy. This somewhat prolonged recital of the struggles of the kingdoms of the Crown of Aragon, gave an opportunity of realizing the stubborn resistance to the arrogant pretensions of the Inquisition, of provinces which still retain institutions through which public opinion could assert itself. The people of the kingdoms of Castile had been reduced to submission under the absolutism of the House of Austria, and though they might at times complain, they could make no effective efforts to ameliorate their position. When, in 1579, and again in 1583, the Cortes of Castile complained of the arrest and emurement in the secret prisons of individuals in every quarrel with the official of the Inquisition to the permanent disgrace of families, Philip II merely replied that he would make inquiry and take such action as was fitting. The only resource was to raise contests in individual cases, and these were frequent enough and violent enough to prove that there was the same spirit of opposition to inquisitorial encroachment and the same pervading discontent with abuses flourishing so rankly under inquisitorial protection. Instances of this could be cited almost without limit, but one or two will suffice as examples of the multi-form aspect of these quarrels and the temper in which they were fought over. It should be borne in mind that, in these struggles as in those of Aragon, there was no question of freedom of conscience and no desire to limit the effectiveness of the Holy Office as the guardian of purity of faith. The Castilian, like the Catalan, looked with exaltation on the triumph over Hersey in the Autos de Fe, and he decided only to set bounds to the intrusion of the Inquisition on the field of secular justice. The chancellery of Granada was the supreme tribunal of no Castile as that of Viadolid was a world Castile. The alcaldes of its Saladel Crimen constituted the highest criminal court from which there was no appeal saved to God. April 15, 1623, the alcalde Mayor, after five days' trial, condemned Heronimo Palomino, a habitual criminal and rapian, to 200 lashes and six years of galleys for various offenses, including sundry blasphemies. On the 24th, the Sala confirmed the sentence and ordered its execution. On the same day, the Inquisition served two notices on the alcalde Mayor prohibiting his cognizance of the case, as some of the alleged crimes concerned the faith, over which it had exclusive jurisdiction, and it demanded the surrender of the accused and avoid the papers under the customary combinations. The alcalde Mayor responded by calling for a competency and offering to deliver Palomino for trial on any charges of heresy if record were made that he was already a galleys slave to be returned to the royal prison. The next day, the tribunal sent to the prison and claimed him on the pretext that the case had been transferred to it, whereupon the alcalde of the prison surrendered him without orders from the judges. When the latter heard of this, they also learned that the transfer had been affected through the efforts of the prisoner's friends and liberal bribery of the officials of the tribunal, who had been active in getting him out of prison. After satisfying themselves of this by investigation, they ordered the arrest of four laymen, a notary, a messenger, and two familiars, and they further imprisoned in their houses the alcalde Mayor and alcalde of the prison for acting without informing the salla. The tribunal concluded Palomino's trial within 48 hours, sentencing him to hear a mass in the audience chamber, and it appears that it returned him. It further commenced proceedings against the alcaldes, summoning them to liberate the officials within three hours under pain of excommunication. The alcaldes protested against this and demanded a competency as provided under the concordia, but the next day they were excommunicated in all the churches, and this was followed by an interdict played on the city. This forced a compromise by which the prisoners were liberated, subject to re-arrest in case the competencia should result in justifying the alcaldes, and the latter were absorbed from the censures. The matters seemed to be settled, but all parties had counted without impetuous and aggressive inquisitor General Pacheco. Without awaiting further information, and in disregard of the laws prescribing peaceful settlement by competencias, he had evoked the case to himself and acted upon it offhand. Two days after the absolution, the inquisitors re-imposed the excommunication by his command, and notices were served on the alcaldes and the alguazil mayor to appear before him within 15 days to stand trial. Against this, they protested, and on their failure to appear, they were not only excommunicated afresh, but anathematized in all the churches. The scandal had thus assumed national proportions. The alcaldes were the direct and highest judicial representatives of the king, but such was Philip's subservience to the inquisition that he would not permit a competencia following the regular course, but took the affair into his own hands. The president of the council of Castile, in remitting to the royal favorite Olivares, July 4, 1623, a memorial from the council, declared that the condition to which the chancellery of Granada was reduced, owing to the methods of the inquisition, was the most ignominious that had ever been heard of in Spain, especially considering how slight was the cause of all this disquiet. For when everything was settled, it was again enkindled at the mandate of the inquisitor general. As the matter was in the king's hands, the council could do nothing but appeal to his majesty, with all the disadvantages under which it labored in combating the inquisitor general. Had its hands been free, it might already have conquered to the benefit of the royal jurisdiction and service of the king for every day brought greater disturbance to the republic. In spite of this appeal, Philip decided in favor of the inquisition, and the humiliation of the chancellery was complete. Yet Pacheco was not satisfied with victory and proceeded to trample on the vanquished. In the course of the quarrel, Gudiel de Peralta, one of the judges, and Matias Gonzalez de Sepulveda, the fiscal of the court, had drawn up legal arguments in its justification. This Pacheco submitted to his censors, who of course is covered Latin heresies lurking in them, whereupon he ordered them to be suppressed as heretical and announced his intention of proceeding rigorously against the authors. The council, on October 7th, again appealed to Philip. The accused, it said, had only defended the royal jurisdiction in a perfectly legitimate manner. The inquisitor general should not have attacked royal officials and inflicted a reparable injury on them and their posterity by denouncing them as heretics without consulting the king. He was begged to intervene and order Pacheco to suspend proceedings, while a junta of the two councils should consider the papers and decide what course should be taken. It is probable that in some such way this indefensible attempt was suppressed, for neither of the inculpated names appeared in the expurgatory index of Zapata in 1632. It would seem difficult to set bounds to the power of an organization which could thus arbitrarily employ the censures of the church on any department of the government, without being subject to control, save the death of a king docile to its exigencies. Yet the Suprema, which always sustained the tribunals in their wanton excesses, adapted their quarrels and fought them unsparingly to the end, was thoroughly conscious of their wrongdoing. While this conflict was in progress, it issued a Carta Accordada, April 23rd, earnestly exhorting the tribunals to maintain friendly relations with the royal officials, and not to waste time in the sentience to the neglect of their duties in matters of faith, competencies were always to be admitted and no censures were to be employed without consulting the Suprema, unless delay was inadmissible. How nougatory were these councils of moderation under the dominance of such a man as Pacheco was soon afterwards manifested in a still more scandalous outbreak in Seville, under his direction in 1625. The asistente or governor, Fernando Ramirez Varinias, himself a member of the council of Castile and a man of high consideration, was excommunicated and thus prevented from concluding a negotiation for a donation to the king of 80,000 doocats. His algoazil, an honorable man, was wounded and was shot up in prison to keep him out of the hands of the tribunal, which declared that he was wanted on a matter of faith, thus covering him and his family with infamy. The king and Olivarez were besieged by Pacheco on the one hand, and the council of Castile on the other. The king as usual sided with the inquisition, and the president of the council tendered his resignation, with a suggestion that his office had better be given to Pacheco, who, by holding both positions, could cover up these scandals, while the royal jurisdiction could scarce be reduced to greater degradation. It is no wonder that Olivarez, in a letter to the president, declared himself to be the most unfortunate of men, for he could satisfy nobody. His best course would be to ask the king to let him abandon the management of affairs. When the kingdom was in such straits that he could scarce take time to breathe in devising remedies, his efforts were wasted in competencias, and he concluded with a despairing declaration that he lost his senses in thinking over it without knowing what to say. The statesmen, who were guiding the destinies of Spain in those perilous times, might well groan under the superfluous burden of deciding these contests over trifles so ferociously waged, but they were not to be spared. Arce Irenoso was not so violent as Pacheco, but he was equally obstinate and was determined to emancipate the Inquisition wholly by relieving it from royal supervision. There was an instructive case at Cuenca, in 1645, where the Corridor, Don Alonso Muñoz de Castelblanque, sent a band of assassins to murder a woman with whom he had illicit relations, together with a priest named Jacinto. The crime created great excitement, but Muñoz was a contador, or accountant of the tribunal, and as such a titular official. He presented himself before the inquisitors who assumed his case, and promptly excommunicated the judge who attempted to prosecute him. Philip Hathamater investigated, and was told that both the woman and the priest had been killed. He sent to the Suprema a decree ordering the removal of text communication and the delivery of the criminal to the Council of Castelblanque to be tried by the judge which it had appointed, for the inquisitors could not properly punish so atrocious a crime without incurring irregularity. This was clear and peremptory enough, but in place of obeying it, Arsé Irénoso replied, May 4th 1645, that this would be a great and unheard of violation of the rights of the Holy Office. The woman was not dead but was in Valencia, where the tribunal was basically collecting evidence. To hand Muñoz over to the secular judges for trial and execution, would incur the same irregularity as sentencing him. The case would be tried by the Suprema, which had a wide range of suitable penalties that did not infer irregularity. Meanwhile, Muñoz would be safely guarded and he trusted that the king would not set so pernicious an example. When Philip rejected this appeal and repeated his order, a learned and elaborate argument was prepared to show that he had no power to interfere. It took the ground, to which we have already referred, that the temporal jurisdiction of the inquisition over its officials was a grant from the papacy. It was exclusive and unlimited and no secular ruler could deprive the Holy Office of it. The pope had power to make this grant and the king had none to remove this or any other case from its cognizance. For he was not supreme over the ecclesiastical and papal jurisdiction. The truth being that the papal commissions to the inquisitor general conferred power to remove and punish subordinates, but said nothing as to its being exclusive. An equally fallacious was the citation of three authorities whose utterances had no bearing on the question at issue. This audacious reliance on the ignorance of Philip and his secular advisers was successful. Philip made one or two efforts more, but Arce Irainoso held good. A memorial in 1648 on the general subject from a member of the Council of Castile tells the king that his repeated commands in the case of Muñoz had been disobeyed and that, although the criminal had so long been in the hands of the inquisitors, he had not yet been sentenced, which he held to be clear proof that their aim was to defend their officials from the royal justice and not to punish them. How liberal was the construction placed on this term of titular official was illustrated when, in 1622 at Toledo, the Corridor arrested the butcher of the tribunal for intolerable frauds on the public. The inquisitor demanded the prisoner and the papers, published the Corridor in all the churches as excommunicate, seized the Aguazil and a paritor who had made the arrest, cast them into the secret prison, tried them as if for heresy, shaved their heads and beards and banished them and refused to their families any evidence that would preserve their posterity from infamy. There was danger of a rising in Toledo against the inquisition, but it was averted. The Council of Castile protested and Nahunta was held, which adopted measures to prevent a repetition of such outrages, but as usual no attention was paid to them. It would be superfluous to multiply examples of the perennial struggle which was distracting the energies of the government and weakening the respectful law in every quarter of Spain. Each tribunal contributed its share and there was an unending stream of cases pouring into Madrid for settlement. Each side blamed the other for this anomalous condition. In 1632, the Suprema, in defending the Tribunal of Valencia for its protection of criminal familiars, bitterly complained that the object of the concordias was the relief of the tribunals, the punishment of offenders, the quick dispatch of cases, and the diminished oppression of pleaders, but that this had been converted into perpetual strife regardless of forms and rules of procedure. For this it was itself primarily to blame. For though there were doubtless faults on both sides, the cases recorded in the reports and the arguments of the inquisition show that it was the chief offender. Its aggressive powers were too much greater than those of its adversaries, and its methods were too sharp for the secular authorities often to risk the consequences of being in the wrong. 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 the license 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. 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 license 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 imprisonment 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 familiars house to take it in secret, basing this upon the danger to which witnesses were exposed in the violent factions of the time. The question, however, was settled in 1699, in the case of Felipe Bru, at Hativa on August 14, 1698. Don Luis Salcedo, Lord of Pamis, was shot and killed when standing at a window of his house. Don Vicente Montserrat, Judge of the Audiencia of Valencia, found Bru, who was a familiar, a contomacious 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 two cuts. 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 15, 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 Perez of Montesa, a familiar, was ordered under penalty of a thousand two cuts 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, Perez went to Valencia and had himself incarcerated in the secret prison, where he was inaccessible. The audience pursued the matter. There was considerable correspondence and preparations for a competencia, but finally the affair was settled by sending Perez 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. End of Book 2, Chapter 4, Part 7, Recording by Shana Sear, Fresno, California.