 Book 4, Chapter 3, Part 1, of the History of the Inquisition of Spain, Volume 2. 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 2, by Henry Charles Lee. Book 4, Organization, Chapter 3, Part 1, Unsalaryed Officials. We have seen, when treating of privileges and exemptions, the distinction drawn between salaried and unsalaryed officials. The former, except in the case of physicians and advocates of the accused, were understood to devote all their time to the service of the tribunal. The latter were only accalled upon, incidentally, for special work. It is true that the Inquisition was in power to summon every one for aid, but its service was confidential and its ministers, at least in the latter period, had to be of unblemished lineage, so that it was requisite to have at hand those on whom it could rely and whom it could summon at any moment. There was no difficulty in finding men ready to serve without pay. The honor of connection with the Inquisition, the privilege of its furor in greater or lesser degree, and the assurance of Limpieza, which had carried with it, rendered applicants for appointment more numerous than positions to be filled. These unsalaryed officials consisted of calificadores, consultores, commissioners with their notaries, and familiars. The function of the calificador, or censor, were important. When the Sumeria, or preliminary array of evidence against the accused, was collected, the theological points involved were submitted to three or four calificadores, who pronounced whether the acts or words testified to amounted to heresy or suspicion of heresy. If there was doubt or disagreement another group was called in, to whom the opinions of the first were given, along with the evidence. If the conclusion was that the matter did not concern the Inquisition, the case was dropped or suspended. If it held that there was heresy, expressed or implied, arrest and trial followed. We have seen the working of the system in the cases of Carranza and Villanueva, in both of which it played so momentous a part, in addition to this was the censorship of books. Any work against which suspicion was aroused was submitted to them and, according to their decision, it was approved, expurgated, or suppressed. To perform these duties properly required learned theologians, and they seemed to have enjoyed the opportunity of displaying their erudition and prolix and elaborate opinions, developing vast ingenuity and discovering traces of the beliefs of the Marcinianites and the Carpo-Cracians and other forgotten heresies in the careless propositions submitted to their criticism. As a matter of course, only ecclesiastics were eligible, in 1627 the minimum age was fixed at 45. The duties of this profitless office were not light. If we may believe the experienced fray maestro Aldarado, in 1811 he complains that if a book is sent to a calificador, no matter what his other engagements may be, he must devote a month or two to reading it and forming a judgment, expressed in an elaborate opinion such as would command for a lawyer two or three thousand to the house. Or some modern philosopher utter scandals and the calificador must investigate his words and acts, and point out the errors as a guide for the inquisitor. If a trial follows the calificador must wait on the tribunal and rack his brains to decide whether the culprit's explanations are valid. If he is contumatious, conferences must be held with him until he is converted or found incapable of conversion, and all this without recompense. The calificador was thus an important and laborious assistant in the current work of the tribunal, and it is somewhat remarkable that although reckoned among the officials, with a recognized place in public functions, there should be doubt whether he was entitled to the funeral. Yet in 1662, when Dr. Vincente Cortes, a cathedral canon and calificador of the Valencia Tribunal, was involved in a suit, it declined to defend him. It's reported to the Suprema that it was ignorant whether calificadors were entitled to the funeral, and the council replied asking on what ground the privilege was claimed. The need of calificadors was not likely to be felt in the early period, when almost the whole business of the inquisition was with judeisers, and moriscos, whose guilt was assumed from their adherence to well-known customs and rights. The first allusion I have met occurs in 1520 when the inquisitors were ordered to make no appointment without submitting to the Suprema the petition of the applicant. There is no reference to them in the Instrucciones Antiguas, but in the Nuevas of 1561 their employment is fully developed. As the appointment was in the hands of the inquisitors, there was a tendency to undo multiplication and in 1606 there was an effort to check this by calling for reports as to the number existing, and how many were necessary, pending which no applicants were to be admitted. This resulted the following year in an order limiting the number to eight in each tribunal. Only the most eminent theologians were to be selected and appointments were to be made only to fill vacancies. Again in 1619 reports were called for an emphasis was laid on the importance of the position and the necessity of discrimination in the choice. This received scant attention, and the Memorial of 1623 to the Suprema recommends the reduction of the number to three or four in each tribunal and the exercise of great care in appointments, for lack of which they had fallen so greatly in public estimation. Nothing was done in 1630. The Fiscal of the Suprema called attention to the fact that but few tribunals had made the reports demanded. In 1619, meanwhile the necessity for reform had increased and he asked that information be called for again so that with filled information the Suprema might remedy the evils existing. The futility of the effort to limit the tribunals in the exercise of their patronage is visible in the statistics of 1746, where Valencia has forty calificadors, Saragossa has twenty-nine and even the little tribunal of Mallorca has twenty-four. If Larena has none and Lugrano only two, this is explicable as we learn from another source by the absence in those places of men competent for the position. Yet not much attention was paid to the selection of suitable material if we may believe an official report presented to Carlos IV in 1798, which says that it is notorious that calificadors are mostly people of little learning, full of preconceptions and errors who have had money enough to take out proofs of limpieza. In the medieval Inquisition all sentences were agreed upon in an assembly of experts summoned for the purpose by the Inquisitors, prior to holding the auto-defei in which the sentences were executed. This custom was naturally followed in Spain and these consultas de fei, as they were called, will be considered hereafter when treating of the conduct of trials. At present we have merely to consider the consultores who assisted the Inquisitors in passing judgment. At first they had no permanent connection to the Inquisition. The Inquisitors had an unlimited power of summoning all persons in whatever capacity, but sometimes it was not easy to obtain the services of competent men, especially when migratory tribunals were sitting in places where jurists were few, and the instructions of 1488 in response to complaints on this score tell Inquisitors in such cases to send the papers to the Suprema which will decide on them. At this time the Inquisitors were theologians and, to supplement their lack of legal knowledge, it was customary to call in lawyers. The incongruity of laymen sitting in judgment on matters of faith was waived, and they were freely employed, the Inquisitors summoning such doctors and maestros and ascienciados and bachelares as they saw fit, who served without pay and might never be called in again. In 1502 the Barcelona Tribunal complained that it sometimes had difficulty in securing the services of the lawyers of the Odencia, whereupon Ferdinand wrote to his Lieutenant General that, as it is a work of God and the services required only two or three times a year, he must see that the Inquisitors get them whenever they are wanted. In 1515 the same trouble showed itself at Villador Lid, where the Inquisitors were in the habit of calling in the judges of the High Court, who endeavored to evade the duty by alleging certain royal cedulas prohibiting their engaging in other functions than those of their office. Ferdinand was appealed to and promptly ordered them to serve when called upon, but they were not to be obliged to absent themselves from court during the hours of its sessions. Apparently there was no eagerness to perform gratuitous service which brought with it no privileges. When in time jurists were preferred in the Tribunals the Inquisitors called in theologians, mostly from the regular Orders, who to a great degree monopolized the learning of the Church. Even with these there were sometimes difficulty, and in 1544 the Suprema asked the Dominican Vicar to rebuke the prior of Saint Pedro Martyr for forbidding his fries to serve. It had already been found that the chance selection made, when a consulte de fe was to be held, was unsatisfactory. The permanent office of Consutor was created and was rendered attractive by attaching to it the privileges and immunities of the Holy Office. Formal commissions were issued by the Inquisitor General, and the appointee swore to the faithful discharge of his duties. The earliest commission that I have met is one issued, April 2nd, 1544, to Dr. Miguel de Nueces, Archdeacon of Morvedro, as Consulter in the Tribunal of Valencia. This continued for some twenty years when confusion and contradictions arose. January 16th, 1565 the Suprema writes that neither it nor the Inquisitor General is accustomed to notify any one of his appointment as Consulter. The Inquisitors can appoint properly qualified persons whenever they are needed. In 1566 this was followed by admonitions as to the care necessary in examining into the fitness of aspirants and then, in 1567, Inquisitors were scolded for making appointments without reporting them and awaiting orders. This was repeated in 1571, but in 1572 Rojas asserts positively that Consultors are not selected by Inquisitors but are appointed by the Suprema. The Suprema continued to retain control, but ceased to issue regular commissions For in 1645 a writer informs us that the Consultor and Chialificador are received and sworn in on the strength of a letter from the Suprema. Finally, however, the matter was restored in the Inquisitors. A formulary of about 1700 contains the form of a commission issued to the Consultors. It is drawn in the name of the Inquisitors who confer on the recipient the powers necessary for the discharge of his duties and order all secular officials to yield him all the honors, graces, franchises, exemptions, liberties, and prerogatives inherent in his office. He was obliged to furnish proofs of his purity of blood and, if he was married, of that of his wife, thus giving another example of the capacity of laymen to act in judgments of faith. With the progressive centralization of business in the Suprema, the Consulta de Fe gradually diminished in importance. As we shall see in the 18th century it became virtually obsolete. The table of officials in 1746 shows that at that time there were only 18 consultores in all the tribunals and of these eight were in the little Inquisition of Mallorca. The office of Commissioner was peculiar to the Spanish Inquisition and although its powers were strictly limited, it was an important factor in keeping the authority of the Holy Office constantly before the people and in detecting offenders in obscure places where they might otherwise have enjoyed security. It was not part of the original organization and there was no reference to it in the instructions. It is true that in 1509 Ferdinand addresses a certain Beltran de la Salla of Perpignan as Commissioner of the Inquisition, but he is also host de Sorrios, or in charge of couriers on the important line between Spain and Italy. He was therefore not a commissioner in the latter sense, but probably was employed to look after the sequestrations which had been extensive in Perpignan. As the tribunals became sedentary in their extensive districts, the need of representatives scattered everywhere made itself felt and the first suggestion seems to have come from Valencia. The Suprema represented, December 4, 1537, to Cardinal Mandike, the size of the District of Valencia where the difficulties of intercommunication were such that it never had been and never could be properly visited. It was therefore proposed that in the Cathedral towns, commissioners should be appointed with power to publish the edicts and to take testimony and ratifications with notaries. The Cathedral clergy would probably furnish proper appointees, serving without pay as the duties would be only occasional. This corresponds so nearly with the plan adopted that it may safely be assumed to be its origin. The entry was given to inquisitors to appoint commissioners, but apparently at first the limitation on their powers was ill-defined. The visitation of Barcelona in 1549 showed that they undertook to arrest and prosecute, in fact to make themselves inquisitors in their little districts and in 1550 the Suprema instructed the tribunal to grant faculties only to receive denunciations, collect evidence and send it to the inquisition for its action. This remained the rule until the end. In the cartillas, or detailed printed instructions, they were forbidden to make arrests unless three conditions coexisted, that the case clearly pertained to the Holy Office, that the evidence was ample and that there was apprehension of flight. Even then they were warned to act only on mature deliberation, and they were forbidden to sequestrate property, though they were to keep an eye on it. If an arrest took place the prisoner and the evidence were to be transmitted to the tribunal under guard of familiars without being allowed to communicate with anyone. In addition the commissioner could hear the civil cases of familiars up to the value of twenty libras and execute his decisions. All of this was concisely expressed in the commission issued to him. As in everything else it was impossible to enforce compliance with wholesome regulations. Cervantes in the report of his Barcelona visitation of 1561 says that commissioners paid no attention to the limitations of their powers. They were thoroughly untrained and ignorant of their duties and had no hesitation in appointing other commissioners. As they had authority to appoint a notary and an elrosil, they set up little courts throughout the land, armed with the awful authority of the Holy Office, and it requires no stretch of the imagination to conceive the tyranny and extortation with which they afflicted the people. Not much was gained when in 1561 the Supremo ordered that they should be appointed only in places where it was necessary that they must be quiet and peaceable persons, or in 1565 when it prescribed great care in issuing commissions which must be so limited as to prevent them from appointing deputies. Cervantes' report of his inspection of Barcelona in 1566 shows that the evil continued unchecked. Commissioners were appointed in unnecessary numbers often by a single inquisitor during a visitation, and sometimes they were ignorant laymen, although the office inferred that it should be reserved exclusively to those in holy orders. It is not strange that this new inflection which seemed to bring the terrors of the inquisition to every man's door should form the subject of vigorous remonstrances and the concordias of 1568 by their enumeration of what was forbidden show the abuses under which the populations were suffering. That of Valencia provided that there should be such officials only in Tortosa, Sogorbe, Teruel, Gandia, Castellon de la Plana, Denia and Iativa, with two in the city of Valencia and that they should be called deputized commissioners and not as hereto for lieutenant inquisitors. That of Aragon limited them to Lerida, Huesca, Terezona, Daroca, Calatuyud, Iaco, Barbastro and towns on the French frontier. Both provided that in future they should not try cases or make arrest save to prevent flight, nor should they grant licenses for the importation or exportation of provisions and other matters. They might have an assessor and a notary, enjoying all privileges and exemptions, and if an arousiel was needed they could assign that post to a familiar without enlarging his exemptions. While this is eloquent of the methods by which these would-be local inquisitors had magnified their office to the vexation of the people. Catalonia rejected the Concordia of 1568 and in the Cortes of 1599 it demanded that neither rectors of churches nor fri should be appointed as commissioners. To this the Suprema in its memorial, to Clement VIII, replied that the object was to prevent the inquisition from having proper commissioners, as Catalonia was too poor in the requisite material to exclude these classes and places where there were no cathedrals or collegiate churches. In 1572 the Suprema made an effort to check the multiplication of these officials by decreeing that they should be appointed only in the chief towns of Archpriestly districts, but it promptly receded from this and the next year authorized them wherever it seemed necessary, which amounted to unlimited permission. An order in 1576 that they were not to be defended in prosecutions for concubinage is suggestive as to the prevailing morality and in 1584 they were instructed to keep in constant correspondence with the tribunals, reporting everything that occurred in their district. Which indicates how comprehensive a system of espionage was established. The Suprema, in a Carta Accordada of March 24, 1604, made a serious attempt to check existing evils. It called attention to the abuses in appointing commissioners, notaries and familiars, whose multitude in general unworthiness resulted in greatly impairing the authority of the inquisition. In future commissioners were to be appointed only in the chief towns of the partidos or local judicial districts, or at least four leagues apart. Inquisitors should bear in mind that their duties embrace cases of the utmost importance, requiring men of intelligence, virtue and silence, they should have benefits or revenues sufficient to live with the dignity befitting their high office. The prescription as to number and location received scant obedience. We chanced to meet with them in obscure places like Cobena and Fuentazas, and a list of them in little province of Guipuzacau, which has but four partidos amount to seventeen. An experienced writer in 1648 after reciting the limitations states that there are places where there are three or four disguised by appointments nominally to neighbouring hamlets. Although without salary, the office had become attractive, not only on account of the importance and immunities which had conferred, but also because a large part of the attendant labour brought in satisfactory fees. In the eagerness to prove Limpieza, investigations into genealogies were perpetual. Only all these passed through the Inquisition and were confided to the Commissioner nearest to the birthplace of the applicant. He was expected to pay roundly, and the Commissioner was entitled to sixteen riales a day for his time, or to two ducats if he had to leave his residence. Moreover, the knowledge thus acquired of the genealogies of his neighbours gave him power to render them uncomfortable, as we may gather from a Carta Accordada of 1622 to make notes of the ancestry of those who were not officials of the Inquisition, and threatening dismissal for stigmatising anyone as a Jew, more, converso, or descendant of such. At seaports and frontier towns, also the Commissioners had a considerable source of revenue from fees for the examinations requisite to prevent the entrance of heretics and heretic books. These which, as we shall see hereafter, were the abundant source of complaint. These positions the Inquisitor General reserved for his own appointment and finally all those in the Cathedral towns and larger cities. In the effort at reform made by Philip V, investigation was made into the character of the Commissioners, their notaries and the familiars, and soon after this in 1706 the Suprema asserted that in Castile there was not one-fourth of the number permitted by the Concordia of 1553, which attributed partly to the War of Secession, then raging, and partly to the molestation to which they were exposed. Unquestionably the number declined rapidly during the eighteenth century, as will be seen by the table in the appendix where, although Saragossa still has thirty-eight and Barcelona twenty-eight, the other tribunals report only from two to seven except the Canaries, where the scattered group of islands necessarily demanded a considerable number. This diminution may be explained by the growing habit of appointing temporary Commissioners in any place where a work was to be done. Moreover the increasing facilities of communication favored local centralization in the Tribunal, even as general centralization was stimulated in the Suprema. Denunciations were readily sent by mail and temporary Commissioners were issued for their investigation. So too, in the matter of Limpieza, the Tribunal could dispense its patronage more profitably by sending out from headquarters special Commissioners who earned a larger per diem at the expense of the applicant. To accommodate this new development, when in 1816 a new cartia of instructions for Commissioners was printed, it provided, at the end, with a number of blank commissions which could be detached and filled in for use. A hundred copies were supplied to each Tribunal, twenty of them bound to be used as a whole, and eighty in sheets to be thus cut up. Within a month one Tribunal applied for a further stock and fifty copies were sent. Until, as the inquisitors of the time had to do, they were evidently devolving their duties upon others more generally than ever. In a previous chapter it has been seen that of all the officials of the Inquisition, those who occasioned the most frequent trouble and who aroused the most strenuous and in inversion were the Familiars. They were the most numerous, they were largely drawn from the turbulent element, seeking the position for the protection afforded against secular justice, and they abused their privileges accordingly. For more than two centuries they were an object of dread to all peaceable folk, and no stronger evidence can be furnished of the subjection to which the Inquisition had reduced Spain than the tolerance of this dangerous class, whose services were overpaid by the immunities which relieved the Inquisition from paying salaries. In the Medieval Inquisition, the Inquisitor had the right to surround himself with armed guards, whether to protect his person or to execute his orders. They were reckoned as members of his family, thus obtaining the name of Familiars, entitling them to immunity from justice. They were dreaded and hated, not without reason, for the position was attractive only to the Ruffian and Brawler, nor was anything gained when in 1213 the Council of Vienne warned Inquisitors to be moderate and discreet in their use of the privilege. Of course the old Aragonese Inquisition enjoyed this prerogative, and when the new Inquisition was organized it inherited the right. This moreover was developed in an entirely novel manner, for the Familiar was not attached to the person of the Inquisitor. Appointments were made all over the land, the Inquisition thus obtaining without cost a small army of servitors, scattered everywhere, sworn to obedience and ready at any moment to perform whatever duty they might be called upon to render. They served moreover, as spies upon their neighbours and were eager to manifest their zeal by volunteer action, for it was commonplace of the canon law that the heretic could be arrested by anyone. It was impossible that such a class as this, released from the restraints of law, should not prove troublesome and even dangerous. Inquisitors appointed them at discretion, furnished them with licenses to bear arms and turned them loose on the community. It would have been some slight protection if registers of these appointments had been kept, and the names of the appointees furnished to the magistrates so that it could be known whether those who claimed immunity were entitled to it. It was impossible, however, to induce the Inquisitors to do this. The many's and the Suprema ordered the names to be entered in a book and copied to be furnished to the Corrigadors, and Ferdinand, in a general order of July 11th, 1513, emphasized this, but to no purpose, and it was repeated endlessly with the same result. The Inquisitors steadily refused obedience, for it would have imposed some check upon multitudinous and indiscriminate appointments which had a recognized money value. The result of all this appears in a letter of Ferdinand in 1514 to the Inquisitors of Toledo, informing them that the royal and municipal authorities complained of the number of turbulent fellows carrying licenses signed by only one Inquisitor who went around in bands disturbing the peace, and if the civil magistrate endeavored to restrain them, the tribunal at once interposed, leading to dissensions between it and the ministers of justice, to the great injury of the city and its vicinity. The many's had already endeavored to check these orders without success, and Ferdinand now insists that his orders must be obeyed, that all such licenses must be signed by the three Inquisitors, a record of them must be kept and a copy be furnished to the Corrigador. End of Book 4, Chapter 3, Part 1, Recording by Salim Siddiqui, www.hotconflict.com Book 4, Chapter 3, Part 2, of the History of the Inquisition of Spain, Volume 2 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The History of the Inquisition of Spain, Volume 2, by Henry Charles Lee, Book 4, Organization, Chapter 3, Part 2, and Salaried Officials The same travels existed in the Aragonese kingdoms where, it will be remembered, the Cortes of Monzón in 1512, endeavored to remedy them in the Concordia by providing it for Aragon, there might be twenty armed familiars in Saragossa, while in other towns where the tribunal was in actual session, there might be temporary appointments not exceeding twenty for the whole kingdom. Notwithstanding the acceptance of this agreement by Ferdinand, its confirmation in 1516 by Leo X, and its solemn ratification in 1520, it never received the slightest respect from the Inquisition, and its only interest lies in its proof of the popular anxiety for relief, and that a very moderate number of familiars sufficed at a period of great activity in the work of the Holy Office. The complaint was renewed about 1530 by the Cortes of Aragon, that familiars were appointed in every place in the three kingdoms, and that no lists were furnished, so that the Inquisition could set free any offender by declaring him to be a familiar, to which Cardinal Manrique merely replied that no more were appointed than were necessary, and that the instructions were observed. Again, in 1547, the Cortes of Catalonia declared that abuse had been carried to a point that seriously limited the royal and ecclesiastical jurisdictions, and it requested that Barcelona should be restricted to fifty, with five each for the Catalan districts subjected to Valencia in Saragossa, and also that lists be furnished, but Prince Philip only answered that he would consult the Suprema and do what was fitting. Of course, nothing was done. While thus the Suprema defended the tribunals against the public, it was constantly scolding them for their excesses and issuing orders to diminish the evil. A Carta Accordada of 1543 alludes to the excessive numbers of familiars, their turbulence and evil lives. They must be persons of good repute and the rest must be dismissed. In 1546, moderation in appointments was enjoined. When the Castile Concordia of 1553 was framed, instructions were issued for each strict observance. All not registered and reported to the authorities were not to be held as familiars. In 1560, and again in 1573, they were ordered to be married men, quiet, peaceable, limpious, and not ecclesiastics. All others were to be removed. In 1562, the Inquisitor of Mahorca was rebuked for unnecessary appointments of turbulent and unfit men, and for not giving a list to the magistrates. In 1566, lists were ordered to be given to the civil authorities, and none not born on them were to enjoy exemption. In 1573, instructions were issued requiring them to be householders and heads of families, residence of the place for which the commission was given, and none to be appointed for uninhabited places. In 1578, it was ordered that appointments should only be made to fill vacancies. In 1586, a Carta Accordada commanded the number to be reduced to the provisions of the Concordia. The surplus must surrender their commissions and support themselves honestly. New appointments were restricted to quiet and peaceful men of good life and habits, and evidence of compliance with the order must be furnished. This brief summary could be largely extended, but its only interest lies in it showing that the Suprema recognized the evil and sought to abate it, while the tribunals paid no attention to its commands, securing the assurance that it would defend them through thick and thin, whenever a question arose between them and the people or the authorities. Sometimes indeed, continued pressure might induce temporary compliance, but it was abandoned as soon as it appeared safe to do so. A single instance will illustrate the tenacity and successful evations of the inquisitors, while Des wrote to the Valencia Tribunal, March 12, 1551, that the excessive number of familiars interfered with its proper functions in consequence of the time required for their cases. They were to be reduced to a hundred in the city of Valencia. In towns of 3,000 inhabitants, the maximum was to be eight. In smaller places, if any were needed, the number was not to exceed four without notifying the Suprema. To effect this, all commissions were to be revoked and, if necessary, he revoked them. Instructions were given as to reappointments. Every commission was to be signed by both inquisitors and countersigned by one of the notaries. The commissions were to be limited to two or three years, so as to stimulate good behavior and lists were to be furnished to the Suprema. To this promising scheme of reform, the inquisitors replied that they suspended its operation because the governors of Valencia thought the number assigned to the city inadequate. July 9, the Suprema ordered them to learn from the governors their views as to numbers. This was left unanswered, and on November 5, the Suprema ordered the report within 30 days of what had been agreed upon with the governors. Otherwise, the provisions of March 12 were to be put into execution, and, if this was not done, a person armed with full powers would be sent to do it. This looked like business and brought from the inquisitor Arteaga the reply that, as soon as his colleague returned from visiting the district, it would be complied with. Valdez waited till December 23, and then wrote that there must be no further delay. The king had repeatedly ordered a reduction of the familiars on account of the daily complaints received against them. He therefore commanded, peremptorily, that, without reply or further excuse, the instructions be executed in a notarial attestation of the fact be furnished during January. If both inquisitors were not in Valencia, the one in residence must do the work. If it was not accomplished within the time named, they must present themselves personally before him to give their reasons for disobedience. This would seem to leave no opening for evasion, but it received no attention, and, on March 10, 1552, Valdez wrote again, repeating the injunctions of the previous march, but conceding that there might be 200 familiars in the city. Public proclamation of their evocations was to be made, and evidence of execution with lists of those retained was to be furnished during April. Again, no attention was paid to this, and it was repeated September 10. This in time brought a statement that the number in the city had been reduced to 200, but there is no evidence as to reductions elsewhere, or that the wholesome limitation of commissions to two or three years had been observed. If it were, it was but for a brief time, and we have seen what were the familiars of Valencia early in the next century. It was the same in Castile, when the concordia of 1553 was agreed upon. A royal sedulof March 10 prescribed the number of familiars to be allowed in cities and towns in order that all in excess should be deprived of their commissions, while lists of those retained were to be given to the secular authorities. The Suprema seems to have honestly endeavored to enforce these provisions by letters issued under the same date, but the inquisitors were sullen and refractory, and the Valencia experience was repeated. July 13, 1555, another royal sedula and circular letter of the Suprema repeated the command to reduce the number and furnish lists. Again, in 1565, these orders were renewed, which brought out the fact that the tribunals had not even kept registers of the appointments. For in 1566, they were ordered to call in all commissions and compile lists from them, with warning that all who were not born on such lists would not be allowed enjoyment of the fuero, and if the judges were inhibited in such cases, when the competencia reached the councils, it would be abandoned. Even this required to be supplemented with another order the next year. It would be a weariness of the flesh to follow in detail these fruitless efforts of the Suprema to force the tribunals to comply with the law, but a carta accordada of 1604 affords a glimpse into some of the tricks innovations resorted to. It lays down salutary rules as to the observance of the Concordia and the character of appointees, and proceeds to forbid the granting of expectative appointments, the admissions of applicants to prove Limpieza unless there is a vacancy, and then he must be a resident of the place where it occurs, and not one with a supposed tissues domicile. Appointments in derogation of these rules will not render the individual unofficial of the inquisition, and no competencias will be entertained for him. It shows how slack was the observance of this that it had to be repeated in 1620 and again in 1626. While thus the Suprema was vainly besieged in repressing the exuberance of its subordinates, it firstly resented any assistance offered by outsiders. The Concordia of 1553 was part of the law of the land, and as such it was printed in the Oficial Nueva Recopilación, Libro 4, Titulo I, Ley 20. In 1634, the Council of Castile, apparently re-read with the stubbornness of the tribunals, undertook to enforce it by printing the articles concerning the numbers and qualifications of familiars, and sending them to the magistrates of the towns and villages with instructions that, if the number was in excess, they were to strike off the surplus. If a least had not been furnished, they were not to regard anyone as a familiar and entitled to exemptions and privileges. When this practical method of enforcing obedience to law came to the knowledge of the Suprema, it was highly incensed. On December 22nd, it addressed an indignant consulta to the king. The Council of Castile, it said, was meddling with concerns wholly beyond its competence. It had no authority in matters concerning the inquisition. If inquisitors transgressed the law, specific complaints could be made and settled in a junta of the two bodies. The Council was leading the local magistrates to sit in judgment on inquisitors and get themselves into trouble. Besides, the familiars are so molested when they seek to avail themselves of their privileges that they think it better to abandon them. They are fewer already than the concordia permits, are diminishing daily, and, in a few years, the inquisition will not have ministers to attend to its business. The consulta concludes by asking the king to order the council to erase the paper from its records and not to issue similar ones in future. For once, these arrogance overshot the mark. There must have been a desperate contest waged over the matter. For Philip kept the consulta until October 3, 1636, when he returned it with the endorsement that the Council of Castile can issue the provision embodying the articles of the concordia and can order the local magistrates to observe and execute them. The reasons inducing inquisitors to the perpetual and illegal multiplication of these officials are not far to seek. The position was much coveted and the high-value set upon it, notwithstanding the assertions of the Suprema as to diminishing numbers, is shown in one of the expedients for raising money resorted to in 1641, when an additional familiarship was created in each place to be sold for 1500 ducats. The offer was withdrawn in 1643, possibly because, as we have seen in 1642, a block of 300 was thrown upon the market, thus breaking the price. When such estimates were placed on the office, the opportunity for illicit gains was tempting to those who had power to issue commissions, and in addition to this were the profits of litigation and the abundant fees for officials in the investigation into the limpieza of aspirants and their wives. The fines also arising from cases in which familiars were concerned were a not inconsiderable addition to the income of the tribunals. Thus, in 1564, Dr. Zurita, in a four-month visitation of the dioceses of Herona and Elne, collected 106 ducats for offenses committed by or against familiars, and in addition five culprits were sent to Barcelona on more serious charges which doubtless yielded still larger returns. It is easy then to understand the temptation to enlarge so profitable a jurisdiction and the steady opposition to revealing the number of appointees by furnishing lists. It is true that the Suprema drew up an excellent list of qualifications as requisites for eligibility. No one was to be appointed who was not an old Christian, at least 25 years of age, married or a widower, head of a household, virtuous, quiet, peaceable, and fitted for the office, as well as of legitimate and not of foreign birth. Yet there was no difficulty in obtaining dispensations for age, for celibacy, for illegitimacy, and for foreign birth or parentage, the considerable fees for which went to the secretary of the Inquisitor General. There was no formal dispensation for the moral qualities, but these were elusive and the general character ascribed to familiars, as we have seen in Valencia, shows how little care was frequently taken as to these. They are not even alluded to in the formalities required in the middle of the 17th century, when we are told that the petition of the applicant must be accompanied with a certificate from the secretary of his place of residence, setting forth the number of inhabitants, the number of familiars, evidence of baptism to show his age, that he did not follow any mechanic or low occupation, and that he had properties sufficient for his decent support. He was also, of course, required to furnish the genealogies of himself and his wife for investigation into Limpieza. To what extent precautions were taken to avoid improper appointments depended, of course, upon the temper of the tribunal, and necessarily varied with time and place. In 1561, Inquisitor Cervantes says that in Cordova, Seville, and Saragossa, where he had served, aspirants for appointment were taken on probation for two or three months, after which inquiry was made as to their Limpieza and mode of life when, if they were married and peaceable men, they were appointed, but that nothing of this was observed in Barcelona. It is not likely that such scrutiny was frequent, for the appointments were treated as patronage by inquisitors, who took them in turn until in 1638, this was forbidden by the Suprema, which ordered that they should be decided by voting. The Fiscals were required to report whether this was observed, which it doubtless was, because it could be so easily eluded by a private understanding. There was some effort made, but without success, to maintain the dignity of the office by excluding those engaged in trade, or in pursuits regarded as degrading, such as butchers, shoemakers, pastry cooks, and the like. On the other hand, there was naturally welcome for personages of distinction, and of this there was no lack. The bluest blood of Spain did not this day to serve the inquisition in the office of familiar. This excited the apprehension in the Aragonese kingdoms, and in the concordes of 1568, it was provided that familiars should be plain men, and not powerful ones, such as gentlemen and barons. At once the Valencia Tribunal inquired of the Suprema whether these excluded gentlemen who were not barons, and it was assured that barons only were excluded. The Tribunal disregarded even this limitation, and appointed barons and gentlemen holding vassals, turbulent men, rendered reckless by the exemptions, leading to quarrels with the Audiencia, in which Philip II in their post in 1590, by ordering all such appointments made since the Concordia to be revoked. Loud were the complaints of the inquisitors, they denied that they had appointed barons. If the gentlemen with vassals were deprived of their commissions, the inquisition would be dishonored, and what made matters worse, the Audiencia had registered a decree where it could be read by everyone, and had sent it to the governors of provinces, thus publishing it to the world. How long this exclusion lasted under the Crown of Aragon, it would be impossible to say, but probably it was not permanent. In Castile there was no such distinction. At the Madrid Autodefe of July 4, 1632, the standard of the inquisition was borne by the admiral of Castile, assisted by the constable of Castile and the Duke of Medina de las Torres, all familiars. Fernando VI, however, adapted the Aragonese precaution and required all familiars to be pecheros or taxpayers, when an indignant memorial, apparently from inquisitor General Prado Equesta, called his attention to the fact that there was not, in all Castile, Aragon, Valencia and Andalusia, a grandi or gentleman of illustrious birth who did not find ancestors on the rolls of the Holy Office, or counted among the glories of his house that they were enlisted in the militia of the faith. By this time the number of familiars had greatly fallen, though not to the extent that would be inferred from the table in the appendix, for the tribunals had evidently not reported them, in fact, it is probable that few if any had kept registers enabling them to do so. The diminishing influence of the inquisition, the curtailment in the privileges of the office, the new spirit vivifying Spain under the Bourbons, all combined to render the position less sought for, and henceforth we hear comparatively little of the familiar as a disturbing element in the social order. It was a matter, of course, that the officials of the tribunals should form organized bodies. They did so under the name of the Cofradia, or Congregacion, or Hermanda de San Pedro Martil, which assumed to be the same as the Cruces Signati, founded in Italy by Innocent IV, after the murder of Saint Peter Martyr in 1252. The bulk of the membership was naturally formed by the familiars, who were the most numerous class of officials, and there are occasional allusions to Collegios de Familiares, which may have been a subdivision of the general body. At what date the Cofradia was organized, it would be impossible to assert, but as early as 1519 it was a formidable body, with chiefs known as Mayor Domos for when, in that year, there were rumors of an attempt in Saragossa to liberate one Pratt by force. Charles V ordered the Zelmedina of Saragossa to assemble it and resist the movement, and he wrote to the Mayor Domos to obey the Zelmedina. The Hermandad became elaborately organized in the Inquisitorial Centers with the Constitution, which was printed in 1617. Each branch had as officers a padre mayor, a secretari, a Mayor Domo Mayor, a Mayor Domo Menor, and a fiscal. The entrance fees were considerable, and the reception of new members was attended with a certain amount of ceremonial, in which the candidate took a solemn oath, in the hands of an Inquisitor, to imperil his life in executing the commands of the Holy Office, and to denounce all heretics after which the Inquisitor gave him a cross and imparted to him all the privileges and indulgences of the Cruces Signati. The extension of the Hermandad over Spain was by no means simultaneous. It was not established in Seville until 1604, and then only after a considerable opposition. Even as late as 1700 in a formulari, there is a formula of a grant by inquisitors to the commissioners and familiars of an arch-priest district to found a cofridia. The functions of the body may be assumed as purely ornamental, giving luster to the solemnities of the auto-defe, and an occasion for the inquisition to exhibit its strength. Marching in procession under the standard of the Holy Office in the Seville auto of November 7, 1604, they formed a body four hundred strong, and at that of Cordova in 1655, they were reckoned at over five hundred. At the last of the great autos, celebrated in Madrid in 1680, the Suprema ordered all the familiars of the city to join the congregation under penalty of forfeiting the fuero, and each member was required to carry in the procession a wax candle of two pounds weight with the insignia of the inquisition, whereupon it ordered three hundred candles. On this occasion, it received a splendid standard, which it continued to use in solemn celebrations. The organization was not always as faithful as it might have been to its oaths of obedience. In 1603, in 1675, and again in 1715, there was trouble over the right claimed by the members to wear habitually their crosses and habits as insignia of St. Dominic, though the Suprema restricted this to occasions of solemnity, and it finally required a threat of dismissal to enforce the rule. There was still greater indiscipline in 1634 and 1635 at Valencia, where they excited the popular tumult, and refused to obey the orders of the Suprema in the matter of the celebration of the Feast of the Cruz Nueva. When under the restoration, Fernando VII endeavored to revive the somewhat dilapidated glories of the inquisition, it was suggested to him to elevate the hermandad into a royal order of knighthood. He welcomed the idea, and on March 17, 1815, he issued a decree in which he says that, at the request of the Mayor Domos of the most illustrious congregation of San Pedro, composed of the Suprema, the inquisitors and the subordinates of all the tribunals, and in order that they may be distinguished and honored, he commands that they wear daily on their outer garments, like the other orders of knighthood, the habit and badge of the inquisition. To set the example, on the Feast of St. Peter martyr, April 29, he presided over the congregation in person, accompanied by the Infantes Don Carlos and Don Antonio, when he wore this insignia, which was imitated by the members, so that it became the fashion in the court. April 26, the Royal Council promulgated the decree, in accordance it said, with concessions from the Holy See, and it ordered that no individual or court should impede the members in the enjoyment of this right. On May 10, the Suprema communicated the decree to the tribunals, with orders for its strict observance by all officials. It was disheartening to find that all this was not taken seriously by the people, for it was not long before the inquisitor of Valladolid had occasion to complain to the Suprema of the insults offered by the ecclesiastical authorities to the officials, on account of the decoration of the royal order of knighthood of St. Peter martyr. Chapter 4 Part 1 of the History of the Inquisition of Spain, Volume 2 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The History of the Inquisition of Spain, Volume 2, by Henry Charles Lee. Repeated allusions have occurred above to the limpieza, or purity of blood, required in all officials of the Inquisition. This was so remarkable a development of the prevailing fanaticism and exercised so much influence on the social condition of Spain that it deserves a somewhat detailed investigation. The first indication of this exclusiveness is seen in the Setencia Estatuto of Toledo, in 1449, under which all conversals were stripped of their official positions as being suspect in the faith, Volume 1, Page 126. This, as we have seen, elicited the bull of Nicholas V, denouncing such legislation as un-Christian, forbidding discrimination between old and new Christians, and confirming the laws to that effect of Alfonso X, Henry III, and Juan II. This was evaded in the founding of a confraternity, under the title of Christian love, in Córdoba, in 1473, from which all conversals were rigorously excluded, leading to the tumult's un-massacres described above. It may have been this which induced Archbishop Carillo of Toledo, in a provincial synod, held at Alcalá, to denounce the growing practice of brotherhoods bound under oaths to exclude conversals and alleging these oaths in justification. All such statutes were declared invalid, and all who had taken such oaths were released from them. In 1473, also, Juan II of Aragon abrogated the statutes of a similar organization in Mahorca, and ordered that conversals should have full enjoyment of all faculties in his dominions. A somewhat ludicrous aspect was given to this prejudice by a guild of stone masons in Toledo, composed principally of Mudejáres, which, in 1481, adopted a rule forbidding members from teaching their art to conversals, and the next year a still more prescriptive statute was adopted in Guipuscóa, prohibiting conversals from settling or marrying in the province. The earliest official recognition of a distinction between old and new Christians was the bull of Sixtus IV in 1483 ordering that Episcopal inquisitors should be old Christians. The next step was more portentous of the future. When in 1485 the temporary inquisition was established in the Geronimite monastery of Guadalupe, a Jew was found among the monks who had been living as one of them for forty years and yet had never been baptized. His prompt burning in front of the convent gates did not allay the dread that other heretics might find similar refuge in the order, leading the general chapter to decree that no descendant of a Jew should be admitted. Those already entered, if they had not professed, were expelled, and those who had professed were incapacitated for any honor or dignity. Much discussion ensued, the decree was held as contravening the bull of Nicholas V in 1449, and there was prospect of trouble leading Ferdinand and Isabella to apply to Innocent VIII for a remedy. He evaded a decision in the brief deset Romanum, September 25, 1486, by clothing the Archbishop of Seville and all bishops of Cordova and Leon, with authority to decide all questions under the decree, and to revoke, modify, and strengthen it at their discretion. This, of course, was held to be a practical confirmation of the new rule, and we are told that our Lady of Guadalupe was so delighted that she coruscated in miracles, which Fray Francisco Sancho de la Fuente undertook to record, but they were so abundant that his zeal was exhausted, and he abandoned the pious task. The next instance was a special and limited one. After Torquemada had founded at Avila his convent of St. Thomas Aquinas, he grew apprehensive that the hatred which he had earned from the conversos might lead them to enter it with evil intent. In 1496 he therefore applied to Alexander VI for a decree forbidding the reception of any one descended directly or indirectly from Jews, a request which the Pontiff readily granted, subjecting to Ipsofacto excommunication any prior or other person contravening the rule. The tendency to discriminate against conversos was stimulated by the disabilities inflicted under the canon law on the children and grandchildren of impenitent heretics. This will be treated more fully hereafter, and it suffices to say here that it was construed as applying to the children and grandchildren of all condemned or reconciled by the Inquisition. It was the subject of some debate, and the instructions of 1488 required inquisitors to enforce by heavy penalties the incapacity of such descendants to hold any public office, or be admitted to holy orders. These disabilities were extended still further by the sovereigns into pragmaticas of 1501, forbidding the children and grandchildren by the male line and the children by the female to hold any office of honor or to be notaries, scriveners, physicians, surgeons or apothecaries. These pragmaticas were promptly sent by the Suprema to all tribunals with orders for their strict enforcement, as the sovereigns did not permit exceptions to be made. In this rising tide of proscription it is pleasant to find an exception. There was no more uncompromising defender of the faith than Jiménez, but in organizing his University of Alcalá he made no discrimination against conversos. In his carefully elaborated details as to qualifications for professorships, fellowships, degrees, and the other objects of academic ambition, there is not a word indicating that the taint of Jewish or Moorish blood was an obstacle. It was doubtless this which accepted Alcalá from the ominous decree of the Suprema, November 20, 1522, prohibiting Salamanca, Valladolid and Toledo from conferring degrees upon any convert from Judaism or on any son or grandsons of one condemned by the Inquisition. Where it found warrant for such assumption of authority it might be difficult to say, but the effect of such proscription can scarce be exaggerated, in thus barring the way to all the learned professions and consequently to public employment and ecclesiastical preferment. The next step was taken by the observantine Franciscans, who, in 1525, procured from Clement VII a brief providing that in Spain no Freilet descended from Jews, or from one convicted by the Inquisition, should be promoted to any office or dignity, and that thereafter no one laboring under such defect should be admitted into that order. By this time the question of Limpiesa was ever present, and every one was popularly clasped as an old Christian or a new, for genealogies seemed to have been public property. When, in 1528, Diego de Uceda was tried for Lutheranism and claimed to be an old Christian, the Toledo Tribunal sought testimony in Cordova, where the witnesses unhesitatingly described his family, paternal and maternal, as perfectly pure from stain of converso blood, which they said was notorious throughout the city. The increasing importance of the matter led the Inquisition to amass evidence for itself, and in 1530 the tribunals were ordered to summon before them the descendants of all who had been relaxed or reconciled and ascertain whether they had changed their names. From this general inquest each tribunal compiled for its own district a number of genealogies comprising all the infected families, which, when duly kept up, preserved a mass of testimony infinitely disquieting to subsequent generations. The growing importance of the questions involved to society at large is indicated by a petition of the Cortes of Segovia in 1532, that those should be held as old Christians who could prove their descent from Christian parents, grandparents and great-grandparents, or if necessary from great-great-grandparents, and that no imputation of lack of limpiesa should be cast on them unless there is evidence to prove their descent from Jews or Moors, or that an ancestor had been condemned by the Inquisition. The Dominicans were not as active as the Franciscans in obtaining papal protection of their limpiesa. In a long list of briefs conceded to Spanish-Dominican houses there is no allusion to the exclusion of conversos between Torque Madas of 1496 and 1531 when the houses of Santa Maria Nieba and San Pedro Martir of Toledo were forbidden to receive any fraile suspected of Jewish or Moorish origin. While in the College of Santa Maria the professors and students of arts and theology were required to be free from all suspicion of such descent, the sentiment of the order was less prescriptive than that of the Franciscans. Its most conspicuous member of the period was Thomas de Vio, better known as Cardinal Caetano, who, when consulted in 1514 by the Regent of Salamanca as to the legality of excluding those of Jewish blood from the order, replied that it was not a mortal sin, but seeing that the race had furnished Jesus Christ and the apostles and the salvation of man, it was irrational and ungrateful to discriminate against them as well as an obstacle to their conversion. Paul III agreed with him, for in a motu proprio of 1535 addressed to the Dominican provincial, he forbade any impediment to the entrance in the order of those of Jewish or Moorish blood, and on learning that this was disregarded in some houses he repeated and confirmed it with censures by a brief of August III, 1537. In this, as in so much else, anyone seemed able to get from the Holy See whatever he wanted, and Paul reversed himself in 1538 when the convent of San Pablo of Cordova represented that, in most of the colleges of the order, descendants of conversals were not received or, if admitted in error, were ejected, and it desired the same concession to its college as necessary for its preservation and the peace of the house. Paul promptly acceded to this request and ordered that the inquisitors and the dean of Cordova to defend the convent in these privileges, even to calling in the aid of the secular arm. This was followed by a more general measure in 1542, when, by command of Paul, Cardinal Juan de Toledo, Bishop of Burgos, prohibited the Dominicans of Aragon from receiving into the order descendants of Jews or of convicts of the inquisition to the fourth generation. It is not likely that this was confined to Aragon, and in the next year we find the Suprema addressing the provincial and the definitors urging that no conversals be allowed to enter. Charles V. was as inconsistent as Paul III. In 1537 he issued a decree reciting that as in some colleges of the universities admittance was refused to new Christians he ordered that the constitutions of the founders be observed. Yet when the chapter of Cordova, in 1530, adopted a statute of Limpiesa applicable to all the ministrants of the cathedral, and was unable to obtain papal confirmation, he ordered its observance and contributed by his influence to induce Paul IV in 1555 to confirm it. The movement was one which was constantly gaining momentum. In 1548 Archbishop Solisio of Toledo enumerates, among the bodies refusing admission to all except old Christians, the three great military orders of Santiago, Calatrava and Alcantara, membership in which was the object of ambition to almost every Spanish layman of gentle birth. In all the Spanish colleges, including that of Bologna, founded by Cardinal al-Bornos, none but old Christians were received and from these colleges were drawn the members of councils and chancellories and other judicial officials. It was the same with the Minims, by expressed statute of the founder of St. Francis de Paola, and in other orders and monasteries of both men and women. Cathedral chapters were beginning to adopt it, such as those of Cordava and Hyane. Numerous confraternities were based upon it, and many mayarrascos, or entailed estates, were conditioned on it. Thus the mania for absolute purity of blood was spreading irresistibly, and, while it would be impossible now to enumerate accurately the bodies which made it a conditioned precedent of membership, it is safe to say that the avenues of distinction and even of livelihood in public life and in the church were rapidly closing to all who bore the fatal mancha or stain. In time even admission to holy orders required proof of limpiesa. The conversals, however, were too able and energetic to yield without a struggle, and how the losing battle was waged is seen in the decisive case of the primational church of Toledo. The Cardinal Archbishop Tavera attempted, in 1539, to procure the adoption of a statute of limpiesa in the cathedral, but the opposition was so strong that he was obliged to desist. His successor was Juan Martínez Pedernales, who adopted the classic appellation of silly sail, a Salamanca professor who had the luck to be appointed tutor to Prince Philip and was rewarded with the Sea of Mercia in 1541, whence he was translated to Toledo in 1546. He was roused to indignation when, in September of that year, papal letters were presented to the chapter granting a canon wreath to Dr. Hernán Jiménez, whose father had been reconciled by the Inquisition. Although the chapter had several conversal members, it refused admission to Jiménez and wrote a rambling and inconsequential letter to Paul III, justifying its disobedience. To prevent such contamination for the future, silly sail drew up a statute forbidding that any but an old Christian should hold a position in the cathedral, even down to the choir boys. All aspirants were to present their genealogies and deposit a sum of money to defray the expense of an investigation. In July 1547 he came to Toledo with a large retinue of gentlemen and secretly assured himself of the assent of a majority of the canons who bound themselves with o's to adopt it. A meeting of the chapter was called and the measure was sprung upon it in violation of its rules of order. As he frankly said, if notice had been given and discussion allowed it could not have been passed, for the conversals would have intrigued successfully against it. The vote in its favor was twenty-five to ten, not including the dean, who opposed it but had no vote. The minority claimed that they were the wiser and better part of the chapter, and probably they were, for they included the Archdeacons of Guadalajara and Talavera, both sons of the Duke del Infantado, and Juan de Vergara, one of the most illustrious men of letters of the day who had had experience of the rigor of the Inquisition. This action aroused so much excitement in the city that the royal council sent an alcalde de corte, who reported that, for the sake of peace, the statute had better not be enforced, inconsequence of which Prince Philip, then holding the Cortes of Monson, sent orders to suspend it until the emperor's pleasure could be learned. The struggle was thus transferred to the imperial court and to Rome. The matter was argued publicly in the rota when the conclusion was against confirmation and the pope signed a brief to that effect, but the Archbishop's envoy, Diego de Guzman, used such persuasive arguments that Paul secretly evoked the matter to himself and signed another brief, May 28, 1548, confirming the statute, so that each side could boast of his support. Charles referred the question back to the royal council, to which both sides presented memorials. Their temper may be judged by the argument of the chapter that, after so many religious bodies had adopted the exclusion, if the opponents contended it to be unscriptural, they are manifest heretics and should be burnt to ashes. A memorial of silly seo to Charles is in the same key. A strange medley of evils is attributed to Jews and conversos, even the German Lutherans are descendants of Jews. On taking possession of his archbishopric he had found that nearly all the benefaced priests and those having cure of souls were of Jewish extraction, and there was danger of conversos obtaining entire possession of the church, owing to the sale of preferment in Rome, where there were at the time five or six thousand Spaniards, most of them conversos, bargaining for benefits. It was the same in the other professions, where judges, lawyers, notaries, scriveners, farmers of the revenue, etc., were mostly of Jewish stock, and they alone were physicians, surgeons, and apothecaries in spite of all that the inquisition had burnt and was daily burning. They adopted these callings solely for the purpose of killing Christians. It was but the other day that, in a Toledo auto, there was reconciled a surgeon who always placed a poisonous powder in the wounds of his Christian patients. If Charles did not confirm the statute, the outlook was that the conversos would govern the church of Toledo. While this all may seem to us, it gives us a valuable insight into the impulses which govern Spain in its dealings with the alien races within her borders. It was a humiliating admission that they were regarded as men of superior intelligence and ability, whose wrongs for generations had converted them into irreconcilable enemies, the object of mingled dread and detestation. As they could not be matched in intellect, the only policy was brute repression and extermination. Of course, silly Seo carried the day. The confirmation of his statute by Paul III was conclusive and was regarded as establishing on irrefragable grounds the necessity of limpiesa as a qualification for all who aspired to a position in church or state. Toledo maintained it even against the Pope. In 1573 the Venetian envoy Leonardo Donato reports that he had seen all the authority of the stern pious the fifth vainly exerted to secure the arched deaconate of Toledo for a servant of his who was not limpio and who finally had to content himself with transferring the dignity to another and retaining a heavy penchant on the revenues. It was not only in Toledo that the capacity of the conversos was filling the minds of the faithful with dire apprehensions of their ultimate triumph over their oppressors. While silly Seo was at work, the inquisition was endeavouring to enforce the brief by which, in 1525, Clement VII had excluded them from the observantine Franciscans. To the Suprema its fiscal represented that the unbridled license of friolets of Jewish dissent had prevailed to such an extent that they were elected as general and provincial ministers, guardians, vicars, procurators, visitors and other officials, to the opposition of the old Christians of the order, who were thus excluded from office, causing daily scandals and threatening worse. Valdez consequently ordered the brief to be published anew and observed everywhere under heavy penalties. Thereupon the general of the order, Andreas de Insula, was incensed and, on the assumption that this had been instigated by old Christian friolets, threatened to punish them severely. The Suprema therefore appealed to Julius III, reciting all this and pointing out the crafty and unscrupulous ways in which that unquiet race disturbed the peace of all bodies to which it found entrance, forming factions and aspiring to rule with the object of ruining the old Christians, thus opening the way to a return of Judaism and the destruction of Christianity. Julius responded favourably in a brief of September 21, 1550, instructing Valdez to summon the general Andreas and all concerned to obey the decree of Clement and granting him full powers to decide summarily the prosecutions proposed with a view to protect the old Christians from molestation, using for the purpose whatever censures might be necessary. It shows how indomitable were the conversos that confirmatory briefs had to be procured from Gregory XIII and Sixtus V. Yet again the Holy See manifested its inconsistency, for when the chapter of Seville in 1565 petitioned Pius IV to confirm a statute of Limpiesa, he refused and condemned the Spanish practice as contrary to law and as upsetting the churches. Cardinal Pacheco defended it and described the evils wrought by the Jews when Pius turned fiercely on him, seeing that he would do as he thought best and that the Spaniards all tried to be popes. When those who had a slightest taint of Jewish or Moorish blood were thus regarded as not only implacable enemies of the Christian faith but as gifted with preeminent intelligence and craft, it became impossible for the Inquisition to consider them as fitted for its service. One would have expected it to take the initiative and the only subject of surprise is that it should have been so late in adopting for itself the rule which it was enforcing on other bodies. Discrimination may have been exercised in special cases, but till the middle of the sixteenth century there is no trace of any systematic adoption of Limpiesa as a test. Acarta Accordada of July 20, 1543, and a decree of Prince Philip in 1545, respecting the numbers and character of familiars, are silent as to this as a qualification. The first allusion to it that I have met occurs in a commission issued to Francisco Romeo as Scrivener of Confiscations in Saragossa, signed April 16, 1546, by the Inquisitor General, but not countersigned by members of the Supremah until July 19, quote, after the Inquisitors of Aragon had ascertained the Limpiesa of the San Francisco Romeo, end quote. A step forward is seen in the instructions issued by the Supremah, October 10 of this same year, in which it ordered that no familiar be received until it is ascertained that he is an old Christian. Still this was rejected as a general principle, for when the Cortes of Monson, in 1547, complained that Moriscos were appointed as familiars, the answer of the Supremah was a formal declaration that the Inquisition regarded as capable of holding office all who had been baptized and who lived as Christians except heretics or apostates or foutures of heretics. This vacillation continued. A number of appointments subsequent to that of Romeo have no illusion to Limpiesa until 1549, when on April 9 Valdes inquires of the Inquisitors of Barcelona whether Heronimo de Tombos, candidate for the receivership, possesses the qualifications of Limpiesa and habits required in officials, and whether there is anything connected with his wife to prevent his appointment. So on April 8, when Moya de Contreras, Inquisitor of Zaragoza, proposed to employ commissioners of the Cruzada, Valdes emphatically negatived the suggestion, giving among other reasons the fact that the officials of the Cruzada were not tan limpios de sangre. Yet in an order of October 8 of the same year to the Tribunal of Cuenca, remodeling its familiars, there is no illusion to the necessity of Limpiesa. This uncertainty continued yet for a while, of which further instances could be cited, but a decisive step seemed to be taken when Philip, in instructions of March 10, 1553, concerning the Concordia of Castile, prescribed that all familiars must be old Christians, and yet a Cartha Accordada of March 20 on the same subject makes no illusion to such a condition. The Tribunals appeared to have been somewhat slack in conforming their patronage to the new regulation. December 23, 1560, the Suprema felt it necessary to order that all familiars must be married men and limpios. When the Inquisitor General made an appointment and required the Inquisitors to certify to the Limpiesa of the nominee, they would do so as appears from the Commission of Bernaldo Mancipi as assistant notary of sequestrations in Barcelona in 1561, but in the same year Inspector Cervantes reported that they paid no attention to it in their appointments of commissioners, consultores and familiars, a negligence which continued, for in 1568 the Suprema was obliged to rebuke them for it. This is scarce surprising when Philip II himself, in 1565, had issued a series of conciliatory instructions regarding the Mariscos of Valencia, in which he ordered that their leading men should be made familiars. End of Book 4, Chapter 4, Part 1 Book 4, Chapter 4, Part 2, of the History of the Inquisition of Spain, Volume 2. The History of the Inquisition of Spain, Volume 2, by Henry Charles Lee. Book 4, Organization, Chapter 4, Part 2, Limpiesa. Thus far there does not seem to have been any definite system adopted as to verifying Limpiesa. The Statute of Toledo required aspirants to furnish genealogies and deposit money for expenses, and this was probably the common plan. In 1557 we are told of Beltrón Ibáñez de Arsamendi, appointed Alguacil in the Tribunal of Sardinia, that the examination of his paternal genealogy was made in Valencia, and of his maternal in Cala Oda, the birthplaces of his respective parents. But doubtless much of this was perfunctory. It is evidently felt that the highest authority must be invoked to prescribe a settled system, and Philip II was called upon for this. In 1562 he accordingly issued a decree, in which, according to custom, antiquity was claimed for innovation, for it recited that, since the Inquisition had been founded in Castile and Aragon, all inquisitors and officials appointed by the Inquisitor-general had been required to furnish genealogies to prove that there was no trace of descent from Jews or Moors, or from those condemned or penanced by the Inquisition. The King therefore ordered that all appointees in tribunals of the kingdoms of the Crown of Aragon and of Navarre and of Lagronio should furnish satisfactory proofs of Limpiesa, even though they might hold canonries or churches or be members of orders which required Limpiesa. Moreover, married men were obliged to furnish proofs of the Limpiesa of their wives, and those already in office were to be dismissed if there was defect of Limpiesa in the wife. These rules were to be embodied in the instructions and were to be inviolably observed. Undoubtedly a similar order was issued for Castile, and the utterance is important as embodying the first absolute demand for proofs of Limpiesa and as marking the extravagant extension of the rule to wives. This royal sedula was interpreted as applicable to existing incumbents, and investigations as to their genealogies were set on foot with the intention of weeding out at least the familiars who were not limpios. Several efforts had already been made to this effect under the Castile Concordia of 1553 without apparent result, and it was now undertaken again with instructions that, if any were found to be conversos, they were to be dismissed without assigning a reason. It was a work ungrateful both to the investigators and investigated and dragged along in the most perfunctory fashion. Carthus Accordadas in 1567 and 1575 called for lists of those who had been investigated and those who had not, and when it came to taking action the habitual tenderness manifested toward officials was displayed in orders issued in 1572 and again in 1582 that if any officials, commissioners or familiars were found lacking in the requisite qualifications they were to be reported to the Suprema without dismissing them. As a matter of course the test was applied to all new appointments and no one was admitted to office in any capacity in the Inquisition who was not free from the mancha of Jewish or Moorish blood or of ancestral punishment. Even for temporary employment Limpiesa was essential. In his visitation of the Canaries in 1574 the Inspector Bravo de Zayas brought an accusation against the Inquisitor Ortiz de Funes of appointing officials without preliminary investigation, the cases being two emergency appointments to fill temporary vacancies and the appointees being Montañeces or Highlanders from the northern provinces of Spain where purity of blood was presumable to say nothing of the fact that an investigation would probably have consumed a year or two. Yet this was but the natural expression of the infatuation which had taken possession of Spain. In 1595 Philip II in his instructions to Manrique de Lara lays a special stress on the importance of Limpiesa. Investigation as to this and as to habits must be made with the utmost rigor and no dispensations must be granted. No examinations are to be made before the party is selected because otherwise if he is not appointed owing to other reasons it may be ascribed to a mancha and thus undeserved infamy be cast upon an entire kindred. Strangely enough, however, the Inquisitor General himself was never required to furnish proofs of purity of blood. Unfortunately in the craze for absolute Limpiesa no limit was set to the number of generations through which the taint could be carried. The canon law as we have seen limited disabilities to grandchildren and in 1573 Leonardo Donato describes the rule as extending to what were called the Four Quarters, that is the parents and the Four Grandparents, and in this moderate shape he says it was the cause of constant strife and of preserving the old judaizing memories. In this, however, he greatly understated Spanish craving for purity of blood. We have seen the Cortes of Castile, in 1532, petition that it should be satisfied with great-grandparents indicating that it was carried beyond this, and solicios to lay those statute affixed no limit. Each body, it is true, could prescribe its own rules, but the more important ones discarded all limitations and refused admission to those against whom a stain could be found, however remote. In 1633 Escobar informs us that among these were included the Inquisition, the Orders of Santiago, Alcantra, Calatrava and St. John, the Church of Toledo, and all the greater colleges and universities, including that of Alcalá. These also required the most rigorous investigation to trace out the slightest mancha in the remotest grade of parentage. There were two sources of descent which caused impurity of blood, from an ancestor of either of the proscribed races, or from one who had ever been penanced by the Inquisition. As regards the former, the line was drawn at the massacres of 1391 former Jews and at the enforced baptisms of the early 16th century for Moors. Voluntary converts prior to these periods were accepted as old Christians, the subsequent ones were considered as unwilling converts and were regarded as new Christians, together with their descendants, no matter how zealously they had embraced the Christian faith. The prevalence of intermarriage with conversals throughout the 15th century had led to infinite ramifications throughout the land in the course of generations, and about 1560 Cardinal Mendoza y Bobadilla, apparently moved by some discussion on Limpieza, drew up and presented to Philip II a memorial in which he showed that virtually the whole nobility of Castile and Aragon had a strain of Jewish blood. There was no lack of material for tracing the dissemination of this blood through the land. In Aragon Juan de Antias, the zealous secretary of the first Saragosa Tribunal, compiled what was known as the Libro Verde de Aragon, giving the affiliations of all the leading conversals who had suffered so as to serve as a beacon for all who desired to avoid contamination. In Castile there was no such authoritative publication, but the records of the tribunals had accumulated ample material, and the Sanvenitos of the relaxed and reconciled hung in the parish churches kept the memory of the sufferers green to the discomforture of their descendants. Many individuals moved by zeal or by malignity, from these and other sources, with greater or less exactness and including much that was mere idle hearsay, compiled books which were circulated under the name of Libros Verde or Del Becerro. No one of the upper or middle class, except in the remote mountainous districts of the north and east, could feel secure that an investigation might not reveal some unfortunate misalliance of a distant ancestor. In fact, only those could feel safe, whose obscurity precluded any prolonged search into their ancestry. As a writer remarks in 1627, if it were not for Limpiesa the Inquisition could select the best men for familiars in place of appointing the low-born whose ignorance enables them to pass the examinations successfully. The second source of impurity, descent from one pennanced by the Inquisition, originally applied only to those who had incurred the heavier penalties of relaxation or reconciliation, but there was nothing to check the scrupulosity of the examiners who worked in secret, and they came to regard any penance inflicted by the holy office as a fixing an indelible stigma on the descendants. The results of this were forcibly described in a memorial presented in 1631 to Philip IV by Dr. Diego de Silva, a member of the Suprema. After alluding to the greatly increased rigor of investigation, dating from the later years of Philip II, he proceeds to state a farther source of wrong only appreciable by one who has handled the records of the Inquisition and not to be openly mentioned. In contrast to the exquisite justice and benignity which he ascribes to the existing tribunals, the proceedings in the former period were hurried and violent. Many to save their lives made confessions which may have been groundless. Whole districts were reconciled rather as a spiritual than a judicial process. In that dangerous period careless words and propositions created suspicion, and people were tried and dismissed with some trivial penance, a few masses, some almsgiving, or a lightfast, for offenses belonging really to the exterior forum. Yet all these were sentences, and as there has since grown up the rule requiring immemorial limpieza, whole families were branded with infamy. As in fact since the Reformation the Inquisition had grown more and more exacting and had inflicted on old Christians innumerable penances for careless words, it is easy to conceive how this rigorous definition of limpieza spread infection throughout the land, even outside of those who had a drop of Jewish or Moorish blood. These evils were aggravated by the looseness with which adverse testimony was admitted in the investigations. Anonymous communications were received and acted upon. For, although this was prohibited by law and by papal briefs, these were commonly disregarded. In a decree by Philip IV in 1623, designed to curb some of the evils, it was ordered that no weight be attributed to idle talk, but the defuseness with which Escobar, in his commentary on this section, dwells upon the worthless character of scandal and idle gossip and angry words uttered in quarrels shows how largely such evidence entered into the conclusions reached. Common fame or reputation, he tells us, suffices, even if the grounds for it be unknown, and purity or impurity of blood, is for the most part a matter of common fame and belief. That this is so is seen in the elaborate series of instructions for the conduct of such investigations, where the fiscal is warned that great weight is to be given to such expressions of opinion, even though the witness can offer no proof except that he has heard it from his elders. The avenue thus opened to the malignant to gratify hatred is dwelt upon by the writer with too much insistence for us to question the frequency with which it was utilized. This was facilitated by the secrecy which shrouded these investigations. The applicant put in his genealogy, named his witnesses, and awaited the event. The process at best was a deliberate one, and if the result was unfavorable the answer never came, though the failure to secure an appointment might arise from any other cause. As Dr. Silva says, the silence and mysterious authority of the Inquisition will not give the slightest glimmer of light to the applicant, even through twenty years of suspense, though meanwhile the opinion gains ground that his family is in pure without his being able to rebut or investigate it, and thus a whole lineage suffers with all its kindred. A glimpse into the anxieties thus caused is afforded by a consulta of February 26, 1634, from the Inquisitor-General to the King, respecting a memorial from the Marquis of Navarrese asking for a speedy decision for his son, Don Francisco Gorella y Borja, who had put in his proofs for an appointment as familiar as the delay is damaging to his reputation. The Inquisitor-General reports to the King that no conclusion had been reached. Perhaps the King may please to decide it, for the Marquis has been in court for a long time pressing the matter, and the delay has brought upon him suffering and stigma. The suspense endured by all the kindred, when one of its members decided to undergo the ordeal, is visible in a letter of 1636 from Fernando Archbishop of Cusco to his nephew, the Coronel Jacinto de Vera, on learning that he was about to apply for admission to one of the military orders. He gives him advice and information, and so important did he consider it that he had seven copies made to be forwarded by different routes and vessels, and another member of the family wrote to Jacinto earnestly precautioning him not to let any eye but his own fall upon the Archbishop's letter. In the routine adopted by the Inquisition for these investigations, the applicant handed in his genealogy, and if married, that of his wife, giving the names and residences of parents and grandparents. If Thoreau searched through the registers by names and districts, revealed a fatal blot, that of course was sufficient. If not, commissioners or secretaries with notaries were sent from the tribunal, or the nearest commissioners were ordered to go to the places of residence, where from eight to twelve of the most aged old Christians of good repute were summoned as witnesses, with precautions to prevent the interested parties from knowing who was called upon. The witnesses were examined under oath on a series of printed interrogatories, as to their knowledge of the bodies, whether they were descended from conversals or from penitents, what were the sources of information, and whether it was public fame in report. The replies were duly taken down and attested. If salaried officials or familiars were concerned, the results of the information were transmitted to the Suprema, to which were also referred doubtful questions and votes in discordia. In a more perfected form, known as the Nueva Ordain, in use in the seventeenth century, stringent additional precautions were taken to prevent the insufficient secrecy observed by officials which was supposed to deter witnesses from giving adverse evidence. Acarta Acordada of January 22, 1628 threatened excommunication and deprivation of office for this, and under subsequent regulations, all concerned were forbidden, under rigorous penalties, to reveal to any one, even to a minister of the Inquisition, any evidence taken, or papers, or records, or even the name of a witness, so that the applicant should be kept in perfect ignorance of the progress of his affair. The commissioners were invested with full power to cite witnesses, to examine into San Benitos suspended in churches, and to demand any papers bearing upon questions that might arise, whether these were in private hands or public archives, and at their discretion, to make copies or carry away the originals, the owners of which were told that if they wanted them back they might apply to the tribunal. If a witness absented himself, a summons to appear before the tribunal was left with the parish priest to be served on him when he should return. Evidently no family records were too sacred to escape these searching investigations. All this, of course, involved expense, and the fees earned in the work by the officials formed a welcome source of revenue. In 1625 the pay of notaries or secretaries was fixed at a per diem of sixteen reales. This was subsequently raised, for in 1665 a statement of expenses in the case of Dr. Martin Royg, applicant for the position of council tour in Valencia, shows that the secretary was paid thirty sueldos a day and a local commissioner twenty. This was only part of the cost, for every act and every blank filled in, every piece of writing bore its separate charge. The bill rolled up for him and his wife in Barcelona for this unsalaried position amounted to nine hundred fifty-five and two thirds sueldos, and this was only the beginning. Similar researches were required in the tribunals of Valencia and Cuenca, which must have been still more costly, for the Barcelona report only occupied twenty-three folios, while that of Valencia was in ninety, and one against his son Vicente was in a hundred and eight. Two years later, in 1667, the affair was still dragging on. It was a large price for the honour of an unpaid position, even if he proved successful. These extortions were multiplied as often as possible. In 1661 Juan Temprado Munoz made his proofs as receiver of the tribunal of Marcia, and of course this included his wife. But when, in 1667, their son Juan Temprado de Serena desired an office in the tribunal of Barcelona, he had to go through the same process afresh, when the examination of the Barcelona registers alone cost him five hundred forty-six sueldos. In addition to this, the registers of Cuenca and Valencia had to be examined, and evidence had to be taken in the home of his ancestors. This chance to be in Roussillon, which was now French territory, there was a war between the nations, and even in peace, France refused entrance to officials of the Inquisition. So the ingenious formality was devised of sending a commissioner to the border and examining there the requisite number of old men as witnesses. The evidence, of course, was valueless, but it gathered in the per diem all the same. In time this per diem for the secretary was increased to fifty reales, and from one or two cases in 1815 it appears that it was a perquisite which the secretaries took in turns, and when the commissioner nearest to the place of examination was employed it was without prejudice to the secretary, that is, the commissioner who did the work received thirty reales a day while the secretary took the other twenty. In order to secure the payment of these fees the applicant was required, when he presented his genealogy, to make a deposit originally of three hundred reales. As the business increased it became evident that a separate fund and separate accounts of these monies must be kept, and in sixteen hundred it was ordered that a special chest be provided with two keys, one entrusted to the fiscal and the other to a secretary. Abuses crept in, effectively described in the memorial of sixteen twenty-three to the Suprema, as a remedy for which a new official was created, known as the depositario de los pretendientes who received an account for the deposits charging two percent on the sums passing through his hands. Thus he remitted to the Suprema, for his office was salaried and he was relieved of the temptation to perquisites. The office was one of those put up for sale for three or four lives under Sotomayor. The whole business was provocative of fraud and perjury and bribery. Despite the well-meant efforts of the Inquisition to preserve the profoundest secrecy, the writers of the period are too unanimous in deploring the success of enemies and casting infamy on those they hated for us to doubt that means were found to ascertain what was on hand and to abuse the opportunity. To the applicants the stake was too great for them to shrink from any means that promised success. Cases became not infrequent in the records of prosecutions for false witness in matters of limpiesa, showing that aspirants were not remiss in furnishing testimony to prove fraudulent claims. Although in 1560 Valdez humanely ordered that descendants of penitents who committed perjury in getting up statements of limpiesa should not be prosecuted, this policy changed in 1577 when they were subjected to prosecution and in 1582 the thrifty plan was adopted of inflicting pecuniary penance. This proved profitable for the culprits where many, not only among aspirants to office, but because limpiesa was requisite in many careers and the inquisition took cognizance of all cases of perjury in this matter, whether it was concerned or not in the investigation. Thus, in 1585 Bernardino de Torres, a prominent citizen of Toledo, had occasion in a suit to prove his nobility and purity of blood which he did with a number of witnesses. The tribunal had evidence in its records that, on both fathers and mothers' side, he was descended from conversos who had been penanced and it promptly prosecuted both him and his witnesses. Among them was the rejidor of Toledo, Diego de Paredes, who had likewise sworn to his own limpiesa, although the records showed his descent from reconciliados in a time of grace. Altogether there were sixteen witnesses, the advanced age of most of them, showing that old men found profitable occupation in testifying to their recollections. Bernardino himself was penanced in fifty thousand Maraveddes. Many of the witnesses were led off with perpetual disability to testify in such cases, but a hundred and thirty-six thousand Maraveddes were collected from the rest. A few other Toledo cases at the same time may be mentioned to show the various motives impelling men to these frauds. Jerónimo de Villarreal desired to place his daughter in a convent where limpiesa was required. The licenciado Antonio de Olvera was about to emigrate to the colonies and wished to protect himself from insult. Hernando de Villarreal had a son who proposed to take orders and another who aspired to an appointment as familiar. The records showed them to be descended from grandparents or great-grandparents who had been burnt or reconciled and they were duly punished. The taint spread with every new generation and a large part of the population was heavily handicapped in life. If there were frequent perjury and subordination of testimony, it is not to be supposed that the seekers for limpiesa hesitated to corrupt the officials who controlled their destinies, nor is it unreasonable to assume that many of the latter were accessible to bribery. The opportunities were tempting and they were freely exploited. An experienced writer in 1648 describes this as the most troublesome business in the tribunals leading to quarrels which he hints arose between those honestly endeavouring to discharge their duty and those who had been bribed. The fiscal is reminded that he must set his face like flint against all efforts to pass a genealogy in which there is a flaw. For the aspirins tempt the officials, there is collusion between them and forged documents are to be expected. The chief reason, he says, why commissionerships are sought, is because of the opportunities thus afforded, and, writing in Toledo, he declares that all the commissioners and notaries attached to that tribunal are untrustworthy and venial. It was natural that the evils with which this absurd cult of Limpiesa afflicted the land should arouse opposition and call forth suggestions to mitigate its hardships. The earliest writer, who ventured publicly to urge a reform, seems to have been Fre Agustín Saludo, a distinguished Dominican theologian. In 1599 he issued a brief tract, pointing out that practically all Spaniards in the course of ages had contracted some more or less infinitesimal impurity of blood. In that, unless investigations were limited to some moderate period, such as a hundred years, only the lower orders whose genealogies were untraceable could escape the consequences. He tells us that both Pius V and Gregory XIII drew up briefs prescribing narrow limits to these investigations, but that on communicating their designs to Philip II discussions arose as to the term which proved so protracted that the briefs were never published. Philip himself became convinced of the necessity of some limitation, and towards the close of his reign he assembled a junta, including Inquisitor General Porto Carrero, 1596 to 1999, which unanimously agreed to a term of a hundred years, but Philip's death caused the project to be dropped. Salucio's tract was promptly suppressed by Philip III, but it was reprinted in 1637 by Fray Heronimo de la Cruz with a verbose confutation. Yet while he indignantly denied the aspersion on the Limpieza of the nation, he was fully alive to the misery caused by the current practice, and he urged a limitation of time, placing it at 1492, the year of the expulsion of the Jews.