 Book 4, Chapter 2, Part 2, of the History of the Inquisition of Spain, Volume 2. It was impossible to get rid of those who held offices under these grants for successive lives, but efforts were made to reduce the numbers of the class that had not been put up at auction. In 1677 Balidadas represented to Carlos II that the income of the Inquisition did not meet more than half the expenses for salaries, prisons, etc. Wherefore he recommended that as vacancies occurred, the offices should be suppressed until, in the busiest tribunals, there should not be more than three Inquisitors, a Fiscal and four Secretaries, while in the smaller ones two Inquisitors, a Fiscal and three Secretaries would suffice. The King assented, and the plan was enlarged by leaving unfilled other superfluous places. Like other reforms, this was not permanent. In 1695 Carlos caused Roccaberti to investigate the personnel of the tribunals and to enforce the regulations of 1677. About 1705 Philip V in his attempted reform instituted a searching examination into the increase in numbers and salaries since the time of Arce Irenoso and of Roccaberti, and the Inquisitor General Vidal Maran again put in force the schedule of 1677, which continued to be, nominally at least, the rule. At intervals as in 1714, 1728, and 1733 inquiries were made and reports were ordered from the tribunals, doubtless with a view to see that the limitations were observed for, under the Bourbons, the Inquisition was held to an accountability much stricter than of old. We have seen the futile effort of Philip V and 1743 to reduce the overgrown numbers of officials in the Santa Cruzada and Inquisition. It was possibly in connection with this that Prado y Cuesta, on his accession in 1746, demanded from all tribunals detailed reports as to all officials and their salaries, stating any vacancies or supernumeraries, and whether they were more familiar than were allowed by the Concordias. The answers to this ought to give a complete sense of the Holy Office. In the appendix will be found a table compiled from these returns and also the report from Muthia, at that time one of the most active of the tribunals, which give a tolerably clear inside view of existing conditions. These documents represent an institution which had outlived its purpose, rapidly falling into decadence, no longer commanding popular veneration and chiefly useful as a refuge for those who were content to live on a miserable pittance and virtual idleness. The diminished number of consultants indicates, as we shall see hereafter, that the Consulta de Fe was falling into disuitude, while the army of Calificadores points to the fact that the chief business consisted in the censorship of the press and the prosecution of propositions requiring theologians to define them. The irregularity in the number of commissioners is explained by the Muthia report which shows that, for the most part, they were omitted from the statements, but it is not so easy to understand the absence of Alguathils, of whom at least one would seem to be necessary to each tribunal. There are many honorary officials and others serving without pay, while still others are jubilado or retired, especially among the secretaries and, where there are two receivers, one is jubilado or absent. The paucity of keepers of penitential prisons shows that that punishment had become practically obsolete. With the absence of confiscations the Coeth de Bienes has disappeared, except in Majorca. The blanks in the returns of familiars, although information concerning them had been specially demanded, may be due either to the tribunals keeping no registers of them or to concealment of the fact that the numbers allowed by the Concordias were exceeded, that there were serious omissions indeed as proved when we consider that the total aggregate reported is only 951, while the census of 1769 gives 2,645 as the number of those admitted to exemption through connection with the Inquisition. During the interval between this and the next census in 1787, strenuous and successful efforts were made to diminish the number of exempts, in spite of which the employees of the Inquisition had increased to 2,705. Surveying the table as a whole it will be perceived that the higher offices of inquisitors and secretaries had rather increased than diminished from the standard set by Baledores in 1667, yet there was virtually no serious work for them to do. Their predecessors had successfully enforced unity of faith and little remained except to repress all freedom of thought and aspiration for improvement. How they earned their salaries by laborious trifling is exemplified in 1808, when three inquisitors and an Inquisitor Fiscal of the Balencia Tribunal pottered for eighteen months over the case of a poor laboring woman accused of, quote, supersticionis, unquote, because she had suggested certain charms to some of her neighbors and finally concluded to suspend it and to order her parish priest to reprimand and threaten her. The tribunals were constantly complaining of their penury and of the inadequacy of the salaries, doubtless with reason, but the pressure for appointment precluded the wholesome reduction in numbers which would have afforded relief. It was probably with a view to some practical readjustment that the Supremah repeatedly, in 1776, 1783, 1793, and 1806, called upon the tribunals for full and exact reports of all employees. If so, the only result was a trifling increase in the salaries of the lower officials, averaging about fourteen percent, leading to a complaint in 1798, repeated in 1802, that the pay of the secretaries and messenger, the hardest work of all the officials, had remained unchanged for a hundred years while the cost of living had quadrupled and they had been deprived of their old exemptions and emoluments. It took, as the Balancy Tribunal declared, half of their salaries to rent a decent house, which would seem to show that they were no longer furnished with dwellings. The excess of officials is emphasized by the fact that the inquisition was empowered to call upon every individual for gratuitous service. Its commissioners were told that, if there was no appointed notary available, he could make another one serve and, when he summoned anyone to accompany him on duty, even to a distant place, if the party refused to go he was to report the fact to the tribunal that it might take the proper steps. Temporary commissions were constantly sent to the parish priest or to a canon, even when their names were unknown, with instructions as to what they were required to do. As the real work of the tribunals diminished, there was an increasing habit of deputing what remained to outsiders. Inquisitors, who did not decide more than five or six trivial cases in a year, were too indolent to investigate denunciations or examine witnesses and would issue a commission to some priest or friar to do the work for them. They spared their subordinates in the same way. Thus in 1791 at Barcelona, there was some reason for identifying a man described as Alejandro Ebalie, sergeant in the second battalion of the Walloon Guards. In place of sending one of the underlings of the tribunal on so simple an errand, a formal commission was made out of Francisco Luc, Augustinian prior, who in due time reported that he had found him in the sixth battalion. If the salaries were trivial, so was the work which returned to them. Offices were virtually held for life, although the commissions technically expired with the death or removal of the grantor, for we have seen that, with each change in the Inquisitor Generalship, the new incumbent renewed them, and the interregnum was bridged over by the action of the Suprema. This did not cover the financial officials, who held from the crown, and the same process was required on a change of sovereigns. Thus when Philip II died in 1598, the Suprema made haste to inform the tribunals that Philip III confirmed all the judges of confiscations, receivers, and auditors. Thus the incumbents came to regard themselves as holding vested rights in their offices, and in fact were technically called, quote, proprietors, unquote, of them, a corollary to which was to consider them as property subject to hereditary transmission or to transactions more or less disguised. A tendency to nepotism seems to have manifested itself early. For the instructions of 1498 forbid the appointment in any tribunal of a kinsman or servant of the inquisitors or of any other official. The force of this was weakened in 1531 by a decision of the Suprema that the deputy of the receiver of Balenthea was not an official in the sense of the prohibition, a decision which opened the door to hereditary transmission by enabling fathers to introduce their sons as deputies in their offices, as we have seen in the case of Heronimo Therita. Still, the prohibition was held to be in force, and in the instructions to visitors, one of the points to be investigated was whether two members of a family were employed in a tribunal. Like all other wholesome rules, however, there was no hesitation in violating it. When the tribunal of Lima was established in 1570, it was specifically called to the attention of the inquisitors, but they had scarce been installed when a letter from Secretary Bhathketh ordered them to appoint Pedro de Bustaminte, brother of one of them, to any office for which he was fitted, and he was duly made notary of sequestrations. Hereditary transmission seems to have been favored from an early period. In 1498 we find Ferdinand not only approving the resignation of Pedro Latharo, Alguafil of Barcelona, in favor of his son Dionisio, but increasing the salary of the latter because he is a person who cannot live upon the regular stipend. So, in 1502, when Juan Pérez, notary of the tribunal of Calatayud, was incapacitated by age, he executed a will leaving all the papers and documents to his son Juan, and Ferdinand confirmed the bequest and empowered Juan to act. So completely did this become the policy of the inquisition that when an official died, leaving a minor son, the place was filled temporarily till the boy should reach adult age, and he was provided for meanwhile. In 1542 Luis Bajes, notary of sequestrations in Saragossa, died in Tvera appointed Batellume Malo to the vacancy, ordering the receiver to pay from the fines and penances five hundred swildos a year to Juan Bajes, the young son of Luis. Accompanying this was a private communication to the inquisitors, informing them that Malo was appointed only until Juan should have age and experience for the position and, as the arrangement does not appear in his commission, a notarial act must be taken so as to ensure Juan's succession. Secret arrangements such as this, however, were not usually considered necessary. The next year died Miguel Deolibán, notary of the secreto in the same tribunal, when a temporary appointee was inducted who divided the salary with Juan Pérez deolibán, son of Miguel, till he should be old enough to take the place. The requirements of age were waived in favor of such transmissions. About 1710, Carlos Al Bornoz, receiver of Balencia, asked to be allowed to transfer his office to his son, age twelve. This was refused, but when, two years later, he renewed the request, it was granted. Of course, the service suffered from the incompetence of those thrust into it, but when they were absolutely unfit they were allowed to employ substitutes who served for a portion of the salary. Thus, when Juan Romeo, in 1548, resigned a notariat of the Huzgado in favor of his brother Francisco, Baldès wrote to the inquisitors that he hoped that Francisco would soon learn his duties and be able to fill the office personally, without employing a substitute as had previously been the case. It would be useless to multiply examples of what was of daily occurrence. Officials were constantly resigning or retiring on half-pay in favor of their sons or grandsons or nephews, who were accepted as a matter of course. So completely was office regarded as property that a bereaved widow sometimes held it as a dowry, with which to tempt a new husband, or was granted a pension on it to be paid by the successor, or a man with a marriageable daughter would secure the promise of the succession for whoever would marry her, or if he died leaving a girl unprovided for, the tribunal would kindly look up a husband for her on the same conditions, as in the case of Juan de Treviño, daughter of Antonio Español in Valencia. Unluckily, the first suitor failed to prove his limpieza, and another one was found in the person of Antonio de Bolsa. The natural result of this was to found inquisitorial families who continued through generations to live on the whole the office, rendering such service as might be expected from those who held their positions to be personal property, like purchasers for four or more lives. Many examples of this could be cited, but a single one will suffice. In 1586 we find Juan de Lomel officiating as notary or secretary of the Valencia Tribunal, whether the first of the line or not, does not appear. In 1590 his widow Magdalena asked the reversion for her son Joseph to whom it was given, and during his minority it was served by the al-Qaedae Pedro Juan Bidal, who gave a third of the salary to the widow. In 1623 this Joseph secured the succession for his son Joseph, who seems to have been a somewhat turbulent gentleman, for in 1638 he and his son were accused of the murder of his fellow secretary Julián de Palamares. Escaping punishment for this, he died in 1644 and was succeeded by his son Josepe Bicente, who in 1666, not without difficulty, obtained the reversion for his son Bicente. The latter was still functioning in 1690. Who followed him I have not been able to trace, but the male line seems to have failed and the office to have passed to a nephew, for in 1750 it is filled by a Bicente Salvador Idel Olmo. Philip II was not blind to the evils of this abuse and in his instructions of 1595 to Manrique de Lara he ordered that offices should not be transferred to brothers or sons unless there were special cause and the recipients were capable of filling them without appointing deputies, but Philip III reversed this in 1608 in his instructions to Sandoval y Rojas and prescribed that when an official died his children should be born in mind. In the instructions of Carlos II in 1695 there is exhibited the fatal Spanish tendency of recognizing evils while tolerating them. He prohibited the transfer of office, save from father to son or from brother to brother when there is a just cause and the appointee has capacity for the position, for it had often happened that sons and brothers so appointed were unfit or were so young that the inquisition had to wait long to its detriment and even more so when substitutes were taken temporarily, for they went out with the knowledge of the secrets of the inquisition and imagined themselves no longer bound to secrecy. Yet after this clear admission he proceeded to repeat the order of Philip III that when an official died care was to be taken of his children, of course the warning went for nothing and the abuse continued to the last. A certificate of Limpiedpa issued November 23rd 1818 to Juan Josef Paris describes him as secretary of the Tribunal of Toledo on half salary while his father Juan Antonio Paris, Jubilado, has the other half. When there was no lineal successor available the customer rose of granting doubtless for a consideration co-editorships with the right of reversion. In 1619 the tribunal Balencia took exception to this and consulted the Suprema resulting in a decision not to recognize such transactions for the future. They still continued, however, and in September 1643 a papal brief was procured prohibiting them, in spite of which a well-informed writer tells us that the inquisitor general still granted them. Another frequent abuse was saddling an office with a pension in favor of some representative of the previous incumbent or even of a stranger suggesting collusion of the appointing power. Even inquisitors themselves sometimes accepted office under these degrading conditions. In 1636 a commission issued to Don Alonso de Vuelba as inquisitor of Toledo bore on its face the full salary, but it was secretly coupled with the condition that he was to draw only the half while the other half was given to Don Francisco de Baldez. A man taking such an office on these terms would probably not be nice in his methods of recouping himself. Still more suggestive of this was the not infrequent custom of taking office, quote, sin hajes, end quote, without pay. Thus in 1637 the licenciado Pedro Montalvo accepted such a commission as notary of the secreto in Toledo, and in 1638 a similar one was issued for Cordoba to Pedro Gutiérrez Armentilla. Even inquisitors did not disdain to stoop to this as when in this same year 1638 Dr. Bilia Bithiosa took the inquisitorship of Murcia without pay. It is easy to understand how a system such as this should encumber the tribunals with useless hangers on whose only serious duty was the drawing of salaries. So well was this understood that when in the confusion of the War of Succession there often was not money enough to go around, an order was issued that those who are performing duties should be paid in preference to those who were not. So one of the features of the reform of 1705 attempted by Philip V was a royal decree declaring null and void all commissions issued without carrying the obligation to work in the office, that no jubilation with salary should be granted without consulting the king, and that no ayuda de costa or other gratification should exceed thirty ducats without the royal assent. Malfeasance was stimulated by the excessive tenderness which forebored to visit misconduct with punishment. Warnings and threats were freely uttered but rarely enforced and, even when the penalty of suspension was inflicted, the term was apt to be reduced before expiration. This patience under repeated and prolonged wrongdoing was partly owing to the paternalism which generally governed the relations between superiors and subordinates, but principally because dismissal was a public acknowledgment of fallibility endangering the popular veneration which the Inquisition sought to inspire. It was so from the first. It is true that the reformatory instructions of 1498 declare that any notary who does what he should not do shall be condemned as a perjurer and forger and be perpetually deprived of office. Besides such other penalty of fine or exile as the Inquisitor General may determine, but this carried few terrors for offenders. The power of effective punishment lay exclusively with the central head which was not readily moved to active indignation by offenses committed at a distance. A letter referred an end, May 17th, 1511, to an Inquisitor who had complained bitterly of a subordinate and evidently had asked his discharge, embodies the principle to which the Inquisition remained faithful to the last. The complainant was told that, when any of his officials was in fault, he was to be admonished. If he persisted, he was to be rebuked in the presence of his fellows. If this did not suffice, consultation was to be had with those who had been present in every care be taken to avoid injustice before going further. For the dismissal of officials of the Inquisition is most odious. Yet most caution must be observed that it is founded on justice and the success of the work depends on all living in harmony. This forbearance Ferdinand himself practised in cases which might well move him to inflict summary chastisement. When the Inquisitor himself proved incorrigible, he might be suspended for a year or two, but the usual course was to transfer him and inflict him on some other district. In extreme cases he might be jubilado or retired on half-pay as was done with officials who were superannuated or too infirm to work. Dismissal was almost unknown and I have met with but few cases of it. Jubilation might be either a reward or a punishment. In the earlier time when an official was obliged to retire on account of age or infirmity he was taken care of with either a pension or a substantial gift of which various cases are to be found in the records. In time this became an established custom known as jubilation and the retiring pension was usually half the salary sometimes but not often deducted from the salary of the successor. Applications for jubilation were common as men grew old or incapacitated and we have seen in the enumeration of the tribunal of Murtia how many wage-eaters of this kind weighed on the finances of the Inquisition. The use of jubilation as a punishment affords a striking illustration of the tenderness shown to offenders. Instead of the deserved dismissal they were shielded as far as possible from disgrace and were retired with a pension thus placing them on a par with aged officials worn out in service. So far was this sympathy carried out that in the instructions of Carlos II to Rocco Berte in 1695 he is warned that as jubilation inflicts grave discredit even sometimes involving risk of life it is only to be resorted to a sample cause after taking a vote in the Suprema. How superfluous was this caution could be instanced by a number of cases of which it suffices to mention that of Miltro Tapata who, about 1640 succeeded his father-in-law as al-Qaidae of the secret prison of Valentia. Then the correspondence of the tribunal becomes burdened with the complaints of his disorderly conduct. He was constantly getting into scrapes and being tried on various charges, among others, that of hiring four soldiers to commit a crime of violence. At length, in place of dismissal, he was jubilated with a life pension of 20,000 Mara-Bedice in silver, and his office was given to his cousin, Crispin Ponce. The titulo de jubilación issued to him by Sotomayor describes his long and faithful service for which he is thus rewarded and was assured of the enjoyment of all the exemptions and prerogatives attached to his office, though his subsequent conduct was so disreputable that, in 1642, it was felt necessary to deprive him of them. When this was the policy observed toward incapable and delinquent officials, it is not difficult to understand the financial troubles of the Holy Office and the grievances endured by the people. The natural effect of this misguided leniency was looseness of discipline and indifference to duty. Inquisitors could inflict fines on their subordinates, except the fiscal, but for serious offenses they could only report to the suprema and, as they had no power of appointment or dismissal, it was impossible for them to exert adequate authority. How little control they possessed is indicated when, in 1546, it was necessary for the suprema to issue a formal order to the janitor of the Granada Tribunal to shut the inner gates of the castle, which was its residence, at such hours as the inquisitors might designate and, if he did not do so, he was to be reported for such action as the council might see fit to take. Under such a system, it is not surprising that, in the suggestions for reform in 1623, it was proposed to give the inquisitors power to punish and suspend. For the tying of their hands resulted in insubordination, causing grave troubles in the tribunals. End of Book 4, Chapter 2, Part 2. Book 4, Chapter 2, Part 3 of the history of the Inquisition of Spain, Volume 2. This is a LibraryVox recording. All LibraryVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibraryVox.org. Recording by Daryl Edson. The History of the Spanish Inquisition. Volume 2 by Henry Charles Lee. Book 4, Chapter 2, Part 3. The History of the Spanish Inquisition. Volume 2 by Henry Charles Lee. Book 4, Organization. Chapter 2, Part 3, The Tribunal. That there was a gross neglect of duty follows as a matter of course. The hours prescribed for work during which all were required to be present were only six. Three in the morning and three in the afternoon except on the numerous holidays and visitors in their inspections were instructed to inquire especially into this. From such reports of visitations as I have examined, it would appear that the enforcement of the rule was difficult. Cervantes, indeed, in his report on Barcelona in 1561, says that there is no hope of securing regular attendance unless the Supremo will impose a penalty for default of more than one hour. Absence from the post of duty was an abuse which also seemed incurable. Even under the vigilant rule of Ferdinand, a circular letter of the Supremo, September 7th, 1509, calls attention to the absence of the officials on their private business. The inquisitors in urgent cases could grant leave of absence for 20 days in the year, but this was never to be exceeded. Records were to be kept and salaries were to be proportionately docked. This was perfectly ineffectual. In 1520, we find the Supremo writing to the officials of Barcelona to return to their posts within 10 days and rebuking the inquisitors for permitting this neglect of duty. But a repetition of the letter in 1521 shows how fruitless had been the first one. The trouble was by no means confined to Barcelona. And in 1521, Cardinal Adrian made an effort to check it by declaring vacant the office of anyone absenting himself for two months. It was not only the subordinates for the inquisitors themselves had frequently to be taken to task for similar neglect of duty. The trouble was endless and serves in part to explain the cruel delays which aggravated so greatly the sufferings of those under the trial. In 1573, the rule of 1509 was repeated with the addition that if the 20 days granted were exceeded by 10 days, the absentee was not to be admitted to his office on his return and this again was reissued in 1597 together with an order that no inquisitor should absent himself without permission from the Suprema. This was not the only matter in which inquisitors had to be kept in check. The frequent commands for them to not accept commissions to attend to outside business show how eager were people to secure the services of agents so powerful and how ready were the inquisitors thus to sell their influence. So in Valdez in 1560 ordered them not to ask for favors for complaints were made by people that they were forced to grant what was asked. We recognize how infinite were the resources of petty tyranny afforded by the terror which they inspired that they were not superior to the vices of the period may be inferred from an injunction by Valdez in 1566 to exercise great moderation and gambling. Ernest efforts were not lacking to maintain a fair standard of efficiency and discipline in the tribunals although they were largely neutralized by the restricted authority allowed to the inquisitors and the fatal clemencies shown to delinquents. Isabella has the credit of reforming the administration of justice in Castile by periodically sending inspectors incorruptible and inflexible to scrutinize the operation of the courts and it was not long after the organization of the inquisition that a similar plan was found necessary for its tribunals. We happen to hear of a visitor or inspector at Medina del Campo while Torcamata was still in active exercise of his functions probably before 1490. From letters of 1497 we learn that the salaries of an inspector and his notary were the same as those of an inquisitor and notary. A hundred thousand maravetes for the one and forty thousand for the other. These were appointed by the inquisitor general and carried royal letters ordering inquisitors to receive and treat them well and all officials to aid them give them free passage and levy no tolls, dues, ferriages or fees of any kind. The instructions of 1498 create permanent inspectors general of whom there were to be one or two to visit all tribunals and report their condition. They were not to lodge or eat with the inquisitors or to receive presence from them and were to exercise only the powers expressed in their commissions. Under this Francisco de Samancas, Archdeacon of Cordova, was appointed inspector with Gonzales Masons as his notary. How long he served does not appear but orders for the payment of his salary can be traced until 1503. When the inquisitions of Castile and Aragon were separated in 1507 each continued to employ inspectors. Alonso Rodriguez of whom we hear in 1509 probably belonged to Castile. In 1514 Jimenez appointed Juan Morris as inspector after which special inspectors cease for a time to be employed. For in 1517 the inquisitor of Cordova was sent to inspect Toledo, Seville and Yein and the inquisitor of Yein inspect Cordova, Suencia and Valladolid. In Aragon, Mercator in 1513 sent Juan de Arolia to inspect Morroca, Sardina and Sicily and about the same time Hernando de Montemayor to inspect the tribunals of Aragon, Catalona and Valencia. After the reunion of the inquisition Cardinal Adrian introduced an innovation by pointing layman to the office licentates Cisa and Piena, the former a judge in the High Court of Valladolid. Their functions were enlarged for Charles V describes them as persons of high authority not connected with the inquisition sent to investigate all the tribunals and to reform whatever required amendment for which he clothed them with ample powers. These regular routine inspections came to an end and though the wholesome supervision was not abandoned, it became irregular either employed occasionally or when complaints seemed to indicate its necessity. Barcelona was a troublesome tribunal but it seems to have been visited only at intervals from six to ten years. The inspections were not inexpensive and the cost had to be defrayed by the Suprema. When in 1567, De Soto Salazar, a member of the Suprema, was sent to investigate Valencia, Barcelona and Sargrocia, he was given at the outset 400 ducats and his secretary Pablo Garcia, 200. The rule became established to employ only inquisitors and those in active service not retired. The work, when conscientiously performed, was not light. An inspection of the Canary Tribunal, made by Claudio de la Cueva, lasted from 1595 to 1597 and his report forms a mass of 1124 folios. This was unusually laborious but reports covering three, four or 500 pages are not uncommon. The Visitor was expected to make a thorough investigation of the condition and working of the tribunal to discover all neglect of regulations, all abuses and malfeasance of the officials, all dare elections of duty, all maladministrations of the property and revenues, all misuse of power, whether through oppression of the defenseless or reminiscence of vindicating the faithful. He was to examine the records, not only to see that they were properly kept and indexed but also whether justice had been duly administered and the Estelio of the Holy Office had been rigidly followed. He visited the prisons, listened to the complaints of the prisoners and investigated them. On arrival, he fixed a day on which he would appear in the audience chamber. The inquisitors and all officials were assembled. His credentials were read and the inquisitors promised obedience in the name of all present. The next day, the inquisitors were examined under oath as to whether there was anything requiring amendment and whether the officials performed their full duty. The answer is being taken down in writing. The inspector brought with him an elaborate series of interrogatories, usually 48 or 50 in number, covering all the points which experience had shown as likely to attempt to wrongdoing. And on these, he examined all the officials singly. He also listened to all who had complaints to make. If these appeared to be justified, he investigated them thoroughly, summoning all witnesses who were guaranteed that their names would be kept secret. And on this evidence, he framed charges against those inculpated and heard them in defense. When his duties in the tribunal were accomplished, he was expected to visit the district and investigate all the complaints. The results were reduced to writing and when his labors were complete, he sent or carried the whole to the Supreme for its action. As a rule, he had no executive authority and could only make recommendations, but visitor doors to the colonies were frequently invested with greater power, presumably in view of the long delays in communication. When in 1654, Medina Rico came as an inspector to Mexico, where maladministration was flagrant, he sat in judgment on the inquisitors, Estrada and Huguera, suspended them and occupied the tribunal for years. It can be readily conceived that at times there was no little friction between the inspector and inquisitors. And in 1645, the Suprema presented for the king a consulta on the controversies then arising. The necessities for the visitations diminished in proportion as the tribunals were subordinated to the Suprema. When they had to make monthly reports of all pending cases so that their action was under constant supervision, when all sentences were submitted for confirmation or revision, the papers showing the conduct of the cases when no arrest could be made without presenting the Samara and receiving authority, when moreover, the business arrangements for property was scrutinized through month reports of the Juanta de Jacinda, there was no longer a justification for the expenses of visitations. The growing facilities of intercommunication encouraged centralization and enabled the Suprema to maintain a constant supervision. When therefore it concentrated in itself all of the judicial facilities of the inquisition, rendering the tribunals merely instruments for investigation, the functions of the visitadors became superfluous, at least in the peninsula. The palace or building, which was the seat of the tribunal was divided into the secreto and the outside rooms or apartments. It was expected to furnish lodgings for the inquisitors and if spacious enough, for the other officials. The most important feature was the carcelias secretas or the secret prison for those on trial, for it was necessary that they could be brought at any moment to the audience chamber without being seen by anyone. There was of course a torture chamber which seems to have generally been underground. The secreto originally was merely a record room in which the papers and documents were preserved. From the first, these were guarded with jealous secrecy, not only on account of their importance in the trials, but because their abstractions or destruction was so ardently desired by the kindred or accomplices of the convicts. As early as 1485, Ferdinand, in his instructions to the tribunal of Saragossa, orders that no servant of any of the officials shall enter lo secreto de la inquisición. The instructions of 1498 provide that the chest or chambers in which the papers are kept shall have three keys. Two held by the notarios del secretos and one by the fiscal so that no one can take out a document saving the presence of others and no one shall enter it accepting inquisitors, the notaries and the fiscal. Rules substantially repeated in the Sicilian instructions of 1516. Among the derelections of the Barcelona Tribunal reported in 1561 by Cervantes was the neglect of this rule leading, he said, to grave abuses. The functions and extent of the secreto were gradually enlarged. In Mercator's instructions of 1514, the money chest with three keys was ordered to be kept in the secreto, a provision which became permanent. When the rule was established of conducting the trials in profound secrecy, a veil of impenetrable mystery was thrown around all the operations of the inquisition. The audience shabber was included in the secreto as well as the offices occupied by the fiscal and secretaries. The door was secured by three locks having different keys and entrance was forbidden saved to those officially privileged or summoned. In 1645, it was discovered that there was a clanger in the notaries or secretaries bringing in their swords for a prisoner when led to an audience might in his desperation seize one and give trouble and they were consequently ordered in future to be left outside. In the Valencia Tribunal, there was considerable excitement in 1679 when the pages of the inquisitors got possession of the keys and had false ones made which they gained at will access to the sacred precincts but no harm seems to have arisen from the boyish prank. One feature of the audience shabber was significant. A solosia or lattice behind which a witness could identify a prisoner without being seen or recognized. In considering the personnel of the tribunal, we may dismiss the assessor with a few words. Such an official was unknown in the old inquisition but we have seen that when the first inquisitors were sent to Seville they were accompanied by an assessor and such a functionary continued sometime to be considered a necessary adjunct to the tribunal. At the beginning, the inquisitors were Dominican friars presumably good theologians but unversed in the intricacies of law. It was therefore desirable to associate them with a lawyer as a guide and his presence moreover might serve as an assurance to the people of the legality of the proceedings. In Torcomata's instructions of 1485, it is provided that they must always act in concert and that anything done by one without the other was invalid. Even communications to the Suprema must be signed by both. In the trials of this period, we sometimes find the assessor sitting with the inquisitors and sometimes not and the sentences are rendered by the latter with a concurrence of the former. In the secular law of the period the assessor had only a consultive and not a decisive role. This would appear to be his position in the tribunal when the routine of the inquisition had established its own precedents when all doubtful questions were decided by the Suprema and the services of trained lawyers were no longer required. In the early time, their salaries were the same as the inquisitors. Indeed, at Saragosa in 1486, Martin Martinez, the assessor, receives 5,000 salutos while the inquisitors are rated at 4,000. It was not long, however, before it apparently became indifferent whether there was an assessor or not. In 1499, the salary list of Seville, of Burgos and of Valencia have no mention of such an official. While there is one at Saragosa and in 1500, Ferdinand empowers the inquisitor of Sardinia to select for his assessor any doctor he pleases. The office continued to exist for a time as a kind of supernumerary employed in hearing the civil cases of officials. But in the Argosis Concordia of 1568, this duty was placed on the inquisitors and the assessorship was abolished. In Castile, the list of officials promulgated in the same year by Philip II is entitled to exemption from taxation and makes no mention of the assessor who may be assumed by this time to disappear. The inquisitors, of course, were the superior officials of the tribunal. They were the judges with practically unlimited power of the lives and fortunes and honor of all whom they summoned before them until they were gradually restricted by the growing centralization of the Suprema. To the people, they were the incarnation of the dreaded holy office, regarded with more fear and veneration than a bishop or noble, for all the powers of state and church were placed at their disposal. They could arrest and imprison at will. With their excommunication, they could at a ward paralyze the arm of all secular officials and, with their interdict, plunge whole communities into despair. Such a concentration of secular and spiritual authority regarded by so little limitation and responsibility has never, under any other system, been entrusted to fallible human nature. To exercise it wisely and temperamentally called for exceptional elevation of character, self-control, and mature experience of men and things. That friars, suddenly called from the cloister or the schools and clothed with such limitless power over their fellow beings should sometimes grow intoxicated with their position and commit the awful slaughter which marked the early years of the Inquisition gives no occasion for surprise, nor that their successors should have trampled with such arrogant audacity on all who venture to raise a voice against their misuse of their prerogatives. It is therefore worth our while to examine what qualifications were required by popes and kings in those whom they selected as fitted for an office of such bewildering temptations and such vast opportunities for evil. Sextus IV, in the bull of November 1st, 1478, empowered Ferdinand and Isabella to appoint, as Inquisitors, three bishops or otherworldly men, priests, either regular or secular, over 40 years of age, godfaring of good character and record, masters or bachelors of theology or licentates of canon law. The prescription, as to the minimum age, was as old as the Council of Vinnie in 1312 and had become a matter of course. The rest was as well chosen a definition of the requisite qualities as perhaps could be expressed in general terms, considering the temper of age and the work to be performed. So in 1483, when Sextus, under the influence of Cardinal Borgia, desired to get rid of Inquisitor Golbis, he asked Ferdinand to replace him with some master of theology who had the fear of God and was eminent for his virtues. The only Inquisitors that Spain had known were Dominicans. And although they were not specified, it seemed to be a matter of course that the Inquisition should remain in their hands. But Ferdinand, in his struggle with Sextus for the control of the Aragonacy Inquisition, had encountered the obstacle of obedience due by the friars to their general, who of course was a creature of the Curia. He was resolved to organize the Inquisition to suit himself, which explains why Torcomata in his instructions of December 6th, 1484, simplified the formula of qualifications to letros, either lawyers or men of university training, of good repute and consequence, the fittest that could be had. This did not even require the Inquisitor to be an ecclesiastic, except insofar as there were comparatively few letardos of this time who were not in orders. When Innocent VIII renewed the commission of Torcomata, February 3rd, 1485, it empowered him to appoint, as Inquisitors, fitting ecclesiastics learned and God fearing, provided they were masters of theology, or doctors, or licentates of law, or cathedral canons, or holding other church dignities. But while this was repeated in a subsequent bull of March 24th, 1486, it was simplified in another clause into ecclesiastics of proper character and learning, not less than 30 years of age. This reduction in the age limit was retained by Alexander VI in the commissions issued to DISA, November 24th, 1498, in September 1st, 1499. When the requisite of being an ecclesiastic was admitted for the qualification was reduced simply to a suitable man of good and tender conscience, even if they had not reached 40 years of age, but are more than 30. This became virtually the accepted formula as shown in the commissions issued June 4th and 5th, 1507 by Julius II, to Ingeria for Argonia, and to Zeminis for Castile, and in those of Leo X to Mercator, and Paul in 1513, and to Cardinal Adrian in 1516 and 1518. The office of the Inquisitor was thus thrown open to the laity, and there was no hesitation in employing them so long as they remained single. But if they married, they were obliged to resign, possibly because it was thought impossible for a married man to preserve the absolute secrecy regarded as essential in the Holy Office. Licentate a Guire, Ferdinand's favorite member of the Supremo, was a layman. On June 28th, 1515, Ferdinand writes to Yeminis that the licentate nebrewdia, Inquisitor of Seville, desires to marry, and he is a good servant. Another office has been found for him, while the treasurer for the Church of Pamplonia will make a suitable appointee for Seville. Two other similar cases occurred about the same time. It was an anomaly to allow laymen to sit in judgment of matters of faith, but no action was taken to prevent it until Philip II, in his instructions of 1595 to the Marquis de Lora, ordered that the Inquisitors and Fiscals at least must be in holy orders. A clause omitted by Philip III in his instructions of 1608. At length, the Supremo met the question, November 10th, 1632, by requiring all Inquisitors to have themselves ordained and prohibiting them otherwise from exercising their functions, a provision which apparently met with slack obedience, for it had to be repeated January 12th and June 5th of 1637, with the addition that Inquisitors and Fiscals who were not in orders should receive no salaries. Even this does not seem to have been effective, for in 1643 a consulta called attention to the matter as a great evil and indecency, and suggested that a papal brief should be obtained, rendering priest's order an essential qualification for Inquisitors and Fiscals. This was not done, but we may presume that in time the functions were confined to ecclesiastics. Legal training was prescribed as a requisite in 1608 by Philip III, who ordered that no one should be appointed Inquisitor or Fiscal who could not exhibit to the Supremo his diplomacy of graduation and law. Carlos II repeated this in 1695, adding that Inquisitors and Secretaries must not be natives of the Providences to which they're assigned, so as to avert partisanship, so that the strictest investigation into character and lapizia must proceed appointment. The papal requirements expressed in the success of commissions issued to the Inquisitors General continued for a while to be simply that they should appoint prudent and suitable men of good repute and sound conscience who had attained the age of 30 years. Apparently, this violation of the Clementine rule of 40 years led to some adamant version and in the commission of Velades in 1547, there is no allusion to age. This example was followed until 1596. Clement VIII, in commission to Porticario, inserted a minimum age limit of 40 years as required by the cannons, adding that if enough suitable men of that age could not be found, as to which he charged Porticario's conscience, then men of 35 could be appointed. But if this were done without necessity, the appointment would be invalid. To this, Porticario objected, saying that it rendered it impossible for him to make appointments without scruples of conscience as it was difficult to find suitable persons of the designated age to take the office. And he therefore begged that the limit should be reduced to 30 years as had been done by all popes since Innocent VIII. Clement yielded, but was careful to insert a derogation of the apostolic constitution and especially of the Clementine dolentes. Thenceforth to the end, all limitation of age was discreetly omitted, the formula being simply prudent and suitable men of good repute and sound conscience and zealous for the Catholic faith. Yet the minimum wage was understood to be 30 and when younger men were appointed, dispensations were required. As in 1782, inquisitor General Bertinan gave the inquisitor's ship of Barcelona to Don Metis Bertinan. Apparently, objection was made to his youth. And in 1783, a papal dispensation was procured, empowering him to exercise the office in spite of not having attained the age of 30. The patronage of the inquisitors was greatly limited by the gradual centralization of powers in the Suprema. In the early period, they had the appointment of the Porteiros and the Nunicos, operators and messengers. And when in 1500, Fernand reorganized the Sicilian tribunal, he sent inquisitors with power to fill all offices, except that of receiver. In 1502, he even authorized the inquisitor of La Rida and Husqa to appoint a judge of confiscations and notary at each place. Subsequently, as we have seen, the inquisitor general absorbed all the patronage of salaried offices, even to the Porteiros and Nunicos. If a vacancy occurred in a post which the daily duties were essential, the inquisitors could fill it temporarily while reporting it at once to the Suprema and waiting its orders, but they had no other power. As regards to the numerous unsalaried officials, the inquisitor general appointed the consultories and the califuctoris or censors and also the commissioners for cathedral towns, seaports and cities, which were seats of the tribunal. This left to the inquisitors the only appointment of familiars and commissioners in other places, though at first, in cathedral towns, they might select a canon of the cathedral for commissioner. It was the same with regards to expenditures as to which originally they enjoyed a certain freedom of action. This, as has been shown above, was curtailed until ultimately the Suprema controlled even the smallest outlays. It also kept watch over the morals of the inquisitors, recognizing the temptations to which they were exposed and the opportunities afforded by their position. Among the interrogatories, which the inspector was instructed to make, was whether the inquisitors lived decently without publicly keeping concubines or corrupting the female prisoners or the wives and daughters of prisoners or of the dead whose fame and memory were prosecuted. When attention was called to official misconduct, it was promptly looked into. As in 1528, when the inquisitors of Barcelona were accused of receiving bribes and suborning witnesses, an inquisitor of Valencia with the notary of Tortosa was dispatched thither, fully commissioned to investigate and report. End of Book 4, Chapter 2, Part 3. Read by Daryl Edson. Book 4, Chapter 2, Part 4 of the History of the Inquisition of Spain, Vol. 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, Vol. 2, by Henry Charles Lee. Book 4, Organization, Chapter 2, Part 4, The Tribunal. The most laborious work imposed on the inquisitors was the visitation of their districts. These were large, usually embracing several bishoprics, and when the tribunals became sedentary, the necessity was apparent of a closer watch over aberrations than could be exercised from a fixed center. Already, in the instructions of 1498, a system of visitation, termed the general inquisition, is seen at work and, in 1500, Datha ordered the inquisitors to visit all places where an inquest had not been held. Each inquisitor was to travel with a notary, receiving denunciations and taking testimony, so that on his return the colleagues could consult together and order such arrests as might be found necessary. In districts where such visitations had already been made, one of the inquisitors was ordered to travel every year, holding inquests in the towns and villages and publishing the edict of faith to attract denunciations. The other inquisitor remained in the tribunal to dispatch routine business or, if there were none such, he too was ordered to take the road. Reports in detail of the work accomplished in the visitation were to be made to the inquisitor general. This remained the basis of the system, and the instructions of 1561 merely define more clearly the functions of the visiting inquisitor, who was told that he was not to make a rest unless there were danger of flight, but was only to gather testimony and carry it to the tribunal for action. If he made an arrest, he was not to try the accused but to send him to the secret prison. Trifling cases, however, he could dispatch on the spot, taking care that he bore delegated powers from the ordinary for that purpose. The importance attached to these visitations is apparent when, during the siege of Toledo and the Comunidades, Cardinal Adrian and the constable and Admiral of Castile joined in an order, November 3rd, 1521, to the commanders of the besieging forces to allow the inquisitors to come out and perform their accustomed visits. In 1517, these visits were ordered to be made every four months, each inquisitor taking his turn under pain of forfeiting a year's salary. This indicates that the duty was distasteful and likely to be shirked, and, in 1581, the obligation was reduced to once a year, starting at the end of January and taking such portions of the district as were deemed to require special attention. In 1607, the districts were ordered to be laid out in circuits to be visited and turned until all recovered when the process began anew. In 1569, an elaborate code of instructions was framed by which it appears that the principal objects were the publication of the edict of faith with its consequent crop of denunciations, an investigation into the character and conduct of commissioners and familiars, and the maintenance in the churches of the San Benitos of those punished by the Inquisition, for which purpose the visitor carried lists for all the places to be visited. A certain amount of statelyness and ceremony attended the visit. Before reaching a town, word was sent forward of the hour of expected arrival, when the authorities, the church dignitaries and the principal gentlemen of the place were summoned to go forth to meet the Inquisitor and escort him to his lodgings. The secretary was instructed to note the details of these receptions, whether honorable or otherwise, the character of the lodgings provided and utensils furnished. Lack of respect on these occasions was punishable. In 1564, Dr. Thurita, visiting the seas of Girona and Elne, found the gates of Castellón de Empurias closed against him and one of the guards seized his horse's reins. He proceeded to prosecute the local authorities, when the consuls proved that they were not in fault, but two guards, Salvador Lyop and Juan Maranya, were sent to Barcelona for trial. Although occasionally nests of Morisco and Jewish apostates were discovered in these visits, as a rule the practical results appear to have been rather the gratification of old grudges by neighbors in little towns and the gathering in of fines by the Inquisitors. In 1582, Juan Imar, Inquisitor of Barcelona, in reporting a visitation of the seas of Girona and Elne and part of Barcelona and Vich, makes parade of having published the Edict of Faith in 263 places, but he brought in only seven trivial cases of which four were a Frenchman. These trips involved no little labor and even hardship. Four months was the time prescribed for them, commencing early in February, and the vernal equinox was not likely to be agreeable, especially in mountainous districts. Naturally the duty was shirked whenever practicable and the effort of the Supremia to compel its performance was endless. In 1557 it instructed the receiver at Saragosa that each Inquisitor, on alternate years, must spend at least four months in visitations and that this performance is in absolute condition precedent to his receiving the customary Ayuda de Costa. This was carried even further in a Carta Accordada of January 25th, 1607, to all the tribunals. The Inquisitor, in his turn, must start on the first Sunday in Lent without attempting an excuse or a reply, and the report of his visit must be included in the annual statement of cases, for otherwise the Ayuda de Costa will be withheld from the whole tribunal because these visits are the principal reason of its bestowal. This solidarity enforced on all the officials was possibly owing to the recalcitrance of subordinates for in 1598, we find a tribunal asking the Supremia to issue the necessary orders to them direct, which it obligingly did, while remonstrating that it should not be burdened with such details. Throughout the 17th century, the correspondence of the Supremia with the tribunals of Balencia and Barcelona is filled with orders to the Inquisitor whose turn it is to go and refusals to accept excuses, and in 1705 a letter to Balencia asks why the visit had been neglected. When there were three Inquisitors, the absence of one did not interfere with current business, but where there were only two it was a serious impediment. From the beginning the rule was absolute that two must act conjointly in all important matters, such as sentencing to torture, ordering publication of evidence, or rendering final sentence, and this in both civil and criminal actions. Minor and trivial cases, however, could be dispatched by one in the absence of his colleague, and he could continue to hold audiences and gather testimony, while in the habitually leisurely transaction of inquisitorial business, procrastination caused by the crippling of the tribunal for four months in every year was evidently not regarded as of any moment. In the little tribunal of Magorca, however, which could support but a single Inquisitor, he was deemed competent to act by himself and he probably was excused from visitations. Next in importance to the Inquisitors stood the Promotor Fiscal, or Prosecuting Officer. In the original Inquisition of the 13th century, there was no such officer. There was kinder in the position of the Inquisitor as both judge and prosecutor, infinitely preferable to the hypocrisy that the trial was an action between a prosecutor and an accused, with the Inquisitor as an impartial judge, how this came to pass will be considered hereafter. We have seen that, even in the skeletal organization of the first tribunal in 1480, a fiscal was deemed essential. He ranked next to the Inquisitor's end, in 1484, it was ordered that he should assist in all public functions, after the Inquisitors and Ordinary, but before the Judge of Confiscations. Yet he was a subordinate. In the Regulation of Salaries in 1498, the Inquisitors received 60,000 Marabedis, the Receiver the same, while the Fiscal was rated at 40,000, the same as the Notaries, and even the Messenger had 20,000. So in the Sicilian Tribunal, in 1500, the Inquisitors and Receiver have 6,000 Swildos, while the Fiscal and Notaries have only 2,500. It was the same with the Ayuda de Costa. In 1540 we find the Fiscal allowed only the same as the Notaries and Algoa Thiel, and when in 1557 the scale was fixed for Saragossa, the Fiscal was portioned with 1,000 Swildos, and the Inquisitors with 3,000. The Fiscal was held to act wholly under orders from the Inquisitors. In the Instructions of 1484, they are represented as ordering him to accuse the Contamassia fugitives and to denounce the dead against whom they find evidence. So in a trial of 1528 we find the Inquisitors ordering the Fiscal to present his accusation against the defendant. In 1561, among his duties was prescribed that of keeping the secreto clean and in good order. He opened and closed its door with his own hands, and in 1570 he was required to have all the multitudinous documents well arranged, sewed, covered, and so marked that they could readily be had when wanted. The letters and instructions of the Suprema were placed in his hands, and it was his duty to give in writing to each official such portion as applied to him. In 1632 there was added to his labours that of furnishing the Suprema a monthly report embracing every pending case with a summary of all that had been done in it since the beginning, a duty apparently not relished for the order had to be repeated in 1639. With all these somewhat multifarious duties we never hear of a Fiscal having a clerk, assistant, or deputy. In 1582 it was prescribed that his seat in the audience chamber was to be smaller than those of the Inquisitors, placed to one side and without cushions. In public functions his chair was to be similar to theirs except that it had no cushion. The Inquisitors were required to address him and the Judge of Confiscations as Merced, and when he entered they were not obliged to rise but merely to raise their caps. The position of the Fiscal gradually improved. In his instructions of 1595 to Manrique de Lara, Philip II couples him with the Inquisitor in requiring both to be in orders, and prescribes great care in the appointment for his customary to promote Fiscal to the Inquisitorship. Similarly Philip III in 1608 requires both Offices to be filled by Jurists and when, in 1632 and 1637, the Suprema made Holy Orders a condition, it included Fiscal with Inquisitors. The assimilation between the Offices was rapid and, in 1647, in a payment of Ayuda de Costa in Valencia, there occurs an item of 30,000 Marabedis to Inquisitor Antonio de Ayala y Berganza, quote, por la plaza de Fiscal, unquote, showing that he was acting as Fiscal. The idea of coalescence was becoming familiar. When in 1658, Gregorio Ossid, after six years service as Inquisitor of Sardinia, was transferred to Cuenca, he suggested that there ought to be their two Inquisitors and a Fiscal, or at least that the junior Inquisitor should serve also as Fiscal. The identification of the Offices was facilitated in 1660 by a royal sedula prescribing that Fiscal were to be held the equals of Inquisitors in precedence and honors, canopies, cushions and the like, as well as in pay and emaluments. Thenceforth the Offices of Fiscal came to be filled by one of the Inquisitors, though he took care to preserve his dignity by styling himself, quote, Inquisitor Fiscal, unquote, or quote, the Inquisitor who performs the Office of Fiscal, unquote. Thus at length the two Offices coalesced and we have seen in the Table of Officials in 1746 that they were reckoned together. As a matter of course the Inquisitor who acted as Prosecutor did not enter the Consulte de Faye and vote on the fate of the accused who he had prosecuted. Sometimes when there was no Fiscal and no Inquisitor willing to perform the duties, the Senior Secretary assumed the function. Such a case occurs as early as 1655 and it continued occasionally to the end. The Notaries or Secretaries formed an important part of the Tribunal. They reduced to writing all the voluminous proceedings of the trials, all the audiences given to the accused with the interrogatories and answers, all the evidence of the witnesses and its ratification, the endless repetitions in the cumbers and involved system of procedure which developed until the object seemed to be to protract business beyond the limits of human endurance. They kept the records which required an elaborate system of indexing so that the name of any culprit and his genealogy could be found whenever wanted. In the later period moreover, when the Tribunals communicated to each other all their acts, the Correspondents served to fill the gap arising from diminished business. At the beginning they were forbidden to employ clerks and were required to write everything with their own hands and this seems to have continued to the last. In the earlier period they were styled Notaries and sometimes Escribanos or Scriveners, possibly because as such their attestation authenticated all papers. Early in the 17th century the title gradually changed to Secretaries, an innovation to which a writer in 1623 objects, as not distinguishing them from the Secretaries of Magnates and Cities. This objection did not prevail and a document of 1638 uses the terms as convertible, although in order of the Supremah in the same year forbids Notaries to be called Secretaries, while in 1648 we find the new Appalachian firmly established. The importance of the office is shown by its fairly liberal salary. In the instructions of 1498 it is placed at 30,000 Marbetis, one half of that of the Inquisitors, though the proportion diminished in time, for we have seen that in 1746 the Secretary received 2,352 Reales, while the Inquisitor had 7,352. There was compensation for this however and the heavy fees accruing to the Secretaries from applicants for proofs of Olympieta, a business shared with a new official known as, quote, secretario de actos positivos, unquote. The number moreover had greatly increased for, while at the early period, with its heavy work, a Tribunal was allowed but two Notaries. In the later time there were often four or five salaried Secretaries to whom were sometimes added Honorary Secretaries with Entrance to the Secreto and Honorary Secretaries without Entrance. There was also a Notary of Sequestrations, whose duties were highly important in the early times of abundant confiscations. He was always present when arrests were made, so as to draw up on the spot an inventory of the property seized. But as confiscations diminished, the office became superfluous and was suppressed by a Carta Cordada of December 1st, 1634. After this we hear of a Superintendent of Sequestrations in 1647 and subsequently its occasional duties were discharged by some other official for a moderate compensation. As, in 1670, in Balintia, the Procurator of the Fisk received 25,000 Libras a year for attending to them. The El Guatil was the Executive Officer of the Tribunal. In the early lists of salaries his pay is the same as, or even larger than, that of the Inquisitors, but this was because the prison was at his charge. From this he was relieved in 1515 by Ferdinand, who empowered the Inquisitors to appoint Carceleros at a salary of 512, after which the wages of the El Guatil declined to those of the secretaries and even of the El Caide who succeeded him as jailer. His superior dignity, however, was recognized in a Carta Cordada of May 13th, 1610, which provided that in public functions he should have precedence over the secretaries. His long wand of office, which exceeded that of secular El Guatiles, was also a distinction, and when, in 1576, the El Guatiles of the Santa Cordada in Barcelona ventured to imitate him, the Supremo ordered the Inquisitors to punish them. His functions were various. The Inquisitors, the Receiver, and the Judge of Confiscations were forbidden to appoint anyone else to execute their orders if he were at hand. If, in his absence, an arrest had to be made, the fact had to be attested at the foot of the warrant issued to another, without which the Receiver was ordered not to pay the expenses incurred. He made all levies and seizures was entitled to fees for the service. By the instructions of 1488, if the duty was at a distance of more than three or four leagues, he was not to be sent, but a temporary substitute whose commission expired with the performance of the errand. Perhaps this was because the thrifty Ferdinand had insisted that, if he was sent out of the city, he must pay his own expenses. But this was relaxed for in 1502. We find the rule established that if an El Guatile is sent from one province to another to a greater distance than four leagues, his expenses were to be paid. He had, however, to furnish at his own cost a satisfactory person to take charge of the prison during his absence, and if he required assistance in making arrests, the inquisitors selected the persons and determined their pay. El Guatile mayor seems to have been an ornamental personage, usually a man of distinction, who thereby proclaimed his purity of blood and devotion to the faith. We have seen that in Seville and Córdoba. The office was hereditary in noble houses whose ancestors had abandoned to the inquisition royal castles of which they were al-Qaidas, receiving in return this position with handsome emoluments. In 1655, the El Guatile mayor of the Tribunal of Córdoba was Luis Mendez de Aro, Gondé Duque of Olivares, and his deputy was Gonzalo de Cardenas y Córdoba, a knight of Calatrava. In Seville, Don Juan de Saavedra y El Vardado, Marquis of Moscoso, served as El Guatile mayor at the Autodefe of March 11th, 1691, and November 30th, 1693. About 1750, the Tribunal of Seville had the Marquis of Belia Franca as El Guatile mayor, that of Balea do Lid, had the Marquis of Revíria. In Granada the incumbent was a minor, Don Nicolás Belafquef, and the office was served by Don Diego Ramírez de la Piscina. The humbler officials of the Tribunal were the Nuncio, the portero, and the carcelero, al-Qaedaide de las cárcelas secretas. Strictly speaking, the Nuncio was a messenger or courier, bearing dispatches to the Supremar or other tribunals, and, before the post office was organized, his life must have been an active one. In 1502 we hear of his salary being 1200 sueldos, out of which he defrayed his traveling expenses, but subsequently these were paid by the receiver and, in 1541, his stipend was 500 sueldos. His ayuda de costa in 1567 was made dependent on his accompanying the inquisitors on their visitations. At that period the tribunals seemed to have been allowed two Nuncios, but, with the development of postal facilities, the functions of the position gradually shrank. The number was cut down to one, and in the 18th century we find him converted into a Nuncio de Cámara, or interior attendant, called indifferently Nuncio and portero, while a Nuncio extraordinario makes the fires and attends to other servile work. The portero in the secular courts was a kind of a pirater to serve summonses, authorized to take bale up to the sum of a hundred reales and forbidden to keep a shop or tavern. In the inquisition his function was to serve citations, notices of autos de fe, decrees and other similar work, and he was prohibited from engaging in trade of any kind. He was not allowed to enter the audience chamber, but in the 18th century we find him converted into a portero de Cámara, or usher and janitor, in which capacity he had entrance to the audience chamber. When in 1796 we find a doctor Don Jose Fontana serving as portero in the Balencia Tribunal we may infer that the office was not servile, and it is observable that the portero and his wife are qualified as Don and Doña, a title withheld from the Nuncio and his spouse. Their salaries, however, were the same, one thousand four hundred twenty reales. When about 1710 porteros laid claim in public functions, to seats on the Banco de Titulados, the bench of commissioned officials, their pretensions were rejected. The jailer was necessary to a tribunal which had its special prison. At first, as we have seen, the Alguathil had charge of this and his employees were not reckoned among the officials. The first allusion to a carcelero that I have met occurs in 1499, when Juan de Moya is spoken of as the carcerarius of the Barcelona Tribunal. He must have been an exceptional official and a person of some consideration, for he was provided with a prebend. In 1515, Ferdinand deemed it advisable to put the prisons under control of the tribunals, with which view he empowered the inquisitors to appoint carceleros with salaries of five hundred sueldos. The jailer thus became a salaried official, entitled to all the privileges and immunities of this position and, gradually, toward the middle of the 16th century, the humble title of carcelero was exchanged for the more dignified one of Alcaide de las carceles secretas. He was necessarily a person of confidence, responsible for the safe keeping of prisoners and for their proper maintenance, functions which will be more conveniently treated when we come to consider the prison system. From the report of the Tribunal of Murfea in 1746, it appears that the salary then was two thousand three hundred fifty-three reales, in addition to which there was a jubilada Alcaide with three hundred thirty reales, possibly this habit of providing for supernumeraries explains why, in the table of officials, Toledo has four Alcaides and Lerena and Balencia have three each. In the early period, the carcelero sometimes served as torturer, but subsequently, it became customary to employ the public executioner. The prison sometimes crowded with inmates and exposed to insanitary conditions rendered necessary an official physician, whose services were also indispensable in examinations before and after torture, and in the not infrequent cases of insanity, real or feigned. As his duties called him within the sacred limits of the secreto, he had to be a person of confidence, sworn like all the rest to secrecy. He was expected also to bestow gratuitous service on the officials, and the Suprema, in the eighteenth century, indulged itself in two, at the fairly liberal salary of one thousand two hundred fifty-eight reales apiece, though they did not share in the extra emoluments so freely bestowed on other officials. At first the appointment of physicians was not universal, although the salary was inconsiderable, attributable, no doubt, to the fact that the physician was at liberty to continue his private practice. Thus, in fourteen eighty-six, Ferdinand designated ten libras as the pay of the physician of the Saragosa Tribunal, while there was none provided for that of Medina del Campo. The surgeon was rated at even less four in fifteen ten. One is furnished Saragosa at a salary of five libras and the same is paid to an apothecary, who can scarce have furnished expensive drugs on such a stipend. The surgeon at this period was also a barber, and in fifteen o' two, a grant, once for all, of fifteen libras was made to Juan de Aguaviva, quote Sirujano y Barbero, unquote of Caltaud, for fourteen years curing and barboring the poor prisoners without salary or other advantage. By sixteen eighteen, apparently the professions had become distinct, for there is an order to pay Narciso Balie, surgeon, and Miguel Juan Barber to the Tribunal of Balencia. A chaplain was also a necessity, not for the prisoners who were denied the sacraments, but for the daily mess celebrated before commencing the work of the audience chamber. In fifteen seventy-two, a stipend of seven thousand five hundred mara-bedis is assigned for this, but in the eighteenth century the Suprema paid the handsome salary of five thousand five hundred reales. Confessors were also required for the penitential prison and were called into the secret prison for the moribund. There were also two persona sonestas, or discrete persons, friars as a rule, whose duty it was to be present when witnesses ratified their testimony. In the earlier period these services were gratuitous, but in the later time there was a small payment which, in the case of a friar, would endure to his convent. An al-Qaeda of the Casa de Penitencia, or Penitential prison, was also a necessity during the period of active work. Although subsequently it was virtually a sinecure and in many tribunals was suppressed. We occasionally also meet with the office of Proveador, or purveyor of the secret prison, who seems to be identical with the dispensero or steward. In the sixteenth century this official had a salary of two thousand mara-bedis, besides two mara-bedis a day for each prisoner and five blancas for cooking and washing. He was required to have honest weights and not to charge more for food than it cost him. He kept an account with each prisoner and was paid out of the sequestrations. Luxsmiths, masons, and other mechanics employed on the buildings were also sometimes reckoned as officials, for their duties in repairing their prisons were confidential. All tribunals, moreover, had from one to three abogados de presos or advocates of prisoners, whose duties will claim consideration hereafter. They were classified as salaried officials, though sometimes they received a small stipend and sometimes none, and they were allowed to serve other clients if they had any. Chapter 2 Part 5 The Tribunal Besides these officials who were concerned in the primary business of the tribunal as a bulwark of the faith, there were others whose functions may be briefly dismissed here. The finances necessarily required a special organization consisting of a receiver of confiscations, subsequently called the treasurer, whose duties in the active period were of the utmost importance, entitling him to a salary which sometimes was even larger than that of the inquisitors. The fines and penances also amounted to large sums for which, in the earlier period, there was usually a special receiver, for they were kept as a separate fund. But finally, they likewise passed through the hands of the treasurer. The receiver had to pay his own assistance and agents, but, in the enormous amount of complicated business thrown upon him, he was aided by the Abogado Fiscal, a salaried official of legal training, while the notary of sequestrations had charge of sequestrated property until its confiscation was pronounced and further served as a check upon the receiver. The intricate claims arising from these seizures were settled in a separate court of confiscations known as the Juzgado, presided over by the Jués de Bienes, or Judge of Confiscations, and furnished with its notary annuncio. We sometimes also meet with the Procurador del Fisco and also with a superintendent of property. All this, which, especially at first, formed so large a part of the business of the inquisition, will be more conveniently considered in detail hereafter. We have seen how much of the activity of the tribunals was consumed in the civil and criminal business of their officials, and it necessarily formed a separate department, which had its notario de los civil and secretario de las causas civiles, the latter office being suppressed in 1643. The qualifications for holding office in the tribunal were simple. From some of the cases of hereditary transmission, it would appear that the minimum age was 19 or 20. Limpieza, or purity of blood from admixture of Jewish or Moorish or heretic strain was the chief essential, as will be seen when we come to consider that important subject. Legitimacy was also a requisite in both the official and his wife, although dispensations could be had for its absence. By a carta acordada of June 15th, 1608, those who were unmarried could not marry without permission of the Suprema. They were obliged to furnish proof that the bride was limpia, and if a foreigner or the daughter or grand daughter of foreigners, a dispensation was necessary, of all of which the appointee was solemnly notified when he took the oath of office. There was also a well-intended information de Moribus concerning applicants for office. When the inquisitor general proposed to make an appointment in a tribunal, he notified it. It then issued a commission to someone at the residence of the nominee with an interrogatory asking whether he was a person modest, quiet, peaceable, of correct life and habits, and what was known as to his limpieza, which, when returned, was forwarded to the inquisitor general. As the witnesses examined were, however, presented by the applicant, the whole was scarce more than a formality. In spite of the constant complaint of the meagerness of the salaries, they seem to have been fairly adequate, at least during the first century and a half of the existence of the inquisition. The rapid fall in the purchasing power of the precious metals necessitated frequent advances, and I have met with allusions to these in 1548, 1567, 1581, and 1606, after which they seem to have remained stationary until 1795, although the valent coinage reduced still further the value of the currency. The salary of an inquisitor, which, in 1541, was 100,000 marabedis, including Ayuda de Costa, by 1606, had become 300,000 or 800 duquettes. This was not extravagant, but was fairly remunerative. In 1630, Arce e Reynoso, when occupying one of the highest professorships in Salamanca, as Catedrático de Prima de Reyes, received only 300 duquettes. It must be borne in mind that most of the lower officials had a comfortable additional source of revenue from the fees which they were entitled to charge for nearly all their work outside of cases of faith. And when the Arancel, or fee bill of 1642, sought to regulate these charges, it was generally disregarded and the inspectors winked at its violation, charitably alleging the increased cost of living as an excuse. The inquisitors and fiscal, on their side, usually held some cannery or other benefits which served to make good all deficiencies. In fact, towards the middle of the 18th century, when the salaries had become really inadequate, a writer ascribes the inefficiency of the inquisition to the fact that the inquisitors general were obliged to appoint ignorant men who happened to possess pre-bends or other benefits. There were also the gratifications for house rent, illuminations, bullfights and mourning which the officials of the tribunals enjoyed like those of the Suprema, although not on so liberal a scale. While the Ayudhas de Costa replaced the propinas. There was also a kindly liberality in granting extra Ayudhas de Costa to those in need and to their widows and children when they die. Applications of this kind were perpetual and innumerable. They were made to the Suprema which naturally found little difficulty in being charitable at the expense of others. It would be needless to enumerate examples of what was of such constant occurrence and these liberalities together with the exemptions and the economies in the cost of the necessaries of life rendered the financial position of the officials reasonably secure. Perhaps the resources of the tribunals might have justified larger salaries if they had not been drawn upon to supply the extravagance of the Suprema and being squandered on other objects with careless profusion characteristic of the age. Thus in 1633 a doctor pastor de Costa of the Royal Council of Catalonia obtained from Inquisitor General Zapata on the plea of services rendered by his father a grant of a hundred ducats a year in silver on the tribunal of Barcelona. Doubtless it was suspended during the Catalan revolt to be subsequently resumed and in 1665 he applied to Arce Irenoso to confirm it to him for life but Arce only ordered it to be continued for four years. Not content with this he asked for an Ayuda de Costa on the ground of his poverty. It is not surprising that Philip V as we have seen in his attempted reform of 1705 forbade all grants of over 30 ducats without his confirmation. The Ayuda de Costa of which we hear so much was either a more or less definite increase of salary or a special gift for cause or else a simple Mercedes or benevolence. While the salary was a matter fixed and due the Ayuda was always to a certain extent arbitrary and was used as an incentive to compel the performance of duties regarded as honoris. We see the germ of it in Torquemada's instructions of 1485 prohibiting fees and bribes for the king provides a reasonable support for all and in time will give them Mercedes. An advance is marked in the instructions of 1498 where after specifying salaries it is added that the inquisitors general when they see that there is much labor or necessity can grant such Ayudas de Costa as they deem proper. Accordingly about this time while we find no regular Ayudas given there are constant examples of special ones sometimes of large amounts granted for the most varied reasons of which two or three instances will suffice. Thus Ferdinand on April 30th 1499 in ordering the payment of the salaries in Seville includes 40,000 Maravedis of Ayudas de Costa for one of the inquisitors but none for anyone else. On August 10th 1502 Juan Ruiz receiver of Saragosa is given an Ayuda de Costa of 10,000 sueldos to meet expenses incurred in illness and on September 27th an official of Seville is gratified with 20,000 Maravedis to help him in his marriage. It cannot have been long after this that the Ayuda de Costa was becoming a regular annual payment as an increment of the salary. On December 3rd 1509 in order for the payment of arrears to Diego de Robles fiscal of the Suprema speaks of there being due to him his Ayuda de Costa for 1506 and half of 1507 at the rate of 20,000 Maravedis per annum. The first formal statement of it as a settled thing that I have met occurs in the same year 1509 in the list of salaries made out for the attempted inquisition of Naples where the Ayuda de Costa is designated for each official. It varies from a little over half the salary to considerably below that proportion and for two of the officials there is none. Yet it was not a universal custom for in the salaries assigned to the Sardinia Tribunal on September 10th 1514 there is no allusion to Ayuda de Costa. That the custom however was gradually establishing itself as a substantial addition to the regular salaries is deducible from formal lists of the Ayudas de Costa of the Suprema and the Valadolid Tribunal in 1515 and by this time it may be regarded as fairly established although innumerable special grants continued such as one of 75,000 Maravedis on June the 30th 1515 to Alonso de Montoya notary of the civil tribunal to assist in his marriage. Confiscations at the time were fruitful and the laborers were not deprived of their share in the harvest if only to stimulate their industry. Reimbursements of traveling and other expenses also frequently took the form of Ayudas de Costa although as the grants were made in round sums it is evident that no accounts were rendered and that the payments were arbitrary. However customary the annual payments had become they still were regarded as a special grace to which the recipients had no claim of right. In 1540 the officials of Barcelona complained to Inquisitor General Tabera that the receiver refused payment on the ground that the grant had expired with the death of Mendrique in 1538 and that it required confirmation which Tabera hastened to give on February 12th 1540. In fact a number of orders issued by Tabera in 1540 would indicate that this was the accepted view of the matter. Another marked distinction at this time is that the Ayudas de Costa are ordered to be paid out of the fines and penances inflicted for the gastos extraordinarios of the tribunals while the salaries come from the funds arising out of the confiscations. For a while there was a regular scale of 50 Ducats for the Inquisitors 30 for the fiscal Alguazil Notaries and receiver 15s for denuncio and 10 for the Porteiro and Alcari but in 1559 this was increased by 20%. Care was taken to make it understood that it was a grace and not a right and the ordinary formula was that it was given in view of the labor in determining the cases of the auto de fe of the previous year and when in 1561 Calajura was exceptionally active and celebrated a second auto it was rewarded with a supplementary Ayuda of half the customary amount. The grant was dependent on the receipt of detailed reports of all the cases in the previous auto which were frequently accompanied with a humble petition for it citing forth the insufficiency of the salaries and the cost of living and begging the Suprema to obtain the grace from the king who was technically the giver. Subsequently, as we have seen, it was made conditional on rendering monthly reports and on the discharge of the duty of visiting the district and other matters apt to be neglected such as rendering prompt statements of accounts and of properties. Finally, in the later period when the tribunals were under close supervision of the Suprema it sometimes took the form of a Christmas gift. Perhaps the most remarkable of all Ayudas de Costa was one granted by Carlos IV in October 1807 in the midst of his troubles with his son Fernando when the shadow of Napoleon was already darkening Spain and the treasury was empty. It was possibly with the object of securing the fidelity of the Inquisition that he ordered an Ayuda de Costa of 100 Ducats to be given to every official of all the tribunals who did not enjoy an income of 7000 Reales outside of his salary. In the existing condition of Spanish finances the money could probably have been better employed. The perfected system of records kept by the tribunals so greatly increased the effectiveness of the Inquisition and rendered it such an object of dread that some reference to it is indispensable. Its development was slow. At the start amid the enormous labors of the slenderly manned tribunals there could be little thought bestowed on the preservation and arrangement of the records of their operations. In the instructions of 1484 the only allusion to them merely prescribes that the notaries shall enter on their registers all orders issued by the Inquisitors to the officials. As the registers accumulated the instructions of 1488 require all writings and papers to be kept in chests in the public place where the Inquisitors transact business so that they may be at hand when wanted. They are never to be removed and the keys are to pass through the hands of the Inquisitors to the notaries all this being under pain of deprivation of office. Ten years later we hear of a chamber assigned to their safekeeping with three keys held by the fiscal and the two notaries so that all must be present when they are consulted. By this time indexes to facilitate references to the rapidly growing mass of papers had become necessary and an article in Deza's instructions in 1500 shows that this had become recognized. The disabilities inflicted on descendants of co-prids rendered it essential that genealogies should be traceable but the incredible crudeness of these early lists shows how informal was the rapid work of that awful time. One kept at Toledo about 1500 contained such entries of the individuals dispatched as un porquero del algo así que tiene un ojo remerado un converso retajado un converso judío un sastre In Valencia from 1517 to 1527 the index to the fifth volume of persons denounced shows equal indifference to the identification of individuals catalogued as le bojes, mare y fies el barriero que está en compañía del calón reprojita After some contradictory decisions as to furnishing papers or information from the records to competent courts applying for it the Suprema in 1556 forbade the tribunals without its express order from giving any information tending to prove that anyone had not been condemned or reconciled or penanced or arrested by the Holy Office a most cruel regulation in view of the tremendous consequences to the posterity of those who had fallen under suspicion of heresy and had been tried or even arrested an order by the Suprema in 1576 to the Valencia Tribunal to erase from its records the name of Maestro Josepe Esteban because he had not been arrested for a matter of faith is suggestive of the fearful power which the inquisition possessed of inflicting infamy on whole families and of the importance of the accuracy of its registers the abuse of its power in this respect is indicated as we have seen above by the instructions which sometimes followed visitations to remove from the records the names of those who had been improperly prosecuted for offenses not of faith it was not easy to preserve the completeness of the records officials were apt to regard them as personal property and to keep them like the notary of Calavayud who thus secured for his son the reversion of his office in 1512 Ferdinand desired from a tribunal complete statements concerning the finances there arose delay during which the notary of sequestrations died were upon he ordered that the receiver should have all the papers or copies of them and if the heirs of the notary refused to surrender them execution should be levied on his estate for the whole of his salary received during his incumbency it was not only the notaries however but other officials who took and kept documents in 1517 Cardinal Adrian complained of this and ordered that papers should never be removed from their depository except to the audience chamber for the purpose of conducting a trial this was disregarded and about the middle of the century the instructions to inspectors require them to order inquisitors under pain of excommunication to return all papers that they had taken and to discontinue the practice even inquisitors general were guilty of this for Philip II issued an order on March the 6th 1573 on the executors of Ponce de Leon to allow his papers to be examined and everything pertaining to the inquisition to be removed an order which can only be regarded as revealing a general custom for Ponce de Leon died on January the 17th 1573 before entering upon his office the looseness which had prevailed during the early period is strikingly manifested when in 1547 the Suprema made an attempt to gather in and preserve its past records a commission was issued to its secretary Tsurita reciting the importance of having an inventory of all the papal bulls briefs registers and other papers relating to the inquisition which had been in the custody of the secretaries and other officials there is it says information that many of these are at Calada Iude and others at Juesca among the papers of Calcena and Uriyes the secretaries of Ferdinand and Charles V and Tsurita is ordered to collect these and is armed with full powers to examine witnesses and inflict penalties all holding such papers are required to surrender them under pain of excommunication in a hundred do-cats the inquisitors of Saragossa are instructed to assist him with censures while letters to various parties indicate that the task is expected to be arduous instructions are not clear as to whether he is expected to seize the papers or merely to make inventories of them but there can be little doubt that whatever he laid his hands on was kept what success attended his mission we have no means of knowing but we're probably old to it many of the important documents illustrating the early history of the Inquisition in addition to this source of incompleteness it seemed impossible to compel the tribunals to keep their records in proper shape in 1544 Dr. Alonso Perez in an inspection of Barcelona found them in complete disorder another inspection in 1550 showed still greater confusion in 1561 inspector Cervantes described them as being in such a state without indexes and inventories that it was impossible to find anything after the visit of Salazar the Suprema in 1568 took the inquisitors sharply to task for not having yet provided indexes and registers it ordered them to do so at once and to furnish a certificate to that effect within 20 days of receipt the certificate was doubtless supply but we may question whether the work was done possibly Barcelona was worse than other tribunals but the memorial of 1623 to the Suprema states that in many of them there are processes books papers informations of limpieza etc requiring to be inventoryed sorted into bundles and reduced to order causing great inconvenience meanwhile the masses of papers had been accumulating more rapidly than ever in 1570 the Suprema had ordered nine books to be kept one of the commissions of officials their oaths and royal provisions one of commissioners and familiars with full details one of the votes in the consultas de fe one of letters from the Suprema and another of letters to it one recording the inspections made of the prisons one of the orders issued on the receiver one of the pecuniary penances inflicted and one of the autos de fe with statements as to the corporates and their punishments besides these the al-qaeda of the prison was to keep lists of those relaxed and pennanced with three indexes all this was exclusive of the voluminous records of the trials which it was the duty of the fiscal to keep in order then in order to accommodate the increasing bulk it was ordered in 1566 and 1572 that there should be four apartments in the camera del secreto one for pending cases one for suspended ones one for those finished divided into the relaxed reconciled and the pennanced and the fourth for papers concerning commissioners and familiars and informaciones de limpieza in 1635 alphabetical lists of all persons tried were ordered to be kept with dates and references to the papers of the case commencing with 1620 the order had to be repeated in 1636 and 1638 with further instructions in 1644 and these lists furnished additional means for tracing the antecedents and kindred of those who were brought before the tribunals but more potent than the mandates of the suprema to keep the archives in order and thoroughly indexed was the mania which arose for limpieza or purity of blood which as we shall see hereafter pervaded all classes and furnished a source of very profitable business to the officials for the inquisition was the ultimate arbiter and its records contain the evidence gradually these records became an immense storehouse of minute and detailed information concerning all heretics and suspects and their kindred under the instructions of 1561 the first thing in examining a prisoner was to require of him an account of parents and grandparents brothers and sisters uncles aunts and cousins with their wives and children and whether any of them had been arrested or penned by the inquisition then when the accused was brought to pro-fast conversion and to beg mercy his confession was not accepted unless he gave information to the best of his ability as to all other heretics whether kindred or strangers whom he had known or heard of with details as to their culpability all this was carefully entered an index until the records became a fairly complete directory of the suspects of Spain a Jew arrested in Granada might compromise 20 others scattered from Compostella to Barcelona each of whom when seized became a new source of information and the intercommunication established between the tribunals placed the records of all at the service of each this vastly increased the effectiveness of the inquisition and rendered the chances of escape slender indeed the trials of the 17th century when the system became fairly perfected show that although the arrest of a few might scatter their accomplices the inquisition was ever on their track and change of name and habitation was unavailing as soon as a suspect was arrested and his genealogy was obtained the sister tribunals were called upon for reports in testimony poured in reaching back perhaps for 20 or 30 years concerning himself and his kindred the net of the inquisition covered the land and its meshes were fine go where they would hide themselves as they might the Judaizers lived in the knowledge that it was ever remorselessly in pursuit and that its hand might fall upon them at any time in the 18th century the system was elaborated by what were known as the libros vocandorum when anyone was denounced a tribunal or came forward spontaneously his name description and offense were transmitted to all the other tribunals which entered them in alphabetical registers arranged under the first baptismal names these entries give the name the date a brief description of the person and the nature of the charge with a blank to be filled in with the result of the trial which was also reported to all thus each tribunal possessed a digested record of the current business of the whole inquisition clearly arranged for ready reference and as the years passed it afforded at a glance the means of ascertaining whether any culprit had been in the hands of the holy office before and of facilitating researches into limpieza the importance of the libros vocandorum was so fully recognized that the Suprema required the monthly reports of the fiscal always to specify that they were kept posted up to date these registers were not arranged uniformly in all the tribunals but the usual plan was that adopted in valencia where there was one general index in two volumes and a third for confessors accused of soliciting women adurbia in the confessional thus all the tribunals cooperated and with their machinery of commissioners and familiars in almost every town and village they formed one harmonious organization for the detection and punishment of culprits human ingenuity could scarce devise a more perfect system of promptly suppressing all deviations from the standards established by the inquisition end of book 4 chapter 2 part 5