 Book 3, Chapter 3, Part 1, of the History of the Inquisition of Spain, Volume 2, by Henry Charles Lee. Book 3, Jurisdiction, Chapter 3, Bishops. There was in Spain but one class over which the Inquisition had no jurisdiction, benefits the Eighth, at the close of the Thirteenth Century, had decreed that, when a bishop was suspect of heresy, the Inquisitor could not prosecute. The most that he could do was to gather evidence and send it to the Holy See, which reserved to itself judgment on the Episcopal Order. This was embodied in the canon law and remained in force, although of course the Pope could delegate his power or could enlarge inquisitorial commissions, as when, in 1451, Nicholas the Fifth responded to the request of Juan II and included bishops among those subjected to the inquisitors whom he appointed. During the Middle Ages the question was one of scarce more than academic interest, but in Spain, where the conversos had attained so many lofty positions in the church and where all of Jewish blood were regarded with suspicion, it might at any moment become of practical importance. The influence and power of the Inquisition would manifestly be increased if it should be granted faculties to prosecute bishops, and Torquemata seems to have applied for this, in 1487, intimating that there were suspects among the bishops. Innocent the Eighth, however, was not disposed to subject the whole Episcopal of Spain to the Holy Office and replied, September 25, reciting the decree of Boniface and telling him to examine carefully all the evidence collected by the Inquisitor's end, if in it he found what incriminated prelates or showed that they were defamed or suspected of heresy. We should send it in legal shape and carefully seal to Rome where it would be duly weighed and proper action be taken. If Torquemata failed in obtaining the desired jurisdiction over the Spanish Episcopal, he could at least strike terror by accusing some of them to the Holy See where their condemnation would be followed by that of their ancestors and large confiscations would result. Two of those of Jewish blood, Davila of Segovia and Aranda of Calaora, were selected for attack. In the existing popular temper it could not have been difficult to collect evidence that they were regarded as suspect and were defamed for heresy. Presumably this was sent to Rome and the matter was regarded as a sufficient moment to induce the dispatch of Antonioto Palevicini, then Bishop of Tornay, as a special nuncio to confer with Torquemata. He returned to Rome with evidence deemed sufficient to justify their summons thither. In 1490 Davila went to Rome in his eightieth year. Since 1461 he had been bishop of Segovia and, in spite of Jewish descent, his family was one of the most influential in Castile, intermarried with its noblest blood. He had given ample proof of pitiless orthodoxy. In 1468, when at Sepulveda, the rabbi, Solomon Pico and the leaders of the synagogue were accused of crucifying a Christian boy during Holy Week, Bishop Davila promptly arrested sixteen of those most deeply implicated, of whom seven were burnt and the rest were hanged, except a boy who begged to be baptized. Although this did not satisfy the pious Sepulvidans, who slew some of the remaining Jews and drove the rest away. He had given cause of offense, however, for when the Inquisition was introduced in Segovia, he drove the Inquisitors from his diocese and remonstrated boldly with the sovereign's hand. When this proved fruitless, it was in evidence that he dug up at night from the cemetery of the convent of La Merced, the bones of his ancestors and concealed them, in order to destroy the proof of their interment in the Jewish fashion. In Rome he seems to have found favour with Alexander VI, who, in 1494, sent him to Naples in company with his nephew, the Cardinal of Monriale. His case was protracted and he died in Rome, October 28, 1497. The result is not positively known, but it must have been favourable, as otherwise his pious legacies would have been fruitless and culminaris, the historian of Segovia, would not have dared to call him one of the most useful prelates that the sea had enjoyed, nor would Galandes de Carvajal have said that his errand to Rome was merely to defend the bones of his father. Pedro de Aranda of Calaora was a man of equal mark who, in 1482, acquired the high position of President of the Council of Castile. His father, Gonzalo Alonso, had been baptized with the famous Pablo de Santa Maria and had been ennobled. The Vio de Lid tribunal prosecuted his memory with the result of a discordia or disagreement, and the bishop went to Rome in 1493, where he gained papal favour and procured a brief transferring the case to the Bishop of Cordova and the Benedictine prior of Vio de Lid. He remained in Rome when Alexander VI, in 1494, sent him to Venice as ambassador and subsequently made him master of the Sacred Palace. Since 1488, however, Torquimata had been collecting evidence against him. It was sent to Rome and, on the night of April 21, 1498, he was ordered to keep his room in the palace as a prison. On the 26th he was brought before the Pope and had a hearing, after which he was taken to other rooms and kept under guard until September. Meanwhile, Alexander seized his property and Sanuto intimates that his real crime was his abundance of ready money, while Bershard tells us that he was accused of heresy and moronia and that he had many enemies. Three bishops of the Curia were commissioned as his judges. They heard many witnesses presented by the Fiscal and 101 by the accused. But all of these testified against him. The points against him were that he said the Mosaic Law had one principle, the Christian Three. In praying he said Gloria Patri omitting filio at Spiritui Sancto. He celebrated mass after eating. He ate meat on Good Friday and other prohibited days. He declared that indulgences were useless and had been invented by the Fathers for gain, that there was neither hell nor purgatory but only paradise and much more of the same nature. On November 16th, the judges laid the evidence before the Pope in secret consistory when, by the advice of the Cardinals, Aranda was deposed and degraded from orders. He was confined in the Castle of Sant'Angelo, where he was given a good room and he died there, apparently in 1500. Pope Alexander seems to have felt that it was necessary to guard his jurisdiction against the encroaching tendencies of the Spanish Inquisition. Before ingranting to the Bishop of Avila, appellate powers, in his brief of November 4, 1594, Valim I, page 179, he was careful to accept the venerable brethren, the Archbishops and bishops, whose cases by law were reserved to the Holy See. It was well understood by this time, however, and in the case of Archbishop Talevera of Granada, it will be remembered that Lucero made no attempt to do more than gather evidence to be sent to Rome and, when papal authority was obtained, it was granted not to the Inquisition, but to prelates specially commissioned. Half a century was to elapse before there was another case involving the Episcopal Order. It has been sometimes thought that the Inquisition was concerned in the trial and execution of Antonio de Acunha, Bishop of Zamora, but such was not the fact, although the case illustrates the difficulty of holding a bishop accountable for his misdeeds. That turbulent prelate, somewhat absurdly styled a second Luther by Leo the Tenth, as an active leader in the Comunidadis, who, after the defeat at VLR, April 21, 1521, fled in disguise but was caught at Via Mediana on the Castilian border. Episcopal immunity rendered him a doubtful prize. Charles V was resolved on his death, but there was considerable doubt as to how he was to be punished. The Inquisition was not brought into play, but, after some negotiation, Leo the Tenth was induced to issue a commission to Cardinal Adrian and the Nuncio to take testimony and forward it for judgment by the Pope in Consistere. On Adrian's accession to the papacy he transferred the commission to the Archbishop of Granada and the Bishop of Ciudad Rodrigo, but gave no authority to employ torture. Then Clement VII, by a brief of March 27, 1524, granted faculties to proceed to extremities under which the trial went on, but apparently died out when carried to Rome. Weiried with five years' confinement in the Castle of Semancas, Acuña made a fruitless attempt to escape, in which he killed the Alcaide, Mendo no Guerrón. Charles then sent to Semancas his Alcalde de Casa y Corte, Rodrigo Ronquillo, with instructions to torture Acuña and put him to death. Instructions faithfully executed, March 23, 1526. This violation of the immunities of the Church caused no little scandal. Charles speedily obtained for himself, from Clement, absolution from the Ipso facto excommunication in Curde, but that which he had promised to procure for his subordinates was granted with difficulty and only after delay of more than a year, the final ceremony not taking place until September 8, 1527. At Vio de Lid a tradition was long current that Ronquillo came to an evil end, being carried off by demons. As the Lutheran revolt grew more threatening and the dread of its extending to Spain increased, a certain limited jurisdiction over bishops was conferred on Cardinal Manrique by a brief of Clement VII, July 15, 1531. He was empowered to inquire against them if suspected of favouring Lutheran doctrines or of aiding those who held to them. He was not permitted, however, to arrest and imprison, although he could punish them according to the canons, and he was granted the fullest faculties of absolving and rehabilitating those who abandoned their errors and asked for forgiveness. It is not likely that any occasion arose for the exercise of these faculties, but if there was it has left no trace. This evidently was a personal delegation, expiring with Manrique, for no reference to it was made in the next case that of Bartolome de Caronza, Archbishop of Toledo. This was perhaps the most important affair during the career of the Inquisition. It attracted the attention of all Catholic Europe and illustrates in so many ways not only inquisitorial methods, but the conflict between orthodoxy and reform that it merits consideration in some detail. Inquisitor General Valdes, who is also Archbishop of Seville and whose name often comes before us, was perilously near disgrace in 1557. Philip II was in desperate straits for money. The glories of San Conten and Graveline were not acquired cheaply, and the war forced upon him by Paul IV was exhausting his Italian possessions. From Flanders he sent Count Milito to Spain, with orders to raise forced loans from nobles and prelates, and the Princess Juana, then governor, called among others on Valdes for 150,000 ducats. The Bishop of Cordova, when approached, promptly furnished a hundred thousand and promised more if he could raise it. The Archbishop of Saragossa, who was asked for a hundred thousand, only gave twenty thousand. Valdes was even more niggerly and supplied nothing, although it was observed about this time that six loads of money reached Viodolid for him. Charles V, from his retirement of Eusta, wrote to him May 18, expressing surprise that he, the creature of imperial favour, should hesitate to repay the benefits conferred, especially as he could have what security he desired for the loan. This letter, with one from Juana, was conveyed to him by Arnando de Ochoa, whose report to Charles, May 28, of the interview showed how little respect was felt for the man. Ochoa reproached him with having promised to see what he could do, in place of which he had gone into hiding at San Montin de La Fuente, fourteen leagues from the court at Viodolid, where he had lain for two months, hoping that the matter would blow over. Quote, he said to me, before a consecrated host, that the devils could fly away with him if ever he had one hundred thousand or eighty thousand or sixty thousand or thirty thousand ducats, for he had always spent much in charities and had made dotations amounting to one hundred fifty thousand, end quote. Ochoa pressed him hard. He admitted that his archbishopric, which he had held since fifteen forty-six, was worth sixty thousand ducats a year, and Ochoa showed that, admitting his claims for charities and expenses, he had laid aside at least thirty thousand a year, quote, which you cannot possibly have spent, for you never have any one to dine in your house and you do not accumulate silver plate, like other gentlemen. All this is notorious, and the whole court knows it. This embarrassed him, but he repeated, with great oaths, that he had no money, that it was not well thus to oppress prelates, nor would money thus obtain to be lucky for war. God would help the king, and what would Christendom say about it, end quote. The honest Ochoa still urged him to return to the court and save his honour, intimating that the king might take action that would be highly unpleasant, but it was to no purpose. This was obdurate and clung resolutely to his shekels. Philip had sent instructions as to the treatment of recalcitrance, probably relegating bishops to their seas and nobles to their estates, but there was hesitation felt as to banishing Valdes from the court, although the continued pressure of Charles and Juana only extorted a promise of fifty thousand ducats. Yet it was desired to remove him, and plans were tried to offer him a pretext for going. In March fifteen eighty-eight, Juana ordered him to accompany the body of Queen Juana LaLoca to Granada for interment, from which place he could visit his civil church. He made excuses but promised to go shortly. Then when she repeated the order, he offered many reasons for evading it, including the heresies recently discovered in Seville and Murcia. The translation of the body could wait until September, and everybody, he said, was trying to drive him from the court. She referred the matter to the royal council, which decided that his excuses were insufficient, and that, even if the interment were postponed, he could properly be ordered to reside in his sea. It was evident to Valdes that something was necessary to strengthen his position, and he skillfully utilized the discovery of a few Protestants in Valladolid, of whom some were eminent clerics like Agustín Cazaya and Frye Domingo de Rojas, and others were persons of quality like Luis de Rojas and Doña Ana Enriquez. We shall have occasion to note hereafter the extraordinary excitement caused by the revelation that Protestantism was making inroads in court circles, the extent of which was readily exaggerated, and it was stimulated and exploited by Valdes, who magnified his zeal in combating the danger and conjured, at least for the moment, the storm that was brewing. Philip wrote from Flanders, June 5, 1558, to send him to his sea without delay. If he still made excuses, he was to be excluded from the Council of State, and this would answer until his approaching return to Spain, when he would take whatever action was necessary. Ten days later, unreceiving letters from Valdes enumerating the prisoners and describing the efforts made to avert the danger, he countermanded the orders. Still this was only a respite. We chanced to hear of a meeting of the Council of State in August or September, in which Juan de Vega characterized as a great scandal the disobedience of a vassal to the royal commands, in a matter so just as residence in his sea. And he suggested that, when the court moved, no quarters should be assigned to Valdes, to which Archbishop Caranza replied that it was no wonder that the orders of the king were unable to effect what the commandments of God and the Church could not accomplish. Something further was necessary to render him indispensable, something that could be prolonged indefinitely, and if at the same time it would afford substantial relief to the treasury, he might be forgiven the niggardness that had resisted the appeals of the sovereign. He had for some time been preparing a scheme for this, which was nothing less than the prosecution of the primate of the Spanish Church, the income of whose sea was rated at from 150,000 to 200,000 dukets. To measure the full audacity of this, it is necessary to appreciate the standing of Archbishop Caranza. Bartolomé de Caranza y Miranda was born in 1503. At the age of 12 he entered the University of Alcalá. At 18 he took the final vows of the Dominican order and was sent to study theology in the College of San Gregorio at Valladolid, where in 1530 he was made professor of arts, in 1533 junior professor of theology, and in 1534 chief professor as well as consultor of the tribunal of Valladolid. In 1540 he was sent as representative of his order to the general chapter held in Rome, where he distinguished himself and was honored with the doctorate. While Paul III granted him a license to read prohibited heretic books. On his return to Spain his reputation was national. He was largely employed by the Suprema in the censorship of books, especially of foreign Bibles, while the councils of Indies and Castile frequently submitted intricate questions for his judgment. In 1542 he was offered the Sea of Cusco, esteemed the wealthiest in the colonies, when he replied that he would willingly go to the Indies on the emperor's service, but not to undertake the cure of souls. On the convocation of the council of Trent in 1545 Charles V selected him as one of the delegates, and during his three years service there he earned the reputation throughout Christendom of a profound theologian. When in 1548 Prince Philip went to join his father in Flanders they both offered him the position of confessor, which he declined, as he did the Sea of Canaries which was tendered to him in 1550. In this latter year he was elected provincial of his order for Castile, and in 1551 he was sent to the second convocation of the council of Trent by Charles and also as the representative of Siliceo, Archbishop of Toledo. As usual he played a prominent part in the council, and after its hasty dissolution he remained there for some time employed in the duty of examining and condemning heretical books. In 1553 he returned to his professorship at Viadolid and when, in 1554, Prince Philip sailed for England to marry Queen Mary and restore the island to the unity of the church, he took Caranza with him as the fittest instrument for the work. Caranza subsequently boasted that during his three years stay in England he had burnt, reconciled, or driven from the land, thirty thousand heretics, and had brought two million souls back to the church. If we may believe his admiring biographers, he was the heart and soul of the Marian persecution and Philip did nothing in religious matters without his advice. When in September 1555 Philip rejoined his father in Flanders he left Caranza as Mary's religious advisor, in which capacity he remained until 1557. Regarded by the heretics as the chief cause of their sufferings, he barely escaped from repeated attempts on his life by poison or violence. It is true that English authorities of the period make little mention of him, but the continued confidence of Philip is ample evidence that his persecuting zeal was sufficient to satisfy that exacting monarch. When in 1557 Caranza rejoined Philip in Flanders he was probably engrossed in the preparation and printing of his large work on the catechism, of which more hereafter. But he still found time to investigate and impede the clandestine trade of sending heretic books to Spain. That he had completely won Philip's esteem and confidence was seen when Ciliceo of Toledo died, May 1, 1557, and Philip appointed him as successor in the Archbishopric. He refused the splendid prize and suggested three men as better fitted for the place. Philip persisted. He was going to a neighboring convent to confess and commune prior to the opening of the campaign and ordered Caranza to obey on his return. When he came back he sent the presentation written in his own hand. Caranza yielded, but on condition that, as the war with the Pope would delay the issue of the bulls, the king in the interval could make another selection. This effort to avoid the fatal gift was fruitless. On his return from the campaign Philip in an autograph letter summoned him to fulfill his promise and made the appointment public. So high was Caranza's reputation that, when the presentation was laid before the Consistory in Rome on December 6, it was at once confirmed, without observing the pre-connization or the customary inquiry into the fitness of the appointee, or a constitution which prohibited final action on the same day. The elevation of a simple friar to the highest place in the Spanish church was a blow to numerous ambitions that could scarce fail to arouse hostility. Valdez himself was said to have aspirations for the position and to be bitterly disappointed. Pedro de Castro, Bishop of Cuenca, had also cherished hopes and was eager for revenge. Caranza, moreover, was not popular with the hierarchy. He was that unwelcome character, a reformer within the church, and, while everyone acknowledged the necessity of reform, no one looked with favor on a reformer who assailed his profitable abuses. As far back as 1547, while in attendance on the Council of Trent, Caranza had preached a sermon on one of the most crying evils of the time, the non-residents of bishops and beneficiaries, and had embodied his views in a tractate as severe as a Lutheran would have written on this abuse and the kindred one of pluralities to which possibly the stringent tridentine provisions on the subject may be attributed. Such an outburst was not calculated to win favor, seeing that the splendor of the curia was largely supported by the prelacies and the benefices showered upon its members, and that in Spain there was scarce an inquisitor or a fiscal who was not a non-resident beneficiary of some preferment. Caranza had, moreover, a peculiarly dangerous enemy in a brother Dominican, Miltur Cano, perhaps the leading Spanish theologian of the time, when Spanish theology was beginning to dominate the church. Learned, able, keen-witted, and not particularly scrupulous, he was an intellect vestally superior to Caranza. There had been early rivalry, when both were professors of theology and causes of strife in the internal politics of the order had arisen, so that Cano could scarce view without bitterness the sudden elevation of his brother Freilis. His position at the time was somewhat precarious, when in 1556 Paul IV forced war on Philip II, that pious prince sought the advice of theologians as to the propriety of engaging in hostilities with the vice-gerent of God, and the parisere or opinion which Cano drew up was an able state paper that attracted wide attention. He defended uncompromisingly the royal prerogatives. He virtually justified the German revolt when the centum gravamina of the diet of Nürnberg in 1522 were unredressed and he described the corruption of Rome as a disease of such long-standing as to be incurable. This hardy defiance irritated Paul in the highest degree. April 21, 1556, he issued a brief summoning that son of perdition, Miltr Carano, to appear before him within sixty days for trial and sentence. But the brief was suppressed by the royal council, and Carano was ordered not to leave the kingdom. The Spanish Dominicans rallied to his defense. In the chapter of 1558 he was elected provincial and deputy to the general chapter to be held in Rome. But Paul ordered the election to be annulled and Carano to be deprived of his priorate of San Esteban. Carano complained of lukewarmness in his defense on the part of both Philip and Caranza, and it is easy to understand that, feeling keenly the disgrace inflicted on him, he was in a temper to attack anyone more fortunate than himself. At this inauspicious moment Caranza presented himself as a fair object of attack by all who, from different motives, might desire to assail him. If we may judge from his writings, he must have been impulsive and inconsiderate in his speech, given to uttering extreme views which made an impression, and then qualifying them with restrictions that were forgotten. He was earnestly desirous of restoring the church to its ancient purity, and by no means reticent in exposing its weaknesses in corruption. He had been trained at a time before the tridentine definitions had settled points of faith which, since the 12th century, had been the subjects of debate in the schools, and even in his maturity the Council of Trent had not yet been clothed with the awful authority subsequently accorded to it. For the inglorious exit of its first two convocations, in 1547 and 1552, gave little promise of what lay in the future. The echo of the fierce Lutheran controversies had scarce penetrated into Spain, and comparatively little was there known of the debates which were shaking to its center the venerable structure of the church. Caranza's very labors in condemning heretic books and converting heretics had acquainted him with their doctrines and modes of expression. He was a confused thinker, and his impulsive utterances were liable to be construed in a sense which he did not anticipate. As early as 1530 he had been denounced to the inquisition by Frey Juan de Villa Martín as a defender of Erasmus, especially in the matter of confession and the authorship of the Apocalypse, and during his persecuting career in England, he more than once gave opportunity in his sermons to unfavorable comment. It was also in evidence that when in Rome in 1539 he had written to Juan de Valdez in Naples, asking what authors should be studied for understanding Scripture, as he would have to teach that subject, and that Valdez replied in a letter which Caranza circulated among his students in Viadolid, a letter highly heretical in its teachings which Valdez subsequently included in his one hundred and ten divine considerations. It is true that in 1539 Juan de Valdez was not reckoned a heretic, but if the letter was correctly identified with the consideration in question its circulation was highly imprudent, for it asserted that the guides for the study of Scripture are prayer inspired by God and a meditation based on spiritual experience, thus discarding tradition for private interpretation, and it further dwelt upon the confidence which the soul should feel in justification through Christ. In the death struggle with Protestantism the time had passed for easygoing latitude of opinion, and in the intricate mazes of scholastic theology it was necessary to walk wearily, for acute censorship could discover heresy in any unguarded expression. The great services rendered by Cardinal Moroni and Cardinal Pol did not save them from the prosecuting zeal of Paul IV, and Contorini and Sateleta were both suspect of heresy. Under such conditions a rambling inconsequential thinker like Caranza was peculiarly open to attack. End of Book 3, Chapter 3, Part 1 Section 5, Book 3, Chapter 3, Part 2 of The History of the Inquisition of Spain, Volume 2. This is a LibriVox recording, all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org. The History of the Inquisition of Spain, Volume 2 by Henry Charles Lee. Book 3, Jurisdiction, Chapter 3, Bishops He had unquestionably been more or less intimate with some of the prominent personages whose arrest for Lutheranism in the spring of 1558 produced so immense a sensation. It was not unnatural that, on their trials, they should seek to shield themselves behind his honoured name, but that attached fragments of conversation which were cited in support of vague general assertions, even if correctly reported, amounted to nothing in the face of the emphatic testimony by Fred Domingo de Roja for the discharge of his conscience a few hours before his execution, that he had never seen in Caranza anything that was not Catholic in regard to the Roman Church and all its councils, definitions and laws, and that when Lutherans were alluded to he said their opinions were crafty and deceiving, they had sprung from hell and the unconscious could easily be deceived by them. The credence due to the evidence of the Lutherans, on which so much stress was laid, can be gauged by a subsequent case illustrative of the tendency to render Caranza responsible for all aberrations of belief. A certain Gil Tibobil de Bonneville, on trial in 1564 for Lutheranism in Toledo, sought to palliate his guilt by asserting that he had heard Caranza preach in the Church of San Augustine against candles and images and that confession was to be made to God and not to the priest. This was too crude to be accepted and he was sternly told that it cast doubt on the rest of his confession for, if Caranza had thus preached publicly, it would have come to the knowledge of the inquisition and he would have been punished. Whether the testimony acquired in the trials of the Lutherans was important or not, inquisitor General Valdez lost no time in using it to discredit Caranza in the opinion of the sovereigns. As early as May 12th, 1558, in a report to Charles V at Eusta, his assistance is asked in obtaining the arrest of a fugitive whose capture would be exceedingly important. He had been traced to Castro de Uriales, where he was to embark for Flanders to find refuge with Caranza or with his companion Freyuan de Vilgarcia, where he was sure of being well received. That the real motive was to enure Caranza with Charles appears from Valdez, repeating to the story to him in a report of June 2nd, adding that the fugitive had escaped and that information had been sent to Philip in order that he might be captured. It is reasonable to assume that whatever incriminating evidence could be obtained from the prisoners was promptly brought to the notice of the sovereigns and that inferences were unscrupulously asserted as facts. At this critical juncture Caranza delivered himself into the hands of his enemies. In England and Flanders he had employed the intervals of persecution in composing a work which should set forth the irrefragable truths of the Catholic faith and guard the people from the insidious poison of heretical doctrine. This was a task for which, at such a time, he was peculiarly unfitted. He was not only a loose thinker but a looser writer, diffuse, rambling, and discursive, setting down whatever idea chance to occur to him and wandering off to whatever subjects the idea might suggest. Moreover, he was earnest as a reformer within the church, realizing abuses and exposing them fearlessly. In fact he declared in the prologue that his object was to restore the purity and soundness of the primitive church, which was precisely what the heretics professed as their aim and precisely with the ruling hierarchy most dreaded. Worst of all he did this in the vulgar tongue, unmindful of the extreme reserve which sought to keep from the people all knowledge of the errors and arguments of the heretics, and of the contrast between apostolic simplicity and the splendid sacer totalism, of a wealthy and worldly establishment. This he cast into the form of commentaries on the catechism, occupying a folio of nine hundred pages, full of impulsive assertions which taken by themselves were of dangerous import, but which were qualified or limited or contradicted in the next sentence or the next page or perhaps in the following section. No one, I think, can dispassionately examine the commentaries without reaching the conviction that Caronza was a sincere and zealous Catholic, however reckless may seem many of his isolated utterances. Nor was his orthodoxy merely academic. He belonged to the church militant, and his hatred of heresy and heretics breaks out continually, in season and out of season, whether apposite or not to his immediate subject. Heretic arguments are not worthy of computation. It is enough to say that a doctrine is condemned by the church and therefore it is heretical. The first duty of the king is to preserve his dominions in the true faith, and to chastise those who sin against it. Even if heretics should perform miracles, their disorderly lives and corrupted morals would be sufficient to guard the people from listening to them or believing them. If they do not admit their errors, they are to be condemned to death. This is the best theology that a Christian can learn, and it was not more necessary in the time of Moses than it is at present. Even in that age, when theology was so favored a topic, few could be expected to wade through so enormous a mass of confused thinking and disjointed writing, and it was easy for Caronza's enemies to garble isolated sentences by which he could be represented to the sovereigns as being at least suspect in the faith, and suspicion of heresy was quite sufficient to require prosecution. Caronza himself, after his book was printed, seems to have felt apprehension and to have proceeded cautiously in giving it to the public. A set of the sheets was sent to the Martianus of Alcani Zez, and a dozen or more copies were allowed to reach Spain, where they were received in March 1558. Pedro Castro, Bishop of Cuenca, obtained one and speedily wrote to Valdez, denouncing the writer as guilty of heretical opinions. Valdez grasped the opportunity and ordered Melkor Cano to examine the work. Cano took as a colleague Fred Domingo de Suevas, and had no difficulty in discovering 101 passages of heretical import. The preliminaries to a formal trial were now fairly under way, the result of which could scarce be doubtful under inquisitorial methods, if the royal and papal assent could be obtained, necessary even to the inquisition before it could openly attack the primate of the Spanish Church. Despite the profound secrecy enveloping the operations of the inquisition, it was impossible that, in an affair of such moment, there should not be indiscretions, and Caronza in Flanders was advised of what was on foot. His friends urged him not to return to Spain, but to take refuge in Rome under papal protection. But he knew this would irrevocably cost him the favor of Philip. For exaggerated jealousy of papal interference with the inquisition was traditional since the time of Ferdinand and Isabella, and he virtually surrendered his case at once by constructing his printer, Mark Nuzio, not to sell copies of the commentaries without his express orders, thus withdrawing it from circulation. But little adverse impression seems as yet to have been made on Philip. When Caronza was about to leave Flanders, the king gave him detailed instructions which manifest unbounded confidence. He was to go directly to Valladolid and represent the extreme need of money. Then he was to see Queen Mary of Hungary, Charles's sister, and persuade her to come to Flanders. Then he was to hasten to Eusta, or Philip, through him, unbosomed himself to his father, revealing all his necessities and desires and family as well as in state affairs. In short, Caronza was still one whom he could safely entrust with his most secret thoughts. Caronza, with his customary lack of worldly wisdom, threw away all the advantages of his position. Landing at Laredo, on August 1st, he passed through Burgos, where he was involved in an unseemly squabble with the arch- bishop over his assumed right to carry his arch-episcopal cross in public. He did not reach Valladolid until the thirteenth, and there he tarried, busy ostensibly with a suit between his sea and the marquis of Camaraza over the valuable adelantamiento of Cazorla. But doubtless occupied also with efforts to counteract the intrigues of Valdez. Then he performed his mission to Mary of Hungary, and it was not until the middle of September that he set out on a leisurely journey to Eusta. Valdez had taken care to forestall his visit. An autograph letter of the Princess Juana to Charles August 8th says that Valdez has asked her to warn him to be cautious in dealing with Caronza, for he had been implicated by the Lutheran prisoners, and would already have been arrested had he been anyone else. Charles was naturally impatient to see him, not only to obtain explanations as to this, but also to receive the messages expected from Philip, for which he had been waiting before riding to Flanders. Caronza's delay, in spite of repeated urgency from Eusta, could not but create a sinister impression, and all chance of justification was lost, for Charles was prostrated by his fatal illness before Caronza left Valadolid, and the end was near when he reached Eusta about noon on September 20th. Charles expired the next morning at half-past two, Caronza administering to him the last consolations, his method in which formed one of the charges against him on his trial. He had thrown away his last chance, and the unexpected death of Charles deprived him of one who might possibly have stood between him and his fate. The plans of Valdez were now sufficiently advanced for him to seek the papal authorization which alone was lacking, and his method to obtain this was characteristically insidious. The Suprema addressed, September 9th, to Paul IV, a relation of its labors in discovering and prosecuting the Lutheran heretics. There was skilful exaggeration of the danger impending from a movement, the extent of which could not be known, and it was pointed out that sympathy with the sectaries might be entertained by officials of the inquisition itself, by the ordinaries and the consultors, so that extraordinary powers were asked to arrest and judge and relax those suspected or guilty, even though they were persons holding a secular or pontifical and ecclesiastical dignity or belonging to any religious or other order. As the inquisition already had jurisdiction over all but bishops, it had not hesitated to arrest and try the Dominican Fred Domingo de Roja. The self-evident object of this was to obtain surreptitiously, under cover of the word pontifical, some general expression that might be used to deprive Caranza of his right to trial by the Pope. The Dean of Oviedo, a nephew of Valdez, was sent to Rome as a special agent to procure the desired brief. Whether royal sanction for this application was obtained does not appear, but it probably was not, at least at this stage. Caranza, meanwhile, had been vainly endeavoring to get copies of the censures on his book in order to answer them. He appealed earnestly to his friends in Philip's court and in Rome, but without awaiting their replies, he pursued his policy of submission. And, on September 21, the day of Charles' death, he wrote to Sancho Lopez de Oralora, a member of the Suprema, that he consented to the prohibition of his work, provided this was confined to Spain, and that his name was not mentioned. In this, and what followed, he has been accused of weakness, but it is difficult to see what other course lay open to him. He doubtless still considered his episcopal consecration a guarantee for his personal safety, while his reputation for orthodoxy could be best conserved by not entering into a fruitless contest with the power irresistible in its chosen field of action. A contest, moreover, which would have cost him the royal favor that was his main reliance. In pursuance of this policy he descended to attempting to propitiate Melcore Cano by offering to do whatever he would recommend. Cano subsequently asserted, with customary mendacity, that Caranza would have averted his fate had he adopted any of the means which he devised and advised to save him. But it is difficult to imagine what more he could have done. Towards the close of November he wrote to Valdez and the Suprema and to other influential persons, professing his submission. He explained the reasons which had led him to write his book in the vernacular after commencing it in Latin. It could be readily suppressed for, on reaching Valadolid, he had withdrawn the edition from the printer. There were no copies in the bookshops, and what he had brought with him he would surrender, while the dozen or so that had been sent to Spain could easily be called in as the recipients were all known. Then on December 9 he proposed to the Suprema that the book should be prohibited in Spanish and be returned to him for correction and translation into Latin. Had the real object of Valdez been the ostensible one of preserving the faith, this would have amply sufficed. The book would have been suppressed in the public humiliation of the Archbishop of Toledo, so distinguished for his services to religion would have been an amply deterrent warning to all indiscreet theologians. It was a not unnatural burst of indignation when, in a letter to Domingo de Soto, November 14, he bitterly pointed out how the heretics would rejoice to know that Fred Bartolome de Miranda was treated in Spain as he had treated them in England and Flanders, and that, after he had burnt them to enforce the doctrines of his book, it was pronounced in Spain unfit to be read. Caranze's submission brought no results saved to encourage his enemies, who put him off with vague replies while awaiting the success of their application to the Pope. Meanwhile he had reached Toledo, October 13, and had applied himself actively to his duties. He was rigid in the performance of divine service. He visited prisons, hospitals, and restaurants. He put an end to the sale of offices and charging fees for licenses. He revised the fee bill of his court. He enforced the residence of parish priests, and was especially careful in the distribution of preferment. In short, he was a practical as well as a theoretical reformer. His charity was also boundless, for he used to say that all he needed was a dominic inhabit and that whatever God gave him was for the poor. Thus, during his ten months of incumbency, he distributed more than 80,000 dukats in marrying orphans, redeeming captives, supporting widows, sending students to universities, and in gifts to hospitals. He was a model bishop, and the resolute fidelity with which the chapter of Toledo supported his cause to the end shows the impression made on a body which, in Spanish churches, was usually at odds with its prelate. He had likewise not been idle in obtaining favorable opinions of his books from theologians of distinction. In view of the rumors of inquisitorial action, there was risk in praising it, yet nearly all those prominent in Spanish theology bore testimony in its favor. The general view accorded virtually, with that of Pedro Guerrero, Archbishop of Grenada, then whom no one in the Spanish hierarchy stood higher for learning in piety. The book he said was without error, and, being in Castilian, was especially useful for parish priests unfamiliar with Latin, wherefore it should be extensively circulated. It was true that there were occasional expressions which, taken by themselves, might on their face seem to be erroneous, but elsewhere it was seen that they must be construed in a Catholic sense. To this effect recorded themselves Domingo and Pedro de Soto, men of the highest reputations, Guerrero, Bishop of Almeria, Blanco of Orens, Cuesta de Leon, Delgado of Lugo, and numerous others. If some of these men belied themselves subsequently and aided in giving the finishing blow to their persecuted brother, we can estimate the pressure brought to bear on them. Valdez speedily utilized the power of the Inquisition to check these appreciations of the commentaries, when, at the University of Alcala, the Rector, the Chancellor, and twenty-two doctors united in declaring the work to be without error or suspicion of error, save that some incautious expressions, disconnected from the context, might be mistaken by hasty readers. Valdez muzzled it in all other learned bodies and individuals by a letter saying that it had come to his notice that learned men of the University had been examining books and giving their opinions. As this produced confusion and contradiction respecting the index which the Inquisition was preparing, all persons, colleges, and universities were forbidden to censure or give an opinion concerning any book without first submitting it to the Suprema, and this under pain of excommunication and a fine of two hundred dukots on each and every one concerned. It was impossible to contend with an adversary armed with such weapons. Not content with this, the Rector of the University, Diego Sobanos, was prosecuted by the Tribunal of Valadolid for the part he had taken in the matter. He was reprimanded, fined, and absolved at Calam. Similar action was taken against the more prominent of those who had expressed themselves favorably and who, for the most part, were forced to retract. The Inquisition played with loaded dice. In Valdez, Voviero, meanwhile, had succeeded in his mission to Rome, aided, as Rinaldo assures us, by the express request of Philip, though this is more than doubtful. The brief was dated Jan. 7, 1559. It was addressed to Valdez and recited that, as there were in Spain some prelates suspected of Lutheranism, he was empowered for two years from the receipt of the brief with the advice of the Suprema to make investigation, and, if sufficient proof were found against anyone, and there was good reason to apprehend his flight, to arrest and keep him in safe custody, but as soon as possible the Pope was to be informed of it, and the prisoner was to be sent to him with all the evidence and papers in the case. With the exception of the provision against expected flight, this was merely in accordance with the received practice in the case of bishops. But it was the entering wedge, and we shall see how its limitations were disregarded. The brief was received April 8. In place of complying with it and sending Caranza to Rome with the evidence that had been collected for nearly a year, a formal trial was secretly commenced. The fiscal presented a clamosa, or indictment, on May 6, asking for Caranza's arrest and the sequestration of his property, for having preached, written, and dogmatized many errors of Luther. The evidence was duly laid before calificadores, or censors, who reported accordingly, and on the 13th there was drawn up a summons to appear and answer to the demand of the fiscal. Before proceeding further, in an affair of such magnitude, it was felt that the assent was required of Philip, who was still in Flanders. As recently as April 4 he had replied encouragingly to an appeal from the persecuted prelate. I have not wanted to go forward in the matter of your book, about which you wrote to me, until the person whom you were sending should arrive. He has spoken with me today. I had already done something of what is proper in this business. Not to detain the courier who goes with the good news of the conclusion of peace, I do not wish to enlarge and reply to you. But I shall do so shortly, and meanwhile I earnestly ask that you make no change in what you have done hitherto, and to have recourse to no one but me, for it would be in the highest degree disadvantageous. Philip evidently thought that only Caronza's book, and not his person, was concerned, that the affair was of no great importance, and his solicitude was chiefly to prevent any appeal to Rome. A matter in which he fully shared the intense feeling of his predecessors. When Caronza ordered his envoy to Flanders, Frernando de San Ambrosio, to proceed to Rome in secure an approbation of the commentaries, he replied, April 19, that all his friends at the court earnestly counseled against. It had been necessary to assure Philip of the falsity of the reports that he had done so, whereupon the king had expressed his satisfaction, and had said that any other course would have displeased him. Advantage for which Caronza foolishly offered the opportunity, was taken of this extreme jealousy to win him over. When the Dominican chapter met, in April 1559, there was open strife between him and Cano, over a report that Cano had styled him a greater heretic than Luther, and that he favored Cazala and the other prisoners. Caronza demanded his punishment for the slander, and sought to defeat his candidacy for the provincialate. In this he failed. Cano's assertion that he had been misunderstood was accepted. He was again elected provincial, and Caronza unwisely carried his complaint to Rome. There it became mixed up with the question of Cano's confirmation, for Paul IV naturally resented the repeated presentation of that son of iniquity. Philip, on the other hand, could not abandon the protection of one whose fault, in papal eyes, was his vindication of the royal prerogative, and he interested himself actively in pressing the confirmation. Paul equivocated and lied and sought some subterfuge in which was found in Cano's consecration in 1552 as Bishop of Canaries, a post which he had resigned in 1553, which was to render him ineligible for any position in his order, and a general decree to that effect was issued in July. All this was skillfully used to prejudice Philip against Caronza. In letters of May 16 to him and of May 22 and 25 to his confessor Bernardo de Fresnera, Cano, with great adroitness and small respect for veracity, represented himself as subjected to severe persecution. He had always been Caronza's friend. He had withheld for seven months his censure of the commentaries, and had yielded only to a threat of excommunication. And now Caronza was repaying him by intriguing against the confirmation in Rome, the truth being that it was not until the end of June that Caronza's agent reached there. It was a terrible thing, Cano added, if the archbishop, through his Italian general, could thus wrong him, and he could not defend himself. He was resolved to suffer in silence, but the persecution was so bitter that if the king did not speedily come to Spain he would have to seek refuge in Flanders. What, in reality, were his sufferings and what the friendly work on which he was engaged, are indicated by a commission issued to him, May 29, granting him the extraordinary powers of a substitute inquisitor general and sending him forth on a roving expedition to gather evidence, compelling everyone whom he might summon to answer whatever questions he might ask. The Suprema and Valdez, moreover, in letters of May 13 and 16, to Philip, adopted the same tone. Cano's labors throughout the affair had been great, and it was hoped that the king would not permit his persecution for the service's render to God and his majesty. There need be no fear of injustice to Caranza, for the investigation was impartial and dispassionate. Philip had already been informed by Cardinal Pacheco, February 24, and again May 13, that Caranza had sent to the Pope copies of the favorable opinions of his book, asking that it be judged in Rome and that his episcopal privilege of papal jurisdiction be preserved. Whatever intentions he had of befriending Caranza were not proof against the assertions, that to his intrigues was attributable the papal interference with Cano's election. On June 26 he wrote to Cano, expressing his satisfaction and assuring him of his support in Rome, and, on the same day to the Suprema, approving its actions as to the commentaries and expressing his confidence that it would do what was right. In thus authorizing the prosecution he ordered the Archbishop's dignity to be respected, and he wrote to the Princess Juana that, to avoid scandals, she should invite him to Valladolid to consult on important matters, so that the trial could proceed without attracting attention. Philip's letters were received July 10, but there was still hesitation and it was not until August 3 that the Princess wrote, summoning Caranza in haste to Valladolid, where she would have lodgings prepared for him. This she sent, with secret instructions, by the hands of Rodrigo de Castro, a member of the Suprema. Caranza was at Alcala de Henares, with her Diego Ramirez, inquisitor of Toledo, was also dispatched under pretext of publishing the Edict of Faith. Caranza, who suspected a snare, was desirous of postponing his arrival at Valladolid until Philip, on whose protection, he still relied, should reach Spain. Finally he converted the journey into a visitation, leaving Alcala, on the 16th, and passing through Fuente del Saz and Talamanca, to Torra Laguna, which he reached on the 20th. On the road he received intimations of what was in store, and at Torra Laguna, Fre Pedro de Soto came with the news that emissaries had already started to arrest him, which elicited from him a despairing and beseeching letter to Fresneda, the royal confessor. De Soto's report was true. Valdez dreaded as much as Caranza desired Philip's arrival. The delay on the road risked this if the device of the invitation to Valladolid was to be carried out. For his plans it was essential that an irrevocable step should be taken in the king's absence. A step which should compromise Caranza and commit the inquisition so fully that Philip could not revoke it without damaging the holy office, in a way that to him was impossible. To allow Caranza to be at liberty, while investigating the suspicion of his heresy, as Philip had ordered, would leave the door open to royal or papal intervention. To seize and imprison him would leave Philip no alternative but to urge forward his destruction, while his delitory progress could be assumed to cover preparations for a flight. Accordingly, on August 17, the Suprema issued a commission under the papal brief of January 7, to Rodrigo de Castro to act with other inquisitors in the case, while, as justice required, Caranza's arrest. Valdez commissioned de Castro, Diego Ramirez and Diego González, inquisitor of Valladolid, to seize the person of the Archbishop and convey him to such prison as should be designated, at the same time sequestrating all his property, real and personal, and all his papers and writings. Simultaneously, Jean-Sebriand, Aguazilmer of the Suprema, was ordered to cooperate with the inquisitors in the arrest and sequestration. Sebriand started the same day for Torre Laguna, where he kept his bed through the day and worked at night. The inquisitors came together, a force of familiars and others was secretly collected and, by daybreak on the 22nd, the governor, the Alcada and the Aguaziles of Torre Laguna, were seized and held under guard. The house where Caranza lodged was surrounded. De Castro, Ramirez, Sebriand and a dozen men ascended the stairs and knocked at the door of the anti-chamber. Frantonio de Utrilla asked who was there and the dread response came open to the Holy Office. It was the same at the door of Caranza's chamber. De Castro knelt at the bedside where Caranza had drawn the curtain and raised himself on his elbow. He begged Caranza's pardon with tears in his eyes and said his face would show his reluctance in performing his duty. Sebriand was called in and read the order of arrest. Caranza replied, These senoras do not know that they are not my judges, as I am subject directly to the Pope. Then De Castro produced the papal brief from the bosom of his gown and read it out. Some say that Caranza fell back on his pillow. Others that he remained imperturbable. He ordered out all the rest and remained for a considerable time alone with De Castro and Ramirez. End of Book 3, Chapter 3, Part 2, Recording by Kathleen Nelson, Austin, Texas, August 2010. Section 6, Book 3, Chapter 3, Part 3 of The History of the Inquisition of Spain, Volume 2. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The History of the Inquisition of Spain, Volume 2, by Henry Charles Lee. Book 3, Jurisdiction, Chapter 3, Bishops. Philip leisurely postponed for a year the nomination of new judges. It may seem harsh to attribute this to the repulsive mode of a prolonging the trial in order to enjoy the benefit of the sequestrated revenues of Toledo, but his financial needs were extreme and the temptation was great. In violation of the rule of the Inquisition that sequestrations were held for the benefit of the owner, to be accounted for unless confiscation was imposed, Philip had appointed Toledo Giron, administrator of the Archbishop Frick, had procured his confirmation from Pius IV in spite of the earnest remonstrances of the chapter, and was quietly absorbing the revenues, except such portion as the supreme acclaimed for the expenses of Caranza and of the trial. We happen to have evidence of this in the promise of a pension of 12,000 cruzados on the Sea of Toledo, by which he won over Cardinal Carafa to the Spanish interest, during the long conclave which resulted in the election of Pius IV, and the acquiescence of that pope and his enjoyment of the revenues was probably purchased by the promise of a similar pension of 12,000 crowns to his favorite nephew, St. Charles Borromeo. A promise which he neglected to fulfill, although, in 1564, it was reckoned that he had already received from the sea some 800,000 crowns. When he quarreled with Pius for deciding the question of precedence in favor of France, the pope threatened to make him disgorge, but without success. It is therefore easy to understand why the case promised to be interminable. The two years of the original brief expired in April 1561. Pius extended it for two years more, then, by a brief of April 4, 1563, he renewed it for another year, at the same time prescribing that Caranza should be more mercifully treated. Then, August 12, 1564, it was extended until January 1, 1565, and for another year still before the matter passed into the sterner hands of St. Pius V. These delays it was the fashion to impute to Caranza. Bishop Samancus, who hated him for the proverbial reason, Odess Quemliersis, asserts that he was constantly employing devices to prevent progress, but this is absurd. It was Caranza's interest to be released from his dreary incarceration and to be sent to Rome, where he felt confident of favor. The cumbrous estilo of the inquisition enabled it to retard action at will, while the accused could do little either to hasten or to impede. When Philip at last acted on the power to name Caranza's judges, he appointed, March 13, 1561, Gasper Zuniga, Archbishop of Santiago, who, on May 2, subdelegated the work to Bishops Valtidano and Samancus, both members of the Suprema and Hostel to the prisoner. Caranza, as the result of his recusation, thus found himself practically remanded to Valdez, who was more over-shielded from direct responsibility. Caranza naturally recused his new judges on the ground that they voted for his arrest, but Philip eerily dismissed the recusation, saying that if this were just cause no judge could try a culprit whose apprehension he had ordered. In the following June Caranza was allowed to select counsel, a special favor for, as a rule, the accused was restricted to one or two lawyers who had held appointments under the tribunal. He chose Martin de Aspelcueta and Alonso Delgado, and also Dr. Santander and Morales, though of these latter we hear nothing subsequently. Aspelcueta, known also as Dr. Navarro, was one of the leading canonists of the time and a man of the highest reputation. He served faithfully to the end and probably thereby ruined his career in Spain, for he remained in Rome as a papal penitentiary. After nearly two years of imprisonment, the formal trial began July 30, and proceeded in most leisurely fashion. The rules of the inquisition required three munitions to be given within ten days after arrest, but Valtodano and Samancus administered the first munition to discharge his conscience by confession on July 30, the second on August 25, and the third on August 29. He replied that for two years he had been desirous of learning the cause of his arrest and begging to be informed, which showed how ignorant he was of inquisitorial practice, for this was sedulously concealed from the accused, who was sternly ordered to search his conscience and earn mercy by confession. Then, on September 31, the fiscal presented the accusation, in thirty-one articles, to each of which the accused was required to make answer on the spot. After this a copy was given to him on which to frame a more formal defense, and for this he asked to have access to his papers. A fruitless request, for it was not the style of the inquisition to allow the accused to have means of justifying himself. The articles of accusation were drawn not only from the commentaries, but from the confessions of the Lutheran heretics, the gossip and hearsay evidence industriously collected, and from the mass of papers seized when he was arrested. Many of these were not his own, but essays of others. There were extracts from heretic books, which he had made at Trent for the purpose of refuting them. There were essays written when as a youth he had entered the Dominican order forty years before. There were notes of sermons taken down for practice when he was a student and sermons preached in the refectory, as required by the rule of his order. Scattered thoughts jotted down for consideration and development. Memoranda made when examining heretic Bibles and their comments for the inquisition. In short, all the vast accumulation of a man who for forty years had been busily studying and teaching and preaching and writing and wrangling on theology. All the intellectual sins of youth and manhood had been scrutinized by malevolent eyes, and he was called upon to answer for them without being allowed to know from what sources the charges were brought. There was in this no special injustice inflicted on him. It was merely the regular inquisitorial routine. Thus a year passed away and on June 5, 1562 the fiscal presented a second accusation, for there was no limit to these successive charges, each of which could be made to consume time. These new articles were mostly based on rumors and vague expressions of opinion. For all who were inimical, secure in the suppression of their names, were free to depose as to what they thought or imagined, and it was all received as evidence. These he answered as best he could, and he succeeded in identifying the names of some of the adverse witnesses. Then he presented a defense, doubtless drawn up as customary by his counsel, for it was clear and cogent, bearing little trace of his discursive and inconclusive style. In support of this he handed in a long list of witnesses to be examined, including Philip II and the Princess Juana, but the fiscal, passing over the royalties, objected to the rest on the ground that they were friends of Karamza. Hostile testimony was admitted from any source, but that which was suspected of favorable partiality was rejected. As a principle this was recognized in inquisitorial practice, but it was not habitually applied with so much rigor. On August 31, 1562 Karamza addressed an earnest appeal to Philip, reminding him of his command in April 1559 to trust in him alone. Three years had passed in prison, his case had scarce more than begun, and promised to be interminable. His judge, the Archbishop of Santiago, had not delegated full powers to Valtidano and Samankas. Questions arose, which they could not or would not decide, and when those were submitted to the Archbishop months elapsed before an answer was received. On January 19th his counsel had issued a requisition on the Archbishop to come and hear the case personally or to grant full powers to his delegates. But up to the present time no reply had come. Never in the world, he said, was justice administered in this fashion, and he despairingly entreated Philip to expedite the case or permit him to appeal to the Pope. Whether or not this cry from the depths reached Philip, it produced no effect. By this time the affair had become a European scandal. The bishops assembled at the third convocation of the Council of Trent felt it acutely, both as an approbrium to the Church and an attack on the immunities of their order. Philip was aware of this, and in letters of October 30th and December 15th, 1562, to his representative at Trent, the Count of Luna and to Vargas, his ambassador at Rome, he gave instructions to prevent its discussion and to ask the Pope to order his legates to see that the Council kept its hands off from the Spanish Inquisition. It was with difficulty that the Council could be restrained. In the early months of 1563 the legates repeatedly reported that it ardently desired him to evoke the case and order the paper sent to Rome. In reply Pius earnestly disclaimed indifference. He had urged the matter until Philip's temper showed that further pressure would disrupt the concord so necessary to the universal good. This did not satisfy the bishops, who persisted till Pius assured them that he had seen the earlier papers in the case and could affirm that Caranza's imprisonment was not unjust. He promised that he would not permit delay beyond April 1564 and that he would render a just judgment. If the bishops could not help their captive brother they could at least provide for their own safety, and this they did by a decree which greatly strengthened a declaration adopted in 1551 concerning the exclusive papal jurisdiction over bishops. There was another way in which the Council sought to aid Caranza. It had a standing congregation employed in compiling an index of prohibited books. The commentaries came legitimately before it and after examination. It was pronounced June 2, 1563 to be good and Catholic and most worthy to be read by all Pius men. The secretary of the congregation, Fra Francesco Ferraro, issued a certificate of this conferring license to print it, and Pius followed, June 23, with a papal license to the same effect. The count of Luna was greatly exercised at this and was aided by the celebrated scholar, Antonio Augustin, then Bishop of Lareda. Matters went so far that the legate Morassini dreaded the disruption of the Council and peace was only restored by withdrawing the certificate of approbation. A copy had been given to Caranza's friends, which they were forced to surrender. Philip's indignation at this, as expressed in a letter to Luna of August 2nd, was too late to be of service and is important only from its statement that he considered the affair of Caranza to be the most momentous that he had in connection with the Council. Meanwhile the case was dragging on, one series of charges being presented after another until the aggregate was over four hundred, each of which furnished opportunity for discussion and procrastination. Besides the financial motive for this delay Philip was now engaged in a struggle with Rome to protect the inquisition from the consequences of its own evil work. There was nothing in his eyes more important than to preserve and augment its privileges, and his jealousy of any attempted interference by the Holy See was an over-mastering passion. His secret object was to erigate to it complete jurisdiction over bishops and prevent the final submission of the case to papal decision. Pious the fourth, to do him justice, felt keenly the humiliating position in which he was placed by the overbearing determination of Philip, but each attempt at self-assertion only rendered more evident the contempt in which he was held. More than once he wrote to the Archbishop of Santiago rebuking him for the long delay which kept Caranza in prison while the case made no advance. He named January 1st, 1564 as the Limit of the Archbishop's Commission, after which the process whether completed or not was to be forwarded to Rome. The limit passed without obedience to his commands and he wrote again, expressing high displeasure at the Contamacy which doomed such a man to grow old in the squalor of a prison without law or justice. Again he ordered the case, whether completed or not, to be sent to Rome. If there were delay, all concerned were ipso facto unathematized, deprived of all dignities and functions and rendered infamous and incapable of restoration. All letters granting jurisdiction were revoked and the case was evoked to Rome for decision. Caranza himself was to be delivered forthwith to the nuncio who was empowered either to keep him in honorable custody or to liberate him on bail. These were brave words, but there was no heart to back them up with action and when they were disregarded he extended on August 12th the Archbishop's Commission until January 1565, after which, as previously ordered, the case was to be transmitted to Rome and there was significant absence of the mandatory tone so prominent in the previous briefs. Encouraged by this evidence of weakness on November 24th, 1564, Philip sent Rodrigo to Castro to Rome on a mission to have Caranza abandoned to the Inquisition, significantly instructing him not to disdain whatever means he might find necessary to win over everybody of influence. Even the unlimited bribery thus planned failed of success, although the secondary object of procrastination was affected. Castro commenced by demanding, in a private audience, that the case be abandoned to the Inquisition, but refused to put the demand in writing. Then he lowered his tone and the Pope agreed to send a special legate to Spain to review the case and pronounce sentence. But Castro insisted that the Suprema in such prelates as the king might select should be adjoined to the legate. This the Pope refused, but there was some misunderstanding about it and when Castro saw the commission drafted for the legate he was furious. He sought an audience and accused the Pope of breaking his word. Pius lost his temper and said that in this whole business he had been treated like an ass. The affair was his and he would do as he pleased. Thus rebuffed Castro poured forth his griefs to Cardinal Borromeo and declared that if the legate went to Spain with such a commission he would not get a reale. This assertion may seem enigmatic to modern years, but it is explained by the remark of the shrewd French ambassador when reporting to Charles the Ninth, the arrival of the legate, that the case of Caronza and the use of his legantine faculties would bring him much money. The Holy See has rarely sent abroad a body so distinguished as this legation, predestined to failure. The special legate, Alater, was Cardinal Buon Campagni, afterwards Gregory XIII, accompanied by Archbishop Rosano, subsequently Urban VII, Fra Felice Paredi, afterwards Sixtus V, and Giovanni Alcobrandini, subsequently Cardinal and brother of Clement VIII. The legate had been given discretional power as to admitting Spanish associates, but he found on arrival at Madrid, in November 1565, that the demand made on him was the impossible one which Pius had refused to Castro. The whole Suprema and Prelates amounting in all to fifteen Spaniards. He offered to admit to as against two of his associates, but he would do no more. As he wrote to Pius, the terror inspired by the Inquisition was beyond belief. To admit a majority of Spaniards would be to invite injustice, but the acquittal of Caronza would be the conviction of the Inquisition, and anyone who had the courage to bring this about would be exposed to lifelong persecution. Of course Philip was firm, as his object was to baffle the legate, but discussion was cut short when the news came of the death of Pius IV, December 9. Blanc Campagni departed in haste to participate in the conclave. He was met at Avignon with the intelligence of the election of Pius V, January 7, 1566, in spite of which he continued his journey to Rome. Pius IV had carried to an extreme his subservience to Philip. Pedro de Avila, when a Philip's agents wrote, August 23rd, 1565, that Cardinal Borromeo assured him that the Pope had done and was doing more than he had power to do in order to gratify the king. He had gone against the cannons, the councils, and the Cardinals, and when recently he thought himself to be dying, nothing weighed on his conscience more heavily than this. His successor was a man of a different stamp. To few popes does Catholicism owe more than to St. Pius V. For, while pitiless in his persecution of heresy, his recognition of the need of reform and his unbending resolution to effect it regained for the church much of the respect which it had forfeited. The Spanish agent speedily found that in the matter of Caranza he was incorruptible and intractable. As the ambassador to Zuniga plaintively reported to Philip, February 23rd, 1566, he is certainly well intentioned but, having no experience in affairs of state and no private interests, which are the two things that ordinarily make popes yielding, he fixes his eyes on what he deems just and is immovable. As Cardinal Inquisitor and Dominican he had been favorably inclined to Caranza whose friends received with hope the news of his accession. They conveyed this by means of an arrow aimed at one of his window shutters, and he responded by casting out a paper, picked up by a person stationed for the purpose, in which he addressed the new pope in the words of Peter, Lord, if it be thou, bid me come unto thee on the water. CHAPTER XIV. VIRS. 28 Pius did not need urging. One of his first acts was to dispatch a messenger to Buono Compagni, ordering him to remain and bring the affair to a conclusion, but the legate Spanish experience did not incline him to return from Avignon. Doubtless his report brought conviction that justice was not to be expected in Spain, for Pius speedily made a demand for the person of Caranza in the paper so that he might decide the case. Accustomed to browbeat popes, Philip replied that the demand was offensive and contrary to the royal prerogative, as an attempt to change a matter unalterably fixed by the Holy See, and that it would not be entertained. The pope could commit the case to such persons as he pleased, provided they were Spaniards. Otherwise if Caranza should linger in prison until he died the responsibility would not be with those who had offered every possible alternative. This audacious answer only strengthened the determination of Pius, who summoned Zuniga and told him to tell his master that he exposed himself to all the indignation of the Holy See, for the pope was resolved to carry the matter to a conclusion. Zuniga was silenced and could only report to Philip the terrible earnestness of Pius, from which there was no hope of diverting him. That he was in deadly earnest is apparent in his brief of July 30th, which he caused to be privately printed and sent copies to Nuncio Rosano, with an autographed letter of August the Third, commanding its rigid execution. After dwelling on the injustice and scandal of the treatment of Caranza, he deprived Valdez, the Suprema, and all concerned of jurisdiction in the case. Under pain of excommunication and suspension of functions, Caranza was to be set at liberty, and, after appointing a vicar for his See of Toledo, was at once to present himself to the pope for judgment. Under pain of the indignation of God, and of the Apostles Peter and Paul, and of excommunication, all the papers in the case were to be delivered in Rome within three months, and anyone impeding the execution of these commands incurred ex communication and suspension from office. By this time Pius was known as a man who was not to be trifled with, but Valdez and the Suprema were ready to risk a rupture with the vice-regent of Christ, rather than to remit their victim to his judgment. When Philip consulted them, they urged him not to permit even a copy of the process to be sent to Rome, much less Caranza's person, lest he should impair his prerogatives. They asserted that the papal brief had given ample power both to prosecute and to sentence, and, that, having been granted, it could not be withdrawn. That, under the papal concessions to Ferdinand and Isabella, the Spanish Inquisition was wholly independent of Rome, that if the Episcopal character were successfully urged in this case, some other excuse would be found in other cases. Valdez might be willing to risk the schism, but Philip drew back. It was not to be thought of that the Catholic King should incur excommunication, and he recognized what strength the heretic cause throughout Europe would derive from such a quarrel and such a cause. Still he dallyed, until Pius forced Valdez to resign and threatened to lay all Spain under interdict. He had encountered a will stronger than his own, and Antonio Tipolo, the Venetian envoy, is doubtless correct in saying that no other pope but Pius could have carried his point. The pressure became irresistible, and he yielded. Caranza, under charge of the hated Inquisitor, Diego Gonzales, and guarded by a body of troops left Valladolid, December 5, reaching Cartagena on the 31st, where he was confined in the castle until April 27, 1567, awaiting the arrival of the voluminous papers of the case, when he was placed on the Admiral's ship, which was conveying the Duke of Alva on his fateful way to Flanders. Sevilla Vecchia was reached May 25 and Rome May 28, where he was confined in the castle of San Angelo, a second imprisonment that was to last nine years. It was much less harsh than the previous one. Besides his two faithful attendants he was allowed two others. He was assigned apartments in the quarters reserved for archbishops. He was sometimes permitted to leave his room under guard and enjoy the landscape, and at the first jubilee he was admitted to confession, though communion was still denied. The case promised to be as interminable in Rome as it had been in Spain. The anxiety of Pius for a thorough investigation caused endless delays, which were skillfully improved by the agents of the Inquisition. The enormous mass of papers reached Rome in the utmost confusion and some portions were lacking, which had to be sent for. Then they had to be translated, as well as the voluminous commentaries which consumed a year. Philip was frequently sending new opinions and statements, and Pius ordered all of Caranza's writings and even notes of his lectures taken by students to be searched for and brought to Rome. He formed a special congregation of seventeen consultants, including four of the Spaniards who had been concerned in the case, with Ramirez as the Fiscal. When all was ready and the congregation met weekly under the presidency of the Pope, the Spaniards insisted on his presence and, as his other duties frequently prevented this, the affair dragged on from year to year. Philip followed it with intense anxiety, as is shown in his correspondence with Zuniga. Thus, a long letter of instructions, June 6, 1570, tells the ambassador to assure the Pope that everything had been done in Spain with the most minute deliberation. There was almost a childish insistence on the opinions of some obscure theologians as to Caranza's guilt, and it is pointed out that, if he is acquitted, he will teach and preach with greater authority than before and the whole prosecution will have been a blunder. All this, he says, should have weight with the Pope, who is moreover to be threatened with what the king may find it necessary to do if the sentence is warped by personal considerations. Foolish communications of this kind were reiterated until August 12, 1571. Pius, in an autograph letter, alluded to the repetition of these insinuations, which he declared to be groundless and in dignified terms warned Philip not to let his pious zeal get the better of his discretion. End of Book 3, Chapter 3, Part 3, Recording by Kathleen Nelson, Austin, Texas, August 2010. Section 7, Book 3, Chapter 3, Part 4 of THE HISTORY OF THE INQUISITION OF SPAIN, Volume 2. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. THE HISTORY OF THE INQUISITION OF SPAIN, Volume 2, by Henry Charles Lee. Book 3, Jurisdiction, Chapter 3, Bishops. The Spanish tactics of delay were successful. Pius V died May 1, 1572 without having published a sentence. Whether one was framed or not is a disputed question. Salazar tells us that it was drawn up, but that Pius, before publication, desired to submit it to Philip and sent it by his chief chamberlain, Alessandro Casal, who was detained by bad weather and other accidents until after the death of the Pope. Lorente gives the details of the sentence as absolving Caronza of the charges but maintaining the prohibition of the commentaries in the vernacular, with permission to translate it into Latin after removing the doubtful expressions. Simoncus, who was one of the inquisitors employed on the case in Rome, says positively that Pius died without framing a sentence, that when Caronza's friends claimed that he had done so and urged his successor, Gregory XIII, to publish it, the latter offered 20,000 crowns to anyone who would produce it and thus save him the task of reviewing the case. However, this may be, Pius was convinced of Caronza's innocence. He allowed the commentaries to be publicly sold in Rome. When the Fiscal Salgado, petitioned for its suppression, he made no answer, and when Salgado insisted upon it in the congregation, he replied angrily that he did not consider it subject to suppression and that they had better not by persistence force him formally to approve it by a motu proprio. Gregory XIII was not liable to the reproach bestowed by Zuniga on Pius V of indifference to personal and worldly considerations. He was quite accessible to them and realized fully the importance to the holy sea of keeping on good terms with the Spanish master of His experience as the legate Juan Campanyi had sufficiently acquainted him with Philip's temper and, when Caronza's friends naturally expected him to take the matter up where the death of Pius had left it, he insisted on going over it personally from the beginning. As he could give but fragmentary attention to it, he was thus able to postpone committing himself for some years. This gave Philip opportunity to gather fresh testimony. By means not the most gentle, the survivors of Caronza's friends, who had approved the commentaries, were induced to retract. The three bishops, Guerrero, Blanco, and Delgado, condemned propositions by the hundred, drawn from work submitted to them as Caronzas, and they exculpated themselves from their approval of the commentaries by saying they had not seen his MS writings, and, in view of his reputation, they had sought to give a Catholic sense wherever possible. Other opinions were industriously collected. Gregory made a decent show of resistance to admitting fresh testimony at this late date, but yielded to Philip's threats of what he might find necessary to do in case his desires were thwarted, and thus excuses, if not reasons, were afforded for reaching a different conclusion from that of Pius V. As the time approached at which it was understood that the long protracted case would be terminated, Philip's anxiety increased. An autograph letter of February 16, 1575, to Pope Gregory, strongly urged Caronza's speedy condemnation, in view of the dangers which he had represented to Pius, and asked the fulfillment of a promise to communicate him the sentence before publication. Whether such promise was made or not, Gregory refused to submit it to him, but intimation of what it was to be reached him, and on April 20, he wrote vigorously to Zaniga expressing surprise that the Pope did not keep his word. As for Caronza, he was so thoroughly convicted of heresy that, according to inquisitorial routine, he ought to be burnt, or at least reconciled after abjuring all kinds of heresy. To allow him to abjure for vehement suspicion of heresy, with temporary suspension from his sea, assumes that in time he will return to occupy the primatial church of Toledo, which would cause disturbance and scandal impossible to contemplate. The Pope can well conceive the dangers which may follow, in Spain and elsewhere by the mere example of such a criminal in such a position. Even if the suspension were perpetual, yet, if God should remove his holiness, a successor might lift the suspension unless Caronza is wholly deprived. This was passion and eloquence wasted, for the sentence had been pronounced six days before, on April 14, 1576. Whatever promise Gregory had made was kept to the letter, but not to the spirit by announcing it to him on April 11. Its provisions were shrewdly framed who turned the whole affair to the advantage of the Holy See. By keeping Caronza as a potential sword of Damocles hanging over Philip's head, and meanwhile absorbing the revenues of the Sea of Toledo, the tenor of the articles was, as communicated to Philip, the Archbishop of Toledo will be declared vehemently suspect of sundry errors, and as such will be required to abjure them, he will be suspended and removed from the administration of his church for five years and subsequently at the pleasure of the Pope and the Holy See. During this time he will be recluded to a monastery in Orvieto, and not allowed to depart without special license of the Pope and the Holy See. The Pope will appoint an administrator of the Church of Toledo with disposition of all the fruits since the date of sequestration and during the suspension, which he will convert to the benefit of the Church and other pious uses, after deducting pensions, expenses, and debts. For the support of the Archbishop there shall be assigned a monthly allowance of a thousand gold crowns. Some salutary penances will be imposed on him. His catechism will be prohibited to be possessed, read, or printed. The errors of which he was declared vehemently suspect amounted to sixteen, professedly drawn from his writings. As they were merely the peg on which to hang the sentence they need not be recapitulated here, and it suffices to say that on April 12th they were taken, with the abjuration, by Giantonio Fashionetti, afterwards in the 11th, to the Castle of San Angelo, where Caranza obediently signed the abjuration. The publication of the sentence was made with a solemnity benefitting the conclusion of a case which, for seventeen years, had occupied the attention of Christendom. On April 14th Caranza was brought from his prison to the Hall of Constantine, where Gregory occupied the papal throne under a canopy. The cardinals sat on benches and about a hundred other spectators stood around. After the opening formalities Gregory handed a roll containing the sentence to Alonso Castalon, the secretary in the case, who read it aloud. It was very long, reciting the vicitudes of the affair from the beginning and concluded with the articles as stated above. Then Caranza read his abjuration, as Samankas tells us, with impassive indifference, as though it related to another, after which he was led to the feet of the pope who expiated on the mercy shown to him, and told him he might expect more if he lived as he ought. He was then handed to the captain of the guard to be conveyed to the Dominican convent of Santa Maria Sopra Manurva, and, as he was led out, in passing Cardinal Gambara, he quietly asked him to have his effects transferred to the convent. Evidently there was no sense of guilt or humiliation. It was a fitting end to Gregory's disgraceful part in the tragedy that, when, on April 20th, he formally notified Philip and the chapter of Toledo of the result, he mournfully expressed his regret that he had been compelled to condemn in place of acquitting, as he had hoped. As a penance the pope ordered Caranza visit the seven churches on Saturday of Easter week, April 28th, and offered him his own litter and horses for his servants, which he declined. It was noised abroad and the whole population was stirred to accompany him, for the compassion felt for him was universal. To avoid such a demonstration Gregory changed the day to Monday the 23rd, but notwithstanding this the throng of coaches and crowds of people changed the penance into a triumph. In the churches he was received with all honour, and at the latteren he celebrated mass, but, towards the end of the day, a strangery commenced, and on his return to the convent he took to his bed, never to leave it. The disease made rapid progress, during which the pope repeatedly sent consulatory messages, and, on April 30th, his apostolic benediction, with an indulgent apoena et eculpa. The same day Caranza made a solemn declaration before his secretaries, affirming his unbroken adhesion to the faith, he received with fervor the last consolations of religion, and passed away at 3 AM on May 2nd. He had entered his prison a vigorous man of 56, and had left it to die, a broken old man of 73. That an autopsy should have been ordered indicates that immediately doubts had arisen whether the death had been natural. The physicians reported some slight ulcers in one kidney and three stones in the gallbladder, but in a position to do no harm, and they attributed the retention to some carnosities. If suspicion existed of poison they found no public utterance that has reached us. Yet, in an age when the removal of an impediment was a recognized resource of state policy, the opportune and sudden death of Caranza is at least suggestive. We have seen how energetically Philip remonstrated against his being left in a position in which his return to Toledo was possible. His resumption of his sea would have inflicted an incurable wound on the authority and influence of the inquisition, and have covered the monarch with mortification. It would have led to complications which, in the temper of the age, would have been insoluble. The injustice meted out to Caranza had rendered his death a necessity. If he was not branded as a heretic or disqualified as a bishop, Philip and he could not exist together in Spain. Besides, so long as Caranza lived, he was a dangerous weapon in the hands of the papacy to thwart Spanish policy by threats of removing the suspension or to extort concessions as the price of maintaining it. To attribute his sudden death to the zeal of Spanish agents in Rome or to secret orders sent in advance would do no injustice to a prince who did not shrink from the executions of Montigny and La Nusa or the assassinations of Escobedo and of William the Silent. It suited him, however, to accept it piously as a special dispensation of providence. June 11 he replied to Gregory's letters of April 11 and 16, conveying copies of the sentence in abjuration. To persons, he said, of great learning and experience in Spain, the sentence was too lenient. But he recognized the Pope's holy zeal and that God's hand had applied the proper remedy to avert greater evils. Yet subsequently Morales, writing by Philip's order, concludes his account. They say that he apparently died as a saint, which I believe, and that it was really so. The Lord reserved for him the other life. A signal mercy which he grants to those whom it pleases him. In one respect the Inquisition was triumphant. The commentaries which had been approved by the Council of Trent and by Pius IV and Pius V was condemned and prohibited with callous disregard of consistency. The work remained in the successive issues of the Spanish index until 1747, but was dropped in the latest one of 1790. Rome was even more persistent and retained it until 1899, though it disappeared with much other antiquated lumber in the recension of 1900. Yet Caron's reputation as an Orthodox champion of the Church seems to have suffered little from his prosecution and condemnation. Cardinal Cuerroga, the Inquisitor General, who in 1577 succeeded him in the Sea of Toledo, caused his portrait to be placed with those of his predecessors, erected a tomb to his memory, and in June 1578 performed solemn obsequies for him which lasted for a fortnight. Oderricus Reynaldus, the official analyst of the Holy Sea, and Cardinal Palavancini, the official historian of the Council of Trent, unite in saying that nothing serious was found against him, only vehement suspicion, and that on his deathbed he gave evidence not only of uncorrupted faith but of singular piety. Nicholas Antonio tells us that for some, mere presumptions, in the absence of legitimate proof of admitted impiety, he was ordered by abjuration to purge all suspicion of guilt. Balmais, the champion of Catholicism, while admitting that on the delicate subject of justification, his expressions lacked clearness, a search that beyond doubt, in his own conscience before God, he was wholly innocent. The dispassionate judgment of posterity has condemned the Inquisition in acquitting its victim. If Philip failed to blast the memory of Caranza, he at least succeeded in one of his objects. For seventeen years he had wrongfully enjoyed Caranza's sequestrated revenues, which, allowing for all deductions, must have yielded him two or three millions of dukots. Much must have been spent in the endeavor to convict the rightful possessor, but, when the case was concluded, outstanding engagements were repudiated. During the trial in Rome, Don Lope de Avalonera had borrowed twenty-six thousand dukots to pay the salaries of the parties employed in the notoriously expensive litigation of the Curia, but the bills of exchange drawn to satisfy the indebtedness were returned dishonored. The Roman bankers were too important an adjunct of the Curia not to be efficiently protected. On April 10th, 1577, Gregory wrote to the Inquisitors, probably of Toledo, to collect the amount with interest up to the date of payment, from the revenue of the arch-episcopal table of Toledo, enforcing the demand if necessary by excommunication, interdite, and the invocation of the secular arm. Philip evidently maintained his hold on the revenues until the consecration of archbishop Quiroga in December 1577, and his administrator would allow no diversion of the funds. Gregory, in the sentence, had endeavored to provide for an accounting to him of the accumulations, but the effort was a failure. Like Philippe Lebel, in the analogous case of the Templars, Philip had a grip on the spoils which nothing could loosen. When, in 1581, Gregory sought to stimulate him to undertake an expedition against Queen Elizabeth, and promised him financial assistance towards Sopias and Enterprise, it turned out that this aid was merely the mesna profits of the Sea of Toledo, which he had collected and had long since consumed. The affair of Caramsa seems to have been regarded as weakening the position of bishops, and, with the customary audacity of the inquisitors in extending their jurisdiction, the Tribunal of Cuenca boasted or threatened that it would arrest the bishop. The services of the incumbent Pedro de Castro, in furnishing evidence against Caramsa, had been too recent to permit him to be hoisted by his own petard, and Valdez, in a letter of June 17, 1560, rebuked the Tribunal for its super-serviceable zeal. We have seen how the bishops at the Council of Trent endeavored to protect themselves by reserving to the Pope exclusive right to pronounce sentence, but this was of small avail when he assumed the right to delegate his power as he pleased. When Sixtus V, January 25, 1586, issued a commission to the cardinal Archduke Albert of Austria, as inquisitor general of Portugal, it specifically subjected Archbishop's bishops and patriarchs to his jurisdiction and that of his sub-delegates. As Portugal was under the Spanish crown, this served as a precedent when, in December 1629, the inquisition desired to prosecute Gavino Milani, Archbishop of Oristano in Sardinia. Against two mid-ed gathered evidence that, since his consecration in 1627, he had never been a confession or had celebrated mass, that he was a blasphemer, that he had a familiar dean-man confined in a ring, etc. The Suprema submitted to Philip IV the Portuguese commission and asked him to instruct his ambassador to procure a similar one for Spain, or, failing this, to obtain a special brief for the case of Milani. Philip ordered the necessary letter to be drafted for his signature, but the effort failed. Milani was probably sent to Rome with the evidence, for he was deposed, being succeeded in 1635 by Pedro Vico, while he did not die until 1641. In spite of this recognition of lack of jurisdiction over bishops, we have seen, that in the quarrel with Manjare de Heredia, Bishop of Mallorca, in 1668, inquisitor general Nithard claimed that the inquisition could prosecute him criminally. He had the effrontery to assert, in a consulta of February 5, 1668, that its possession of this power was so notorious and so completely established in practice as to require neither argument nor demonstration, and the infatuated queen regent sustained him in summoning the bishop to appear for trial. The inquisition continued the prosecution even after the expulsion of Nithard, and proceedings ceased only with the death of the bishop. The next case in which the inquisition had to deal with a bishop was one which attracted much attention at the time, that of Jose Fernando de Toro, Bishop of Oviedo. We shall have to consider it hereafter in its relation with Aluminism and Molanism, and need only say here that he was an adept in the dangerous mysticism which mistook the promptings of the senses for divine impulses and taught that union with God conferred impeccability. There was no doubt of his guilt, for he confessed freely when arraigned, and the inquisition raised no question as to the exclusive papal jurisdiction. After elaborate investigation, inquisitor general Ibáñez de la Riva Herrera put the mass of testimony into shape and sent it to Clement XI, November 27, 1709. On June 7, 1710, Clement authorized the imprisonment of Toro and the prosecution of the case, the results to be sent to him. After the death of Ibáñez, a fresh commission was sent to his successor, Guadice. In 1714, Clement granted permission to Toro to come to Rome, but this was not carried out until 1716, when he was confined in the castle of San Angelo and his trial dragged on until 1719. Sentence was pronounced July 27, with the same ceremonies as that of Caranza, the records of which were examined for the purpose. While the inquisition thus freely admitted its incompetence to sit in judgment on bishops, yet, in the next case that occurred, it asserted complete jurisdiction. Manuel Abad Cuiepo was bishop-elect of Mejicon, Valladolid, in Mexico, where, although not consecrated, he was accepted by the chapter and governed the diocese as bishop, fulminating, in 1810, excommunication against Hidalgo and his followers, which was confirmed by the Archbishop, Ligama Ibomant. He was thus fully recognized as bishop, and it was probably the disturbed state of the land, during the rebellion of Hidalgo and Morelos, that prevented the assembling of bishops for his consecration. In the turbulence of the period, he made enemies, and an anonymous denunciation was lodged against him with the Mexican tribunal. It collected evidence and forwarded it, August 31, 1814, to the Suprema, which referred it to the Madrid Tribunal for investigation and report. The question as to the liability of bishops-elect is rather intricate, dependent on whether there has been presentation by the king or election by the chapter and confirmation by the pope, but it would seem that Cuiepo was not subject to the Inquisition, nor were the charges matters of heresy. The Madrid Tribunal recognized this in its report, October 27, 1814, saying that he should be cited to answer, provided his office did not stand in the way, at the same time admitting that the charges were the work of enmity and that at most he had been careless in conduct and ministration. Cuiepo returned to Spain, and on February 12, 1816, the Suprema ordered the Tribunal to proceed. He refused to acknowledge the jurisdiction. The Tribunal, May 16, pronounced his reasons invalid and the Suprema, September 2, took the high ground that no one could question its acts. When it has once declared itself a competent judge, no private person could dispute it or impede the execution of its decrees. This could only be done by an authority feeling its jurisdiction invaded, and, as there was none such in the kingdom, he was only prejudicing his case, which otherwise he could expedite and preserve the right of maintaining his claims by a protest which would be admitted. Cuiepo offered to answer the charges extrajudicially, but this was refused, and he was told that if he did not present himself to answer them fully within three days, he would be prosecuted in condomacy. He yielded under protest and was spared the humiliation of appearing in the inquisition, for inquisitor Zoria was ordered to conduct the audiences in the convent, or he was residing, but during them he was ordered not to leave it, and when they were over he was set at liberty, under command to present himself at the house of the Fiscal whenever summoned. Thus, at the end of its career, the inquisition successfully asserted its jurisdiction over a bishop, but he had his revenge. It was evidently no accident that, in the revolution of 1820, Cuiepo was made a member of the provisional junta of March 9, which, on the same day, caused Fernando VII to decree the extinction of the Holy Office.