 Book 4, Chapter 4, Part 3 of the History of the Inquisition of Spain, Vol. 2. At length Philip IV was induced in a pragmatica of February 10, 1623, to attempt some amelioration of existing conditions. Anonymous communications were to receive no attention, and precision as to dates and persons was required in alleging that the punishment inflicted by the Inquisition. Witnesses were prohibited to testify as to common rumor unless they could allege reasons and details. Some tribunals, especially colleges, were so rigorous that they required not only proof of Limpieza, but also that evidence of the doubts had been expressed, whereby many families had been unjustly defamed through the malice so frequent in these matters, all of which was forbidden for the future. A significant clause pointed out that, in the early days, persons sometimes confessed to matters about which there was no other evidence. And such confessions, unsupported by external proofs, were not to be prejudicial to their descendants. The practice of many persons in compiling books called Libros Verdes or Del Bercerro, fabricated with no greater authority than their own malignity, was condemned, because they caused irreparable injury and injustice, and disturbance of the public peace, seeing that many persons gave evidence based only on having read such books. Anyone possessing books or papers calling in question to Limpieza or nobility of others, was condemned, because they caused irreparable injury and injustice, was condemned, because they caused irreparable injury and injustice, seeing that many persons gave evidence based only on having read such books. Anyone possessing books or papers calling in question to Limpieza or nobility of others, was therefore commanded to burn them under pain of five hundred Ducats and two years of exile. It was decreed that when there had been tres actos positivos, three positive decisions affirming Limpieza or nobility, it should be deemed a proved and settled matter for the party involved and his lineal descendants. Not thereafter to be called in question provided always that the decisions were made with full knowledge of the case by proper tribunals, which were defined to be the Inquisition, the Council of Military Orders, the Order of St. John, the Four Principal Colleges of Salamanica, the Two Principal Ones of Vaidolid and Atkala and the Church of Toledo. Considering the acute perception of existing evils displayed in the preamble to the law, the slender restrictions imposed manifest the strength of the prejudices to be overcome. Slight as they were, the Inquisition and the Council of Military Orders, after nominally accepting the law, proceeded vigorously to nullify the provision of the tres actos positivos. A writer in 1629 tells us that they had succeeded in requiring regular investigations in spite of the production of the three acts. They also held that these only related to parents and grandparents and that they were conclusive only as to the articles covered by them and not as to the new points that would require fresh examinations, and thus the fees of the officials and the anxieties of the applicants remained undiminished. As regards the character of the testimony received, the secrecy of the procedure renders credible the assertion of Escobar in his commentary on the law that there was little, if any, improvement. There was some mitigation of rigor in an order of the Suprema about 1645 that when an applicant could prove the tres actos positivos, it was not necessary to push investigations as to his great grandparents. Somewhat halting was another rule promulgated in 1639 requiring submissions to the Suprema of matters more than a hundred years old before rejecting the applicant, but this was withdrawn in 1654. The futility of the system and its unfortunate influence are forcibly set forth by the writer of 1629 who tells us that those who succeed best in their proofs are the poor peasants whose grandparents have been forgotten and the great nobles against whom no one dares to testify. The chief sufferers are the lesser nobility and gentlemen, too conspicuous for their ancestry not to be known and too powerless to exclude adverse witnesses. Everybody knows that he who has friends succeeds and that he who has enemies fails, irrespective of the truth, and thus the statutes wholly fail of their object. This is facilitated by the secrecy enabling the enemy to produce false witnesses and the accomplice to bribe and bring forward perjured testimony so that it is notorious that in no other class of cases are the results so fallacious. In this way there has been created a sort of factitious nobility that of limpieza, the processors of which look down with contempt on the old nobility of the land. Another evil of magnitude is the fearful waste of money. He who succeeds after paying his agents for things too scandalous to be described finds himself penniless and he who fails has not enough money left to make another attempt. His proofs are destroyed and he hangs around the court wasting his life and perhaps that of his father and sons and all this under the ban of being infamous. He and his latest posterity. The damage to men's honors is incredible and also to the kingdom for strangers call us all moranos. Moreover, those whose talents would be of great servants to the state and church are lost to us for they have not confidence to seek to enter a college and, what a base cobbler can risk and gain, those who are noble and ambitious fail in because there may be a single drop of tainted blood in their veins. It is also one of the causes of depopulation. For women, internonaries and men remain celibates rather than inflict infamy on descendants while large numbers immigrate. Besides all this are the hatreds arising from adverse testimony and the infinite bribery and collusions and perjury so that Satan has no greater source of winning souls. It is not required for an archbishop of Toledo but it is insisted on for the betel of his cathedral. It is not demanded for an inquisitor general but for the messenger of a tribunal. Not for the president of Castile but for a familiar or purveyor of a college. This is not exaggeration for it is merely an amplification in detail of the preamble of the pragmatica of 1623 and is fully borne out by Escobar in his commentary on the law. That, in fact, it was the conviction of all sober-minded and thinking men of the period may be gathered from the emphatic testimony of Fray Benito de Peñuelosa, though he does not venture to suggest a remedy more radical than restricting the effect of impurity of blood to five generations. The effects of this prescription were manifold. As early as 1575 Lorenzo Perulli, the Venetian envoy, describes the descendants of the conversos as living like other good Christians and being among the richest and noblest of the land, yet perpetually incapacitated from the honors and employments which were the ambition of every Spaniard, an evil which was increasing every day. Thus Spain, being full of discontented persons and divided in itself, some rising would be feared but for the severe execution of justice and the presence of the king. In 1598 Augustino Nani repeats the assertion, the descendants of all who have at any time been punished by the inquisition, live in a state of despair for to the third and fourth generation they are regarded as infamous and incapable of any office in church or state. Navarate does not hesitate to suggest that but for the exclusion from public life of all but old Christians of purest lineage the fatal necessity of the expulsion of the Moriscos might have been averted. They might have been Christianized had they not been driven to desperation and hatred of religion by the indelible mark of infamy to which they were subjected. In fact the statutes of Limpieza created a caste of pariahs who infected all with whom they might form alliances but the caste was not recognizable by exterior signs and no one could tell what corruption of blood he might entail upon his family by any marriage that he might contract. As Frey Saluccio says, no one entering into wedlock could make the investigations required by the colleges and the military orders. Thus the infection was constantly spreading, every man stood upon a mine which might explode at any moment in the distant kinsmen of his own or of his wife might provoke an investigation during which a taint might be discovered in the common line of ancestry. When we recall the history of the Conversos anterior to the 16th century and the enormous operations of the early Inquisition we can conceive how this indelible stain must have spread throughout society to be revealed at any moment in the most unexpected places. A writer in 1668 reflects the popular prejudice when he compares a marriage with a man whose father has been penanced by the Inquisition to sleeping in a bed full of lice or in sheets that have been used by one who has had the itch. Another result was greatly to increase the authority of the Inquisition and the terror which it shed around it by the fact that at a word it could inflict its undyne infamy upon a lineage. To be arrested and cast into the secret prison even without cause was sufficient. In 1601 Philip III, when instructing the Inquisition to furnish to the Council of Military Orders full information as to anyone when called upon required the report to include not only the imprisonment of an ancestor subsequently acquitted but even the fact of an accusation never acted upon. It can readily be understood that even a summons to appear in a matter not of faith was felt acutely through the whole kindred. In the long struggle at Bilbao over the visites de Navios the Corregidor Mendienta took an active part against the Commissioner Linguina who to silence him caused him to be cited by the Tribunal of Logorno. This caused intense excitement and the Signoria of Biscay had him accompanied by two Caballeros. When he demanded to know the charges against him there were none forthcoming and he was dismissed. The affair was regarded as so serious that the Council of State presented a consulta to the Queen Regent in October 1668 setting forth that the citation might lead to the disgrace of his family and posterity and suggesting that some relief should be found for him. All this is of supreme importance in estimating the benignity and mercy of which the Inquisition was constantly boasting. The sentences rendered may frequently appear to us as trivial but the penance was the smallest part of the penalty. Via Nueva, as we have seen, was condemned merely to abjure for light suspicion of heresy and to a few years absence from Madrid but that cast disgrace upon his whole kindred he and his descendants fell into a class of pariahs and could form no alliance outside of that cast. Through generations they were branded with an ineffable stigma. To Spanish Pundador the scaffold were merciful in comparison. The mercy of the Inquisition was more to be dreaded than the severity of other Tribunals and men might well beware of incurring the enmity of those who could at discretion consign them and their prosperity to infamy. The Limpieza test survived the revolution and purity of blood was as essential under the restoration as under the old monarchy but there was some relaxation of rigidity. Thus if a man and wife proved their Limpieza it sufficed for their children. Only a legal certificate of baptism being required and in the same way the proofs presented by one brother answered for another on his furnishing evidence of their common paternity. A couple of years was also allowed to appointees in which to put in their proofs and there was even a case of secretaries admitted without proofs but with a warning that it would not be allowed again. In the extreme pinnury of the time the Suprema imposed a fee for its own benefit of sixty reales on every investigation which the receivers were required to collect and to remit yearly. It was also in receipt of the two percent levied by the Disposterios de los Pendientes and one of its last acts was the acknowledgement February 10th, 1820 of three hundred sixty reales remitted by the Diposterio of Sevilla which would show that eighteen thousand reales had passed through its hands. The part of the business which fell to the Suprema was not large. Its first certificate is dated January 3rd, 1816 and the last one, January 4th, 1820 the whole number being one hundred and eight. From these investigations it would appear that the investigation was scarce more than a formality. The demand for Limpieza survived the inquisition though with its closure it is not easy to conjecture where any serious proofs could be found. Up to 1859 it was still requisite for entrance into the core of cadets but in 1860 the Cortes unanimously abolished this survival of prejudice and intolerance. Yet there is still a corner of Spain where that prejudice has proved superior to law. We shall have occasion hereafter to refer to the terrible persecution of the Judaizing New Christians of Mallorca in 1679 and 1691. Padre Francisco Garrao, S.J. who promptly printed an exulting account of the four altos de fe celebrated in the latter year tells us that the descendants of Conversoes formed a community of some two hundred families living huddled together in the Caye and apart from the rest of the population for there never was intermarriage between them and the old Christians. The people called them Jews and, on their complaining of this offensive nickname was speedily invented and they were termed Chulas an illusion to their avoidance of pork. They were not allowed to hold public office although great efforts supported by the government were made by the wealthy and influential among them. The same prescription was exercised by the guilds and brotherhoods especially by the surgeons, confectioners, candle makers, grocers and silk weavers so that they were virtually all traders. Thus there was a solid foundation of inveterate prejudice which was stimulated in 1755 by the malicious reprint of Father Garrao's book followed by the circulation of lists furnished by the secretary of the tribunal of all Conversoes punished by the inquisition comprising all the families of Jewish extraction. This caused a recruitience of ill-feeling and compliment was made to Carlos III who responded in Sedulis of December 10th, 1782, October 9th, 1785 and April 18th, 1788 ordering that they should not be impeded from residing in any part of Palma or of the islands that the entrance gate of the Cayet should be destroyed and that insults or calling them Jews or Chuglas should be punished with four years of presidio. They were declared fit for service in army or navy or any other department and free to exercise all arts and trades and all this was extended to the descendants of Conversoes throughout Spain. Yet even an autocratic monarch could not overcome prejudices so deep-rooted. Church and state in Mallorca had bitterly opposed the appeal to the throne and had succeeded in postponing action for ten years. The university, in 1776, had revived its statute of Limpieza and had closed its doors to the proscribed class. When the royal decrees came they provoked warm opposition on the part of the municipal authorities who resolved not to yield obedience. It was the force of events rather than the growth of tolerance that gradually brought relief. In 1808, when the nation rose against the French they were admitted to military service but when the local levies were ordered to the mainland there was a mutiny in which the barrio de Seguel was sacked. After the reaction of the restoration under the revolution of 1820 they were enrolled in the National Guard but when came the counter-revolution of 1823 they were disarmed and the rabble promptly sacked their houses and made bonfires of what was too cumbersome to steal. After the death of Fernando VII the enforced constitutionalism of Cristina government restored them practically to citizenship and military service and gradually their exclusion from civil office disappeared. Popular aversion, however, was not to be overcome by statute. It was rekindled in 1856 by a suit brought to establish their right to membership in the Circulo Belar or Beleric Club which led to republication of the essential portions of Father Garau's book. This was answered in 1858 by Thomas Beltran-Soliar from whom we learn that the new Christians were still excluded from Christian society and continued to dwell in the Cayet. They were refused all public offices and admission to guilds and brotherhoods so that they were confined to trading. They were compelled to marry among themselves for no one would contract alliance with them nor would the ecclesiastical authorities grant licenses for mixed marriages. Since then there has been some abatement of popular prejudice but the latest accessible view of the situation in 1877 by Padre Tarroni, a priest of the proscribed class represents the clergy as still obstinately impoverished to all ideas of extending fellowship to their fellow believers and as busily fanning the dying embers of class hatred based on events two centuries old. Wise statesmanship in Spain would have sought the unification of the races within its borders. In place of this, race hatred was stimulated in the name of religion with the deplorable results recorded in Spanish history. Book 5. Chapter 1. Part 1 of the History of the Inquisition of Spain. Volume 2. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Guido. The History of the Inquisition of Spain. Volume 2. By Henry Charles Lee. Book 5. Resources. Chapter 1. Part 1. When the Inquisition was established, it was expected to be not only a self-sustaining institution but a source of profit. To what extent the anticipation of gain by seizing the substance of their subjects may have influenced Ferdinand and Isabella in adopting this method of indicating the faith it would be useless now to inquire but they refused to permit any division of the spoils as in the older papal Inquisition of Italy. These were reserved to the crown and when the first inquisitors were sent to Seville in 1480 they were accompanied by a receiver of confiscations, a royal official whose appointment shows what were the expectations entertained. Yet the support of the Inquisition had to come out of the product of its labors. The basis of its finances was confiscation and the use which it made of its powers in this respect whether for its own benefit or for that of the sovereign. Ferdinand exercised so large an influence on the prosperity of Spain that it demands a somewhat careful examination. Spoliation on such a scale continued unremittingly for nearly three centuries was a tremendous burden on the productivity of the most industrious class of the population. At the commencement a very large portion of the accessible wealth of Spain was in the hands of the Jews and Conversos. By the expulsion of the former and the prosecution of the latter they were stripped of it. The tireless persistence of the new Christians, their tireless activity and business aptitude kept them incessantly at work making acquisitions which continued to render persecution profitable and contributed to maintain the institution which was laboring with equal persistence for their destruction. It would not be wholly true to assert that the exhaustion of confiscations caused the inertia of the later decades of the Inquisition but it unquestionably was a contributing factor. The cruelty of confiscation was equal to its effectiveness. To strip a man, perhaps advanced in years, of the results of the labours of a lifetime and to turn his wife and children penniless on the street was a severity of infliction which rendered the sparing of his life a doubtful mercy and it was not without reason that the legious deemed it equivalent to capital punishment. To the persecutor this was a recommendation in addition to its financial advantages and we can readily understand why it was enforced with such remorseless perseverance. Confiscation as a punishment for crime was too subtle a principle of the imperial jurisprudence for any jurist to call in question his propriety. As heresy was held to be treason to God, more detestable than treason to an earthly prince, the Church naturally adopted it as soon as, in the 12th century, persecution became systematized. In 1163 Alexander III at the Council of Tours commanded all potentates to seize heretics and confiscate their possessions and Lucius III in his Verona Decree of 1184 sought to divert this to the benefit of the Church. Under the Roman law of treason the property of a traitor was forfeited from the time when he first conceived his crime and this was applied to the heretic whose earliest act of heresy was the date from which the Fisk claimed his estate, a provision of much importance in the settlement of debts. In Aragon the introduction of the Inquisition in the 13th century rendered confiscation for heresy a matter of course. In Castile a more tolerant spirit as expressed in the laws of Alfonso X forbade it so long as there were Catholic heirs or kindred. If there were none the king inherited subject to the right of the Church if the culprit were cleric This code however was not confirmed until 1348 by which time Scruple had diminished for Alfonso XI followed by Henry III confiscated to the royal treasury one half of the possessions of the convicted heretic. It was reserved for Ferdinand and Isabella tacitly to accept the canon law in all its rigor while diverting to the royal treasury all the proceeds. A contemporary asserts that they divided it into thirds one for the war with the Moors one for the support of the Inquisition and the third for pious uses but there is no trace of such allotment and we shall see that the crown made such use as it pleased of its acquisitions. Strictly speaking the Inquisition did not confiscate but merely pronounced the culprit guilty of that which implied confiscation and it seems to have felt some hesitation as to assuming the responsibility. In the earliest trials that have reached us there is no settled formula either in the demand of the Fiscal for punishment or in the sentences confiscation being sometimes expressed and sometimes inferred and left for the Alcalde to pronounce. The instructions of 1484 are silent as to confiscation in the cases of the living but in treating a prosecution of the dead they order the heirs to be heard so that the property may be confiscated and applied to the Fisk of the Sovereigns and it is noteworthy that in sentences on the dead immediately after this the instructions are referred to as though to shield the Inquisitor from responsibility. There evidently was popular repugnance to this bulliation and no one wished to be responsible for it. Ferdinand in a proclamation of October 29, 1485 declared that the confiscations were made by order of the Pope in discharge of his conscience and by virtue of his obedience to Holy Mother Church. It was probably owing to his instructions that the tribunals finally assumed the responsibility as is seen in a sentence of July 8, 1491 in Zaragoza on the deceased Juan de la Caballeria where the king is ordered in virtue of Holy obedience to take the property and hold it as his own. Apparently all did not acquiesce promptly for we find him in 1510 ordering the Inquisitor of Mallorca when pronouncing anyone to be a heretic to add at the end of the sentence that he declares the property confiscated and applied to the royal fisk and orders the receiver to take it when the receiver is to do so in virtue of the sentence. In accordance with this the official formula adopted bore that the tribuno found the culprit guilty of heresy and as such to have incurred excommunication and the confiscation and loss of all his property which had applied to the royal treasury and to the receiver in the name of the king from the time when he commenced to commit the crime of heresy or if the offender was an ecclesiastic it was applied to whom it lawfully belonged. This rather evaded the question whether confiscation was self-acting but the fait de confiscation given by the notary to the judge of confiscations formally asserts that the Inquisitors in Ordinary had confiscated the property to the king's treasury and by the sentence had applied it to his receiver in the his name. If any uncertainty remained it was removed by a Carta Accordada of 1626 which ordered that, in all cases of formal heresy the sentence should include confiscation for if there was to be any mitigation the granting of such grace belonged to the Inquisitor General. The interior date to which the confiscation operated was determined under the instructions of 1561 by the consulta de fait when voting on the sentence. The phrase in the case of ecclesiastics of a judging the property to whom it legally belonged was a recognition of the claims of the church. What these were seems to have been open to question. Under the partidas the church had the right if it put forward the demand within a year but Ferdinand in a letter of March 11, 1498 says he is told that he has a right to a third in such cases. Whence this was derived we are not told but he established the rule and it remained in force as late as 1559 when two-thirds of the estate of Dr. Agustín Casaya passed to the Bishop of Palencia who, however, transferred it back to the Inquisition. This was probably a compromise for the Inquisition had asserted its right to the whole and Bishop Simancas in 1552 had said that many hold that the property of clerics goes to the Bishop but the truer opinion which had always been followed in Spain was that it belongs to the Fisk for the use of the Inquisition. The question, however, was not definitely settled for in 1568 the Suprema called upon all the tribunals to report without delay what was their practice and what was their formula of sentence. It was inevitable that any doubts should eventually be construed in favor of the Holy Office and in the 17th century the authorities assume as a matter of course that the confiscations of clerics are newer to the tribunals although the sentence still attributed them to whom they lawfully pertained. Forfeited benefits of heretics, however, were a papal perquisite by decree of Paul IV, June 18, 1556 and this is cited about 1640 as still in force in Spain. For a while the confiscations were subject to another diversion. The feudal lords who saw the property of their vassals swept into the royal maelstrom through restless and although they do not seem to have put forth any legal claim Ferdinand in many cases deemed it wise to pacify them with a grant of one-third of the confiscations made in their estates. The earliest grant of the kind that I have happened to meet is to the Infante Enrique, Duke of Segurbe, April 20, 1491. These grants were subject to a deduction for the expenses of the trials which led to a good deal of friction as none of the parties concerned were overscrupulous. If the grantee quarreled with the receiver over the question of expenses he had a fashion when the customary auction of the property was held of announcing that he desired to bid and that nobody should bid against him. By this device the Duke of Bejar enforced a settlement in 1514 and again in 1517. The experience of the Duke de l'Infantable shows how skillful were the officials in neutralizing these grants. In 1515 he obtained a grant of one-half of confiscations up to that time and one-third for the future subject to expenses. Disputes arose as a matter of course and in 1519 he prevented auction sales till he should be paid and in 1520 he compromised for two hundred ducats in settlement of claims up to that time and ten percent for the future, free of expenses. It is safe to say that Jiménez was exposed to no such trouble in his settlements but with his enormous revenues and his position as Inquisitor General it would have better comported with his dignity to have abstained from procuring in 1515 a grant of one-third of the confiscations made in his estates and in the Casorla lands assigned for the expenses of his table. With the gradual weeding out of the wealthier conversos and the increasing expenses of the tribunals the share of the feudal lords doubtless diminished until it was not worth contesting for shortly after this period we ceased to hear of this division of the proceeds. Confiscation, as we have seen, was one of the invariable penalties of heresy under the Canon Law. The heretic was outside of the church. If persistent he was relaxed and burnt. If he repented and professed conversion he was reconciled to the church but though he thus escaped death the forfeiture of his property remained. Reconciliation as a rule inferred Confiscation. An exception to this was when a term of grace was published usually of thirty or forty days during which those who made full confession of their sins and gave full information about others were received to reconciliation under promise of release from imprisonment and Confiscation but subject to public penance and giving as alms such portion of their property as the inquisitors should designate. This was an abandonment by the king of the property which had become forfeit through heresy and was confirmed by a formal grant by him to them of what was lawfully his empowering them to sell and convey a good title which otherwise they could not do. This did not apply to what the penitent suffered from the crimes of others and thus children so reconciled could not claim estates forfeited by their parents. Outside of the term of grace there was no escape. Espontaneados, those coming forward spontaneously after ex-expiration had already forfeited all their possessions and as it was explained it was not the intention of the sovereigns to remit the penalty to them save when in special cases they might exercise clemency. This covetous policy which discouraged the repentant sinner was continued until in fifteen ninety-seven the Suprema Order de Espontaneados should be reconciled without confiscation. Yet in spite of this when in sixteen seventy-seven Álvaro Núñez de Velázco came forward voluntarily to denounce himself and was reconciled his sentence included confiscation. Occasional instances are met in which confiscation was spared on account of the extreme youth of the penitent but I have been unable to find any formal rule to that effect and it seems to have been discretional with the tribunal. In fifteen-o-one at Barcelona when Florencia, daughter of Manuel de Puegrinija was condemned to perpetual prison it is said that her property was spared in view of her tender age. In the reconciliation at Toledo April twentieth, sixteen-fifty-nine of Ana Pereira age ten confiscation was included and that of Beatriz Jorge of the same age, December eight, sixteen-fifty-nine there is no allusion to confiscation and in that of Diego de Castro age ten December eight, sixteen-eighty-one it is stated that confiscation is omitted in view of his age. The enforcement of confiscation was a business matter reduced to a thorough and pitiless system the sufferers naturally sought to elude it and every possible means that experience could suggest were adopted to prevent the loss of the might-nudest fragment. When the accused was arrested all his visible possessions were simultaneously sequestrated and inventoried. His papers and books of account were examined to ascertain what debts were owing to him and he was at once subjected to an audiencia de hacienda in which he was interrogated under oath in the most searching manner as to all his property, his debts and credits, his marriage settlement, dowries or gifts to his children their estates if they were dead he had secreted anything in apprehension of arrest and every detail that the circumstances suggested. Any failure to answer fully and truly was perjury for which he could be punished as occurred in the case of Luis de Perlas tried in Valencia for Lutheranism in fifteen-fifty-two the most repulsive incident in this perquisition was the advantage taken of the terrors of approaching death when the confessors of those who were to be executed were employed during the preceding night and exhorting them to reveal any portion of property that might have escaped previous investigations thus June 29th, 1526 Fray Castel reported Pedro Pomar whom he had confessed during the night of the Auto de Fe estando en el suplicio de la muerte had revealed where certain account books could be found and also some debts due to him so December 21st, 1529 Anton Ruiz under the same circumstances confessed to debts due to him which had eluded previous search this prostitution of religion to the service of greed was exploited to the utmost excommunication was so habitually abused for temporal purposes that it was naturally resorted to and all who concealed or held any property of a convicted heretic were subjected to it in 1486 Ferdinand writes that certain notaries refused to give copies of contracts for them relative to obligations due to heretics to which they must be constrained by censures and the invocation if necessary of the secular arm and the same course must be taken with debtors refusing to pay what they owe October 17th, 1500 he scolds some inquisitors for their negligence those who know that they are suspected commonly hide their property or place it in the hands of third parties and in this way those who hold such property become excommunicated to the great damage of their souls for they continue under the censure and my fisk suffers for the property escapes confiscation in 1645 a writer gives us the form adopted in such cases if the fiscal thought that there was property of a confiscated estate concealed or debts due to it unrevealed the tribunal issued an edict to be read from the pulpits ordering under pain of excommunication everyone holding such property or cognizant of facts concerning it to make it known to the commissioner or to the parish priest within three days on the expiration of this term the priests were required to denounce from their pulpits all such persons as excommunicated and to be avoided by all Christians then after three days more followed the anathema in its awful solemnities of bell, book and candle with the impractory psalm and invoking the wrath of Almighty God and the glorious virgin his mother and of the apostles Peter and Paul and all the saints of heaven and all the plagues of Egypt on the wicked ones who were withholding its own from the holy office the spiritual punishment did not exclude temporal in 1671 Manuel Fernández Chávez tried in Toledo for the occupation of confiscated effects was fined in 500 ducats and was banished for two years from Toledo, Pastrana and Madrid the fulfillment was for the benefit of a culprit there was the additional charge of vouchership as in the case of Gabriel de la Sola and Joseph López de Sosa who secreted property of the latter's sister Beatriz and whose trial in 1697 in Valladolid lasted for two years more effective at least in the earlier period when the press of business rendered minute investigation difficult was the offer of heavy commissions to those who would furnish information confiscated property that had escaped the search of the receivers this resulted in creating a gang of professional detectives and informers of whom a certain Pedro de Madrid the later may be taken as the type under a provision of 1490 he was entitled to one third of all the hidden property that he might discover whether alienated or conveyed under other names or otherwise concealed in 1494 he complained that this was not enough in view of his heavy expenses traveling to France, sharing with other informers, etc. whereupon Ferdinand agreed to give him one half and moreover to those who should furnish information he pardoned the offence committed by their knowing without revealing the inquisitors were to remove the ex-communication and all receivers were to comply with these instructions under penalty of a thousand Florence Ferdinand however did not always play fair with these gentry under the list of his 50% Pedro worked hard and successfully but when in 1499 the account of a receiver who had settled with him came in for audit Ferdinand ordered the payments to be disallowed for the present. Pedro ought not to have such large sums his success was attributable to the negligence of the receiver rather than to his own activity and in fact it was a voluntary gift to him a year later we find Ferdinand agreeing to give one half of 30 libras that he had discovered and promising to determine what share he should have when other properties unearthed by him should be settled. The frequent allusions to these transactions in Ferdinand's correspondence show what an active business it was both with professionals and volunteers and Ferdinand was sometimes liberal in rewarding the zeal of the latter as when in 1501 he made a gift to Don Antonio Cortez the first in mayor of a house and an oil warehouse in Seville which Cortez had discovered to be the property of Beatriz Fernández condemned to perpetual imprisonment which had escaped the receiver this indicates that men of standing did not disdain to engage in this disreputable business and it would seem that Juan de Anchas the secretary of the Saragosa Tribunal to whom we owe the Libro Verde gave up his office to speculate in it in 2009 we find him complaining that the receiver refused to pay him the one third which he had been promised on certain discoveries and Ferdinand ordering the bargain to be carried out there was no settled rate of commissions about the same time Clement Rodérez a Barcelona was only allowed one seventh of the property recovered through his investigations while the Majorca Tribunal was authorized to offer 25% and when the case seemed desperate Juan Martinez was encouraged by a promise of 50% to devote himself to looking at the concealments of Teruel and Alba Racín which were understood to be large while doubtless the Fisk by thus stimulating detectives recovered property which might otherwise have escaped the system was one which invited collusion between them and the officials frauds of this kind were probably not uncommon for in 1525 the Suprema complained of the abuses which had sprung up through the disregard by the receivers of their instructions these were to be strictly observed and in future commissions must be paid only on property of which nothing had been known to the officials and the informer must not be an official whose knowledge had been acquired in the discharge of his duties moreover the compensation was strictly limited to 20% of the amount realized through the information furnished this is the latest illusion that I have met with in the phase of the business it evidently diminished with the falling off in the confiscations though doubtless special transactions continued to occur for it was inevitable that the victim should exhaust their ingenuity in the effort to save for their children some fragments of their possessions cruel as was confiscation in principle its enforcement by the older papal inquisition was aniquitous to a degree which multiplied to the utmost the forfeiture of property from the time when the first act of heresy had been committed was construed to invalidate all subsequent acts of the heretic for he had lost his dominion over all his possessions all alienations thus were void all debts contracted and all obligations given were invalid and the prescription of time against the church had to be at least 40 years possession by undoubted Catholics ignorant of the former owner's heresy prosecutions of the dead moreover for which there was no limit carried back to previous generations the claim of the inquisition to upset titles less in practice when a man was a judge to heretic all debts due to him were rigorously collected while all due by him were cancelled and all real estate that he had sold was reclaimed the only mitigation of this was a declaration by innocent the fourth in 1247 giving to a Catholic wife under certain conditions a life interest in her dowry expiring at her death for her children were incapable of inheritance it is pleasant to be able to say that in time some of the worst features of this all grasping rapacity were softened in the Spanish inquisition its early operations were so extensive and the commerce of the land was so largely in the hands of the new Christians that we can readily imagine the general consternation aroused by the strict enforcement of the canon laws which vitiated all alienations and stripped all creditors of their claims it could lead only to widespread ruin and general paralysis of trade and there doubtless arose a cry for relief which the sovereigns could not disregard with the wise liberality therefore they consented to a partial abandonment of their claims which is set forth in the instructions of 1484 in a manner showing how fully they knew what were their rights the clause recites that they could recover all alienations and refuse to pay all debts unless the proceeds could be identified among the effects of the confiscated estate whether of those condemned or of those reconciled outside of the term of grace but out of clemency and to avoid oppression of vassals who had dealt with heretics they ordered that all sales, donations exchanges and contracts prior to the year 1479 if duly proved to be genuine attempts to take fraudulent advantage of this were declared punishable in reconciled heretics with a hundred lashes and branding in the face with a hot iron in Christians with confiscation deprivation of office and penalties at the royal discretion while there was substantial relief in this abandonment of the right to upset all transactions prior to the introduction of the inquisition yet it was retained with regard to all subsequent dealings and no man could know whether the banker or merchant or tradesman with whom he dealt might not soon fall into the hands of the Holy Office it thus can readily be conceived how fatally credit was affected and what risks were encountered in the daily transactions of business that there was difficulty in making the tribunals respective in this concession is visible in its promulgation anew by the Suprema in 1491 1502 cases in fact occur which show that the officials paid slender attention to it thus in 1499 Costanza Ramirez appealed to Ferdinand for property comprised in the dowry given to her mother in 1475 by her grandfather Juan Lopez Beltran whose estate had been recently declared confiscated and the king ordered its restoration if the statement was true so in 1509 Jo and wards of Johan Perez de Oliva petitioned him for the release of certain houses which Oliva had bought in 1474 and which were now claimed as having been purchased from a condemned heretic here was a perfectly legitimate transaction 35 years old which the inquisition was endeavoring to set aside in the instructions of 1484 prosecutions against the dead including confiscation were ordered even if they had died 40 or 50 years before as it stands in the printed collections this virtually postponed indefinitely the prescription against the inquisition as the transactions of the deceased might have extended anteriorly through 40 or 50 years and in fact it was quoted about 1640 as a proof that there was no prescription this however was a later additional severity for in a manuscript copy of the instructions of 1484 a clause omitted by the official compilers to the effect that if the heretic had died more than 50 years before the accusation was brought and if the heirs or owners of the property had been good Catholics and had held it in good faith they were not to be disturbed there is significance in the suppression and under such a system it is conceivable what a cloud hung over the titles of all property that had ever passed through the hands of a new Christian and how poignant was the feeling of insecurity of its possessors 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 5 Resources Chapter 1 Confiscation In the struggle made by the kingdoms of Aragon against the oppression of the Inquisition the iniquities of confiscation were prominent they were illustrated in the Cortes of Monzon in 1512 by a special grievance which illustrates the working of the system the local government had borrowed money and secured it by a senso or obligation given to Maestro Miró and Juan Bertrán who were condemned for heresy and the senso was demanded the authorities showed that the senso had been paid off and the debt cancelled 29 years before but the receiver insisted on their paying it again because the heretical acts of Miró and Bertrán were anterior and their release of the senso was therefore invalid they petitioned Ferdinand for relief but he contented himself with ordering that they should not be unduly oppressed which left the matter open still one of the concessions granted in 1512 was that prescription of time should be reduced to 30 years this was confirmed in Mercader's instructions of 1514 and when in 1515 the Catalan's complained of its in-observance Ferdinand ordered it to be maintained Leo X went even further in his bowl of 1516 confirming the concordia of 1512 and in that of 1520 this was defined as protecting from confiscation all property acquired in good faith from those not publicly noted for heresy even though they should subsequently be condemned and the prescription of 30 years was not expired this was declared applicable to all pending cases and to render it more emphatic Charles V made a formal grant of all such property to the holders we have seen however how completely the Inquisition ignored this settlement denying its authority and even its existence Castile was no more successful for when the Cortes of 1534 petitioned that possession for three years in the hands of Catholics would confer immunity from confiscation and that dowries of Catholic wives should be exempt Charles flatly refused both requests finally the question settled itself in the canonical prescription of 40 years undisturbed possession by Orthodox Catholics where this is what Simancus informs us was the rule the old instructions requiring longer possession he says had been abrogated and although some authorities argued that five years were not recognized or at most 20 these were not recognized by the tribunals how business adjusted itself to the risks attending all transactions with new Christians we can only conjecture in one important respect the Inquisition mitigated the iniquitous harshness of the older institution by recognizing the claims of the creditors of the condemned heretic this however was not the case at first and it would not be easy to generate the general confusion and distress when it came to be understood that confiscation included the debits as well as the credits of the victims the early extensive arrests were followed by the wholesale flight of those who felt themselves under suspicion flight was regarded as confession and the fugitives were condemned in absentia as soon as the necessary formalities could be dispatched the losses of the consequent confiscation of debits fell were not only on individuals connected with their extensive transactions but on the public bodies and ecclesiastical establishments the collection of whose revenues was largely in their hands the conditions thus created are impressively reflected in the records of Jerez de la Frontera where the municipal taxes were largely farmed to conversos who had fled the public funds had been in their hands and they were naturally in debt and in private persons it would appear that all these obligations were calmly ignored by the inquisition and the municipality appealed to the sovereigns who replied December 6th, 1481 that the matter had been referred to the licenciado Ferran Janes de Lobón the very commissioner who for about a year had been busy in enforcing the collections of the confiscations this voted ill for relief the documents do not reveal the outcome but as all the efforts of the authorities only brought them in contact with the officials engaged in gathering the spoils it is evident that the sovereigns did not propose to abandon their rights we have seen that the instructions of 1484-5 when recognizing the validity of transactions anterior to 1479 asserted absolutely the right of the Fisk to refuse payment of debts and made no concessions as to those contracted subsequently to that period at the same time a clause concerning claims made by nobles who had received fugitives in their lands shows that the inquisition felt the matter to be within its discretion the earliest positive admission that I have met of an obligation to pay debts due by a confiscated estate is an order by Ferdinand May 12th 1486 to Alfonso de Mesa receiver at Teruel that wages due in good faith to their Moorish servants are to be paid but this may perhaps be attributable to the special preference allowed to servants wages by the laws of Aragon various contradictory decisions illustrate the uncertainty hanging over the matter at this time and it is clearly manifested by two letters of Ferdinand evidently drawn up for him by his unscrupulous secretary Calsena the first of these 1498 relates to the Castillo de Calaña which Calsena had obtained from the confiscated estate of Johann Benete and against which certain parties held censors, ground rents and other claims the king is made to order the receiver to suspend action because the debts had been contracted after Benete had committed acts of heresy the other letter March 11th 1498 reiterates an order of 1429 1497 to a receiver to pay out of the sequestrated property of Antoni Cones a hundred ducats which Calsena had lent him and to pay him before any other creditors by this time however the claims of creditors were beginning to be officially recognized the instructions of 1498 give detailed orders as to surrendering property belonging to others and promptly paying debts clearly due out of sequestrated states and when confiscation was pronounced a proclamation was to be made to all claimants to present their claims within a designated time which in 1499 was fixed at 30 days while no property was to be sold until the claims against it had been determined yet in spite of this the rights of creditors were admitted with difficulty by the receivers and numerous instances occur in which they were obliged to appeal to Ferdinand as late as 1515 Margarita D'Artes wife of Dr. Francisco D'Artes assessor of the Valencia Tribunal complained that in 1499 she had bought a senso secured on a house of Aldonza Coca-Redes Aldonza had now been relaxed and Aliaga the receiver refused to recognize the senso because it had been created after she had committed heresy Ferdinand admitted the validity of this argument and said that in the rigor of justice she had lost her claim but in view of the fact that her husband had been in the service of the inquisition since its foundation he ordered it paid as a favor an examination of the records of the Valencia court of confiscations in 1531 and 1532 evinces on the whole an evident desire to administer the law rigidly whether in favor of or against the Fisk among the claimants were a number of serving women for wages which were always allowed although the court exercised somewhat arbitrary discretion in cutting down the amounts gradually the honest policy prevailed and in 1543 the Suprema instructed the tribunals that the first thing to be paid were the debts that were properly proved a rule which apparently was difficult to enforce for the order had to be repeated and again in 1547 yet it was no easy matter for creditors to obtain payment against the resistance offered by receivers and their advocates in 1565 after Fierre and Gilles de Bonville were burnt for Protestantism in Toledo the Fisk reported to the inquisitors that numerous creditors had come forward whose claims were pending before the juez de los bienes wherefore he asked for a certificate of the date of the culprits' heresies in order to use it before the court the inquisitors duly certified that the date was about 1550 the object being to plead the obsolete canonical rule that subsequent obligations were invalid that chicanery of all kinds was employed to exhaust the patience of creditors and accumulate costs is plainly admitted in the memorial of 1623 to the Suprema which states that in the suits of creditors there is much that brings discredit on the inquisition for confiscations are managed solely for the benefit of those who administer them the appointees of the juez de los bienes and ordinarily his kinsmen or friends for whose advantage the suits are prolonged until they become immortal abuses such as these were inevitable in a system which confined everything within the circle of the inquisition permitting no outside interference or supervision while dealing so tenderly with official malfeasance it would be difficult to overestimate the widespread damage resulting when the accused were merchants with extensive and complicated transactions as in the immense confiscations in Mexico and Peru from 1630 to 1650 and those of Mallorca in 1678 when funds and merchandise of correspondence were tied up for an indefinite time to the destruction of their credit the hazards to which business was thus exposed was a factor and by no means the least important in the decay of Spanish commerce for no one could foresee at what moment the blow might fall sequestration accompanied arrest and in 1635 it was ordered that during the pending of a trial no payments or delivery of property should be made to creditors no matter what evidence they presented without awaiting the decision the only exception being claims of the king which were to be paid without delay in 1721 this prohibition to pay debts was made absolute accepting a few trivial matters such as servants, wages and house rent that foreigners dealing with Spain had ample cause to dread the decisions of the Jueces de los Bienes is shown by a remarkable clause in the English Treaty of 1665 which provided that in case of sequestration of property by any tribunal of either nation the effects or debts belonging to a subject of the other should not suffer confiscation but should be restored to the owner on the whole however the Spanish Inquisition is entitled to the credit of mitigating in favor of creditors the abhorrent harshness of the inquisitorial law of confiscation although in practice its officials were guilty of minimizing as far as they could the benefits of this moderation in the matter of dowries there was also a partial mitigation of the old severity the dowry was forfeited by the wife's heresy but not by that of the husband and in the latter case it descended to her children there was one provision however which worked infinite hardship for if the parents of the wife had been guilty of heresy at the time of her marriage it was forfeited on the ground and they had no power of alienation the cases are numerous in which the parties after prolonged married life thus suddenly found themselves despoiled by the condemnation of parents who had enjoyed the reputation of faithful Christians and in the intermarriages so frequent in the earlier period the blow thus often fell upon old Christians we hear of these cases through despairing appeals to Ferdinand for mercy not infrequently responded by abandoning his claims or surrendering apart a typical case illustrative of many others is that of Juan Quirat of Elche whose petition to the king in 1513 represents that 25 years before he had married Violante Propinan receiving 10,000 sueldos as her dowry from her parents Luis and Blanca 8 years ago they were condemned and now the receiver claims the dowry he is a poor escudero or squire and the enforcement of the claim would send him with his wife and children to the hospital in view of all which Ferdinand charitably waved his right more peculiar was the case of Juan Castellón of Mallorca who, when trading in Tunis was enslaved by a brother of Barbarossa after 42 months of captivity he was ransomed for 400 ducats and returned home in 1520 to find that his wife's mother Isabella Luna had been condemned and the dowry received from her was claimed by the receiver he petitioned Cardinal Adrián the matter was referred to Charles V who humanely ordered that if his story was true and he was unable to pay the confiscation should be remitted the hardship was sometimes aggravated by an ostentatious custom of inserting in the marriage contract a larger sum than was actually paid thus in 1531 the Magnífico Diego de Montemayor baile of the Grau of Valencia swore that he received only 3000 sueldos of the 6000 specified in his marriage contract with Beatriz Scrivana in 1510 and that the larger sum had been inserted honoris causa the dowries of nuns were subject to the same merciless absorption in 1510 the convent of Santa Inés of Cordova appealed to Ferdinand stating that some 20 years previous Pedro Cigero had placed his niece there as a nun giving as her dowry certain houses which had peacefully enjoyed until her grandfather had recently been condemned for heresy and the property was seized as part of his confiscated estate this was strictly legal and it was a pure act of grace when the king ordered the houses to be released still the dowry of an orthodox wife was exempt from the confiscation of a heretic husband's estate but it was imperiled by the possibility that the estate might be exhausted in the maintenance of the husband in prison during a prolonged trial and by the sacrifice of values in the realization of assets at auction which was imperative in the proceedings of the Juscado de Bienes of Valencia in 1531 there are numerous cases which show that this claim of the wife was fully recognized and a fair adjudication made in the complicated questions which frequently arose correlative to this was the liability of the husband to pay the fisc the dowry of a wife condemned or reconciled for heresy obviously in time this was exacted is manifested in 1549 by a petitioned Valdez from Don Pedro Gascon who represents himself as an hidalgo whose ancestors had served the king faithfully the judge of confiscations at Cuenca had condemned him in a hundred and fifty ducats for the dowry of his wife and the receiver had cast him in prison to enforce payment while there he had sold a large part of his property and had paid fifty ducats but the rest of his estate would not produce the remaining hundred Ferdinand would have forgiven him the balance but Valdez only looked to obtaining assurance of ultimate payment when he empowered the receiver to grant him six years time on his furnishing good security another feature which frequently complicated these settlements was the question of the conquests or creces the gains made during married life in which both spouses had an equal share the laws of Toro in 1505 provide that neither husband nor wife could forfeit claim to have the ganancias for the crime of the other even if the crime were heresy and the ganancia is defined to be the whole increase during wedlock until the decree of confiscation no matter when the crime was committed a rule which remained in force the complexity introduced by these various interests in the settlement of confiscations is illustrated in the case of Diego López and merchant of Zamora reconciled in the Aoto de Fe of Ajo de Luid in June 1520 he kept no books and the number of debits and credits rendered his affairs exceedingly complicated moreover the paternal estate had never been divided between him and his wife while his wife put in claims for her dowry and share of the ganancias in this perplexity the only solution was a compromise which was reached by the wife and brothers agreeing to pay 450,000 maravedis in installments giving adequate security the Valencia court of confiscations however invented a method of evading the wifely claim to the accretions for in 1532 Angel Peres, widow of Luis Gilabert burnt for heresy demanded her dowry of 3000 sueldos and the crese the court ordered the receiver to pay the dowry but refused the crese on the ground that the date of his committing heresy showed that he could not lawfully make any gains the exemption from confiscation of those who came in under the edicts of grace confessed and were reconciled gave rise to an impressive illustration of the passionate greed aroused among all classes by the legalized spoliation of the new Christians and the corollary that they had no rights prelates and chapters of churches abits and priors of convents rectors of hospitals and pious institutions and other ecclesiastics and laymen who had mortgaged their properties to the heretics or had sold ground rents to them or otherwise hypothesated them repudiated their engagements and would render no satisfaction whereby we are told many were deterred from seeking reconciliation a more practical objection was that those who were thus dispoiled were hindered in paying the heavy fines laid upon them by the inquisitors Ferdinand and Isabella therefore applied to innocent the Eighth for a remedy which he furnished in 1486 by a brief in which, after reciting the above he granted to those thus reconciled the mortgages and censos and other liens which they held on properties forbidding the debtors from claiming release and pronouncing in valid any judgments which they might obtain while thus the Spanish inquisition in some respects dealt more liberally than its medieval predecessor with the unfortunate subjected to its operations it was ruthlessly systematic in its absorption of everything that was not covered by the above exceptions it was in vain that, in 1486 Innocent the Eighth probably induced by the gold of the conversos represented to the sovereigns that as the confiscations had been conceded to them it would stimulate the penitents to be firm in the faith if their property was restored to those who were reconciled it was much more profitable for greed to disguise itself as zeal for religion when in 1533 at the Cortes of Monson Valencia petitioned that an exemption from confiscation granted to the forcibly converted moriscos should be extended to their children and the Suprema replied that confiscation was the penalty most dreaded and that which most deterred from heresy as for relying on the terror of burning as a preventive the fact was that the church received to reconciliation all who repented and were not punished with confiscation they would enjoy immunity in the same spirit Bishop Simancas argued that it was for the public benefit that the children of heretics should be beggared and therefore the old laws which allowed Catholic children to inherit had justly been abrogated this heartless remark indicates that by the middle of the 16th century there was no compassion for the helpless offspring that at first some responsibility felt for them possibly through a reminiscence of the old laws the instructions of 1484 provide that when the children of those condemned to the stake or to perpetual prison are underage and unmarried they were to be given to respectable Catholics or to religious to be brought up in the faith and a record of such cases was to be kept for it was the intention of the sovereigns that if they proved to be good Christians they should have alms especially the girls to enable them to marry or to enter religion there is no trace of any systematic attempt to carry out this humane provision but when cases of special hardship were called to Ferdinand's attention he occasionally was moved to make liberal concessions when however in 1486 the inquisitors of Saragossa asked for authority and relief to some poor culprits not very guilty who were encumbered with daughters likely to be forced to evil courses the county monarch evidently distrusted the sudden access of benevolence and while approving the kindness of the suggestion he said that he was better acquainted than they with the people of Saragossa and less likely to be deceived so they could send him the names of the parties, their properties and the number of their daughters when he would determine what should be done it was evidently a question only of kindly impulses there was no obligation moral or legal and as the wants of the holy office grew more urgent in the shrinkage of the stream of confiscations inquisitors like Simankas argued that the service of God required the sacrifice of the innocence in practice everything on which the officials could lay their hands under any pretext was swept remorselessly into the fisk even the bedding and clothes of those led out to execution at the Autos de Fe were seized as appears from occasional donations of them to officials when in 1495 Charles VIII occupied Naples it became a place of refuge for fugitives from Spain but the pious skippers of the vessels carrying them not infrequently served God by stripping their defenseless passengers and carrying home the spoils this was an invasion of the rites of the crown which vindicated itself by sending to Biscay and Guipusqua Anton Sanchez de Aguirre to search for the jewels and merchandise thus taken from heretics and sell them for the benefit of the fisk in 1513 when Jaime de Marrana scrivener of the court of Segurbe was condemned all his subordinates were called upon to surrender the fees which they had received during his term of office a dying man could not make even a pious bequest if his natural heir was a heretic for when in 1514 Nicolas de Medina and merchant of Seville returning from France died at Bayonne and bequeathed to it a bill of exchange for 126 ducats the procurator of the hospital came to Seville to collect it Vigiasis the receiver there promptly sequestrated it on the ground that Medina's heir had been condemned for heresy and although the Suprema finally released it this was done as an act of charity to the hospital the same rule applied when there was heresy in the ascendance Juan Francisco Vitalis was settled in Rome as a merchant he desired to trade with Spain but feared to do so for his father and grandfather had been condemned for heresy and any merchandise or funds that he might send would be liable to confiscation as constructively derived from them he therefore in 1511 applied for a safe conduct for his goods which Ferdinand issued exempting them from seizure by the Inquisition it was good however only during the royal pleasure and for six months after its withdrawal should be notified to Vitalis or be publicly proclaimed in Valencia heresy shed around it an infection which contaminated everything with which it came in contact not only was a ship carrying heretics forfeited but also its cargo in 1501 Vicencio de Landera a merchant of Galleta was caught by a Biscayan vessel for Alicante on her arrival the receiver seized the cargo because she carried two persons condemned by the Inquisition but the Bishop of Galleta head chaplain to Ferdinand's sister the Queen of Naples brought influence to bear and the king ordered Landera to be paid the proceeds of his cotton apparently the other owners of the cargo had no redress in 1511 when a ship and its cargo were condemned in Seville for carrying heretics this included a quantity of pepper belonging to a Portuguese merchant named Juan Francisco King Manuel interposed to protect his subject when Ferdinand replied that he had ordered justice done but that the Inquisition had represented that Francisco had bought the pepper from King Manuel and had paid for it with bills of exchange drawn by heretics and thus with heretic money which was held to forfeit the pepper this policy was not merely transient in 1634 the Inquisition seized the goods and credits of Portuguese merchants residents of Holland Hamburg and France trading with Spain agents had been sent abroad to secure evidence of their Judaism they naturally sought to defend their property and presented certificates of their orthodoxy the affair dragged on and in 1636 Dr. Juan de Goza presented an elaborate opinion in justification of this proving that the property must be confiscated although the owners were not Spaniards nor Domiciled in Spain nor had committed heresy in Spain his argument was based on the principle of the canon law that the heretic had no rights and that any Catholic could seize and despoil him heresy is a crime all pervading and not limited to the spot where it is committed for it is an injury to the whole Christian Republic no evidence was required for it was notorious that the Portuguese absented themselves in order to indulge their heretical proclivities and that they frequented the synagogues in Amsterdam and elsewhere the Inquisition was to hold the property and for greater justification to summon by edict the owners to appear and defend it within a fixed term or it could appoint defenders to act for them but in no case was it to raise the sequestration or surrender the property it is superfluous to point out the effect of all this on Spanish commerce as regards property alienated subsequently to the commission of heresy the only limitation on its confiscation is found in the provision prohibiting interference with transactions anterior to 1479 all later ones were subject to forfeiture without compensation to the purchaser unless indeed he had made improvements the value of which was reimbursed to him the frequency of these cases and the hardship to which they exposed innocent third parties are amply illustrated by the numerous appeals to Ferdinand for relief which, be it said to his credit he often granted the cloud thus thrown on the title to all property that had passed through the hands of new Christians at any time subsequent to 1479 continued to hang over it and the inquisition grew stricter in the interpretation of its rights a letter of May 6 1539 from the Suprema to the inquisitor of Saragossa says that he is reported to have decided that when a person is condemned or reconciled with confiscation and has alienated real property subsequently to the commission of heresy if the purchaser is required to surrender it to the Fisk he is entitled to reimbursement of the purchase money the inquisitor is therefore summoned to state his authority for this decision as law and custom are to the contrary and it is so practiced this was preemptory and it is not likely that the question was raised again but it took no count of the rule which Simancas soon afterwards tells us was still in vigor that if the purchase money or what represents it is found in the confiscated estate restitution should be made to the purchaser the Spanish inquisition preferred to both keep the money and take the property Ferdinand and Isabella manifested liberality in setting free the Christian slaves of confiscated estates and this was extended by the instructions of 1484 at the cost of those reconciled under edicts of grace for though they were not subject to confiscation their Christian slaves were manumitted it was perhaps a kindly care that kept these freedmen in a species of serfdom for instructions about 1500 direct the inquisitors to place them with proper persons under agreements as to wages and if they are not reasonably treated to transfer them to other masters embarrassing cases sometimes arose such as that in which a slave was owned jointly by a good Catholic and a condemned heretic but it would seem from a decision in 1531 that the manumitted half carried with it into freedom the enslaved half and the Catholic owner had no redress the inquisitors did not always respond to the humane intentions of the instructions they seemed to have sometimes kept slaves for themselves in place of setting them free for which in 1516 they were rebuked and were also ordered that during the trials of the owners the slaves should be hired out and their wages be strictly accounted for all of which points to current abuses these did not cease for in 1525 Dr. Mercader in a visitation found similar ones flourishing while thus considerate of the slaves of culprits confiscation seems sometimes to have extended to the persons of the culprits themselves one of the few letters concerning the inquisition in which Isabella joins with Ferdinand is of December 28, 1498 addressed to the Count of Cifuentes Governor of Seville ordering him for the service of God of justice to take all the Jews condemned for heresy now held as prisoners by the Abbot of San Pedro and sell them slaves at such prices as he deems fit the proceeds to be handed over to the receiver and be applied to the debts and necessities of the tribunal an intimation of a similar kind is made November 6, 1500 respecting Maestre Luis Carpano Avantiquera and his wife described as confiscated to the royal fisk with all their property real and personal end of book 5 chapter 1 part 2 recording by Guero