A History of the Inquisition of Spain; vol. 1

by Henry Charles Lea

FERDINAND’S CONTROL

Whatever participation he might thus allow to the head of the Inquisition, when he saw fit he asserted his arbitrary control and he by no means deemed it necessary to communicate with the tribunals through the inquisitor-general but frequently issued his commands directly. May 14, 1499, he writes to an inquisitor to have a certain confiscated property sold at an appraised value to Diego de Alcocer, no matter what instructions he may have from the inquisitors-general or what orders to the contrary. Even for trifles he took them sharply to task, as when, May 17, 1511, he vigorously rebuked one for sending Bachiller Vazquez to him on an affair which could have been as well settled by letter with much less expense. He was fully aware that the power of the Inquisition rested on his support and when there was the slightest opposition to his will he had no hesitation in saying so, as when, in a letter of July 22, 1486, to the inquisitors of Saragossa, he tells them that, although they have the name, it is to him and to Isabella that the Holy Office owes its efficiency; without the royal authority they can do little and, as they recognize his good intentions, they must not interfere with his orders.[735]

These instances illustrate the minute and watchful care which he exercised over all the details of the Holy Office. Nothing was too trivial to escape his vigilant attention, and this close supervision was continued to the end. The receiver of Valencia consults him about a carpenter’s bill of ninety sueldos for repairs on the royal palace occupied by the tribunal and Ferdinand tells him, May 31, 1515, that he may pay it this time, but it is not to be a precedent. On January 18th of the same year he had written to the receiver of Jaen that he learns that the audience-chamber is ill-furnished and that the vestments for mass are lacking or worn out, wherefore he orders that what the inquisitors may purchase shall be paid for.[736]

Ferdinand’s control over the Inquisition rested not only on the royal authority, the power of appointment, his own force of character and his intense interest in its workings, but also on the fact that he held the purse-strings. He had insisted that the confiscations should enure to the crown, and he subsequently obtained the pecuniary penances. The Inquisition had no endowment. One could easily have been provided out of the immense sums gathered from the victims during the early years of intense activity but, although some slender provision of the kind was at times attempted, either the chronic demands of the royal treasury or a prudent desire to prevent the independence of the institution rendered these investments fragmentary and wholly inadequate. Thus the expenses of the tribunals and the salaries of the officials were in his hands. Nothing could be paid without his authorization and the accounts of the receivers of confiscations, who acted as treasurers, were scrutinized with rigid care. He regulated the salary of every official and his letter-books are full of instructions as to their payment. Besides this, it was the Spanish custom to supplement inadequate wages with ayudas de costa, or gifts of greater or less amount as the whim of the sovereign or the deserts of the individual might call for. In time, as we shall see, this became a regular annual payment, subject to certain conditions but, under Ferdinand, it was still an uncertainty, dependent upon the royal favor and the order of the king was requisite in each case, even including the Suprema and its officials.[737] The crown thus held the Holy Office at its mercy and the recipients of its bounty could not resent its control.

INDEPENDENCE IN MATTERS OF FAITH

Yet in this perpetual activity of Ferdinand in the affairs of the Inquisition it is to be observed that he confined himself to temporal matters and abstained from interference with its spiritual jurisdiction. In his voluminous correspondence, extending, with occasional breaks, over many years, the exceptions to this only serve to prove the rule. I have met with but two and these fully justified his interference. In 1508 the leading barons of Aragon complained that the inquisitors were persecuting the Moors and were endeavoring to coerce them to baptism. As they had no jurisdiction over infidels, he rebuked them severely, telling them that conversion through conviction is alone pleasing to God and that no one is to be baptized except on voluntary application. So, when some had been converted and had been abandoned by their wives and children, he ordered the inquisitors to permit the return of the latter and not to coerce them to baptism.[738] The other case was that of Pedro de Villacis, receiver of Seville, a man who possessed Ferdinand’s fullest confidence. No name occurs more frequently in the correspondence and he was entrusted with the management of an enormous and most complicated composition, in which the New Christians of Seville, Córdova, Leon, Granada and Jaen agreed to pay eighty thousand ducats as an assurance against confiscation. While deeply immersed in this the tribunal of Seville commenced to take testimony against him. On hearing of this Ferdinand was astounded; he expressed indignation that such action should be taken without consulting him and ordered all the original papers to be sent to him for consideration with the Suprema, pending which and future orders nothing further was to be done.[739]

This was an extreme case. There are others which prove how useless it was to rely upon the royal favor in hopes of interposition. Thus Ferdinand’s vice-chancellor for Aragon was Alonso de la Caballería, a son of that Bernabos de la Caballería whose Çelo de Cristo contra los Judíos has been referred to above (p. 115). The father’s orthodox zeal did not preserve his children from the Inquisition and their names and those of their kindred frequently occur in the records. Alonso had already passed through its hands without losing his position. In December, 1502, his brother Jaime was arrested by the tribunal of Saragossa, and Alonso ventured to ask Ferdinand’s intervention in his favor and also for himself in case he should be involved and be subjected to another trial. Ferdinand replied, December 23d, expressing regret and the hope that all would turn out as he desired; if Alonso’s case comes up again he shall be tried by Deza himself who can be relied upon to do exact justice. A second application from Alonso brought a reply, January 3, 1503, reiterating these assurances and promising a speedy trial for his brother, about whom he writes to the inquisitors. In effect, a letter to them of the same day alludes, among other matters, to Jaime’s case, with the customary injunctions to conduct it justly so as not to injure the Inquisition and assuring them that if they do so they shall not be interfered with. How little the appeal to Ferdinand benefited the accused is seen in the result that Jaime was penanced in an auto de fe of March 25, 1504.[740]

In one respect Ferdinand showed favoritism, but he did so in a manner proving that he recognized that the royal power could not of itself interfere with the exercise of inquisitorial jurisdiction. Notwithstanding his settled aversion to papal intervention, he procured a series of curious briefs to spare those whom he favored from the disgrace of public reconciliation and penance and their descendants from disabilities. So many of his trusted officials were of Jewish lineage that he might well seek to shield them and to retain their services. Thus, in briefs of February 11, 1484, and January 30, 1485, Innocent VIII recites that he is informed that some of those involved in this heresy would gladly return to the faith and abjure if they could be secretly reconciled, wherefore he confers on the inquisitors faculties, in conjunction with episcopal representatives, to receive secretly, in the presence of Ferdinand and Isabella, fifty persons of this kind to abjuration and reconciliation. A subsequent brief of May 31, 1486, recites that he learns that the sovereigns cannot always be present on these occasions, wherefore he grants for fifty more similar power to be exercised in their absence but with their consent. Then, July 5, 1486, the same is granted for fifty more, even if testimony has been taken against them, with the addition of the removal of disabilities and the stain of infamy in favor of their children and moreover it authorizes the secret exhumation and burning of fifty bodies—doubtless the parents of those thus favored. These transactions continued, for there are similar letters of November 10, 1487, and October 14, 1489, each for fifty persons and fifty bodies, to be nominated by the king and queen, and possibly there were subsequent ones that have not reached us.[741] It was doubtless under letters of this kind that, on January 10, 1489, Elionor and Isabel Badorch were secretly reconciled in the royal palace of Barcelona.[742]

INSISTENCE ON JUSTICE

These apparently trivial details are of interest as revealing the basis on which the Inquisition was established and from which it developed. They also throw light on the character of Ferdinand, whose restless and incessant activity made itself felt in every department of the government, enabling his resolute will to break down the forces of feudalism and lay the foundation of absolute monarchy for his successors. It would be doing him an injustice, however, to dismiss the subject without alluding to his anxiety that the Inquisition should be kept strictly within the lines of absolute justice according to the standard of the period. Trained in the accepted doctrine of the Church that heresy was the greatest of crimes, that the heretic had no rights and that it was a service to God to torture him to death, he was pitiless and he stimulated the inquisitors to incessant vigilance. He was no less eager in gathering in every shred of spoil which he could lawfully claim from the confiscation of the victims, but, in the distorted ethics of the time, this comported with the strictest equity, for it was obedience to the canon law which was the expression of the law of God. There can have been no hypocrisy in his constant instructions to inquisitors and receivers of confiscations to perform their functions with rectitude and moderation so that no one should have cause to complain. This was his general formula to new appointees and is borne out by his instructions in the innumerable special cases where appeal was made to him against real or fancied injustice. His abstinence from intrusion into matters of faith limited such appeals to financial questions, but these, under the cruel canonical regulations as to confiscations, were often highly complicated and involved the rights of innocent third parties. His decisions in such cases are often adverse to himself and reveal an innate sense of justice wholly unexpected in a monarch who ranked next to Cesar Borgia in the estimation of Machiavelli. An instance or two, taken at random out of many, will illustrate this phase of his character. July 11, 1486, he writes to his receiver at Saragossa “Fifteen years ago, Jaime de Santangel, recently burnt, possessed a piece of land in Saragossa and did not pay the ground-rent on it to García Martinez. By the fuero of Aragon, when such rent is unpaid for four years the land is forfeited. You are said to hold the land as part of the confiscated estate of Santangel and for the above reason it is said to belong to Martínez. You are therefore ordered to see what is justice and do it to Martínez without delay and if you have sold the land, the matter must be put into such shape that Martínez may obtain what is due.” In a similar spirit, when Caspar Roig, of Cagliari, deemed himself aggrieved in a transaction arising out of a composition for confiscation, Ferdinand writes to the inquisitor of Sardinia, March 11, 1498, “As it is our will that no one shall suffer injustice, we refer the case to you, charging you at once to hear the parties and do what is just, so that the said Gaspar Roig shall suffer no wrong.... You will see that the said Gaspar Roig shall not again have to appeal to us for default of justice.”[743]