A History of the Inquisition of Spain; vol. 1

by Henry Charles Lea

The tribunal of Valencia enjoyed another privilege in the important matter of salt, the royal monopoly of which rendered it so costly to the ordinary consumer. Every year the tribunal issued an order to the farmers of the salt-works, commanding them, under pain of excommunication and fifty ducats, to deliver to the receiver of confiscations twelve cahizes (about forty-two bushels) of refined salt, at the price of eight reales the cahiz, and the custom-house officials were summoned, under the same penalties, to let it pass without detention or trouble for the service of God. The salt was duly apportioned among the officials at this trivial price, each inquisitor getting four bushels down to the messengers who received two-thirds of a bushel, and even jubilado officials had their portion. When or how this originated is unknown; in 1644 it seems established as of old date and it continued until 1710, when the new dynasty brought it to a sudden conclusion. The Council of Hacienda reported it to the king, as though it were a novelty just discovered, pointing out that the eight reales were less than the cost of transport from the works to the magazines; that the manufacture was a monopoly of the regalías and the price charged was in no respect a tax or impost, but was regulated by the necessities of the national defence; that no other tribunal in Spain, secular or ecclesiastic, made such a demand, while the publication of censures against royal officials was dangerous in those calamitous times. This aroused Philip, who ordered a prompt remedy. The Suprema no longer ventured an opposition or remonstrance, but wrote immediately to Valencia expressing its surprise; the demand must be withdrawn at once; if any censures had been published they must be revoked and no such demonstration should have been made without previous consultation.[951]

It would be superfluous to adduce further examples of the manner in which the tribunals abused their power for unlawful gains and benefits, and we can readily conceive the exasperation thus excited, even among those most zealous in the extermination of heresy.

BILLETING TROOPS

Few of the privileges claimed by the Inquisition gave rise to more bickering and contention than its demand that all connected with it should be exempt from the billeting of troops and the furnishing of bagages or beasts of burden for transportation. The subject is one of minor importance, but it furnishes so typical an illustration of inquisitorial methods that it is worthy of examination somewhat in detail. Under the old monarchy the yantar or droit de gîte, or right to free quarters, was an insufferable burden. Almost every Córtes of Leon and Castile, from the twelfth century complained of it energetically, for it was exercised, not only by the royal court in its incessant peregrinations, but by nobles and others who could enforce it, and it was accompanied by spoliation of every kind, while the impressment of beasts of burden was an associated abuse and even the lands of the Church were not exempt.[952] The more independent Aragonese were unwilling to submit to it, and a fuero of the Córtes of Aleañiz, in 1436, provided that the courtiers and followers of the king should pay all Christians in whose houses they lodged.[953] When the Inquisition was founded and was to a great extent peripatetic, its officials apparently claimed free quarters, for a clause in the Instructions of 1498 provides that where a tribunal was set up they should pay for their accommodations and provide their own beds and necessaries.[954] When travelling, a decree of Ferdinand, October 21, 1500, repeated in 1507, 1516, 1518, 1532, and 1561, provided that they should have gratuitous lodging and beds, with food at moderate prices.[955] The frequent repetition of this indicates that it aroused opposition and, in 1601, when the inquisitor of Valencia was ordered to go at once on a visitation of Tortosa, he was told not to oppress the city by demanding free quarters but to lodge decently in a monastery or in the house of some official.[956]

Furnishing free quarters however was different from enjoying them. The old abuses gradually disappeared with the settled habitations for kings and tribunals, but the change in military organization, with standing armies, gave rise to others which, if more occasional, were also more oppressive—the billeting of troops. When Louis XIV resorted to the dragonnades—the quartering of dragoons on Huguenot families—as an effective coercion to conversion, it shows how severe was the infliction. The rebellion of Catalonia, in 1640, had for its proximate cause the outrages committed by troops quartered for the winter in places insufficient for their support, culminating in their burning the churches of Riu de Arenas and Montiró.[957] The massacre in Saragossa, December 28, 1705, of the French troops in the service of Philip V, had the same origin.[958]

As the pay of Spanish armies was habitually in arrears and the commissariat system imperfect, it can be realized how valuable was the privilege of exemption from entertaining these uninvited guests and providing them with transportation when they departed. In the war with Portugal, in 1666, Galicia suffered so seriously that we are told a company of cavalry was worth to its captain two thousand ducats in ransoms, from outrage.[959] That the Inquisition should claim such exemption was to be expected, for it was one of the privileges of hidalgos, but the earliest allusion to it that I have met occurs in 1548, when Inquisitor-general Valdés ordered that no billets must be given on houses occupied by inquisitors or officials, even though not their own or during their absence, for their clothes were in them.[960] What authority he had to issue such a command it might be difficult to say, but it indicates that the exemption was an innovation and, as it refers only to salaried officials, it infers that the numerous unsalaried ones were not entitled to the privilege, which is further proved by the fact that, in the Castilian Concordia of 1553, regulating the exemptions of familiars, there is no allusion to billeting. The action of Valdés, however, settled the matter as far as the salaried officials were concerned and even the Aragonese Córtes of 1646, which greatly limited the claims of the Inquisition, admitted that they had the same privileges as hidalgos.[961]

BILLETING TROOPS

The determination with which this was enforced is seen in a case in 1695, when Inquisitor Sanz y Múñoz of Barcelona threatened with excommunication and a fine of two hundred libras the town-councillors of Manlleu if they should assign quarters in a country-house belonging to the portero of the Inquisition, although it was occupied by a peasant who worked on the land. The councillors appealed for protection to the Audiencia, or royal court, which invited the inquisitor to settle the matter amicably in the prescribed form of a competencia, but he treated the overture with such contempt that he promptly issued a second mandate, under the same penalties, and summoned the councillors to appear before him as having incurred them. The Audiencia made another attempt at pacification to which he replied that he proposed at once to declare the councillors as publicly excommunicated. The Diputados of Catalonia thereupon protested vigorously to the king that, while all the rest of the people were patriotically united in aiding the war, and the gentry had voluntarily foregone their privilege of exemption, the officials and familiars of the Inquisition were exciting tumults and riots in their efforts to extend exemptions to those who had no claim.[962]

The chief trouble arose with the unsalaried officials, especially the multitudinous familiars, who had no claim to exemption. The Barcelona tribunal seems to have started it, for one of the complaints made to de Soto Salazar, on his visitation of 1567, was that the inquisitors forbade the quartering of soldiers in the houses of familiars; in his report he suggested that it should be done when necessary and the Aragonese Concordia of 1568 followed this idea by prohibiting inquisitors to support familiars in refusing to receive men assigned to them when there were no other houses to receive them.[963] There was evidently no recognized exemption but a steady effort to establish one, while the familiars complained that the hatred felt for them led to their being oppressed with billets when others went free. To remedy this Philip II, in a cédula of February 21, 1576, ordered that no discrimination should be made against them, but that they should be placed on an equality with justicias and regidores who were not called upon to furnish quarters until all other houses were occupied. Complaints continued and he advanced a step, February 22, 1579, by decreeing that for three years, in towns of upwards of five hundred hearths, familiars should be exempt from billeting and furnishing transportation; in smaller towns, one-half should be exempted and where there was but one he should be exempt. This was renewed frequently for three years at a time and as frequently was overlooked, but this made little difference for we are told by an experienced inquisitor that it was always assumed to be in force and, when a familiar complained of a billet, the tribunal would issue a mandate ordering his relief within three hours under a penalty of 100,000 mrs.; if the exemption was in force, a copy of the cédula was included in the mandate, if it was not it still was quoted as existing in the archives of the tribunal.[964]