A History of the Inquisition of Spain; vol. 2

by Henry Charles Lea

EFFORTS TO EVADE IT

Hernández had dutifully obeyed orders, but he was becoming thoroughly frightened. He begged Marcen to allow him to denounce the matter to the Inquisition and was told that if through him harm came to the Society he would be imprisoned for life in chains. He persisted and then reports were spread that he was insane and possessed by the devil; he was sent to the college at Oviedo, where there was no Inquisition and no means of communicating by post, and for a year he was unable to discharge his conscience, for the confessors were forbidden to absolve him unless he pledged submission to his superiors. Then promises were tried and he was told that whatever he asked for would be obtained for him from the General, and he was further informed that the beatas had retracted their testimony.

How the Inquisition obtained knowledge of the affair is not stated, but it was probably through the garrulousness of the beatas who could not be kept from talking. As soon as it obtained sufficient evidence it acted vigorously. Marcen, Larata and López were imprisoned and put on trial, in 1585; in the progress of the case it was found that this was by no means the first time that Marcen had defrauded the Inquisition of its culprits. Padre Cristóbal de Trugillo had been guilty of the same offence and Marcen had simply dismissed him from the Society. Also Padre Francisco de Ribera had repeatedly uttered heretical propositions for which some of the brethren demanded that he should be denounced to the Inquisition, but Marcen dismissed him from the Society and gave him money to betake himself to Italy, for all of which his defence was that he only obeyed the orders of the General.[110]

The case was a clear one; Marcen and his colleagues were convicted, but the Inquisition had not the satisfaction of punishing them. The Society did not venture to question the jurisdiction of the Inquisition, but its influence at Rome was great and it probably had little difficulty in convincing Sixtus V that the interests of religion required the suppression of the scandal, for which he had only to exercise his right of evoking the case to himself. He did so, in 1587, and when the Suprema tried its usual dilatory tactics, the impetuous pontiff notified Cardinal Quiroga that, if the prisoners and the papers were not surrendered forthwith, he would be deprived of both the cardinalate and the inquisitor-generalship. Sixtus was not a man to be trifled with and the surrender was made.[111] The treatment of Briviesca, Trugillo and Ribera serve to explain why the frailes were so anxious to avoid the inquisitorial jurisdiction of which the familiars were so eager to avail themselves.

The ascription to the Inquisition of the crime of solicitation naturally stimulated the desire of the frailes to recover their exemption and Marcen’s case rendered the Jesuits especially active. A prolonged agitation in Rome was the result, which finally took the shape of submitting to the Congregation of the Inquisition the question whether, in this crime, the jurisdiction of the Holy Office was exclusive or whether it was cumulative with that of the prelate, depending on the first possession of a case. The decision was made, December 3, 1592, in the presence of Clement VIII, declaring that the jurisdiction of the Inquisition was exclusive, that the prelates could not exercise it and that all members of the Orders were bound to denounce offenders to the tribunals. The victory of the Inquisition was complete, but the pope expressed to the Suprema, through a cardinal, his desire that the inquisitors would exercise their functions with the prudence, circumspection and moderation that would preserve the cult due to the sacrament of penitence and, at the same time, the good repute of the frailes.[112]

Still the regulars could not be brought to submit to the jurisdiction of the Inquisition and Paul V, by a brief of September 1, 1606, evoked to himself all pending cases and committed them to it, at the same time decreeing that it should have exclusive jurisdiction in all cases of suspected heresy; whenever, during a visitation, any member of an Order was found to be suspected he was at once to be denounced and any superior refusing obedience was threatened with deprivation and perpetual disability. Moreover this decree was to be read in all chapters of the Orders. Even this was deemed insufficient and was supplemented, November 7th, with another prohibiting superiors, under any pretext or custom, from receiving denunciations or taking cognizance in any way of cases pertaining to the Inquisition. Every member, whether superior or subject, was required, without consulting any one, to denounce to the Inquisition or to the Ordinary all who were suspected, however lightly, of heresy.[113]

JURISDICTION CONFIRMED

Some details in this would seem to point to the Society of Jesus as the chief recalcitrant and this is confirmed by a brief of Alexander VII, July 8, 1660, which condemns, as pernicious and rash, opinions calling in doubt the obligation to denounce and the pretexts employed of fraternal correction to prevent denunciation. Even the Company of Jesus is ordered to obey the constitution of Paul V; no superiors are to molest or oppress their subjects for performing this duty but must exhort them to it. Disobedience is threatened not only with the penalties provided by Paul V but with deprivation of office, the right of voting and being voted for, perpetual disability and other punishments at the discretion of the pope and removable only by him. The decree is to be read annually on March 1st at the public table and notarial attestation of the fact is to be sent to the nearest tribunal or to Rome and a copy is to be posted where all can read it. The Inquisition lost no time in publishing this and the decree of November 7, 1606, in an edict commanding their observance and pointing out that the alternative of denunciation to the Ordinary was invalid in Spain, where the Inquisition had exclusive jurisdiction. It further ordered that in all books where contrary opinions were taught there should be noted in the margin “This opinion is condemned as pernicious and rash by our Holy Father, Alexander VII.”[114]

No further papal utterances seem to have been asked for; indeed there was nothing that the Holy See could add to these comprehensive decrees. In time, however, they seem to have been conveniently forgotten for, in 1732, Inquisitor-general Juan de Camargo reissued them in an edict saying that some persons were ignorant, or affected ignorance, of the doctrines expressed in them, wherefore he ordered them to be posted in the sacristies of all churches, with the announcement that all contraventions would be punished with the utmost rigor.[115] Of course it is impossible to say how many frailes may have escaped prosecution through the indisposition of the Orders to recognize the jurisdiction of the Inquisition, but, from the numbers who appear in the registers of the tribunals, it is charitable to assume that evasion in this way was exceptional.

The completeness of the domination assumed by the Inquisition over the religious Orders is illustrated by its intervention in a matter which would appear wholly beyond any possible definition of its jurisdiction. The internecine strife between the different bodies had long been an inextinguishable scandal. The old hatred between Franciscans and Dominicans was inflamed to white heat by the quarrel over the Immaculate Conception. The immense success of the Jesuits brought upon them the virulent enmity of the older communities, which regarded them as upstarts and were repaid with interest. The new Moral Philosophy of the Probabilists was a fresh source of active discord. These mutual antagonisms found free expression in the press, the pulpit and the professorial chair, where the rivals derided and insulted each other, to the grief of the faithful and the amusement of the godless. The Inquisition appeared to be the only authority that could restrain the expression of the mutual wrath of the good fathers, though it might not be easy to define on what grounds it could claim authority on such a matter. Scruples as to this, however, rarely gave it concern and it undertook to effect what popes had repeatedly failed to accomplish.