A History of the Inquisition of Spain; vol. 2

by Henry Charles Lea

This was all purely for papal consumption. Philip himself was beginning to hesitate and, on March 2nd, he ordered the Council of State to consider the tenacity with which the pope was insisting upon his encroachment on the regalías and the privileges of the Inquisition. Arce at once took the alarm and, in a memorial to the king, he sought earnestly to dissuade him from yielding. He repeated the falsehood that, for a hundred and fifty years, there had not been an instance of the pope disregarding the royal wishes, and reminded him that he had declared that he would rather lose his crown than allow the case to go to Rome. Now he learns that the king, in consultation with the Council, has resolved to let the papers go to Infantado with instructions not to deliver them or to ask the pope to return the package without opening it; it is folly to believe that he would do so and such precedent will be ruin to the Inquisition.[396]

In this memorial, Arce alludes to a papal command, received some time before, to retire to his see of Plasencia, from which he had been absent for eight years—a favorite method, as we have seen, of getting rid of a troublesome inquisitor-general. The command had been disregarded and now it was emphatically repeated. Philip complained to his ambassador that this was even more offensive than the evocation of Villanueva’s case; it would result in irretrievable damage to religion and to the state; he had asked the nuncio to suspend the order and now he requests the pope to accept Arce’s resignation of his bishopric and pass the bulls of presentation for his successor. Innocent was too shrewd to forfeit his hold on his antagonist; he played fast and loose with the resignation until he had carried his point and it was not until December 2, 1652, that it was accepted and Arce’s successor, the Bishop of Zamora, was preconized. Arce lost his see, but he gratefully acknowledged that Philip’s liberality was such that he could forego the revenues. It must have cost the king dear, for Plasencia was one of the wealthy sees, estimated, in 1612, as worth forty thousand ducats a year.[397]

VILLANUEVA’S CASE

In spite of Arce’s remonstrance, Philip yielded to the advice of his counsellors. In a letter of April 11, 1651, he announced to Infantado that orders have been given to Fonolleda to sail and deliver to him the papers. Then, with an earnestness that betrays the cost of the sacrifice, the duke is told to refresh his memory with all the arguments advanced in previous despatches and, when thus fully prepared, he is to seek an audience and express the king’s mortification at being forced to submit to an innovation so unexampled and so subversive of the rights of the Inquisition. If this fails to move the pope, he is to ask that the process be returned unopened, when the Inquisition will revise the case. If this is unsuccessful he is to request that the case be referred back to the three bishops. In the event of the rejection of these proposals, the process is to be laid at the pope’s feet with an exhortation to consider, before opening it, the disfavor shown to the royal person and to the kingdom of Spain, in the sight of all Christendom.[398] Philip was fairly beaten. If his humiliation was extreme it was because he had attributed such absurd adventitious importance to the question and had staked everything on a struggle in which the papacy had unquestionable right on its side. There was nothing left for him but retreat and, with curious infelicity born of weakness and obstinacy, he contrived to render his defeat as undignified as possible.

Permission to sail was issued to Fonolleda, April 14th, but it was not until September 17th that Infantado reported that he had delivered the process to the pope with the hope that it would be speedily returned without being read by the ministers, or at least by more than one. It suited the Spaniards subsequently to assert that a promise had been given that the package should not be opened, but such a promise would have been grotesque and this letter shows that at most there was some assurance that a knowledge of the contents would be confined to a few. At the same time there can be no wonder that the Inquisition felt acutely the disgrace of having such a record exposed to unfriendly eyes, and the effort to get the papers back commenced at once. As early as October 31st, Infantado reports his efforts to accomplish this, but as yet without success.[399]

Infantado was replaced by the Count of Oropesa, whose letter of instructions, April 23, 1652, orders him to pay special attention to the matter. Innocent had committed it to Cardinals Lugo and Albizi, but in June he stated to Cardinal Trivulzio, then the representative of Spain, that he had given much labor to it and had recognized in it contradictions and variations, leading him to the conviction that it was a matter of vindictiveness. He refused to return the papers, but did not care to intervene personally in the case and thought he might delegate it to some bishops.[400] Now that he had vindicated his jurisdiction he evidently felt little interest in what he regarded as merely an intrigue.

Nothing further was done until, October 12th, Innocent addressed two briefs, one to the king and the other to Arce. It is evident that the acquittal in 1632 and the condemnation in 1647 had excited no little comment in Rome, for in these briefs great surprise is expressed at the mutability in the opinions of calificadores, consultors and judges, such as might be expected of the populace but not of learned and thoughtful men. To soften this reproof some expressions followed highly commending the Inquisition as the ornament and protection of Spain and, to the king, Innocent added that, owing to the importance and prolixity of the case, he had not been able to reach a conclusion. The nuncio, however, in handing his brief to Arce, told him that the pope had concluded to place the case at the disposition of the king and that the papers had been returned to Trivulzio in Rome. Arce was radiant with triumph; Cabrera had reported the same and petitioned to be allowed to return and nothing remained but to get the papers back. They did not come, however, nor any brief recommitting the case; Arce grew anxious and begged the king, January 4, 1653, to urge Trivulzio to obtain them.[401]

Innocent either was taking malicious pleasure in exciting hopes and then disappointing them or else he was using the position to obtain diplomatic advantage in the growing tension between the courts over the Barberino marriage of the grand-daughter of his brother—a transaction in which he complained that the Spanish ministers had almost threatened him and that no present had been sent on the occasion. Cabrera’s letters of December, 1652 and the first half of 1653 report a series of tergiversations and of promises made and broken by Innocent which show that to him Villanueva was merely a pawn in the game between Rome and Madrid.[402]

VILLANUEVA’S CASE

Villanueva died in Saragossa, July 21, 1653. In his will, executed the day before, he made ample provision for the salvation of his soul, and San Placido was in his mind to the last, for he appointed as its patron his nephew Gerónimo and his descendants, or in their default his niece Margarita and her descendants, they being the principal heirs of his large estate. The only change which this brought into the affair was that the Inquisition proposed to take advantage of the opportunity to commence a new prosecution against his fame and memory—apparently with the double purpose of vindicating its jurisdiction and, by sequestrating his property, of restraining the family, who continued their efforts in Rome for a vindication. Fortunately for them, Alexander VII, who saw in such action an invasion of his jurisdiction, prohibited, in 1656, this cowardly profanation of the ashes of the dead and when, with quenchless malignity, Arce, in 1659, sought to get this prohibition removed, the attempt was unsuccessful.[403]