A History of the Inquisition of Spain; vol. 2

by Henry Charles Lea

When the Inquisitions of Castile and Aragon were separated, in 1507, each continued to employ inspectors. Alonso Rodríguez, of whom we hear in 1509, probably belonged to Castile; in 1514 Ximenes appointed Juan Moris as inspector, after which special inspectors ceased for a time to be employed for, in 1517, the Inquisitor of Córdova was sent to inspect Toledo, Seville and Jaen and the Inquisitor of Jaen to inspect Córdova, Cuenca and Valladolid.[624] In Aragon, Mercader in 1513 sent Juan de Ariola to inspect Majorca, Sardinia and Sicily and, about the same time, Hernando de Montemayor to inspect the tribunals of Aragon, Catalonia and Valencia.[625] After the reunion of the Inquisition, Cardinal Adrian introduced an innovation by appointing laymen to the office—the Licentiates Sisa and Peña—the former a judge in the high court of Valladolid. Their functions were enlarged, for Charles V describes them as persons of high authority, not connected with the Inquisition, sent to investigate all the tribunals and to reform whatever required amendment, for which he clothed them with ample powers.[626]

INSPECTORS

These regular routine inspections came to an end and, though the wholesome supervision was not abandoned, it became irregular, either employed occasionally or when complaints seemed to indicate its necessity. Barcelona was a troublesome tribunal, but it seems to have been visited only at intervals of from six to ten years. The inspections were not inexpensive and the cost had to be defrayed by the Suprema. When, in 1567, de Soto Salazar, a member of the Suprema, was sent to investigate Valencia, Barcelona and Saragossa, he was given at the outset four hundred ducats and his secretary, Pablo Garcia, two hundred.[627] The rule became established to employ only inquisitors and those in active service, not retired.[628] The work, when conscientiously performed, was not light. An inspection of the Canary tribunal, made by Claudio de la Cueva, lasted from 1595 to 1597 and his report forms a mass of 1124 folios.[629] This was unusually laborious, but reports covering three, four or five hundred pages are not uncommon.

The visitador was expected to make a thorough investigation of the condition and working of the tribunal, to discover all neglect of regulations, all abuses and malfeasance of the officials, all derelictions of duty, all maladministration of the property and revenues, all misuse of power, whether through oppression of the defenceless or remissness in vindicating the faith. He was to examine the records, not only to see that they were properly kept and indexed but also whether justice had been duly administered and the estilo of the Holy Office had been rigidly followed. He visited the prisons, listened to the complaints of the prisoners and investigated them. On arrival, he fixed a day on which he would appear in the audience-chamber; the inquisitors and all officials were assembled, his credentials were read and the inquisitors promised obedience in the name of all present. The next day the inquisitors were examined under oath, as to whether there was anything requiring amendment and whether the officials performed their full duty, the answers being taken down in writing. The inspector brought with him an elaborate series of interrogatories, usually forty-eight or fifty in number, covering all the points which experience had shown as likely to tempt to wrongdoing and on these he examined all the officials singly. He also listened to all who had complaints to make; if these appeared to be justified he investigated them thoroughly, summoning all witnesses, who were guaranteed that their names would be kept secret, and on this evidence he framed charges against those inculpated and heard them in defence. When his duties in the tribunal were accomplished he was expected to visit the district and investigate all complaints. The results were reduced to writing and, when his labors were completed, he sent or carried the whole to the Suprema for its action.[630] As a rule, he had no executive authority and could only make recommendations, but visitadores to the colonies were frequently invested with greater power, presumably in view of the long delays in communication. When, in 1654, Medina Rico came as inspector to Mexico, where maladministration was flagrant, he sat in judgement on the inquisitors, Estrada and Higuera, suspended them and occupied the tribunal for years.[631] It can readily be conceived that at times there was no little friction between inspector and inquisitors, and, in 1645, the Suprema presented to the king a consulta on the controversies thence arising.[632]

The necessity for these visitations diminished in proportion as the tribunals were subordinated to the Suprema. When they had to make monthly reports of all pending cases, so that their action was under constant supervision; when all sentences were submitted for confirmation or revision, with the papers showing the conduct of the cases; when no arrest could be made without presenting the sumaria and receiving authority; when, moreover, the business management of property was scrutinized through monthly reports of the junta de hacienda, there was no longer a justification for the expenses of visitations. The growing facilities of intercommunication encouraged centralization and enabled the Suprema to maintain a constant supervision. When, therefore, it concentrated in itself all the judicial faculties of the Inquisition, rendering the tribunals merely instruments for investigation, the functions of the visitador became superfluous, at least in the Peninsula.

THE SECRETO

The palace or building, which was the seat of the tribunal, was divided into the secreto and the outside rooms or apartments. It was expected to furnish lodgings for the inquisitors and, if spacious enough, for the other officials. The most important feature was the carceles secretas or secret prison for those on trial, for it was necessary that they could be brought at any moment to the audience-chamber without being seen by any one. There was, of course, a torture-chamber, which seems to have generally been underground. The secreto originally was merely a record-room in which the papers and documents were preserved. From the first these were guarded with jealous secrecy, not only on account of their importance in the trials but because their abstraction or destruction was so ardently desired by the kindred or accomplices of convicts. As early as 1485, Ferdinand, in his instructions to the tribunal of Saragossa, orders that no servant of any of the officials shall enter “lo secreto de la Inquisicion.”[633] The Instructions of 1498 provide that the chest or chamber in which the papers are kept shall have three keys, two held by the notarios del secreto and one by the fiscal, so that no one can take out a document save in the presence of the others, and no one shall enter it except the inquisitors, the notaries and the fiscal, rules substantially repeated in the Sicilian instructions of 1516. Among the derelictions of the Barcelona tribunal, reported in 1561 by Cervantes, was the neglect of this rule, leading, he said, to grave abuses.[634] The functions and extent of the secreto were gradually enlarged. In Mercader’s Instructions of 1514, the money-chest with three keys was ordered to be kept in the secreto, a provision which became permanent.[635] When the rule was established of conducting the trials in profound secrecy, and a veil of impenetrable mystery was thrown around all the operations of the Inquisition, the audience-chamber was included in the secreto, as well as the offices occupied by the fiscal and secretaries. The door to it was secured by three locks having different keys and entrance was forbidden save to those officially privileged or summoned.[636] In 1645, it was discovered that there was danger in the notaries or secretaries bringing in their swords, for a prisoner when led to an audience might in his desperation seize one and give trouble, and they were consequently ordered in future to be left outside.[637] In the Valencia tribunal there was considerable excitement, in 1679, when the pages of the inquisitors got possession of the keys and had false ones made, with which they gained at will access to the sacred precincts, but no harm seems to have arisen from the boyish prank.[638] One feature of the audience-chamber was significant—a celosía or lattice, behind which a witness could identify a prisoner, without being seen or recognized.[639]

THE INQUISITORS

In considering the personnel of the tribunal, we may dismiss the assessor with a few words. Such an official was unknown in the Old Inquisition, but we have seen that, when the first inquisitors were sent to Seville, they were accompanied by an assessor, and such a functionary continued for some time to be considered a necessary adjunct to a tribunal. At the beginning the inquisitors were Dominican friars, presumably good theologians but unversed in the intricacies of the law. It was therefore desirable to associate with them a lawyer as a guide, and his presence moreover might serve as an assurance to the people of the legality of the proceedings. In Torquemada’s instructions of 1485 it is provided that they must always act in concert and that anything done by one without the other was invalid; even communications to the Suprema must be signed by both.[640] In the trials of this period we sometimes find the assessor sitting with the inquisitors and sometimes not, and the sentences are rendered by the latter with the concurrence of the former.[641] In the secular law of the period, the assessor had only a consultative and not a decisive vote, and this would appear to be his position in the tribunal, when the routine of the Inquisition had established its own precedents, when all doubtful questions were decided by the Suprema and the services of trained lawyers were no longer required.[642] In the early time their salaries were the same as those of the inquisitors—indeed, at Saragossa, in 1486, Martin Martínez, the assessor, receives five thousand sueldos while the inquisitors are rated at four thousand.[643] It was not long, however, before it apparently became indifferent whether there was an assessor or not. In 1499, the salary lists of Seville, of Burgos and of Palencia have no mention of such an official, while there is one at Saragossa and, in 1500, Ferdinand empowers the inquisitor of Sardinia to select for his assessor any doctor he pleases.[644] The office continued to exist for a time, as a kind of supernumerary, employed in hearing the civil cases of officials but, in the Aragonese Concordia of 1568, this duty was placed on the inquisitors and the assessorship was abolished. In Castile, the list of officials, promulgated in the same year by Philip II, as entitled to exemption from taxation, makes no mention of the assessor, who may be assumed by this time to disappear.[645]