A History of the Inquisition of Spain; vol. 2

by Henry Charles Lea

The inquisitors, of course, were the superior officials of the tribunal. They were the judges, with practically unlimited power over the lives and fortunes and honor of all whom they summoned before them, until they were gradually restricted by the growing centralization in the Suprema. To the people they were the incarnation of the dreaded Holy Office, regarded with more fear and veneration than bishop or noble, for all the powers of State and Church were placed at their disposal. They could arrest and imprison at will; with their excommunication they could, at a word, paralyze the arm of all secular officials and, with their interdict, plunge whole communities into despair. Such a concentration of secular and spiritual authority, guarded by so little limitation and responsibility, has never, under any other system, been entrusted to fallible human nature. To exercise it wisely and temperately called for exceptional elevation of character, self-control and mature experience of men and things. That friars, suddenly called from the cloister or the schools and clothed with such limitless power over their fellow-beings, should sometimes grow intoxicated with their position and commit the awful slaughter which marked the early years of the Inquisition, gives no occasion for surprise, nor that their successors should have trampled with such arrogant audacity on all who ventured to raise a voice against their misuse of their prerogatives. It is therefore worth our while to examine what qualifications were required by popes and kings in those whom they selected as fitted for an office of such bewildering temptations and such vast opportunities for evil.

QUALIFICATIONS

Sixtus IV, in the bull of November 1, 1478, empowered Ferdinand and Isabella to appoint, as inquisitors, three bishops or other worthy men, priests either regular or secular, over forty years of age, God-fearing, of good character and record, masters or bachelors of theology or licentiates of canon law. The prescription as to the minimum age was as old as the Council of Vienne, in 1312, and had become a matter of course; the rest was as well-chosen a definition of the requisite qualities as perhaps could be expressed in general terms, considering the temper of the age and the work to be performed.[646] So, in 1483, when Sixtus, under the influence of Cardinal Borgia, desired to get rid of Inquisitor Gualbes, he asked Ferdinand to replace him with some master of theology who had the fear of God and was eminent for his virtues.[647] The only inquisitors that Spain had known were Dominicans and, although they were not specified, it seemed to be a matter of course that the Inquisition should remain in their hands, but Ferdinand, in his struggle with Sixtus for the control of the Aragonese Inquisition, had encountered the obstacle of the obedience due by the friars to their General, who of course was a creature of the curia. He was resolved to organize the Inquisition to suit himself, which explains why Torquemada, in his Instructions of December 6, 1484, simplified the formula of qualifications to letrados (either lawyers or men of university training) of good repute and conscience, the fittest that could be had.[648] This did not even require the inquisitor to be an ecclesiastic, except in so far as there were comparatively few letrados of the time who were not in orders. When Innocent VIII renewed the commission of Torquemada, February 3, 1485, it empowered him to appoint as inquisitors fitting ecclesiastics, learned and God-fearing, provided they were masters of theology or doctors or licentiates of laws, or cathedral canons or holding other church dignities, but, while this was repeated in a subsequent bull of March 24, 1486, it was simplified, in another clause, into ecclesiastics of proper character and learning, not less than thirty years of age.[649] This reduction in the age limit was retained by Alexander VI, in the commissions issued to Deza, November 24, 1498 and September 1, 1499, when the requisite of being an ecclesiastic was omitted, for the qualification was reduced simply to suitable men of good and tender conscience, even if they have not reached forty years of age but are more than thirty.[650] This became virtually the accepted formula, as shown in the commissions issued, June 4 and 5, 1507 by Julius II, to Enguera for Aragon and to Ximenes for Castile, and in those of Leo X to Mercader and Poul in 1513 and to Cardinal Adrian in 1516 and 1518.[651]

The office of inquisitor was thus thrown open to the laity and there was no hesitation in employing them so long as they remained single but, if they married, they were obliged to resign—possibly because it was thought impossible for a married man to preserve the absolute secrecy regarded as essential in the Holy Office. The Licentiate Aguirre, Ferdinand’s favorite member of the Suprema, was a layman. On June 28, 1515, Ferdinand writes to Ximenes that the Licentiate Nebreda, Inquisitor of Seville, desires to marry and, as he is a good servant, another office has been found for him, while the treasurer of the church of Pampeluna will make a suitable appointee for Seville.[652] Two other similar cases occur about the same time.[653] It was an anomaly to allow laymen to sit in judgement on matters of faith, but no action was taken to prevent it until Philip II, in his instructions of 1595 to Manrique de Lara, ordered that inquisitors and fiscals at least must be in holy orders—a clause omitted by Philip III in his instructions of 1608.[654] At length the Suprema met the question, November 10, 1632, by requiring all inquisitors to have themselves ordained and prohibiting them otherwise from exercising their functions, a provision which apparently met with slack obedience, for it had to be repeated January 12 and June 5, 1637, with the addition that inquisitors and fiscals who were not in orders should receive no salaries.[655] Even this does not seem to have been effective for, in 1643, a consulta called attention to the matter as a great evil and indecency, and suggested that a papal brief should be obtained, rendering priests’ orders an essential qualification for inquisitors and fiscals.[656] This was not done, but we may presume that in time the functions were confined to ecclesiastics.

Legal training was prescribed as a requisite in 1608, by Philip III, who ordered that no one should be appointed inquisitor or fiscal who could not exhibit to the Suprema his diploma of graduation in law. Carlos II repeated this, in 1695, adding that inquisitors and secretaries must not be natives of the provinces to which they were assigned, so as to avert partisanship, and that the strictest investigation into character and limpieza must precede appointment.[657]

The papal requirements expressed in the successive commissions issued to inquisitors-general continued for a while to be simply that they should appoint prudent and suitable men of good repute and sound conscience who had attained the age of thirty years. Apparently this violation of the Clementine rule of forty years led to some animadversion and, in the commission of Valdés, in 1547, there is no allusion to age. This example was followed until, in 1596, Clement VIII, in the commission to Portocarrero, inserted a minimum age limit of forty years, as required by the canons, adding that if enough suitable men of that age could not be found, as to which he charged Portocarrero’s conscience, then men of thirty-five could be appointed, but if this were done without necessity, the appointment would be invalid. To this Portocarrero objected, saying that it rendered it impossible for him to make appointments without scruples of conscience, as it was difficult to find suitable persons of the designated age to take the office, and he therefore begged that the limit should be reduced to thirty years, as had been done by all popes since Innocent VIII. Clement yielded, but was careful to insert a derogation of the apostolic constitutions and especially of the Clementine Nolentes.[658]

APPOINTING POWER

Thenceforth to the end all limitation of age was discreetly omitted, the formula being simply “prudent and suitable men of good repute and sound conscience and zealous for the Catholic faith.”[659] Yet the minimum age was understood to be thirty and, when younger men were appointed, dispensations were required, as when, in 1782, Inquisitor-general Bertran gave the inquisitorship of Barcelona to Don Matias Bertran. Apparently objection was made to his youth and, in 1783, a papal dispensation was procured empowering him to exercise the office in spite of his not having attained the age of thirty.[660]

The patronage of the inquisitors was greatly limited by the gradual centralization of power in the Suprema. In the early period they had the appointment of porteros and nuncios—apparitors and messengers—and when, in 1500, Ferdinand reorganized the Sicilian tribunal, he sent inquisitors with power to fill all offices except that of receiver. In 1502 he even authorized the inquisitor of Lérida and Huesca to appoint a judge of confiscations and notary at each place.[661] Subsequently, as we have seen, the inquisitor-general absorbed all the patronage of salaried offices, even to the porteros and nuncios. If a vacancy occurred in a post of which the daily duties were essential, the inquisitors could fill it temporarily, while reporting it at once to the Suprema and awaiting its orders, but they had no other power.[662] As regards the numerous unsalaried officials, the inquisitor-general appointed the consultores and calificadores, or censors, and also the commissioners for cathedral towns, sea-ports and cities which were seats of tribunals. This left to the inquisitors only the appointment of familiars and of commissioners in other places, though at first in cathedral towns they might select a canon of the cathedral for commissioner.[663] It was the same with regard to expenditures, as to which originally they enjoyed a certain freedom of action. This, as has been shown above, was curtailed until ultimately the Suprema controlled even the smallest outlays.

It also kept watch over the morals of the inquisitors, recognizing the temptations to which they were exposed and the opportunities afforded by their position. Among the interrogatories which the inspector was instructed to make was whether the inquisitors lived decently, without publicly keeping concubines or corrupting the female prisoners or the wives and daughters of prisoners or of the dead whose fame and memory were prosecuted.[664] When attention was called to official misconduct it was promptly looked into, as in 1528, when the inquisitors of Barcelona were accused of receiving bribes and suborning witnesses, an inquisitor of Valencia with a notary of Tortosa was despatched thither, fully commissioned to investigate and report.[665]