A History of the Inquisition of Spain; vol. 2

by Henry Charles Lea

Considering the acute perception of existing evils displayed in the preamble to the law, the slender restrictions imposed manifest the strength of the prejudices to be overcome. Slight as they were, the Inquisition and the Council of Military Orders, after nominally accepting the law, proceeded vigorously to nullify the provision of the tres actos positivos. A writer, in 1629, tells us that they had succeeded in requiring regular investigations, in spite of the production of the three acts; they also held that these only related to parents and grandparents and that they were conclusive only as to the articles covered by them and not as to new points that would require fresh examinations and thus the fees of the officials and the anxieties of the applicants remained undiminished.[895] As regards the character of the testimony received, the secrecy of the procedure renders credible the assertion of Escobar, in his commentary on the law, that there was little if any improvement. There was some mitigation of rigor in an order of the Suprema, about 1645, that when an applicant could prove the tres actos positivos it was not necessary to push investigations as to his great grandparents. Somewhat halting was another rule promulgated in 1639, requiring submission to the Suprema of matters more than a hundred years old, before rejecting the applicant, but this was withdrawn in 1654.[896]

The futility of the system and its unfortunate influence are forcibly set forth by the writer of 1629, who tells us that those who succeed best in their proofs are the poor peasants, whose grandparents have been forgotten, and the great nobles, against whom no one dares to testify. The chief sufferers are the lesser nobility and gentlemen—too conspicuous for their ancestry not to be known and too powerless to exclude adverse witnesses. Everybody knows that he who has friends succeeds and that he who has enemies fails, irrespective of the truth, and thus the statutes wholly fail of their object. This is facilitated by the secrecy enabling the enemy to produce false witnesses and the accomplice to bribe and bring forward perjured testimony, so that it is notorious that in no other class of cases are the results so fallacious. In this way there has been created a sort of factitious nobility—that of limpieza—the possessors of which look down with contempt on the old nobility of the land.

EVILS

Another evil of magnitude is the fearful waste of money. He who succeeds, after paying his agents for things too scandalous to be described, finds himself penniless, and he who fails has not money enough left to make another attempt; his proofs are destroyed and he hangs around the court, wasting his life and perhaps that of his father and sons, and all this under the ban of being infamous—he and his latest posterity.

The damage to men’s honors is incredible and also to the kingdom, for strangers call us all Marranos. Moreover those whose talents would be of great service to State and Church are lost to us, for they have not confidence to seek to enter a college and, what a base cobbler can risk and gain, those who are noble and ambitious fail in, because there may be a single drop of tainted blood in their veins. It is also one of the causes of depopulation, for women enter nunneries and men remain celibates rather than inflict infamy on descendants, while large numbers emigrate. Besides all this are the hatreds arising from adverse testimony and the infinite bribery and collusions and perjury, so that Satan has no greater source of winning souls. It is not required for an Archbishop of Toledo, but it is insisted on for the beadle of his cathedral; it is not demanded for an inquisitor-general, but for the messenger of a tribunal; not for the President of Castile, but for a familiar or the purveyor of a college.[897]

This is not exaggeration, for it is merely an amplification in detail of the preamble of the pragmática of 1623 and is fully borne out by Escobar in his commentary on the law.[898] That in fact it was the conviction of all sober-minded and thinking men of the period may be gathered from the emphatic testimony of Fray Benito de Peñalosa, though he does not venture to suggest a remedy more radical than restricting the effect of impurity of blood to five generations.[899]

The effects of this proscription were manifold. As early as 1575, Lorenzo Priuli, the Venetian envoy, describes the descendants of the Conversos as living like other good Christians and being among the richest and noblest of the land, yet perpetually incapacitated from the honors and employments which were the ambition of every Spaniard—an evil which was increasing every day. Thus Spain, being full of discontented persons and divided in itself, some rising would be feared but for the severe execution of justice and the presence of the king. In 1598, Agostino Nani repeats the assertion—the descendants of all, who have at any time been punished by the Inquisition, live in a state of despair for, to the third and fourth generation they are regarded as infamous and incapable of any office in Church or State.[900] Navarrete does not hesitate to suggest that, but for the exclusion from public life of all but Old Christians of purest lineage, the fatal necessity of the expulsion of the Moriscos might have been averted: they might have been Christianized had they not been driven to desperation and hatred of religion by the indelible mark of infamy to which they were subjected.[901]

In fact, the statutes of limpieza created a caste of pariahs who infected all with whom they might form alliances, but the caste was not recognizable by exterior signs and no one could tell what corruption of blood he might entail upon his family by any marriage that he might contract. As Fray Salucio says, no one, entering into wedlock, could make the investigations required by the colleges and the Military Orders. Thus the infection was constantly spreading; every man stood upon a mine which might explode at any moment when some distant kinsman of his own or of his wife might provoke an investigation during which a taint might be discovered in the common line of ancestry. When we recall the history of the Conversos anterior to the sixteenth century and the enormous operations of the early Inquisition we can conceive how this indelible stain must have spread throughout society, to be revealed at any moment in the most unexpected places.[902] A writer in 1668 reflects the popular prejudice when he compares a marriage with a man whose father has been penanced by the Inquisition to sleeping in a bed full of lice or in sheets that have been used by one who has the itch.[903]

EFFECTS

Another result was greatly to increase the authority of the Inquisition and the terror which it shed around it, by the fact that at a word it could inflict this undying infamy upon a lineage. To be arrested and cast into the secret prison, even without cause, was sufficient. In 1601, Philip III, when instructing the Inquisition to furnish to the Council of Military Orders full information as to any one, when called upon, required the report to include, not only the imprisonment of an ancestor subsequently acquitted, but even the fact of an accusation never acted upon.[904] It can readily be understood that even a summons to appear, in a matter not of faith, was felt acutely through a whole kindred. In the long struggle at Bilbao over the visitas de navios, the corregidor Mendieta took an active part against the commissioner Leguina who, to silence him, caused him to be cited by the tribunal of Logroño. This caused intense excitement and the Señorio of Biscay had him accompanied by two caballeros. When he demanded to know the charges against him, there were none forthcoming and he was dismissed. The affair was regarded as so serious that the Council of State presented a consulta to the queen-regent in October, 1668, setting forth that the citation might lead to the disgrace of his family and posterity and suggesting that some relief should be found for him.[905]