A History of the Inquisition of Spain; vol. 2

by Henry Charles Lea

CHAPTER I.
CONFISCATION.

WHEN the Inquisition was established it was expected to be not only a self-sustaining institution but a source of profit. To what extent the anticipation of gain, by seizing the substance of their subjects, may have influenced Ferdinand and Isabella, in adopting this method of vindicating the faith, it would be useless now to enquire, but they refused to permit any division of the spoils as in the older papal Inquisition of Italy. These were reserved to the crown and, when the first inquisitors were sent to Seville, in 1480, they were accompanied by a receiver of confiscations—a royal official whose appointment shows what were the expectations entertained. Yet the support of the Inquisition had to come out of the product of its labors; the basis of its finances was confiscation and the use which it made of its powers in this respect, whether for its own benefit or for that of the sovereign, exercised so large an influence on the prosperity of Spain that it demands a somewhat careful examination. Spoliation on such a scale, continued unremittingly for nearly three centuries, was a tremendous burden on the productivity of the most industrious class of the population. At the commencement, a very large portion of the accessible wealth of Spain was in the hands of the Jews and Conversos. By the expulsion of the former and the prosecution of the latter they were stripped of it. The marvellous persistence of the New Christians, their tireless activity and business aptitude, kept them incessantly at work making acquisitions which continued to render persecution profitable and contributed to maintain the institution which was laboring, with equal persistence, for their destruction. It would not be wholly true to assert that the exhaustion of confiscations caused the inertia of the later decades of the Inquisition, but it unquestionably was a contributing factor.

The cruelty of confiscation was equal to its effectiveness. To strip a man, perhaps advanced in years, of the results of the labors of a life-time and to turn his wife and children penniless on the street was a severity of infliction which rendered the sparing of his life a doubtful mercy, and it was not without reason that the legists deemed it equivalent to capital punishment.[915] To the persecutor this was a recommendation, in addition to its financial advantages, and we can readily understand why it was enforced with such remorseless perseverance.

Confiscation as a punishment for crime was too settled a principle of the imperial jurisprudence for any jurist to call in question its propriety. As heresy was held to be treason to God, more detestable than treason to an earthly prince, the Church naturally adopted it as soon as, in the twelfth century, persecution became systematized. In 1163, Alexander III, at the Council of Tours, commanded all potentates to seize heretics and confiscate their possessions, and Lucius III, in his Verona decree of 1184, sought to divert this to the benefit of the Church.[916] Under the Roman law of treason, the property of a traitor was forfeited from the time when he first conceived his crime and this was applied to the heretic, whose earliest act of heresy was the date from which the fisc claimed his estate—a provision of much importance in the settlement of debts.

RESPONSIBILITY

In Aragon, the introduction of the Inquisition in the thirteenth century rendered confiscation for heresy a matter of course. In Castile a more tolerant spirit, as expressed in the laws of Alfonso X, forbade it, so long as there were Catholic heirs or kindred; if there were none, the king inherited, subject to the right of the Church, if the culprit were a cleric, to claim it within a year.[917] This code however was not confirmed until 1348, by which time scruple had diminished, for Alfonso XI, followed by Henry III, confiscated to the royal treasury one-half of the possessions of the convicted heretic.[918] It was reserved for Ferdinand and Isabella tacitly to accept the canon law in all its rigor, while diverting to the royal treasury all the proceeds. A contemporary asserts that they divided it into thirds—one for the war with the Moors, one for the support of the Inquisition and the third for pious uses,[919] but there is no trace of such allotment and we shall see that the crown made such use as it pleased of its acquisitions.

Strictly speaking, the Inquisition did not confiscate but merely pronounced the culprit guilty of that which implied confiscation, and it seems to have felt some hesitation as to assuming the responsibility. In the earliest trials that have reached us, there is no settled formula, either in the demand of the fiscal for punishment or in the sentences, confiscation being sometimes expressed and sometimes inferred and left for the alcalde to pronounce.[920] The Instructions of 1484 are silent as to confiscation in cases of the living but, in treating of prosecution of the dead, they order the heirs to be heard, so that the property may be confiscated and applied to the fisc of the sovereigns, and it is noteworthy that in sentences on the dead, immediately after this, the Instructions are referred to as though to shield the inquisitor from responsibility.[921]

There evidently was popular repugnance to this spoliation and no one wished to be responsible for it. Ferdinand, in a proclamation of October 29, 1485, declared that the confiscations were made by order of the pope, in discharge of his conscience and by virtue of his obedience to holy Mother Church.[922] It was probably owing to his instructions that the tribunals finally assumed the responsibility, as is seen in a sentence of July 8, 1491, in Saragossa, on the deceased Juan de la Caballería, where the king is ordered, in virtue of holy obedience, to take the property and hold it as his own.[923] Apparently all did not acquiesce promptly for we find him, in 1510, ordering the inquisitor of Majorca, when pronouncing any one to be a heretic, to add at the end of the sentence that he declares the property confiscated and applied to the royal fisc and orders the receiver to take it, when the receiver is to do so in virtue of the sentence.[924] In accordance with this the official formula adopted bore that the tribunal found the culprit guilty of heresy and as such to have incurred excommunication and the confiscation and loss of all his property, which it applied to the royal treasury and to the receiver in the name of the king, from the time when he commenced to commit the crime of heresy. Or, if the offender was an ecclesiastic, it was applied to whom it lawfully belonged. This rather evaded the question whether confiscation was self-acting, but the Fe de confiscacion, given by the notary to the judge of confiscations, formally asserts that the inquisitors and Ordinary had confiscated the property to the king’s treasury and by the sentence had applied it to his receiver in his name.[925] If any uncertainty remained, it was removed by a carta acordada of 1626, which ordered that, in all cases of formal heresy, the sentence should include confiscation for, if there was to be any mitigation, the granting of such grace belonged to the inquisitor-general.[926] The anterior date to which the confiscation operated was determined, under the Instructions of 1561, by the consulta de fe when voting on the sentence.[927]

GRANTS TO FEUDAL LORDS

The phrase, in the case of ecclesiastics, of adjudging the property to whom it legally belonged, was a recognition of the claims of the Church. What these were seems to have been open to question. Under the Partidas the Church had the right, if it put forward the demand within a year, but Ferdinand, in a letter of March 11, 1498, says he is told that he has a right to a third in such cases. Whence this was derived we are not told, but he established the rule and it remained in force as late as 1559 when two-thirds of the estate of Dr. Agustin Cazalla passed to the Bishop of Palencia who, however, transferred it back to the Inquisition.[928] This was probably a compromise, for the Inquisition had asserted its right to the whole, and Bishop Simancas, in 1552, had said that many hold that the property of clerics goes to the bishop, but the truer opinion, which had always been followed in Spain, was that it belongs to the fisc, for the use of the Inquisition.[929] The question, however, was not definitely settled for, in 1568, the Suprema called upon all the tribunals to report without delay what was their practice and what was their formula of sentence.[930] It was inevitable that any doubts should eventually be construed in favor of the Holy Office and, in the seventeenth century, the authorities assume as a matter of course that the confiscations of clerics enure to the tribunals, although the sentence still attributed them to whom they lawfully pertained. Forfeited benefices of heretics, however, were a papal perquisite, by decree of Paul IV, June 18, 1556 and this is cited, about 1640, as still in force in Spain.[931]