A History of the Inquisition of Spain; vol. 2

by Henry Charles Lea

For awhile the confiscations were subject to another diversion. The feudal lords, who saw the property of their vassals swept into the royal maelstrom, grew restless and, although they do not seem to have put forth any legal claim, Ferdinand, in many cases, deemed it wise to pacify them with a grant of one-third of the confiscations made in their estates. The earliest grant of the kind that I have happened to meet is to the Infante Enrique, Duke of Segorbe, April 20, 1491.[932] These grants were subject to a deduction for the expenses of the trials, which led to a good deal of friction, as none of the parties concerned were over-scrupulous. If the grantee quarrelled with the receiver over the question of expenses he had a fashion, when the customary auction of the property was held, of announcing that he desired to bid and that nobody should bid against him. By this device the Duke of Bejar enforced a settlement in 1514 and again in 1517.[933] The experience of the Duke del Infantado shows how skilful were the officials in neutralizing these grants. In 1515 he obtained a grant of one-half of confiscations up to that time and one-third for the future, subject to expenses. Disputes arose as a matter of course and, in 1519, he prevented auction sales till he should be paid and, in 1520, he compromised for two hundred ducats in settlement of claims up to that time and ten per cent. for the future, free of expenses.[934] It is safe to say that Ximenes was exposed to no such trouble in his settlements but, with his enormous revenues and his position as inquisitor-general, it would have better comported with his dignity to have abstained from procuring, in 1515, a grant of one-third of the confiscations made in his estates and in the Cazorla lands assigned for the expenses of his table.[935] With the gradual weeding out of the wealthier Conversos and the increasing expenses of the tribunals, the share of the feudal lords doubtless diminished until it was not worth contesting, for shortly after this period we cease to hear of this division of the proceeds.

VERIFICATION OF PROPERTY

Confiscation, as we have seen, was one of the invariable penalties of heresy under the canon law. The heretic was outside of the Church; if persistent he was relaxed and burnt; if he repented and professed conversion he was “reconciled” to the Church, but though he thus escaped death the forfeiture of his property remained. Reconciliation, as a rule, inferred confiscation. An exception to this was when a Term of Grace was published, usually of thirty or forty days, during which those who made full confession of their sins and gave full information about others were received to reconciliation, under promise of release from imprisonment and confiscation, but subject to public penance and giving as “alms” such portion of their property as the inquisitors should designate.[936] This was an abandonment by the king of the property which had become forfeit through heresy and was confirmed by a formal grant by him to them of what was lawfully his, empowering them to sell and convey a good title, which otherwise they could not do.[937] This did not apply to what the penitent suffered from the crimes of others, and thus children so reconciled could not claim estates forfeited by their parents. Outside of the Term of Grace there was no escape. Espontaneados—those coming forward spontaneously—after its expiration, had already forfeited all their possessions and, as it was explained, it was not the intention of the sovereigns to remit the penalty to them, save when, in special cases, they might exercise clemency.[938] This covetous policy, which discouraged the repentant sinner, was continued until, in 1597, the Suprema ordered that espontaneados should be reconciled without confiscation.[939] Yet, in spite of this, when, in 1677, Alvaro Núñez de Velasco, came forward voluntarily to denounce himself and was reconciled, his sentence included confiscation.[940]

Occasional instances are met in which confiscation was spared on account of the extreme youth of the penitent, but I have been unable to find any formal rule to that effect and it seems to have been discretional with the tribunal. In 1501, at Barcelona, when Florencia, daughter of Manuel de Puigmija, was condemned to perpetual prison, it is said that her property was spared in view of her tender age. In the reconciliation, at Toledo, April 20, 1659, of Ana Pereira, aged ten, confiscation was included; in that of Beatriz Jorje of the same age, December 8, 1659, there is no allusion to confiscation and, in that of Diego de Castro, aged ten, December 8, 1681, it is stated that confiscation is omitted in view of his age.[941]

The enforcement of confiscation was a business matter, reduced to a thorough and pitiless system. The sufferers naturally sought to elude it and every possible means that experience could suggest were adopted to prevent the loss of the minutest fragment. When the accused was arrested, all his visible possessions were simultaneously sequestrated and inventoried. His papers and books of account were examined to ascertain what debts were owing to him, and he was at once subjected to an audiencia de hacienda in which he was interrogated under oath, in the most searching manner, as to all his property, his debts and credits, his marriage settlement, dowries or gifts to his children, their estates if they were dead, whether he had secreted anything in apprehension of arrest, and every detail that the circumstances suggested. Any failure to answer fully and truly was perjury, for which he could be punished, as occurred in the case of Louis de Perlas, tried in Valencia for Lutheranism in 1552.[942] The most repulsive incident in this perquisition was the advantage taken of the terrors of approaching death, when the confessors of those who were to be executed in an auto de fe were employed during the preceding night in exhorting them to reveal any portion of property that might have escaped previous investigations. Thus, June 29, 1526, Fray Castell reported that Pedro Pomar, whom he had confessed during the night of the auto de fe “estando en el suplicio de la muerte” had revealed where certain account books could be found and also some debts due to him. So, December 21, 1529, Anton Ruiz, under the same circumstances, confessed to debts due to him which had eluded previous search.[943]

EMPLOYMENT OF INFORMERS

This prostitution of religion to the service of greed was exploited to the utmost. Excommunication was so habitually abused for temporal purposes that it was naturally resorted to, and all who concealed or held any property of a convicted heretic were subjected to it. In 1486 Ferdinand writes that certain notaries refuse to give copies of contracts passed before them, relative to obligations due to heretics, to which they must be constrained by censures and the invocation, if necessary, of the secular arm, and the same course must be taken with debtors refusing to pay what they owe.[944] October 17, 1500, he scolds some inquisitors for their negligence; those who know that they are suspected commonly hide their property or place it in the hands of third parties and “in this way those who hold such property become excommunicated to the great damage of their souls, for they continue under the censure and my fisc suffers, for the property escapes confiscation.”[945] In 1645 a writer gives us the form adopted in such cases. If the fiscal thought that there was property of a confiscated estate concealed or debts due to it unrevealed, the tribunal issued an edict to be read from the pulpits, ordering under pain of excommunication every one holding such property, or cognizant of facts concerning it, to make it known to the commissinoner or to the parish priest within three days. On the expiration of this term the priests were required to denounce from their pulpits all such persons as excommunicated and to be avoided by all Christians. Then, after three days more, followed the anathema, in its awful solemnities of bell, book and candle, with the imprecatory psalm, and invoking the wrath of Almighty God and the glorious Virgin his Mother and of the Apostles Peter and Paul and all the saints of heaven and all the plagues of Egypt on the wicked ones who were withholding its own from the Holy Office.[946]

This spiritual punishment did not exclude temporal. In 1671, Manuel Fernández Chaves, tried in Toledo for the “occultation” of confiscated effects, was fined in five hundred ducats and was banished for two years from Toledo, Pastrana and Madrid. When the concealment was for the benefit of a culprit, there was the additional charge of fautorship, as in the case of Gabriel de la Sola and Joseph López de Sossa, who secreted property of the latter’s sister Beatriz and whose trial, in 1697, in Valladolid, lasted for two years.[947]

More effective, at least in the earlier period, when the press of business rendered minute investigation difficult, was the offer of heavy commissions to those who would furnish information as to confiscated property that had escaped the search of the receivers. This resulted in creating a gang of professional detectives and informers of whom a certain Pedro de Madrid, “delator,” may be taken as the type. Under a provision of 1490 he was entitled to one-third of all the hidden property that he might discover, whether alienated or conveyed under other names or otherwise concealed. In 1494 he complained that this was not enough, in view of his heavy expenses, travelling to France, sharing with other informers, etc., whereupon Ferdinand agreed to give him one-half, and moreover to those who should furnish information he pardoned the offence committed by their knowing without revealing; the inquisitors were to remove the excommunication and all receivers were to comply with these instructions under penalty of a thousand florins.[948] Ferdinand however did not always play fair with these gentry. Under the stimulus of his fifty per cent., Pedro worked hard and successfully but, when in 1499 the account of a receiver who had settled with him came in for audit, Ferdinand ordered the payments to be disallowed for the present; Pedro ought not to have such large sums; his success was attributable to the negligence of the receiver rather than to his own activity and, in fact, it was a voluntary gift to him. A year later we find Ferdinand agreeing to let him have one-half of thirty libras that he had discovered and promising to determine what share he should have when other properties unearthed by him should be settled.[949]

The frequent allusions to these transactions in Ferdinand’s correspondence show what an active business it was, both with professionals and volunteers, and Ferdinand was sometimes liberal in rewarding the zeal of the latter as when, in 1501, he made a gift to Don Antonio Cortes, his sacristan mayor, of a house and an oil warehouse in Seville, which Cortes had discovered to be the property of Beatriz Fernández, condemned to perpetual imprisonment, which had escaped the receiver.[950] This indicates that men of standing did not disdain to engage in this disreputable business, and it would seem that Juan de Anchias, the secretary of the Saragossa tribunal, to whom we owe the Libro Verde, gave up his office to speculate in it for, in 1509, we find him complaining that the receiver refused to pay him the one-third which he had been promised on certain discoveries and Ferdinand ordering the bargain to be carried out. There was no settled rate of commissions. About this same time Clíment Roderes, of Barcelona, was only allowed one-seventh of the property recovered through his investigations, while the Majorca tribunal was authorized to offer twenty-five per cent. and, when the case seemed desperate, in 1514, Juan Martínez was encouraged by a promise of fifty per cent. to devote himself to looking up the concealments in Teruel and Albarracin, which were understood to be large.[951]