A History of the Inquisition of Spain; vol. 2

by Henry Charles Lea

Old and forgotten heresies were exploited with equal rigor. In 1510, Pedro de Espinosa of Baza represented to Ferdinand that, when Baza was recovered from the Moors (December 4, 1489) he married Aldonza Rodríguez, niece and adopted daughter of the esquire Lazaro de Avila and Catalina Ximenes and, on Lazaro’s death, they went to live with Catalina. Now Catalina has been condemned for an act of heresy committed when a child in her father’s house (probably a fast, or eating unleavened bread) and her property, worth some 18,000 ducats, has been confiscated. In view of his services in the war with Granada, Espinosa begged that the confiscation be remitted and Ferdinand liberally assented, to the amount of 18,000 ducats.[1022]

With the death of Ferdinand these frequent appeals to the crown become fewer and are met with less kindliness, though the call for relief from the rigor of the law was undiminished, as will be seen from the case of the monastery of Bonifaza. In 1452, Pedro Roy, priest of Tortosa, sold to Dalvido Tolosa of Salcet for 400 libras a rent of 20 libras per annum secured on certain property, and this property Roy subsequently sold to the monastery. In 1475, Dalvido died, leaving the rent to his son, Luis Tolosa, from whom the monastery redeemed it, March 1, 1488. Luis, or his memory, was condemned and, about 1519, the receiver demanded of the monastery the 400 libras and all arrearages of rent, claiming that the redemption had been in fraud of the fisc, as Luis’s heresy antedated it. The case was clear and judgement against the monastery was rendered, June 7, 1519. Pleading poverty, it applied for relief to Charles V, who instructed the receiver that, if it would pay 100 libras during July and 50 more within a year, he should release the claim.[1023]

JURISDICTION EXCLUSIVE

The avidity of the Inquisition did not diminish with time, nor its disastrous influence on all exposed to its claims. In 1615, a German Protestant, known as Juan Cote, was condemned by the Toledo tribunal to perpetual prison and confiscation. He was then twenty-four years old and had been taken, in early youth, by his uncle Juan Aventrot, to the Canaries, where the uncle married María Vandala, a widow with four children, who died in 1609, leaving one-fifth of her estate to Cote. In 1613 Aventrot sent him to Spain with a letter to the Duke of Lerma, which led to the discovery of his heresy. Proceedings for the confiscation of his share in the widow’s estate dragged on interminably. September 7, 1634, the Suprema ordered the Toledo tribunal to furnish papers in the case, including a certificate of the date of Cote’s heresy, which, in view of his having been brought up as a Protestant, it fixed at the age of fourteen, when he could be considered responsible. In this the Inquisition overreached itself, for in 1635 the Canary tribunal reported that the heirs alleged Cote to have been incapable of inheritance, seeing that he was brought up as a Protestant and both he and his uncle had pretended to be Catholics, and they called for a copy of the sentence to demonstrate this. The unabashed Suprema then shifted its ground and procured, September 10, 1640, from the Toledo tribunal, a certificate that Cote had commenced his heretical acts in 1613, when he brought the letter to Lerma and delivered it to Philip III, in August, 1614. How the affair terminated and how much longer it was protracted we have no means of knowing, but the Inquisition had at least succeeded in tying up the estate for twenty-five years.[1024]

The hardship of the system on innocent third parties was intensified by the fact that in this, as in all else, the Inquisition claimed and exercised exclusive jurisdiction. There was no appeal to a disinterested tribunal but only from the judge of confiscations to the Suprema, which was as much interested as its subordinates in obtaining as large returns as possible from all sources. As these fell off, the liberality, so often displayed by Ferdinand, was no longer in place and it became inexorable. Confiscations were specially assigned to the payment of salaries and the judges were thus directly interested in their productiveness. The danger and the humiliation of this were fully recognized. In his futile plan of reform, in 1518, Charles V proposed to assign to the officials definite salaries and relieve them from dependence on the sentences which they pronounced.[1025] In 1523, he received from his privy council a memorial in which, among other matters, he was urged to see that proper appointments were made in the Inquisition and that they had fitting salaries from other sources, so that they should live neither by beggary nor on the blood of their victims, and that their labors should tend to instruction rather than to destruction and to rendering Christianity odious to the infidel.[1026] The Córtes of Castile remonstrated repeatedly to the same effect. Those of 1537 complained of the salaries being thus defrayed; those of 1548 asked Charles to provide fixed salaries so as to put an end to the notorious evil of the judges paying themselves by fining and confiscating, and again, in 1555, they pointed out that, besides the danger of judges deriving their pay from the condemnations which they decree, it diminished the respect due to the Holy Office. To this the answer was merely that the matter has been considered and will be fittingly decided.[1027] Spanish finances, however, were never in a position to assure the Inquisition that, if it paid over its receipts to the crown, it would get them back in appropriations for salaries and expenses. As we have seen, it kept them under its own control and it jealously repelled all intrusion, even by the crown, on its exclusive jurisdiction over confiscations.

JURISDICTION EXCLUSIVE

This position had not been won without a struggle. January 20, 1486, Ferdinand empowered the inquisitors of Saragossa to act as judges in the complicated litigation which was growing, and he commissioned them to decide all questions thence arising. On March 31 he reiterated the injunction; if the secular judges were allowed to intervene, everything would be lost; they were to be restrained by censures, as had already been done and, if royal letters or exequutorias were required, they would be promptly furnished. There evidently was active resistance to this for, on May 5th he wrote that all questions must be settled by ecclesiastical law for, if the fueros were admitted, he would never get justice. The inquisitors must therefore act, the receiver and fiscal must try the cases before them alone, and they must be speedy.[1028] When persecution was active, this threw upon the inquisitors too heavy a burden and one, moreover, for which they were unprepared, for they were theologians and not canon lawyers. The assessors, it is true, assisted them, but a special tribunal evidently was a necessity and this was furnished by the erection of courts of confiscation, presided over by the jueces de los bienes. In Castile, where the fueros were not an impediment, this had already been tried. As early as 1484, there is an allusion to such an official[1029] and a commission as such was issued, April 10, 1485, to the Bachiller Juan Antonio Serrano, of Córdova.[1030] For some time, however, such appointments continued to be unusual. In 1490, we hear of Juan Pérez de Nieva as juez de los bienes in Segovia,[1031] but for the most part the inquisitors and their assessors continued to perform the functions and, when a juez existed, his position was subordinate, as appears by a letter of Ferdinand, August 27, 1500, to an assessor, telling him that the juez was only to relieve him in ordinary cases and not to tie his hands in important ones.[1032] Inquisitors also continued to act for, in 1509, we hear of Niño de Villalobos as inquisitor and juez in Cartagena and a certain Dembredo as filling both positions in Seville, while as late as 1514 Toribio de Saldaña is spoken of as inquisitor and juez.[1033] With the gradual disappearance of the assessors, however, the necessity of a separate functionary became apparent, and the courts of confiscations grew to be an established feature of the tribunals, so long as confiscations continued to be numerous and profitable. Towards the end, when they had become infrequent, the senior inquisitor performed the duties of the juez.[1034]

Ferdinand, meanwhile, persisted in asserting the exclusive jurisdiction of the Inquisition over all matters connected with confiscation, recognizing that his interests would suffer if the secular courts were allowed to intervene. The establishment of this as a rule of practice is attributable to the year 1508. The receiver of Jaen had sold a confiscated house to Diego García el rico for forty-two thousand maravedís on a year’s credit. When the term expired, García, instead of paying, exhibited a grant made to him of the house by Philip of Austria. After Philip’s brief career was over, his acts were not treated with much respect, and the juez de los bienes refused to recognize the grant, on the ground that it was not countersigned by the Suprema. García appealed to the chancellery of Granada which ordered the grant to be recognized, but Ferdinand interposed, January 18, 1508, commanding the judges to keep their hands off and not to interfere with the Inquisition, in any way, either in its civil or criminal jurisdiction.[1035] The chancellery did not take this kindly and invited, in 1510, another rebuke for meddling in suits concerning sequestrations and confiscations; if any cases of the kind were pending they must be forthwith remitted to the tribunals to which they belonged, and in future nothing of the kind was to be entertained.[1036]

It was impossible that this monstrous policy, of making it the judge in its own cases, should be submitted to without resistance, but it was stoutly maintained by the crown. The tribunal of Jaen invested some of its funds in a censo created by a cleric of Alcalá. He died in 1524, when his mother and brothers attacked the censo as being secured on a property in which they held undivided interests, and another party came forward with an incumbrance on the same property. The Inquisition seized it and also collected some debts due to the deceased, which reduced its claim to seven or eight thousand maravedís. The other parties appealed to the chancellery of Granada, which entertained the case, but the Inquisition invoked Charles V who, in letters of May 19 and July 7, 1525, repeated the commands of Ferdinand to abstain from all interference. The Inquisition was the sole judge and parties thinking themselves aggrieved must appeal to the Suprema.[1037] Still, those who smarted under injustice sought relief in the secular courts, which were nothing loath to aid them; complaints were loud on both sides and competencias were frequent until, as we have seen, they led to the settlement of 1553, in which Prince Philip emphatically forbade cognizance of such matters to all courts and ministers of justice, and confined appellate jurisdiction strictly to the Suprema.[1038]

As has been seen in other matters, the great high court of Granada was recalcitrant and persisted in asserting its jurisdiction. In 1571 and 1573 it entertained cases relating to confiscations, in both of which it was told by Philip II to hold its hand and not to meddle with such affairs. Despite this, in 1575, it intervened in a case which suggests the reasonable objection felt to rendering the Inquisition a judge in its own cause. The creditors of Don Diego de Castilla had embargoed his property and the court had placed it in the hands of an administrator for their benefit; but the tribunal of Murcia chanced to hold a censo of his for a thousand ducats; the juez de los bienes stepped in, seized the property, sold it and kept the money. The chancellery was seeking to obtain justice for the other creditors; it arrested the juez and threw him into prison, when Philip again intervened, ordering his liberation and the abandonment of the case.[1039]