A History of the Inquisition of Spain; vol. 2

by Henry Charles Lea

If I have entered thus minutely into the details of this branch of inquisitorial activity, it is because its importance has scarce been recognized by those who have treated of the Inquisition. It not only supplied the means of support to the institution during its period of greatest activity, but it was recognized by the inquisitors themselves as their most potent weapon and the one most dreaded by the industrious classes which formed their chief field of labor. Its potency is the measure of the misery which it inflicted, through long generations, on the innocent and helpless, far transcending the agonies of those who perished at the stake. To it was largely owing the ultimate extinction of Judaism in Spain, for the exalted heroism which might dare the horrors of the brasero might well give way before the prospect of poverty to be endured by disinherited offspring. To it also is greatly attributable the stagnation of Spanish commerce and industry, for trade could not flourish when credit was impaired, and confidence could not exist when merchants and manufacturers of the highest standing might, at any moment, fall into the hands of the tribunal and all their assets be impounded. Even the liberality of the Spanish Inquisition, in not confiscating the debts due by the heretic, was but a slender mitigation of this, for the creditor was liable to ruin through the difficulties and delays interposed on the realization of his credits, and past transactions were not secure until protected by a proscription of forty years. The Inquisition came at a time when geographical discovery was revolutionizing the world’s commerce, when the era of industrialism was dawning, and the future belonged to the nations which should have fewest trammels in adapting themselves to the new developments. The position of Spain was such as to give it control of the illimitable possibilities of the future, but it blindly threw away all its advantages into the laps of heretic Holland and England. Many causes, too intricate to be discussed here, contributed to this, but not the least among them was the bleeding to anæmia, through centuries, of the productive classes and the insecurity which the enforcement of confiscation cast over all the operations of commerce and industry.

CHAPTER II.
FINES AND PENANCES.

ALTHOUGH, at least in the earlier period, confiscation was the main financial reliance of the Inquisition, it had other resources. Of these a productive one was the pecuniary penance which the tribunals had discretionary power of imposing on those whose offences amounted only to suspicion of heresy and not to the formal heresy which entailed reconciliation or relaxation with confiscation.

Almsgiving in satisfaction of sin formed a feature of ecclesiastical practice and, in the middle ages, the schoolmen had no difficulty in proving that pecuniary penance was more efficacious than any other[1125]—and it certainly was more efficacious in the sense that the enormous possessions of the Church were largely gathered from this source. Moreover, the inquisitor inherited from his medieval predecessors an undefined duplicate function of confessor and judge—his culprits were penitents and the punishments he inflicted were penances.[1126] Even when the canon law required the hardened or relapsed heretics to be relaxed to the secular arm for burning, they are sometimes alluded to as penitenciados[1127] When, under the early Edicts of Grace, penitents by the thousand flocked to confess their sins and escape corporal penalties and confiscation, the inquisitor was instructed to make them give as “alms” a portion of their property, according to the quality of the person and the character and duration of his offences, and these penitencias pecuniarias were to be applied to the war with Granada as to the most pious of causes.[1128] Thus, at the start, pecuniary penance and almsgiving were regarded as convertible terms, both equally applicable to the discretionary fines which the inquisitor could impose on his penitent. There was a technical, though not a practical, distinction between these and the mulcts inflicted on offenders for other than spiritual offences, in the exercise of the royal jurisdiction conferred on the Holy Office. They formed together a common fund which was known as that of the penas y penitencias—the fines and penances—of which the former were drawn from the secular and the latter from the spiritual jurisdiction. This distinction at best was shadowy and though it was observed at first, in time the tribunals grew indifferent and recognized that penance was punishment.

The earliest formality is seen in the case of Brianda de Bardaxí, where the consulta de fe, March 18, 1492, pronounces her guilty of vehement suspicion, to be penanced at the discretion of the inquisitors. Accordingly, on March 20th, the inquisitors deliberated on the “penance” and pronounced an Impositio penitentie, consisting of five years’ imprisonment, with certain spiritual observances, “and moreover we penance her in the third part of all her property, which we apply to the coffer of penances of this tribunal and to the costs of her trial, which third part, or its true value, we order to be paid within ten days to Martin de Cota, receiver of penances.”[1129] By the middle of the sixteenth century this scruple was overcome. In the case of Mari Serrana, at Toledo in 1545, the consulta de fe, it is true, votes that she be “penanced” in a third of her property, but the public sentence, which customarily did not specify the amount, after enumerating certain spiritual observances, adds “also the pecuniary punishment imposed on her, for a certain reason is reserved for the present.” So, in the case of Mari Gómez, in 1551, it is stated that she is “condemned” in twenty ducats for the expenses of the tribunal, which she is to pay within nine days to the receiver. When the sentence was read to her in the audience-chamber, she asked how she was to pay the twenty ducats and was told it would come out of the property sequestrated at her arrest.[1130] Sequestration, we may observe, enabled the tribunal to help itself at discretion from the culprit’s property and to proportion the penalty to his ability.

DISTINCT FROM CONFISCATION

There was an advantage to the Inquisition in considering these fines as penitential, for penance was part of the sacrament of absolution which was an ecclesiastical function, the proceeds of which were controlled by the Church, and it differed thus wholly from confiscation. It is true that practically this was merely a verbal juggle, for the inquisitor did not absolve and, as he was not necessarily a priest, his office did not comprise the administration of the sacraments, but the verbal juggle sufficed and serves to explain the rigid separation of the funds arising from penance and from confiscation, even after both were controlled by the Inquisition. We have seen (Vol. I, p. 338) the prolonged struggle made by Ferdinand to obtain possession of the penances, which finally terminated in favor of the Inquisition. This was rather beneficial to the accused, as the tribunal would be inclined to find him guilty only of suspicion of heresy, enabling it to inflict a pecuniary penance for its own benefit, rather than of formal heresy which inferred confiscation. Of course this passed away when financial control practically lapsed to the Suprema, but the distinction between the funds was still maintained.

In the earlier period the distinction was emphasized by the office of special receiver for the penances, who seems to have been subject to the inquisitor-general, while the receiver of confiscations held from the king. Thus the sentence of Brianda de Bardaxí shows us Martin de Cota as receiver of penances in Saragossa in 1492 and we still hear of him in that position in 1497, while Ferdinand had, as his own receiver, Juan Denbin, succeeded by Juan Royz. As early as 1486, Esteve Costa was “receptor de las penitencias” in Valencia, whose salary of fifty libras shows the office to be of much less importance than that of the receiver of confiscations.[1131] Still, there came to be no settled rule about this. In 1498, Juan Royz was receiver of both penances and confiscations in Saragossa and, in Valencia, Juan de Monasterio was inquisitor and at the same time receiver of penances, while, in 1512, in Barcelona the fiscal also filled the latter office, as we learn from his salary being suspended until he should render an account of his receipts.[1132] As late as 1515 there was still a special receiver of penances in Huesca, the Canon Pero Pérez, whose death revealed him to be a defaulter to the extent of four thousand sueldos, when the office was consolidated with that of the receivership.[1133] In 1516, among his other reforms, Ximenes abolished this special office and put the fines and penances in the hands of the receivers of confiscations, with instructions, however, to keep the funds separate and not to disburse the fines and penances except on orders from the inquisitor-general. There had previously been, in the Suprema, a receiver-general of fines and penances, an office which was likewise suppressed and all the revenues were placed in charge of a single official, a regulation which was confirmed by Manrique in 1524.[1134]