A History of the Inquisition of Spain; vol. 2

by Henry Charles Lea

DISTINCT FROM CONFISCATION

There was difficulty in preventing the unauthorized collection of these funds, by other officials, with the consequent absence of responsibility and risk of embezzlement. In instructions for the prevention of abuses, October 10, 1546, it is prescribed that all fines be paid to the receiver; again, August 20, 1547, it is ordered that neither the inquisitors nor other officials save the receiver shall collect the penances or other moneys. Inspection of the Barcelona tribunal, in 1549, showed that this was not obeyed; other officials made the collections and they were not reported to the receiver, all of which was forbidden for the future, but the order of 1547 had to be repeated December 4, 1551, May 9, 1553, and December 20, 1555.[1135] Evidently there were leaks which the Suprema was vainly seeking to stop. A special commission was issued, January 12, 1549, to Gerónimo Zurita, as contador for the kingdoms of Aragon, to audit the accounts of all receivers, past, present and to come, concerning the fines and penances and other parties casuelles, with full powers to send for persons and papers under such penalties as he might designate, which is highly significant.[1136] Possibly his investigations led to a carta acordada of September 23, 1551, which states that, in some tribunals, some of the pecuniary penalties are not entered in the Book of Punishments; the notaries of sequestrations are therefore impressively ordered, under holy obedience and major excommunication latæ sententiæ, to make such entries when sentence is rendered, stating whether they are applicable to the Inquisition or to some pious work, so that the contador may know whether they are collected, and all fines thus omitted are to be deducted from the salaries of the notaries.[1137] As, by this time, the fines and penalties were invariably applied to the Inquisition, the pretence of appropriating to pious uses was presumably a mere device for embezzling them. The Suprema evidently had no doubts as to this, when the inquisitors of Barcelona, in the case of Pirro de Gonzaga, imposed a penance of three hundred ducats and appropriated twenty-five to the convent of N. Señora de los Angeles, twenty-five to the nuns of San Gerónimo and the remainder to beds and garments for the poor. It told them, in 1568, that all fines were for the expenses of the Inquisition and required them, within thirty days, to furnish authentic evidence of the disposition made of the two hundred and fifty ducats, under pain of rigorous proceedings against them.[1138] As for holding the notaries responsible, there was manifest injustice in this, for they were powerless to prevent fraud by the inquisitors. In 1525, some instructions to the tribunal of Sicily mention that the notary had repeatedly and vainly requested that notice be given to him of all penances, in order that he might charge them to the receiver.[1139] How reckless sometimes were the inquisitors appears in the case of the murder of Juan Antonio Managat, deputy receiver at Puycerda. In 1565 the three Barcelona inquisitors inflicted on the accused certain heavy fines which were duly collected and placed in the coffer with three keys, after which they coolly helped themselves to a thousand reales apiece, under pretext that it was for fees in trying the case. On this being discovered, in the inspection by de Soto Salazar, the Suprema ordered the money to be returned to the coffer and satisfactory evidence of the restitution to be furnished within thirty days.[1140]

The distinction between the confiscations and the fines and penances was rigidly maintained when both were concentrated in the hands of the receiver. A special commission was issued to authorize him to receive the latter[1141] and he was straitly instructed to keep the accounts separate. The confiscations were devoted to salaries and, if there was an overplus, to investments of a more or less permanent character, while the fines and penances were levied, as the formula of the sentences habitually expressed it, for the gastos extraordinarios—the other and extraordinary expenses of the tribunals. Still, when the confiscations ran short, there was no hesitation in drawing upon the other fund, although a special order of the Suprema was necessary for its authorization. Ayudas de costa were generally drawn from the fines and penances, though frequently the receiver is told to pay them out of any funds in hand.[1142] In 1525, Manrique directed the house-rents of the officials to be paid from the fines and penances; in 1540 Tavera granted, from the same fund in Valencia, three thousand sueldos to the nunnery of Santa Julia as the dowry of a reconciled Morisca, placed there to save her soul; in 1543 he calls upon the receiver of Granada to furnish, from the same source, two hundred ducats to Juan Martínez Lassao, secretary of the Suprema, on the occasion of his marriage; in 1557 the inquisitors of Saragossa were allowed, in the same manner, to defray the cost of alterations in the Aljafería.[1143] In short, this fund was expected to meet the innumerable miscellaneous expenses of the tribunals and to supply all deficiencies, rendering the inquisitors watchful to keep it abundantly supplied.

There were occasions when penances replaced confiscations, to the manifest advantage of the tribunals. Thus, in 1519, when the estate of Fernando de Villareal was subject to confiscation, Charles V authorized the inquisitors to impose on him such penance as they deemed fit and released to him the surplus. It is not likely that this surplus was allowed to be large for, when in 1535, the tribunal of Valencia was trying the Bachiller Molina and learned that the viceroy had promised Molina’s wife that, in case of confiscation, he would ask the emperor to forego it, the inquisitors wrote to the Suprema that they proposed not to confiscate his property but to impose a penance of something less than its value.[1144] This indicates that the penances were not subject to the crown and thus it exposes the disingenuousness of the Suprema, in replying to a petition of Valencia, in the Córtes of Monzon in 1537, that the Inquisition should be restrained from penancing the Moriscos. It argued that these pecuniary penances were applied to the royal treasury and that his majesty should not be asked to remit them, or be required to supplicate the pope to revoke what the canons prescribe.[1145]

REPLACE CONFISCATION

The canons prescribed confiscation, but there was no hesitation, as we have just seen, in substituting penance. The largest scale on which this was tried was in the kingdoms of Aragon, where the Moriscos were mostly vassals of the gentry and nobles, who suffered when they were impoverished and their lands were taken. The fueros of Valencia provided that feudal lands confiscated, whether for heresy or other cause, should revert to the lord, and this was repeatedly sworn to by Ferdinand and Charles, but the Inquisition calmly disregarded all laws and insisted on confiscating for its own benefit. Even a brief of Paul III, August 2, 1546, decreeing that for ten years and subsequently, at the pleasure of the Holy See, there should be no confiscations or pecuniary penances inflicted on the Moriscos, received no attention and the practical answer to the remonstrances of the Córtes of 1564 was a specific instruction from the Suprema to the Valencia tribunal to go on confiscating, no matter what the people might say about their privileges.[1146] Aragon, meanwhile, had obtained, in 1534, a pragmática by which Charles renounced his right to the Morisco confiscations, which were to revert to the heirs or be distributed as intestate, and to this the assent of the Suprema was secured. This was, however, practically nullified for, in 1547, the Córtes complained that confiscations were replaced by penances greater than the wealth of the culprits, who were obliged to sell all their property and, in addition, to impoverish their kindred, to which the Suprema loftily replied that, if any one was aggrieved, he could appeal to it or to the inquisitors.[1147]

A lucrative bargain was finally made with Valencia, which had the largest Morisco population. In 1537 the Córtes proposed that, for a payment of 400 ducats a year, the Inquisition should abstain from penancing the Moriscos, but the Suprema refused, on the ground that it would be a disservice to God. It was shrewd in this for, in 1571, it secured an agreement under which, for an annual payment of 50,000 sueldos (2500 ducats) it abandoned confiscation and limited penance to 10 ducats, the payment of which was rendered secure by levying it on the aljamas of the culprits.[1148] Favorable as was this, the inquisitors did not restrain themselves to its observance. In the auto de fe of January 7, 1607, there was a penance of 50 ducats, one of 30 and one of 20 and, while there were only eight reconciliations, there were twenty penances of 10 ducats. The Suprema took exception to this, saying that, without reconciliation, the fines were uncalled for, in the absence of some special offence.[1149] The agreement, in fact, was one under which the gains of the tribunal were limited only by its industry, for there was no lack of Morisco apostates. The little village of Mislata, near the city, must have been well-nigh bankrupted, for it was liable for the penances of its inhabitants, of whom there were eighty-three penanced in 1591 and seventeen in 1592.[1150]

As confiscations diminished throughout Spain, the unrestricted power to impose fines and penances came in opportunely to fill deficiencies. They could be levied in a vast variety of cases—not only for suspicion of heresy and for fautorship, but for bigamy, blasphemy, ill-sounding expressions and all offences against the tribunal and its officials, as well as for those of the officials themselves and the familiars. The temporal jurisdiction especially afforded large opportunities, for the defendant, whether he was a familiar or an outsider, could always be fined for the benefit of the tribunal and this was rarely omitted. It was no secret within the Holy Office that this discretional power was to be exercised, not in accordance with the merits of the case, but with the needs of the Inquisition. As early as 1538, this was intimated in the instructions to Inquisitor Valdeolite of Navarre, when sent on a visitation to investigate witchcraft. He was forbidden to inflict confiscations but was told that he could impose fines and penances, in proportion to the offences and wealth of the culprits, in order to meet expenses and enable the receiver to pay salaries.[1151] In time the Suprema grew more outspoken. A carta acordada of October 22, 1575 told inquisitors that they could impose pecuniary penalties while on visitations, as well as when sitting in the tribunal, and must bear in mind the poverty of the Suprema as well as the wealth of the culprits and the character of the offence. This was repeated in 1580, and in 1595 attention was called to the necessity of relieving the wants of the Inquisition in this manner, an exhortation repeated in 1624.[1152]

PRODUCTIVENESS