This stimulation was apparently superfluous, for the inquisitors exploited their powers in this respect to a degree that sometimes moved even the Suprema to reproof. In a visitation of Gerona and Elne by Doctor Zurita of Barcelona, in 1564, we find him inflicting fines and penances continually, of 4, 6, 10, 20, 30 or 100 ducats, apparently limited only by the means of the victim. His colleague, Dr. Mexia, on a visitation penanced Damian Cortes in 100 ducats because, thirty years before, when some one told him to trust in God, he had exclaimed “Trust in God! By trusting in God last year I lost 50 ducats” and, when Juan Barbero made a comment on this sentence, he was fined 20 ducats and costs. When this last exploit was reported by de Soto Salazar, the Suprema ordered the fines to be refunded, as it also did with those inflicted by Mexia, of 60, 40 and 15 ducats, on the Bayle of Vindoli and two jurados for an offence so trifling that their names were ordered to be stricken from the records. When sitting as a tribunal these inquisitors were even more liberal to themselves, for they fined the Abbot of Ripoll 400 ducats for keeping a nun as a mistress—an offence wholly outside of their jurisdiction.[1153] As late as 1687, the tribunal of Logroño furnished a flagrant instance of this abuse of arbitrary power, when it excommunicated and fined in 200 ducats D. Miguel Urban de Espinosa, a Knight of Santiago and familiar, because, when summoned to attend at the publication of the Edict of Faith, he sought to enter the church while wearing a sword. The inquisitor-general promptly ordered his absolution and suspended the fine until further information.[1154]
The receipts from penances, although fluctuating, were a substantial addition to income. In the Seville auto de fe of May 13, 1585, a penitent accused of Lutheranism was penanced in 100 ducats, a bigamist in 200, provided it did not exceed half his property; for asserting fornication to be no sin one man was penanced in 200 ducats or less, according to his wealth, another in 200 and two in 1000 maravedís apiece, while, for concealing heretics, there was a penance of 50 ducats. In all, the auto yielded 850 ducats and 2000 maravedís.[1155] Even more productive was the auto of June 14, 1579, at Llerena, where the tribunal harvested 626,000 maravedís and 2700 ducats, or about 4375 ducats in all—owing to some of the penitents being well-to-do ecclesiastics, given to Illuminism.[1156] Toledo, in 1604, imposed a penance of 3000 ducats on Giraldo Paris, a German of Madrid, guilty of sundry heretical propositions, including the assertion that St. Job was an alchemist.[1157] The same tribunal, in 1649 and 1650, penanced four persons engaged in endeavoring to shield a Judaizer, two of them 500 and the other two 300 ducats apiece. In 1654, again, in two autos, November 8th and December 27th, it realized a total of 4000 ducats. After this it had occasional good fortune and, in 1669, it was supremely lucky in a rich penitent, Don Alonso Sanchez, priest and physician to the Cuenca tribunal, whom it convicted of fautorship and penanced in the large sum of 13,000 ducats.[1158] In 1654, Cuenca realized 2250 ducats, besides thirteen confiscations, from its auto of June 29th.[1159] Córdova was more fortunate, in an auto of May 3, 1655, when a group of wealthy Judaizers and their friends yielded an aggregate of 7000 ducats.[1160]
In addition to this source of revenue from penance imposed on penitents there were the fines inflicted in the exercise of the secular jurisdiction of the Inquisition. How liberally this power was exercised, even when the delinquents were officials, is seen in the defence offered by the Suprema, in 1632, when strenuous complaints were made about the familiars of Valencia. It instanced the case of Jaime Blau, who was fined 600 libras, half to the complainant and half to the fisc; Vicente de San German fined 300 libras; Hierónimo Llodra, 500 ducats; Pedro Carbonel, 500 ducats; Tomás Real, 300 ducats; Miguel Rubio, 400 libras, and Hierónimo Pilart, 500 libras.[1161] Doubtless through these inflictions the culprits escaped corporal punishments much less endurable, and they serve to explain the persistent multiplication of familiars, coupled with disregard of the character of the appointees. It was the same with outsiders who were prosecuted for offences against officials, as when, in 1565, Don Tristan de Urria of Saragossa was fined 60 ducats for insulting a notary.[1162]
LUCRATIVE RESULTS
In the seventeenth century the Suprema claimed these fines as its special perquisite. When Jaime Blau, for instance, was mulcted in 300 ducats for the fisc, no sooner was the Suprema apprised of it than it ordered the amount to be remitted at once, and the length of correspondence which ensued indicates that this was a novelty submitted to unwillingly.[1163] Even a fine of 100 libras, imposed on Ignacio Navarro, in 1636, was called for immediately and remitted, as was also soon afterwards 100 ducats with which he purchased his pardon; as he was forthwith arrested again for murdering Don Juan Augustin Saluco, he probably yielded another series of fines.[1164] In the extreme exigencies of the royal treasury, the king claimed a portion of these receipts and, by a decree of September 30, 1639, he ordered one-fourth of all fines for secular offences to be paid to the official designated to receive the fines of the royal courts.[1165]
In the unscrupulous exercise of discretional power, fines and penances were frequently imposed beyond the culprit’s ability to pay, and inquisitors had a habit of adding in the sentence the alternative of some corporal punishment, such as the galleys, scourging or vergüenza, with the object of inducing the kindred to contribute, in order to avert from the family the shame of the public infliction. The Instructions of 1561 strictly forbid this cruelty; the sentences are to be without condition or alternative and inability to pay is not to be thus visited.[1166] This received scant obedience. In 1568 it was the ordinary practice of the Barcelona tribunal to enforce payment of its arbitrary impositions by the alternative of such punishment.[1167] About 1640, however, we are told by an inquisitor that the question was evaded by the prudent custom of sending poor men to the galleys and reserving pecuniary penance for the wealthy.[1168]
In fact, after the middle of the seventeenth century, the number of such penances diminished and they are usually for larger amounts. In a record of the autos de fe of Toledo, from 1648 to 1794, there is but one that is less than 100 ducats and that one is for 50. In all there are but sixty-four penances imposed up to 1742 and none subsequently. The aggregate is 30,600 ducats, besides fourteen of half the property of the culprit.[1169] Whether from a growing sense of their indecency or from a lack of material, the custom of imposing pecuniary penances rapidly declined in the eighteenth century. In a collection of sixty-six autos de fe, between 1721 and 1745, comprising in all 962 cases, there is not a single pecuniary penance.[1170] Fines, however, continued to be imposed to the last. March 27, 1816, Pasqual Franchini of Madrid, for possessing two indecent pictures, was fined 100 ducats and, as these are defined as applicable to the royal treasury, it would appear that the crown had absorbed this trifling source of revenue.[1171]
In this matter the Roman Inquisition offered a creditable contrast to the Spanish. Except in Milan, Cremona and other places under Spanish rule, pecuniary punishments were rarely to be inflicted; the assent of the Congregation of cardinals was required, and they were at once to be distributed in pious uses, of which a strict account was required. Thus in 1595, one of 4000 crowns was given to the poor of Genoa and, in the same year at Naples, one of 400 crowns was parcelled out among the charitable establishments. Even this was felt to derogate from the character of the Holy Office and, in 1632, Urban VIII decreed that papal confirmation must be had in each case and, at the same time, he withdrew the special privileges of the Milanese tribunals.[1172] So strong was the disgust felt in Rome for this commercialized zeal for the faith that, when the Fiscal Cabrera was there representing the Inquisition, in the case of Villanueva, and Arce y Reynoso sent to him, for presentation to the pope, a report of an auto celebrated by the tribunal of Santiago, with the expectation of arousing his sympathy for an institution that was doing so much for religion, Cabrera replied, January 6, 1656, that he would not present it without special orders. Alexander VII, he said, disliked pecuniary penalties in matters of faith, and there were some of these in the report; his Holiness had already spoken to him on the subject and it was wiser not to call his attention to it afresh.[1173]