A History of the Inquisition of Spain; vol. 2

by Henry Charles Lea

CHAPTER IV.
BENEFICES.

WHEN the Inquisition was established, it was apparent that if its officials, or a portion of them, could be quartered on the Church there might be less diversion of the confiscations from the royal treasury. At the very commencement, in 1480, Ferdinand and Isabella obtained, from Sixtus IV, an indult authorizing them to present the four earliest inquisitors to benefices, of course without obligation to reside. As yet, however, the Inquisition had not inspired general terror, and the people refused to admit the intruders, whereupon the sovereigns provided them with four chaplaincies in the royal chapel.[1217] The attempt was not abandoned and, in the supplementary Instructions of December, 1484, Torquemada announced that it was the intention of the sovereigns to procure a papal indult authorizing them to bestow benefices, not only on the inquisitors but on all the clerics employed in the holy work.[1218] Something of the kind was evidently obtained for, when the Holy Office was organized, in 1485, under Torquemada, the brief confirming his appointment dispensed from residence all officials in its service who held or might thereafter obtain preferment; new appointees were released from the customary temporary residence, and all were assured of their full revenues without deduction, all apostolical and conciliar decrees to the contrary notwithstanding.[1219] There was nothing in this to shock public opinion, for the canon law permitted canons to be absent for study in any recognized university, and the enjoyment of benefices everywhere by the creatures of the curia was legalized by assuming service to the pope to be equivalent to service in a chapter.[1220] Yet the Spanish Church, apparently, was not disposed to submit quietly to this and its resistance may be assumed as the cause of another brief of Innocent VIII, February 8, 1486, which limited the grant to five years and required the beneficiary to supply a vicar to fill his place. At the same time it specified all officials, down to messengers and gaolers, as entitled to its benefits and provided for opposition by appointing the Bishops of Córdova and Leon and the Abbot of San Emiliano of Burgos as executors with full powers to suppress recalcitrants.[1221] When the five years expired, the indult was renewed for another five years and so it continued until the end of the Inquisition—the popes steadily refusing to prolong the term, as it gave them an important advantage, in their frequent collisions with the Spanish Holy Office, to say nothing of the fees consequent upon the issue of briefs so voluminous and so valuable.

The next step was to procure the power of presenting to benefices, and this was secured by another brief from Innocent VIII, in 1488, granting to the sovereigns the patronage of a prebend in each metropolitan, cathedral and collegiate church, excepting, in prudent deference to the Sacred College, those of which the bishops were also cardinals. Of this brief, Alonso de Burgos was made executor, enabling him to fulminate censures and take all necessary steps, until the appointee enjoyed pacific possession of his prebend. Under it Ferdinand and Isabella, on October 30th of the same year, made the first presentations, amounting to ten, six being inquisitors, two fiscals, one an apparitor and one designated merely as an official.[1222]

OPPOSITION OF CHAPTERS

This brief probably was good only for five years for, in 1494, the sovereigns obtained from Alexander VI another, with enlarged powers, of which Martin Ponce, Bishop of Avila, was executor. Under this, on April 11, 1495, they made twenty-four appointments, mostly inquisitors, but comprising seven fiscals, two members of the Suprema and two Roman agents of the Inquisition. Among the inquisitors we recognize the notorious Lucero and his predecessor in Córdova, the embezzling Dr. Guiral.[1223] It is probable that these briefs encountered resistance, for, in this latter case, we chance to hear of a prolonged struggle required to install Doctor Manuel Fernández Angulo of the Suprema in the Seville canonry given to him.[1224] Haughty canons of noble blood might well resent the intrusion of low-born officials such as Ferdinand sometimes thrust upon them. Thus, in 1499, on the death of Inquisitor Cevallos of Barcelona, his first appointee to a prebend in the church of Santa Ana, in the same city, he replaced him with Juan Moya, a simple tonsured clerk and gaoler of the tribunal, nor was this the only instance of such abuse of patronage.[1225] He also availed himself largely of the privilege of non-residence by appointing canons and other beneficed clerks to positions in the tribunals, and his letters of the period are numerous in which he notifies the chapters that their members have been thus drafted to the service of God, during which they are, under the papal letters, to be reckoned as present and are not to be deprived of any of the fruits of their preferment. So, when he drew the Licentiate Pero González Manso from the professorship of law in Valladolid, he told the college that the chair would be filled by a substitute at half-price during Manso’s absence.[1226] Everything was subservient to the Inquisition and all other institutions were expected to minister to its needs.

When Julius II, November 16, 1505, renewed the quinquennial indult, he no longer appointed executors but empowered the inquisitor-general to coerce with censures the chapters to account for and pay over to the appointees the revenues of their benefices. It appears that they sometimes compelled the appointees to agree under oath that they would take only a portion of the fruits, for Julius pronounced such agreements to be void and released the incumbents from their oaths. This brief he repeated, September 8, 1508, with some additions, of which more hereafter.[1227] The opposition of the chapters, in fact, had in no way diminished and defeat only seemed to intensify their obstinacy. When, in 1501, Diego de Robles, fiscal of the Suprema, was granted a canonry in the church of Zamora, the persistence of the chapter carried the matter to Rome, where Gracian de Valdés, nephew of the bishop, boasted that he would get the pope to reserve the benefice to himself. It gave infinite vexation to Ferdinand, who wrote to the canons, July 24th that, if they did not admit Robles within three days, they must leave the city and present themselves before him within thirty days, under pain of forfeiture of citizenship and temporalities. Similar orders were sent to the provisor; the corregidor was commanded to see to their execution, while urgent letters were addressed to Rome to counteract the labors of Valdés. These vigorous measures brought the chapter to terms and Ferdinand, on September 2nd, accepted their submission, revoking their banishment to take effect after their giving possession to Robles.[1228] Simultaneously a similar quarrel was on foot with the chapter of Barcelona, over the grant of a canonry to the Inquisitor of Saragossa, who was already Archdeacon of Almazan, and this was likewise carried to Rome.[1229] So resolutely did the chapters resist the invasion of their rights that Enguera, Inquisitor-general of Aragon and Bishop of Lérida, in 1512, had to invoke both royal and papal authority to secure the revenues of benefices held by him in the churches of Tarragona and Lérida and, with regard to the latter, the pope was obliged to appoint executors to enforce his briefs.[1230]

If Ferdinand had expected, by this abuse of patronage, to lighten the burden of supporting the Inquisition, he was doomed to disappointment. He probably found that those, who thus obtained positions for life, could not be depended upon to perform gratuitous service in the tribunals. Their full salaries had to be paid and their benefices were only an extra gratification, so that his anxiety to secure these for them must be attributed to his desire to obtain able and vigorous men for the moderate remuneration provided by the pay-roll. When Pedro de Belorado was sent to Sicily, in 1501, as Archbishop of Messina and also as inquisitor, the receiver was ordered to continue to him the salary paid to his predecessor Sgalambro.[1231] So it continued. When, in 1540, Blas Ortiz was commissioned as inquisitor of Valencia, the orders were to pay him the regular salary of six thousand sueldos, although, as canon of Toledo, he possessed a handsome income.[1232]

OPPOSITION OF CHAPTERS

By this time these matters were in the hands of the Suprema, and its members and officials were too eager seekers after pluralities not to enforce the papal indults with vigor, giving rise to incessant struggles with recalcitrant churches. Thus, in 1546, when Pedro Ponce de Leon was made a member, he was maestre escuela in the church of Alcalá de Henares. There was trouble about his revenues for, on February 27, 1547, Valdés summoned the abbot and chapter to keep on paying him and expressed the hope that they would not compel him to resort to censures. Similar letters, about the same time, were issued in behalf of the private secretary of Valdés, Fortuno de Ibarquen, who was an insatiable pluralist, being Archdeacon of Sigüenza and canon in the churches of both Leon and Oviedo. Simultaneous were letters to the chapter of Segovia about the revenues of its dean and canon Miguel de Arena, who was Inquisitor of Seville, and to that of Sigüenza for its treasurer and canon, Menendo de Valdés, who was Inquisitor of Valladolid. A couple of months later there were letters to the chapter of Badajoz, about its canon Baltodano, who was Inquisitor of Toledo, and in August to the chapter of Majorca, about Joan García, who had been appointed consultor to the tribunal of Saragossa. In October prosecutions were commenced against the recalcitrant chapter of Leon, which had refused to pay the fruits of the canonries of Ibarguen and of Cervantes, the Inquisitor of Córdova.[1233]

It would be useless to multiply examples of this incessant strife, in which the chapters persistently, but unavailingly, sought to prevent the absorption of their revenues by the Holy Office. The resistance was hopeless for, even with the most resolute, it was only a question of time when opposition was broken down by excommunication and the summons to appear before the Suprema, while appeal to Rome was fruitless when it was the duty of the Spanish ambassador to watch for such cases and oppose them.[1234] Of course the greater number yielded without remonstrance and we hear only of those who dared to offer futile opposition.