All foreigners thus were objects of suspicion, and the jurisdiction of the Inquisition was stretched to the utmost to prevent their infecting the faithful. In 1572, the Suprema ordered the tribunals of Aragon, Catalonia and Valencia to see that no Frenchmen were employed as teachers of reading and writing anywhere within their districts, experience having shown the dangers thence arising.[1225] Intercourse with foreigners was dangerous and was discouraged. In 1568, Inquisitor Moral, in reporting a visit to San Sebastian, expressed a desire to punish those who received and entertained and had particular friendship and dealings with French and English strangers, sometimes even giving them information enabling them to escape arrest, on all of which the Suprema commented by characterizing these as grave cases, which should have been sent to Logroño for trial.[1226] The Spaniard, too, who went abroad was an object of suspicion, and was held to strict accountability for his acts during absence. In the Barcelona auto of June 21, 1627, there appeared a merchant of Manresa who, while in France, had listened to Huguenot preaching and had eaten flesh on Friday, for which he was penanced in a thousand ducats and was recluded in a convent for three years.[1227]
That, under these influences, coupled with the growing poverty of Spain and the curse of its debased currency, the number of resident foreigners diminished greatly after the opening of the seventeenth century, may be assumed from the reduction in the cases of Protestantism in the records. Those of Toledo, from 1575 to 1610, show a total of forty-seven, of which the last one occurred in 1601, while those from 1648 to 1794 contain only eleven.[1228] In Valladolid, the reports of twenty-nine years, between 1622 and 1662, show only eighteen cases.[1229] In the Madrid tribunal, from 1703 to 1751, there is only a single case of a “Huguenot.”[1230] In the sixty-four autos celebrated by all the tribunals between 1721 and 1727, there are only three cases.[1231] In Valencia, between 1705 and 1726, there was but a single case—a Calvinist who spontaneously denounced himself.[1232] Scattering and imperfect as are these statistics, they suffice to indicate how rapidly the number of foreign delinquents fell off, after the year 1600, and that this was not the result of progress in enlightenment and toleration we shall see hereafter. It was simply that the Inquisition had succeeded in its efforts to limit intercourse between Spain and its neighbors, and to isolate it from European civilization.
FOREIGN HERETICS
If this was the case in regard to nations presumably Catholic, we can readily conceive how much greater vigilance was exercised towards those which had lapsed into heresy. Commercial intercourse with them was unavoidable, but it was a necessary evil, to be restricted within the narrowest limits by deterrent regulations. For awhile, indeed, the heretic trader took his life and fortune in his hands when he ventured to make a Spanish harbor, as we have seen in the case of the good ship Angel. Even castaways were the legitimate prey of the Inquisition, as was experienced by seventeen English sailors of a fishing-boat, who were captured by a French vessel and were thrown on shore on Fuerte Ventura, one of the Canaries. They were tried and escaped burning by conversion, after which four of them, Richard Newman, Edward Stephens, John Ware, and Edward Stride managed to escape. As this showed them to be impenitent, they were prosecuted in absentia for relapse, and their effigies were solemnly burnt in an auto of July 22, 1587.[1233] The number of merchant vessels touching at the Canaries, in fact, furnished to the tribunal at one time the major portion of its work. A record of prisoners entered in its secret prison, during six months of 1593, shows thirteen belonging to the German ship San Pedro, seventeen to the Flemish ship La Rosa, and fifteen to the Flemish ship El Leon Colorado, besides a dozen English sailors whose vessel is not specified. These comprise all hands, officers and crews, merchants and passengers, and presumably, if the cargoes were not confiscated, they were effectually looted in the absence of their guardians.[1234] That such was the motive, rather than the protection of Spain from the infection of heresy, is inferable from a sentence of the Granada tribunal, in 1574, condemning to reconciliation and life-long galley-service Jean Moreno, a Frenchman, resident in Málaga, because he had warned some Protestant sailors not to enter the port of Almería.[1235] When there was prospect of a fat confiscation, indeed, the Inquisition paid little respect to the justice of the case or to the parties who might suffer. There was a long dispute between Rome and Madrid over two cargoes of alum, which the papal camera was sending to England, when the ships were seized and the cargoes sequestrated by the tribunal of Seville, on the ground that the English crews were heretics.[1236]
This barbarous policy necessarily made itself felt in the cost of foreign commodities, especially after the troubles in the Netherlands had cut off or reduced that portion of the carrying trade. Under this pressure, in 1597, an exception was made in favor of the Hansa. Instructions were issued by the Suprema that, when its ships arrived with merchandise, the persons in them were not to be interrogated about their religion, nor on that account were the ships or cargoes to be sequestrated or confiscated, unless while in port they had offended against the Catholic faith and, in such case, only the property of delinquents was to be seized; search, however, for prohibited books was to be made, as was customary with Catholic vessels.[1237] There was also an approach to admitting the Dutch, in a royal order of February 27, 1603, providing that Holland vessels and crews, bearing passports from the Archdukes of the Netherlands, were to be allowed entrance to Spanish ports, and their persons and property were to be secure, but this was revoked, December 11, 1604, subject to the twelve months’ notice provided in the order.[1238]
A treaty of peace with England, covering this matter, was ratified by James I, August 29/19, 1604 and by Philip III, June 16, 1605. During this interval, in November, 1604, an English ship, with a crew of twenty men, coming for a load of corn, touched at Messina and then at Palermo. In the latter port it was visited by the officials of the Inquisition, when the men admitted that they were Protestants and wished to live in that faith. They were all arrested and appealed to the viceroy, the Duke of Feria. He was powerless save to write a private letter in which he declared that the arrest was a disservice to the king and tended to destroy the treaty agreed upon, wherefore the Inquisition ought to dissemble and treat the heretics well, for the public good. The inquisitors thereupon assembled ten consultors, reaching the conclusion that the Englishmen could be liberated only on condition of giving ample security that they would go to Spain and present themselves before the inquisitor-general. For strangers this was a virtual impossibility, and it doubtless proved to be so for, in 1605, we hear of certain Englishmen, who had been admitted to penance with the sanbenito and required to live for two years in certain monasteries for instruction in the faith; they had contrived to escape, but were tracked and found on board a French ship, without their sanbenitos. As the tribunal did not care to support them, they were ordered to be distributed separately to monasteries in the mountains, far from the sea, where they were, for ten years, to perform labor without pay.[1239]
When such irrational cruelty was habitual, international comity and commercial interests alike demanded that a curb should be placed on the irresponsibility of the Inquisition. Accordingly, in the English treaty of 1604, Article 21 provided that the vassals of King James, coming to or residing in the Netherlands or Spain, should not be molested or disturbed on account of matters of conscience, so long as they gave no occasion for scandal, and that corresponding instructions should be issued by the king. This Philip did, under the same date of June 15, 1605, ordering that English subjects should not be held accountable for acts prior to their coming to Spain. While in Spain they were not to be compelled to enter churches but, if entering voluntarily, due respect must be paid to the Venerable Sacrament and, if it was met on the street, they must kneel, or take another street or enter a house. If any one were prosecuted for contravention of these rules, only his own property was to be seized, and not a vessel or cargo, or the goods of others in his charge, and to the observance of all this the king pledged his royal faith and word. The Suprema had previously, December 11, 1604, issued instructions similar to those of 1597 for the Hansa; on July 14, 1605, it transmitted to the tribunals the articles of the treaty, but it seems to have objected to the royal declaration, for it delayed until October 8th embodying its provisions in a carta acordada.[1240]
FOREIGN HERETICS
This was too reasonable to be acceptable to Spanish fanaticism. Archbishop Ribera, in 1608, varied his efforts for Morisco expulsion with an earnest appeal to the king, expressing the grief which he had never ceased to feel since he heard of the peace with England, fearing, as he did, the offence given to God which would bring many evils on Spain. His affliction had increased in view of the excesses committed by the English in Valencia, living publicly in their religion and causing great scandal and evil example to the faithful and, at much length and with many instances, he proved that peace with infidels was forbidden by Holy Writ. This memorial was duly considered in the Council of State, when the Comendador Mayor of Leon reported that the king had ordered the inquisitor-general to be notified, so that he might instruct the tribunals to exercise great vigilance and to punish all who gave occasion for scandal.[1241]
When, in 1609, the twelve years’ truce was concluded with the United Provinces, the Dutch naturally claimed the same privileges as the English, and these were embodied in Article 7 of the treaty.[1242] The Inquisition did not submit quietly to this restriction on its powers and, in 1612, it issued a carta acordada, repeated in 1616, asserting that these privileges applied only to transient strangers, and that those who were resident and kept houses were subject to the tribunals in all matters of faith like any Spanish subjects; it invoked, moreover, an old regulation of 1581, ordering special watch to be kept on them, so that what they did in private as well as in public might be known, full reports being sent to the Suprema. In 1620 it revived another instruction of 1581 forbidding foreigners in the seaports to keep inns or lodging houses.[1243] Whether any trouble arose from these arbitrary constructions of international compacts does not appear, but at least they manifested a desire to render the position of foreign heretics as precarious and uncomfortable as possible.