A History of the Inquisition of Spain; vol. 3

by Henry Charles Lea

SECULAR LEGISLATION

All this was in furtherance of a savage pragmática evidently motived by the Lutheran scare. It was issued September 7, 1558, by the Infanta Juana in the name of Philip II, and shows that the civil power coöperated with the Inquisition, while providing an effective machinery for a state censorship. It recited that, in spite of the law of 1502 and the labors of inquisitors and bishops, there were many heretical works in circulation, and that foreign heretics were making great efforts thus to disseminate their doctrines, while there were also many useless and immoral books, so that the Córtes had petitioned for a remedy. It was therefore ordered, under penalty of death and confiscation, that no bookseller or other person should sell or keep any book condemned by the Inquisition, and all such books should be publicly burnt. The Index of prohibited books must be printed and every bookseller must keep a copy exposed, where the public could consult it. No books in Romance printed abroad, even in the kingdoms of Aragon, were to be imported, under the same terrible penalty, unless they had a printed licence from the Royal Council, but books in Romance previously printed abroad, and not prohibited by the Inquisition, were to be presented to the local magistrates, who were to send lists of them to the Royal Council for decision, pending which they were not to be kept for sale under pain of confiscation and exile. Moreover, a general inspection was ordered of all books in the kingdom; those in book-shops and private libraries by the bishops, in conjunction with royal officials and universities, and those in religious houses by the superiors of the Orders. Everything regarded as suspicious or immoral was to be sequestrated, until judgement should be passed upon it by the Royal Council, and this was to be repeated annually.

Existing and foreign books being thus provided for, a stringent censorship of the press was organized. Death and confiscation were decreed for any one who should give out for printing a book without first submitting it to the Royal Council for examination when, if found unobjectionable, a licence would be issued. To prevent alterations, every page of the MS. must be signed by a secretary of the royal chamber, who must rubricate every correction and state at the end the number of pages and corrections. After printing, the MS. must be returned with one or two printed copies for comparison. Every book must have in front the licence, the tassa or price at which it was sold, the privilege, if there was one, and the names of author, printer and place of publication. New editions were subject to the same regulations, but legal documents and official papers of the Inquisition and the Cruzada Indulgence were excepted. Even writing was subjected to the same restrictions as printing, for death and confiscation were threatened for all who should own or exhibit to others a MS. on any religious subject without submitting it to the Council, which should either license it or destroy it. This ferocious law was confirmed, in 1627, by Philip IV and remained unrepealed until the Revolution, its enforcement being rigorously enjoined by Carlos IV, in 1804.[1303] That any one suffered death for its violation is unlikely, and inquisitorial trials of theologians show that they accumulated masses of papers on religious subjects without thought of submitting them to the Royal Council, but the impediments which it threw in the way of authorship were rigidly enforced and coöperated with the Inquisition in exercising a most repressive influence on the intellectual progress of Spain.

It was not difficult to secure from the papacy its aid in rendering this censorship effective. The Suprema, in its letter of September 9, 1558, to Paul IV respecting the Lutheran development, called attention to the negligence of confessors in requiring their penitents to surrender prohibited books and to denounce offenders, and Paul, in a brief of January 5, 1559, commanded all confessors in the Spanish dominions to enquire of penitents whether they owned or read such works, or knew of any one owning or printing or selling them, when absolution was to be refused, unless the books were surrendered or the culprits denounced. For obedience to this, on the part of confessors, remission of sins was promised, while negligence was threatened with fines, deprivation of functions and benefice and disability for reinstatement, penalties which were discretional with the inquisitor-general.[1304]

CAPTIOUS EXPURGATION

Thus papal, royal and inquisitorial powers were concentrated in the effort to purify the land of heretical literature. By the Edicts of Faith and by the confessional the whole population was enlisted as spies and informers on those who contravened the prohibitions, which rapidly succeeded each other in the inquisitorial edicts, and all readers of books were required to denounce any passages which might seem to them suspicious or offensive. It is probably to this latter source that are attributable most of the incredibly trivial expurgations with which the later Indexes are burdened. How it sometimes fared with authors, indubitably orthodox but careless in expression, is exemplified in the case of the Maestro Fray Hernando de Santiago who, in 1597, published at Salamanca, of course after the preliminary censorship, his Consideraciones sobre todos los Domingos y Fiestas de la Quaresma. It was denounced to the Inquisition as containing some heretical propositions and many that were erroneous and scandalous. The Toledo tribunal summoned him and after examination voted to suspend his case with a reprimand and order to be more reticent in his sermons and to write no more scandalous books, which was an admission that the work contained nothing especially objectionable. The Suprema, however, set the vote aside and ordered his trial to be vigorously pushed and all his papers to be seized. A struggle, prolonged until 1602, ensued over an infinite number of expressions to which the calificadores took exception, resulting in his being severely reprimanded in the presence of representatives of all the religious Orders, with banishment from Castile and suspension from preaching for three years, the first year of which was to be passed in reclusion in the monastery of Cuenca as a penitent. From his book were to be expurgated all the passages noted as objectionable by the calificadores, and the list of these as printed in the Indexes is formidable in length rather than in quality, for captious criticism had wreaked itself on the minutest points. It was justified in correcting “Assur King of Persia” to “Assur King of Assyria;” possibly also in altering “the day when Peter renounced Christ” to “denied Christ,” but only slavish adulation could require that “the day when a tyrant king” should be changed to “tyrant captain.” Still, the indomitable maestro was not silenced, for in the following year, 1603, he issued another book, Consideraciones sobre los Evangelios de los Santos, for which he escaped prosecution, though his book likewise found its way into the Index, with, however, a smaller array of expurgations.[1305]

Inquisitorial censorship, it will thus be seen, by no means confined itself to suppressing the works of foreign heretics, for which it was primarily instituted. Had it done so, it would have exercised a sufficiently benumbing influence on Spanish intelligence, for it excluded many works because of their authors rather than of their contents and it never was able to settle definitely the troublesome questions arising from works of high scientific and intellectual merit, in which the authorship or an occasional passage might offend the hyper-sensitiveness so zealously cultivated. This was sufficiently restrictive on culture, not only in itself but in the obstruction which, as we shall see, it imposed on the introduction of all books from abroad, but even more unfortunate in its influence was the censorship extended over the whole field of native literature, interposing barriers on authorship seeking publicity, and exposing even the most orthodox writers to the danger of seeing their works suppressed, or to the humiliation of having them disfigured with blotted passages in which the perverse ingenuity of some theological expert might detect possible danger to the unwary.

Yet, to do the Spanish Inquisition justice, in this it was more considerate than the Roman censorship. In 1564 appeared the Index of Pius IV, known as the Tridentine Index. This is the basis of all succeeding Roman Indexes, which are strictly of prohibited books—that is, all books, to which exception of any kind could be taken, were prohibited, whether their errors were systematic or only occasional. No indication was given as to what were the objectionable points, although the author, by humble supplication to the Congregation of the Index, might obtain information and reprint his book with corrections, at the risk of its being again prohibited.[1306] The Spanish Inquisition was more laborious, for it prepared Expurgatory Indexes, in which, when books were not absolutely prohibited, the objectionable passages were designated and, when these were borrado, or blotted out, the book could be circulated.

THE INDEXES

Working thus on different lines, there was little harmony between Spain and the Holy See. In fact, as we shall have occasion to observe, the Inquisition asserted entire independence of the Roman censorship, disregarding its prohibitions and issuing its own without reference to Rome. This commenced early, as is shown in some curiously contradictory utterances, in 1568, respecting the Tridentine Index. February 7th, a carta acordada orders the observance of the Spanish Index of 1559; then another, of June 14th, recites that the Tridentine Index is not observed and that persons are using books prohibited in it, wherefore inquisitors are to order it to be obeyed and to tell preachers to urge this from their pulpits; finally a third carta, a fortnight later, on June 29th, practically revokes this by commanding that the Index of 1559 is the only one to be followed.[1307]