A History of the Inquisition of Spain; vol. 3

by Henry Charles Lea

ESTATES OF THE DEAD

Death afforded an opportunity not neglected of expurgating private libraries. When the owner died, the Inquisition stepped in to investigate and control the disposition of his books. In 1651, it would seem that all books had to pass through its hands for, in the case of Don Alonso de la Torre, the Suprema orders the Valencia tribunal to forward to it the packages delivered by the heirs, the prohibited ones separate from those approved.[1335] The instructions of 1707 apparently limit this interference to cases of sale, for they provide that when, on account of death or other cause, a library is sold, the booksellers must furnish the revisor with a list of all books and their prices, so that prohibited or suspected ones may be surrendered, for which the booksellers can take receipts.[1336] In 1748 the case of Doctor Teodoro Tomás, canon of the cathedral of Valencia, indicates that the executors had to render to the tribunal a detailed statement under oath of the disposition made of all books and papers. The prohibited books were given to the Dominican convent, which had a licence enabling it to hold them, and the rest were sold to Juan Bautista Malet and Manuel Cortés, booksellers. The papers were also accounted for—those pertaining to cathedral affairs were delivered to the chapter, those which seemed useless were burnt and the servants sold some to an apothecary.[1337]

In this case the necessary preliminary of submitting an inventory to a revisor had evidently been complied with. When this was omitted the resultant trouble is exemplified in the library of Gregorio Mayans y Siscar, the most eminent man of letters of his day, who died in 1781. His library was large and valuable, and his widow sought to make the most of it for his children. She was a pious woman but through ignorance did not observe the requisite formalities. She sold a large portion to the Augustinian convent, which had a licence to hold prohibited books, and when she learned that this was unlawful she made great efforts to get it back; the Augustinians resisted but were finally obliged to submit. Then she applied to the Suprema for a licence to sell the prohibited books, which was referred to the Valencia tribunal. It replied, November 8, 1803, that the Augustinian provincial had exhibited the licence, and had been told that the convent had a right to hold them, but the widow had no right to sell them. The inquisitor sympathized with her, but pointed out that to grant her request would open the door to fictitious transactions, and he recommended that at most she should be allowed to sell those which the Augustinians had bought, for there were others. The library was large; it had taken long to make an inventory and still longer to find a revisor to go over it and note the prohibited books. This, however, had at last been accomplished, and the widow had been furnished with two lists—one of prohibited books to be surrendered to the Inquisition, and the other of those which must be expurgated before she could sell them. The Suprema, before deciding, required to see a list of the prohibited books sold to the Augustinians, which was duly furnished, and we may hope that, in the end, the widow was able to dispose of her husband’s books, although the proceeds must have been wofully diminished by the fees and expenses and the confiscation of those prohibited.[1338] There was scant encouragement in Spain for scholars to accumulate the means of study and research.

While this case was dragging along, irrepressible zeal in pursuit of prohibited books threatened a foreign complication. Leonhardt Schuck, the Dutch consul at Alicante, died, leaving the French vice-consul as his executor. The house and effects were duly sealed with the royal seal during the execution of certain legal formalities, but the commissioner of the Inquisition called on the governor to remove the seal and deliver the keys to him, so that he might inventory the books, papers and prints, for he was informed that there were prohibited articles of all three kinds. The governor refused until he could consult the king, when the commissioner at night broke the seal, made his way in, compiled an inventory and replaced the seal as best he could. The Dutch ambassador complained to Carlos IV, and the minister Urquijo, who was unfriendly to the Inquisition, took occasion to issue a carta orden of October 11, 1799, severely rebuking it for this and other similar occurrences, which had contributed greatly to increase its evil reputation abroad.[1339]

This supervision over the libraries of the dead continued under the Restoration. In 1815 orders were sent to all commissioners to see that no books belonging to estates were sold at auction until exact lists were submitted to the tribunal and its permission was obtained and, in 1817, when Fray Raymundo García, prior of the convent of Montesa at Onda, died, the Valencia tribunal had his library examined with the result of finding quite a number of prohibited books, mostly of a Jansenist character.[1340] Despite the ceaseless vigilance of the Inquisition, the seekers after forbidden literature took the risk of gratifying their longings.

PREVENTION OF SMUGGLING

This forbidden literature was necessarily foreign. Under the preliminary restrictions on printing, which weighed with such deadly pressure on authorship, and under such vigilance as that which prompted the Suprema, in 1602, to order the tribunals to instruct their commissioners to seize all new books, or those of new authors or new editions, and report about them without delivering them to any one,[1341] it was impossible that native works of dangerous tendency could reach the public, and censorship was confined to theological subtilties or to trivialities. The only real danger to be guarded against came from abroad, and the Inquisition’s most effective service to obscurantism was rendered in the quarantine which it established to preserve the nation from the infection of new ideas. To this were directed the unremitting energies of the state, which found in the Holy Office its most useful instrument. We have seen above how early it took the alarm in 1521. In 1532 the Royal Council adopted the heroic measure of prohibiting the importation and sale of all recently printed books[1342]—a measure which, if enforced, would have cut off Spain from all foreign literature, without preventing the introduction of heretical books concealed in packages of other merchandise. If not speedily repealed, it at least soon became obsolete, and the function of guarding the land from the importation of heretical matter naturally fell into the hands of the Inquisition, which alone possessed the authority and the ability to decide between what was innocent and what was obnoxious. This function consisted of two duties—that of separating the wheat from the tares in books regularly imported through the custom-houses, and in the suppression of smuggling.

Precisely at what time the Inquisition undertook these duties it would be impossible to say, but its activity and organization of the work would seem to date from the Lutheran scare of 1557 and 1558. In a letter of May 12, 1558, from the Suprema to Charles V, it declares that all the inquisitors had been instructed to use the greatest vigilance at the sea-ports and along the French frontier, but such was the audacity of the heretics that this did not suffice, as was proved by the number of books daily seized in spite of the most rigorous punishment.[1343] So, in its report of September 9th to the pope, it stated that to prevent the importation of heretic books, inquisitors with their officials had been established along the coasts and in the places of greatest trade, which was a falsehood for the purpose of obtaining papal sanction for despoiling the Church, since no new tribunals were established, though the existing ones were urged to special vigilance. How this was exercised is detailed in a letter of October 25th from the Seville inquisitors, in response to an exhortation to diligence. They declare that all possible care was taken; instructions had been given for the visiting of all ships on arrival; no merchandise of any kind could be discharged or opened without the presence of a commissioner, who saw that there were no books in the packages or, if there were, they were sent to the tribunal. All packages for Seville were sealed and not opened save in the presence of their inspector, to see whether there were books enclosed. All books arriving were delivered to the tribunal and examined, when those found to be prohibited or suspicious were detained; it had not come to their knowledge that any one had received and distributed books without this previous examination.[1344]

This shows that already the system had been established, which continued with little modification to the end. All packages of books were carefully inspected, those prohibited or subject to expurgation, and the new and unknown ones regarded as suspicious were removed and sent to the tribunal to await its decision, which usually inferred consultation with the Suprema and indefinite delay. Every package of merchandise, moreover—box, bale or barrel—was opened in presence of the commissioner in search of concealed books. Thus the whole importing commerce of Spain passed through the hands of the Inquisition, whose officials employed in the business were unpaid, except by the fees which they could exact from merchants, leading to interminable squabbles, insufferable delays and grievous impediments to the commercial activity of the nation.

SUPERVISION OF BOOK-TRADE