A History of the Inquisition of Spain; vol. 3

by Henry Charles Lea

The trade in books suffered especially. It evidently was regarded as a thing to be restricted as far as possible, and was subject to any caprice of the authorities. In the sixteenth century orders were sometimes sent to special ports to forward all packages of books unopened and finally this was adopted as a universal rule, the whole foreign book-trade thus passing through the hands of the Suprema. A carta acordada of June 17, 1666, complains of the inobservance of these instructions, which must be obeyed by the commissioners at all the ports; the carriers must be bound under a penalty to return, within a fixed time, the receipt of the secretary of the Suprema, and a separate letter of advice must inform the Suprema who he is and at what tavern in Madrid he is accustomed to lodge.[1345] No trade could be profitably carried on which was subject to such vexatious and costly interference, while the Suprema was constantly scolding the tribunals for their negligence.

How their ignorant scrupulousness affected trade may be guessed by an incident occurring at Barcelona in 1666. A bookseller of that city imported a number of copies of a book just printed in Lyons—a Pharmacopœia Medico-Chemica, by Johannes Schoderius, M.D., Physician in ordinary to the Republic of Frankfurt a/M. In the Index of 1640, the inquisitors found, among authors of the first class, the name of Joan. Schroderus, qualified as “Philosophus et Theologus German. Luther. August. Confess.,” all of whose works were condemned. They seized the Pharmacopœias and reported to the Suprema, which ordered a copy forwarded. It was duly submitted to calificadores and five months afterwards the tribunal was notified that the books might be delivered to the owner.[1346]

The internal traffic in books was trammelled by the closest supervision. In 1645 the Valencia tribunal was instructed to issue no licences to take books to Castile without a formal order from the Suprema.[1347] While their departure was thus closely scrutinized, a second inspection was required on their arrival, as appears from a petition, in 1665, of Juan Antonio Bonet, bookseller of Madrid, representing that, in 1663, he had forwarded to Miguel Paysso, a bookseller of Barcelona, certain books, among which the Barcelona tribunal found and seized a copy of the works of Quevedo, in two volumes, which he prays to be released, as it was printed in Madrid, where it enjoyed free circulation.[1348]

It was the same with exports. In 1573 the books of some frailes going to the Canaries require a special order from the Suprema to commissioners in Seville, Granada, Córdova and Badajoz to pass them if there were none prohibited among them.[1349] The instructions of 1707 provide that, when books are to be exported, lists of them are to be submitted to the revisers that they may retain any that are prohibited or are unknown to them and thus require examination.[1350] A transaction in 1788 shows that a special permit was required for each shipment of books to the colonies, and a royal order of August 8, 1807, prescribed that the examination should be made conjointly by the commissioners of the Inquisition, the royal revisor and a delegate of the juez de imprentas.[1351] Even books in transit were subject to the watchful eye of the Inquisition, as we learn when, in 1560, some that had belonged to Cardinal Pole were shipped through Spain to Venice and were diligently investigated.[1352] Books in fact were regarded with almost an insane fear, as the most dangerous of all articles of commerce, and the more thoroughly that Spain could be prevented from knowing what men were thinking and doing in foreign lands, the safer it was for society.

The regulations adopted for importations were well adapted to protect the Spanish intellect from such dangers. The requirement of sending all packages to the Suprema unopened seems to have been abandoned, but other obstacles were sufficiently onerous. All books, with which the commissioner of the Inquisition was not acquainted, had to be submitted to calificadores or sent to the Suprema for decision. As foreign books, especially the new ones, came under this category, the consequent delays and the risk of prohibition exposed the importing bookseller to hardships rendering trade almost impracticable. Thus, in 1772, Pierre Crozier, a bookseller of Valencia, imported a copy of the Essais de Morale of Pierre Nicole. It had to be referred to the Suprema, which, by letter of August 29th, ordered it to be examined and reported upon. After the lapse of four years we find Crozier still begging the tribunal to decide whether it will be permitted, as well as copies of the Discours de Fleuri and the Histoire de la Bible of Royaumont. If prohibited, he asks permission to sell them to some one who holds a licence or to return them to France.[1353] How much longer he had to wait we can only conjecture. These impediments to importation were aggravated by a regulation of the Royal Council, in 1784, requiring a licence before a new foreign book could be exposed for sale and, out of the small number on which the dealer could venture to try the market, he had, when applying for a licence, to give two copies and to pay the examining censor a real per sheet for reading it, with the prospect that if the licence was obtained, the Inquisition might subsequently prohibit it.[1354]

SUPERVISION OF IMPORTS

The books seized were detained by the tribunals, and their fate is revealed in a letter from that of Valencia, July 28, 1798, in answer to orders from the Suprema to return to Don Josef Joaquin de Soria a copy of the Lettres Provinciales in four languages, and to send to Madrid, under seal, the books brought from Holland (some ten years before) by Don Pedro Antonio Casas. The tribunal explained at much length its inability to comply. The practice of entering the name of the owner in books seized is recent. The accumulation of prohibited books is large, and the room in which most of them are stored is so hot and so infested with book-worms that in a fortnight a book is pierced through and through. If those of Casas were placed there or left in their boxes there would not be a leaf remaining. Besides, a bookseller was formerly employed to come monthly and dust them, and he carried away all that he wanted, as appeared in his prosecution on that charge in 1789. This explains why only a portion of Casas’s books can be found; as to Soria’s Lettres Provinciales, two copies of that edition have been found, but each has a different owner’s name.[1355] Verily, the Inquisition was the grave-yard of books.

The outbreak of the French Revolution brought fresh activity and redoubled watchfulness for the exclusion of dangerous literature. Politics and religion were inextricably intermingled, and the revolutionary propaganda was as much dreaded as the religious had been in the sixteenth century. In 1792, the Suprema ordered all the tribunals to be especially zealous in preventing the introduction of the books, which the French were industriously disseminating for the purpose of exciting rebellion and imperilling religion and the monarchy. With this it circulated a royal order commanding special examination of books and papers from foreign parts. Wherever there was a custom-house, there were two revisors appointed, one royal and the other inquisitorial, who were to examine together all books and papers arriving. These were to be divided into three parts; those allowed currency and unknown works on history and science, which could be delivered to the owners; those included in the Index, to be retained by the inquisitorial revisor, and those unknown and suspected, to be kept by the royal revisor, until the king’s pleasure could be ascertained. Thus the forces of the State and the Inquisition were marshalled together in defence of the faith and of the crown; unfortunately they did not always work harmoniously for, in 1805 these instructions were reissued with urgent appeals for cordial coöperation.[1356] It would be useless to follow in detail the numerous exhortations to vigilance in the succeeding years. In spite of precautions, foreign ideas drifted through the custom-houses and embodied themselves in the Constitution of 1812 and, when the reaction came under the Restoration, the supervision of importations was confided exclusively to the Inquisition. In 1816 a question arose as to the functions of the subdelegado de Imprentas and the revisor Real, when Fernando VII decided that it pertained alone to the tribunals to decide what books should pass through the custom-houses, and that their permission was necessary.[1357]

If these efforts to control the legitimate importation of books exercised an unfortunate influence on the intellectual development of Spain, its commercial interests suffered likewise from the precautions adopted to prevent the smuggling of the dreaded literature. These were known as the Visitas de Navios, which rendered the ports of Spain an object of dislike to all merchantmen, whether of native or foreign origin. Their systematization is attributable to the Protestant scare of 1558, when no means were deemed too radical which should serve to defeat the propagandist energy ascribed to the Spanish refugees and their heretical allies.