A History of the Inquisition of Spain; vol. 3

by Henry Charles Lea

It was natural that the use made of the Bible by the Reformers should cause the revival of these obsolete prohibitions. Even before the compilation of the Indexes, we find Inquisitor-general Tavera granting to the Duchess of Soma, wife of the Admiral of Naples, a licence to keep and read a Bible in Italian, but the permission is limited to one year, showing how carefully it was guarded.[1412] It was therefore a matter of course that the Index of 1551 should contain a prohibition of the Bible in Spanish or any other vulgar tongue.[1413] This zeal was intensified by the versions which the Spanish refugees—Francisco de Enzinas, Juan Pérez, Cipriano de Valera and Cassiodoro de Reina—perfected and strove to introduce into Spain, but the prohibition was not confined to these. It extended to all fragments and extracts, however orthodox the rendering, as though to keep the unlearned ignorant of the existence of the Bible, or at least to make them understand that it was a wholly forbidden book. The Index of 1559 condemns twenty-two editions of the Hours of the Virgin in Romance, together with all others containing similar superstitions, but the real objection was the passages of Scripture contained in them, and, in 1573, all Hours in Romance were forbidden, as the Council of Toulouse had done in 1229.[1414] The extreme care with which the public was guarded from the Bible is seen in the 1583 Index of Quiroga, which, in forbidding all portions of Scripture in Romance, only excepts the fragments embodied in the canon of the mass, and the texts which Catholic writers may cite and explain, provided they are not printed alone but are in sermons and other works of edification.[1415] So unreasoning was this jealousy that, according to Azpilcueta, there were earnest men who desired to suppress vernacular versions of the Creed, the Paternoster, the Ave Maria and the Salve Regina, a zeal which found practical expression, in 1674, when the Inquisition prohibited a work entitled Exercicios de Devocion because it contained translations of the Miserere, the Magnificat, the Te Deum and the Athanasian Symbol.[1416] The people were to be kept in such profound ignorance that the Sotomayor Index of 1640 prohibits, not only the vernacular Bible and all its parts, but even summaries and compendiums of it and, as though to render it hateful, in the Edicts of Faith, it was classed with the Koran and other Mahometan books, the possession of which was to be denounced to the Inquisition.[1417] It had to watch not only over its Spanish flock, but over its converts in the Indies, when it found that the English Society for the Propagation of the Gospel had caused versions to be made in the Indian tongues and was circulating them in America. This unexpected missionary work called for fresh exertion and, in 1710, we find Clement XI congratulating Inquisitor-general Ibañez on his efforts and urging him to persistent watchfulness.[1418]

This treatment of the Bible seems to have piqued the curiosity of the intelligent for, in 1747, Inquisitor-general Prado y Cuesta complains of the inordinate desire of many persons to have it in the vernacular, but, among the mass of the people it produced the impression desired. In 1791, Villanueva tells us that they, who once sought it, now regard it with horror and detestation; many care nothing for it and more are ignorant of its very existence.[1419] Yet, within a decade of Prado’s utterance, the policy of the Church changed. Although, in 1713, Clement XI, in the bull Unigenitus, had condemned the use of the Bible by the laity as a Jansenist error, yet, only forty-four years later, the Congregation of the Index, in 1757, conceded the use of vernacular versions, if approved by the Holy See and accompanied with orthodox comments.[1420] This was followed, in 1771, by a version of the Acts of the Apostles by Catenacci, dedicated to Clement XIV and, in 1778, by the brief In tanta librorum, in which Pius VI approved of a translation of the whole Bible by Archbishop Martini.[1421] The Spanish Inquisition promptly followed the papal example. In 1782, Inquisitor-general Beltran issued a decree reciting that ample cause had existed for exceeding the Tridentine rule, but these causes had ceased and, in view of the usefulness of the sacred text, the Spanish rule was modified to conform to that of Trent, to the decree of the Congregation of 1757 and to the brief of 1778.[1422] In 1783 the Suprema ordered that the French version of Le Maître de Saci should be freely allowed[1423] and, in 1790, there appeared in Valencia a complete Spanish translation by Scio de San Miguel, which was speedily and repeatedly reprinted. No such evils have followed as were dreaded for two centuries, showing how much wiser would have been the policy of meeting the heretic Scriptures with an orthodox version, fortified with appropriate comments.

EXTENSION OF JURISDICTION

The same jealousy of admitting the vulgar to too great a familiarity with spiritual things showed itself with regard to works of devotion and edification. In 1570 a consulta of the Suprema to the inquisitor-general recommended that the catechism should not be printed in Romance.[1424] In the Preface to the Index of 1583, the prohibition of works by men of the highest Christian repute, such as Fisher of Rochester, Thomas More, Gerónimo Osorio, Francisco de Borja, Luis de Granada, Juan de Avila and others is explained, partly by books having been falsely attributed to them, partly by occasional incautious passages, and partly by their not being fitted for circulation in the vulgar tongue. The case of the Obras del Cristiano of St. Francisco de Borja is illustrative. In the Index of 1559 it is simply prohibited. After his death, in 1572, as General of the Society of Jesus, Quiroga, in the Index of 1583, added “only in Romance or other vulgar tongue.” He was beatified in 1624, but the canonization proceedings were delayed in consequence of his book being in the Spanish Index and, in 1662, the Jesuit Procurator-general applied to the Inquisition to rubricate the leaves of a copy and send it to the Congregation of Rites, so as to remove the impediment, but it was not until 1671 that he was finally enrolled in the catalogue of saints.[1425] The effort to suppress mysticism manifested itself, about 1620, in numerous edicts to suppress books of mystic devotion and lives of men and women who evidently were mystics.

Books of ritual were scrutinized with the same captiousness. June 15, 1568, the Pontificals printed in Dueñas and Valladolid were ordered to be seized. In 1583 some pernicious errors were discovered in the Breviary printed in Salamanca, in 1575. Even books so elementary as cartillas, or primers, could not escape. A carta acordada of November 6, 1577, alludes to a previous one of June 14th, ordering the suppression of cartillas containing an article entitled “Castigo y doctrina de Caton.” Since then, it goes on to say, there have been found in other cartillas various matters pernicious and contrary to the teaching of the Church, especially in those printed by Juan de la Plaza in Toledo, wherefore all cartillas of every kind are to be seized, in the shops and in the hands of children going to school, and orders are consequently given that no one, under pains and censures, shall hold, read, or sell them.[1426]

There was little, indeed, to which the Inquisition could not extend the jurisdiction of its censorship. The fifth Council of Lateran had alluded to the danger to the public peace arising from libellous attacks on individuals, as one of the reasons for the examination and licensing of books before printing, but this was a purely secular matter, and the faculties conferred on the inquisitor-general looked solely to the suppression of heresy. Clement VIII, however, in his Index of 1596, included, as subjects of condemnation, defamatory memorials against religion or princes, and this opened the way to much else. It is true that an experienced writer assures us that, although such writing can be suppressed by edict, it cannot be under pain of excommunication, but only as a command under pain of mortal sin, and that the Inquisition cannot proceed against the author unless the faith is involved.[1427]

These limitations, however, were easily overpassed. We have seen (Vol. I, p. 488) how Inquisitor-general Pacheco, in 1623, condemned some legal arguments in defence of the Chancellery of Granada and commenced prosecutions of the counsel who had drawn them up. His successor Zapata, in 1627, was a trifle more cautious in a conflict wherein the Inquisition was not concerned. The Universities of Salamanca, Valladolid and Alcalá united in an attack on the Jesuits and their new college, when the Inquisition ordered the paper suppressed on the ground that it was anonymous and harsh in style. Then Salamanca came forward and acknowledged the authorship; the Jesuit procurator still asked for its suppression, but the Inquisition decided that it had not the calidad de oficio and withdrew the prohibition, but still assumed authority to require the removal of asperities. Philip IV was dissatisfied, as he favored the Jesuits, and asked in what this case differed from others in which Pacheco had suppressed similar papers.[1428]

In 1687, the tribunal of Toledo, in a quarrel with the Carthusian house of el Paular, suppressed four memorials of its adversaries to the king, and punished the printer, Lucas Antonio Bedmar with four years’ exile from Toledo and Madrid; the grounds alleged were that they were scandalous, insulting, untrue and defamatory of those mentioned in them; there was no assumption that the faith was in any way involved and it was simply an expeditious way of putting an opponent out of court.[1429] Other similar cases will come before us presently and meanwhile we may observe that there was even no scruple in prosecuting individuals, in matters with which the Inquisition seemingly had no concern or jurisdiction, as in the case of Fray Bonifaz de San Pablo, tried in 1791, by the Barcelona tribunal, for attempting to print a satirical paper on his own Carmelite Order, and in that of Josefa and Jacinto López, prosecuted by Toledo, in 1797, on suspicion of having posted some pasquinades, characterized as “infamatorios y hereticales.”[1430] The powers of the Inquisition were so elastic that they included the privilege of self-definition; none dared to call them in question, and it seems have been invoked to supply any deficiency in the ordinary machinery of justice—or of injustice.

THE REGALIAS

Still less concerned with heresy was an important field in which the censorial functions of the Inquisition were employed by the crown, in its frequent struggles with the Holy See. In the middle ages papal domination encroached in many ways on the prerogatives of the temporal ruler, encroachments submitted to, with more or less resistance, by the loosely organized feudal monarchies. As these, in the sixteenth century, transformed themselves into absolutism, it was natural that they should grow restive, and the Reformation, which divided Europe into two hostile religious camps, gave to those sovereigns who remained faithful to Rome the opportunity of advancing their claims as the price of their support. The Spanish kings had always been distinguished by their resistance to papal pretensions and though, throughout the sixteenth century, they sternly kept their people in the Roman obedience, they were none the less resolute in asserting the regalías, or royal prerogatives, which in many ways conflicted with what Rome asserted as its rights. In the struggles thence arising, valuable assistance was derived from the works of legists, learned in the imperial jurisprudence and in the fueros, and these regalistas became especially obnoxious to the Holy See. Rome has never hesitated to use the powerful aid of the Index in support of Ultramontanism, and it took special care to condemn and prohibit the books of the regalistas. It was impossible for a temporal sovereign to allow the suppression of works written in defence of his sovereignty, and the Inquisition, at least for a time, willingly supported the crown in this, not from loyalty, but because it afforded the opportunity of declaring and maintaining its independence of the hated Congregations of the Inquisition and of the Index.