A History of the Inquisition of Spain; vol. 3

by Henry Charles Lea

USED AGAINST THE CROWN

The Inquisition had thus, by supporting the royal jurisdiction against the papal claims, achieved its independence of Rome, but it was fighting for its own hand and, when its object was attained, its allegiance to the Church outweighed its allegiance to the sovereign. When the question was between its own jurisdiction and that of the crown, its attitude was most decisive. The condemnation by Pacheco of the arguments of Don Luis de Gubiel, in the competencia with the Chancellery of Granada, was not an isolated instance of this. In 1637, there was a bitter controversy between the Seville tribunal and the royal Audiencia, over the banishment of a familiar by the latter, in the course of which the Suprema ordered the suppression of various arguments prepared in support of the royal jurisdiction, and among them one by Juan Pérez de Lara, the fiscal of the Audiencia, written in the strict line of his duty. To this the Council of Castile took exception, in a consulta complaining that it was of great prejudice to the regalías; the paper contained nothing contrary to the faith, rendering it liable to the censure of the Inquisition, wherefore the Council asked that all the documents suppressed should be examined by disinterested persons, and that the Suprema be ordered in future not to suppress any paper in favor of the royal jurisdiction without preliminary notice to the king. To this temperate expostulation the Suprema replied with lofty disdain. The king was told that he should answer all remonstrances as Charles V did, May 17, 1519, to the Diputados of Aragon—“as an affair of the Inquisition, it is not for us to interfere, nor can the fueros of the kingdom impede what the inquisitor-general does, as it is an ecclesiastical case.” It was astonished that there should be any question as to the power of the Inquisition, established by papal bulls, decrees of councils and inviolable custom, while the rule of the Index extends this power without limitation, at the discretion of the inquisitors. That the regalías had been threatened was easy of disproof, for the peace and prosperity of the king’s dominions were due to the unity of faith procured by the watchful care of the Inquisition. The object of the Council of Castile was to limit the jurisdiction of the Inquisition and to reduce its censorship to a matter of competencias, but the Inquisition alone could decide what belonged to it and what did not belong.[1446]

Such being the temper and spirit of the Holy Office, it is not surprising that, when it had secured its own emancipation from Rome, it should no longer prove an ally of the crown in defence of the regalías. Llorente mentions two authors—Ramos del Manzano and Pedro González de Salcedo, whose works it condemned for defending the royal prerogative.[1447] It could not be depended on for suppressing those which impeached the regalías, and the State, in defending itself, was obliged to resort to its own censorship, as in case of the work entitled “Casos reservados à su Santidad,” attributed to Doctor Francisco Barambio, in 1694. It never appeared in the Index, but a royal auto condemned it as subversive of the regalías and prerogatives of the crown, and ordered its suppression under pain of half confiscation and arbitrary penalties.[1448]

RESTRICTIONS

We have already (Vol. I, pp. 315, 321) seen how, in the eighteenth century, the Inquisition, in the cases of Macanaz and the works of Barclay and Le Vayer, and in that of the Catechism of Mesengui, took sides against the royal prerogative. Although in the former Philip V weakly yielded, Carlos III in the latter, not only temporarily suspended Inquisitor-general Bonifaz, but took steps to protect more thoroughly the crown against papal encroachment, and to limit the censorial powers of the Inquisition. November 27, 1761, he laid down the basis of subsequent legislation in instructions to the Council of State to frame a law adequate to the necessities of the case. In consequence, the Pragmática del Exequatur of January 18, 1762, ordered that no bull, brief or papal letter, addressed to any tribunal, junta, judge or prelate, should be published without having first been presented to the king for his approval by the nuncio, while those for individuals should be submitted to the Royal Council to see whether they affected the Concordat, or prejudiced the regalías or the good customs and usages of the kingdom. This was followed by a cédula of August 18th imposing restrictions on inquisitorial censorship, but both of these were withdrawn by decree of July 15, 1763—a decree obtained by the royal confessor, Padre Eleta, working on the king’s superstition by representing the loss of Havana as an evidence of divine wrath.[1449] This respite, however, was not of long duration. At a junta called, in 1768, to consider matters growing out of the expulsion of the Jesuits, the Counts of Floridablanca and Campomanes presented a memorial calling attention to the surreptitious introduction of several papal briefs, and to the disastrous influence of the censorship in flooding the land with ignorance. The result of the discussion was the re-enactment of the Pragmática del Exequatur, with more enlarged provisions, and a cédula of June 6th providing that the Inquisition should not prohibit any work by a Catholic of good repute, without giving him a hearing or, if he were a foreigner or dead, without appointing for him an advocate of competent character. The circulation of books was not to be suspended under pretext that they were undergoing examination; in those to be expurgated the objectionable passages were to be speedily designated, so that the current reading of them should not be interrupted, and any special propositions condemned were to be clearly indicated, so that they could be expurgated by the owners. Prohibition was to be confined to errors and superstitions and lax opinions prejudicial to religion and morality, and no edict was to be published until it had been approved by the king.[1450]

These reforms were in the spirit of those by which Benedict XIV, in the bull Sollicita ac provida, had endeavored to soften the rigor of the Roman censorship, but they were largely impracticable. They excited lively opposition, especially the provision allowing the circulation of books during the process of examination, and Llorente tells us that, for the most part, the Inquisition eluded their restrictions. It was of course impossible for the king to pass judgement on all the condemnatory edicts which followed each other in rapid succession and were submitted to him without explanation or record of the author having been heard in his defence.[1451] This latter provision however seems to have been observed. In 1775 we find the Suprema sending to Valencia certain conclusions commencing “Sistema phisicum de hominis generatione,” together with the papers concerning their condemnation and the cédula of June 16, 1768, so that the party could be heard in defence.[1452] The author, however, was not allowed to print and circulate his defence, though he might have licence for enough copies to supply the members of the Suprema; in a case in which he distributed them through the universities they were called in and suppressed, and if he attacked the witnesses and calificadores, he was liable to the savage penalties of the bull Si de protegendis.[1453] Yet to the end the author was entitled to a hearing. In a case occurring at Llerena, in 1816, the Suprema instructs the tribunal to suppress a certain pamphlet in the next edict, but it is to ask the author, Dr. Martin Batincas, whether he desires to defend it; if so to furnish him with the censures, but not the names of the calificadores, when the matter will take its regular course. The provision for a defender in the cases of deceased and foreign authors was similarly maintained. In 1816 the Suprema instructed the Madrid tribunal to take up the case of a book entitled “El Niño instruido,” which had been suspended on account of the troubles; now a new edition had appeared, which must be seized and a copy of the censures be furnished to the General of the Barefooted Carmelites; if he should not desire to put forward a defender, the tribunal was to appoint a defensor de oficio. So scrupulously was this observed that, in 1817, a single copy of a French book, printed in 1801, entitled “Du Mariage dans ses rapports avec la Religion et avec les lois nouvelles,” found in possession of Canon Miguel Cortés, was duly condemned by calificadores when Padre Cento was appointed to defend it and, on his refusal, proceedings appear to have been dropped.[1454]

POLITICALLY EMPLOYED

During this later period, the Inquisition and the State were in firm alliance, against their common enemy the Revolution, and the State made full use of the Inquisition as a political instrument, although it had its own elaborate and effective censorship. This employment of the Inquisition was a new development, for in the earlier time, the instances in which inquisitorial censorship was called upon for political service are surprisingly few. In the case of Antonio Pérez, it was inevitable that the Inquisition should prohibit his writings and unauthorized accounts of his persecutions. There was less excuse for suppressing, in 1609, Padre Mariana’s volume of essays on account of his criticism of the ruinous debasement of the coinage.[1455] There was unworthy complaisance to the Holy See when, in 1606, the Suprema forbade the possession by any one of the papers and memorials issued by Venice, in its quarrel with Paul V, on the pretext of their being scandalous to Christendom, and an even greater misuse of its power when it arrested and prosecuted Francisco de la Cueva, a lawyer whom the Venetian ambassador had employed to write in defence of the Republic.[1456] On the eve of the Catalan revolt, in 1640, the protest of Barcelona to the king was suppressed as coming under the rules of the Expurgatorio, being seditious, insulting and scandalous, and this precedent was followed with all writings on the subject during the revolt.[1457] On the whole, however, throughout the first three centuries of its existence, the political use made of the Inquisition, in this and other ways, was wonderfully small.

It was otherwise when the upheaval came which threatened the stability of all monarchical institutions, and nothing was more dreaded than public opinion, which might develop into action. All the agencies at command of the State were felt to be needed, and Carlos IV hastened to open the way for the Inquisition by declaring, in an edict of 1789, that all which contributed to spread revolutionary principles was heresy, being a doctrinal error, contrary to the teachings of the Apostles Peter and Paul, and this was speedily reduced to practice by an edict of the Inquisition ordering the surrender of all papers coming from France and conveying revolutionary ideas.[1458] Watchfulness on importations, especially from France, by both royal and inquisitorial officials, was redoubled, and for years new methods were constantly devised to keep the population in ignorance of events beyond the Pyrenees.[1459]

It was in vain. French newspapers and books were smuggled across the frontier, and forbidden speculations on the laws of nature and the rights of man were widely disseminated. When the crisis came, with the deportation of the royal family and the Napoleonic invasion, there was a leaven of liberalism sufficient to find expression in the demand for a new order of things. The Extraordinary Córtes, elected by universal suffrage and assembled at Cádiz in 1810, lost no time in framing a law for the freedom of the press. Yet the tradition of the necessity of censorship was so strong that the decree of February 22, 1813, suppressing the Inquisition, transferred to the bishops the jurisdiction over censorship as well as over heresy. The law on the press had provided a control by the State over all printing, and works on religion were subjected to a second episcopal examination, with full power of condemnation and suppression, while elaborate provisions were made for an authoritative Index.[1460]