A History of the Inquisition of Spain; vol. 3

by Henry Charles Lea

INQUISITION OF PORTUGAL

Lippomano had assured the Portuguese treasurer that he did not come to interfere with the Inquisition; that his orders were only to see whether the inquisitors observed justice; if they did not, conscience would require the pope to make the necessary provisions. His secret instructions, however, were of a very different tenor. He was told that he need not hesitate to act with energy, though observing external courtesy, for Portugal was fatally weakened and approaching ruin; the king was completely impoverished, oppressed with debt, at home and abroad, hated by his people, and wholly under the influence of the friars, while his relations with France and with the emperor were unfriendly. As for the Infante Henrique, if he was not to be deprived of the inquisitor-generalship, he must at least seek a dispensation for lack of age, ask absolution for the past and ratify or annul all the preceding trials. As for the Inquisition, it would be a most holy thing to abolish it and commit the jurisdiction to the bishops; the nuncio was furnished with faculties to do this, or to suspend it, and these he was to show openly, that it might be known that this was at his discretion. Meanwhile he could issue letters to all who asked for them, on their making payment, and even if the price was small the aggregate would be large, as there were fifty thousand of them. The declaratory bull of November 13, (sic) 1539, suppressed by Capodiferro, was to be published without consulting the king; it need not be affixed to the church-doors, but copies could be given to all who asked, so that they could use it when on trial, and Henrique was to be notified that all procedure must conform to it; if he protested, he was to be told that such was the papal will and he could write to the pope if he so chose. Lippomano was finally told that pressure of all kinds would be brought to bear on him, but he must be firm and remind them that he had power to abolish the whole institution. Whatever we may think of João’s blind fanaticism, we cannot wonder at his objection to admitting in his kingdom an emissary who came to set him at defiance and to upset all his most cherished plans. On the other hand, a letter in December, from the spokesman of the New Christians to their Roman agent, remitting to him two thousand cruzados, depicts their agonized anxiety for the coming of the nuncio; it will be their salvation and his absence is their destruction; it is useless to spend money on briefs when there is no one to enforce them.[699] They might well feel desperate, for the Inquisition was active and unsparing. At an auto held in Lisbon, October 14, 1542, there appeared a hundred culprits, of whom twenty were relaxed and João de Mello, in reporting this to the king, complained that it left the prisons still crowded with those on trial. Nor was this all, for Herculano gives a terrible picture, full of revolting details, of the atrocities perpetrated everywhere, such as we have seen set forth in the memorials of Llerena and Jaen.[700]

Although ignorant of the nuncio’s instructions, João persisted in refusing him admittance, until he should have an answer to his letter of September 18th. This was long in coming, and Lippomano vainly complained of the disrespect to the Holy See shown in making him wander from one tavern to another. For awhile he remained in Salamanca and then, on false news that he would be received, he went to Badajoz, only to find the frontier closed to him, and there he was forced to stay, for some months, hopeless and querulous.[701] Meanwhile, Francisco Botelho, who had been sent with João’s letter, was conferring with the pope, who blandly assured him that Lippomano’s mission was only to notify the king of the approaching convocation of the Council of Trent. At length it was arranged that he should confine himself to this, and to such other matters as the king should permit. A brief to this effect, satisfactory to the Portuguese agents, was framed and despatched from Rome November 3d. It can scarce have reached Portugal before the early months of 1543 for a letter of João of March 2d mentions its arrival and his satisfaction at the settlement, in which he hopes that the pope’s acts may correspond with his words. Lippomano, thus shorn of his powers and with no financial prospect before him, was anxious for his recall, but he was not permitted to return until the close of 1544; he obeyed the final instructions and abstained from aiding the New Christians.[702]

Possibly Paul’s yielding in this may be explained by a negotiation on foot early in 1543. Through the Cardinal of Burgos, it was proposed to João that the pope would concede to Portugal an Inquisition identical with that of Castile, if, for a term of years, one half of the confiscations should belong to the Holy See. This cold-blooded offer to sell out the New Christians shows how purely mercantile had been the fluctuating protection accorded to them hitherto, and it was met by João in the same spirit. Protesting that he had never sought for gain in his efforts to serve God, he instructed his envoy that he might agree to three years, but must endeavor to reduce the papal share to a quarter.[703] The attempted bargain came to naught, but Rome was apprehensive that Portugal might follow the example of England, and João was propitiated with a renewed offer of a cardinal’s hat for the Infante Henrique. To this he at first replied surlily, that when he had asked for it, it had been given to Silva, and now that he had not asked, it did not seem fitting to accept it. Subsequently, however, he assented and, in December, 1545, Henrique received the honor. Moreover, in October, 1543, a signal favor was granted to the Inquisition, by a perpetual brief empowering the officials to enjoy the fruits of benefices in absentia, although, as we have seen, in Spain the grant was only quinquennial. It is true that this was not wholly gratuitous, for it cost two hundred and fifty cruzados in addition to the regular fees of seventy.[704]

INQUISITION OF PORTUGAL

The Inquisition was assisted in another way. Through the subsidized Cardinal of Paris, the Portuguese ambassador, Balthasar de Faria, was enabled to inspect all papal letters granted to New Christians. In a letter of February 18, 1544, he describes the use made of this information, for he opposed each one, and it was fought over bitterly, the unfortunate pope being assailed on both sides and driven to change his decisions repeatedly, as the rival influences prevailed. Information, moreover, was sent in advance to Henrique, so as to enable him to forestall the papal graces or render them ineffective. Henrique was instructed to disregard as surreptitious everything that Faria had not seen, to appeal to the pope and to report to Faria, for this was the way that the Castilian inquisitors managed. It was a kind of guerrilla warfare, in the interval of the greater struggles.[705]

One of these conflicts was close at hand. Paul III resolved to send another nuncio, charged with the duty of wrenching from the king Cardinal Silva’s temporalities and of moderating the severity of the Inquisition. For this he selected Giovanni Ricci da Montepulciano who, at the same time, was advanced to the archbishopric of Siponto. Faria flattered himself that he had succeeded in postponing the nuncio’s departure till the king should be heard from, but in spite of this Ricci started July 17, 1544.[706] He travelled leisurely and did not reach Valladolid until November 5th, where he found awaiting him Christovão de Castro with letters from the king forbidding his admittance. He succeeded in making de Castro believe that he had no instructions concerning Silva or the Inquisition that would offend the king, who accordingly wrote November 28th, cautiously admitting him under these presumptions. It so chanced however that, before the courier started with this letter, Lippomano, who was still acting as nuncio, received and affixed at the church doors a papal brief of September 22d, inhibiting all inquisitors and ecclesiastical judges from executing any sentences pronounced on New Christians, or from proceeding to sentence in any cases, until Ricci should arrive, investigate and report as to the conduct of the Inquisition, after which the papal pleasure should be made known. This settled the question; copies of the brief were sent to de Castro to justify to the Spanish court the absolute refusal to admit Ricci until João should have an answer to letters demanding explanation and reparation, despatched by a special courier. At the same time the brief was obeyed, for there were no more autos after June, 1544, until 1548.[707]

Considering all that had occurred during the past ten years, there was an inexcusable aggravation about all this, which it is difficult to understand in the absence of information as to the secret working of the New Christians in Rome, unless it was to convince João that he would have to pay roundly for the pleasure of persecuting his subjects. He exhaled his wrath in one or two letters to Balthasar de Faria and, on January 13, 1545, he despatched Simão da Veiga in hot haste with instructions to demand the installation of the Inquisition in satisfaction of the royal grievances; the recent brief must be revoked, and Ricci must come under the limitations imposed on his predecessor and must say nothing about Cardinal Silva. A prolix letter to the pope, to be read in consistory, was free-spoken but not intemperate and, considering the provocation, was much more moderate than the papal duplicity had deserved.[708]

INQUISITION OF PORTUGAL