A History of the Inquisition of Spain; vol. 3

by Henry Charles Lea

How João regarded these pleadings for the victims is seen in a letter to Faria after the settlement. He had accepted, he said, the conditions as to the Inquisition, knowing that further protests would only bring worse terms, but he intended that the Inquisition should proceed in the form conceded by the bull. Those pardoned under the pardon brief, if they committed heresy during the year, could be arrested and prosecuted at once, but should not be sentenced or relaxed until after the expiration of the year. For a year the inquisitors should be directed to proceed mildly, but, as for treating heresy like other crimes, it would be unreasonable, because the pope ordered otherwise in the bull itself. As for the prohibition of emigration, it was not for the service of God to repeal the law as the pope desired. The pardon should be published and the prisoners released; those who had to abjure should not so do on a staging but publicly at the church doors.[718] Thus brutally was brushed aside the mask under which Paul had sought to disguise his abandonment of the New Christians.

INQUISITION OF PORTUGAL

Since May, 1547, Ugolino waited in daily expectation of orders to start, but it was not until December 1st that he left Rome with the bulls that decided the fate of Portugal. It was probably in January, 1548, that he reached Lisbon, where fresh delays occurred in settling details, and only on March 24th was the agreement respecting Silva’s temporalities signed; João grumbled at the assignment of the accrued revenues to the fabric of St. Peter’s; he had not agreed to surrender them and did not intend to do so, but he finally submitted. The pardon was published in Lisbon, June 10th, the prisons were emptied and the abjurations, we are told, for the most part were private.[719] Thus, after a contest lasting through seventeen years, the Inquisition was fastened upon Portugal and, in reviewing the kaleidoscopic vicissitudes of the struggle, we cannot trace, in any act of the Holy See, a higher motive than the sordid one of making, out of human misery, a market for the power of the keys and selling it to the highest bidder.

INQUISITION OF PORTUGAL

The New Christians promptly sought to save a fragment from the wreck, by obtaining the publication of the names of witnesses, based on the canonical provision that they were to be suppressed only in the case of powerful delinquents, who could wreak vengeance on accusers. With this view they procured from Paul III a brief of January 8, 1549, defining that New Christians and others could only be deemed powerful men, in respect to the communication of witnesses’ names, provided they were nobles exercising jurisdiction over vassals, public magistrates, or officers in the royal palace. There seems to have been some delay in the publication of this but, when it came to the knowledge of the king, he sent, August 13, 1550, a copy of it to Julius III, with an urgent request for its revocation as it would prove the total destruction of the Inquisition.[720] A long struggle ensued between the Portuguese ambassadors and the New Christians, in which, for some time, the latter were successful. Into these details it is not worth while to enter, but the final incidents are too illustrative of the course of business in the papal court to be passed over. Paul IV succeeded to the pontificate May 23, 1555; while yet a cardinal he had expressed opposition to the brief, and the ambassador, Affonso de Lencastro, with the assistance of the Grand Inquisitor, Cardinal Alessandrino—the future Pius V—had not much difficulty in winning him over. The brief of revocation was drafted and approved and sent to the dataria for despatch. The deputy there chanced to be a Castilian New Christian and, when the ambassador’s secretary called for the brief, he was told that Paul III had done a just and holy thing, and that in Portugal the inquisitors wanted to burn everybody. The brief was withheld and, when complaint was made to the pope that his datary refused to obey orders, he promised to look into it. Nothing more could be got from him at the time, and his reckless war with Philip II gave him ample occupation for the next few years. Lencastro however continued his efforts until replaced, in April, 1559, by Lourenço Pirez de Tavora, who brought urgent instructions to procure the brief of revocation. Peace with Philip was proclaimed April 5, 1559, but Paul IV, in his 84th year, was broken and was moreover engrossed with his prosecution of Cardinal Morone. Lencastro and Pirez, however, labored with the Congregation of the Inquisition which, on July 22, approved of the revocatory brief. They carried it at once to the pope and, with the aid of Cardinal Alessandrino, obtained the promise of his signature. To their dismay they learned the next day that it had not been signed. Paul had called for his signet-ring, had drawn it from its bag and was about to append it, when he glanced over the brief; the preamble did not suit him, for it was not easy to give a reason for revocation without inferring blame. He laid it aside, and this was almost his last act, for he died August 18th and for three weeks no briefs had been expedited. The conclave was prolonged and Pius IV was not elected till December 26th. Pirez lost no time and, on his visit of congratulation, January 2, 1560, before the coronation, he urged the matter on the pope. Cardinal Alessandrino was sent for and gave his approval. The secretary Aragonia was instructed to draft the brief and it was, as Pirez thought, the first one signed after the coronation. Pirez attributed his success to the profound secrecy which kept the measure from the knowledge of its opponents and, in the midst of his self-congratulation, he twice solemnly warned Cardinal Henrique to use his powers with moderation for, under the brief, it would be easy to burn the New Christians. It was in vain that they sought to obtain its revocation; their agents and their memorials were alike disregarded, and the suppression of the names of witnesses became the established practice in Portugal as in Spain. All hope of relief, moreover, was extinguished when, in September, Prospero de Santa Croce was sent as nuncio, Cardinal Henrique was reappointed legate a latere, in all matters concerning the faith, thus cutting off all appeal and all interference with the Holy Office.[721] The earnest persistence with which permission to withhold the names of witnesses was sought shows how great a hindrance to condemnation their publication proved, and this probably explains the fact that, during the continuance of the prohibition, the activity of the Inquisition was restricted. A list of autos de fe, as complete as research could compile, indicates that of the three established tribunals, Lisbon celebrated no auto prior to 1559, nor Coimbra until 1567. There may be some defect in the archives to account for this, and they may have been better preserved in Evora, for there we find autos recorded in 1551, 1552, 1555 and 1560. After this they became more frequent and increased in severity, but, up to the time of the conquest by Philip II, in 1580, the whole number of autos recorded in the three tribunals was only thirty-four, in which there were a hundred and sixty-nine relaxations in person, fifty-one in effigy and nineteen hundred and ninety-eight penitents.[722] The insignificant number of relaxations in effigy, when compared with the multitudes that figure in the early Spanish autos, would seem to indicate that they were merely those who escaped from prison or died during trial and that, in the absence of confiscation, the Portuguese inquisitors were not earnest in tracing the heresies of ancestors or in following up the records of fugitives.

The question of confiscation, in fact, had been left by Paul III in the hands of the king, who found in it a financial resource for his bankrupt treasury by granting, for a consideration, decennial periods of exemption—a practice continued by the Regency after João’s death. Probably in 1568, the New Christians hesitated to pay the price demanded, for a brief of Pius V, dated July 10th of that year, recites that the last term had expired on June 7th, and that King Sebastian had not renewed it, finding that it served as an incentive to heresy, and that he had asked the pope not to listen to appeals. This Pius willingly promised and withdrew all privileges which the New Christians might enjoy. Doubtless this induced them to come to terms, for the exemption was renewed. After this decennium, Sebastian again granted it in his efforts to provide for his ill-starred African expedition, but Henrique, on succeeding to the throne, felt his conscience much disturbed at this concession to apostasy. He applied to Gregory XIII who, by a brief of October 6, 1579, renewed the one of 1568, and permitted Henrique to revoke the grant made by Sebastian.[723] As Portugal the next year passed into the hands of Philip II, we hear nothing more of exemption from confiscation.

It is somewhat remarkable that João neglected to extend to his colonial possessions the blessings of the Inquisition. The New Christians had largely availed themselves of the opportunities presented by the colonial trade, and had established themselves in Goa and its dependencies. The comparative freedom there had doubtless encouraged them to observe less caution than at home, for St. Francis Xavier had scarce begun his missionary labors when he was scandalized by what he saw and, on November 30, 1545, he wrote urgently to the king as to the necessity of an inquisitorial tribunal. No response was made to his appeal. João died June 11, 1557, leaving the crown to his grandson Dom Sebastian, a child in his third year, under the regency of the dowager Queen Catalina, who resigned it, in 1562, in favor of Cardinal Henrique. The Regency was more mindful of the spiritual needs of the Indies than the late king and, in March, 1560, Henrique sent to Goa as inquisitor Aleixo Diaz Falcão who, by the end of the year, founded a tribunal which in time earned a sinister renown as the most pitiless in Christendom.[724] When Lourenço Pirez, the ambassador at Rome, learned through Egypt of this establishment, he expressed to the Regency his apprehension that this zeal for religion would prove a disservice to God and to the kingdom, for it would drive to Bassorah and Cairo many who would aid the enemy in both finance and war.[725] His prevision was justified more fully than he anticipated for, to the activity of the tribunal was largely attributable the decay of the once flourishing Indian possessions of Portugal. After exhausting the New Christians, it turned its attention to the native Christians, who rewarded so abundantly the missionary labors of the Jesuits, for Portugal did not follow the wise example of Spain in exempting native converts from the Inquisition. It was impossible for these poor folk to abandon completely the superstitious practices of their ancestors, and any relapse into these, however trifling, was visited with the rigor with which were treated similar lapses by the Conversos of the Peninsula. Even Philip II recognized the impolicy of this and, in 1599, he procured from Clement VIII a brief empowering the inquisitors to commute the penalties of relaxation and confiscation for relapse, up to a third relapse but no further, and the faculty was limited to the term of five years.[726]

It is not a little remarkable that no tribunal was established in Brazil, although the New Christians who abounded there proved a very troublesome element, from the encouragement which they gave to the Dutch in their efforts to obtain a foothold.[727] There was a commissioner there, but his powers were limited to collecting evidence and transmitting it with the accused to Lisbon, where they were tried and punished.[728] It may be worth noting that, in the treaty of 1810 with England, Portugal bound itself never to establish the Inquisition in its American possessions.[729]

In general, it may be said that the Portuguese Inquisition was modelled on that of Castile. A series of edicts issued by Dom Sebastian and Dom Henrique and confirmed by later kings, granted to officials and familiars the privileges, exemptions and immunities which they enjoyed in the sister kingdom. This gave rise to similar quarrels and competencias, and to a multiplication of the privileged class even greater than in Spain. In 1699 we find Dom Pedro II endeavoring to enforce a decree of 1693, which limited to six hundred and four the familiars allowed in the larger towns, while small places were to be reduced to one or two each.[730] The main difference in the organization of the Inquisitions of the two kingdoms was in the Portuguese officials known as deputados, of whom at least four were appointed by the inquisitor-general, as assistants to the three inquisitors constituting each tribunal. They were required to possess qualifications entitling them to promotion as inquisitors; they performed such duties as might be assigned to them and, in the consulta de fe, they replaced the Spanish consultores, with the distinction that they cast decisive and not merely consultative votes. To render a sentence legal at least five votes were required besides that of the Ordinary.[731] There was no appeal from a definitive sentence, for the reason that it was not made known to the culprit before the auto in which it was pronounced, but all interlocutory sentences and intermediate proceedings were subject to appeal, and the Supreme Council came to exercise minute supervision over every act of the tribunals even earlier than we have seen was the case in Spain.[732] The minuteness, indeed, of the details prescribed in the Regimento of Inquisitor-general de Castro, printed in 1640, left little to the discretion of the inquisitor, and their systematic arrangement, in an authoritative code of procedure, affords a strong contrast to the cumbersome and often contradictory cartas acordadas, which lumbered up the secreto of the Spanish tribunals.

INQUISITION OF PORTUGAL