A History of the Inquisition of Spain; vol. 4

by Henry Charles Lea

When re-establishment came the task of gathering the salvage from the wreck of the past six years was most disheartening. The royal decree simply called on the Inquisition to resume its functions and said nothing about its property, the restoration of which was evidently taken for granted, under the manifesto invalidating the acts of the Córtes. There was no disposition, however, on the part of the treasury officials to do this and, in response to a consulta of August 11th, the king, on the 18th, issued an order on them to make over to the tribunals all real estate of every kind that had been absorbed by the treasury, the account of rents to be made up to July 21st and apportioned on that basis. This left personal property out of consideration and a further decree was procured, September 3d, ordering the restoration of everything that had passed into the Caja de Consolidacion, as well as the fruits of the suppressed prebends, balancing the accounts up to July 21st.[941] This was slackly obeyed; the necessities of the tribunals were pressing, and the Suprema presented consultas of October 1st and 23d asking that they should be allowed to collect the revenues, and that restitution should be made of all past collections or, in default of this, that a monthly allowance of eighty thousand reales be made to the Inquisition. To this Fernando replied that the needs of the royal treasury did not permit the repayment of back collections, nor could it meet the proposed monthly allowance, but it was his will that such payments as the General Treasury and the Junta del Crédito Público could spare should be made as a payment on account for the most necessary expenses of the Inquisition. This last was doubtless an empty promise; the royal financiers were determined not to go back of July 21st, and it appears, by a letter of December 16th, that the royal officials were still making collections. The most that the Suprema could accomplish was to procure from the Junta del Crédito Público an order of January 9, 1815, and from the chief of the Treasury one of January 30th, to their subordinates to cease collecting from the property of the Inquisition, under the rigid condition that an account should be kept by the tribunals of their collections, so that whatever they might obtain of arrears due prior to July 21st should enure to the benefit of the Government.[942] In this, however, there was recognized the justice of a claim for the unpaid back salaries of the officials, and elaborate arrangements were made to ascertain and put these in shape, but it was labor lost. The treasury was at too low an ebb, and the claimants for services rendered during the troubled years of war and revolution were too numerous, for the Inquisition to obtain what it demanded.

The Suprema was also diligent in seeking to recover the amounts which the tribunals had been obliged to invest in Government securities, but this was as fruitless as other attempts to save fragments of the wreck. The last we hear of it is in 1819, when the Suprema was still endeavoring to meet the exigencies of the Treasury in framing lists of the dates and numbers of the bonds.[943]

It was difficult to evolve order out of the chaos of destruction, especially where the papers had been scattered, so that evidences of indebtedness and accounts were lost, interfering greatly with efforts to reclaim property. In November, 1814, we find the Valencia tribunal issuing an edict requiring the return of all books and papers and records within fifteen days, under pain of excommunication and two hundred ducats; as to the furniture and other effects, they were to be restored under threat of legal proceedings. Although Valencia had been for two years under French occupation, it seems to have been more prompt than some others in getting its finances into intelligible condition. In November the Suprema calls upon it for a detailed schedule of resources and expenses and, in the latter it is not to omit the contribution required by the Suprema, amounting to 130,896 reales, and meanwhile it is not to pay out anything for salaries or other purposes without awaiting permission. Under this it was allowed, January 21, 1815, to pay salaries up to the end of 1814, and in May to make further payments. Yet in 1816 we find it reduced to seeking a loan wherewith to meet the salaries and a sum of thirteen thousand reales demanded by the Suprema.[944]

The Suprema itself, despite the contributions which it sought to levy from the tribunals, was in a condition of penury so absolute that, on July 3, 1815, it announced that it had no funds wherewith to pay the salaries of its officials or the postage on the official communications from the tribunals, which must therefore in future arrange with the Post-Office to prepay the postage and settle monthly or quarterly. This, however, as it explained August 19th, applied only to what was addressed to it as, under a decree of May 19, 1799, letters to the inquisitor-general and other heads of councils were carried free.[945]

RESUMPTION OF FUNCTIONS

There was gradual improvement, but it was slow. A carta acordada of September 3, 1818, says that the Suprema cannot view with indifference the deplorable financial condition of nearly all the tribunals, whose diminished revenues force them to allow the meagre salaries of their officials to fall into arrears, nor can it close its ears to the clamors of these unfortunates, reduced as they are to the deepest indigence. Seeking for partial remedies, it must insist on the avoidance of all expenses not absolutely indispensable, and the suppression of all superfluous offices. One of these is the notariate of the court of confiscations; when it falls vacant it is not to be filled, and its duties are to be performed by the secretary of sequestrations, whose salary will consequently be raised by fifty ducats. This was a somewhat exiguous conclusion of so solemn an exordium, seeing that the actual work of the tribunals could readily have been performed by less than half the officials who swelled their pay-rolls, but it is not without interest as showing how persistently the old inflated organization was maintained, and was struggling to support itself on the remnants of its once prosperous fortunes. Under such a system, poverty naturally continued to the last. When the Revolution of 1820 broke out, and the Seville tribunal contributed six thousand reales to the committee organized to resist the rising, it had no funds and was obliged to borrow the money on interest. As almost the first act of the successful revolutionists was to suppress the Inquisition, the lenders in this case doubtless found themselves to be involuntary contributors.[946] At this time the Seville tribunal had a force of twenty-eight officials, with a pay-roll of 92,300 reales, while the amount of its work may be gathered from the fact that the revolutionists found only three prisoners to release.[947]

Thus amid difficulties and tribulations the tribunals one by one resumed their functions. In October, 1814, Seville was prosecuting Lt. Colonel Lorenzo del Castillo for propositions; Saragossa was receiving the self-denunciation of Mathias Pintado, priest of Bujanuelo, for heregia mista, and Valencia was suspending the sumaria of the Capuchin Fray Pablo de Altea for mala doctrina, while in December Murcia was prosecuting Don Josef de Zayas, a prominent lieutenant-general of the royal army, for Free-Masonry.[948] Business, however, at the first was scanty. In the book of secret votes of the Suprema, there is an interval from December 22, 1814, until February 16, 1815. As the months of 1815 passed on, the breaks grow shorter and, by the summer of 1815, the decrees follow each other closely. Valladolid seems to have been dilatory in getting to work for, although it had three inquisitors drawing salary, no case came up from it until January, 1817, and, from this one it would seem that it had not been in operation until October, 1816.[949]

The prosecution of such a man as Zayas shows that the reorganized Inquisition did not hesitate to grapple with those in high place, and another early case illustrates this still more forcibly. During the French occupation the Duke and Duchess of Sotomayor and the Countess of Mora had obtained possession of the books and indecent pictures accumulated in the Madrid tribunal. Apparently they refused to surrender them; the tribunal prosecuted them and rendered a sentence, subject to the royal permission, that these objects should be seized, but in such a manner as not to attract attention or to provoke resentment. The Suprema confirmed the sentence, ordering its execution by a single inquisitor, accompanied by a secretary, so as to reconcile the respect due to the parties with the secrecy that was essential.[950]

A politic act was the issue of a general pardon for all that had “impiously and scandalously” been uttered and done against the Inquisition under the fatal circumstances of the recent troubles.[951] It could afford to assume this attitude of magnanimity, seeing that the Government was pitilessly avenging it on its most prominent adversaries. When the Government failed in this duty, the Inquisition had no hesitation in nullifying its edict of pardon. We have seen its prosecution of Ruiz de Padron, until it found that the Bishop of Astorga was rendering this superfluous, nor was this by any means an isolated case. In August, 1815, we find the Suprema acting on sumarias from Canaries, in the cases of Mariano Romero, a priest, for a sonnet against the Inquisition, and of Francisco Guerra for a sonnet and an epitaph of the same character. So, in November, 1815, there is a prosecution of the Duke of Parque Castrillo for congratulating the Córtes on the abolition of the Inquisition and for a general order to the troops, December 2, 1812. His case dragged on until June 10, 1817, when its suspension was ordered.[952]

FERNANDO’S FAVOR