REMNANTS OF THE INQUISITION
Some papers connected with a quarrel between the officials of the Majorca tribunal give us an insight into its internal condition in 1830. Its business consisted in the collection of the censos and other sources of revenue. There were many of these—loans to towns and villages as well as to individuals throughout the islands; payments were apt to be tardy and the labor of collection was considerable, frequently involving legal proceedings. The inquisitor had disappeared, although from another document we learn that he was named Francisco Antonio Andraca and that he was drawing his salary elsewhere. The existing head of the tribunal was a juez subdelegado, a representative of the old juez de bienes; there was a treasury and an auditing department with an administrador tesorero, Juan Antonio Togores, who was disabled and represented by his son, José Antonio Togores. The secretary of the secreto was Bartolomé Serra y Bennassar, acting as auditor ad interim, whose clerk was Pedro Mascaro, notary of sequestrations. The only other official was the portero, Sebastian Banza. Togores claims that, when the buildings were destroyed in 1820, he incurred many enmities by efforts to compel restitution of plundered materials—among others a Count of Ayamans was sued for purloining building stone. Togores constructed a wall around the site, and the heaps of stone and tiles still lay scattered there. Outside of the enclosure, a couple of small buildings were erected for offices, with a warehouse below for the storage of the rescued materials. One of the charges against him was that he had used the site of the old garden of the senior inquisitor to raise vegetables and flowers for himself.[1012] There is impressiveness in this glimpse of the old officials clinging to the ruins of what had once been so formidable.
From this quarrel we learn that the central authority of the Inquisition was the General Superintendent of the Property of the Inquisition—apparently a subordinate of the Colector-general de Espolios, to whom the assets were confided by the decree of January 1, 1824. In 1830 this General Superintendent was an old inquisitor, Valentin Zorilla, and he had as fiscal another inquisitor, Vicente Alonso de Verdejo. The Inquisitor-general, Gerónimo Cavillon y Salas, Bishop of Tarazona, was still drawing his salary of 71,491 reales 24 mrs. and did not die until 1835. Of the Suprema there were but two survivors, the Dean Ethenard and Cristobal Bencomo, Archbishop of Heraclea, who by 1833 had disappeared, leaving Ethenard alone. There was still a relator, a private secretary of the inquisitor-general, a keeper of the archives, and four minor officials. All these, however, were mere pensioners. The active organization consisted of the superintendent and his fiscal, with a treasurer and receiver-general ad interim, Don Angel Abad, whose accounts for 1830 show that he had received by drafts drawn upon the several tribunals
| From | Valencia | 35,000 | rs. |
| Córdova | 26,000 | ||
| Barcelona | 28,000 | ||
| Granada | 60,000 | ||
| America | 93,417 | .17 | |
| Santiago | 52,000 | ||
| Murcia | 60,000 | ||
| Majorca | 50,000 | ||
| Saragossa | 84,000 | ||
| Canaries | 112,635 | .17 |
Logroño, Madrid, Cuenca and Llerena apparently contributed nothing. The sums credited to America and Canaries were probably old balances. The receipts from prebends must have gone directly to the Superintendent, for the decree of final extinction in 1834 shows that they were still held for the benefit of the Inquisition. There were other sources of revenue, principally from censos, of which the most notable was one of the Count of Altamira, from whom was collected, in 1830, the sum of 272,335 reales 25 mrs., being arrearages that seem to run back to 1818. He was still hereditary alguazil mayor of the Seville tribunal, in which capacity he was receiving a yearly salary of 4411 reales 26 mrs. The Duke of Medinaceli, as alguazil mayor of the Madrid tribunal, was still drawing his yearly stipend of a thousand reales and personally signing monthly receipts. There are scattering entries of payments to officials of various tribunals, showing that they were gradually thinning out, and refugees from the American Inquisitions were kept on the pay-roll.[1013] Such was the moribund condition of the Holy Office on the eve of its extinction.
While the Inquisition was thus suspended, the more zealous bishops replaced it with so-called Juntas de fe, based on the same principles, with secrecy of procedure and exercising jurisdiction in the external as well as internal forum. No record of the proceedings of these anomalous tribunals seems to have been preserved except in the case of Valencia, where the archbishopric was held by Simon López, in reward for his defence of the Holy Office in the Córtes of Cádiz. Almost his earliest act on assuming his new dignity, in 1824, was to issue a pastoral confirming the junta de fe, established by his predecessor Veremundo Arias, and empowering it to receive denunciations. He took the presidency with Dr. Miguel Toranza, the former inquisitor of Valencia as his colleague, Dr. Juan Bautista Falcó as fiscal and Dr. José Royo as secretary.[1014]
JUNTAS DE FE
Thus the old tribunal was revived under another name, and it speedily proved that such juntas were more dangerous than those of the Inquisition, as they were not subject to the supervision and control of the Suprema. A poor schoolmaster of Rizaffa, named Cayetano Ripoll, had served in the War of Liberation and had been carried as a prisoner to France, where he became a pervert. He abandoned Christianity for Deism, while at the same time he was a living embodiment of the teachings of Christ, sharing his scanty pittance with the needy, and constantly repeating “Do not unto others what you would not have done unto you.” He did not seek to propagate his beliefs, but he was denounced to the Junta by a beata for not taking his scholars to mass, for not making them kneel to the passing viaticum, and for substituting in his school the ejaculation “Praise be to God” instead of “Ave Maria purissima.” He was arrested September 29, 1824, and his trial lasted for nearly two years. The testimony confirmed the denunciation and showed that the only religious instruction which he gave his pupils was the Ten Commandments. During his prolonged trial he made no complaints; he shared his meagre prison fare with his fellow-prisoners; he openly avowed his convictions, and the repeated efforts of the theologians to convert him were futile. The sentence bore that the tribunal had consulted with the Junta de Fe and concluded that he be relaxed, as a formal and contumacious heretic, which had been confirmed by the archbishop. There was no hypocritical plea for mercy, and the Sala del Crimen of the Audiencia, to which he was handed over, gave him no hearing or opportunity for defence. Its function was purely ministerial, and he knew nothing of its action until the sentence was announced to him that, within twenty-four hours, he was to be hanged and burnt, but the burning might be figurative by painting flames on a barrel, in which his body should be thrust into unconsecrated ground. He listened to this with the patient resignation that he had exhibited throughout his trial, and his last words on the gibbet, July 26, 1826, were “I die reconciled to God and man.”[1015]
This barbarity scandalized all Europe and proved to be the last execution for heresy in Spain. While it gratified the zealots, who were clamoring for the resurrection of the Inquisition, it displeased Fernando, who caused the Audiencia to be notified that the Government recognized no such tribunals as the juntas de fe.[1016] In spite of this rebuke, the episcopal juntas continued to exercise an irregular and irresponsible jurisdiction, until the sufferers sought from the Holy See the protection denied to them at home. Pius VIII listened to their prayer, whether from motives of humanity or of establishing in Spain the jurisdiction which the Inquisition had sought so sedulously to exclude, and, in a constitution of October 5, 1829, he recited the numerous prayers reaching him from those persecuted in Spain for matters of faith, asking that they might have opportunity of appealing from sentences rendered by archbishops and bishops, before being subjected to punishment. To save them from the expenses and delays of appeals to Rome, he empowered the tribunal of the Rota, in the papal nunciature, to hear all appeals in matters of faith, even twice, thrice, four or five times in succession, until three concording sentences should be rendered.[1017] Fernando was less sensitive than his predecessors as to papal encroachments, and he gave this the force of law by a royal order of February 6, 1830.