A History of the Inquisition of Spain; vol. 4

by Henry Charles Lea

INDIFFERENCE TO MORALS

Thus the conclusion that may be drawn from our review of the causes underlying the misfortunes of Spain is that what may fairly be attributable to the Inquisition is its service as the official instrument of the intolerance that led to such grave results, and its influence on the Spanish character in intensifying that intolerance into a national characteristic, while benumbing the Spanish intellect until it may be said for a time to have almost ceased to think. The objects for which it was so shrewdly and so carefully organized were effectually attained and, in the eyes of experienced statesmen, at the time of its fullest development, it was the bulwork of the faith. In 1573, Leonardo Donato reflects the prevailing view in governmental circles when he speaks of its authority and severity as absolutely necessary, for the number of the New Christians was everywhere so great, recently baptized with God knows what disposition, and with ancestral memories still vivid, that, if it were not for the incessant watch kept over them by the Inquisition, there would be great danger that Spain would lose her religion. In 1581, Gioan Francesco Morosini declares that, although the Spaniards were in appearance the most devout and Catholic of nations, yet, what between the Jews, Moriscos and heretics, Spain would be more infected than Germany or England if it were not for the fear inspired by the severity of the Inquisition; and the same views are expressed by Giambattista Confalonieri in 1591, and by the Lucchese envoy Damiano Bernardini, in 1602.[1131] Yet the faith, thus sedulously preserved at such fearful cost, was largely, as we have seen, one of exterior observance, without corresponding internal piety, ready to burst into flame for the maintenance of a dogma like the Immaculate Conception, and to earn heaven by paying for masses and anniversaries and chaplaincies, but not to labor for it by purity of life and self-abnegation, or by obeying the divine command to earn its bread by the sweat of its brow. The natural result of this, when brought face to face with modern conditions, is that Cánovas del Castillo, in a debate in the Córtes of 1869, declared with sorrow that Spain, of all nations, was the one most indifferent to religion, and a recent author asserts that there would be no hazard in affirming the Spaniards to be the most irreligious, indifferent, and practically atheist people in Europe.[1132]

In fact, the dissociation of religion from morals—the incongruous connection of ardent zeal for dogma with laxity of life—was stimulated by the Inquisition. As we have seen, it paid no attention to morals and thus taught the lesson that they were unimportant in comparison with accuracy of belief. No matter how dissolute was the conduct of the confessor with his spiritual daughters, he was safe so long as he did not commit a technical transgression inferring suspicion of misbelief as to the sacrament, and even when he neglected these precautions we have seen how benignant was the treatment extended to him. It is true that, towards the end of the sixteenth century, the Inquisition showed remarkable ardor in prosecuting those who gave utterance to the common opinion that there was no sin in simple fornication between the unmarried, and that in large measure it suppressed the utterance, but, as it punished only the utterance and not the sin, this did nothing to advance morality. The same may be said of its ignorant destruction of works of art which it regarded as indecent and the occasional prohibition of a book or play that evoked its disapprobation. In the absence of more serious work a few cases may be found of its undertaking to vindicate morals, but they are too rare for us to attribute to them any motive save a desire to intermeddle. The advancement of morality in fact was no part of its functions as a bulwark of the faith; rather, indeed, it aided in disseminating corruption by its custom of reading at the autos de fe sentences con méritos of which the details were an effective popular education in vice.[1133] The result is seen in the seventeenth century, when the only heretics were the scattered and persecuted Portuguese, and yet there has probably never existed a society more abandoned to corruption—so abandoned, indeed, that even the sense of shame was lost. Padre Corella was no rigorist but, towards the close of the century, he draws a hideous picture of social conditions; everywhere, he says, is vice and crime, lust and cruelty, fraud and rapine, in the seats of trade, in the halls of justice, in the family, in the court, in the churches, while the clergy, if possible, are worse than the laity. Philip IV, who so religiously supported the Inquisition, was not only notorious for his licentiousness, but amused himself with scandalously sacrilegious comedies and farces in his palace theatre, where the scenes and persons of Scripture were made subjects of ridicule, and this style passed into popular literature and rhymes which escaped the censure.[1134]

CONTEMPT FOR LAW

Spanish theology, which was supreme in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, made only one real contribution—the invention of Probabilism by Bartolomé de Medina in his commentaries on Aquinas in 1577. On this was founded the new science of Moral Theology, devoted to evading the penalties of sin, and to applying to the decrees of God the favorite Spanish device for eluding those of the king, by obeying and not executing. Escobar, held up to an infamous immortality by Pascal, merely compiled what he found in theologians of the highest authority and, when the laxity of the Jesuit Moya’s Opusculum called forth a papal prohibition in 1666, repeated in 1680, the Spanish Inquisition asserted its independence by refusing to put the work on the Index.[1135] The practical influence of all this is described in a memorial of nine Spanish bishops, in 1717, to Clement XI, against the Consultas Morales of the Capuchin Martin de Torricella, in which they state that Probabilism had undermined all morality and all obedience to divine, municipal and canon law, and that multitudes lived disorderly lives under appeal to probabilistic casuistry, for so-called probable opinions could be had to justify whatever men desired to do.[1136]

If the power of the Inquisition thus was withheld when it might have been exerted with benefit to society, it was actively employed, under the later Hapsburgs, to loosen the bonds of social order and stimulate contempt for law. To it was largely attributable the virtual anarchy of Spain, during the seventeenth century, arising from the numerous competing jurisdictions and the contempt felt for the royal officials. This found its origin in the insolent audacity with which the Inquisition enforced its claims to jurisdiction. When the royal officials were excommunicated, arrested and imprisoned without scruple, and the highest courts were treated with contempt and contumely, respect for law and its ministers was fatally weakened. That the other privileged jurisdictions—the Cruzada, the spiritual, and the military—should follow the example was inevitable, and the social condition of Spain became deplorable.[1137] In 1677, the Council of Castile represented to Carlos II the evils thus inflicted on the people by the two chief offenders, the Inquisition and the Cruzada, the most oppressive form of which was the abuse of excommunication for matters purely secular. The Council had endeavored to remedy this, but its authority had been suspended and it was powerless to protect the vassals of the crown. Carlos feebly replied that, although he could deprive them of the royal jurisdiction which they abused, yet he deemed it better not to do so, and he contented himself with prohibiting the use of censures in temporal matters—a prohibition which of course was disregarded.[1138] In the very next year Carlos was made to feel his powerlessness in the face of the arrogant superiority asserted by the Inquisition.

When, in 1678, the raid on the whole trading community of Majorca gave promise of immense confiscations, Carlos prudently ordered, May 30th, the viceroy to look after the safety of the sequestrations. The viceroy thereupon asked for inventories or statements and, on their refusal, made threats of taking further measures. The tribunal reported to the Suprema which instructed the inquisitors to defend their jurisdiction by censures and, if necessary, by a cessatio a divinis, when, if this did not suffice, they were to entrust their prisoners to the bishop and sail for Spain, reporting to the pope. After despatching this defiant and revolutionary missive, the Suprema, on August 8th, condescended to inform the king of it in the form of a stinging rebuke. The request of the viceroy, it said, was an unexampled assault on religion and the Holy See, and also a profanation of the most venerable sacredness of the Inquisition; sequestrated property was ecclesiastical property until confiscated, and to allow a layman to control it would be subversive of all law, as well as a violation of the secrecy of the Inquisition. Carlos humbly apologized; he had not meant to show distrust and would punish the viceroy if he had exceeded his instructions, but he complained that, without notice to him, the inquisitors should have been ordered to leave Majorca, and thus cause irreparable evils. The Suprema, in reply, followed up its advantage. The abandonment of Majorca by the inquisitors would be a less evil than violating the secrecy of the Inquisition; the viceroy should have positive orders to keep his hands off, and the king ought to have consulted it before issuing such instructions; this would have prevented all trouble, for the operations of the Inquisition were so special and peculiar that even his superior intelligence could not understand them without explanations.[1139] This insolence accomplished its purpose; Carlos was effectually snubbed, and we have seen how small was the share of the spoils eventually doled out to him.

DOMINATION

The Inquisition, in fact, was virtually an independent power in the state, which asserted itself after the vigorous personality of Ferdinand had been forgotten. Its aspiration to dominate the land was revealed in the projected Order of Santa María de la Espada blanca which Philip II was shrewd enough to crush while yet there was time, but the measure of independence which it had already attained was seen when the Córtes of the kingdoms of Aragon sought to get the signature of the inquisitor-general, as well as of the king, to the concessions which they secured, and when the Inquisition ignored the royal agreements, even to the point of deliberately contravening them in the matter of confiscations. It was manifested, in the affair of Antonio Pérez, when Philip II was obliged to call it to his assistance, and it followed its own interests in disregard of the royal policy. So, in the long struggle with Bilbao over the visitas de navios, it virtually set at defiance both the crown and all the authorities of Biscay. If it helped the monarchy in the struggle with Rome over the regalías, when it had thus secured its independence of the papal Inquisition it had no scruple in turning its powers of censorship against the royal prerogative. But for the advent of the Bourbon dynasty, it might reasonably have looked forward to becoming eventually dominant, for it combined legislative and executive functions, temporal and spiritual jurisdiction, and asserted, like the Church, the right to define the limits of its own powers. Its whole career, indeed, shows how baseless is the modern theory that it was an instrument of the State in establishing the autocracy of the monarch. If the fallacy of this requires further proof it is sufficiently demonstrated, even under the first of the Bourbons, by the fate of Macanaz, whom it dismissed from power and condemned to a life of poverty and exile because, in the service of the king, he endeavored to render it what Ranke and Gams fancy it to have been. It is true that, in its period of decadence, it joined forces with the crown to withstand the inroad of free thought, which was equally threatening to both, and that it employed its expiring power to suppress political as well as spiritual heresy, but in this it was fighting its own battle as much as that of the monarchy on which it depended for existence.

Defenders of the Inquisition, in the controversy over its suppression and since then, have relied largely on the assertion that, during its existence, no voice was raised against it, that all organs of public opinion and all writers praised it, as the protector of religion, and as extremely careful to administer exact justice. So far from this being the case, we have seen its own admissions (Vol. I, p. 538) of the hearty hatred felt for it and its officials, and we have heard the complaints of the Córtes of Valladolid in 1518 and 1523, of Coruña in 1520 and of Madrid in 1575, besides the ceaseless struggles of Aragon and Catalonia, whose Córtes had not been reduced to servility. What was its reputation throughout Europe may be gauged by the fact that, in 1535, when João III was endeavoring to have an Inquisition of his own in Portugal, and there was talk of referring the subject to the general council then expected shortly to assemble, his ambassador at Rome, Martinho, Archbishop of Funchal, warned him that, if the matter was broached in the council, it would result in abolishing the Inquisition of Spain.[1140] In Spain, its reputation is to be gathered from the unbiased reports of the Venetian envoys, who lauded its services in the suppression of heresy, and to whom, as practical statesmen, it was an object of wonder and admiration, as a machine perfectly devised to keep the people in abject subjection. In these reports it is observable that, while all are emphatic as to its rigor, not one hazards approval of its justice. The envoys were profoundly impressed by the universal awe which it inspired. As early as 1525, Gasparo Contarini tells us that every one trembled before it, for its severity and the dread entertained for it were greater even than for the Council of Ten. In 1557, Federico Badoero speaks of the terror caused by its pitiless procedure. In 1563, Paolo Tiepolo, after dwelling on the secrecy and unsparing rigor of its judgements, says that every one shudders at its very name, as it has supreme authority over the property, life, honor and even the souls of men. Two years later Giovanni Soranzo speaks of the great fear inspired by it, for its authority transcends incomparably that of the king. In 1567, Antonio Tiepolo echoes these assertions, and all agree in their comments on the influence of the mysterious secrecy of its operation and the relentless severity of its action.[1141]