STATISTICS
Llorente explains the discrepancy between the accusations and the convictions by misconstruction put on the interrogations of confessors, leading simple-hearted nuns to imagine themselves solicited.[298] This implies eagerness on the part of women to bring such accusations when, as we have seen, the main difficulty was to induce them to denounce, by threats of excommunication and refusal of absolution; in the majority of cases it was done only by order of a subsequent confessor, and this frequently five, ten, or more years after the occurrence. The fact is that only a small portion of offenders were denounced, and of these but a fraction were brought to trial. So far moreover from the evidence being only the excited imaginations of young girls, it rarely happened that a case reached trial without resulting in conviction—the preliminaries were too carefully guarded, and the dread of scandal too vivid, to permit the arrest of a priest against whom the evidence was not conclusive.
The number of cases pushed to sentence was therefore not large. The Toledo record, from 1575 to 1610, only furnishes fifty-two in a total of eleven hundred and thirty-four of all kinds.[299] In the later period, when the activity of the tribunals had greatly slackened, solicitation formed a much larger proportion of their business.[300] We have a record of all cases despatched in Toledo, from 1648 to 1794, in which those for solicitation amount to only sixty-eight. This seems but few and yet, when we compare this total with that of other offences, in which there were no special impediments to prosecution, it becomes surprisingly large, for there were but sixty-two cases of bigamy, thirty-seven of blasphemy, seventy-four of propositions and one hundred of sorcery and divination. Between 1705 and 1714, the whole number of sentences was but twenty-six and of these eight were for solicitation, while between 1757 and 1763 it contributed six cases out of a total of eight.[301]
When we turn to the number of accusations we find them unexpectedly large. The registers of solicitations, kept during the final century of the Inquisition, afford trustworthy statistics showing that, from 1723 to the final suppression in 1820, the total number of cases entered amounts to thirty-seven hundred and seventy-five. Of these, it is worthy of note that the secular clergy only furnished nine hundred and eighty-one, leaving for the regulars twenty-seven hundred and ninety-four, or nearly three-quarters. Partly this is explicable by the greater popularity of the regulars as confessors but, to a greater extent, by the opportunities of the beneficed priests, who were usually well off, to gratify their passions without incurring the dangers of polluting the confessional.[302] One noteworthy fact is the large proportion of those occupying prominent positions as Provincials, Guardians, Ministers, Priors, Comendadores, Visitadores, Superiors, Rectors, Lectors, and the like, whose titles appear in the registers with a frequency greater than their mere numbers would seem to justify.
STATISTICS
In 1797, Tavira, then Bishop of Osma and subsequently of Salamanca, assumed that the crime of solicitation had greatly increased and was increasing, which he attributed partly to the influence of Illuminism and Molinism, but still more to its cognizance having been taken from the bishops and the requirement by the Inquisition of two denunciations before prosecution.[303] That the latter provision conferred practical immunity on many culprits is self-evident, but this was probably less effective than would have been the habitual indifference and leniency of the spiritual courts, their dread of scandal and the inevitable disgrace which deterred women from appearing in their public proceedings. There is practically no reason for supposing that the crime was either more or less prevalent, at the close of the eighteenth century, than it had been ever since, in the thirteenth, auricular confession was made obligatory, or than it has been since the nineteenth century opened. The strain of the confessional is too great for average human nature, and the most that the Church can do, in its most recent regulations, is to keep these lapses of the flesh from the knowledge of the faithful.[304]
CHAPTER VII.
PROPOSITIONS.
DELATION HABITUAL
ALTHOUGH the Spanish Inquisition was founded for the suppression of crypto-Judaism, it promptly vindicated its jurisdiction over all aberrations from the faith. There were, at the time, no other formal heresies in Spain, but the people at large were not universally versed in all the niceties of theology, and the supineness of the spiritual courts permitted a licence of speech in which the trained theologian could discern potentialities of error. All this the Inquisition undertook to correct and ultimately, under the general denomination of “Propositions,” there developed an extensive field of action, which towards the end became the principal function of the institution. Reckless or thoughtless expressions, uttered in anger or in jest, or through ignorance or carelessness, gave to pious zeal or to malice the opportunity of secret denunciation, which in time impressed upon every Spaniard the necessity of caution, and left its mark upon the national character. As we have seen, the closest family ties did not release from the obligation of accusation, and every individual lived in an atmosphere of suspicion, surrounded by possible spies of his own household.[305] Men of the highest standing for learning or piety, moreover, were exposed to the torture of prolonged prosecution and possible ruin, for words spoken or written to which an heretical intent could be ascribed, in relation to the obscurest points of theology, and thus the development of the Spanish intellect was arrested at the time when it promised to become dominant in Europe. From every point of view, therefore, the miscellaneous offences, grouped under the general term of Propositions, was by no means the least noteworthy subject of inquisitorial activity.[306]