A History of the Inquisition of Spain; vol. 4

by Henry Charles Lea

MARRIAGE BETTER THAN CELIBACY

There were two special propositions, which were so widely held and came so repeatedly before the tribunals that they almost form a special class. One of these was the assertion that the married state is as good as or better than that of celibacy as prescribed for clerics and religious. That this was plainly heretical could not be doubted after the anathema of the Council of Trent in 1563, and its prevalence is a noteworthy fact.[317] In the Toledo record, from 1575 to 1610, there are thirty cases of this: in strictness, as the assertion of a doctrine contrary to the teachings of the Church, and condemned as heretical, it should have been visited with reconciliation, or at least with abjuration de vehementi and heavy penalties, but, as the heresy was one of Tridentine definition and a novelty, it was mercifully treated with abjuration de levi and usually with a moderate fine or vergüenza, or even with less. Extreme leniency was shown to Sebastian Vallejo, in 1581, who had declared that if he had a hundred daughters he would not make nuns of them, in view of the licentiousness of the frailes, for those in the convents were as lecherous as those outside; no parent should put his children in religion until they were of full age and, as to marriage, he advanced the customary argument that it was established by God, while monachism was the work of the saints. He came to denounce himself and pleaded drunkenness in extenuation, which probably explains his escape with a reprimand. Soon after this María de Orduña was treated with equal mercy, on denouncing herself for the same offence, the reason alleged being that she was a very simple-minded woman.[318] As the offence was thus lightly regarded, it follows that torture was not permitted in the prosecution.[319] The error was difficult of eradication. In 1623 a writer calls attention to the number of cases still coming before the tribunals, and suggests for its repression that the sentences be read in the churches of the offenders, so that a knowledge of the erroneous character of the assertion should be disseminated.[320] Some twenty years later it still was sufficiently frequent to be treated as a separate class, though we are told that it was visited with less severity than of old, as it presumably arose from ignorance and was not to be considered as a heresy.[321] This is remarkable in view of the ease with which it might have been regarded as Lutheran.

A still more frequent proposition, which gave much trouble to eradicate, was that fornication between unmarried folk is not a mortal sin. Although the theologians held that this assertion in itself was a mortal sin,[322] there was really in it nothing that savored of heresy, and its cognizance by the Inquisition was an arbitrary extension of jurisdiction without justification. Perhaps there was some confused conception that it was derived from the Moors whose sexual laxity was well known, but the usual argument offered in its defence, by those who entertained it, was the toleration by the State of public women and of brothels, whence the inference was natural that it could not be a mortal sin.

FORNICATION NOT SINFUL

It seems to have been between 1550 and 1560 that the Inquisition commenced its efforts to suppress this popular error. The earliest record of its action that I have met occurs in the great Seville auto of September 24, 1559, where there were no less than twelve cases, of whom eight abjured de levi, one de vehementi, six were paraded in vergüenza, four were scourged with a hundred lashes (of whom one was a woman) and two heard mass as penitents.[323] The requirement of abjuration shows that suspicion of heresy was already attributed to the proposition, but this as yet was not universally accepted for, in 1561, the Suprema wrote to the tribunal of Calahorra that Pedro Cestero, whom it had penanced for this offence, ought to have been prosecuted as a heretic, for it would seem to be heresy.[324] Thus heresy was injected into it and we speedily find it to be a leading source of business in the Castilian tribunals. Seville was notably active. In the auto of October 28, 1562, there were nineteen cases.[325] In that of May 13, 1565, out of seventy-five penitents, twenty-five were for this proposition. The punishments were severe. All abjured de levi and appeared in their shirts with halter and candle; all but one were gagged; fourteen were scourged with an aggregate of nineteen hundred lashes; five were paraded in vergüenza, two were fined in two hundred ducats apiece, and two others in a thousand maravedís each; six were exiled and one was forbidden to leave Seville without permission. Besides these there was one man who had a hundred lashes for saying that there was no sin in keeping a mistress, and three women were penanced for saying the same of living in concubinage, of whom two had a hundred lashes apiece and the third was paraded in vergüenza. Two men appeared for saying that keeping a mistress was better than marriage, of whom one had the infliction of the gag. To these we may add two who held that marriage was better than the celibacy of the frailes, and we have a total of thirty-three cases, or nearly one-half of all in the auto, for errors concerning the relations of the sexes.[326]

Active as was this work it did not satisfy the Suprema which, in a carta acordada of November 23, 1573, speaks of the prevalence of the offence as indicated in the reports of autos, and the little progress thus far made in its suppression; greater vigor was therefore ordered and, in future, all delinquents were to be prosecuted as heretics. This was followed by another, October 2, 1574, ordering the proposition to be included in the Edict of Faith, and yet another December 2^d, of the same year, repeating the complaint of its frequency and the little improvement accomplished. It was apparently an error of ignorance and, to remedy this, a special edict was ordered to be published everywhere, declaring it to be a heresy condemned by the Church, and that all uttering and believing it would be punished as heretics; all preachers moreover were to be instructed to warn and admonish the people from the pulpits.[327]

All this was wholesome, and yet it is difficult to understand this ardent zeal for the morals of the laity, when compared with the slackness as to solicitation. Be this as it may, the activity of the tribunals under this stimulus was rewarded with an abundant harvest of culprits. We chance to hear of eight cases in the auto of 1579 at Llerena and of five at Cuenca in 1585.[328] A more effective showing is that of the Toledo record from 1575 to 1610, in which the number of cases is two hundred and sixty-four—by far the largest aggregate of any one offence, the Judaizers only amounting to a hundred and seventy-four and the Moriscos to a hundred and ninety.[329] These statistics comprehend only the tribunals of the crown of Castile; those at hand for the kingdoms of Aragon are scanty but, from such as are accessible, it would appear probable either that there was less energy or a much smaller number of culprits. The only cases that I have happened to meet are two in a Saragossa auto of June 6, 1585, while, in a Valencia list for the five years 1598-1602, comprising in all three hundred and ninety-two cases, there are but four of this offence and not a single one in the reports for the three years 1604-6.[330]

Notwithstanding the characterization of the offence as heresy, torture was not to be employed in the trial, although confinement in the secret prison and sequestration were permitted.[331] The energy and severity with which it was prosecuted virtually suppressed it in time. In 1623 a writer speaks of it as less common than formerly and, in a list of the cases tried at Toledo, commencing in 1648, the first one of this offence occurs in 1650, the next in 1665 and the third in 1693. Thenceforth it may be said practically to disappear from the tribunals, although as late as 1792, Don Ambrosio Pérez, beneficed priest of Candamas was tried for it in Saragossa and in 1818 there was a case in Valencia.[332] Thus the Inquisition succeeded in suppressing the expression of the opinion though, as it took no action against the sin, its influence on the side of morality was inappreciable.

INTELLECTUAL REPRESSION

A reference to the cases of propositions tried by the Toledo tribunal between 1575 and 1610 (see Vol. II, p. 552) will indicate the very miscellaneous character of the utterances for which its interposition was invoked. These involved culprits of all classes of society and as, for the most part, they concerned theological questions of more or less obscurity, this method of enforcing purity of faith frequently brought under animadversion the foremost intellects of Spain and rendered the Inquisition the instrument through which rivals or enemies could mar the careers of those in whom lay the only hope of intellectual progress and development. What between its censorship and the minute supervision, which exposed to prosecution every thought or expression in which theological malevolence could detect lurking tendencies to error, the Spanish thinker found his path beset with danger. Safety lay only in the well-beaten track of accepted conventionality and, while Europe, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, was passing through a period of evolution, Spanish intellect became atrophied. The splendid promise of the sixteenth century was blasted by the steady repression of all originality and progress, and Spain, from the foremost of the nations, became the last.