A History of the Inquisition of Spain; vol. 4

by Henry Charles Lea

The severity of this sentence shows how little ceremony there was in restraining the eccentricities of the Spanish pulpit, even when it would be difficult to discern where suspicion of heresy came in. The formula of retraction prescribed rendered the humiliation of the ceremony most bitter. There were forms suited for the different characters of propositions, but all bore the essential feature that the culprit in the pulpit admitted having uttered the condemned expression; that the inquisitors had ordered him to retract it; that he recognized that it ought to be retracted and, as an obedient son of the Church and in fulfilment of the command, he declared, of his own free will, that he had uttered a proposition heretical and contrary to express passages of Holy Writ and, as such, he retracted and unsaid it and confessed that he did not understand it when he said it nor, for lack of knowledge, did he understand the evil contained in it, nor did he believe it in its heretical sense, nor understand that it was heresy and, as he had spoken evil and given occasion to be justly suspected that he said it in an heretical sense, he was grieved and begged pardon of God and the holy Roman Catholic Church, and begged pardon and mercy of the Holy Office. A notary with a copy followed his words and, if the performance was correct, made an official attestation of the fact.[372]

Instances of this sharp censorship of pulpit eloquence were by no means rare. Thus in the single tribunal of Toledo, after Madrid had been separated from it, Fray Juan de Navarrete, Franciscan Guardian of Talavera, was sentenced, December 19, 1656, for an heretical proposition in a sermon, to make a retraction. On April 21, 1657, Fray Diego Osorio, regent of studies in the Augustinian convent of Toledo, was required to retract, was suspended for two years from preaching and was banished for the same period from Madrid and Mascaraque. On April 23, 1659, the Mercenarian, Maestro Lucas de Lozoya, Definidor General of his Order and synodal judge of the province, was condemned to retract, was suspended from preaching for two years and was exiled from Madrid and Toledo. Similar sentences were pronounced July 14, 1660, on the Trinitarian Jacinto José Suchet, and August 31st on the Franciscan Juan de Teran. The Trinitarian, Juan de Rojas Becerro, December 24, 1660, was allowed to retract in the audience-chamber, but was suspended and banished for one year. Juan Rodríguez Coronel, S. J., on June 28, 1664, was suspended and banished for two years, but was not required to retract. These instances will suffice to indicate the frequency of these prosecutions and the manner in which such cases were treated. They offer a curious contrast to the mercy shown, January 31, 1665, to Sebastian Bravo de Buiza, assistant cura of Fresno la Fuente, who was only reprimanded and required to explain in the pulpit the most offensive proposition that the Virgin was a sinner and died in sin.[373]

This last case suggests that favoritism sometimes intervened to shield culprits and this would seem to be confirmed by the leniency shown, in 1696, to Fray Francisco Esquerrer. He was the leading Observantine preacher and theologian in Valencia and teacher of theology in the convent of San Francisco in Játiva. It was an episode in the quarrel between Dominicans and Franciscans over the Immaculate Conception, when, November 13, 1695, the Dominican Fray Juan Gascon denounced him to the Valencia tribunal for having defended at Játiva, October 9, 1693, the proposition that Christ, in the three days of his death, was sacramented alive in the heart of the Virgin; that he who should die in defence of the Immaculate Conception would die a martyr, for it was a point of faith settled by Scripture, by the Council of Trent, by the Apostolic Council of Jerusalem and by the cult of the Church. Gascon had denounced this at the time, but the tribunal had taken no notice of it, and he now repeated the charge, adding that Esquerrer, preaching in 1693 at Olleria, had held it to be a point of faith that the adoration of latria was due to St. Francis; in the same year at Játiva he preached that Christ owed more to St. Antony of Padua than St. Antony owed to Christ. Also, when preaching about an image known as the Virgin of Salvation, he said that she was rather the Mother of Salvation than the Mother of Christ. Then, on August 28, 1695, preaching to the Augustinians of Játiva, he proved logically that the wisdom of St. Augustin was greater than the wisdom of the Logos and, on November 6, 1695, to the Franciscans of Játiva, he declared that the Immaculate Conception had been made a point of faith by Alexander VII and Innocent XI. Then the tribunal at last was spurred to action; it gathered evidence and procured from the calificadores a definition that some of the propositions were blasphemous, others heretical and others ill-sounding. Early in 1696 Esquerrer was thrown into the secret prison; he endeavored to explain away the propositions; the trial proceeded with unwonted celerity and, on September 9th, the case was suspended with merely the usual reprimand and the suppression of the propositions of October 9, 1693.[374] Apparently the Inquisition was content to have the people fed upon such doctrines.

It was probably less to favoritism than to indolence that we may attribute the outcome of the case of the Minim, Fray N. Serra, lector in the Barcelona convent of S. Francesco de Paula. On St. Barbara’s day, December 4, 1721, he preached a sermon in which, among various other ineptitudes, he said that St. Barbara was a virgin and yet pregnant, and that Christ was the fourth person of the Trinity. An artillery regiment in quarters had been taken to the church and, in the evening, some of the officers, visiting Doña Bernarda Vueltaflores, amused themselves by repeating his grotesque utterances. A week later she chanced to mention the matter to Fray Antonio de la Concepcion and he, for the discharge of his conscience, carried the tale to the tribunal. Doña Bernarda was sent for, told what she remembered and furnished the names of the witnesses. They were summoned and gave their evidence. The fiscal fussed over it, said that he had only two concurrent witnesses, and wanted others of the audience looked up and examined, which was not done. The registers were searched, but no former complaints against Fray Serra were found. Then the fiscal asked that all the other tribunals of Spain be written to, which was postponed. On April 22, 1722 he had the propositions submitted to calificadores, five of whom unanimously pronounced that the one relating to Christ was formally heretical and the others scandalous and irreverent, rendering the culprit vehemently suspect and of little sense. Then ensued a pause until 1726, when in July replies were received from all the tribunals that they had nothing against Fray Serra. Then followed another pause, until June 27, 1728, when the inquisitors resolved that the case should be suspended after consulting the Suprema, which assented with the mild rebuke that, as the sumaria had been formed in 1721, it should have been acted upon at once, in place of waiting until 1728.[375]

Cognizance of the more or less trivial utterances of individuals continued to the last and formed an increasing portion of inquisitorial business as Judaism gradually disappeared. How the people were still taught to keep a watch over their fellows is exhibited in the case of Manuel Ribes, of Valencia, in 1798. He was a boy only nine years of age, attending a primary school, who was denounced by a fellow-pupil for an heretical expression. That the case was seriously considered is inferable from the fact that it was suspended, not dismissed, and remained of record against the child in case of future offences. How keen, moreover, was the inquisitorial eye to discern peril to the faith, is visible in the prosecution at Murcia, in 1801, of Don Ramon Rubin de Celis y Noriega, a dignitary of the cathedral of Cartagena and rector of the conciliar seminary, for a proposition concealed in his printed plan for instruction in Latin.[376]

RELIGION AND POLITICS

Under such impulses it is not a matter for surprise that, in this later period “propositions” furnished half the business of the tribunals. In the register compiled in Valencia of all the cases tried in Spain, after 1780 until the suppression of the Inquisition in 1820, the aggregate is 6569 cases, out of which 3026, or not far from one-half, are designated as for propositions. Of these latter 748 are noted as suspended or laid aside in Valencia, leaving 2278 carried on through trial. Of the 3543 cases for other offences, 1469, as we have seen, were for solicitation, leaving only 2074 as the total number for the miscellaneous business of the tribunals. Those accused for propositions represent every sphere of life, but a larger portion than of old belong to the educated classes—clerics, professional men, officers of the army, municipal officials, professors in colleges and the like.[377]

That this class of business should increase was natural in view of the infiltration of the irreligious philosophy and liberal ideas of the later eighteenth century, which escaped the censorship and watchfulness at the ports. The Napoleonic war poured a flood of this upon the land, traversed in almost every part by armies, whether hostile like the French or heretic allies like the English. After the Restoration, the duty of the Inquisition was largely the extirpation of these seeds of evil in a political as well as a spiritual sense, and propositions antipoliticas, as we shall see, were as freely subject to its jurisdiction as the irreligiosas. The punishments inflicted were not usually severe, but the trial itself was a sufficient penalty, for the accused was thrown into the secret prison during the dilatory progress of his case, his property was embargoed and his career was ruined, while in most cases he was subsequently kept under strict surveillance, for which the inquisitorial organization furnished special facilities.

As a typical case it will suffice to allude to that of two merchants of Cádiz, Julian Borrego and Miguel Villaviciosa, sentenced in 1818 by the Seville tribunal, for “propositions and blasphemies,” to abjure de vehementi and to ten years’ exile from Cádiz, Seville and Madrid, including service in a presidio. In consideration, it is said, of the extraordinarily long imprisonment which they had endured, the service of the former was only to be four years in Ceuta and of the latter six years in Melilla. As was so frequently the case at this time, the Suprema interposed in favor of leniency and reduced the term to presidio for both to two years. They were married men; the trial and sentence virtually meant ruin, and probably influence was exerted in their behalf for, after six months, the Suprema allowed them to return to Spain to support their families.[378]

What was the precise nature of the propositions the record does not inform us, but, had the offence been political, it is improbable that this mercy would have been shown. If it were religious, it may have been the deliberate expression of erroneous belief, or a hasty ejaculation called forth by an ebullition of wrath for, as of old the Inquisition took cognizance of everything and, in its awe-inspiring fashion, undertook to discipline the manners as well as the faith of the people. In 1819, the sentence of Bartolomé López of Córdova, for propositions, warns him on the consequences of his unbridled passion for gambling and lust, which had caused his offence, and, in another case, the culprit’s inconsiderate utterances are ascribed to his quarrels with his wife, with whom he is urged to reconcile himself.[379]