A History of the Inquisition of Spain; vol. 4

by Henry Charles Lea

Thus gradually the worst features of witch persecution disappeared in Italy, while yet belief in the reality of witchcraft was untouched. As late as 1743, Benedict XIV manifests complete acceptance of it, when discussing the nice question whether a witch, terrified by threats and blows, commits a fresh sin by transferring to an ox the deadly spell which she has cast upon the son of the man who beat her. He concludes that she is guilty of a fresh sin, while the father is excusable, for he presumably does not know that she has to have recourse to the demon to effect the transfer, and his only object is to save his son. Moreover Benedict, in his great work on canonization, not only admits the common opinion as to incubi and succubi, but he does not deny that in some way such unions may result in offspring.[530] In fact, the supreme authority of the modern Catholic Church, St. Alphonso Liguori, repeats without disapproval the common opinion of the doctors, that witches are transported through the air and that the theory of illusion is very pernicious to the Church, as it relieves them from the punishment prescribed for them.[531]

PERSISTENT BELIEF

Thus the two lands in Christendom, in which the Inquisition was thoroughly organized, escaped the worst horrors of the witch-craze. The service rendered, especially by the Spanish Holy Office, in arresting the development of the epidemics so constantly reappearing, can only be estimated by considering the ravages in other lands where Protestants, who had not the excuse of obedience to papal authority, were as ruthless as Catholics in the deadly work. Did space permit, it would be interesting to trace the development and decline of the madness throughout Europe, but it must suffice to allude to Nicholas Remy, a witch-judge in Lorraine, who boasts that his work on the subject is based on about nine hundred cases executed within fifteen years,[532] and to the estimate that the total number in Germany, during the seventeenth century, was a hundred thousand.[533] In these, burning alive was often considered an insufficient penalty, and the victims were torn with hot pincers or roasted over slow fires. France was less a prey to the delusion than Germany, but, in 1609, Henry IV sent a commission to cleanse the Pays de Labour of witches, which, in the hurried work of four months, burnt nearly a hundred, including several priests, and was obliged to leave its task uncompleted, for the land was full of them; two thousand children were transported to the aquellares almost every night and the assemblages consisted of a hundred thousand, though some of these were phantoms.[534] For Great Britain the total estimate of victims is thirty thousand, of whom about a fourth may be credited to Scotland.[535] When, in 1775, Sir William Blackstone could deliberately write “To deny the possibility, nay, actual existence, of witchcraft and sorcery is at once flatly to contradict the revealed word of God.... and the thing itself is a truth to which every nation in the world hath in its turn borne testimony,”[536] we cannot judge the Inquisition harshly for maintaining to the last its existence in theory, while refusing to reduce that theory to practice.

Note.—Since this chapter was in type, the indefatigable Don Manuel Serrano y Sanz has printed in the Revista de Archivos (Nov.-Dic. de 1906) the second discourse by Pedro de Valencia on the Auto de fe of Logroño. In this he states that in the previous one he had only had opportunity for a cursory glance at the proceedings of the auto, and had taken into consideration exceptional cases which God may have permitted of old. Now that he had thoroughly examined the confessions of the culprits he proceeds to give in much detail the monstrosities which they relate and concludes with a brief expression of the convictions resulting therefrom. This is that the aquelarre has nothing supernatural about it, such as flying through the air and the presidency of the demon in the shape of a goat. It is merely a nocturnal assemblage on foot of men and women to gratify disorderly appetites, inflamed perhaps by the instigation of the devil, and that their confessions are fictions invented to cover their wickedness. From this he concludes that they should be held not as confessing but as denying—which, under the inquisitorial code, would expose them to the fiery death of the negativo impenitente. He is careful, moreover, not to discredit the poisonings and the inunctions to cause sleep and dreams. Unfortunately the paper is not dated; it may have been seen by Salazar Frias, but if so it exercised no influence on him, as appears from the different conclusion reached in his report.

Señor Serrano y Sanz states that in 1900 he printed the first discourse of Pedro de Valencia in the Revista de Extremadura.

CHAPTER X.
POLITICAL ACTIVITY.

DEVELOPMENT OF ABSOLUTISM

Joseph de Maistre, in his profound ignorance of the Inquisition, started the theory that it was a mere political agency.[537] Apologists, like Hefele, Gams, Hergenrother and others, have eagerly elaborated this idea in order to relieve the Church from responsibility for its misdeeds, wholly overlooking the deeper disgrace involved in the assumption that for three centuries the Holy See assented to such misuse of delegated papal authority, and stimulated it with appropriations from ecclesiastical revenues.[538] They base their arguments on the difference between the Old and the New Inquisition—the former consisting of inquisitors selected by Dominican or Franciscan Provincials, and the latter organized with its inquisitor-general and supreme council, appointed by or with consent of the sovereign, so that its whole corps was virtually composed of state officials[539]—forgetting that their authority consisted of apostolical faculties, delegated by the popes and exercised without restraint through their recognition by the State. Ranke falls into the same error and so do Maurenbrecher and some other Protestant historians, apparently in an overstrained effort at impartiality and without investigation of the facts.[540] In the Catholic reaction since the time of Hefele, the most advanced writers of that faith no longer seek to apologize for the Inquisition, and to put forward royal predominance to relieve it from responsibility. They rightly represent it as an ecclesiastical tribunal which discharged the duty of preserving the religious purity for which it was created.[541]

The synchronism of the development of the Inquisition and of absolutism in Spain renders seductive the theory that the one was the product of the other, but this is wholly fallacious. Nowhere in the transformation of the State does the Inquisition appear as a factor. Isabella, as we have seen, laid the foundations of monarchism when she subdued the anarchy pervading Castile by the vigorous assertion and extension of the royal jurisdiction. Ferdinand eliminated some of the most troublesome elements of feudal power when he incorporated in the crown the masterships of the great Military Orders. The restiveness of the nobles under the unaccustomed restraint manifested itself when, in 1506, they flocked to Philip and Juana, had the Inquisition been a political force, Ferdinand would have used it, for Inquisitor-general Deza was devoted to him, in place of which he suspended it. After the death of Philip I, during the retirement of Juana and the absence of Ferdinand, the nobles attempted to reassert themselves but, when he returned, the severe punishment of the Marquis of Priego, the great Duke of Medina Sidonia, Don Pedro Giron and others, was a severe blow to feudalism, redoubled, after Ferdinand’s death, when Ximenes as governor raised a standing army and crushed the rebellion of the Girons and their allies, punishing them with the destruction of the town of Villadefrades. What remained of feudalism disappeared under the steady policy of Charles V and Philip II, in keeping the great nobles aloof from the higher offices of state, and employing them in military service abroad or in vice-royalties, until they became mere courtiers, wasting their substance in adding to the splendor of the throne. In all this there is no trace of the Inquisition, nor is there in the rise and suppression of the Comunidades, which destroyed the privileges of the communes, and left the crown supreme. The comuneros had no grievance against the Inquisition, nor had it any share in their defeat and punishment, although Charles V applied to Leo X for special briefs empowering it to act and one was granted, commissioning Cardinal Adrian to try and punish ecclesiastics concerned in the movement.[542] Even when Acuña, Bishop of Zamora, was prosecuted, as we have seen, the Inquisition was not charged with the work, as Ranke mistakenly asserts. The revolt arose from the coercive measures applied by Charles to the Córtes of 1518 and 1520, by which he reduced to impotence the only representative and deliberative body of the nation. Thus the last obstacle to autocracy was swept away, and thenceforth royalty was supreme. The process was a normal development, such as accompanied the downfall of feudalism throughout Europe and, from first to last, it accomplished itself without aid or opposition on the part of the Inquisition.