A History of the Inquisition of Spain; vol. 4

by Henry Charles Lea

Thus the zeal and activity of the Inquisition, working through its disregard of all laws, and its methods of procedure, virtually placed under its control the whole trade of the kingdom in horse-flesh. Encouraged by this, the Saragossa tribunal sought a still further extension of jurisdiction and, in 1576, it reported to the Suprema great activity in the exportation to France, Béarn and Gascony of arquebuses, powder, sheet iron for cuirasses and other warlike material, and it suggested an edict concerning that trade similar to that respecting horses. To this the Suprema assented, with the caution that it must be understood that these arms and munitions were intended for heretics.[575] The difficulty inherent in this probably prevented action, for I have met with no case of its enforcement.

It will be observed that the Saragossa tribunal pointed out that there was no penalty defined by law for the offence. This omission was rectified in the Córtes of Tarazona, in 1592, which deprived of what was known as the via privilegiata a long list of crimes, including that of passing horses and munitions of war to Béarn and France, with the addition that it could be punished with the death-penalty.[576]

A decision of the Suprema, rendered to the Barcelona tribunal in 1582, was to the effect that, if horses were taken to France, it must be ascertained whether they were for heretics in order to justify prosecution by the Inquisition, but, if to Béarn, that alone sufficed.[577] In time this nice distinction was abandoned, although the fiction was maintained that it was a matter of faith. About 1640, an inquisitor informs us that it was customary to punish those who exported horses or warlike material to France, even though there were no evidence that they were for heretics, for the act was very prejudicial. The accused was generally confined in the secret prison, the trial was conducted as one of faith, and was voted upon in a regular consulta de fe, including the episcopal Ordinary. Unless the case was light, the culprit appeared in a public auto. If he belonged to the lower classes, he was sometimes scourged; if of higher estate, he suffered exile and a fine, together with forfeiture of the horse or, if it had been passed successfully, he paid double its value. In the case of a Benedictine abbot, who had passed one or two horses to France, the Suprema fined him in six hundred ducats and suspended him from his functions for a year. Sometimes the sentence included disability for public office for both the culprit and his descendants.[578]

Oddly enough, in the case of Antonio Pérez this matter emerges for a moment in a manner significant of the uses to which it could be put. In the Spring of 1591, when it was desirable to suppress Diego de Heredia, Inquisitor-general Quiroga wrote, March 20th to the Saragossa tribunal, that he was suspected of passing horses to France. By April 4th, the tribunal was taking testimony to show that, a year or two before, he had sold two horses to a Frenchman for three hundred and sixty libras and that they were to be taken to France. There had been no secrecy in the transaction and further evidence was obtained that Heredia brought horses from Castile to Saragossa, whence they were taken to the mountains and were seen no more.[579] The events of May 24th, however, rendered further researches in this direction superfluous.

When this peculiar inquisitorial function was abandoned, does not clearly appear. In 1667 the Barcelona tribunal prosecuted Eudaldo Penstevan Bonguero for exporting horses to France. Already it would seem that the cognizance of the offence had become obsolete for, in 1664 the Suprema had called in question the competence of the tribunal to deal with it, when it replied, July 23d, that it held a papal brief conferring the faculty. The Suprema asked for an authentic copy of this or of the instructions empowering it to act, but neither was forthcoming and, on November 11, 1667, the Suprema again asked for them in order to decide the case of Bonguero.[580] We should probably not err in considering this to mark the last attempt to enforce a jurisdiction so foreign to the real objects of the Holy Office.

COINAGE

A still more eccentric invocation of the terror felt for the Inquisition, when the secular machinery failed to accomplish its purpose, occurred when the debasement of the coinage threw Spanish finance into inextricable confusion. The miserable vellon tokens were forced into circulation at rates enormously beyond their intrinsic value, and statesmen exhausted their ingenuity in devising clumsy expedients to arrest their inevitable depreciation—punishments of all kinds to keep down the premium on silver, and laws of maximum to regulate prices, from shirts to house-rent. The rude coinage, mostly battered and worn, was easily counterfeited, and there was large profit in manufacturing it abroad and flooding Spain with it at its fictitious valuation. Sanguinary laws were enacted to counteract this temptation, and the offence was punishable, like heresy, with burning, confiscation and the disabilities of descendants. To render this more effective, it was declared to be a case for the Inquisition and, like the exportation of horses, there was an attempt to disguise it as a matter of faith. A carta acordada of February 6, 1627, informed the tribunals that it fell within their jurisdiction if any heretic or fautor of heretics imported vellon money for the purpose of exporting gold or silver or other munitions of war, thus weakening the forces of the king, and all such offences belonged exclusively to the Inquisition. But when this was done by Catholics, for the sake of gain, the jurisdiction belonged exclusively to the king and as such he granted it cumulatively to the Inquisition, with the caution that, in competencias, censures were not to be employed. A papal brief confirming this was expected and meanwhile such prosecutions were to be conducted as matters of faith. It is not likely that Urban VIII condescended to authorize such misuse of the power delegated to the Inquisition for, in little more than a year, Philip IV revoked this action and confined the cognizance of the offence to the secular courts.[581]

If, as we have seen, the Inquisition was not a political machine of the importance that has been imagined, this was not through any lack of willingness on its part to be so employed. When its services were wanted, they were at the command of the State and if this rarely occurred under the Hapsburg princes, it was because they were not needed.

CHAPTER XI.
JANSENISM.

JANSENISM is a convenient term wherewith to stigmatize as heresy whatever is displeasing to Ultramontanism, whether in Church or State, and it served as a pretext for the continued existence of the Inquisition, after the older aberrations were exterminated. As a concrete heresy, however, it defies accurate theological definition. It took its rise in the interminable disputes over the insoluble questions of predestination, grace and free will, as settled by St. Augustin and the Second Council of Orange, and accepted by the Church, till the use made of predestination by Calvin forced a modification by the Council of Trent, and the daring Jesuit, Luis de Molina, revived the problem. Then the discussion became a trial of strength between the rising Company of Jesus and its elder rivals, the Augustinians and Dominicans, when Clement VIII vainly imposed silence on the disputants. Cornelis Jansen, Bishop of Ypres, sought to vindicate St. Augustin in his work entitled “Augustinus,” around which the controversy raged, until the Jesuits won a victory, in 1653, by procuring the condemnation of the famous Five Propositions, drawn from the work—a condemnation to which the followers of Jansen assented, while denying that he had taught them.[582]