A History of the Inquisition of Spain; vol. 4

by Henry Charles Lea

He threw himself into the project with enthusiasm, labored with intelligent activity, overcame the initial difficulties and for some years success seemed assured. Gradually however trouble arose with the Capuchin friars who had accompanied the colonists as their priests. Friar Romuald of Freiburg, the prefect of the group, was a disturbing element, involved in quarrels with the episcopal officials; friction sprang up between him and Olavide, which developed into hatred, and the Inquisition furnished ready means for gratifying malevolence. In September, 1775, Romuald presented a formal denunciation of the Superintendent as an atheist and materialist, who was in correspondence with Voltaire and Rousseau, who read prohibited books, denied the miracles, and held that non-Catholics could be saved. Ample details were furnished of his irreligious walk and conversation, some of which indicate the points on which quarrels had arisen—not resorting to prayer and good works to avert calamities, forbidding the ringing of bells in tempests, wanting corpses buried in cemeteries rather than in churches, and defending the Copernican system condemned by the Church. Olavide’s protector, Aranda, had fallen from power in 1773 and the opportunity was not to be lost by the Inquisition of striking at a man, conspicuous enough to serve as a terrifying example, and yet who, as a “kinless loon,” had no influential family behind him. Besides, the whole scheme of the Poblaciones had aroused the hostility of two influential classes—the friars whose establishments were excluded and the Mesta whose flocks were not allowed to ravage the fields.

PABLO OLAVIDE

It shows the decadence of the Inquisition that the royal permission to prosecute was sought and obtained. Olavide was summoned to court, towards the end of 1775, on a pretext; after some delay he realized the situation and sought the protection of Manuel de Roda, then minister of Gracia y Justicia, who was too vulnerable himself to compromise his own safety, and who merely wrote to Inquisitor-general Beltran a note speaking favorably of Olavide. The Madrid tribunal moved with deliberation, for it was not until November 14, 1776, that Olavide was arrested. For two years he disappeared from human sight. Seventy-two witnesses were examined, and the fiscal accumulated a formidable array of a hundred and sixty-six heretical propositions. He admitted imprudent talk, while denying all lapse from the faith, but he confessed enough for the inquisitors to assume that he secretly cherished the opinions of the fashionable philosophy, and his condemnation was inevitable. We are told that a public auto was desired, in order to emphasize the warning, but it was felt that the occasion scarce justified such a solemnity, and the Roman Inquisition was consulted which suggested that the purpose would be answered by a private auto with a huge number of spectators. It was held, November 24, 1778, in the audience-chamber, after inviting—invitations equivalent to commands—Campomanes and numerous prominent nobles, statesmen and others who had been connected with Olavide, or were suspected of philosophism, so that when he was brought in he found himself surrounded by his friends assembled to witness his humiliation. For three hours he listened to the long-drawn recital of all the heretical propositions proved against him by the witnesses, to which he responded by ejaculating “I never have lost the faith although the fiscal says so.” Then followed the sentence, pronouncing him a convicted heretic, a rotten member of the Church, and condemning him to reconciliation, confiscation, and banishment for ever for forty leagues from Madrid and all royal residences, the kingdoms of Lima, Andalusia and the colonies of the Sierra Morena, to reclusion for eight years in a convent and to the customary disabilities for himself and his descendants to the fifth generation. This tremendous severity so overcame him that he fell senseless to the floor. A distant convent at Gerona was selected for his confinement; in 1780, on the plea of ill-health, he was allowed to visit a watering-place, from which he escaped to France, not without, it is said, the secret connivance of the court, although, when his extradition was demanded, he sought safety in Geneva. With the outbreak of the Revolution he returned to France, where he narrowly escaped the guillotine; adversity brought a change of heart and, in 1798, he published anonymously at Valencia his “El Evangelio en Triunfo, ó Historía de un Filósofo disengañado,” which had an enormous circulation and so impressed Inquisitor-general Lorenzana that he was allowed to return to Spain. He was offered restoration to his positions, but he was disillusioned with the world; he retired to Baeza, devoting himself to good works and dying in 1804.[639]

The Inquisition had not miscalculated the salutary influence of the example. Don Felipe Samaniego, Archdeacon of Pampeluna, Knight of Santiago and member of the Royal Council, was one of those constrained to be present, and was so frightened that the next day he denounced himself to the tribunal as a reader of prohibited books, of which he presented a long list. This, he said, had led him to religious doubt but, on serious reflection, he had resolved to adhere firmly to the Catholic faith and he asked to be absolved ad cautelam. He was turned to account by being required to submit a sworn statement as to where and how he had procured the books, how long he had held these views, who had taught him, with whom had he discussed these matters, and who had refuted or accepted his opinions. This brought out a detailed confession compromising almost all the learned and enlightened men of the court—Aranda, Floridablanca, Campomanes, O’Reilly, Lacy, the Duke of Almodovar and many others of high position. Prosecutions were instituted against them all, but the testimony of a single witness was insufficient and the power of those implicated was so great that the tribunal was content to let the cases remain in suspense.[640]

Offenders less conspicuous were less fortunate, and numerous cases attested the resolve of the Inquisition to crush out the new ideas. It was merciful to Benito Bails, a professor of mathematics and author of a series of text-books long in use, for a niece was allowed to enter with him the secret prison and take care of him, as he was aged and crippled in all his limbs. Before the publication of evidence he confessed to having entertained doubts as to the existence of God and as to immortality, but that solitude and reflection had removed them, and that he was ready to abjure and accept penance. As reclusion in a convent would have deprived him of the care of his neice, his house was charitably assigned to him as a prison, with various spiritual penances.[641] A more suggestive case was that of Doctor Gregorio de Vicente, professor of philosophy in the University of Valladolid, for certain theses in which were discovered twenty propositions savoring of “naturalism,” and for a sermon in which he argued that true religion consisted in the practice of virtue and not in external observance. For eight years he lay in the secret prison, but it chanced that he had an uncle who was an inquisitor of Santiago, whose influence induced the Valladolid tribunal at length, in 1801, to pronounce him insane, while condemning his propositions. On his release, however, he gave such evidence of sanity that the tribunal felt obliged to arrest him again and repeat his trial. This time a year of incarceration sufficed; he abjured his errors publicly and accepted certain penances.[642]

CONSERVATISM AND PROGRESS

A case which excited much attention was that of D. Ramon de Salas, a prominent man of letters and professor in Salamanca, imprisoned in 1796, on the charge of entertaining the errors of Voltaire, Rousseau and other exponents of the new philosophy. He admitted that he had read their works, but only for the purpose of confuting them, which he had done publicly and in writing. The accounts which have reached us of his trial differ irreconcileably, but it appears that the prosecution was the result of private enmity on the part of men high in office, and that Salas had powerful protectors who induced Carlos IV to evoke the case, after he had been condemned. This invasion of inquisitorial jurisdiction led to resistance on the part of Inquisitor-general Lorenzana, which caused Queen María Luisa to exclaim to him “It is you, hypocrite, and the like of you who cause the revolutions of Europe.” Not only was the sentence annulled and Salas was liberated, but a royal order was obtained that in future no arrest should be made without previously consulting the king. This was duly drawn up, but Vallejo, Archbishop of Santiago and President of the Council of Castile, one of the enemies of Salas, had sufficient influence with Godoy to procure its withdrawal.[643]

This case illustrates the struggle on foot between the forces of conservatism and progress, in which the Inquisition, as the protagonist of the former, was not always successful. The propagators of the new ideas were difficult to silence. Even under Carlos III, we are told that in 1785-6 there appeared in Saragossa essays scandalizing to the faithful, for they sought to establish that celibacy is prejudicial to the State, that vows of religion should be postponed to the age of 24, that the Church had customs detrimental to the State and that its abuses and superstitions should be suppressed. Apparently the Inquisition took no steps to vindicate the faith, and when Fray Diego de Cádiz, at the request of many ecclesiastics, preached against these subversive propositions, he was obliged to fly and even then he was pursued by the wrath of the innovators.[644] Under the anomalous government of Carlos IV, constant changes in the ministry and the fluctuating whims of his favorite Godoy, who liked to pose as the patron of letters and enlightenment, in turns repressed the Inquisition and gave it free rein. A prominent personage of the time was the Count Francisco Cabarrús, a French adventurer who founded the Bank of San Carlos and alternated, like other statesmen of the period, between guiding the destinies of the nation and a dungeon. After his imprisonment in the castle of Batres, he relieved his mind in 1792 and 1793 of the thoughts which had accumulated there, in three letters to Jovellanos, developing in verbose rhetoric the ideas of Rousseau and the contrat social. Education, he argued, should be universal, but it should be purely secular, and the clergy should not be allowed to meddle with it, religious training being left to parents and parish priests. In colleges the studies should be directed to fitting youth for actual life; the existing universities were sewers of humanity, whose scholastic theology and teaching of jurisprudence were equally destructive to the human race. The numbers of the clergy were enormously excessive, constituting a running sore and a body subversive of all the principles of morals and statesmanship. There should be stimulated a holy and virtuous indignation against all the absurd and apocryphal devotions which pervert reason, destroy virtue and cause heathendom to ridicule Christianity.[645] For much less than this many a man, like Olavide, had suffered bitterly but, in 1795, Cabarrús prefaced these letters with one addressed to Godoy himself as “mi amigo” and, secure in the protection of the all-powerful favorite, he was beyond the reach of the Inquisition, showing how uncertain were its functions during the disastrous period when absolutism was in the hands of a frivolous courtier.

CONSERVATISM AND PROGRESS