The efficient organization of the Inquisition and the dread which it inspired caused it to be invoked in numberless contingencies, most diverse in character and wholly foreign to the objects of its institution. A brief enumeration of a few of these will serve to complete our survey of its activity and, trivial as they may seem, to illustrate how powerful was the influence which it exercised over the social life of Spain.
The value of its services, arising from the indefinite extent of its powers, was recognized early. In 1499, a Benedictine monastery complained to Ferdinand that it had pledged a cross to a certain Pedro de Santa Cruz and could not recover it, as he had placed himself under protection of Dominicans, who claimed exemption from legal processes. Ferdinand thereupon ordered the inquisitors of the city to settle the matter; they neglected it and he wrote again peremptorily, instructing them to seize the cross and do justice between the parties. In April, 1500, the king instructs the Valencia tribunal to recover for Don Ramon López, of the royal guard, two runaway slaves and some plate which they had stolen.[840] Evidently there was no little variety of duties expected of the Holy Office.
In 1518 a nunnery of Clares, in Calatayud, complained that, within ten paces of their house, there had been built a Mercenarian convent of which the inmates were disorderly; the nuns could not walk in their garden without being seen and great scandals were apprehended. Charles V applied to Leo X to have the Mercenarians replaced by Benedictines or Gerónimites and the Inquisition was invoked to assist.[841] Parties sometimes obtained papal briefs to have their suits transferred to the tribunals. In 1548 Doña Aldonza Cerdan did this in a litigation with Don Hernando de la Caballería and, in 1561, Doña Isabel de Francia in a suit with Don Juan de Heredia. In both cases the inquisitors of Saragossa refused to act until Inquisitor-general Valdés ordered them to do so.[842] All inquisitors were not thus self-restrained, for when, about this time, a general command was issued forbidding them to prosecute for perjury committed in other courts, it shows that they had been asked to do so and that some of them, at least, were ready to undertake such business.[843] In 1647, when the prevalence of duelling called for some effective means of repression, among the remedies proposed was that sending a challenge should be made a matter for the Inquisition, on the ground that the infamy accruing to the offender and his descendants would be the most effective discouragement to punctilious gentlemen.[844] The suggestion apparently was not adopted, but it illustrates the readiness to have recourse to the elastic jurisdiction of the Holy Office.
The Jesuits found the Inquisition of much service when, through the favor of Olivares, they were enabled to invoke its intervention in one of their quarrels with the Dominicans. In 1634, Fray Francisco Roales issued a pamphlet against the Society and Dr. Espino, an ex-Carmelite, published two others. They were answered by Padre Salazar and there the matter might have ended, but the Jesuits appealed to Philip IV and to Olivares, who promised satisfaction and ordered the Inquisitor-general Sotomayor (himself a Dominican) to take action, with the significant hint that he would be watched. A royal decree of January 29, 1635, rebuked the Suprema for lack of zeal, and ordered it to act with all diligence and to inflict severe punishment. It responded promptly on February 1st with an edict suppressing the pamphlet of Roales under heavy penalties, but this did not suffice and, on June 30th, it prohibited every one, layman or ecclesiastic, from saying anything in private or in public, derogatory to any religious Order or the members thereof, under exemplary penalties, to be rigorously executed—a decree which had to be repeated in 1643.
On June 27, 1635 the three obnoxious pamphlets were burned with unprecedented ceremony. There was a solemn procession of the officials and familiars, with the standards of the Inquisition, while a mule with carmine velvet trappings bore a chest painted with flames in which were the condemned writings. It traversed the principal streets to the plaza, where a fire was lighted; a herald, with sound of trumpet, proclaimed that the Company of Jesus was relieved of all that had been said against it and that these papers were false, calumnious, impious and scandalous; they were cast by the executioner into the flames and then the box and the procession wended their way solemnly back to the Dominican College of San Tomas. The effect of the demonstration, however, was somewhat marred by the populace believing that the box contained the bones of a misbelieving Jew, and accompanying the procession with shouts of “Death to the dogs!” and other pious ejaculations.
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Espino was arrested and incarcerated—not for the last time for, in 1643, he boasted that he had been imprisoned fifteen times for his attacks on the Jesuits. Roales was more fortunate; he was a chaplain of Philibert of Savoy; his pamphlet had been printed in Milan and he was safe in Rome, but a printer who had issued an edition in Saragossa was arrested and presumably sent to the galleys, and a Dominican Fray Cañamero, who had circulated the three pamphlets, was ordered to be arrested but seems to have saved himself by flight. Still the irrepressible conflict continued and the Inquisition was kept busy in prosecuting offenders and suppressing obnoxious utterances. It even construed its duty so rigidly that it condemned a memorial of the unfortunate creditors who suffered by the bankruptcy, in 1645, of the Jesuit College of San Hermengildo in Seville, when some three hundred depositors lost four hundred and fifty thousand ducats, and were struggling to rescue the remaining assets from the hands of the Jesuits.[845]
The Granada tribunal did not pause to enquire as to its jurisdiction when, in May 1646, owing to the scarcity of wheat, there were bread-riots and the mob had control of the city. It summoned all the grain-measurers and porters, under pain of excommunication, to appear before it on a matter of importance. By examining them, considerable stores of hidden corn were revealed; the corregidores registered it and the price was fixed at forty-two reales.[846] This was volunteer action but, in 1648, when a pestilence was raging in Valencia, the tribunal was called upon to maintain the quarantine at one of the city gates. The king, on February 1, 1649, notified the Suprema that the pest had ceased in Valencia, but that it was violent at Cádiz, San Lucar and other places, and urged continued vigilance, to which the Suprema replied that it had, since April, done its full duty, but that the municipal officials were very negligent, and it asked him to order them to do their share.[847] Apparently the Inquisition was relied upon for quarantine work. As lately as July 2, 1818, the Suprema wrote to all the tribunals that the plague had appeared at Tangier and threatened Spain with the most terrible of calamities. The king had ordered energetic precautions, in which all branches of the Government must coöperate, and it was no time for hesitation or scruples. The tribunals were therefore instructed to keep watch on the officials of all departments and see that they did their duty and, if they could devise more effective measures, they were invited to make suggestions.[848]
The unlimited interference of the Inquisition with matters pertaining to episcopal supervision is seen in two or three cases tried by the Madrid tribunal. May 5, 1656, it sentenced the priest, Francisco Pérez Lozano, to exile for a year from various places for his share in founding a confraternity with what were called “statutos execrables.” February 6, 1688, Juan Moreno de Piedrola, a priest of the Congregation of San Salvador, who proposed to establish a congregation, in the rules of which the tribunal discovered censurable propositions, was ordered to surrender all the papers and not to discuss it in word or writing and was exiled until he should have permission to return, with warning that otherwise he would be prosecuted with the full rigor of the law. As he was not required to abjure even de levi, it shows that there was no suspicion of heresy involved. Then, in 1697, Fray Juan Maldonado, of the Order of San Juan de Dios, had three years of exile for preaching, in the church of his convent at Ciudad Real, a sermon characterized as burlesque and scandalous, though there is no hint of its being in any way heretical.[849]
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