A History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages; volume II

by Henry Charles Lea

The great kingdom of Castile and Leon, embracing the major portion of the Spanish peninsula, never enjoyed the blessing of the mediæval Inquisition. It was more independent of Rome than any other monarchy of the period. Lordly prelates, turbulent nobles, and cities jealous of their liberties allowed scant opportunity for the centralization of power in the crown. The people were rude and uncultured, and not much given to vain theological speculation. Their superfluous energy, moreover, found ample occupation in the task of winning back the land from the Saracen. The large population of Jews and of conquered Moors gave them peculiar problems to deal with which would have been complicated rather than solved by the methods of the Inquisition, until the union of Aragon and Castile under Ferdinand and Isabella, followed by the conquest of Granada, enabled those monarchs to undertake seriously the business, attractive both to statecraft and to fanaticism, of compelling uniformity of faith.

It is true that the Dominican legend relates how Dominic returned from Rome to Spain as Inquisitor-general, on the errand of establishing there the Inquisition for the purpose of punishing the renegade converted Jews and Moors; how he was warmly seconded by San Fernando III.; how he organized the Inquisition throughout the land, celebrating himself the first auto de fé at Burgos, where three hundred apostates were burned, and the second auto in the presence of the saintly king, who himself carried on his shoulders fagots for the burning of his subjects, and the pertinacious wretches defiantly rejoiced in the flames which were consuming them; how, after this, he established the Inquisition in Aragon, whence he journeyed to Paris and organized it throughout France; how, in 1220, he sent Conrad of Marburg as inquisitor to Germany, and in 1221 finished his labors by founding it in all the parts of Italy. All this can rank in historical value with the veracious statement of an old chronicler—a compatriot of the Pied Piper of Hamelin—that St. Boniface was an inquisitor, and that, with the support of Pepin le Bref, he burned many heretics. Detailed lists, moreover, are given of the successive inquisitors-general of the Peninsula—Frailes Suero Gomes, B. Gil, Pedro de Huesca, Arnaldo Segarra, Garcia de Valcos, etc., but these are simply the Dominican provincials of Spain, who were empowered by the popes to appoint inquisitors, and whose exercise of that power did not extend beyond Aragon. Even Paramo, although he tries to prove that there were inquisitors nominally in Castile, is forced to admit that practically there was no Inquisition there.[201]

Yet, even in the distant city of Leon, Catharism had obtained a foothold. Bishop Rodrigo, who died in 1232, expelled a number of Cathari, on his attention being called to them by their circulating a story to excite hatred of the priesthood, relating how a poor woman placed a candle on the altar in honor of the Virgin, and on her leaving it a priest took it for his own use. The following night the Virgin appeared to her votary and cast burning wax into her eyes, saying, “Take the wages of your service. As soon as you went away a priest carried off the candle; as you would have been rewarded had the candle been consumed on my altar, so you must bear the punishment, since your carelessness gave me the light only for a moment.” This diabolical story, says Lucas of Tuy, an eye-witness, so affected the minds of the simple that the devotion of offering candles ceased, and it required two genuine miracles to restore the faith of the people. During the interval between the death of Bishop Rodrigo, in March, 1232, and the election of his successor, Arnaldo, in August, 1234, the heretics had ample opportunity to work their wicked will. A Catharan named Arnaldo had been burned, about 1218, in a place in the suburbs used for depositing filth. There was a spring there which the heretics colored red, and proclaimed that it had miraculously been turned to blood. Many of them, simulating blindness, lameness, and demoniacal possession, were carried there and pretended to be cured, after which they dug up the heretic’s bones and declared them to be those of a holy martyr. The people were fired with enthusiasm, erected a chapel, and worshipped the relics with the utmost ardor. In vain the clergy and the friars endeavored to stem the tide; the people denounced them as heretics, and despised the excommunication with which the neighboring bishops visited the adoration of the new saint; while the real heretics made many converts by secretly relating how the affair had been managed, and pointing it out as a sample of the manufacture of saints and miracles. God visited the sacrilege with a drouth of ten months, which was not broken until Lucas, at the risk of his life, destroyed the heretic chapel; and when the rains came there was a revulsion of feeling which enabled him to expel the heretics. All this would seem to indicate that the heretics were numerous and organized; it certainly shows that there was no machinery for their suppression; but after the elevation of Lucas to the see of Tuy, in 1239, we hear no more of heretics or of persecutions. The whole affair, apparently, was a sporadic manifestation, probably of some band of fugitives from Languedoc, who disappeared and left no following.[202]

If what Lucas tells us be true, that ecclesiastics frequently joined in and enjoyed the ridicule with which heretics derided the sacraments and the clergy, the Spanish Church was not likely to give much aid to the introduction of the Inquisition. How little its methods were understood appears in the fact that when, in 1236, San Fernando III. found some heretics at Palencia, he proceeded to brand them in the face, which brought them to reason and led them to seek absolution. No one seemed to know what to do with them, so Gregory IX. was applied to, and he authorized the Bishop of Palencia to reconcile them. There is probably no truth in the statement of some historians that the king, on several occasions, was obliged to levy from his subjects a tribute of wood with which to burn the unrepentant, and the story only serves to show how utterly vague have been the current conceptions of the period.[203]

We reach firmer ground with the codes known as El Fuero Real and Las Siete Partidas, the first issued by Alonso the Wise, in 1255, and the second about ten years later. By this time the Inquisition was at its height. It was thoroughly organized, and wherever it existed the business of suppressing heresy was exclusively in its hands. Yet not only does Alonso take no count of it, but in his regulation by secular law of the relations between the heretic and the Church he shows how completely, up to this period, Spain had remained outside of the great movements of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Heresy, it is true, is one of the matters pertaining to the ecclesiastical tribunals, and any one can accuse a heretic before his bishop or vicar. If the accused is found not to believe as the Church teaches, effort is to be made to convert him, and if he returns to the faith he is to be pardoned. If he proves obstinate, he is to be handed over to the secular judge. Then, however, his fate is decided without reference to the laws which the Church had endeavored to introduce throughout Christendom. If the culprit had received the consolamentum, or is a believer observing the rites, or one of those who deny the future life, he is to be burned; but if a believer not observing the rites, he is to be banished or imprisoned until he returns to the faith. Any one learning heresy, but not yet a believer, is fined ten pounds of gold to the fisc, or, if unable to pay, to receive fifty lashes in public. In the case of those who die in heresy or are executed, their estates pass to Catholic descendants, or, in default of these, to the next of kin; if without such kindred, the property of laymen goes to the fisc, of ecclesiastics, to the Church, if claimed within a year, after which it inures to the fisc. Children disinherited for heresy recover their portions, but not the mesne profits, on recantation. No one, after condemnation for heresy, can hold office, inherit property, make a will, execute a sale, or give testimony. The house where a wandering heretic missionary is sheltered is forfeited to the Church, if inhabited by the owner; if rented, the offending tenant is fined ten pounds of gold or publicly scourged. A rico home or noble sheltering heretics in his lands or castles, and persisting after a year’s excommunication, forfeits the land or castle to the king; and if a non-noble his body and property are at the king’s pleasure. The Christian who turns Jew or Moslem is legally a heretic, and is to be burned, as well as one who brings up a child in the forbidden faith. Prosecutions of the dead, however, are humanely limited to five years after decease.[204]

All this shows that Alonso and his counsellors recognized the duty of the State to preserve the purity of the faith, but that they considered it wholly an affair of the State, in which the Church had no voice beyond ascertaining the guilt of the accused. All the voluminous and minute legislation of Gregory IX., Innocent IV., and Alexander IV. was wholly disregarded—the canon law had no currency in Castile, which regulated such matters to suit its own needs. That in this respect the popular needs were met is shown by the Ordenamiento de Alcalà, issued in 1348, which is silent on the subject of heresy. Apparently no change was deemed necessary in the provisions of the Partidas, which were then for the first time confirmed by the popular assembly. Under such legislation it follows as a matter of course that the Dominican provincial had no inquisitors to appoint, except in Aragon, under the bull of Urban IV. in 1262.

Castile continued unvexed by the Inquisition, and persecution for heresy was almost unknown. In 1316 Bernard Gui, of Toulouse, discovered in his district some of the dreaded sectaries known as Dolcinists or Pseudo-Apostoli, who fled to Spain to escape his energetic pursuit. May 1, 1316, he wrote to all the prelates and friars of Spain describing their characteristics and urging their apprehension and punishment. Had there been an Inquisition there he would have addressed himself to it. From remote Compostella he received an answer, written by Archbishop Rodrigo, March 6, 1317, announcing that five persons answering to the description had been captured there and were held in chains, and asking for instructions as to the mode of trying them and the punishment to be inflicted in case they are found guilty, “for all this is heretofore unaccustomed in our parts.” Evidently there was no Inquisition in Castile and Leon to which to apply, and even the provisions of the Partidas were unknown, though of all places in the kingdom Compostella must have been the one most familiar with the outer world and with heretics, from the stream of penitents continually sent thither as pilgrims.[205]

In 1401 Boniface IX. made a demonstration by appointing the provincial, Vicente de Lisboa, inquisitor over all Spain, directing that his expenses should be paid by the bishops, and that no superior of his Order could remove him. The only heresy specifically alluded to in the bull is the idolatrous worship of plants, trees, stones, and altars—apparently superstitious relics of paganism which indicate the condition of religion and culture in the Peninsula. Boniface’s action could hardly have been taken with any expectation of result, as Spain rendered obedience to Benedict XIII., the Antipope of Avignon, and it was probably only a move in the political game of the Great Schism. Whatever the motive, however, the effort was fruitless, for Fray Vicente was already dead in the odor of sanctity at the date of the bull. On learning this, Boniface returned to the charge, February 1, 1402, by empowering forever thereafter the Dominican Provincial of Spain to appoint and remove inquisitors, or to act as such himself, with all the privileges and powers accorded to the office by the canons. Inoperative as this remained, it at least had the advantage of supplying to the Spanish historians an unbroken line of inquisitors-general to be catalogued. About the same time King Henry III. increased the penalties of heresy by decreeing confiscation to the royal treasury of one-half of the possessions of heretics condemned by the ecclesiastical judges.[206]

This, perhaps, technically justifies Alonso Tostado, Bishop of Avila, who soon afterwards alludes to inquisitors in Spain investigating those defamed for heresy, and it explains the remarks of Sixtus IV. when, in January, 1482, he confirmed the two inquisitors appointed at Seville by Ferdinand and Isabella at the commencement of their reforms, and forbade their naming more, for the reason that the appointees of the Dominican provincial were sufficient. In spite of all this, the Spanish Inquisition was simply potential, not existent. When, in 1453, Alonso de Almarzo, Abbot of the great Benedictine foundation of Antealtares of Compostella, with his accomplices, was tried for selling throughout Spain and Portugal indulgences warranted to release the souls of the damned from hell, for counterfeiting the papal Agnus Dei, for forging and altering papal letters, and for persuading Jewish converts to apostatize, had there been an Inquisition it would promptly have taken cognizance of the culprits; but in place of this the case was referred to Nicolas V., who instructed the Bishop of Tarazona to proceed against them. A few years later Alonso de Espina, about 1460, sorrowfully admits the absence of all persecution of heresy. Bishops and inquisitors and preachers ought all to resist the heretics, but there is no one to do it. “No one investigates the errors of heretics. The ravening wolves, O Lord, have gained admittance to thy flock, for the shepherds are few. There are many hirelings, and because they are hirelings they care only for shearing, not for feeding the sheep!” and he draws a deplorable picture of the Spanish Church, distracted with heretics, Jews, and Saracens. Soon after this, in 1464, the Cortes assembled at Medina turned its attention to the subject and complained of the great number of “malos cristianos e sospechosos en la fe,” but the national aversion to the papal Inquisition still manifested itself, and its introduction was not suggested. The archbishops and bishops were requested to set on foot a rigid investigation after heretics, and King Henry IV. was asked to lend them aid, so that every suspected place might be thoroughly searched, and offenders brought to light, imprisoned, and punished. It was represented to the king that this would be to his advantage, as the confiscations would inure to the royal treasury, and he graciously expressed his assent; but the effort was resultless.[207]

For the most part the orthodoxy of Spain had been vexed only with a few Fraticelli and Waldenses, not numerous enough to call for active repression. The main trouble lay in the multitudes of Jews and Moors who, under the law, were entitled to toleration, but whom popular fanaticism had forced to conversion in great numbers, and whose purity of faith was justly liable to suspicion. Hereafter I hope to have the opportunity of showing that from both the religious and the political standpoint of the age the measures taken by Ferdinand and Isabella were by no means without justification, however mistaken they were both in morals and in policy, and however unfortunate in their ultimate results. At present it suffices to point out this condition of affairs to explain the dissatisfaction which was widely prevalent and the demand for an efficient remedy.