The inquisition in the Spanish dependencies / Sicily—Naples—Sardinia—Milan—the Canaries—Mexico—Peru—New Granada

by Henry Charles Lea

This necessarily applied to the citations and orders of arrest with which the Roman Inquisition was endeavoring to extend its jurisdiction over Naples. In April, 1564, Hieronimo de Monte, Apostolic Commissioner in Benevento (a papal enclave in Neapolitan territory), in the case of the Marquis of Vico, was taking testimony to the effect that no one would dare to serve a summons from Rome on him without the vice-regal exequatur, as he would thus expose himself to punishment, including perhaps the galleys.[171] Rome endeavored to evade this limitation on its jurisdiction and was met with consistent firmness. In 1568 Alcalá was informed that, under orders from the Inquisition, the bishop had arrested a citizen named Martino Bagnato and was holding him for transmission to Rome. The bishop was at once notified that he must surrender the prisoner to the captain of the city, to be held subject to prosecution in the via ordinaria by his competent judge, and the captain was ordered, in case of refusal, to take him by force. This did not avail Bagnato much, for the Roman Inquisition then wrote to the viceroy, asking to have the prisoner forwarded, which presumably was done.[172]

There was in this merely an assertion of sovereignty and no desire to shield the heretic, for when the Inquisition accepted the inevitable and made application to the viceroy, it was granted almost as a matter of course. The formality was simple. The application was referred to the chief chaplain, who made a show of consulting with the judges of the Audiencia and reported that it was in due form, when the exequatur was granted. Occasionally, however, some question might be raised when the process called attention to some abusive extension of inquisitorial jurisdiction. Thus in 1610 a certain Fabio Orzolino asked for the exequatur on a citation which he had obtained directed to the Abate Angelo and Carlo della Rocca of Traetto (Gaeta). On this the chief chaplain reported that the parties owed to Orzolino 88 ducats, for non-payment of which they had been publicly excommunicated. Under this excommunication they had lain for a year, which, according to the canon law, rendered them suspect of heresy and thus, by a strained construction, subjected them to inquisitorial action. It is not easy to understand the decision of the chaplain that the exequatur should be granted as to the abate and not as to the layman.[173] A more wholesome case was one in 1574, shown in the application of Giovanni Tomase, Modesto Abate and Sebastiano Luca for an exequatur to the order of the Roman Inquisition to sell the property of Nicola Pegna and Giovanni Mateo of Tagio, to reimburse the applicants for expenses amounting to 338 crowns arising from false accusations of heresy brought against them by Pegna and Mateo, who had been condemned for false-witness to scourging in Rome, with the addition of the galleys for Mateo.[174]

Under this system the Roman Inquisition had a tolerably free hand in Naples and its arrests were sufficiently numerous for it to establish a regular service of vessels to carry its prisoners, transportation by sea being much more economical than by land. The latter was expensive, as we chance to learn from a letter of March 8, 1586, ordering Captain Amoroso to be forwarded by land because the tempestuous weather prevented vessels from putting to sea. He was to have a guard of six soldiers who were to bring back a certificate of his delivery to the Inquisition, and the expenses of the journey were to be defrayed from the property of the prisoner.[175] The sea service, however, was not without its risks. When, in 1593, Fray Gerónimo Gracian, the disciple of Santa Teresa, left Naples for Rome, it was on a fragata de la Inquisicion, which is described as well provided with chains and shackles for securing prisoners. It chanced to be captured by the Moors and Gracian narrowly escaped burning, as he was supposed to be an inquisitor.[176]

Still Rome was not satisfied with this and it found Viceroy Osuna (1582-86) obsequious to its exigencies. About 1585 he allowed Sixtus V to establish in Naples a regular Commissioner of the Inquisition, with jurisdiction practically superseding that of the archbishop. By this time the spirit of the Neapolitans had been effectually broken. Already, in 1580, the Venetian envoy Alvise Lando, in describing how they had been subdued by the universal misery attendant on the Spanish domination, especially under the vice-royalty of the Marquis of Mondéjar (1575-79), adds that it is the opinion of many that if the king chose to establish the Inquisition, so greatly abhorred, there would be little opposition.[177] How speedily under these circumstances the episcopal functions became atrophied is illustrated by a case occurring in 1592. In 1590 a French youth named Jacques Girard was captured by a Barbary corsair, circumcised and forced to embrace Islam. In 1592 he was sent on shore in Calabria with a boat’s crew to procure water, when he escaped and, being taken for a Moor, was thrown in prison at Cosenza. He applied to the archbishop for reconciliation to the Church; the prelate felt unable to act, even in so simple a matter, and wrote to the Roman Inquisition for instructions. Before these came, Jacques had been transferred to Naples; a second application was made to Rome and the necessary powers were sent to the Archbishop of Naples, with orders to report the result.[178] So, in the trial for heresy of the celebrated Fra Tommaso Campanella, in 1600, Clement VIII designated as a court his nuncio at Naples, the archiepiscopal vicar and the Bishop of Termoli, and they were to transmit to Rome a summary of the case, with their opinions, before rendering sentence.[179]

Under such a viceroy as Osuna, the inquisitorial commissioner was superfluous, for all the powers of the state were put at the disposition of the papal representatives. As early as 1582 we find the nuncio assuming jurisdiction and requesting Osuna to execute a sentence of scourging which he had passed on the Venetian Giulio Secamonte for suspicion of heresy, a request which was promptly granted. The Roman Inquisition had only to ask for the arrest of any one throughout the kingdom, when immediately orders were given to the local authorities to seize him and send him to Naples for transmission to Rome, and if necessary to take possession of and forward all his books and papers. From this the highest in the land were not secure. In 1583 Cardinal Savelli, then secretary of the Inquisition, wrote that the person of Prince Gianbattista Spinello was wanted in Rome to answer for matters of faith, when immediately Osuna issued orders to seize him wherever he might be found and bring him to the Royal Audiencia, where he was to give security in 25,000 ducats to present himself within a month to the Holy Office and not to leave Rome without its permission.[180]

Osuna’s successor, Juan de Zuñiga, Count of Miranda, was equally subservient, but he insisted on the observance of the formalities when Rome sought to act independently without vice-regal intervention. In 1587, at the order of Cardinal Savelli, the Apostolic Vicar of Lecce induced the Audiencia of the Terra d’Otranto to arrest Giantonio Stomeo. This was overslaughing the viceroy who rebuked the Audiencia, telling it that it should have referred the matter to him and awaited his instructions, meanwhile assuring itself of the person of the individual. It was purely a matter of etiquette for, in the end, after some further correspondence, Miranda ordered Stomeo to be forwarded to Naples by the first chain (of galley slaves), giving advices so that arrangements could be made for his transmission to Rome. There seems to have been some doubt as to the correctness of the stand taken by Miranda for subsequently Annibale Moles, Regent of the Vicaria, was called upon for a consulta in which he stated the rule to be that arrests for the Inquisition must always pass through the hands of the viceroy, who always ordered their execution.[181]

Rome was not satisfied with this and continued its encroachments, taking advantage of any weakness of the civil power to establish precedents and claim them as rights. In 1628 we find it represented by the Dominican Fra Giacinto Petronio, Bishop of Molfetta, who styled himself inquisitor and was especially audacious in extending his powers. He arrested Dr. Tomas Calendrino, a Sicilian, because he assisted in the escape from Benevento of a contumacious person. He was carried to the Archbishop of Naples and placed on the papal galleys for transmission to Rome, but the Neapolitan spirit was rising again and the Collaterale and Junta de Jurisdicion called on Viceroy Alba to demand his surrender under threat of not allowing the galleys to depart and of banishing Fra Petronio within 24 hours. Alba however conferred with the nuncio and archbishop, who assured him that it was customary to arrest and send people to Rome without notice to him. In this perplexity Alba referred the matter to his master Philip IV, who warmly praised his prudence in so doing. The papal nuncio at Madrid, he said, had received orders from Rome to protest against the attempted innovation of requiring notice to the viceroy and he therefore ordered Alba, as the matter was of the highest importance, to investigate precedents of persons arrested with or without notice, and not to introduce any novelty. What was the ultimate result as respects Calendrino does not appear, but this nerveless way of treating the matter was not calculated to check the insolence of Fra Petronio who, in the course of the affair, excommunicated the judges Calefano and Osorio, summoned the auditor Figueroa to present himself to the Roman Inquisition and finally arrested him with his own armed sbirri. This was no novelty, for he had no scruple in imprisoning and maltreating royal officials for executing orders of the government.[182]

Philip was accustomed to allow his own officials to be thus abused by the Spanish Inquisition, but the Neapolitan temper was stubborn and, in 1630, the Collaterale reminded Fra Petronio that all commissions to arrest required the exequatur; it ordered him to present within three days all that he had received from Rome, and moreover forbade him to keep armed retainers. It made complaints to the king and to the Spanish ambassador at Rome, while Urban VIII issued briefs defending him, under which encouragement he continued his arbitrary methods. At length Philip, by a letter of March 18, 1631, ordered that no papal brief should be executed without the exequatur; a new viceroy, the Count of Monterey, was prompted to defend the royal jurisdiction and Fra Petronio complained to Rome that the aid of the secular arm was withheld unless he would state the names of those whom he desired to imprison. The pope appealed to Philip IV, who apparently had forgotten about the matter and, in a letter of November 27, 1632, asked for explanations. Then Fra Petronio commenced taking evidence against the auditor Brandolino, but when the Collaterale deliberated, January 31, 1633, on a proposition to banish him, he yielded. Monterey negotiated with Rome to have him replaced with some one less objectionable and also that the new incumbent should not hold a tribunal but should only report to the Congregation the cases occurring. Urban VIII offered to appoint any one whom they might select, and when the name was presented of Antonio Ricciullo, Bishop of Belcastro, then their ambassador at Rome, he was duly commissioned.[183]

There was nothing gained by the change. Ricciullo styled himself inquisitor-general; he held a tribunal and in his time condemned four clerics for functioning without priest’s orders—three strangled and burnt in public, and one strangled privately. The pope ordered that the Dominican convent should serve as an inquisitorial prison and its prior should be a consultor, and thus after a struggle of nearly a century the papal Inquisition was fairly established in Naples.[184]

Ricciullo died, May 17, 1642, and was succeeded by Felice Tamburello, Bishop of Sora. He died in 1656 and was replaced temporarily by the nuncio Giulio Spinola, who served until 1659, when Camillo Piazza, Bishop of Dragona was appointed. That Naples should be impatient at finding itself thus gradually and imperceptibly brought under the yoke of the papal Inquisition was natural. The turbulent city had gallantly resisted, at no little cost to itself, the imposition of the Spanish Holy Office, through times in which unity of faith was seriously threatened by successive heresies. Now all such danger was past. There were no Cathari or Waldenses or Protestants to rend in Italy the seamless garment of the Church and the period was one of spiritual apathy, wholly averse to proselytism. Only the unappeasable longing of Rome to make its power manifest everywhere could explain its persistence in thus insinuating the abhorred jurisdiction in a city which prided itself on its piety, on the number of churches and convents which impoverished it, on the obedience of the people to the priesthood and on the strictness of its religious observance. The only field of inquisitorial activity lay in reckless speeches which might savor of irreligion, in the blasphemy through which anger or despair found expression, in the superstitious arts of wise-women, in burning clerics who administered sacraments without having received the requisite orders and in such offences as bigamy and seduction in the confessional, all of which could only by a strained construction be deemed as savoring of heresy, and could readily be disposed of by the ordinary spiritual or secular courts. The Holy Office was a manifest superfluity and its imposition was all the more galling.