Such prosperity as the tribunal enjoyed was spasmodic and it soon relapsed into indigence. In 1577 we find the tribunal of Murcia ordered to pay two hundred ducats, arrearages of salary due to Martínez Villar, who had been promoted, in 1569, from the inquisitorship to the archbishopric of Sassari[214] and, in 1588, Seville and Llerena were each called upon for 119,000 maravedís to repair an injustice committed by the Sardinia tribunal on María Malla—apparently it had spent the ill-gotten money and was unable to make restitution.[215] In hopes of relieving this poverty-stricken condition, Philip II, in 1580, appealed to Gregory XIII stating that it could not sustain itself and asking for assistance, which of course meant that canonries or other benefices should be assigned to its support.[216] This appeal was unavailing for, in 1618, the Suprema represented to Philip III the deplorable condition of the tribunal, unable to defray the salaries of a single inquisitor, a fiscal, two secretaries and the minor officials; it urged him to obtain from the pope the suppression of canonries and meanwhile to meet its necessities by the grant of some licences to export wheat and horses, which the pious monarch hastened to do.[217] This did not relieve the chronic poverty and, in 1658, Gregorio Cid, transferred to Cuenca after six years and a half of service in Sardinia, represented to the inquisitor-general that the tribunal ought to have two inquisitors and a fiscal and that it was difficult to find any one to serve as a notary, for the salary was small and expenses were great; besides, the climate was so unhealthy that the tribunal often had to be closed in consequence of the sickness of the officials.[218]
The tribunal was evidently a superfluity, in so far as its legitimate functions were concerned, and we may assume that it was maintained not so much to deal with existing heretics as to prevent the island from becoming an asylum for heresy. This could have been accomplished by strengthening and stimulating the episcopal jurisdiction, but the Inquisition had monopolized this and was jealous of all interference. In 1538 Paul III addressed to the bishops and inquisitor of the island a brief in which he recapitulated the provisions of the Council of Vienne requiring them to coöperate and work in harmony; he urged the bishops to be so active in repressing heresy that they should need no outside aid but, if such should be necessary, the mandates of the council were to be observed. The bishops apparently were not remiss in taking advantage of this to revendicate the jurisdiction of which they had practically been stripped and the Inquisition resented the intrusion; Charles V must speedily have made the pope sensible of his mistake for, in 1540, he addressed to the judges of the island another brief revoking the previous one and reciting that the episcopal Ordinaries were interfering with the functions of the inquisitors and must be restrained from impeding or molesting them in any way by the liberal use of censures and the invocation, if necessary, of the secular arm. This was not allowed to be a dead letter for, when in 1555 Salvator, Archbishop of Sassari, under the brief of 1538, undertook to interfere with the tribunal, Paul IV, at the request of the emperor, promptly ordered the Bishops of Alghero, Suelli and Bosa to intervene and granted them the necessary faculties to coerce him.[219]
The tribunal had little to show as the result of the jurisdiction so eagerly monopolized. In fact, its chief industry consisted in multiplying its nominal officials and familiars—positions sought for in consequence of their privileges and immunities and doubtless liberally paid for. As early as 1552, Inquisitor-general Valdés rebuked Andreas Sanna, Bishop of Ales and inquisitor, for the inordinate number of familiars and commissioners who obtained appointments for the purpose of enjoying the exemptions, and he ordered them reduced to the absolute needs of the Holy Office.[220] This command was unheeded, the industry flourished and the principal activity of the tribunal lay in the resultant disputes with the secular courts. So recklessly did it distribute its favors that, on one occasion, an enumeration in three villages of Gallura disclosed no less than five hundred persons entitled to the privileges of the Holy Office. The consequences of this widely distributed impunity were of course deplorable on both the peace and the morals of the island.[221]
Under such circumstances quarrels with the secular authorities were perpetual and inevitable and were conducted on both sides with a violence attributable to the remoteness of the island and the little respect felt by either party for the other. A specimen of the spirit developed in these conflicts is afforded in a brief of Paul V, March 22, 1617, to Inquisitor-general Sandoval y Rojas, complaining bitterly of a recent outbreak in which the inquisitor excommunicated two officials and the royal court ordered him to absolve them. On his refusal, the court cited him to appear and sentenced him to exile—a decree which was published in Cagliari and elsewhere to sound of drum and trumpet. Then the governor intervened in support of the court, treating the inquisitor, if we may believe the ex parte statement, with unprecedented harshness. He broke into the Inquisition with an armed force and ordered the inquisitor either to grant the absolutions or to go on board of a vessel about to sail for Flanders and, on his refusal, he was so maltreated as to be left almost lifeless on the floor. On a second intrusion he was found in bed with a fever; he still refused to embark and was left under guard, but he succeeded in escaping by a rope from a window and took asylum in the Dominican church, whither the governor followed him and seized him while celebrating mass, with the sacrament in his hands. This time he was kept in secure custody until he gave bonds to sail, after which, in fear of the voyage, he submitted and absolved the excommunicates. Paul summoned the governor and his accomplices to appear in Rome and undergo the penalty of their offences, but it may be doubted whether they were obliged to obey, for Spanish jealousy of the curia was quite as acute as indignation caused by invasion of inquisitorial inviolability and appeals to Rome were absolutely forbidden to all parties.[222] It was impossible to devise any permanent basis of pacification between the conflicting jurisdictions and, up to 1630, there were enumerated no less than seven Concordias, or agreements to settle their respective pretensions, in spite of which the disturbances continued as actively as ever.[223]
During the War of the Spanish Succession, Sardinia was captured by the Allies in 1708 and, in 1718, it passed into possession of the House of Savoy. As soon as the Spanish domination ceased the Inquisition disappeared and the bishops revendicated their jurisdiction over heresy, each one organizing an Inquisition of his own, not so much, we are told, with the object of eradicating heresy as to enable them to exempt retainers from public burdens, by appointing them to useless offices.[224] Jealousy of the Inquisition had been the traditional policy of the Dukes of Savoy[225] and, as the support of the secular arm was essential to the activity of the institution, we may presume that even these episcopal substitutes faded away in silence. In 1775 a survey of the ecclesiastical and religious condition of the island makes no allusion to prosecutions for heresy although it records a tradition that, towards the end of the seventeenth century, certain Quietists and followers of Molinos had found refuge in the mountain caves.[226]
CHAPTER IV.
MILAN.
By the treaty of Cambrai, in 1529, Francis I abandoned the Milanese to Charles V and it thenceforth formed part of the Italian possessions of Spain. In the eleventh and twelfth centuries it had been the hot-bed of heresy and it was, in the thirteenth, one of the earliest scenes of inquisitorial activity. It was there that Pietro di Verona sealed his devotion with his blood and became the patron saint of the Holy Office. With the gradual extermination of heresy, the Inquisition there as elsewhere grew inert and, even after the new and threatening development of the Reformation, when Paul III, in 1536, was alarmed by reports of the proselyting zeal and success of Fra Battista da Crema, he had no tribunal on which he could rely to suppress the heretic. In default of this he commissioned Giovanni, Bishop of Modena, who was then in Milan, together with the Dominican Provincial, to preach against the heretics and to punish according to law those whom they might find guilty, at the same time significantly forbidding the inquisitor and the episcopal Ordinary to interfere.[227]
Even when the Inquisition was reorganized by Paul III, in 1542, it was for some time inefficiently administered and lacked the secular support requisite to its usefulness. This was especially felt in the Milanese which, from its neighborhood to Switzerland and the Waldensian Valleys, was peculiarly exposed to infection. The adventure which brought the Dominican Fra Michele Ghislieri into notice and opened for him the path to the papacy, shows the danger and difficulty of the situation. Heresy was creeping through the Grisons, the Valtelline and the Val di Chiavenna, forming part of the diocese of Como when, in 1550, Fra Michele was sent thither as inquisitor to arrest its progress. He found a dozen bales of heretic books consigned to a merchant in Como, to be distributed throughout Italy where, in all the cities, there were said to be agencies for the purpose. He seized the books in the custom-house, whereupon the merchant complained to the episcopal vicar, who took possession of them. Ghislieri wrote to the Roman Holy Office which cited the vicar and the canons to appear; in place of obeying, they appealed to Ferrando Gonzaga, Governor of Milan, and raised such a storm among the people that Ghislieri’s life was in danger. Gonzaga summoned him to come to him the next day; he started at night on foot and it was only the accident of his taking the longer road that led him to escape an ambush where he would have shared the fate of St. Peter Martyr. Gonzaga threatened him with imprisonment, but finally allowed him to depart, when he went to Rome and so impressed the cardinals of the Holy Office that he was marked for promotion. It was not much better in 1561 when, after being created Bishop of Mondovi, he visited his diocese and returned dissatisfied, for he had been unable to secure the support of the secular arm for the suppression of heresy.[228]
In Milan, we are told, there were many heretics, not only among the laity but among the clergy, both regular and secular, some of whom seem to have been publicly known and to have enjoyed the protection of the authorities. In 1554 Archbishop Arcimboldo and Inquisitor Castiglione united in issuing an Edict of Faith, comprehensive in its character, promising for spontaneous confession and denunciation of accomplices the reward of a fourth part of the fines and confiscations that might ensue. Denunciation of heretics was also commanded, with assurance of secrecy for the informer. This Edict is moreover of especial interest as comprehending what is perhaps the earliest organization of censorship, for it required the denunciation of all prohibited books and the presentation by booksellers of inventories of their stocks, with heavy penalties for omissions or for dealing in the prohibited wares.[229] This zeal seems not to have aroused the secular authorities to a fitting sense of their duties, for a brief of Paul IV, May 20, 1556, to Cardinal Mandrusio, lieutenant of Philip II, recites how that son of iniquity, the apostate Augustinian Claudio de Pralboino, had been condemned by the inquisitor and handed over to the secular arm; how, while awaiting his fate in the public prison, a forged order, purporting to be signed by the inquisitor, had been fabricated by some lawyers, on the strength of which he escaped and, in view of all this, the cardinal is urged to see to the punishment of those concerned in the fraud, to lend all aid and assistance to the inquisitor and to be watchful against the heresies creeping in from the Grisons. It was doubtless with the hope of securing greater efficiency that, in 1558, the Inquisition was taken from the friars of San Eustorgio and confided to those of Santa Maria delle Grazie and the Dominican Gianbattista da Cremona was appointed inquisitor-general.[230]
In 1560, Cardinal Carlo Borromeo, in his twenty-second year, was, through the nepotism of his uncle Pius IV, appointed to the great archiepiscopate of Milan, which extended over all Lombardy. Sincere as was his piety, he accepted an office which he did not fill, for he remained in Rome until the severe virtue of Pius V, in 1566, required him to reside in his see. His ceaseless labors to reform his people, both clergy and laity, his self-devotion, his charity, earned for him the honors of canonization and the admiration even of Jansenists, but the zeal displayed in the enforcement of discipline upon unwilling ecclesiastics found equal expression in the persecution of heretics. He was, in fact, the incarnation of the Counter-Reformation, in combating heresy by force as well as by depriving it, as far as possible, of its raison d’être. In the early years of his archiepiscopate, during his attendance on the papal court, the business of the Inquisition in Milan was carried on in most slovenly fashion. This was not for lack of any sensitiveness as to heresy for, when in July, 1561, the Franciscan Guardian of Marignano, being delayed in making a sacramental confession, exclaimed, in a fit of impatience, that confession to God sufficed, he was arrested for such heretical speech and sent for trial to Milan, under a guard of soldiers. They arrived at night and carried their prisoner to the archiepiscopal palace, where they were told to take him to the prison, but misunderstanding, as was said, their instructions, they marched him to one of the city gates and let him go, whereupon he naturally disappeared.[231] In that same month of July, Carlo’s uncle, Giulio Cesare Borromeo, writes to him that the inquisitor has allowed to escape a certain chief of the Lutherans, whom he had had infinite trouble to seize; he would give a thousand ducats that the culprit had not been brought to Milan for, as a relapsed, he was already convicted. He shrewdly suspects complicity, but there is no remedy and great scandal is to be expected.[232] Matters probably did not improve when, in the Spring of 1563, the inquisitor Fra Angelo da Cremona involved himself in a bitter quarrel with Andrea Ruberto, the archbishop’s vicar, over a printer named Moscheno, whom he had cast into prison and whose wife and work-people he threatened to arrest. It was a conflict of jurisdiction, the vicar claiming concurrent action and the inquisitor that his cognizance of the case was exclusive. The vicar appealed to the archbishop and represented the inquisitor in no flattering terms. The inquisitor wrote to the Roman Congregation that the vicar was a man without fear of God and was interfering to protect a heretic who was disseminating his heresies throughout the land; he had refused the vicar’s request to communicate the proceedings, as he desired to preserve the privileges of the Holy Office. Carlo counselled moderation to his vicar and, as the latter was replaced the next year by Nicolò Ormanetto, he was evidently worsted in the encounter.[233]