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

by Henry Charles Lea

STUDIES IN CHURCH HISTORY. The Rise of the Temporal Power, Benefit of Clergy, Excommunication, The Early Church and Slavery. Second edition. In one volume, 12mo.

CHAPTERS FROM THE RELIGIOUS HISTORY OF SPAIN, CONNECTED WITH THE INQUISITION. Censorship of the Press, Mystics and Illuminati, Endemoniadas, El Santo Niño de la Guardia, Brianda de Bardaxí. In one volume, 12mo.

THE MORISCOS OF SPAIN, THEIR CONVERSION AND EXPULSION. In one volume, 12mo.

THE
INQUISITION
IN THE
Spanish Dependencies

—————
SICILY—NAPLES—SARDINIA—MILAN—THE CANARIES—MEXICO—PERU—NEW
GRANADA
—————
BY
HENRY CHARLES LEA, LL.D., S.T.D.
New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., Ltd.
1908
All rights reserved

Copyright, 1908
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
Set up and electrotyped. Published January, 1908

PREFACE.

The scope of my History of the Spanish Inquisition precluded a detailed investigation into the careers of individual tribunals. Such an investigation, however, is not without interest, especially with respect to the outlying ones, which were subjected to varying influences and reacted in varying ways on the peoples among whom they were established. Moreover, in some cases, this affords us an inside view of inquisitorial life, of the characters of those to whom were confided the awful irresponsible powers of the Holy Office and of the abuse of those powers by officials whom distance removed from the immediate supervision of the central authority, suggesting a capacity for evil even greater than that manifested in the Peninsula.

This is especially the case with the tribunals of the American Colonies, of which, thanks to the unwearied researches of Don José Toribio Medina, of Santiago de Chile, a fairly complete and minute account can be given, based on the confidential correspondence of the local officials with the Supreme Council and the reports of the visitadores or inspectors, who were occasionally sent in the vain expectation of reducing them to order. While thus in the colonial tribunals we see the Inquisition at its worst, as a portion of the governmental system, we can realize how potent was its influence in contributing to the failure of Spanish colonial policy, by preventing orderly and settled administration and by exciting disaffection which the Council of Indies more than once warned the crown would lead to the loss of its transatlantic empire. It is perhaps not too much to say that these revelations moreover go far to explain the influences which so long retarded the political and industrial development of the emancipated colonies, for it was an evil inheritance weighing heavily on successive generations.

I have not attempted to include the fateful career of the Inquisition in the Netherlands, for this cannot be written until the completion of Professor Paul Fredericq’s monumental “Corpus Documentorum Inquisitionis hæreticæ pravitatis Neerlandicæ,” the earlier volumes of which have thrown so much light on the repression of heresy in the Low Countries up to the dawn of the Reformation.