The inquisitor evidently magnified his office and the result soon showed how much more efficient was a tribunal of which the energies were concentrated on a single object, than the desultory action of the episcopal provisors. He had, on his arrival, lost no time in filling up his staff by appointing an alguazil mayor, an alcaide of the secret prisons, a portero or apparitor and a messenger, as well as a receiver of confiscations, to whom he assigned the handsome salary of six hundred ducats, not anticipating how slender, for some time, were to be the receipts from that source. His efforts were seconded at home for, by a carta orden of the Suprema, January 5, 1573, the Spanish tribunals were instructed to give precedence over all other business to requests from colonial Inquisitions for evidence to be taken and furnished, experience having already shown the great benefit arising from their establishment there.[407] The publication of the Edict of Faith had brought in many denunciations; arrests were frequent and the number of prisoners soon exceeded the capacity of the improvised prison—among them some thirty-six Englishmen, the remnant of the hundred of Sir John Hawkins’s men who had taken their chances on shore after the disaster at San Juan de Ulua, in 1568.[408] The fruits of this energy were seen when the first great auto de fe was celebrated February 28, 1574, with a solemnity declared by eyewitnesses to be equal in everything, save the presence of royalty, to that of Valladolid, May 21, 1559, when the Spanish Lutherans suffered. A fortnight in advance it was announced throughout the city with drums and trumpets, the Inquisition commenced to erect its staging and the city authorities did the like for themselves and their wives, and invited the judges and their wives to seats on it. A week later, on learning that prominent officials from all parts of the country were coming, the invitation was extended to them. The population poured in from all quarters, crowding the streets and occupying every spot from which the spectacle could be witnessed. The night before was occupied in drilling, in the courtyard of the Inquisition, the unfortunates who were to appear and at daylight they were breakfasted on wine and slices of bread fried in honey.

The accounts of the auto as given by Señor Medina are somewhat confused, but from them we gather that there were seventy-four sufferers in all. Of these, three were for asserting that simple fornication between the unmarried was no sin; twenty-seven were for bigamy; two for blasphemy; one for wearing prohibited articles although his grandfather had been burnt; two for “propositions;” one because he had made his wife confess to him and thirty-six for Lutheranism, of whom two, George Ripley and Marin Cornu were burnt. These Lutherans were all foreigners of various nationalities, but mostly English, consisting of Hawkins’s men. One of these, named Miles Phillips has left an account of the affair, in which he says that his compatriots George Ripley, Peter Momfrie and Cornelius the Irishman were burnt, sixty or sixty-one were scourged and sent to the galleys and seven, of whom he was one, were condemned to serve in convents; the wholesale scourging was performed the next day, through the accustomed streets, the culprits being preceded by a crier calling out “See these English Lutheran dogs, enemies of God!” while inquisitors and familiars shouted to the executioners “Harder, harder, on these English Lutherans!” Páramo, who doubtless had access to official records, tells us that there were about eighty penitents in all, of whom an Englishman and a Frenchman were burnt, some Judaizers were reconciled, together with several bigamists and practitioners of sorcery. One of these latter, he says, was a woman who had made her husband come in two days to Mexico from Guatemala, two hundred leagues away and, when asked by the inquisitor why she had done this, she replied that it was in order to enjoy the sight of his beauty, the fact being that he was the foulest of men. Bigamy, he adds, was a very frequent crime, for men thought that, at so great a distance from Spain, there was little chance of detection.[409]

Miles Phillips says that at the conclusion of the auto the victims relaxed were burnt on the plaza, near the staging. This shows that no proper preparation had been made for these solemnities and in fact, it was not until 1596 that the municipality, at a cost of four hundred pesos, constructed a quemadero or burning place, where concremation could be performed decently and in order. It was a ghastly adjunct to a pleasure-ground, for it was situated at the east end of the Alameda. There it remained until the stake was growing obsolete and was removed in 1771 to enlarge the promenade.[410]

This was the last inquisitorial act of Doctor Contreras, whose promotion to the archbishopric had already taken place. He had been provided with a colleague by the promotion of the fiscal Bonilla in 1572, and the vacancy caused by his retirement was filled by the appointment of Alonso Granero de Avalos. These held an auto March 6, 1575, in which there were thirty-one culprits, twenty-five of them for bigamy and but one Protestant, the Irishman William Cornelius, who was burnt. Less important was an auto celebrated February 19, 1576, with thirteen culprits, all for minor offences, except an Englishman named Thomas Farrar, a shoemaker long resident in Mexico, who was reconciled for Protestantism. Another auto followed December 15, 1577, in which, besides the customary minor offenders, three Englishmen, Paul Hawkins, John Stone and Robert Cook, were reconciled for Protestantism and the first Judaizer, Alvarez Pliego, abjured de vehementi and was fined in 500 pesos.[411] The Judaism which thus commenced to show itself speedily furnished further victims for, in 1578, two Spaniards were burnt for it and, in 1579, another, García González Bermejero, while a Frenchman, Guillaume Potier, who escaped, was burnt in effigy for Calvinism. After this, until 1590, the tribunal seems to have become indolent; but few autos were celebrated and the culprits consisted of the miscellaneous bigamists, blasphemers, sorcerers and soliciting confessors, whose cases present no especial interest. With 1590 the yearly autos were resumed. In that year nine Judaizers at least were reconciled, one was burnt in person and one in effigy. With the advent of Alonso de Peralta as inquisitor, in 1594, the tribunal seems to have been aroused to increased activity and the auto of December 8, 1596, was a memorable one in which there were sixty-six penitents, including twenty-two Judaizers reconciled, nine burnt in person and ten in effigy. Even this was exceeded by the great auto of March 26, 1601, also celebrated by Peralta, in which there were one hundred and twenty four penitents, of whom four were burnt in person and sixteen in effigy. There would seem to have been a recrudescence of Protestantism, for among these were twenty-three Lutherans and Calvinists.[412]

The Inquisition thus vindicated the necessity of its existence if the land was to be purified of heresy and apostasy, for some of the Judaizers had been practising their unhallowed rites for an incredible length of time. García González Bermejero, who was burnt in 1579, had been thus outraging the faith in Mexico for twenty years; Juan Castellanos, who repented and was reconciled in 1590, had done so for forty-eight years. Although their Judaism was almost public, for they ate the paschal lamb and smeared their houses with blood, they were only discovered through the confession of an accomplice tried in Spain, who denounced González. Of a family of Portuguese Jews who suffered in 1592, and the following years, we are told that the father, Francisco Rodríguez Mattos, was a rabbi and a dogmatizer, or teacher. Fortunately for him he was dead and was only burnt in effigy, as was likewise his son, who escaped by flight. His four daughters repented and were reconciled. They were in high social position and a cultured race, for it is said that the youngest, a girl of seventeen, could recite all the psalms of David and could repeat the prayer of Esther and other Hebrew songs backwards. A brother of these girls, Luis de Carvajal, was governor of the province of New Leon and a man who had rendered essential service to the crown; for the crime of not denouncing them, he was prosecuted, publicly penanced as a fautor of heresy and deprived of his office; he relapsed, was tried and tortured in 1595 and was burnt in the auto of December 8, 1596, together with his mother and three sisters.[413] The men who founded the Mexican Inquisition knew their duty and were resolute in its performance. They were kept busy for, between 1574 and 1600, they despatched no less than 879 cases, or an average of about thirty-four per annum.[414] Considering the complex character of inquisitorial procedure, with its inevitable delays and consumption of time, this represents a creditable degree of industry, equal to that of the great tribunal of Toledo which, at the same period, was averaging thirty-five cases per annum.

It will be observed that no Indians figure among the victims on these occasions, since the zeal of Bishop Zumárraga, in 1536, burned the cacique of Tezcoco. In fact, the native population was exempt from the jurisdiction of the Inquisition. This exemption was originally attributable to the theory held by the Conquistadores that the Indians were too low in the scale of humanity to be capable of the faith—a theory largely relied upon to excuse the cruelties inflicted upon them. In 1517, when Las Casas was laboring in their behalf at the Spanish court, this proposition was advanced by a member of the royal council to Fray Reginaldo Montesino, who was assisting Las Casas and who promptly declared it to be heretical. To settle the question, he asked one of the foremost theologians of the time, Fray Juan Hurtado, to assemble the doctors of the University of Salamanca to decide the matter; thirteen of them debated it and drew up a series of conclusions which they all signed, the final one being that whoever defended with pertinacity such a proposition must be put to death by fire as a heretic.[415] Notwithstanding this decision, the theory was so generally asserted in the New World that Fray Julian Garcés, the first Bishop of Tlaxcala, wrote to Paul III on the subject and elicited a brief of June 2, 1537, condemning those who, to gratify their greed, asserted that the Indians were like brutes to be reduced to servitude, and declaring them competent to receive the faith and enjoy the sacraments.[416] Bishop Zumárraga had already acted on this presumption when he burnt the cacique and this suggested an obstacle, almost as damaging as the popular theory, to the conversion which was the ostensible object of the conquest, for it was evident that the doctrineros, or missionaries, would find their labors nugatory if the Indians realized that, in embracing the new faith, they would be liable to death by fire for aberrations from it. To remove this impediment, Charles V, by a decree of October 15, 1538, ordered that they should not be subject to the inquisitorial process but that, in all matters of faith, they should be relegated to the ordinary jurisdiction of their bishops. As the papal delegation of power to the inquisitors gave them exclusive faculties in all cases of faith, this imperial rescript would have been invalid without papal sanction, but this had already been procured in the brief Altitudo divini consilii of Paul III, June 1, 1537.[417]

It was probably through an oversight that the commissions issued to Francisco Tello de Sandoval in 1543 and to Dr. Contreras in 1570 granted them jurisdiction without exception over every one, of whatever condition, quality or state; possibly the latter may have commenced to exercise it on the Indians, but the error was rectified by Philip II, in a decree of December 30, 1571, ordering the inquisitors to observe their instructions and the previous law, and the injunction had to be repeated in 1575. Moreover, to silence any objections as to the episcopal power, he procured from Gregory XIII a brief granting full faculties to the bishops to absolve the Indians for heresy and all other reserved cases.[418] The Indians thus remained exempt from prosecution by the Inquisition—an exemption popularly attributed to their not being gente de razon, or not rational enough to be responsible—which libel on their intellect Las Casas considers as perhaps the worst of the many offences committed upon them.[419] They could, however, endure this philosophically so long as it exempted them from the Holy Office and confided them to the more temperate zeal of the bishops.[420]

While the Inquisition, as we have seen, maintained its awful dignity before the people, by the solemnity of its public functions and its severity towards the evil-minded, all was not entirely serene within its walls. In fact, its financial history illustrates so vividly some of the aspects of Spanish colonial administration that it is worth recounting in some detail. We have seen that Inquisitor Contreras was promised a salary of three thousand pesos and a prebend in the cathedral, but he was confronted with a decree of January 25, 1569, prescribing that the income of all benefices enjoyed by inquisitors and fiscals in the Indies was to be deducted from their salaries, and the retention of this provision in the Recopilacion shows that it was not of mere temporary validity.[421] It was doubtless however waived in favor of the Inquisition, as was likewise another question which speedily arose.

The tribunal was expected to become self-supporting, from confiscations, fines and pecuniary penances, but this required time and meanwhile Philip granted it a subvention from the royal treasury, to continue during his pleasure, of 10,000 pesos per annum, being 3000 each for two inquisitors and a fiscal and 1000 for a notary. Although the tribunal started with but one inquisitor, the thrifty receiver, or treasurer, collected the salaries of two and, when called to account, claimed that he spent the money on the maintenance of poor prisoners. The treasury officials had no authority to allow this and refused further disbursements till the amount was made good but, when Philip was appealed to, he ordered, by a cédula of December 23, 1574, the receiver’s claim to be allowed.[422] Thus early began the long-continued bickering between the Holy Office and the treasury, which Philip had already, in 1572, endeavored to quiet by instructing the inquisitors to obtain their salaries direct from the viceroy and not from subordinates, whom he forbade them to prosecute or excommunicate for the purpose of enforcing their demands.[423]

While Philip had provided liberally for the superior officials, he had taken no thought of the minor positions and, in spite of the solemnity of the autos de fe and the successful persecution of heresy, the internal working of the tribunal was pursued under difficulties, in the absence of resources from confiscations. A curious insight into these troubles is afforded by some correspondence of 1583 with Inquisitor-general Quiroga by the two inquisitors, Santos García and Bonilla. It seems that their portero or apparitor, Pedro de Fonseca, had exhibited to them a commission, which he had secretly obtained from Quiroga, promoting him to the post of notary of sequestrations. They met this piece of jobbery with the favorite inquisitorial formula—obedecer y no cumplir, obeying without executing—for they say they obeyed it without admitting him to the office until they could consult the cardinal. This notariate, they say, is the least necessary of offices, as there are no sequestrations or confiscations, and they have no other portero and no money wherewith to pay a substitute: besides, Pedro is destitute of all qualifications for the position. If a good salary could be assured, proper persons would apply for the position but, in the absence of salaries, the offices have not a good reputation and people say they are bestowed on any one who will accept them. In view of the poverty of the tribunal and small prospect of improvement they repeat what they had previously said that, if the king will not provide for it, it had better be abolished rather than maintained precariously, with the officers relying on the hope of confiscations that never come, so that one resigns today and another tomorrow, leaving only the alcaide and portero, who are so poor that they would also have gone if they saw other means of escaping their creditors. It is therefore suggested that, in addition to the two inquisitors, the fiscal and the notary, salaries be furnished of 600 ducats for an alguazil, 500 for an alcaide or gaoler and 400 for a messenger—or otherwise that, as in Spain, a canonry be suppressed for the benefit of the Inquisition, in each of the eleven bishoprics of the district, though this would have its disadvantages in view of the poverty of the churches and paucity of ministers. Then, in another letter the inquisitors announce that they have filled the vacant post of alguazil by appointing Don Pedro de Villegas, for whom they ask Quiroga to send a commission; it is true, they say, that he is too young, but then both he and his wife are limpio—free from any taint of heretic blood—and he has the indispensable qualification of possessing means to live on without a salary and that, in the present condition of the Inquisition, is the main thing to be considered.[424]