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

by Henry Charles Lea

It is an emphatic testimony to the exhaustion of the royal treasury that so pious a monarch as Philip II should have shown indifference to this deplorable condition of a tribunal which had already given evidence so conspicuous of its services to the faith, but he remained deaf to all appeals and it was left to struggle on as best it could. As the number of its reconciled penitents increased it felt the need of a carcel perpetua or penitential prison, for their confinement and, having no funds wherewith to purchase a building, it besieged the Marquis of Monterey, the viceroy, for an appropriation. In 1596 he yielded in so far as to authorize the treasurer to lend the tribunal 2000 pesos, on its giving security to return the money in case the royal approbation should not be had within two years. The term elapsed without it, but Philip III, September 13, 1599, graciously approved the expenditure, at the same time warning the viceroy not to repeat such liberality without previous permission.[425] Even though the monarchs were thus niggardly, there were advantages in serving the Inquisition which in many cases answered in lieu of salary, for official position conferred the fuero or right to the jurisdiction of the Inquisition as well as substantial exemptions. As early as 1572, Philip II decreed that, during the royal pleasure, the inquisitors, the fiscal, the judge of confiscations, one secretary, one receiver, one messenger and the alcaide of the secret prison should be exempt from taxation and the royal officials were ordered, under penalty of a thousand ducats and punishment at the king’s pleasure, to observe this and protect them in all the honors and exemptions which such officials enjoyed in Spain.[426]

A further, although illegal, relief was found by sharing in the repartimientos under which the Indians were allotted to Spaniards who lived upon their enforced labor. It is to this cruel system that Las Casas, Mendieta and Torquemada attribute the rapid wasting away of the natives and the hatred which they bore to the Spaniards. Among other attempts to diminish the evils arising from the system, repeated laws of 1530, 1532, 1542, 1551 and 1563 prohibited the allotment of Indians to any officials or to prelates, clerics, religious houses, hospitals, fraternities, etc. In spite of this, as soon as the Inquisition was established, it claimed and was allowed its quota in the allotments. It watched vigilantly, moreover, to see that it was not defrauded in any way, for one of its earliest recorded acts, in 1572, was the prosecution of Diego de Molina, the repartidor de los Indios of San Juan, because, in allotting the Indians of that place, the twelve assigned to the Inquisition proved to be boys and incapables, while the useful ones, who could be hired out advantageously, such as carpenters and masons, he gave for bribes to others. He was mercifully let off with five days’ imprisonment and a forcible warning and doubtless served as a wholesome example to other partitioners.[427] Like most of the salutary legislation of Spain, it seems to have been impossible to enforce the prohibition, and that the Inquisition continued to enjoy the unpaid service of Indian serfs is manifested by its being specifically included in subsequent repetitions of the law in 1609, 1627 and 1635.[428]

When, as we have seen, the Judaizers commenced to appear among the penitents in the autos de fe, the longed-for relief derivable from confiscations, fines and penances was at hand. Spanish finance was already suffering the distress which was to become so acute and the treasury naturally looked to find its burden lightened by the income from these sources. It looked in vain, for whatever the tribunal acquired from its victims it retained and it persisted, with incredible audacity, in refusing even to render an account, although the confiscations belonged to the crown which never renounced its claim to them. In 1618 a royal cédula required the receiver to render itemized statements of all receipts and expenditures; in 1621 Philip IV sought to enforce this by ordering his viceroys in the Indies not to pay salaries until proof should be furnished that the confiscations were insufficient to meet them in whole or in part, and this was to be observed inviolably, no matter what urgency there might be, but repetitions of the decree, in 1624 and 1629, show how completely it was ignored.[429] Not the slightest attention was paid to these repeated royal commands and, to the last, the Inquisition never permitted either the king or the Council of Indies to know what it acquired in this manner, although the sums were large and the tribunal became wealthy through investments of the surplus, besides making, with more or less regularity, very considerable remittances to the Suprema.

Finding himself thus baffled by the immovable resistance of the Holy Office, Philip, in 1627, sought to relieve his treasury by despoiling the Church. He reported to Urban VIII that he expended 32,000 ducats a year on the tribunals of Mexico, Lima and Cartagena, wherefore he prayed that the bull of Paul IV, January 7, 1559, suppressing a prebend in every cathedral and collegial church in Spain, for the benefit of the Inquisition, might be extended to the Indies. Urban complied in a brief of March 10, 1627, whereupon Philip ordered the archbishop and bishops to remit to the senior inquisitors of their respective tribunals the fruits of the prebends as they should fall in, furnishing, at the same time, to the royal officials a statement of the sums thus paid, so that the amount should be deducted from the salaries.[430] Receipts from this source commenced at once and went on increasing as vacancies occurred, amounting, according to the estimate of the Council of Indies, to 30,000 pesos per annum for the three tribunals, while the Suprema admitted that those of Mexico and Lima produced about 11,000 pesos each, but those of Cartagena, it said, yielded only about 5000.[431]

During this time there had been frequent collisions between the inquisitors and the treasury officials, arising from the refusal of the former to reveal the amount of the confiscations and penances and the obedience, more or less persistent, of the latter to the royal commands to require such statements as a condition precedent to paying the royal subvention. In these collisions the inquisitors enforced their demands as usual by prosecution and excommunication, giving rise to unseemly controversies and, when the Suprema forbade their use of such measures, they were reduced to impotence. In a letter of February 13, 1634, they complained bitterly of this; during 1633, they said, in spite of all their efforts, they received no money until October, after all the royal officials had been paid and, as they had no other means of support, they were exposed to the deepest humiliations.[432] The suppressed canonries, however, introduced an element of pacification and, in the Concordia of 1633, between the Suprema and the Council of Indies, a plan to harmonize differences was agreed upon which was a practical surrender to the Inquisition. It provided that every year, before the first tercios (four months’ instalments in advance) were paid, the receivers should render a sworn itemized statement of all receipts and expenditures, including confiscations, fines and penances, in accordance with the royal cédulas and, when this was delivered to the viceroy, the tercios should be paid in advance without delay. If the treasury officials should take exception to any portion of the statement, they were to forward it with their comments to the Council of Indies, but this was not to interfere with the prompt payment of the salaries and the inquisitors were to furnish the Suprema with their explanations. If the statement should show a surplus applicable to the salaries, this was, if agreed to by both parties, to be deducted from the second tercio; but if the inquisitors presented any reasons why this tercio should be paid in full, the treasury should pay it and the question be referred for settlement to the two Councils. The inquisitors were not to proceed against the treasury officials with censures or fines or other penalties, but were to apply to the viceroy, to whom positive instructions were sent to pay them punctually, both the arrearages then unpaid and the current salaries, while any fines or penalties that had been imposed were to be withdrawn or, if collected, to be refunded.[433]

This elaborate arrangement is only of importance as showing that, in spite of the suppressed canonries, the treasury was still required to support the tribunal and that the latter could be bound by no agreements however solemnly entered into. Except at Cartagena it was never carried into effect. No statement of receipts was ever rendered. In 1651, Count Alva de Aliste, the viceroy, reported to Philip IV that he had no means of learning what the confiscations amounted to but, on cautiously sounding the inquisitors, they told him that they reported them to the Suprema and would obey its instructions. They might well keep the facts secret. In the exterminating persecution of the wealthy New Christians, during the decade 1640-50, of which more hereafter, the confiscations were very large, placing the tribunal at its ease for all future time, besides what was embezzled by the inquisitors. The auto of 1646 yielded 38,732 pesos; that of 1647, 148,562. What was gathered in two autos held in 1648 does not appear, but between November 20, 1646, and April 24, 1648, the inquisitors remitted 234,000 pesos in bills of exchange while the crowning auto of 1649 furnished three millions more.[434] In spite of this enormous influx of wealth, the Inquisition still maintained its grip on the royal subvention of 10,000 pesos per annum, though for how long it is impossible to determine with positiveness. In the prolonged controversy which raged between the Suprema and the Council of Indies over the relations of the colonial tribunals, the former, in 1667, positively declared that, after 1633, there had been no subvention paid in Mexico or Lima and this assertion was repeated in 1676, but the statements of the Suprema are so full of duplicity that no reliance can be reposed in them.[435] On the other hand, in 1668, we find the Council of Indies earnestly advising the king to withdraw the subvention on the ground that the tribunals were rich and could support themselves, as they do in Castile; in 1675 it speaks of the payments as still continuing and urges their discontinuance without consulting the Suprema, as it is a matter wholly within the control of the treasury and, in 1676, Carlos II answered the Suprema by demanding a prompt decision as to a proposition made by the Council of Indies to discontinue the subventions enjoyed by the three tribunals for the salaries of their officials.[436] When they were definitely discontinued it would be impossible to assert, but it is probable that those of Mexico and Lima were stopped in 1677, while that of Cartagena was prolonged even later. In 1683 Inquisitor Valera of that tribunal complained that, owing to the exhaustion of the public treasury through wars and piratical attacks, an arrearage had accumulated of thirty-three tercios. He claimed that the king was indebted to the tribunal in the sum of 58,000 pesos and he urged its transfer to Santa Fe, where the royal treasury was in better condition to meet the obligation. The transfer was not made, payments of the subvention became more and more irregular and we shall see that in 1706 the tribunal was still unavailingly endeavoring to enforce them.[437]

In a letter to the king, July 31, 1651, the viceroy, Alva de Aliste, took the ground that the subvention had been merely a loan, to be repaid when confiscations should come in, and as, within the last few years, these had been large enough to settle the debt, he had had the accounts examined and had found that, since the beginning, there had been advanced for salaries 559,189 pesos, 6 tomines and 5 granos and, for other purposes, 6837 pesos, 5 granos, wherefore he suggested that the king should compel restitution of this amount.[438] To a treasury so desperately embarrassed as that of Spain the prospect of such relief was most welcome. Philip referred the viceroy’s letter to the Council of Indies, which delayed its reply till December 12, 1652, when it advised the king that examination showed that the salaries were to be defrayed by the confiscations, which were to be reported to the treasury. The only light that could be thrown upon the subject was to be sought in the registration, by the Contratacion of Seville, of the amounts of silver passing through it from Mexico and Peru and from these registers it appeared that the colonial tribunals had remitted to the Suprema the aggregate of 76,965 pesos de ensayados and 85,454 pesos de á ocho, thus showing that those tribunals had revenues largely in advance of their needs. In view of the magnitude of the sums furnished by the treasury, the extensive confiscations, the income of the suppressed canonries and the dire necessities of the royal finances, it therefore advised the king to call upon the Suprema for restitution and to furnish statements of the amount of the confiscations from the beginning. To this the king replied, in the ordinary formula of approval “It is well and so have I ordered.”[439] When the Suprema was concerned, however, obedience by no means followed royal orders and so it proved in this case.

Philip’s weakness was shown in his next despatch to the viceroy, February 1, 1653, in which he said that he had determined that the Suprema should arrange to make restitution and that, to facilitate a proper adjustment of the matter, it should furnish a statement of all confiscations from the beginning, “for neither my Council of Indies nor my viceroys have been able to obtain this, but only the records of the shipments of silver from the Indies.”[440] There is no evidence that the Suprema made any attempt to obey the royal commands or that it paid any attention to a reiterated demand made on August 12, 1655. Then the effort seems to have been abandoned and the matter was allowed to slumber until attention was called to it again in 1666. Philip had written, August 12, 1665, to the Marquis of Mansera, then Mexican viceroy, urging him to extinguish the debt of 1,333,264 pesos, by which amount the Mexican treasury was in arrears with its payments. The viceroy replied, September 5, 1666, pointing out the difficulty of accomplishing this and, at the same time, keeping up the remittances by the fleet, which were imperatively required by the absolute needs of the monarchy. He added that one of the chief causes of the indebtedness was the large sums withdrawn from it by the salaries and expenses of the Inquisition since its foundation in 1570; this had been intended as a loan, until it could be repaid from the confiscations, fines and penances but, although these had been large, restitution had never been made. The cédula of 1653 had inferred that the matter would be settled between the two councils and therefore the viceroys were powerless, but he suggested that the tribunal was rich and held large amounts of property; it had the disposition, which it might not have in future, to commence making this just and long overdue payment. This despatch the Council of Indies reported to the queen-regent, together with copies of the royal cédulas of 1653 and 1655, in order that she might compel the Suprema to make restitution, not only of the sums reported by Count Alva de Aliste, but of what had since been paid to the tribunal, seeing that it had the means to do so and was remitting such large amounts to the Suprema.[441]

It is scarce worth while to follow in detail the discussion which ensued, lasting, with true Spanish procrastination, until 1677, when the effort to make the Inquisition refund seems to have been abandoned out of sheer weariness. Of course the feeble queen-regent and the feebler boy-king, Carlos II, failed in the attempt and the only importance to us of the debate lies in the falsehoods and prevarications of the Suprema’s defence. It was notorious that there had been heavy confiscations, for persecution, as we have seen, had become active and exceedingly profitable as the half-century had drawn to a close. The tribunal had grown rich and had made large investments, besides the enormous remittances to the Suprema, and these had been derived almost exclusively from the confiscations and penances. Yet the Suprema endeavored to make it appear that financially confiscation had been a failure. There had been some confiscations, it admitted, in Mexico and Lima; there was the one of Diego López de Fonseca, amounting to 79,965 pesos, but Jorje de Paz of Madrid and Simon Rodriguez Bueno of Seville had come forward with claims amounting to more. They had asked to have the money sent to the receiver of Seville for adjudication and, on its arrival, the king had seized it and, by a cédula of July 14, 1652, had bound himself to satisfy the claimants, which he did by assigning to them certain matters. It was true that, in 1642, a number of Judaizing Portuguese had been discovered in Mexico, of whom some had moderate fortunes and one was reputed to be rich, but on the outbreak of the Portuguese rebellion, for fear that the viceroy would embargo their property, they had concealed it, and although the Inquisition had published censures, only a little had been discovered, while there came forward creditors with evidences of claims amounting to 400,000 pesos, so that it was difficult to make the confiscations meet them, to say nothing of the heavy expenses of feeding the prisoners, hiring houses to serve as prisons and the increased number of officials required. Besides this, there was protracted and costly litigation in investigating the claims and detecting suspected frauds. For this, Archbishop Mañozca was appointed visitador; on his death Medina Rico was sent out for the same purpose and, when he died, the matter had not been settled, nor has it yet.[442] If the Suprema was to be believed, confiscation cost more than it came to.

In the same way it sought by garbled statements to conceal the fact that it was secretly deriving a considerable revenue from the colonial tribunals, thus proving that they were possessed of superabundant means. In its private accounts for the year 1657, there is an item of 10,000 ducats from those of Mexico and Lima, with the remark that this is always in arrears and is now two years overdue[443]—for the tribunals were as anxious as the Suprema to conceal their gains. Yet it could not hide the fact that it was in receipt of large remittances through the Contratacion of Seville and the Government, in its extremity, had an awkward habit of seizing what took its fancy and possibly paying for silver in vellon, for we chance to hear of such an occurrence in 1639 and again in 1644.[444] The Council of Indies, as we have seen, did not fail to call attention to the large amounts which it was thus receiving, but it airily replied, in its consulta of November 16, 1667, that the three tribunals had, at various times, remitted the aggregate of 130,803 pesos, 3 reales, as the proceeds of sales of varas or offices of alguazil, and that this and much more, from the home tribunals, amounting in all to over 700,000 pesos, had been contributed to the necessities of the State. It repeated this, May 11, 1676, with the addition that the colonial tribunals had sent about 8000 pesos to the fund for the attempted canonization of Pedro Arbués and that there were also remittances for the media añata of the officials and for the deposits of aspirants to office to defray the expenses of the investigations into limpieza—the whole manifesting extreme desire to divert attention from the confiscations.[445] In spite of these subterfuges there can be no question that the tribunals of Mexico and Lima accumulated vast amounts of property. The magnificence of the palace of the Mexican tribunal, rebuilt from 1732 to 1736, shows that it could gratify its vanity with the most profuse expenditure.[446] That it was fully able to do this without impairing its revenues may be assumed from the assertion, in 1767, of the royal fiscal, when arguing a case of competencia before the Audiencia, that if its accumulations were not checked, the king would have but a small portion of territory in which to exercise his jurisdiction.[447] Certain it is that the tribunal continued to be able to render large pecuniary support to the home institution. In 1693 we hear of a remittance of 93,705 pesos and in 1702 of 19,898 in spite of heavy defalcations by the receivers. This was followed by remittances of 40,000 pesos in 1706, of 16,500 in 1720, and of 31,500 in 1727. In 1771 the tribunal lent to the viceroy, for the emergencies of the war with England, 60,000 pesos, which were repaid, and, in 1795, a further loan was made of 40,000 to aid in the war then raging.[448] As late as 1809 the Government seized a remittance from it to the Suprema of 60,131½ pesos and gave a receipt for the proceeds, being 915,886 reales, for which, after the Restoration, we find the Suprema claiming restitution.[449] In spite of these reiterated drains we shall see hereafter what wealth the tribunal possessed when suppressed.