The enlightened despotism of Carlos III brought increased tendency to curtail the privileges of the Inquisition and to curb its audacity. A cédula of February 29, 1760, declares that the titular and salaried officials shall enjoy the fuero only as defendants, in both civil and criminal matters, and wholly withdraws that of the familiars. Also that in clear and notorious cases there shall be no competencia, but that the viceroy, as the personal representative of the sovereign, shall decide what is fitting to prevent invasion of the royal jurisdiction.[520] The transitory liberalism of the period greatly diminished the traditional awe inspired by the Inquisition. About the year 1767, it had a serious conflict with the Audiencia, over the case of a Doctor Bechi, in which the royal fiscal, during his argument, treated it with scant respect, reciting how Charles V had been obliged to limit its jurisdiction in Sicily, how the reigning monarch had exiled from court the Inquisitor-general Quintano Bonifaz, and hinting not obscurely that, if it was abolished, substitutes for it could be found—all of which was made the subject of bitter, and apparently fruitless, remonstrance to the king by the Suprema, in a consulta of February 29, 1768. This unprecedented freedom of speech reveals the existence of a belief in some impending change, and this was stimulated by the startling expulsion of the Jesuits, skilfully managed by the viceroy, the Marquis de Croix, June 25, 1767. The foundations of the ecclesiastical structure seemed to be crumbling and there arose a universally accredited rumor that the Inquisition would be the next to suffer. So definite did this become that the day was fixed for September 3d and the precaution taken by the viceroy, in anticipation of disturbance, by keeping troops under arms all that night, especially in the quarter where the Inquisition was situated, only strengthened the delusion. So firmly rooted was this that, when the night passed away without the expected event, the archbishop called upon the viceroy to learn for himself the truth of the belief that the suppression had only been postponed until certain pending trials should be completed.[521]
During this period of decadence the functions of the tribunal, in its proper sphere of action, amounted to little more than punishing a few bigamists, so-called sorcerers and soliciting confessors. In 1702 it reported only four cases pending—three for bigamy and a Jesuit, Padre Francisco de Figueroa, for what was known as flagellation, or stripping female penitents and using the discipline on them, an offence akin to solicitation.[522] Yet in an auto of 1704 it exhibited eight bigamists and two sorcerers and, in one of 1708, it had thirteen penitents of whom five were bigamists. There was an exception in 1712 when it had the fortune to present a Judaizer who had denounced himself and begged for mercy, notwithstanding which he was condemned to appear in an auto with a gag and to irremissible prison and sanbenito for life. In 1712-13 there were eleven convictions for solicitation and in 1722 an auto with twelve penitents, of whom nine were bigamists, followed soon afterwards with five cases of solicitation. So it went on, gradually diminishing and affording less and less justification for the existence of the tribunal with its large revenues, though when it had an opportunity it demonstrated that it retained its capacity for evil, as in the case of a naval lieutenant, Manuel Germa de Bahamonde, arrested February 24, 1735, for heretical propositions and, after nine years of incarceration, pronounced insane in 1744, when he was sent to the castle of San Juan de Ulua pending transmission to Spain.[523]
After 1750 there was some increase in business, arising from the prevalence of blasphemy and irreligion in the army, especially in the regiments of foreigners, and cases became more numerous among foreign residents accused of heresy and free-thinking. It was doubtless owing to this that Fernando VI, in a decree of December 31, 1756, imposed the death penalty on recruits who pretended Catholicism in order to enlistment—a severity modified in 1765 by Carlos III to expulsion from the kingdom.[524] In spite of these measures, the tribunal, in a letter of April 28, 1766, complained of the number of foreigners sent to Mexico among the troops—their disseminating the heresies of Luther and Calvin and of total irreligion, and their justification of England, thus diminishing the horror and detestation felt by the natives for the English, which it was so desirable to maintain. The Suprema represented this to Carlos, who thereupon ordered that no soldiers should be sent to the Indies who were not assuredly Catholics.[525]
The increasing discredit into which the tribunal had fallen and the widely spread rumors, as we have seen, of its approaching suppression, seem to have stimulated it to a recrudescence of activity in an effort to assert its continued existence. It celebrated an auto, September 6, 1767, with four culprits—one of them, María Josefa Pineda Morales, for bigamy, who had been arrested as long before as in 1760. Then on March 13, 1768, it held another with seventeen penitents. Cases of solicitation also became more frequent as the century drew to its close.[526] A new field of activity, moreover, was opened to it by the outbreak of the French Revolution, when the propaganda of the rights of man increased the importance of the Inquisition as an agency of repression. Already, in 1770, an edict ordered the denunciation within six days of confessors who should use the confessional to encourage ideas contrary to the submission due to the sovereign. The accession of the reactionary Carlos IV and the dread of revolutionary principles began to afford a harvest of cases in which politics had more to do than religion. There were many Frenchmen in Mexico following their trades; they were naturally partizans of the new order of things; their influence was dreaded for they spread their opinions among the people and the organization and methods of the Inquisition rendered it the most efficient instrument for the detection and punishment of liberalism.[527]
A typical example was that of two Frenchmen, the Capitan Jean Marie Murgier and Doctor Joseph François Morel, accused of a conspiracy to cause a revolution and arrested in 1794. Murgier feigned sickness and, when visited by Dr. José Francisco Rada, he asked the gaoler for a glass of water and during his absence blocked the door with his trunk. Then he seized Rada’s sword and declared that he would kill both him and himself unless the tribunal would liberate him with a full acquittal and furnish him with a pair of loaded pistols. The confusion of the tribunal was great; parleying went on from 10.15 A.M. to 4.30 P.M., when it was decided to break down the door. Guards with hatchets attacked it and Murgier ran himself through with the sword. His comrade Morel cut his throat with a pair of snuffers February 11, 1795. They were prosecuted after death and furnished occasion for the last public auto, August 9th of that year, where their effigies and bones were burnt as those of heretics, deists and materialists. At the same auto there figured the first Judaizer for many years—Rafael Gil Rodríguez, a cleric in the lower orders, who had been arrested October 9, 1788. He proved exceedingly obstinate and was sentenced to relaxation on February 9, 1792, after which he was held awaiting an auto. His resolution failed on the morning of the fatal day, he professed repentance, was reconciled, and thus saved the Inquisition the shame of burning a fellow-creature alive at the close of the eighteenth century. The other penitents were Jean Langouran of Bordeaux, who was reconciled for Lutheranism and atheism, and Jean Lausel of Montpellier who abjured de levi for suspicion of Free-Masonry.[528]
It was not however Frenchmen alone who suffered for their political opinions. José Antonio Rojas was denounced by two ladies, in correspondence with whom he had expressed his liberalism too freely. In September, 1804, he was condemned, as a formal heretic and materialist, to reclusion in the College of the Propaganda Fide at Pachuca, but he escaped to the United States where he relieved his feelings in a tremendous pamphlet against the Holy Office, which was duly prohibited in an edict of March 6, 1807. The distinguished publicists, Juan Wenceslao Bosquera and José Joaquin Fernández de Lizardi, known as El Pensador Mexicano, were also prosecuted for writings that evinced too ardent a spirit of patriotism. It was also doubtless for offences of the same nature that Fray Juan Antonio de Olabarrieta was reconciled for atheism in 1803, and his sanbenito was suspended in the cathedral, for the charge of atheism or any kindred form of speculation was, as we have seen, a convenient one to bring political liberalism under inquisitorial jurisdiction.[529]
Under the pressure of the time the censorship was sharpened with special rigor and severity. A curious instance of the strictness with which the laws against prohibited books were enforced is afforded by an episode, in 1806, of the Louisiana Purchase. As this rendered necessary a delimitation of the boundary between Mexico and the United States, Carlos IV ordered an investigation and report from the viceroy, who employed Fray Melchor de Talamantes to make it. He found it necessary to consult the works of Robertson and Raynal, but these were in the Index and he applied to the Inquisition, through the viceroy, for the requisite licence, saying that, although the books were detestable, the information they contained, and especially their maps, were important for the public service. The request was refused and, as a compromise, a formal commission was given to two calificadores, Fray José Paredo and Fray José Pichardo, to examine the dangerous books and report to Talamantes such information on the subject as they might find.[530] When Spanish diplomacy was thus hampered by such scruples it is no cause of surprise that the eminent historian of Mexico, Lucas Alaman, was prosecuted for reading prohibited books and even the episcopal dignity of Manuel Abad y Queipo, Bishop-elect of Valladolid (Mechoacan) did not save him from trouble for the same offence.[531]
Yet this reactionary tendency was accompanied with an increasing disposition to enforce the subordination of the Inquisition and to render it an instrument of the Government. A royal cédula of December 12, 1807, takes additional precautions to prevent illegal increase in the number of familiars and officials and to give the secular authority a closer supervision over them. When secular assistance, moreover, was called for, it could no longer be commanded as a right, except in matters of faith; if the temporal jurisdiction was concerned, the Inquisition was put on a level with other ecclesiastical courts, and the magistrate was instructed to examine the merits of the case and to give or withhold his aid accordingly.[532] As agitation in Mexico increased with the news of the abdication of Carlos IV and the Napoleonic usurpation, foreshadowing the Revolution, the political importance of the Inquisition, as an agency of repression, became greater and its so-called sacred functions were more and more subordinated. Successive edicts of August 27, 1808, and April 28, June 16 and September 28, 1809, were directed against all proclamations and emissaries seeking to pervert the loyalty of the colonists in favor of the ambitious schemes of the French, and the doctrine of popular sovereignty was denounced as manifest heresy[533]—a doctrinal definition which was effectively used during the debate on the suppression of the Holy Office, in the Córtes of Cádiz, which had affirmed that sovereignty. Even in a matter so foreign to politics as solicitation in the confessional, it is suggestive to observe that, in the trial for that offence of Dr. Pedro Mendizabal, cura of the parish of Santa Ana (1809-1819) his correct political conduct is urged upon the inquisitors as a matter for their favorable consideration—which may possibly have conduced to his escape in the face of convincing evidence.[534]
The political functions assumed by the Inquisition become especially manifest in its trials of the two chief martyrs of the war of independence—Hidalgo and Morelos. The former of these, Miguel Hidalgo y Castilla, the parish priest of los Dolores, who first raised the standard of revolt, in conjunction with Allende, Aldama and Abasolo, and who was elected generalissimo of the insurgent army, was a singularly interesting character.[535] Born in 1753, he received his education at the royal university of San Nicolás at Mechoacan, where he became rector and theological professor. In the formal accusation during his trial it is asserted that he was known while there as el zorro, or the fox, on account of his cunning, and that he was finally expelled because of a scandalous adventure, in the course of which he was obliged to escape at night through a window of the chapel. Taking orders, he finally settled as cura at los Dolores where, in spite of a large revenue, he encumbered himself with debts. He loved music and dancing and gaming and his relations with women were of a character common enough with the clergy of the period. His abounding energy led him to establish potteries and to introduce silk-culture, which may doubtless account for his indebtedness. He was regarded as a prodigy of learning and kept up his intellectual pursuits, translating tragedies of Racine and comedies of Molière, the latter of which he caused to be acted in his house, his favorite being Tartufe. The priest, García de Carrasqueda, who enjoyed his intimacy for twelve or thirteen years, when on trial by the Inquisition, deposed that they used to read together Cicero, Serri, Fleury’s Ecclesiastical History, Rollings Ancient History and an Italian work on commerce by Genovesi and that he praised highly the orations of Æschines and Demosthenes, Bossuet, Buffon’s Natural History, Pitavak’s Causes Célèbres and various historical works. He was fond of debating questionable points in theology, emitting opinions not wholly orthodox on such subjects as the stigmata of St. Francis, the House of Loreto, the Veronica, whether St. Didymas or Gestas was the penitent thief, the inheritance of original sin, the identity of the three kings and the like, while his high reputation for learning caused him to be regarded as an authority. Altogether he presents himself to us as a man of unusual physical and intellectual energy, not over nice as to the employment of those energies, of wide culture, of vigorous and enquiring mind and of small reverence for formulas or for authority.
Such a character was not likely to escape the attention of the Holy Office. On July 16, 1800, Fray Joaquin Huesca, a teacher of philosophy in the Order of Merced, denounced him to the commissioner of Mechoacan for various unorthodox utterances, at which Fray Manuel Estrada, of the same Order, had been present, and Estrada, on being summoned, confirmed and amplified the accusation. In transmitting these depositions to the tribunal, July 19th, the commissioner reported that Hidalgo was a most learned man, who had ruined himself with gambling and women, that he read prohibited books and, while professor of theology, had taught from Jansenist works. The tribunal necessarily started an investigation, which lasted for more than a year and included the testimony of some thirteen witnesses, resulting in proof of a wide variety of most heretical utterances, any one of which, if pertinaciously maintained, would have sufficed to consign him to the stake. Moreover, he was described as revolutionary in his tendencies, speaking of monarchs as tyrants and cherishing aspirations for liberty; he was well-read in current French literature and had little respect for the censorship—in short he was what was subsequently termed an afrancesado. The commissioner of San Miguel el Grande reported, March 11, 1801, much about Hidalgo’s disorderly life and that he carried about with him an Alcoran but, in a second report of April 13th, he stated that in the recent Easter, Hidalgo had reformed, a matter which was widely discussed and seems to have aroused general attention. In due time, on October 2, 1801, the fiscal reported on this accumulated testimony that, if Hidalgo had uttered the propositions ascribed to him, he should be arrested with sequestration of property, but the witnesses were contradictory and Estrada had the reputation of an habitual liar. He therefore recommended that the case be suspended and the papers be filed for future reference, to which the tribunal assented.