This rebuff silenced the Suprema for the time but, on September 19, 1630, it returned to the charge. The Lima tribunal, in a letter of June 28, 1629, had related how a soldier in the port of Buenos Ayres, on the look-out for a vessel, had picked up on the shore a sealed package addressed “A las justicias del Perú” and on opening found it full of attacks on the papal and monarchical authority. This showed, it said, the audacity with which the heretics were disseminating their doctrines in those regions. They were also circulating tracts which had been seized, one of which was enclosed to prove to the king the necessity of ordering efficacious support to the Inquisition by the royal officials, and how desirable ii would be to establish a tribunal at Buenos Ayres.[609] This appeal likewise fell on deaf ears and, on November 26, 1636, the Suprema forwarded to Lima the king’s reply with corresponding instructions.[610]
The suggestion was renewed, March 1, 1636, by the fiscal of the Audiencia of la Plata, but this time the proposed seat of the tribunal was in Tucuman. This led the king, November 2, 1638, to ask for information from the audiencia, the viceroy and other authorities. To this the President of Charcas replied, warmly approving of the project, but for a wholly different reason, saying that during his years of service he had observed the great oppression of the people by the commissioners, maltreating them on trivial pretexts, ordering them to appear at Lima with excessive cost and irreparable disgrace and molesting them in many ways, for which they dared not seek redress, for it lay at such a distance and the remedy was to them so horrible. The audiencia answered, March 10, 1640, recommending Córdoba de Tucuman as the most desirable seat. Two inquisitors and a fiscal, with salaries of two thousand pesos and a secretary with one thousand would suffice and would be largely defrayed by the fines and confiscations. Viceroy Chinchon delayed responding until September 29, 1641, when he said that it would be advantageous but costly; the salaries would have to be large, for living was dear, and the confiscations would be insufficient; in the last auto, although the culprits were many and of much reputed wealth, the property had almost wholly disappeared. Chinchon’s successor, the Marquis of Mancera, had already written, June 8, 1641, that Chinchon had handed the matter over to him; he had referred it to the President of Chuquisaca, whose report he enclosed, and he dwelt upon the evil of the Portuguese who entered Paraguay by San Pablo and spread over the land.[611]
By this time the Portuguese and Catalan revolts gave Philip ample occupation, and the absolute exhaustion of the treasury forbade all thoughts of incurring avoidable expenses. When these pressing necessities diminished, the suggestion was renewed in 1662; the erection of an audiencia in the growing city of Buenos Ayres led the Lima tribunal to urge the establishment of an Inquisition there or in Córdoba de Tucuman. Communication with Spain was easy from there and two inquisitors would suffice, or one and a fiscal. The Suprema warmly advocated the measure, but favored Córdoba, which was only eight days’ journey, or even only five, from Buenos Ayres. The failure of this effort seems to have discouraged further official attempts and we hear nothing more of the matter for nearly a century. In 1754 the Jesuit Pedro de Arroyo wrote to the procurador of his province in Spain, calling attention to the necessities of an additional tribunal. That of Lima was so far off—a thousand leagues, he said—that it was of no use to them. In the twenty years spent in those provinces, he had never heard of an arrest by the Inquisition except one in Buenos Ayres, and then the prisoner escaped before reaching Lima; there was, however, a case of a cleric of Paraguay who spontaneously obeyed a summons to Lima. A commissioner had told him that, in ten or eleven years, he had had ten or eleven cases, which he had investigated and reported to Lima, but had never had a reply, except in the first case and this was not until two years had elapsed, by which time the culprit had disappeared. A second tribunal was now more necessary than ever, as the Portuguese were inundating the land. In the jurisdiction of Buenos Ayres they were said to number six thousand, and there was the same proportion in other districts; in that of Córdoba, the audiencia banished them some years ago, but they merely moved their residence and their places were taken by other Portuguese. About the same time Pedro de Logu, a calificador in Buenos Ayres, called attention to the mischief to religion arising from the scum collected there and subjected to no supervision; the powers of the commissioner were limited, he had no profit from his work and the introduction of prohibited books was frequent. These unofficial representations seem to have elicited no attention, but more authoritative was the memorial, in 1765, of Pedro Miguel, Archbishop of la Plata, whose residence there for twenty years had shown to him the necessity of a tribunal in Buenos Ayres. To this the fiscal of the Council of Indies replied, December 13, 1766, with an indifference which forms the measure of inquisitorial decadence. The rarity, he says, of cases of faith, attributable to the care exercised in preventing the immigration of descendants of infected persons, rendered it unnecessary to burden the fisc with the expenses of another tribunal; besides, the difficulty of reaching Lima restored to the bishops their inherent jurisdiction in such matters and they could sufficiently protect the faith.[612] It may be hoped, for the good archbishop’s peace of mind, that he did not avail himself of this unofficial authorization to set up an episcopal Inquisition.
It may be gathered from these ineffectual efforts to multiply tribunals that the financial question was as important in South America as we have seen it in Mexico. The experiences of the two Inquisitions were similar. When Cerezuela and his colleague went to Lima, they bore instructions to the royal officials to disburse to the receiver of confiscations ten thousand pesos a year for the salaries of the two inquisitors, the fiscal and the notary.[613] This made no provision for other inevitable expenses. The theory on which the Holy Office was based was that it should be self-sustaining—supported by the fines and confiscations which it inflicted—and that when these were in excess the surplus should enure to the royal fisc. In Lima, more clearly than in Mexico, Philip defined repeatedly that this royal subvention should continue only as long as there was deficiency from other sources of income. In the quarrels which speedily arose between the tribunal and the viceroy, Toledo kept it in some sort of subjection by making the inquisitors apply to him personally for their salaries. This was highly distasteful, and they seem to have endeavored to escape from it by excommunicating the royal officials who declined to honor their demands, for cédulas of July 17 and 27, 1572, addressed to the viceroy and inquisitors, prohibited them from drawing on the royal treasury and enforcing payment with censures; they were to hand in their accounts which were to be promptly paid, until the fines and penances and confiscations should suffice. If this meant that they should render accounts of these other sources of income, it received no attention. In Lima as in Mexico no effort on the part of the government could obtain an insight into the finances of the tribunal and the royal subvention was indefinitely prolonged.[614]
Still this did not provide for the salaries of the minor officials and the other unavoidable expenses. For awhile doubtless the tribunal felt the pinch of poverty. We find the Suprema suggesting that, if the prisons are insufficient, they can be made good out of the fines and penances; the alguacil is to be dismissed and, if another is appointed, he must serve without salary; possibly the viceroy may be induced to grant pensions on some of the vacant repartimientos of Indians. The tribunal astutely raised the question of the ayuda de costa, or supplementary payment to meet the expenses of the visitations, which it had no intention of making, and it was told to consult the viceroy and report, after which the Suprema would consult the king. In this it doubtless failed, but we chance to hear of an ayuda de costa paid as a reward for the auto de fe of 1578. Philip was by no means disposed to be liberal. In 1593 a question arose as to the salary of a fiscal ad interim and he rather grudgingly, by a cédula of February 7, 1594, ordered that one-half might be paid, until the confiscations should suffice.[615]
Meanwhile the activity of the tribunal was rapidly enabling it to emerge from its penury. Its correspondence with the Suprema between 1570 and 1594 shows that confiscations were continually decreed and were apparently profitable. Frequent references occur to the estate of a Dr. Quiñones, who owned a mine which was to be rented until sentence was pronounced and then was to be sold; he also had a library which seems to have been of value and was to be disposed of either in bulk or at retail. Up to 1583 the total receipts from confiscations amounted to thirty-eight thousand pesos, or an average of nearly three thousand per annum.[616] Fines were also lucrative. Between 1571 and 1573 there were twenty-seven cases sentenced in the audience-chamber, yielding in all twenty-six hundred pesos of which a thousand were levied on Rodrigo de Arcas, parish priest of Ribera, for solicitation in the confessional. Between 1581 and 1585 fifty-seven cases, similarly sentenced in private, furnished eighty-three hundred pesos. In 1583 there came a piece of good fortune in a legacy of Pedro de la Peña, Bishop of Quito, who left to the tribunal twenty thousand pesos to build a chapel for his interment. The house and prison thus far occupied were unfitted for the growing activity of the tribunal; with the legacy and the proceeds of sale of the existing building, a much finer structure was erected, including a prison with twelve cells. With increasing business came increasing income and, while the pretext of poverty continued to be put forward to the king, the tribunal soon began to accumulate capital and place it at interest. In 1596, Inquisitor Ordoñez, while blaming the receiver Juan de Saracho, admitted that he had succeeded in amassing twenty thousand pesos, part of which sum was invested in censos or ground-rents. To this Ordoñez, by a happy stroke, added seven thousand more from the estate of Pedro González de Montalban, whose property had been sequestrated. He was very sick and obtained his liberation by making a will in favor of the tribunal.[617] The Portuguese Judaizers now began to occupy a constantly increasing share of the tribunal’s attention, opening up a most prosperous field of operations. The time had come when the temporary subvention should be withdrawn, but the tribunal continued quietly to demand and receive it.
It was impossible to keep wholly secret the absorption of large estates and the investments of accumulating capital. The attention of Philip III was called to the matter and, in a letter of June 4, 1614, to the viceroy, he recited the conditions on which the grant had been made; he had learned that the salaries continued to be paid by the treasury, in spite of the receipt from these sources of amounts sufficient to defray them in whole or in part, and he therefore ordered that, when the salaries were paid, the viceroy should inform himself of the receipts from other sources and deduct them from the charge on the treasury, making full reports to the king. This was evaded by the receiver giving a certificate such as he saw fit, of what moneys he had on hand, which naturally was found to be a worthless safe-guard, and the viceroy was ordered to require from the receiver a statement of all receipts every year. It was found impossible to procure this and Philip, in a letter to the Viceroy Squillace, April 26, 1618, after recalling all the previous attempts, ordered him to appoint from the treasury two experienced accountants to audit the receiver’s accounts and report the result to the king. The accountants were duly appointed, but the receiver refused absolutely to exhibit his accounts—he had sent them to the inquisitor-general as he was required to do by his instructions. This exhausted the royal patience and one of the first acts of Philip IV was a letter to the viceroy, June 11, 1621, ordering the suspension of payments until the inquisitors should furnish authentic evidence that the confiscations had not sufficed to meet them. This went on for two years, the inquisitors preferring to forego the subvention rather than to expose the flourishing condition of their finances. They brought incessant pressure to bear, however, and finally induced Viceroy Guadalsacar, under a resolution of the treasury officials, to resume payments on the presentation of certain certificates of the contador, the scrivener of sequestrations and the receiver. On learning this the Council of Indies made a thorough investigation of the whole matter and reported that, in view of the exhaustion of the royal treasury, and that since the foundation of the tribunal, up to 1625, it had consumed six hundred and sixty-two thousand ducats without having returned anything from the fines and confiscations, it was wholly wrong that the money should have been used by the officials in buying lands and censos which they were now enjoying. To put an end to this the king, April 20, 1629, issued a cédula ordering that the conditions expressed in 1621 should be inviolably observed, no matter what might be the exigency, under pain not only of the royal displeasure but that all such disbursements should be charged to the viceroy and be deducted from his salary. To insure observance this cédula was to be entered on the books of the treasury and all auditors were to be governed by it.[618]
These were brave words but it is probable that the Inquisition found means to render them nugatory, while an apparent compromise was sought at the expense of a third party—the Church. We have seen (Mexico, p. 216) how a prebend in each cathedral was suppressed at the first vacancy and the fruits were paid to the tribunal. The process was necessarily slow, commencing with the brief of Urban VIII, March 10, 1627, and delayed by waiting for the successive vacancies and also by resistance, in some cases, of the cathedral chapters.[619] It was virtually completed in 1635, when Philip wrote to the treasury officials, September 26th, that the senior Inquisitor, Juan de Mañozca, had advised him that the suppression of the prebends for the payment of salaries had been effected. The orders with regard to this are to be executed and, as he supposes that the arrearages of salaries have been paid, he writes to Mañozca that in future the prebends are to be applied to the salaries as the treasury is in urgent need of relief—which shows that up to that time the king had continued to pay them and even to make good the arrearages, in spite of the decisive provisions of 1629.[620] The prebends thus obtained were eight in number, in the cathedrals of Lima, Quito, Trugillo, Arequipa, Cuzco, Paz, Chuquisaca and Santiago de Chile. They produced, as we have seen, eleven thousand pesos a year, thus more than replacing the subvention. Further documents fail us here but, from the experience of Mexico and Cartagena, it is fairly to be assumed that, in spite of the prebends and of the large confiscations now coming in, the tribunal managed to continue drawing the subvention and, in 1677, there was still discussion of the subject.[621]
The time, in fact, had come when the finances of the tribunal were to be placed on an enduring foundation. We shall see hereafter the details of the complicidad grande, when nearly all the leading merchants in Lima, of Portuguese extraction, were arrested on charges of Judaism and their property was sequestrated. Arrests had commenced in 1634 and the tragedy culminated in the great auto of January 23, 1639. What was the amount acquired by the tribunal can never be known, but popular report estimated it as a million of pesos, and we have seen that Viceroy Chinchon reported that it virtually disappeared without any one knowing where it went. Philip IV, whose necessities were daily becoming greater, was led by the report of the enormous sequestrations to seek an explanation of the Suprema, which replied to him, December 19, 1636, that the sequestrations had been large but they shrank to almost nothing from the claims of creditors, some of which came from Spain.[622] Disappointed in this he wrote, March 30, 1637, congratulating the inquisitors on their zeal and suggesting that it appeared to him just that out of them the fisc should be reimbursed for its outlays on their salaries, and that enough should be set aside to provide for the future in case the prebends did not suffice. The inquisitors replied, with outward demonstrations of respect, that they would report to the Suprema to which the funds belonged; that as yet there had only been sequestrations, while innumerable claims on the property had been presented, and that many prisoners had been found innocent and their estates had been restored to them—to five of these, Pedro de Soria, Andrés Muñoz, Francisco Sotelo, Antonio de los Santos and Jorje Danila there had thus been returned a hundred and seventy-four thousand pesos. Philip made an attempt to investigate the matter by appointing, in 1643, with the assent of the Suprema, Dr. Martin Real as visitador to examine into the finances of the tribunals of Lima and Cartagena, but, as we shall see, he was baffled in Cartagena and, after stormy experiences, returned to Spain without reaching Lima.[623] Repulsed thus at every point, Philip resorted to somewhat arbitrary measures. In 1644 we find the Suprema complaining of the seizure at Seville of two or three large sequestrations sent there from Lima for settlement with creditors, and again of twenty thousand ducats’ worth of wool taken by him, of which Alfonso Cardosso & Co. were demanding the surrender as owners.[624]
What share of the spoils the Suprema obtained it would be impossible to say. We happen to hear, in 1640, of twelve thousand pesos brought to it from Lima by Juan de Arostegui, which is doubtless only a portion of the amount doled out to it by the tribunal.[625] The latter, in fact, in its reports habitually belittled the results obtained or anticipated; it treated the Suprema as the Suprema treated the king. In reporting the arrests, in 1636, it was careful to point out that, although the prisoners were reputed to be wealthy and lived with ostentation, it was a deception, for in reality they were trading on borrowed money and had little of their own. This was a repetition of what it had said in 1631, when persecution of the Portuguese had already been going on for some years—the sequestrations made much show but with slender results; the real estate of the accused was held in order to gain the reputation of wealth, while in reality it was so encumbered as to be valueless, and the personal property was so concealed as to be undiscoverable.[626]