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

by Henry Charles Lea

Valera had imparted some vigor to the tribunal and had held public autos in 1693 and 1694, but there was not another until 1733. His death had seriously crippled the tribunal, for his colleague Burrelo had died in 1701, the third inquisitor Suárez was old and disabled by asthma, and the fiscal, Ponte y Andrade, was so prostrated with gout that, for twenty-two months prior to November, 1704, he could not venture out of doors. By this time the civil business of the tribunal was greater than that of the royal Audiencia and it necessarily fell into confusion, while matters of faith were neglected. Suárez asked the Suprema for help and it was rendered after the customary fashion, for the fiscal Ponte was appointed inquisitor and an old professor of law, who had sought the priesthood, Gaspar Ibañez, was made fiscal. Quarrels arose immediately, for Ibañez received his commission by private hand and was sworn in immediately, while that of Ponte came by the galleons. Suárez, who was a friend of Ibañez, endeavored to enforce the latter’s seniority, which carried with it considerable emoluments, and this was resisted by Ponte. By this time there was no distinction of grade between inquisitor and fiscal; the latter had the title of inquisitor-fiscal, and the functions were interchangeable, although no one could perform both—that is of prosecutor and judge—in any given case. Ponte, in 1707, exhaled his griefs to the Suprema; his colleagues, he said, acted irregularly; Ibañez assumed to be both fiscal and inquisitor in the same case; the situation was desperate and the civil business was at a standstill.[648]

For more than a quarter of a century there was no improvement. Slender as was the business of the tribunal in matters of faith, it was greatly in arrears. Ibañez, who had become senior inquisitor, was sometimes unable to sit for three months at a time. Holidays, beyond those on the register, were taken until they amounted to half the days in the year. Gutiérrez de Cevallos, one of the inquisitors, on being made Bishop of Tucuman, in 1730, reported to the Suprema that he had been unable to expedite matters; there were prisoners who had been confined for thirteen years, of which eleven had passed since he had, as fiscal, presented the formal accusations—and we shall see that six more were to elapse before these dreary trials came to an end in the quemadero.[649]

Ibañez finally fell into dotage. Sánchez Calderon had become his colleague and Diego de Unda came as fiscal in 1735, to be rated as inquisitor when Mateo de Amusquíbar, in 1737, assumed the former position, to be in turn made inquisitor, in 1744, when he had attained the age of thirty, which was the minimum for that office. Allusion has been made above to the quarrels over the mismanagement of the finances by the receiver Ilarduy, with whom Amusquíbar formed an alliance. Amusquíbar wrote to the Suprema most damaging reports as to his colleagues; the irregularities committed in serious trials for heresy and the monstrous contradictions in civil cases. Unda, he said, acceded to all that Calderon did, and Calderon followed his own whims in opposition to the precise orders of the Suprema, while the same disregard of instructions was shown in appointments and in dismissals from office. There had, indeed, been gross irregularities in the trial culminating in the great auto of December 23, 1736, in which a woman and two effigies had been relaxed. One of the effigies was that of a Jesuit Padre, Juan Francisco de Ulloa, who had died in 1710 with a reputation of sanctity; the Jesuits had made great efforts to avert it and were deeply incensed at the disgrace inflicted on the Society. This may perhaps aid to explain why, when Calderon and Unda sent their official relation of the cases, the Suprema had replied that it felt the greatest sorrow and scandal in seeing how the affairs of religion were treated, in offence both of religion and justice, and of the honor of the Holy Office, with the threat that, if in future the laws were not observed, the inquisitors would be dismissed. Calderon and Unda, moreover, were greatly discredited by their amours. They kept as concubines two sisters, Magdalena and Bartola Romo, the daughters of the alcaide of the prison. Magdalena had three daughters whom Calderon educated in the monastery of las Catalinas, where they were known as las inquisidoras. Romo was an accomplice of Ilarduy, but when Calderon and Unda dismissed others who were compromised, they retained him on account of their relations with his daughters.[650]

These scandals and Calderon’s commercial enterprises were weapons used by Ilarduy who, as we have seen, sent to Spain emissaries with a hundred thousand pesos to accomplish Calderon’s downfall. One of these, Felipe de Altolaguirre, Ilarduy’s son-in-law, before his departure, openly boasted that he would not return without securing Calderon’s dismissal, and after he came back he publicly spoke of having bribed the inquisitor-general and Suprema, while Ilarduy said that it had cost him forty thousand pesos.[651] What was attained was the appointment of a visitador, armed with supreme powers. The person selected was Pedro Antonio de Arenaza, inquisitor of Valencia, who was promised a salary of fourteen thousand pesos and perquisites. If Calderon is to be believed, Altolaguirre, the envoy of Ilarduy, told him that there were rich pickings to be had from the fines to be imposed on the inquisitors; that he could make large profits from merchandise which he could carry with him; that he would have the appointment of corregidores in Piura and el Cercado, yielding him thirty-six thousand pesos; that his travelling expenses would be paid and that, on his return to Spain, he could not get a seat in the Suprema unless he took with him a hundred thousand pesos.[652] His experience in Madrid had evidently familiarized him with the depth of corruption existing there.

The impression conveyed by this is confirmed by the commercial aspect of the visitador’s voyage, strangely at variance with its object of reforming abuses. To escape the risk of English cruisers, Altolaguirre and Arenaza sailed from Lisbon to Rio, the visitador taking with him a large assortment of goods and some negro slaves for sale. Rio was reached in the middle of 1744 and Buenos Ayres in November, whence they passed to Santiago and arrived in Lima early in March, 1745. On March 15th Arenaza presented his credentials and at once examined the funds in the chest. Two weeks later, when Unda went to the chapel as usual to hear mass, Arenaza’s notary told him to go to Amusquíbar’s house. As he was about to enter, the notary made him get into a carriage standing at the door, when, accompanied by a secretary, he was carried to the Franciscan convent in the neighboring village of la Magdalena, with orders to speak to no one. His property was at once embargoed, his house locked up and placed under guard.

Calderon was arrested in even more unceremonious fashion. He had been sick in bed for three days when Yrazabal, the alguazil mayor, who had been reinstated, penetrated to his apartments. His physician and chaplain, who were with him, were dismissed and an order was read suspending him from office, embargoing his property and ordering his departure for Limatamba. Yrazabal collected all the keys, and at once commenced an inventory which consumed two days. Calderon remained in bed under guard, with orders to speak to no one and no one was allowed to leave the premises. The next day he was sent, in Amusquíbar’s coach, to Limatamba, where two Dominicans were ready to guard him and, on May 3, he was carried to Guaura. For a month there was busy search for the sequestrated property. Calderon declared that it consisted mostly of deposits confided to him, and he says that he was offered reinstatement and the withdrawal of the visitation, if he would give security for fifty thousand pesos and Unda for twenty thousand.[653]

Meanwhile Arenaza was openly retailing his negroes and his goods, through his secretary Gabiria, in rooms obligingly placed at his disposal by the Jesuits in their college. Ilarduy collected for him the proceeds and the traffic was so successful that Arenaza was speedily able to remit to Spain forty thousand four hundred pesos. The friendly assistance of the Jesuits was due not only to their rancor against Calderon, but also to their desire to shield one of their members, whose arrest had been ordered and evaded by hurrying him away and procuring the arrest of another party in his place. They were Arenaza’s advisers and Calderon’s transfer to the secret prison had been determined when an unlooked-for event changed the aspect of affairs. The Inquisitor-general, Manrique de Lara, died January 10, 1746, and was succeeded, July 26th, by Pardo y Cuesta. Calderon received the news by way of Potosí and claimed that Arenaza’s commission expired with the grantor. He hastened to Lima where he recused Arenaza as his judge, threatened to shoot him and asked the Count of Superunda, then viceroy, to give him no support. Superunda was strongly in favor of Arenaza and ordered Calderon to leave the city within ten hours, nor does it need Calderon’s accusation that he was bribed to this by the Jesuits. Arenaza, in a letter to his brother, asserts that Calderon attempted to buy him off and, when this failed, threatened him, but he would gain nothing by this “for I am resolved rather to be fried in a frying-pan in the public plaza.”[654]

Calderon’s faction in the city had been active in discrediting Arenaza with pamphlets, lampoons and caricatures. The viceroy stood by him, holding that his commission emanated from the Suprema and had not lapsed, but still he sought to effect a settlement. At one time it was agreed that the inquisitors should resume their offices and the sequestrations be lifted, on their giving security in fifty thousand pesos to answer judicially to the charges but, from some cause, the arrangement fell through. Then came the great earthquake of October 28, 1746, followed by pestilence, which, for a time, suspended all action. Calderon had his agents at work with the Suprema, which resolved, in April, 1747, that the inquisitors should be restored and the sequestration be lifted; that Arenaza’s functions should be limited to the subordinate officials, and that the viceroy should select some one to replace him as respected the inquisitors. It was nearly a year before these orders reached Peru, but, on March 4, 1748, Calderon and Unda entered the city triumphantly, in coaches escorted by a crowd of negroes and mulattos, with bands of music and scattering of flowers, while the bells of the convents of which they were patrons sounded a joyous peal, the demonstration continuing for two days.

Arenaza was humiliated and, when Superunda received a commission in blank for a new visitador, the warning was quite sufficient to deter any competent person from accepting the perilous position. All to whom it was offered declined, pointing out the fate of Arenaza and the danger of arousing enmities that would blast their honor and reputation. Superunda therefore brought Arenaza and the inquisitors together and, after a long conference, it was agreed that the sequestration should be lifted and that they would sit with Arenaza in the tribunal, but they failed to comply with their promise and the business was carried on by Arenaza and Amusquíbar. Unda died, May 27, 1748, of apoplexy following a visit paid to a house where he had illicit relations with the daughters. His funeral was dismal, even Calderon refusing to be present, saying that he had died as he had lived.

Superunda reported to the inquisitor-general that affairs were beyond remedy by a continuance of the visitation, and Arenaza was ordered to return to Spain. This order reached Lima at the close of 1750 and he sailed from Callao August 11, 1751, complaining bitterly that his salary of fourteen thousand pesos had been cut down to fifty-nine hundred. Amusquíbar, however, states that he was paid in addition eighteen thousand five hundred for his outward expenses and living and eight thousand for those of his return, which conflicts with the statement of Viceroy Superunda that he embarked wholly destitute of money. He died on the passage at Cartagena, but his secretary went on to Spain with the papers of the visitation.