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

by Henry Charles Lea

The victory of the tribunal and the humiliation of the viceroy were complete. When the inquisitors read his petition, October 27th, they issued to Antonio de Balcázar, provisor of the archdiocese, a commission to absolve him, at the same time admonishing him to present himself to the Suprema as early as possible. They also gave him the papers of the suit brought against him by Dr. Salinas, in order to enable him to make his defence before the Suprema. Villar received the absolution with much humility and satisfaction, as a great favor from the inquisitors, and on the 28th the provisor was summoned, who solemnly absolved him in the chapel of the palace.[661]

Yet Villar was so little reassured that, on his voyage home, he wrote from Havana to implore the protection of the king from the enmity of Salinas. He rehearsed the services of his ancestors to the monarchy, while of his children five sons had been killed and one crippled in the king’s wars with heretics and infidels, two more were then serving and two were in training for service, while two had died in the priesthood. His fears were probably groundless for the Suprema, in a letter to Prado, blamed him for the dissensions in the tribunal which it attributed to his favor for Salinas, a man of such evil life and tortuous methods that he alone would throw any republic into discord. Apparently it did not as yet know that the secret of the influence of Salinas was the relations of his sister-in-law with Prado, a scandal which continued until Prado’s recall.[662]

It has seemed worth while to give somewhat in detail the particulars of this obscure quarrel to illustrate the position adopted by the tribunal towards the highest authorities, its arrogant assumption of superiority, and the readiness with which its jurisdiction could be extended in any desired direction. It can easily be perceived how difficult was the task of the viceroys to maintain an efficient government, and to keep the peace with so independent and so unruly a factor in the land. But few of them escaped collisions, although it does not appear that in any subsequent case the quarrel went so far as the institution of a formal prosecution against the personal representative of the king. It is not surprising therefore that, however pious were the viceroys, they were almost unanimous in deprecating the acts and the influence of the Holy Office. The Count del Villar naturally exhaled his woes in long and lugubrious epistles to the king. His successor, the Count of Cañete, as early in his term as 1589, complained bitterly of the exemptions through which all connected with the Holy Office admitted responsibility to no one. This gave rise to endless trouble, for every one who was summoned to have his accounts examined, or who refused to pay his dues to the royal treasury, procured a familiarship or some office and with it secured exemption. Even Alvaro Ruiz de Navamuel, the government secretary, had himself made a familiar and auditor, and assumed that he was not subject to investigation. The royal officials were familiars-one of them at Arequipa, when called upon for his accounts, refused because he was a familiar.[663] Government conducted after this fashion seems like opéra bouffe.

In like manner the Viceroy Luis de Velasco, in 1604, represented strongly to Philip III the intrusion of the tribunal on other jurisdictions and its overbearing methods, so that the superior royal officials, on whom rested the peace and quiet of the land, had to abandon their rights to avoid scandals. As for himself, sometimes he temporized, sometimes he yielded, and sometimes he pretended not to see, in order to avoid dissension, for, when the tribunal was opposed, it made public demonstrations, which degraded the authority of the vice-regal office and of the Royal Audiencia. So, in 1609, the Viceroy Marquis of Montesclaros, in representing some scandalous ill-treatment of the alcaldes of the city, declared that the inquisitors were arbitrary and assumed that there was no power superior to them to restrain or even to resist them.[664] It was probably representations such as these which led to the concordias of 1610 and 1633. In these some of the more flagrant usurpations of authority were forbidden, but the underlying principles were unchanged and we have seen how, in Mexico, the attempted reform was frustrated.

The Viceroy Count of Alba de Aliste was involved in many encounters with the tribunal, for which, as noted above, in 1655, Philip IV sent him a copy of the circular letter of 1603 commanding respect and obedience. This did not prevent him, in 1657, from writing that the reiteration and multiplication of its excesses of jurisdiction might render it necessary for him to break with it altogether, as the only way of maintaining the authority of the Government.[665] With the advent of the Bourbon dynasty, the consequent infusion of Gallicanism in Spain, and the resolute assertion of the regalías, the authority of the viceroys was more fully recognized, and we hear less, in the eighteenth century, of their struggles to maintain it against the tribunal. Yet the latter did not cease to assert the superiority of its jurisdiction and to extend it as far as possible, giving rise to a perpetual succession of embittered contests with the other judicial organizations, to the detriment of the public peace and the weakening of the functions of government. Even after its decadence had fairly set in, as late as 1773, the Viceroy Manuel Amat y Yunient writes that the Inquisition, so necessary for the purity of the faith, would be more useful and respected if it would confine itself to its proper functions, for its cognizance of civil cases has always led to collisions with the royal courts, which are particularly prejudicial at this distance from the king and, though there have been concordias and royal cédulas to prevent them, there are never lacking occasions to revive the contention to the great disquiet of the people.[666]

The eighteenth century, in fact, presents an almost continuous series of quarrels with all the different jurisdictions, the existence of which so greatly weakened the organization of the Spanish colonial system, and these quarrels were fought out with a persistent bitterness, sometimes degenerating into violence, which taxed to the utmost the efforts of the viceroys as peacemakers. Into the trivial details of these dreary conflicts it is not worth while to enter at length, but a single case may be briefly described, to illustrate the ferocity displayed by all parties and the confusion arising from the complexity of the multiplied judicial systems which influenced Spanish development so unfortunately.

On November 11, 1723, two brothers, the Licentiates Juan and Martin Lobaton, presented themselves before the tribunal to claim its protection. Juan was cura or parish priest of Soras and commissioner of the Inquisition in Guancabelica; Martin was cura of Viñao and “persona honesta” or cleric called in to be present when witnesses ratified their evidence. Both parishes were in the see of Guamanga, then sede vacante and governed by the chapter, which had required Juan to account for the property of an Indian woman, a parishioner who had died some two years previous, and it had ordered him not to leave Guamanga, under penalty of excommunication, whereupon he had promptly fled to Lima. In his case, the fiscal reported that the matter did not concern the Inquisition and the papers were returned to the episcopal Ordinary. Martin had assisted his brother’s flight and for this he was confined to his house by the episcopal authorities and a coadjutor appointed, to the great scandal and destruction, we are told, of the parish. In this case the tribunal assumed jurisdiction; it ordered him, June 2, 1724, to be restored and his property released, on his giving security, and the chapter was ordered to prosecute before the Inquisition whatever charges it had to bring against him.

Martin meanwhile had the town of Guamanga as a prison. On the afternoon of April 30th, as he was standing in the street, the dean of the chapter, who was also commissioner of the Inquisition, passed in his carriage, then got out and scolded him roundly for not taking off his hat. Martin withdrew, but the dean, still unsatisfied, went to his house with the alcalde, broke open the door and embargoed all his goods—even to his clothes and breviary—then summoned the chapter and by 5 o’clock had him excommunicated and fined twenty pesos, as the papers stated, for not removing his hat to the dean an hour before, and notices of the excommunication were duly affixed to the doors of the churches.

When the inquisitorial sentence of June 2d was served upon the chapter it said that it had nothing against Martin, but when his embargoed property came to be restored much of it was found to have been stolen by the depositaries to whom it had been confided. The tribunal held the chapter responsible and ordered the loss to be made good, under threat of excommunication. The chapter replied, September 29th, that the case belonged to the bishop and chapter and its previous surrender of the papers had been without prejudice. Then Fray Luis de Cabrera, prior of the Augustinian convent, to whom the sentence had been sent as executor, excommunicated the chapter. The archdeacon as Commissioner of the Cruzada, declared the excommunication void, ordered the notices to be removed, and replaced them with others excommunicating Cabrera as a disturber of the Bull of the Cruzada. Cabrera responded by excommunicating the alguazil and notary of the Cruzada and, on October 2d, the archdeacon pronounced these excommunications to be null.

When the tribunal heard of this, by orders of October 18th and 27th it declared the excommunications on both sides to be null; it put the matter of the chapter in the hands of Luis de Mendoza, rector of the Jesuit college, and it ordered Cabrera to push the restitution of Martin’s property, but not to employ censures without instructions. This was the situation when the new bishop, Alfonso Roldan, arrived at Lima and, on its being stated to him, he expressed himself as satisfied. Then Martin came before the tribunal asserting that one of the depositaries, Juan Joseph Lasco, who had stolen most of the goods, had pawned some silverware of his with a merchant named Joseph de Villanueva, and asking their restoration on his proving property. Consequently on March 14, 1725, orders were sent to Cabrera that, if the silver were proved to be Martin’s, it should be deposited in safe hands. This was done on April 5th, when Villanueva deposed that Lasco had pawned with him ninety-three marks of silver plate. He was ordered to deposit it and promised to do so but, on the 7th, he testified that the day before the bishop had ordered him not to surrender the silver but to tell Cabrera to throw up the commission of the Inquisition and any other that he might hold. This was followed by the archdeacon notifying Martin to go to his parish in sixteen hours and, on his representing the impossibility of this, as he had been a prisoner for a year and was deprived of his property, he was posted as an excommunicate. After considerable delay he was absolved and was told to stay in the city, but on falling sick and unable to assist in the church, he was excommunicated again and recluded in his house.