All this is a one-sided relation, furnished by the tribunal to the Suprema. It evidently omits much that would show the tribunal in a less favorable light, as the outcome indicates, for in it there is nothing to justify the intervention of the viceroy and Audiencia. Yet we learn from another source that Cabrera had arbitrarily excommunicated and fined the alcalde of Guamanga who complained to the Audiencia, and on October 30, 1724, the viceroy notified the tribunal that the Audiencia, after considering the evidence, had resolved that the Inquisition should restrain its officials. A correspondence ensued, continued until the summer of 1725, in which the tribunal complained that the viceroy and Audiencia were assuming to be the superiors of the Inquisition, in violation of the laws and the royal cédulas. The affair finally took the shape of a competencia referred for settlement to the Suprema and the Council of Indies. The Suprema took high ground; it alone could review the acts of the tribunal or entertain appeals, and no other authority had power to intervene. This might have answered under Philip IV, but times had changed. A decree of Philip V, February 1, 1729, ordered it to correct the excesses of the tribunal by such means as it deemed requisite, and to this it replied, April 16th, that it had revoked the acts of the tribunal in the affair of Martin Lobaton, ordering the surrender of all papers to the Ordinary and judge of Cruzada before whom he must plead; that it had entirely disapproved the proceedings of the tribunal and that it had instructed the inquisitors hereafter to observe the provisions of the law.[667]
The Cruzada jurisdiction which emerges in this case was another of the subdivisions of judicial authority, which so fatally complicated the administration of justice in the Spanish dominions and furnished an abundant source of quarrels. The indulgence known as the Santa Cruzada supplied a large revenue to the crown and the organization for its sale was elaborate. At its head was a chief commissioner who held exclusive jurisdiction, civil and criminal, over his subordinates and, although this was by law confined to their official acts, yet it was, as we have just seen, extended to protect them in every way.[668] While the case just mentioned was in progress, another prolonged quarrel arose, similarly involving all three jurisdictions. Don Antonio de Marcategui, the priest of Quiquixana, was also a commissioner of the Inquisition. As such he was already engaged in a contest with the episcopal provisor of Cuzco, in which the Suprema decided against him and ordered all his acts to be revoked. While this was pending he celebrated mass in the chapter’s chapel of the Virgin, on a feast-day, without first settling with the Cruzada for the indulgences gained there by the worshippers under some old concessions. For this Don Juan de Ugarte, commissioner of the Cruzada in Cuzco, on January 8, 1724, notified him that he was fined in three hundred pesos, and also excommunicated him without trial. Marcategui went to Cuzco and laid the matter before Bishop Arregui, who sided with Ugarte. After some further trouble the corregidor was sent to arrest him and sequestrate his property; he gathered together some Indians and Spaniards for resistance but thought better of it and escaped to Lima when, on appealing to the Inquisition, it declared all the proceedings to be invalid and ordered the surrender to it of all the papers. The bishop however sent his papers to the viceroy and Ugarte his to the Cruzada tribunal of Lima. The inquisitors demanded the former from the viceroy and asked him to compel the Cruzada to surrender the latter, but the viceroy refused, alleging that what he held concerned the royal patronato and that he had no control over the Cruzada, whose jurisdiction was ecclesiastical, exempt and privileged. To a second demand, he expressed the wise determination not to get entangled in ecclesiastical matters and jurisdictions, and he further claimed cognizance of the case of the corregidor, whom the Inquisition was prosecuting for sequestrating Marcategui’s property and attempting his arrest. He stubbornly rejected repeated requests and he finally ordered the tribunal to suspend its summons to Ugarte to appear before it. The case was carried to Spain to vex the souls of the Suprema, the Council of Indies and the Commissioner of the Cruzada. In 1729 the king decided against the Inquisition and ordered the case to be surrendered to the Cruzada and the episcopal court, but it still dragged on and, in 1733, a royal decree ordered the Inquisition to obey the Concordias and the laws, but even this was not the end, how it was finally settled matters little; its only interest lies in illustrating the hopelessly impracticable character of Spanish colonial organization and administration.[669]
These defeats of the Inquisition were followed soon afterwards by a still greater invasion of the privileges of the inquisitorial employees. A citizen of Lima pursued a slave into the house of a salaried official, whereupon the tribunal forthwith ordered his arrest. The royal Audiencia intervened, representing to the viceroy, the Marquis of Castel-Fuerte, that the officials enjoyed only the passive and not the active fuero; that the pretensions of the Inquisition, if admitted, would destroy the royal jurisdiction, and that an order should be issued requiring the aggrieved party to plead in the Audiencia. This opinion the viceroy sent to the tribunal with a request that it should abstain. It replied that the official had withdrawn his complaint on account of the apologies made to him, but that the tribunal could not assent to the position of the Audiencia without committing the grave fault of crippling its powers. A considerable correspondence ensued in which the Audiencia asserted decisively that, in matters not connected with faith, the officials of the Inquisition did not enjoy the fuero and much less the active fuero; that there were no laws or customs to contravene the settled principle that the plaintiff or prosecutor must seek the court of the defendant. To this the tribunal replied that the Audiencia had no authority to frame general rules in contravention of laws and customs, and that the matter must be settled by the Suprema. Castel-Fuerte rejoined that the competence of the royal court was not to be impugned, that the Suprema had cognizance only of matters of faith and that to admit the contrary was to place the whole administration of justice at the mercy of the tribunal.[670]
These were brave words which a century earlier would have consigned the utterer to disgrace. They were the denial of the privileges and exemptions which the Inquisition had enjoyed for nearly two centuries and a half, and their significance lies in their expression of the tendencies of the period. In time those tendencies brought about their inevitable development. In 1744 there was a contest over the will of D. Felix Antonio de Vargas, in the consulado or commercial court. A secretary of the tribunal claimed to have an interest in the estate, and it consequently asserted jurisdiction over the whole affair. This was resisted by the consulado, and Viceroy Villagarcia ordered a sala de competencia to decide between the conflicting claims, according to established rule. The tribunal refused, on the ground that its rights were too clear to be called in question. While this was pending, Superunda succeeded to Villagarcia and, after no little trouble, he induced the visitador Arenaza to agree to a sala reflexa, to determine whether a sala de competencia should be held. Then there came fresh trouble on the side of the senior judge of the Consulado, but finally the decision was reached that the officials of the Inquisition were entitled to the active fuero. When Superunda reported the matter to Fernando VI there resulted the royal cédula of June 20, 1751, declaring that the officials should enjoy only the passive fuero, and this in both civil cases and those criminal ones not excepted by the concordias, while their servants and the familiars were wholly deprived of it. In the case in question, the papers were to be surrendered to the Consulado; in future no sala reflexa was to be held and, when the matter was so clear as in this one, the viceroy should decide it, as the effort was manifestly an assault on the regalías.
By this time Arenaza had departed and the inquisitors were Amusquíbar and Rodríguez. The latter was disposed to accept the royal cédula without dispute, but Amusquíbar refused to obey it on the ground that it had not come with the confirmation of the Suprema. A long wrangle ensued, but at length another cédula of February 29, 1760, was received, ordering the observance of the previous one, and this time it was accompanied by a corresponding decree of the Suprema. These were communicated to the tribunal, March 24, 1761, which, seeing that further resistance was useless, promptly promised obedience. This was followed by a demand for the papers of the estate of Vargas, which, after an interval of seventeen years, was at length placed in train for adjudication.[671]
This settled the question as to the civil jurisdiction of the tribunal and simultaneously another case put an end to conflicts over criminal matters. A negro slave of the alguazil mayor had been arrested for some offence; the tribunal demanded the prisoner with its customary threats of fines and excommunications. The affair was pending when the cédula of 1760 was received; the Audiencia thereupon served on the tribunal an inhibition to issue letters of excommunication and fine against the alcaldes del crimen and proceeded to try the slave. The cédula was sent to all the judicial officers of the vice-royalty and they were ordered to defend the royal jurisdiction in all cases covered by it. To the arrogant temper of Amusquíbar this limitation of the traditional jurisdiction of the Inquisition must have been gall and wormwood, but it was worth much to the peace of the land. In 1796, the Viceroy, Frey Francisco Gil de Taboado y Lemos, tells us that it had put an end to the former conflicts between the jurisdictions.[672]
We have seen how neglectful was Amusquíbar of the real duties of his office, but he found time and energy to keep Barroeta y Angel, the Archbishop of Lima, in a condition of exasperation for years, and in this he seems to have had the support not only of the Suprema but of Fernando VI. What was the origin of the dissension between them does not appear, but Barroeta lost no opportunity of exercising his authority for Amusquíbar’s annoyance and always to his own discomfiture. The rupture must already have been pronounced when, October 4, 1752, Barroeta wrote calling his attention to the fact that his licence as confessor had not been renewed, while in spite of this he continued his visits to the nunneries of the Recollects, which was unfitting his position and was prohibited; his ceasing these visits would relieve the Archbishop from further proceedings. This sharp provocation was disarmed by cool insolence. Amusquíbar delayed a reply until November 14th, when he simply said that he had postponed acknowledging the note in order to be temperate, and he now omitted answering it in order not to fail in the respect due to his own office and the dignity of the archbishop. Barroeta transmitted the correspondence to the Suprema for redress and obtained none. Amusquíbar, however, ceased his visits but kept up a correspondence. So it was, in 1756, when Barroeta called upon Amusquíbar and Rodríguez for a statement of settlements with creditors and sales of farms belonging to chaplaincies, in order that he might see that the souls of the founders were reaping the benefits designed in the foundations. The inquisitors replied that it was impossible and, on his asking why, replied that it was on account of the mode of his demand; the archbishop could send his fiscal and any special question about any special foundation would be answered. Again he forwarded the letters to the Suprema but its only action was to file them away. He had equal ill-luck in all the questions that he raised. In 1751 the Suprema sent to Amusquíbar its approval and that of the king, as to his conduct in an encounter with Barroeta over jubilee faculties for absolving for heresy. Then Barroeta claimed that the inquisitors should submit to him their licences to celebrate and hear confessions, but the king decided against him. Barroeta transferred the delegation of his inquisitorial jurisdiction from his Ordinary to another person; the tribunal disputed it and the king decided in its favor. He undertook to deprive the inquisitors of their faculties as confessors, and only provoked fresh rebukes from Spain. He issued an edict on fasting which the tribunal prohibited; then he printed it at the end of his Synodal Constitutions only to have the prohibition confirmed and the decision approved by the Suprema. There was a question about the notary of the episcopal court going to the tribunal to report certain acts, in which the Suprema sustained its action, and the visits of ceremony between them was a fruitful source of controversy.[673] Barroeta died, December 10, 1757, his whole episcopate marred with these little squabbles. It is all very petty, but it illustrates how the relations of the Inquisition with the spiritual authorities were as unfriendly as with the temporal.
Thus far we have considered the activity of the tribunal in matters foreign to its original purpose, which, indeed, were the most important portion of its record. As regards its proper function, that of maintaining the purity of the faith, its chief business in Peru, as in Spain, was with a class of cases which could only by forced construction be considered as heretical. Bigamists furnished a large proportion of penitents—the adventurer who left a wife in Andalusian Córdoba was apt to take a new one in Córdova de Tucuman and chance might at any time bring detection, while, even in Peru itself, distances were so great and intercommunication so difficult, that the seeker after fortune was easily tempted in his wanderings to duplicate the sacrament of matrimony. Blasphemy was another prolific source of prosecution, for the gambling habit was universal and lost none of its provocative character in crossing the ocean. Sorcery moreover, including the innumerable superstitions for creating love or hatred, curing or causing disease, bringing fortune or averting misfortune, and foretelling the future, which were technically held to include implicit or explicit pact with the demon, brought an ample store of culprits before the tribunal. To the mass of superstitious beliefs carried from home by the Spaniards were speedily superadded those of the native wise-women and a sprinkling taught by Guinea negro slaves. We find but few whites among these offenders, but every other caste is represented—negro, mulatto, quadroon, mestizo and sambo and sometimes Indian, for in this crime the jurisdiction of the Inquisition over the Indians seems to have been admitted. One feature of Indian sorcery which constantly meets us is the use of the drug coca, owing to the marvellous properties attributed to it, akin to the peyote which, in Mexico, was employed to produce fatidical dreams and revelations. Both of these were strictly prohibited by the respective Inquisitions.[674]
No specific cases of witchcraft occur in the autos de fe, but, in 1629, a special Edict of Faith directed against the occult arts and sorcery was published, enumerating all the forbidden practices in minute detail and forming a curious body of superstitions and folk-lore, much more extensive than anything of the kind issued in Spain. It brought in, we are told, numerous denunciations, but the practices were ineradicable and continued to flourish until the end. The virtual paralysis of the tribunal in the later years of Amusquíbar caused many complaints, among which was one from Córdova de Tucuman to the Suprema, representing that, in the interior provinces, sorcery was universal; there was no case of sickness that was not attributed to it, but denunciations and testimony sent to the tribunal received no attention and, as the civil magistrates were precluded from acting, it flourished unrepressed.[675]
Propositions, which furnished so large a portion of the work of the Spanish tribunals, afforded a much smaller percentage in Peru. This is probably attributable to lack of intellectual activity, for some of the cases tried indicate that the susceptibility of the Inquisition was as delicate as in Spain, and that there was the same readiness to denounce any careless speech or ill-sounding remark uttered in vexation or anger. Thus, in 1592, Felipe de Lujan was tried because, when looking at a picture of the Last Judgement, he said it was not well painted, for Christ was not with the Apostles. Juan de Arianza had the indelible disgrace of appearing in the auto of February 27, 1631, because, when reading the Scriptures, he exclaimed “Ea! there is nothing but living and dying,” which sounded ill to those who heard it. A case, which came near to ending in tragedy, was that of Antonio de Campos who, for uttering certain heretical propositions and adhering to them pertinaciously, was condemned to relaxation. Fortunately for him the expense of a public auto was too great to be incurred for him and the Suprema was consulted, in 1672. During the delay thus caused it was found that his real name was Fray Teodoro de Ribera and that his brain had been turned by a potion given to him by a woman. This afforded a solution and he was handed over as insane to his Provincial. A case in 1721 is noteworthy as illustrating the dangers which environed all speculations connected with the Church. A Frenchman, known as Juan de Ullos, was denounced for saying that neither the pope nor a general council was the head of the Church. In due course this proposition was submitted to two calificadores, Padre Luis de Andrade, S. J., and the Mercenarian Fray Francisco Galiano. It was probably through some vague reference to Gallicanism that they reported that the qualification was difficult because the accused was a Frenchman, and for this they were imprisoned, with sequestration of their property.[676]