This somewhat exuberant zeal in asserting their privileges was accompanied with corresponding activity in the performance of their regular duties. In 1513 there were three autos de fe celebrated, in which the burnings aggregated thirty-nine, a large portion being of those who had been previously reconciled and had relapsed, thus indicating the increased vigilance of the tribunal.[29] A further evidence of this was the arrival, in September, 1513, at Naples, of four hundred fugitives, including a number of priests and friars, to escape the rigor of the inquisitors, who they said were endeavoring to force confessors to reveal the confessions of their penitents.[30] One gratifying result of this activity was the financial ease afforded by the resultant large confiscations. A letter of Ferdinand’s to Obregon, June 27, 1513, calls his attention to them and to those anticipated from the number of prisoners on trial, requiring greater care than had hitherto been devoted to the management; the officials were now receiving their salaries and doing their duty. In spite of this warning we find, a year later, that Obregon had abruptly quitted Palermo, leaving the affairs of the office in confusion, rendering necessary the appointment, June 15, 1514, of a successor, Garcí Cid, who was instructed to reduce it to order and to invest in ground-rents twelve hundred ounces which Obregon had deposited in a bank.[31] That the profits of persecution continued is evidenced by a gift made, March 30, 1515, by Ferdinand, to his wife, Queen Germaine, of all the confiscations of that year, in the city of Syracuse and district of the Camera reginale, up to the sum of ten thousand florins—a gift which Garcí Cid was ordered to keep secret until after he should have rendered a statement of all that was on hand and was expected.[32]
It is perhaps not surprising that this increased effectiveness of the tribunal stimulated popular discontent, which found expression in a petition from the Sicilian Parliament asking Ferdinand that the Inquisition be required to observe the ancient canons and methods of procedure, for many of those burnt in the autos asserted their innocence, declaring that their confessions had been extorted by torture and dying with every sign of being good Christians. It was further asked that some limit be put to the issue of licences to bear arms and as to the kind of persons licensed; that the judge of confiscations should have a fixed salary and should not exact fees and that there should be an appeal from him to the viceroy; also that those who in good faith entered into contracts with persons reputed to be good Christians should be able to collect their debts, in place of having them included in the confiscation, the contrary practice being destructive to trade and commerce.[33] There was also a special embassy from Palermo, complaining that the inquisitors required the city authorities to renew every year the oath of obedience and that they issued licences to bear arms to men of evil life who caused much disorder and scandal.[34] Ferdinand promised relief of these grievances and, in due course, a fresh series of instructions was issued, in 1515, by Bishop Martin de Aspeitia and the Aragonese Supreme Council, or Suprema. It limited the number of familiars to thirty for Palermo, to twenty for Messina and Catania, to fifteen for Syracuse and Trapani and to not over ten in other places; they were to be men of approved character and were to carry certificates identifying them, in the absence of which they could be disarmed by the secular authorities. If officials were accused of serious crime, the evidence was to be sent to the inquisitor-general when, if the proof was sufficient, the offender would be dismissed and the inquisitor who had tolerated it would be punished. Officials were deprived of the voz activa or right as plaintiffs to the jurisdiction of the tribunal, although Dr. Martin Real assures us that experience had already shown that they could not exist without it, so universally were they detested. Their buying up of claims and matters in litigation, in which they had the benefit of the tribunal as a court, was prohibited. The dowries of wives were protected from confiscation when husbands were convicted and dealings with those in good repute as Christians were held good, in case of confiscation, so that the claims of creditors were allowed and, if the fisc desired to seize alienated real estate, it was required to refund the purchase-money to the buyer.[35] There were various other reforms embodied in the instructions, all indicating a desire to avoid injustice to innocent third parties, but the whole is interesting rather as an exposure of customary abuses than as effecting their removal, although when, towards the close of 1514 a new inquisitor, Miguel Cervera by name, was sent to Sicily, he was ordered to obey to the letter the instructions of Torquemada and his successors and not to increase the number of officials without permission.[36]
However praiseworthy may have been the intentions at headquarters, it was impossible to control the tribunal or to allay popular hostility, which found opportunity for expression after the death of Ferdinand, February 23, 1516. Hugo de Moncada had held the office of viceroy for six years and had earned universal hatred by his cruelty, greed and lust. Among other devices, he had monopolized the corn-trade and, by his exportations, had reduced the island almost to starvation, though its fertility rendered it the granary of the Mediterranean, while the poverty of the people was aggravated by an adulterated currency.[37] He concealed the news of Ferdinand’s death, in hopes of reappointment by Charles V, but it became known and the people, led by some powerful nobles, claimed that his commission had expired. While the popular mind was thus excited, Fra Hieronimo da Verona, in his lenten sermons in Palermo, denounced as sacrilegious the wearing of red crosses on the green penitential sanbenitos of the reconciled heretics, who were very numerous, and he urged the people to tear off the symbol of Christ from the heretical penitents. His advice was followed and the aspect of the mob grew more and more threatening. Moncada attempted to quiet matters by proclaiming Charles and Juana, abolishing an obnoxious corn-tax and exhibiting letters from Charles confirming him in office. These were denounced as forgeries; a man who demanded to see them was arrested by the prefect and rescued by the people, while the prefect was obliged to fly for his life. That night, March 7, 1516, an immense crowd, with artillery taken from the arsenal, besieged the vice-regal palace; Moncada, disguised as a serving-man, escaped by a postern to the house of a friend, whence he took refuge on a ship in the harbor and sailed for Messina, which consented to receive him. After sacking the palace, the mob turned its attention to the Inquisition. Cervera saved his life by taking a consecrated host in a monstrance, under protection of which he gained the harbor, amid the jeers and insults of the people, who cried that he was an inquisitor and hunter of money, not of heretics. He took ship for Spain, while the mob released the prisoners, destroyed the records and pillaged the property of the Inquisition. The Palermitans followed this with an embassy to Charles, complaining of the evil doings of Moncada and the disorders caused by the Inquisition which had well-nigh destroyed their city. The sole object of its officials they said was to accumulate money and they would lay down their lives rather than see it restored, except under the ancient form as carried on by the bishops and Dominicans. Cervera betook himself to Flanders to solicit his restoration, but the island held out and, for three years, there was no Inquisition in Sicily, except in Messina and its territory.[38]
Enlightened by the insurrection and the Palermitan complaints, the Suprema or supreme council of Aragon, on August 29, 1516, sent to Centelles, Bishop of Syracuse, a commission to investigate the tribunal, with a list of interrogatories from which it appears that Cervera had filled the office with his kindred and servants, while every kind of pillage and oppression is suggested, even to the rifling of the treasure-chest by the officials on the day of the tumult. Bishop Centelles, however, had died on August 22d; of course no investigation was made and the Suprema contented itself with expressing, on October 27th, to Charles its gratification at his determination to restore with the greatest honor the tribunal which had been expelled with such disgrace.[39] This, however, was not so readily accomplished. Some seven months later, on June 15, 1517, Charles wrote to the Sicilian viceroy ordering Cervera to be received back and obeyed under penalty of the royal wrath and three thousand crowns but, for a time, this was a dead letter. Cervera returned to Spain when Charles went there, in 1517, and it was not until 1519 that Sicily was sufficiently pacified to render it expedient to send him back. A royal cédula of May 29, 1519, announces this and orders Garcí Cid, the receiver, to pay him 343 ducats for his accrued salary without deduction for absence, and, when the cédula of June 15, 1517, was published at last on July 6, 1519, it was not in Palermo but in Messina, where the Marquis of Monteleone, the new viceroy, was still residing. Meanwhile a certain Giovanni Martino da Aquino had been enjoying the title of inquisitor there, but he was removed, May 20, 1519, in favor of Cervera. A second inquisitor, Tristan Calvete had been appointed in 1517 and had been welcomed in Messina.[40]
Calvete’s first act was to issue an edict, May 16, 1518, requiring, under pain of excommunication, all papers and property of the Inquisition to be returned within fifteen days and the anathema duly followed on June 6th.[41] Presumably this produced little result; Palermo, the seat of the tribunal and scene of insurrection, had not yet returned to obedience; the records had been destroyed and their lack long remained a source of embarrassment. The tribunal however, in 1519, was re-established and fully manned; it celebrated an auto de fe, June 11, 1519 and, for five or six years, there seems to have been one nearly every year, but the number of executions was not large.[42] Popular antagonism was by no means disarmed, for we find Calvete issuing, September 29, 1525, two edicts, one commanding everyone to aid and favor the Inquisition and not to defend heretics, and the other summoning all cognizant of the numerous penitenciados and their descendants, who disregarded the disabilities imposed on them, to denounce them.[43]
There was ample cause for disaffection, arising, not from sympathy with heresy, but from the arbitrary proceedings of those who regarded persecution primarily as a source of enrichment. Instructions given, July 31, 1517, by Cardinal Adrian to Calvete, commence with the remark that all inquisitors thus far sent to Sicily had disregarded the rules of the Holy Office, both as to civil and criminal procedure, as to confiscations and as to familiars. It was therefore ordered that all officials, under pain of excommunication, should inviolably observe the instructions, including those given to Melchor Cervera; the whole body of these rules was ordered to be read in presence of all the officials assembled for the purpose, a notarial act being taken to attest the fact. Moreover, in addition to excommunication for violations of the rules, the special penalties provided were to be irrevocably enforced. Following this were particular instructions for the correction of abuses which indicate how completely the interests of the fisc and the rights of the people were subordinated to official cupidity. One of the practices prohibited shows how repulsive the religion of Christ, in such hands, was rendered to converts. The inquisitors, it appears, were in the habit of making reconciled penitents and baptized neophytes labor on the fortifications of the castle; when they did not appear at the appointed hour they were fined and these fines, which were collected by Zamporron, the messenger of the tribunal, amounted to a considerable sum, of which no account was rendered.[44] In this, as in all similar denunciations of malversations and abuses, a noteworthy feature is that punishment is always threatened for the future and none is inflicted for the past; no one is dismissed and the thieving and corrupt officials are allowed unmolested to continue their career of plunder and oppression.
Apparently Cardinal Adrian was advised that his instructions were not obeyed and he sent Master Benito Mercader as “visitor” or inspector to report on the condition of the tribunal. Before this report was received, Adrian had passed through the papacy to the tomb, and it was acted upon by his successor, Manrique, Archbishop of Seville, who issued, January 31, 1525, a fresh set of instructions, based on its revelations. From this it would appear that there was little in which the inquisitors and their officials did not violate the rules, both in the conduct of trials and management of the finances. There seems, in fact, to have been a Saturnalia of peculation. Collections were made by both authorized and unauthorized persons, of which no accounts were kept. The fines and pecuniary penances, which formed so lucrative a source of income, were kept from the knowledge of the notary of sequestrations so that he could make no charge of them to the receiver. Officials claimed and received twenty or twenty-five per cent. for discovering hidden confiscated property, their knowledge of which was acquired officially. The Christian slaves of condemned heretics were sold in place of being set free, according to law. Inquisitors and their subordinates received “presents,” or rather bribes, from penitents and litigants, which perhaps explains the complaint that sentences to the galleys and other penalties were not executed and that the disabilities and sanbenitos of those reconciled were not enforced. There is significance in the instructions for the collection of the two hundred gold ducats, which the late inquisitor, Melchor Cervera, had bequeathed to the Inquisition for the discharge of his conscience—probably but a small portion of the irregular gains for which he had had ample opportunity. As a whole, this inside picture of the Holy Office shows us how completely it was converted into an engine for oppression and peculation and how little there was of genuine fanaticism to serve as an excuse for its existence, but, as usual, there are no dismissals or punishments inflicted and the only remedy proposed is the formal semi-annual reading of the instructions to the officials. That they should continue to be the objects of popular detestation was inevitable, and the complaint is made that their maltreatment and the resistance offered to them remain unpunished.[45]
This was the only point on which reformation was attempted. Charles V, in a letter to his viceroy, October 22, 1525, says that he understands that the royal courts take cognizance of the cases of the officials of the tribunal, which displeases him greatly; it is his will that the Holy Office shall be cherished and favored and that in all cases, civil and criminal, its officials are to enjoy the immunities and privileges to which they are entitled; they are to exercise their functions with all freedom, under the royal protection, guarded by the penalties expressed in the royal concessions. This was supplemented by another cédula of August 25, 1526, taking the inquisitors and their officials under the royal safeguard and ordering that they should have all aid and support and protection from the secular authorities.[46]
As for the wrongs committed by the inquisitors, their continuance is shown by repeated petitions from the Sicilian Parliament, which indicate how completely the instructions of 1515 and 1517 were ignored, while Charles’s replies—probably drawn up for him by the Suprema—prove how little hope there was of redress through an appeal to the throne. The Parliament represented that the Conversos who remained were few and poor, the rest having fled or been condemned, wherefore the inquisitors despoiled the native Christians of their property, to remedy which it asked as before that in future the Inquisition should be conducted by the bishops and Dominicans as of old. To this the answer was that he would consult the pope. It was also asked that Christians who had, in good faith, made contracts with reputed Catholics and thus were their creditors, should have their claims recognized and satisfied out of the confiscated property of a condemned debtor. This shows that the instructions of 1515 to this effect had been disregarded and there was little hope of improvement in Charles’s assent with the nullifying proviso that there must be a prescription of thirty years’ possession, concerning which he would write to the pope. A further request was that the dowries of orthodox wives should not be subject to confiscation and that children’s portions should be exempted, to which the reply was “agreed as to dowries received before the commission of heresy; for the rest, the pope will be consulted.” Another point was that, in case of denial of justice or evident scandal, the viceroy could appoint some prelate who, with the Gran Corte or the doctors, could decide the matter. This was rejected with the declaration that all appeals must be to the inquisitor-general. It was further asked that each inquisitor when he came should file his commission in the ordinary public registers, so that every one could learn what was his authority, for the inquisitors often exceeded their lawful powers. Complaint was also made that the officials abused their immunities and privileges by engaging in trade and it was asked that in suits thence arising they should be subjected to the vice-regal or episcopal courts, to which Charles replied that he had given orders to the inquisitor-general to see to this.[47]
Thus supported, the Inquisition pursued its course and held one or more autos de fe every year, until 1534, though the number of burnings was not excessive, the summary for the nine years showing only thirty-nine victims relaxed to the secular arm, the most of whom suffered for relapse after previous conviction and reconciliation.[48] While thus performing its full duties to the faith, the consciousness of imperial support had not led it to mend its ways or to reform abuses, and popular opposition was undiminished, for Charles found it necessary to issue another rescript, January 18, 1535, addressed to Viceroy Monteleone, confirming at much length the privileges and exemptions of the officials from secular jurisdiction and their right to bear arms.[49] When, however, in the following September, Charles visited Palermo, on his return from his crusade to Tunis, and listened to the earnest representations of the Parliament, his convictions changed—a change possibly facilitated by a subsidy granted to him of two hundred and fifty thousand ducats over and above the ordinary revenue.[50] He suspended, for a period of five years, the jurisdiction of the Inquisition in all cases involving the death-penalty and not connected with matters of faith, and, when this term had elapsed, he prolonged the suspension for five years more.[51] The historians of the Inquisition tell us that this resulted in the unchecked multiplication of heretics among the noblest families, while the hatred of the people for its representatives manifested itself without fear of punishment. There can, in fact, be little doubt that its operations were crippled on this account, for its officials were no longer shielded from popular anger as soon as offences committed against them became cognizable by the secular courts in sympathy with the offenders. Thus when the Inquisitor Bartolomé Sebastian made a visitation of the town of Jaca, with his officials and servants, and published the Edict of Faith, the inhabitants piled up wood around the house in which they were lodged and would have burnt them all had not the Baroness de la Florida assembled her kinsmen and retainers, raised the siege and enabled them to escape. Soon afterwards, when the alguazil and his assistants went to San Marcos to arrest some heretics, they were set upon by Matteo Garruba and his accomplices; he was left for dead and some of his people were slain.[52] Apparently the danger, of which these are examples, caused the inquisitors to confine their labors to the larger cities for, in January, 1543, Inquisitor-general Tavera ordered a general visitation of the island, which he says had not been performed for a long while. In June a new inquisitor, the Licentiate Gongora, was sent with special instructions to carry out this visitation and peremptory orders were issued by Prince Philip that he and his officials should be efficiently protected.[53] Another manifestation of popular repugnance was the resistance offered to the invariable custom in Spain of hanging in the churches the sanbenitos of the condemned, or linens with inscriptions of their names, heresies and punishment, thus perpetuating their infamy, which was one of the severest features of the penalty of heresy. Páramo explains that this was not observed in Sicily for when, in 1543, Inquisitor Cervera endeavored to introduce it, by hanging them in the church of St. Dominic, there arose so great a tumult that he was obliged to abandon the attempt and it had never since then been possible to effect it, up to his time (1598).[54] To add to the embarrassment of the tribunal, it was or professed to be impoverished. When its alguazil Marcos Calderon died, there was owing to him for arrears of salary 155 ounces, 24 tarines and 9 granos, and in February, 1543, the receiver Francisco Cid declared his inability to pay this to the heirs. To relieve him the Suprema agreed to place half the burden of this on the tribunal of Granada and, by letter of May 30, 1544, ordered Cid to pay the other half.[55]