The total amount of work accomplished is estimated by Medina as three thousand cases tried, but this is probably too liberal an allowance. His exhaustive researches have resulted only in an enumeration of 1474 cases.
These consist of—
| Laymen | 1126 |
| Women | 180 |
| Secular clergy | 101 |
| Franciscans | 49 |
| Dominicans | 34 |
| Mercenarians | 36 |
| Augustinians | 26 |
| Jesuits | 12 |
The offences prosecuted were
| Propositions | 140 |
| Judaism | 243 |
| Moors | 5 |
| Protestants | 65 |
| Solicitation | 109 |
| Blasphemy | 97 |
| Sexual errors | 40 |
| Bigamy | 297 |
| Sorcery | 172 |
| Miscellaneous and not specified | 306 |
For the 250 years of existence, the estimate of a total of 3000 cases would make 12 per annum, or 1 per month, but in the first 20 years of the tribunal the cases amounted to 1265, which would reduce the average of the other 230 years to about 7½, and it would be safe to assume for the last century an average of not more than 3 or 4 a year.[755]
For this slender result, to say nothing of the large expenditure, the colony was kept in a constant state of disquiet, the orderly course of government was well-nigh impossible, intellectual, commercial and industrial development were impeded, universal distrust of one’s neighbor was commanded by ordinary prudence, and the population lived with the sense of evil ever impending over the head of every one. That there was any real danger to the faith in Peru is absurd. Possibly the tribunal may have been of some service in repressing the prevalence of bigamy among laymen and of solicitation among the clergy, but the fact that these two offences remained to the last so prominent in its calendar would show that it accomplished little. As regards sorcery and superstitions, which pervaded all classes, in the mixed population of Europeans, Indians, negroes and half-breeds, with an accumulation of superstitious beliefs drawn from so many sources, the number of cases is surprisingly small, especially as the exemption of Indians from inquisitorial jurisdiction seems to have been disregarded in this offence. In the repression of the practices which were regarded as implying pact with the demon the Inquisition may be said to have virtually accomplished nothing. It would be difficult to find, in the annals of human misgovernment, a parallel case in which so little was accomplished at so great a cost as by the Inquisition under Spanish institutions.
CHAPTER VIII.
NEW GRANADA.
Although the Nuevo Reino de Granada originally formed part of the Viceroyalty of Peru, it was the earliest settlement on the continent of South America. When Balboa, in 1514, reported his rich discoveries in Darien, no time was lost in sending out Pedro Arias Dávila as governor, who landed at Santa Marta. He took with him as bishop Fray Juan de Quevedo, who formed one of his council with a right to vote, thus founding at the start that curious complication of jurisdictions which exercised so unhappy an influence on the development of the Spanish colonies. The see of Santa Marta, however, was not founded until 1531 and, as settlements were pushed into the interior, Santa Fe de Bogotá was established as the capital, where the Audiencia, or high court, was organized in 1547 and governed the colony until 1564, when Andrés Díaz Venero de Leiva was sent out as president.[756] It was not erected into a viceroyalty until 1719, from which it was reduced to its former state in a few years, to be restored again in 1740.[757]