A typical case was that of Don David de la Mota, who came in 1783, and who made no secret of being a Jew. The tribunal summoned him and swore him in the Jewish fashion, when he said that he was born in Velez-Malaga; his parents had been penanced and his grandfather had been burnt by the tribunal of Granada; he had married a Jewess in the Danish island of Santa Cruz and had been circumcised fifty years before in Santa Eustacia. It indicates the altered situation when this case, which formerly would have been treated with little ceremony, was the subject of doubt and discussion. The inquisitors forbore to arrest him, for he represented foreign interests, which would have complained to the consul and he to the ambassador. They accordingly shrank from the responsibility and let him go. In Spain the exclusion of Jews was still rigidly enforced and, when they reported their action to the Suprema, it censured their timidity and ordered them always to arrest such parties when the evidence sufficed. It was the same in other parts of the district. In Santo Domingo the governor was liberally inclined and, in 1783, the Archbishop complained to the Suprema that, during the previous year, a Jew named José Obediente had come and was allowed to go about freely, to entertain persons of distinction and even to be present in the solemnities of Holy Week. The commissioner had vainly appealed to the authorities, and the archbishop was afraid to say anything, for fear of public disturbance. This year he had come again, bringing six or seven others, who kept house and lived like any other residents.[784] It was not the Jews alone whom the tribunal, in its weakened state, was afraid to attack. In 1784, the royal auditor at Mompox, Don Francisco Antonio Antona, was denounced for having, at a banquet given by a priest, proposed for discussion some manifestly heretical propositions. In place of prosecuting him, the inquisitors consulted the Suprema alleging, as a reason for their timidity, the character of the accused, the relations of his wife with the best families, and the protection given to him by the viceroys in the conduct of his office.[785] A tribunal thus shorn of its audacity could only be an object of contempt.
There was, however, a little recrudescence of activity as the progress of free-thought and the approach of the Revolution called for the exercise of the functions of censorship. This has been well-nigh in abeyance. The edicts prohibiting books, as sent out by the Suprema, were regularly published as matters of routine, but they were regarded by no one. In fact, the intellectual torpor of the colony was so profound that there was little danger of the spread of dangerous literature. In 1777 Cartagena could not even support a small printing-office, and the inquisitors complained that they had to copy the edicts by hand; there had been a printer, but the poor man had sold his stock elsewhere and no one had ventured to replace him.[786] Seizures of prohibited books had been exceedingly rare. In 1661 some copies had been suppressed of “Horas y oraciones devotas,” printed in Paris in 1664. In 1668 there was a little flurry when, on one of the affluents of the Orinoco, a Dutchman was found in possession of copies of a work in Spanish, apparently printed in Holland, entitled “Epistola á los Peruleros,” consisting of a Calvinistic catechism and exhorting the colonists to withdraw their allegiance from Spain and ally themselves with the Dutch, whose colony of Guiana was dangerously near. In 1732 a little book called “Paraiso del alma” was seized in Santa Fe and, in 1757, some copies of Bishop Palafox’s “Ejercicios devotos.” The moral phase of censorship had manifested itself in 1736, when the commissioner at Panamá took from the French astronomers, on their way to the equator to measure an arc of the earth’s surface, an engraving of a woman which he regarded as indecent, but when he sought to get possession of another, said to be even worse, they assured him that it had been burnt and threatened to complain to the king of the insult offered to them. So, in 1807, there were denounced to the tribunal some watches brought by a Danish vessel, of which the cases were enamelled with indecent pictures; the enamels were destroyed and the watches were restored to the owner.[787]
In 1774 a more difficult question was forced upon the tribunal. José Celestino Mutis, distinguished both as priest and physician and professor in the Colegio Mayor of Santa Fe, in 1773, presided over some conclusions in which the Copernican theory of the solar system was defended. In June, 1774, the Dominicans of the Universidad Tomistica resolved to celebrate other conclusions to prove the contrary by Scripture and St. Augustin and St. Thomas, and that the Copernican theory was intolerable for Catholics, indefensible and prohibited by the Inquisition. Mutis addressed a defence of Copernicus to the viceroy, who sent a copy to the commissioner; he transmitted it to the tribunal, which submitted it to two calificadores. One of these reported that the propositions were not subject to theological censure; the other held that the Copernican system was opposed to Scripture and no Catholic could defend it. The matter then passed into the hands of the inquisitor-fiscal, who argued that all authors of greatest repute detested the system as absolutely contrary to Scripture, repeatedly condemned by the Roman Inquisition and, as some say, by Urban VIII. He was especially shocked by an assertion of Mutis that the king had ordered all Spanish universities to teach the works of Newton which were based on Copernicus. Dr. Mutis, he added, was the first and only one who, in this kingdom and perhaps in all America, had publicly declared himself in favor of this system. Thereupon the tribunal, at a loss what to do in a matter beyond its comprehension, sent all the papers to the Suprema for instructions, and the latter discreetly filed them away without answering.[788]
Of more practical importance was the manifesto of the French Constituent Assembly on the rights of man, of which a Spanish version appeared under the title of Derechos del Hombre. This was condemned in Cartagena by edict published December 13, 1789. Then, in 1794, there was a sudden command for its vigorous suppression. In almost identical phrase the Viceroys of New Granada and Peru wrote to their respective tribunals, describing it as a work destructive of social order and advocating toleration. Every pains, they said, must be taken to hunt up every copy and to ascertain when and how and from whom they came. The tribunals accordingly exerted their utmost diligence, but were not rewarded by finding a single copy.[789] Probably equal ill-success attended their efforts to obey the orders of the Suprema to suppress Gli Animali parlanti of Giambattista Casti and to spare no pains in ascertaining the possessors of the poem which, as a clever satire directed against the vices and follies of kings and courts, was especially distasteful to an autocratic monarch. The work had appeared in Paris in 1802 and these orders came from the Suprema under date of May 23, 1803, although the formal decree suppressing it was not issued until June 23, 1805, to be followed, August 6th, by a similar papal prohibition.[790]
If the results of the labors of the tribunal in defence of the faith were thus meagre, it was far more successful in its true vocation of creating scandal, by incessant quarrels with the civil and ecclesiastical authorities, and by its internal discords. Hardly had it been organized when the Easter solemnities of 1611 offered occasion for dissension, over questions of etiquette and precedence, with the secular and spiritual powers, giving rise to antagonism throughout the district, especially on the part of the bishops, who grudged the deprivation of the jurisdiction which they had been accustomed to exercise in matters of faith. They continued to disregard the exclusive functions of the inquisitors, who complained bitterly of them as ignorant prelates, with officials whose ignorance was equalled by their turbulence; they had few duties to occupy them and they desired to retain this jurisdiction because of the hold which it gave them over their subjects. It probably would be unjust to estimate them by one of their number, Fray Juan González de Mendoza, Bishop of Popayan, who, on his arrival at Cartagena in 1610, introduced the practice of divination with sticks, which he asserted to be allowed by the Inquisition and to be used by the queen and the Duke of Lerma. It spread rapidly among all classes and, as all divination was held to imply pact with the demon, the inquisitors were greatly exercised and inquired anxiously of the Suprema, January 31, 1611, what they should do about it, to which apparently they received no answer.[791]
Mañozca, arrogant, unscrupulous and ambitious, was the leading spirit of the tribunal. He speedily made it apparent that, under his guidance, it was to be the dominant power in the community, and that its awful authority was to be restrained by no considerations of law or justice. The governor, Diego Fernández de Velasco, was good-natured and made every effort to keep on good terms with the inquisitors, but his moderation only encouraged their insolence and at length, in a letter of July 4, 1613, to the king, he poured forth his grievances. The tribunal, he said, sought to render itself the supreme master and had become so feared that the whole province was terrorized, so that, not only for the inquisitors but for their servants and slaves, there was no law but their own will. They were accustomed to arrest butchers, fishermen, bakers and other dealers in provisions; to seize with violence the goods of merchants and to summon and scold them for objecting. In two cases Mañozca forced parties who imported cargoes of slaves to give him some of them, whom he sold. They took, without notice, prisoners from the public prisons and, on one occasion, when the gaoler asked for a voucher, as requisite for his justification, the messenger wounded him on the head with his sword and was not punished. The governor added numerous instances of outrages on all classes, winding up with himself, as having been publicly proclaimed as excommunicated in all the churches.[792]
The regular Orders had equal cause of complaint and managed, with some trouble, to send to Spain a procurator to represent that everything in the convents was regulated by Mañozca’s powerful hand, whence it resulted that many estimable frailes were unjustly punished, while those were untouched who deserved to be castigated and reformed. This brought upon Mañozca, from the Suprema, a severe reprimand with orders to abstain from such interference.[793] Apparently the warning was disregarded if we may believe a memorial addressed by a fraile, May 12, 1619, to the king, representing that to leave Mañozca at his post was to keep a monster in the seat of an angel of light. This was substantiated with ample details of his scandalous mode of life, his nocturnal sallies in disguise and the general terror which he inspired, for terrorism was the means by which he had become the ruler of all. When the secular authorities sought to banish the courtezans and concubines he prevented it and, when the preachers preached against them, he issued what he called an instruccion de predicadores in which he called them dishonoring names and covered them with ridicule. The writer relates a number of cases by which it appears that Mañozca controlled the local courts and officials, dictating sentences and procuring that his supporters escaped justice and won their suits, however unrighteous. Moreover he gave occasion for an indefinite amount of smuggling; arrivals were reported to him in advance of the custom officials, and he received bribes—negro slaves and other things of value—to enable the owners to defraud the customs—a matter presumably easy of accomplishment through the supervision of all arrivals, by which the Inquisition was empowered to prevent the intrusion of heretics and the importation of heretic books.[794]
Quarrels with the bishops were incessant and only the bishop of Cuba, Alfonso Henríquez de Almendáriz, who was old and self-willed and prompt in quarrel, held his own, leading to numerous complaints of him by the tribunal.[795] Then, towards the middle of 1619, there came a new governor, García Giron, with whom there was speedily trouble. A negro slave of Inquisitor Salcedo was refused meat by a negro in the market; he complained to his master who gave him a paper requiring the dealer to supply it. Armed with this, he struck the negro several times with the flat of a machete, took what meat he wanted and told the man that, if he wanted pay, he could send for the money. Thereupon Giron ordered a prosecution; the inquisitors sent for the notary employed in it and ordered him to surrender the papers under the customary threat of fine and excommunication; the governor ordered him not to obey, but he was finally obliged to pay the fine and deliver the papers.[796]
Complaints against Mañozca came pouring in upon the Suprema, especially from members of the regular Orders, including whole convents, until it found itself obliged to have an investigation made into his life and morals. The result justified the accusations and it ordered him to present himself in Madrid. He had no trouble in gathering certificates—which no one dared to refuse—as to his good character and conduct, with which he sailed for Spain, towards the end of July, 1620. There he succeeded so completely in exonerating himself that, in April, 1621, the inquisitor-general wrote that his presence in the court being no longer necessary, for the business on which he had been summoned, he had been ordered to return to his post. Thus, after a year’s absence, he reoccupied his seat in the tribunal, but only for a short time. With the customary policy of the Holy Office, he was promoted to the more important tribunal of Lima, to be elevated, in 1643, as we have seen, to the archbishopric of Mexico. He remained, however, in Cartagena, until the arrival of his successor, Agustin de Ugarte y Saravia, in the middle of 1623.[797]
During his absence at the court, his colleague Salcedo had become involved in a furious quarrel with the bishop, Diego de Torris Altamirano, by forcibly taking from his prison a priest named Pedro de Quesada, condemned to degradation and death for robbery and murder. Quesada, through his confessor, informed the tribunal that he had a deposition to make; Salcedo sent a message informally to the provisor to send the culprit, who would be returned, but when the messenger went for him, he was found fast in the stocks and the key carried off. The bishop declared that he should not be delivered without a written demand, but Salcedo sent a party of familiars, who carried him off by force and then returned him within an hour—the object being simply to humiliate the bishop and demonstrate the superior authority of the Inquisition.[798] Salcedo and Altamirano both died in 1621, but the new bishop, Francisco de Sotomayor, who arrived in 1622, became immediately involved in a serious quarrel with Mañozca, which had to be referred to Spain for settlement.[799]