In its career, since 1487, Franchina, writing in 1744, boasts that the Holy Office had handed over to the secular arm for burning two hundred and one living heretics and apostates and two hundred and seventy-nine effigies of the dead or fugitives.[90] It illustrates forcibly the changed spirit of the age that Viceroy Caraccioli, in writing to D’Alembert an account of the abolition, says that he shed tears of joy in proceeding to the Inquisition with the great dignitaries of State and Church, when he caused the royal rescript to be read to the inquisitor and the arms of the Holy Office to be erased from the portal amid the rejoicing of the assembled people.[91]
MALTA.
Malta, if we may believe Salelles, enjoyed the honor of having St. Paul as the founder of its Inquisition, when he was cast ashore there on his voyage to Rome.[92] In the sixteenth century, however, as a dependency of Sicily, it was under the Sicilian tribunal, which maintained an organization there, under a commissioner.[93] When, in 1530, Charles V gave the island to the Knights of St. John, the Sicilian jurisdiction lapsed but, even without the Holy Office, the Church had efficient machinery for the suppression of heresy. In 1546 a Frenchman named Gesuald was found to have been for ten years infecting the islanders with Calvinist opinions, and the Aragonese Domingo Cubelles, the Bishop of Malta, was at no loss in exercising his episcopal jurisdiction. Gesuald was obstinate in his faith and was duly burnt alive; on his way to the stake he called out “Why do priests hesitate to take wives, since it is lawful?” whereupon Cubelles ordered him to be gagged and he perished in silence. His converts lacked his stubborn convictions and were reconciled—among them two priests who had secretly married their concubines, for which they were condemned to wear the sanbenito. In 1553, the Grand Master, Juan de Omedes, constituted three of the knights and a chaplain as an Inquisition, but there is no trace of their labors and Cubelles continued to exercise his episcopal jurisdiction in several cases during the following years. In 1560, however, when a Maltese, named Doctor Pietro Combo, fell under suspicion, Cubelles seems to have felt uncertain what to do with him and sent him in chains to the Roman Inquisition, where he was acquitted. Cubelles informed the cardinals that the Lutheran heresy was spreading in the island and this probably explains why, by letters of October 21, 1561, the Roman Inquisition, while recognizing the episcopal jurisdiction of Cubelles, enlarged it to that of an inquisitor-general, empowering him to appoint deputies and to proceed against all persons, whether clerics or laymen, to try them, torture them, relax them or reconcile them with appropriate penance.[94]
In his zeal for the effective discharge of his duties, Cubelles sent to Palermo for detailed information as to the conduct of the Inquisition and was furnished with copies of the Spanish instructions and forms. This seems to have provoked the Roman Congregation of the Holy Office, between which and the Spanish there was perpetual jealousy, and it sent to Malta a Dominican to act as his assistant and to direct him. He was succeeded, both as bishop and inquisitor, by Martin Rojas de Portorubio, to whom in 1573 Gregory XIII sent a commission. Apparently it was impossible for the Inquisition to maintain harmonious relations with the temporal power and, already in 1574, he complained to Rome that his officials were beaten and that the Grand Master, Jean l’Evesque de la Cassière, threatened to throw him out of the window if he came to the palace. This created considerable scandal, but Rome, unlike Spain, was not accustomed to support inquisitors through thick and thin, and the result was that, by brief of July 3, 1574, Gregory revoked his commission and sent Dr. Pietro Duzzina as apostolic vicar to conduct the Inquisition. In thus separating it from the episcopate no provision was made for its expenses, but soon after this the confiscated property of Mathieu Faison, a rich heretic burnt in effigy, yielded a revenue of three hundred crowns and, when Bishop Rojas died, March 19, 1577, opportunity was taken to burden the see with a pension of six hundred more for its benefit.[95] It was thus rendered permanent, but a protracted struggle with successive grandmasters was necessary to secure for its officials the privileges of the forum and the immunities and exemptions which they claimed.[96]
Yet the Spanish Inquisition was not satisfied to be thus completely superseded by that of Rome, even in so remote and inconspicuous a spot as Malta. In 1575 Duzzina arrested a man as a heretic; it was known that testimony against him had been taken in Sicily and application for it was made to the inquisitors of Palermo. They applied for instructions to the Suprema, which ordered them not to give it but to claim the prisoner. The result was that the Maltese tribunal tried him on what had occurred on the island and discharged him.[97] This emphasized its absolute separation from the Spanish Holy Office and its history need not be further followed here, except to allude to the most celebrated case in its annals, when the two Quakeresses, Katharine Evans and Sarah Cheevers, moved by the Spirit, went to Malta on a mission of conversion and suffered an imprisonment of four years.[98]
CHAPTER II.
NAPLES.
In Naples the Inquisition had been introduced by Charles of Anjou after the battle of Benevento had acquired for him the succession to the unfortunate Manfred. The house of Aragon, which followed that of Anjou, had permitted its existence, but under conditions of such subjection to the crown that it was for the most part inert. Yet Naples offered an abundant harvest for the zealous laborer. The Waldenses from Savoy, who had settled and multiplied in Calabria and Apulia, had obtained, in 1497, from King Frederic, a confirmation of their agreements with their immediate suzerains, the nobles, and felt secure from persecution.[99] Still more inviting were the banished Jews and fugitive New Christians from Spain, who found there a tolerably safe refuge. There was also a considerable number of indigenous Jews. In the twelfth century Benjamin of Tudela describes flourishing synagogues in Capua, Naples, Salerno, Amalfi, Benevento, Melfi, Ascoli-Satriano, Tarento, Bernaldo and Otranto, and these doubtless were representatives of others existing outside of the line of his wanderings.[100] They had probably gone on increasing, although, in 1427, Joanna II called in the ruthless St. Giovanni da Capistrano to suppress their usury and, in 1447, Nicholas V appointed him conservator to enforce the disabilities and humiliations prescribed in a cruel bull which he had just issued.[101] Possibly, under this rigorous treatment, some of them may have sought baptism for, in 1449, we find Nicholas despatching to Naples Fra Matteo da Reggio as inquisitor to exterminate the apostate Judaizers, who were said to be numerous.[102] If we may believe Zurita, when Charles VIII of France made his transitory conquest of Naples, in 1495, the Jews were all compulsorily baptized, with the usual result that their Christianity was only nominal.[103] Such unwilling converts of course called for inquisitorial solicitude but, when Ferdinand of Spain obtained possession of the land, it was the fugitives from the Spanish Inquisition that rendered him especially desirous of extending its jurisdiction over his dominions on the Italian mainland.
A single example will illustrate this and also throw light on the resistance which, as we shall see, the Neapolitans offered to the introduction of the Holy Office after the Spanish pattern. In the inquisitorial documents of the period, no name occurs more frequently than that of Manuel Esparza de Pantolosa, who was condemned in absentia as a heretic, in Tarragona. He had evidently sought safety in flight, abandoning his property which was confiscated and sold, June 4, 1493, for 9000 libras to his brother, Micer Luis Esparza, a jurist of Valencia, whose final payment for it is dated February 2, 1499, when the inquisitor, Juan de Monasterio, was authorized to retain a hundred ducats in reward for his labors.
Meanwhile Pantolosa had prospered in Naples as a banker and had become one of the farmers of the revenue. As a condemned heretic, however, all dealings with him were unlawful to Spaniards. It was difficult to avoid these in transactions between Spain and Naples and, in February, 1499, the inquisitors of Barcelona created much scandal by arresting a number of merchants for maintaining business relations with him, an excess of zeal for which Ferdinand scolded them, while ordering the release of the prisoners. Pantolosa seems to have held out some hopes of returning and standing trial, for a safe-conduct was issued to him, October 4, 1499, good for twelve months, during which he and his property were to be exempt from seizure, dealings with him were permitted and ship-masters were authorized to transport him and, on the plea that he had been impeded, the safe-conduct was extended, August 22, 1500, for two years. There was manifest policy in suspending the customary disabilities for a personage of such importance, as appears from one or two instances. When, in the autumn of 1499, Ferdinand’s sister, Juana, Queen of Naples, and her stepson, the Cardinal of Aragon, came to Spain, they provided themselves with bills of exchange drawn by the farmers of revenue—Pantolosa, Gaspar de Caballería and others—on Luis de Santangel, Ferdinand’s escribano de racion, or privy purse. They could not anticipate any trouble in a transaction between officials of Spain and Naples, but Santangel, also a Converso, had reason to be cautious as to his relations with the Inquisition and he refused to honor the bills, because the drawers were fugitive condemned heretics, with whom he could have no dealings. Ferdinand was obliged to confer with the inquisitors-general, after which he authorized Santangel to supply the necessities of the royal visitors. Possibly in this case the association with Caballería neutralized Pantolosa’s safe-conduct, but this disturbing element was absent from a flagrant exhibition of inquisitorial audacity when, in 1500, Ferdinand sent the Archbishop of Tarragona to Naples on business connected with his sister, the queen. Requiring money while there the archbishop sold bills of exchange to Pantolosa and, when they were presented in Tarragona, the inquisitors, apparently regarding them as a debt due to a condemned heretic, forbade their payment and sequestrated the archiepiscopal revenues to collect the amount. The bills were returned and were sent back with a fresh demand for payment, when Ferdinand intervened and, by letters of July 3d, ordered the inquisitors to remove the sequestration so that they could be paid and the archbishop’s credit be preserved.[104] It is easy to understand how Ferdinand felt towards the Neapolitan asylum for condemned Spanish heretics and banished Jews and how Naples regarded the arbitrary processes of the Spanish Holy Office.