Moñino (Don Joseph), Count de Florida-Blanca, first secretary of state under Charles III., and Charles IV. He had been successively an advocate at Madrid, procurator to the king and fiscal of the Council of Castile, and minister plenipotentiary at Rome. His celebrity as a lawyer was the origin of his elevation, and his subsequent conduct fully justified the favourable opinion which had been formed of him. In his quality of fiscal he wrote several works. Don Juan Sempere Guarinos, in his Catalogue of the Authors of the Reign of Charles III., has inserted notices of those which had been printed and those which remained unpublished. Among the first are some of great merit: the Advice of a Fiscal, which he gave to the council on the memorial presented to Charles III. by Don Isidro Carbajal y Lancaster, Bishop of Cuença, and on the impartial judgment of the brief issued by Clement XIII. against the sovereign Duke of Parma, induced some ignorant and prejudiced priests to denounce him to the Inquisition as an enemy to religion. The Count furnished them with additional arms against himself, when he gave his opinion as procurator-fiscal on the abuses committed by the inquisitors in the prohibition of books, and on the system which they had adopted of taking cognizance of crimes not relating to doctrine. However, the inquisitors, not finding in his writings any proposition which might be qualified as heretical, were afraid to continue the trial of a minister for whom the king showed the greatest esteem.
Mur (Don Joseph de), president of the royal Court of Appeal at Majorca, being obliged to maintain the rights of the tribunal against the holy office, composed, in 1615, a work on competency, in which he supported the royal jurisdiction against the ecclesiastical power in all contests not relating to spiritual concerns. The holy office made the author suffer much, and inserted his work in the Index. Philip IV. caused it to be erased in 1641, at the request of the Council of Castile.
Ossuna (the Duke of). See Chapter 37.
Olavide (Don Paul), born at Lima, in Peru, Assistant, that is, Prefect of Seville, and director of the towns and villages recently built in the Sierra-Morena and in Andalusia, was arrested in 1776, and taken to the secret prisons of the Inquisition of Madrid; on the suspicion that he held impious opinions, particularly those of Rousseau and Voltaire, with whom he maintained an intimate correspondence. It appeared from the trial, that Olavide had, in the new towns which he governed, uttered the opinions of these philosophers, on the exterior worship which is rendered to God in this country. The accused denied many of the words and actions imputed to him; he explained others which might not have been understood by the witnesses, but he confessed enough to induce the inquisitors to believe that he secretly held the same opinions as his two friends. Olavide asked pardon for his imprudence, but declared that he could not do so for the crime of heresy, as he had never lost his interior faith. On the 24th of November, 1778, an auto-da-fé was celebrated with closed doors, in the hall of the Inquisition of Madrid, in the presence of sixty persons of high rank: Don Paul Olavide appeared before them, in the habit of a penitent, and holding in his hand an extinguished torch. The sentence declared him to be convicted of formal heresy; he ought to have appeared in the San-benito, with a cord round his neck, but this was dispensed with, as well as the obligation of wearing the San-benito afterwards. He was condemned to pass eight years in a convent, and to live according to the orders of a spiritual director chosen by the Inquisition; to be banished from Madrid, Seville, Cordova, and the new town in the Sierra Morena. His property was confiscated; he was forbidden to possess any office or honourable title; to ride on horseback, or to wear any jewels or ornaments of gold, silver, pearls, diamonds, precious stones, or habits of silk, or fine wool, but only those of coarse serge or some other stuff of that kind. The reading of the factum of his trial, by the secretary, lasted four hours; the fiscal accused him of having advanced seventy heretical propositions, and seventy-two witnesses were examined. Towards the conclusion, Olavide exclaimed, Whatever the fiscal may say, I have never lost my faith. No answer was made to him. When he heard his sentence he fainted, and fell off the bench on which he had been permitted to sit. When he had recovered, and the reading of the sentence was finished, he received absolution on his knees, after having read and signed his profession of faith; he was then taken back to the prison. The sixty individuals who were invited to this ceremony were dukes, counts, marquises, generals, members of the councils, and knights of different military orders; they were most of them his friends. These persons were, from some circumstances in the trial, suspected of partaking his opinions, and the invitation was intended to inform them of what they might expect, and to induce them to be more reserved in their conversation. Olavide went to the convent where he was to be confined, but made his escape some time after, and retired to France. He lived at Paris under the name of the Count de Pilo, a title which he had never borne in Spain. A few years after he published a work, called The Gospel Triumphant; or, the Converted Philosopher. This composition obtained his pardon, and permission to return to Spain, where no penances were imposed on him.
Perez (Antonio). See Chapter 35.
Ramos del Manzano (Don Francis), Count de Francos, tutor of Charles II. and president of the Sovereign Council of the Indies, composed some treatises on politics, which are mentioned by Nicolas Antonio. In these writings he maintains the prerogatives and independence of the sovereigns against the indirect powers of the Popes, the abuses of the Court of Rome, and the ecclesiastical judges in the holy office. The Count de Francos suffered much persecution, and his works were prohibited; if Philip IV. had not protected him, he would have been arrested, and his books burnt.
Ricla (the Count de), minister of war, and lieutenant-general in the army under Charles III., was denounced to the holy office as having adopted the opinions of the philosophers of the eighteenth century. There was not sufficient proof against him, and the trial was suspended.
Roda (Don Manuel de), Marquis de Roda, minister and secretary of state in the department of grace and justice, under Charles III. He had been a celebrated advocate at Madrid, and minister-plenipotentiary at Rome; his talents and learning made him of the greatest use to Charles III. in the important affairs relative to the expulsion of the Jesuits. The imputation of Jansenism, incurred by the archbishops and bishops of the Council extraordinary, was also brought against this minister, who had made many enemies by advising Charles III. to reform the six great colleges established at Salamanca, Alcala, and Valladolid. This denunciation failed, because it contained no particular proposition which deserved to be censured.
Salcedo (Don Pedro Gonzalez de), procurator to the king in the Council of Castile, published a treatise On Political Law, and some other works, in which he attacked the abuses committed by the judges of the privileged tribunals, and the pretensions of the inquisitors and other ecclesiastics to the royal jurisdictions. He was persecuted, and his works were condemned, but Philip IV. revoked the prohibition; however some passages were afterwards retrenched, and they are not found in the later editions.
Salgado (Don Francis de), member of the Council of Castile, published some works in defence of the royal jurisdiction against the ecclesiastical authority; they are mentioned by Nicolas Antonio. The Court of Rome condemned them; the inquisitors of Spain persecuted the author, but when they were on the point of publishing the prohibition of his works, Philip IV. commanded them to suspend their proceedings.