The History of the Inquisition of Spain from the Time of its Establishment to the Reign of Ferdinand VII.

by Juan Antonio Llorente

The Jesuit, Count Juan Baptiste de Poza, occupied the Inquisitions of Spain and Rome for some time with his writings, during the reign of Philip IV., particularly from the year 1629 to 1636. I have spoken in Chapter 15 of the memorial presented by the university of Salamanca against the Jesuits, in order to prevent the imperial college of Madrid, which was under the direction of these fathers, from being made an university; Poza wrote several pamphlets in defence of the pretensions of his order, which were all condemned by the Inquisition of Rome in 1632. The enemies of the Jesuits hoped that the Spanish Inquisition would do the same, but the inquisitors were afraid of offending the Count Duke de Olivares, whose confessor was a Jesuit. At this period, Francis Roales, doctor of the university of Salamanca, almoner and councillor of the king, professor of mathematics, and preceptor to the Cardinal-infant Don Ferdinand, published a work which created a great sensation. The author denounces the writings of Poza to the Catholic Church in general, and to each of its members in particular, as heretical and tainted with atheism, and also denounces all the Jesuits who defended his doctrine.

Urban VIII. would have pronounced Poza to be an heretic, if he had not feared to offend the Court of Madrid; he therefore contented himself with depriving him of his professorship, and commanding that he should be sent to a house of the Jesuits, in some small town in Castile, and forbade him to preach, teach, or write. Although the Jesuits in their fourth vow, promised to obey the Pope without restriction, and they were, generally speaking, the most zealous supporters of his authority, yet, in this instance, they refused to obey, because they were supported by the Court of Madrid. At this time the work of Alphonso Vargas[74] was published out of Spain; Vargas exposes the stratagems, the perfidious politics, and the bad doctrine of the Jesuits. Their general alleged, as an excuse for their disobedience, that they were forbidden to execute the orders of his Holiness by the king of Spain: this was the state of the affair when Olivares was disgraced. The works of Poza were then prohibited in Spain, and he was condemned to abjure several heresies.

Juan Nicolas Diana, another Jesuit, known for the very relaxed morals of his printed works, was prosecuted by the Inquisition of Sardinia for some propositions contained in a sermon, and was condemned to recant. The Jesuit published his defence, and went to Spain where he demanded to be tried by the Supreme Council. The Council, after taking the opinions of several qualifiers, annulled the sentence, and not only acquitted the Jesuit, but made him a qualifier.

Ali Arraez Ferrarés, surnamed the Renegado, was tried by the Inquisition of Sicily in this reign. He was a Moor of Tunis, and high in the favour of the king of that country: having been taken prisoner to Palermo, he was ransomed and sent back to Tunis. Some Christian slaves, who were in that city, expressed their surprise that an apostate had been ransomed instead of being sent to the dungeons of the Inquisition. The tribunal, being informed of the opinion of these slaves, published that they were ignorant that Ali Arraez Ferrarés had been a Christian, and that he was surnamed the Renegado. Ali was taken a second time in 1624, and though no other proof of his guilt existed but the report above-mentioned, he was taken to the prisons of the holy office. A great number of Sicilians, Genoese, and others, who had known him at Tunis, were examined; they all declared that he was called the Renegado, and some added that they had heard him say that he had been a Christian. Ali denied the fact, but the tribunal considered him as convicted, and condemned him to be burnt. The Supreme Council decided that the proof was not complete, annulled the sentence, and commanded that the prisoner should be tortured, in order to obtain additional proofs, and that the sentence should then be renewed. Ali still persisted in denying that he had been a Christian, and found means to inform the king of Tunis of his situation; the Moorish king received his letter at the moment when Fray Bartholomew Ximenez, Fray Ferdinand de Reina, Fray Diego de la Torre, and three other Carmelites, were brought in captive; they had been taken in going to Rome. The king commanded them to write to the inquisitors of Sicily to set Ali Arraez at liberty, and to accept his ransom, and, in case they refused, to inform them that he would imprison and torture all the Christian slaves in his power. The monks excused themselves by alleging that they did not know the inquisitors, and the affair was dropped. At this period the Supreme Council commanded that Ali should be confined in a dungeon and ironed. In 1628, Ali found means to convey another letter to the Moorish king, informing him that he was imprisoned in a dark and fetid dungeon, with a Christian captain, and that they were almost starved. When the king received the letter, the Spanish monks were negotiating their ransom. He sent for them, and said, "Why do they endeavour to make this renegado a Christian by their tortures? If this Inquisition is not suppressed, or if the inquisitors do not send the renegado immediately to the galleys with the other slaves, I will burn all the Christians who are in my power: write, and tell them so." The monks obeyed, and added, that if justice and religion required the execution of the prisoner, they were ready to suffer martyrdom. The king of Tunis afterwards accepted the ransom of the monks. After detaining Ali for sixteen years, the inquisitors had no greater proof of his crime, and yet they refused to exchange him for a Christian priest, alleging that the relations of the priest ought to ransom him, and that it would be taking an active part in the heresy and damnation of the renegado to set him at liberty: it was represented that their refusal might have the most fatal consequences to the Christian slaves at Tunis; but this consideration did not affect them.

An affair, which created a great sensation, occupied the Supreme Council at this time. A convent for Benedictine nuns had been founded in the parish of St. Martin. The director and confessor, Fray Francis Garcia was considered a learned and holy man. Donna Theresa de Sylva, whose relation had founded the convent for her, was the abbess, though only twenty-six years of age. The community was composed of thirty nuns, who all appeared to be virtuous, and had voluntarily embraced the monastic life. While the new convent enjoyed the highest reputation, the gestures and words of one of the nuns indicated that she was in a supernatural state: Fray Garcia exorcised her, and on the 8th of September she was pronounced to be a demoniac. In a short time, the abbess and twenty-five nuns were attacked in the same manner. Many consultations took place on the condition of these women, between men of learning and virtue, who believed that they were really possessed,—their confessor repeated his exorcism every day, and even spent days and nights in the convent to renew them. He at last brought the tabernacle of the holy sacrament into the room where the nuns worked, and they said the prayers of forty hours. This singular scene lasted for three years, when the Inquisition of Toledo put a stop to it in 1631, by arresting the confessor, the abbess, and some of the nuns. Fray Francis Garcia was denounced as an illuminati, and it was said that he had corrupted the nuns, who pretended to be possessed. The trial was terminated in 1633; the confessor and the nuns were declared to be suspected of having fallen into the heresy of the Alumbrados. They were condemned to several penances, and sent to different convents; the abbess was exiled, and deprived of the privilege of consulting for four, and of voting for eight years: when this period had expired, she returned to her own convent, and was commanded by her superiors to demand a revision of her trial. The abbess obeyed, declaring at the same time, that she did it solely for the honour of her nuns and those of the other houses of St. Benedict. The enterprise was difficult, but the power of her relation, the prothonotary of Aragon, and of the Count Duke de Olivares, overcame every obstacle. In 1642 the Supreme Council acknowledged the innocence of the nuns, but not of Fray Francis, became he had been so imprudent as to hold a correspondence with the demons to satisfy his curiosity, before he drove them from the nuns. Donna Theresa gives an account of her own feelings when possessed, and says that she was in a state of delirium, and did the most foolish things.

Don Jerome de Villanueva, prothonotary of Aragon, that is, the royal secretary of state for that kingdom, had, in his youth, been the secretary to the Inquisition. He was prosecuted by the tribunal on the disgrace of the Count Duke de Olivares, as his creature and principal confidant. Several heretical propositions were imputed to him, and he was arrested in 1645, and condemned to abjure: this sentence was pronounced on the 18th of June, 1647. When he was set at liberty to accomplish his penance, he appealed to Pope Innocent X., complaining of the injustice with which he had been treated in depriving him of the means of defending himself, and protesting that he had only submitted to the sentence, that he might bring his cause before an impartial tribunal; he therefore demanded that his trial should be revised by judges appointed by his Holiness. Don Pedro Navarro, an opulent gentleman, went to Rome to negotiate the affair, out of friendship to Villanueva; and although Philip requested through his ambassador that Navarro should be compelled to leave Rome, his Holiness refused, and would not allow him to be arrested. The Pope issued a brief of commission to the bishops of Calahorra, Segovia, and Cuença, to revise the trial, but Philip IV., in consequence of the insinuations of the inquisitor-general, forbade them to accept the commission, because it was contrary to the prerogatives of the crown. The Pope then commanded that the process should be transferred to Rome; after some opposition he was obeyed, and Villanueva was acquitted. The resistance and the injustice witnessed by the Pope in this case induced him to expedite a second brief in 1653, in which he declared that he had discovered great irregularities in the trial of Villanueva, and charged the inquisitor-general to observe that the laws were more strictly followed, and the trials conducted with more justice, gravity and circumspection.

New contests soon arose between the Courts of Madrid and Rome, and the Pope sent Francis Mancini as his nuncio to Madrid, to settle the dispute, but he could not obtain an audience of the king, and in 1654 was obliged to apply in the name of his Holiness to the inquisitor-general, who told him that the Pope had offended the king in the affair above-mentioned; he asserted that the prosecution of Villanueva had been properly conducted, and that the Pope had approved it. If this assertion was true, the Pope must have expressed his approbation before he took cognizance of the trial, for when it was transferred to the tribunal of Rome, the injustice and defects were discovered.

CHAPTER XXXIX.
THE INQUISITION DURING THE REIGN OF CHARLES II.

CHARLES II. succeeded his father on the 17th of September, 1665, when he was only four years of age. The grand inquisitors, during his reign, were, Cardinal Don Pascual d'Aragon, archbishop of Toledo; Father John Everard de Nitardo, a German Jesuit; Don Diego de Sarmiento de Valladarés, bishop of Oviedo and Placentia; Don Juan Thomas Rocaberti, archbishop of Valencia; Cardinal Don Alphonso Fernandez de Cordova y Aguilar; and Don Balthazar de Mendoza-Sandoval, bishop of Segovia.

The infancy of Charles II., the ambition of his brother Don John of Austria, the imperious temper of the queen-mother, Maria Anne of Austria, and the machiavelism of the Jesuit Nitardo, gave occasion for a number of scandalous events during this reign. The weakness of the government was the principal cause of the insolent conduct of the inquisitors.