These circumstances, and some other causes, during the reign of Philip V. prepared the way for the interesting revolution in Spanish literature under Ferdinand VI. This change was followed by a great benefit to mankind; the inquisitors, and even their inferior officers, began to perceive that zeal for the purity of the Catholic religion is exposed to the admission of erroneous opinions. The doctrine of Macanaz no longer shocked the people, who heard with tranquillity all that had been written on the appeal against violence (fuerzas), and without dreading the anathemas fulminated every year by the Popes in the bull in cœna dominum.
The effect of this change in opinion was particularly conspicuous in the reduction of the number of trials for Judaism and, consequently, in the victims in the autos-da-fé. During the reign of Ferdinand, no general, and not more than thirty-four private autos-da-fé were celebrated; the persons who appeared in them were condemned for blasphemy, bigamy, and pretended sorcery. Ten persons only were relaxed, and one hundred and seventy subjected to penances: those who were burnt had relapsed into Judaism. The Jews had been so severely persecuted in the preceding reigns, that scarcely any remained.
Jansenism and Freemasonry particularly occupied the Inquisition under Ferdinand VI. The Jesuits called those persons Jansenists who did not adopt the opinions of Molina, on grace and free-will: their adversaries designated them as Pelagians. These parties reciprocally accused each other of favouring heresy. But the faction of the Jesuits prevailed during the reigns of Philip V. and his successor, because their confessors were of that order.
Freemasonry was an object entirely new to the Inquisition. Clement XII. had expedited on the 28th of April, 1738, the bull in Eminenti, in which he excommunicates the freemasons. In 1740 Philip issued a royal ordinance against them, and many were arrested and sent to the galleys. The inquisitors took advantage of the example, and treated the members of a lodge discovered at Madrid with great severity. The punishment of death was decreed against freemasons, in 1739, by the Cardinal Vicar of Rome, in the name of the high-priest of the God of peace and mercy! Benedict XIV. renewed the bull of Clement, in 1751. Fray Joseph Torrubia, examiner of books for the holy office, denounced the existence of freemasons, and Ferdinand published an ordinance against them in the same year, in which it was said, that all who did not conform to the regulations contained in it, would be punished as state criminals guilty of high treason. Charles III., then King of Naples, prohibited the masonic assemblies on the same day. The following pages contain the notice of a trial of this nature, which took place at Madrid, in 1757.
M. Tournon, a Frenchman, had been invited into Spain, and pensioned by the government, in order to establish a manufactory of brass or copper buckles, and to instruct Spanish workmen. On the 30th of April, 1757, he was denounced to the holy office as suspected of heresy by one of his pupils, who acted in obedience to the commands of his confessor.
The charges were: 1st. That M. Tournon had asked his pupils to become freemasons, promising that the Grand Orient of Paris should send a commission to receive them into the order, if they should submit to the trials he should propose, to ascertain their courage and firmness; and that their titles of reception should be expedited from Paris. 2nd. That some of these young workmen appeared inclined to comply, if M. Tournon would inform them of the object of the institution. That in order to satisfy them, he told them several extraordinary things, and showed them a sort of picture on which were figured instruments of architecture and astronomy. They thought that these representations related to sorcery, and they were confirmed in the idea, on hearing the imprecations which, according to M. Tournon, were to accompany the oath of secrecy.
It appeared from the depositions of three witnesses that M. Tournon was a freemason. He was arrested and imprisoned on the 20th of May. The following conversation, which took place in the first audience of monition, may be interesting to some readers. After asking his name, birth-place, and his reason for coming to Spain, and making him swear to speak the truth, the inquisitor proceeded:—
Question. Do you know or suppose why you have been arrested by the holy office?
Answer. I suppose it is for having said that I was a freemason.
Q. Why do you suppose so?