The denunciations had not the effect expected by the enemies of the prelates, because no singular and independent proposition, opposed to true doctrine, was proved to have been advanced. In a less enlightened age, these prelates would have been exposed to great mortification from this attack; but at this time the Inquisition found it dangerous to be too severe, because the court had adopted the system of vigorously opposing all the ancient doctrines which favoured the pretensions of the ecclesiastics at the expense of the royal prerogatives; and on the occasion of the publication of some conclusions on the canonical law, which were entirely favourable to the Pope and the ecclesiastical jurisdiction, a royal censor was appointed for each university, without whose approbation no conclusion could be published or maintained.
The perseverance of the government in the new system prevented the inquisitors from venturing to sentence the prelates of the extraordinary council: they however thought proper to endeavour to avert the storm, and applied to Don Fray Joachim de Eleta, the king's confessor. This man was an ignorant Recollet, and known for his blind attachment to the Court of Rome. The prelates declared that they condemned several propositions advanced by the two fiscals in their work called An Impartial Judgment of the Monitory of Parma, which was written by the king's order, because they thought they tended to the infringement of the privileges of the church. After this declaration, the prelates used every means to make the confessor persuade Charles III., that the printed copies ought not to be published, and that the work should be reprinted, after the suppression of several propositions. The inquisitor-general and the Supreme Council being informed of this circumstance, the affair took another turn, and the faction of the Jesuits became more calm.
These events exposed to great danger a person who had entered into them without being aware of it. M. Clement, a French priest, treasurer of the cathedral of Auxerre, and afterwards bishop of Versailles, arrived at Madrid in 1768, at the time when the event above mentioned occupied every mind. He held several conversations on this subject with the Marquis de Roda, the fiscals of the council, and the Bishops of Tarazona and Albarracin[77]. The zeal of this theologian for the purity of doctrine on all points of discipline induced him to say, that the good dispositions of the Court of Madrid ought to be taken advantage of, and proposed three measures. The first was to place the Inquisition under each bishop, who should be the chief, with a deliberative vote, with the addition of two inquisitors with a consultive vote; the second, to oblige the monks and nuns to acknowledge the bishop as their chief, and to obey him as such after renouncing all the privileges contrary to this arrangement; the third to abolish the distinct schools of theology, under the titles of Thomists, Scotists, Suarists, or others, and to have only one system of theology for the schools and universities, founded on the principles of St. Augustin and St. Thomas.
It is sufficient to be acquainted with Spain, and the state of the monks at that period, to foresee the persecution which the author of such a plan would incur. The confessor of the king and the inquisitor-general were informed of it by their political spies, and several monks denounced M. Clement to the holy office, as a Lutheran, a Calvinistic heretic, and an enemy of the regular orders.
M. Clement suspected the existence of this intrigue, from some expressions made use of by a Dominican, with whom he was intimate. The inquisitors, who saw that M. Clement was received at court, did not dare to arrest him, but they requested their chief to oblige him to quit the kingdom. The treasurer of Auxerre imparted his fears to the Count de Aranda, and the Marquis de Roda; who being, from his connexion at court, acquainted with all that had passed, advised him to depart, but without informing him of what it was useless for him to know. M. Clement followed his advice, and though he had intended to go to Portugal, he returned immediately to France, to avoid the Sbirri of the holy office, who might have arrested him on his return from Lisbon, if the system of the court was changed. In fact a great number of charges were brought against him after his departure, but they were not made public, and he wrote his travels without knowing anything of the plots against him.
All that passed on the occasion of the apostolical prohibition of the catechism of Mesengui was made public: Charles III. had ordered that it should be made use of in the religious instruction of Charles IV.; and the inquisitor-general was openly and justly blamed, for having published the brief of prohibition, without waiting to obtain the consent of the king. This proceeding was the cause of the exile of the inquisitor-general. His disgrace might have rendered him more prudent, but in his reply to the king, in 1769, concerning some measures taken by the extraordinary council of five prelates, he advanced, as certain, several propositions concerning the Inquisition, which might have been proved to be false, if the Marquis de Roda had consulted the registers of the Supreme Council. He said that the Inquisition had met with nothing but opposition from the beginning; that it was conspired against in the most cruel manner; that all the proceedings of the council were made public, except the trials for heresy, but that even those were always submitted to his Majesty; and that the charge against it of acting with entire independence was not just, he concluded with saying, that his Majesty might appoint an ecclesiastic as his secretary to attend the council, and inform him of all that passed.
It is impossible to find a reason for the necessity here imposed upon the king to have a priest for his secretary, since the inquisitors employed seculars in their offices, who were permitted to see the trial, though obliged to take an oath of secrecy, and two members of the Council of Castile also attend the Supreme Council. Yet neither an ecclesiastic nor a layman could prevent fraud: the same may be said of the members of the Council of Castile, because in case of any intrigues, for example, in a conflict for jurisdiction, the counsellors assembled at the house of the inquisitor-general, and their chief sealed their papers with his private seal.
The most decisive proof of the entire independence of the Inquisition, exists in two laws of Charles III., concerning bigamy and the prohibition of books; they were insufficient to restrain the inquisitors within their jurisdiction.
Yet though these abuses and many others were still continued, I do not hesitate to say that the inquisitors of the reigns of Charles III. and his successors were men possessed of extreme prudence and singular moderation in comparison with those of the time of Philip V. and the preceding reigns. This is confirmed by the very small number of autos-da-fé celebrated under the two kings, a period of twenty-nine years; only ten persons were condemned, four of whom were burnt, and fifty-six individuals subjected to penances. All the other trials were terminated by individual autos-da-fé; the condemned was taken into a church to hear his sentence read, when it was confirmed by the Supreme Council, without waiting for other prisoners to form a particular auto-da-fé. Other trials are concluded by a lesser auto-da-fé in the audience-hall of the tribunal; another mode, which was the least severe, was to celebrate the auto-da-fé in the presence of the secretaries of the Inquisition alone; no greater indulgence than this could be shown.
The individual auto-da-fé was decreed in two famous trials of the reign of Charles III. Of the first, that of Olavide, an account has been given in Chapter 26. The second was that of Don Francisco de Leon y Luna, a priest and knight of the military order of St. Jago. He was condemned as violently suspected of having fallen into the heresies of the Illuminati and of Molinos, for having seduced several women, for communicating several times with the consecrated wafer from superstitious motives, and for preaching a false and presumptuous mysticity to several nuns and other women who were the dupes of his error and their own weakness. Leon was imprisoned for three years in a convent; he was then banished for seven years from Madrid, and forbidden to exercise the ministry of a confessor. The council of the orders requested the king to deprive Leon of his cross and knighthood, according to the statutes which ordain that measure towards all who commit a crime which incurs an infamous punishment. But the council ought to have known that the suspicion of heresy was not sufficient, since the tribunal always declares, if the condemned desire it, that this sort of sentence does not prevent them from attaining offices and dignities.