He mentions, however, two cases of interest and importance,[133] to show how arbitrary was the spirit of the Inquisition, and how far-reaching its arm.
Juan Pedro Sanchez, the leader of the affair, having fled to Toulouse, was, as we have seen, sentenced as contumacious and burnt in effigy pending the seizure of his person.
In Toulouse at this time there was a student named Antonio Agustin, a member of an illustrious family of Aragon and a man destined to rise to great dignity and honour. Under the impulse of fanaticism, and acting in conjunction with several other Spaniards in Toulouse, he petitioned for the arrest of Sanchez. When this had been effected, he indited a letter to the inquisitors of Aragon, and forwarded it to his brother Pedro in Zaragoza for delivery.
Pedro, however, first discussed the matter with Guillerme Sanchez, brother of the fugitive, and three friends, and all were opposed to Agustin’s purpose. They decided not to deliver the letter, and they wrote to Agustin begging him to withdraw his plea against Sanchez and consent to the fugitive’s being restored to liberty.
Agustin was persuaded, and replied informing his brother that he had done as they had requested. Once Pedro Agustin in Zaragoza was assured of this, he delivered the letters to the inquisitors—though why he should have done so is not by any means clear. Possibly he conceived that this was the wisest course to pursue, lest it should afterwards transpire that he had suppressed such a communication. But from what follows it will be seen how ill-advised he was.
The Holy Office having received the letters, and supposing Juan Pedro Sanchez still under arrest in Toulouse, ordered him to be brought to Zaragoza. The courts of Toulouse replied that he had already been released and that his whereabouts were now unknown.
The inquisitors inquired into the matter with that terrible thoroughness of which they commanded the means. They controlled the most wonderful police system that the world has ever seen. A vast civilian army was enrolled in the service of the Holy Office, as members of the tertiary order of St. Dominic. These were the lay brothers of the family, and as the position conferred upon those who held it certain signal benefits, of which immunity from taxation was one,[134] it will be understood that their number had to be limited, so very considerable were the applications for enrolment.
Originally this had been a penitential order, but very quickly it came to be known as the Militia Christi, and its members as familiars of the Holy Office—i.e. part of the family of St. Dominic. They dressed in black, and wore the white cross of St. Dominic upon their doublets and cloaks, and they were made to join the Confraternity of St. Peter Martyr. The inquisitors seldom went abroad without an escort of these armed lay-brothers.
In the ranks of the Militia Christi were to be found men of all professions, dignities, and callings. They formed the secret police of the Inquisition, they were the eyes and ears of the Holy Office, ubiquitous in every stratum of social life.
Through these agents the inquisitors were not long in ascertaining what had taken place in the matter of Juan Pedro Sanchez, and soon the five friends were under arrest and forced to answer the serious charge of hindering the Holy Office.