A History of the Inquisition of Spain (Vol. 1-4). Henry Charles Lea
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passed away without the request being granted and, in January, 1486, the king ventured the experiment of sending two appointees of Torquemada, the Dominicans Juan Franco and Guillen Casells, with an Executoria pro Inquisitoribus apud Cataloniam, addressed to all the officials, who were ordered under pain of five thousand gold florins to receive and convey them safely, to aid them in their work, to arrest and imprison in chains whomsoever they might designate and to inflict due punishment on all whom they might abandon to the secular arm.[685] This energetic movement was as fruitless as its predecessors and some weeks later an order was issued to the inquisitors at Saragossa to reimburse, from the pecuniary penances in their hands, the expenses of the cleric who had been sent to Barcelona and also to pay fifty libras each to Esteban Gago, sent there as alguazil and Jaime Millan as notary, in order to provide for their support.[686] At the same time Ferdinand expressed the hope that the Barcelonese tribunal would soon be in working order, and in this he was not wholly disappointed.
BARCELONA SUBMITS
Innocent VIII yielded at last and, by a brief of February 6, 1486, under pretext that they had been too zealous, he removed all inquisitors holding papal commissions—in Aragon Juan Colivera, Juan de Epila, Juan Franco and Guillen Casells, in Valencia Juan Orts and Mateo Mercader and in Barcelona Juan Comte; he appointed Torquemada as special inquisitor for Barcelona, with power of subdelegation and, apparently to prepare for expected resistance, he authorized the Bishops of Córdova and Leon and the Abbot of St. Emelian of Burgos to suppress all opposition, especially on the part of Juan Comte, while he expressly set aside the privileges of the city.[687] In spite of this formidable missive nearly eighteen months elapsed before Barcelona was reduced to submission, and Torquemada’s final appointee, Alonso de Espina, was able to enter the city. When at last he succeeded, July 5, 1487, we are told that the Lieutenant-general of the Principality, the Bishops of Urgel, Tortosa and Gerona and many gentlemen and citizens sallied forth to greet him, but there is no mention made of the Diputados, or the local magistracy, or the canons joining in the reception, and it was not until July 30th that the municipal officials took the oath of obedience to him.[688]
He probably still found obstacles in his path, for it was not until December 14th that the first procession of penitents took place, consisting only of twenty-one men and twenty-nine women, followed, a week later, by another in which the participants were scourged.[689] The smallness of these numbers, as the result of five months’ work, showed that the Edict of Grace had met an ungrateful response and the first public auto, celebrated January 25, 1488, furnished only four living victims and the effigies of twelve fugitives. As already remarked elsewhere, the fear spread abroad by the advent of the Inquisition, after so long a struggle, caused the greater part of those who had reason for fear to seek safety in flight, in spite of the edicts forbidding expatriation. During the whole of the year 1488 the number of burnings amounted only to seven and in 1489 there were but three. It was doubtless owing to the lukewarmness of the local magistracy that, in the earlier autos, the sufferers were spared the extreme penalty of concremation and were mercifully strangled before the pile was lighted.[690] In fact, a royal cédula of March 15, 1488, ordering afresh all officials to render aid and support to the Inquisition, under penalty of two thousand florins, would seem to argue no little slackness on their part.[691]
The jurisdiction of the tribunal of Barcelona was extensive, comprehending the dioceses of Barcelona, Tarragona, Vich, Gerona, Lérida, Urgel and Elna; the inquisitors were industrious and visited many portions of their territory, for we have record, during the remainder of the century, of autos de fe held in Tarragona, Gerona, Perpignan, Balaguer and Lérida, but as late as November 18, 1500, Ferdinand complains that in Rosellon the Inquisition had not yet been put fairly in operation and that no effort had been made to secure the confiscations.[692]
SUPREMACY OF THE INQUISITION
The imperiousness with which the inquisitors exercised their authority to break the independent spirit of the Catalans is well illustrated by a trifling but significant incident in 1494. The city of Tarragona had established a quarantine against Barcelona on account of pestilence. On June 18th the inquisitor, Antonio de Contreras, with all his officials, presumably fleeing from the pest, presented himself at the gates and demanded admittance. The vicar-general of the archbishop, the canons and the royal and local officials came to meet him and explained the situation, asking him to remain in some convenient place in the neighborhood for some days. His reply was to give them the delay of three Misereres in which to open their gates under pain of major excommunication and interdict, whereupon they left him, after interjecting an appeal to the Holy See. He recited the Miserere thrice, commanded his notary to knock at the gate and then fulminated his censures, with an additional order that no notary but his own should make record of the affair. He then withdrew to the neighboring Dominican convent, whence he sent his excommunication to be affixed to the town-gates. While at supper, Ciprian Corte, a scrivener, came and served him with a notice of the appeal to Rome and was seized and confined in the convent prison. During the night the vicar-general with a crowd of citizens surrounded the convent in a fashion so threatening that the scrivener was released. It was not until July 18th that the inquisitor entered Tarragona, when he suspended the excommunication and interdict and took testimony as to the affair, banishing a man who said that Vich had similarly refused to break a quarantine for an inquisitor. Finally, on September 5th all the dignitaries, ecclesiastical and secular, with the leading citizens, were assembled in the chapel of the chapter, in presence of the inquisitor and of Don Juan de Lanuza, the Lieutenant-general of Catalonia. There they humbly begged for pardon and absolution and offered to undergo any penance that he might inflict; he made them swear obedience to him and appointed the following Sunday for the penance, when they were all obliged to attend mass as penitents, with lighted candles in their hands, thus incurring an indelible stigma on themselves and their posterity.[693]
Men who wielded their awful and irresponsible power in this arbitrary fashion were not to be restrained by law or custom and from their tyranny there was no appeal save to the king, who was resolved that no one but himself should check them. He had already, by a cédula of March 26, 1488, forbidden all secular officials, from the lieutenant-general down, from taking cognizance of anything concerning the subordinates and familiars of the Holy Office, under penalty of the royal wrath and a fine of two thousand florins and when, in 1505, the Diputados of Catalonia were involved in some trifling quarrel with the inquisitors and represented to Ferdinand that their jurisdiction was in derogation of the constitution of the land, he sternly replied that the jurisdiction of the faith and the execution of its sentences pertained to the Inquisition; that this jurisdiction was supreme over all others and that there was no fuero or law that could obstruct it.[694] This fateful declaration became practically engrafted upon Spanish public law.
It was impossible that such irresponsible power should not be abused and there speedily commenced a series of complaints from the Catalan authorities which, as we shall see hereafter, continued with little intermission until the revolt of 1640. At the present time, however, Ferdinand showed a disposition to curb the abuses inevitable under the system and, in letters of August 16th and 20th and September 3, 1502, to the inquisitors of Barcelona, he enclosed a memorial from the Diputados of Catalonia, accompanying it with a severe rebuke. The chief source of complaint that the receiver of confiscations bought up claims and prosecuted them through the irresistible machinery of the tribunal. In a sample instance Francí Ballester made over to the receiver for 100 libras a debt of 228 due by Juan de Trillo which was then collected through the Inquisition. Ferdinand said that he had frequently forbidden this practice and he ordered the inquisitors to excommunicate the receiver if he persisted in it. The receiver then contented himself with a smaller profit and proceeded, in the case of the confiscated estate of a certain Mahul, to collect from it debts for a commission of ten per cent., whereby the creditors with the weakest claims got most of the money. Again Ferdinand prohibited this, September 9th, ordering all funds to be paid in to the tabla of Barcelona, for equitable distribution among the creditors and all commissions to be refunded.[695] At the same time there was no talk of the only effective way of cutting up these practices by the roots—that of discharging the knavish receiver. This tenderness for official malfeasance continued throughout the career of the Inquisition and prevented any effective reform.
THE BALEARIC ISLES.
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