A History of the Inquisition of Spain (Vol. 1-4). Henry Charles Lea
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Floridablanca to procure for Bertran a dispensation from residence at his see during his term of office. Clement XIV had died, September 22, 1774, and the intrigues arising from the suppression of the Jesuits delayed the election of Pius VI until February 15, 1775, but on February 27th the commission and dispensation were signed. March 25th, Carlos sent the commission to the royal Camara for examination before its delivery to Bertran and the Camara reported, April 24th, that its fiscal pronounced it similar to that granted to Bonifaz in 1755, but that it did not express as it should the royal nomination and had the form of a motu proprio; he also objected to its granting the power of appointment and further that some of the faculties included infringed on the royal and episcopal jurisdictions, while the clauses on censorship conflicted with the royal decrees. Under these reserves the brief was ordered to be delivered to Bertran; whether or not a protest was made to the curia does not appear, but if it was it was ineffective for the same formula was used in the commission issued to Inquisitor-general Agustin Rubin de Cevallos, February 17, 1784.[762]
THE INQUISITOR-GENERALSHIP
It may be assumed as a matter of course that the king had no power to dismiss an inquisitor-general who held his commission at the pleasure of the pope, but the sovereign had usually abundant means of enforcing a resignation. Whether that of Alfonso Suárez de Fuentelsaz, in 1504, was voluntary or coerced is not known, but the case of Cardinal Manrique, the successor of Adrian, shows that if an inquisitor-general was not forced to resign he could be virtually shelved. Manrique, as Bishop of Badajoz, after Isabella’s death, had so actively supported the claims of Philip I that Ferdinand ordered his arrest; he fled to Flanders, where he entered Charles’s service and returned with him to Spain, obtaining the see of Córdova and ultimately the archbishopric of Seville.[763] Perhaps he incurred the ill-will of the Empress Isabella soon after his appointment, for we find him complaining, January 23, 1524, to Charles that when in Valencia she had ordered the disarmament of the familiars and the arrest of Micer Artes, a salaried official of the Inquisition, violations of its privileges for which he asked a remedy.[764] In 1529, he gave more serious cause of offence. When Charles sailed, July 28th, to Italy for his coronation, he placed under charge of the empress Doña Luisa de Acuña, heiress of the Count of Valencia, until her marriage should be determined. There were three suitors—Manrique’s cousin the Count of Treviño, heir apparent of the Duke of Najera, the Marquis of Astorga and the Marquis of Mayorga. The empress placed her ward in the convent of San Domingo el Real of Toledo, where Manrique abused his authority by introducing his cousin; an altar had been prepared in advance and the marriage was celebrated on the spot. The empress, justly incensed, ordered him from the court to his see until the emperor should return and turned a deaf ear to the representations by the Suprema, December 12th, of the interference with the holy work of the Inquisition and the discredit cast upon it. It was probably to this that may be referred the delay in his elevation to the cardinalate, announced March 22, 1531, after being kept in petto since December 19, 1529. On Charles’s return, in 1533, he was allowed to take his place again, but he fell into disgrace once more in 1534, when he was sent back to his see where he died at an advanced age in 1538. Still, this was not equivalent to dismissal; he continued to exercise his functions and his signature is appended to documents of the Inquisition at least until 1537.[765] Yet while thus dealing with the inquisitor-general the crown could exercise no control over the tribunals. The empress was interested in the case of Fray Francisco Ortiz, arrested April 6, 1529, by the tribunal of Toledo, and she twice requested the expediting of his trial for which, October 27, 1530, she alleged reasons of state, but the tribunal was deaf to her wishes as well as to those of Clement VII who interposed July 1, 1531, and the sentence was not rendered until April 17, 1532.[766]
There was no occasion for royal interference with Inquisitors-general Tavera, Loaysa or Valdés. If the latter was forced to resign, in 1566, it was not by order of Philip II but of Pius V for his part, as we shall see hereafter, in the prosecution of Carranza, Archbishop of Toledo. So if Espinosa, in 1572, died in consequence of a reproof from Philip II, it was not for official misconduct and merely shows the depth of servility attainable by the courtiers of the period. The reign of the feeble Philip III however afforded several instances that the royal will sufficed to create a vacancy. He had scarce mounted on the throne as a youth of twenty, on the death of Philip II, September 13, 1598, before he sought to get rid of Inquisitor-general Portocarrero, who had, it is said, spoken lightly of him, or had incurred the ill-will of the favorite, the Duke of Lerma. To effect this, a bull was procured from Clement VIII requiring episcopal residence; Portocarrero was Bishop of Cuenca, a see reputed to be worth forty thousand ducats a year, but he preferred to abandon this and made fruitless efforts at Rome to be permitted to do so. He left Madrid in September, 1599, for Cuenca and died of grief within a twelve-month, refusing to make a will because, as he said, he had nothing to leave but debts that would take two years’ revenue of his see to pay.[767] His successor, Cardinal Fernando Niño de Guevara fared no better. He was in Rome at the time of his appointment and did not take possession of his office until December 23, 1599, but already in May, 1600, there were rumors that he was to be superseded by Sandoval y Rojas, Archbishop of Toledo. Yet, in 1601, he was made Archbishop of Seville and he sought to purchase Philip’s favor by a gift of forty thousand ducats and nearly all his plate. This was unavailing and, in January, 1602, he was ordered to reside in his see, when he dutifully handed in his resignation.[768] Juan de Zuñiga, who succeeded, had a clause in his commission permitting him to resign the administration of his see in the hands of the pope, but the precaution was superfluous for he died, December 20, 1602, after only six weeks’ enjoyment of the office, for which he had sacrificed thirty thousand ducats a year from his see. He was old and feeble and his death was attributed to his coming in winter from a warm climate to the rigors of Valladolid, then the residence of the court.[769]
THE INQUISITOR-GENERALSHIP
The question of non-residence was happily solved, for a time at least, by selecting as the next incumbent Juan Bautista de Azevedo, Bishop of Valladolid, the seat of the court. He was a person of so little consequence that the appointment aroused general surprise until it was recalled that he had been a secretary of Lerma. When the court removed to Madrid, in 1606, he was obliged to choose between the two dignities and his resignation of the bishopric was facilitated by granting him a pension of twelve thousand ducats on the treasury of the Indies, besides which, as Patriarch of the Indies, he had a salary of eight thousand.[770] His death soon followed, in 1608, when Sandoval y Rojas, the uncle of Lerma, obtained the position without sacrificing his primatial see of Toledo, a dispensation for non-residence being doubtless easily obtained by such a personage.
Sandoval was succeeded, in 1619, by Fray Luis de Aliaga, a Dominican who had been Lerma’s confessor. In 1608 Lerma transferred him to the king, over whom his influence steadily increased, although his doubtful reputation is inferable from the popular attribution to him of the spurious continuation of Don Quixote, published in 1614 under the name of Avellaneda—a work of which the buffoonery and indecency are most unclerical.[771] Though he owed his fortune to Lerma, he joined, in 1618, in causing his patron’s downfall in favor of Lerma’s nephew, the Duke of Uceda, and during the rest of Philip’s reign Uceda and Aliaga virtually ruled and misgoverned the land, filling the offices with their creatures, selling justice and intensifying the financial disorders which were bringing Spain to its ruin. When Philip IV succeeded to the throne, March 31, 1621, under tutelage to his favorite Olivares, their first business was to dismiss all who had been in power under the late king. The secular officials were easily disposed of, but the papal commission of the inquisitor-general rendered him independent of the king; he did not manifest the accommodating disposition of Portocarrero and Guevara and, as he was not a bishop, he could not be ordered to his see. It illustrates the anomalous position of the Inquisition, as part of an absolute government, that for some weeks the question of his removal was the subject of repeated juntas and consultations, but finally, April 23d, Philip wrote, ordering him to leave the court within twenty-four hours, for the Dominican Convent of Huete, where his superior would give him further instructions. He obeyed, but he refused the bishopric of Zamora and the continuance of his ecclesiastical revenues as the price of his resignation. The only method left was to obtain from Gregory XV the withdrawal of his delegated powers by representing his unworthiness, his guilty complicity with Uceda and Osuna and Philip III’s reproach to him on his death-bed for misguiding his soul to perdition.