A History of the Inquisition of Spain (Vol. 1-4). Henry Charles Lea
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made to tribunals; in one case his tone is apologetic and he asks Torquemada to confirm the order, in others his command is absolute.[842]
This indicates the uncertainty which existed both as to the use and the control of the pecuniary penances. So long as lasted the war with Granada, whatever was taken by the crown might be regarded as devoted, directly or indirectly, to that holy object, but when the conquest was achieved, in January, 1492, that excuse no longer existed and doubtless the inquisitors looked with jealousy upon the diversion to secular objects of the proceeds of their pious labors. The confiscations unquestionably belonged to the crown, but the penances were spiritual funds which for centuries had always enured to the Church. There must have been a sustained effort to withhold them from the royal acquisitiveness, to which Ferdinand was not disposed to yield, for he procured from Alexander VI, February 18, 1495, a brief directing the inquisitors to hold all such moneys subject to the control of the sovereigns, to be disposed of at their pleasure. Even this was resisted and Ferdinand and Isabella complained to the pope that they were unable to compel an accounting of the sums received or to collect the amounts, to correct which Alexander issued another brief, March 26, 1495, commissioning Ximenes, then Archbishop of Toledo, to enforce accounting and payment by excommunication and other censures.[843]
FINES AND PENANCES
This was equally ineffective. There was a privacy and simplicity in the imposition and collection of a penance very different from the procedure of sequestration and confiscation, and Ferdinand, at least for a time, abandoned the struggle. This is manifested by a clause in the Instructions of 1498, enjoining on inquisitors not to impose penances more heavily than justice requires in order to insure the payment of their salaries,[844] and the principle was formally recognized by Ferdinand and Isabella in a cédula of January 12, 1499, reciting that, although they held a papal brief placing at their disposal all moneys arising from penances, commutations and rehabilitations, yet they grant to the inquisitors-general all collections from these sources, both in Castile and Aragon, to be used in paying salaries, disbursements being made only on their order.[845]
Ferdinand, however, was not disposed to relax, on any point, his control over the Inquisition and, on April 10th of the same year, we find him forbidding the levying of penances on the members of a town-council for fautorship of heresy—doubtless a speculative infliction for some assumed neglect in arresting suspects. In 1501 his renunciation is already forgotten and he is making grants from the penances as absolutely as ever—even empowering Inquisitor-general Deza to use those of Valencia, to the extent of a hundred ducats a year for the salary of Jaime de Muchildos, the Roman agent of the Inquisition.[846] So, in 1511, we find him granting to Enguera, Inquisitor-general of Aragon, a thousand libras out of the penances to defray the expenses of his bulls for the see of Lérida and authorizing him to pay from them an ayuda de costa of two hundred ducats to Joan de Gualbes, a member of the Aragonese Suprema. Then, in 1514, he places all the penances unreservedly at the disposal of Inquisitor-general Mercader to be employed on the salaries and other necessary expenses of the Inquisition of Aragon. This seems to have been final. After his death, instructions sent to the tribunal of Sicily assume that the inquisitor-general has sole and absolute control. It was the same in Castile. Instructions issued by Ximenes, in 1516, direct the receiver-general, who was an officer of the Suprema, to collect the penances from the receivers of the tribunals, who were to keep them in a separate account and not to disburse them without an order from the inquisitor-general. After this we find the Suprema in full control.[847]
There is virtually no trace of any interference subsequently by the crown, and the Inquisition found itself in possession of an independent and by no means inconsiderable source of revenue which it could levy, almost at will, from those who fell into its hands. The only exception to this that I have met is that Philip IV, in his financial distress, by a decree of September 30, 1639, claimed and collected twenty-five per cent. of fines, but he scrupulously limited this to those inflicted in cases not connected with the faith—that is, in the exercise of the royal jurisdiction, civil and criminal, enjoyed by the Inquisition in matters concerning familiars and other officials.[848]
IRRESPONSIBILITY
Though, as we have seen, the independence of the Inquisition, as a self-centered and self-sustaining institution in the State, varied with the temper and the necessities of the sovereign, there was a time when it seemed as though it might throw off all subjection and become dominant. But for the prudence of Ferdinand, in insisting upon the power of appointment and dismissal, this might have happened in the temper of the Spanish people, trained to an exaltation of detestation of heresy which to us may well appear incomprehensible. There is no question that, under the canon law, kings, like their subjects, were amenable to the jurisdiction of the Inquisition and that they held their kingdoms on the tenure not only of their own orthodoxy but of purging their lands of heresy and heretics. The principles which had been worked so effectually for the destruction of the Houses of Toulouse and of Hohenstaufen and under which Pius V released the subjects of Queen Elizabeth from their allegiance, in 1570, were fully recognized in Spain as vital to the faith.[849] But beyond this the Spaniards, in the exuberance of their religious ardor, boasted that their national institutions conditioned orthodoxy as necessary to their kingship. Even when the seventeenth century was well advanced, a learned and loyal jurisconsult tells us that, from the time of the sixth Council of Toledo, in 638, their monarchs had imposed on themselves the law that, if they fell into heresy, they were to be excommunicated and exterminated; that Ferdinand, in 1492, had renewed this law and that he had instituted that most severe tribunal the Inquisition and had sanctioned that, in view of the Toledan canon, all kings in future should be subject to it.[850] Even Spanish loyalty could not have been relied upon to sustain a king suspect of heresy, against the claims of the Holy Office to try him in secret, and suspicion of heresy was a very elastic term. Impeding the Inquisition came within its definition and any effort to curb the arrogant extension of its powers could readily be so construed, as Macanaz found to his sorrow. The fact that the Inquisition possessed such power must have had its influence more than once on the mind of the sovereign when engaged in debate with his too powerful subject and perhaps explains what appears to us occasionally a pusillanimous yielding.
The monarchs had guarded the Inquisition against all supervision and all accountability to the other departments of government. Within its own sphere it was supreme and irresponsible and its sphere, owing to the exemption from the secular courts accorded to all connected with it in however remote a degree, covered a large area of civil and criminal business, besides its proper function of preserving the purity of the faith. In this self-centered independence it stood alone. Even the spiritual jurisdiction of the Church, so jealously guarded, had become subject to the recurso de fuerza, which, like the French appel comme d’abus, gave to those who suffered wrong an appeal to the Council of Castile.[851] But even from this the Inquisition was exempt. A decree of Prince Philip, in 1553, was its ægis and was constantly invoked. This was addressed to all the courts and judicial officers of the land and affirmed, in the most positive terms, the sole and exclusive jurisdiction of the Inquisition in all matters within its competence, civil or criminal, concerning the faith or confiscations—and faith was a convenient term covering the impeding of the Inquisition in all that it wanted to do. Philip recited that repeated cédulas of Ferdinand and Isabella and of Charles V had asserted this and now he reaffirmed and enforced it. No appeals from its tribunals were to be entertained, for the only appeal lay to the Suprema, which would redress any wrong, for it, by delegation from the crown and the Holy See, had exclusive cognizance of such matters. If therefore anything concerning the Inquisition should be brought before them they must decline to entertain it and must refer it back to the Holy Office.[852]
The Inquisition was not content to enjoy these favors as a revocable grace from the crown but, in a consulta of December 22, 1634, it advanced the claim that this decree was a bargain or compact between two powers which could not be in any way modified without mutual consent.[853] This was emphasized in a printed argument in 1642, asserting that that transaction could only become of binding force by the consent of both parties—the king and the inquisitor-general—and the king had no power to change it of his own motion, as it was an agreement. Even were it admitted to be a concession granted by the crown, this would make no difference, for a privilege conceded to one who is not a subject (as the Inquisition in the present case) and accepted