History of the Inquisition of Spain. Henry Charles Lea
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there was no question of freedom of conscience and no desire to limit the effectiveness of the Holy Office as the guardian of purity of faith. The Castilian, like the Catalan, looked with exultation on the triumph over heresy in the autos de fe, and he desired only to set bounds to the intrusion of the Inquisition on the field of secular justice.
CASTILE
The chancellery of Granada was the supreme tribunal of New Castile as that of Valladolid was of Old Castile. The alcaldes of its Sala del Crimen constituted the highest criminal court, from which there was no appeal save to God. April 15, 1623, the alcalde mayor, after five days’ trial, condemned Gerónimo Palomino, an habitual criminal and rufian, to two hundred lashes and six years of galleys for various offences, including sundry blasphemies; on the 24th, the Sala confirmed the sentence and ordered its execution. On the same day the Inquisition served two notices on the alcalde mayor prohibiting his cognizance of the case, as some of the alleged crimes concerned the faith, over which it had exclusive jurisdiction, and it demanded the surrender of the accused and of all the papers under the customary comminations. The alcalde mayor responded by calling for a competencia and offering to deliver Palomino for trial on any charges of heresy, if record were made that he was already a galley-slave to be returned to the royal prison. The next day the tribunal sent to the prison and claimed him, on the pretext that the case had been transferred to it, whereupon the alcaide of the prison surrendered him without orders from the judges. When the latter heard of this they also learned that the transfer had been effected through the efforts of the prisoner’s friends and liberal bribery of the officials of the tribunal, who had been active in getting him out of prison. After satisfying themselves of this by investigation, they ordered the arrest of four laymen—a notary, a messenger and two familiars—and they further imprisoned in their houses the alcalde mayor and alcaide of the prison for acting without informing the Sala. The tribunal concluded Palomino’s trial within forty-eight hours, sentencing him to hear a mass in the audience chamber, and it appears that it returned him. It further commenced proceedings against the alcaldes, summoning them to liberate the officials within three hours under pain of excommunication. The alcaldes protested against this and demanded a competencia, as provided under the Concordia, but the next day they were excommunicated in all the churches and this was followed by an interdict laid on the city. This forced a compromise by which the prisoners were liberated, subject to rearrest in case the competencia should result in justifying the alcaldes, and the latter were absolved from the censures. The matter seemed to be settled, but all parties had counted without the impetuous and aggressive Inquisitor-general Pacheco. Without awaiting further information, and in disregard of the laws prescribing peaceful settlement by competencias, he had evoked the case to himself and acted upon it off-hand. Two days after the absolution, the inquisitors reimposed the excommunication by his command, and notices were served on the alcaldes and their alguazil mayor to appear before him within fifteen days to stand trial. Against this they protested and, on their failure to appear, they were not only excommunicated afresh but anathematized in all the churches. The scandal had thus assumed national proportions.[1173]
The alcaldes were the direct and highest judicial representatives of the king, but such was Philip’s subservience to the Inquisition that he would not permit a competencia following the regular course but took the affair into his own hands. The President of the Council of Castile, in remitting to the royal favorite Olivares, July 4, 1623, a memorial from the Council, declared that the condition to which the chancellery of Granada was reduced, owing to the methods of the Inquisition, was the most ignominious that had ever been heard of in Spain, especially considering how slight was the cause of all this disquiet, for, when everything was settled it was again enkindled at the mandate of the inquisitor-general. As the matter was in the king’s hands, the Council could do nothing but appeal to his majesty, with all the disadvantages under which it labored in combating the inquisitor-general; had its hands been free it might already have conquered, to the benefit of the royal jurisdiction and service of the king, for every day brought greater disturbance to the Republic.[1174]
In spite of this appeal, Philip decided in favor of the Inquisition and the humiliation of the chancellery was complete. Yet Pacheco was not satisfied with victory and proceeded to trample on the vanquished. In the course of the quarrel, Gudiel de Peralta, one of the judges, and Matias González de Sepúlveda, the fiscal of the court, had drawn up legal arguments in its justification. These Pacheco submitted to his censors, who of course discovered latent heresies lurking in them, whereupon he ordered them to be suppressed as heretical and announced his intention of proceeding rigorously against the authors. The Council, on October 7th, again appealed to Philip. The accused, it said, had only defended the royal jurisdiction in a perfectly legitimate manner; the inquisitor-general should not have attacked royal officials and inflicted irreparable injury on them and their posterity by denouncing them as heretics, without consulting the king. He was begged to intervene and order Pacheco to suspend proceedings, while a junta of the two Councils should consider the papers and decide what course should be taken.[1175] It is probable that in some such way this indefensible attempt was suppressed, for neither of the inculpated names appear in the Expurgatory Index of Zapata, in 1632.
It would seem difficult to set bounds to the power of an organization which could thus arbitrarily employ the censures of the Church on any department of the government, without being subject to control save to that of a king docile to its exigencies. Yet the Suprema, which always sustained the tribunals in their wanton excesses, adopted their quarrels and fought them unsparingly to the end, was thoroughly conscious of their wrong-doing. While this conflict was in progress, it issued a carta acordada, April 23d, earnestly exhorting the tribunals to maintain friendly relations with the royal officials and not to waste time in dissensions to the neglect of their duties in matters of faith; competencias were always to be admitted and no censures were to be employed without consulting the Suprema, unless delay was inadmissible.[1176]
CASTILE
How nugatory were these counsels of moderation, under the dominance of such a man as Pacheco, was soon afterwards manifested in a still more scandalous outbreak in Seville, under his direction, in 1625. The assistente or governor, Fernando Ramírez Fariñas, himself a member of the Council of Castile and a man of high consideration, was excommunicated and thus prevented from concluding a negotiation for a donation to the king of eighty thousand ducats; his alguazil, an honorable man, was wounded and was shut up in prison to keep him out of the hands of the tribunal, which declared that he was wanted on a matter of faith, thus covering him and his family with infamy. The king and Olivares were besieged by Pacheco on the one hand and the Council of Castile on the other. The king, as usual, sided with the Inquisition and the President of the Council tendered his resignation with the suggestion that his office had better be given to Pacheco who, by holding both positions, could cover up these scandals, while the royal jurisdiction could scarce be reduced to greater degradation. It is no wonder that Olivares, in a letter to the president, declared himself to be the most unfortunate of men, for he could satisfy nobody; his best course would be to ask the king to let him abandon the management of affairs; when the kingdom was in such straits that he could scarce take time to breathe in devising remedies, his efforts were wasted in competencias and he concluded with the despairing declaration that he lost his senses in thinking over it without knowing what to say.[1177]
The statesmen who were guiding the destinies of Spain in those perilous times might well groan under the superfluous burden of deciding these contests over trifles so ferociously waged, but they were not to be spared. Arce y Reynoso was not so violent as Pacheco but he was equally obstinate and was determined to emancipate the Inquisition wholly by relieving it from royal supervision. There was an instructive case at Cuenca, in 1645, where the corregidor, Don Alonso Muñoz de Castilblanque sent a band of assassins to murder a woman with whom he had illicit relations, together with a priest named Jacinto. The crime created great excitement, but Muñoz was a contador, or accountant of the tribunal, and as such a titular official. He presented himself before the inquisitors who assumed his case and promptly excommunicated the judge who attempted to prosecute him. Philip had the matter investigated and was told that both the woman and the priest had been killed. He sent to the Suprema a decree ordering the removal of the excommunication and the delivery of the criminal to the Council of Castile, to be tried by the judge which it had appointed, for the inquisitors could not properly punish so atrocious