History of the Inquisition of Spain. Henry Charles Lea
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the royal officials, thus avoiding competencias which ordinarily arose from passionate conflicts over trifles.[1217]
CURTAILMENT OF PRIVILEGES
These were wise admonitions to which as usual scant attention was paid, but in time the tribunals were made to recognize the change which had come in with the Bourbons. There was a highly illustrative case in 1720, at Toledo, where Don Pedro Paniagua, contador or auditor of the tribunal, received in October twenty sacks of cocoa from Cadiz. In the intricate details of the Spanish system of internal imposts, it would be impossible now to say whether he had observed the formalities requisite in the transmission of merchandise, but the local authorities assumed that there was a violation of law and also an infraction of quarantine, imposed in August, owing to an epidemic in Marseilles. The corregidor was prompt; at 2 A.M. of the day following the arrival of the cocoa, he searched Paniagua’s country house and at 9 A.M. his town house and sequestrated the cocoa. The inquisitors responded by imprisoning the civic guards who had been employed. A fortnight later, another visit paid to Paniagua’s house showed that five sacks of the sequestrated article had been removed, whereupon he was confined in the royal prison. Then the inquisitors proceeded against the corregidor and alcalde mayor with censures, and aggravated them so energetically that in twenty-four hours they had an interdict and cessatio a divinis in four parishes of the city. These active demonstrations, however suited to the seventeenth century, were out of place in the eighteenth. As soon as news of them reached Madrid, hurried orders were despatched by the Suprema to remove the interdict, absolve the officials and release the guards, and when the formal report came from the tribunal the orders were repeated, with the addition that the senior inquisitor should start for Madrid within twenty-four hours. Prior to receiving this the inquisitors had written to Inquisitor-general Camargo lamenting his abandonment of them and the dishonor inflicted on the tribunal; they blushed to be accomplices in this ruin and they tendered their resignations. The answer to this was sending the senior Inquisitor of Madrid to take charge of the tribunal, with orders to the two remaining inquisitors to report in Madrid but, on learning that they had obeyed the first orders, they were allowed to remain in Toledo.
How strong had been the pressure exerted on the Suprema to produce this action may be inferred from a protest in which, a month later, it poured forth to Philip V its bitterness of soul. The corregidor had violated the privileges and immunities of the Inquisition; the inquisitors had been perfectly justified in their action, although too speedy in aggravating the censures; they had been humiliated, while the corregidor and his underlings were boasting of their triumph over the Inquisition and of depriving it of the rights granted by the popes and the kings of Spain. The Suprema therefore asked that the senior inquisitor be allowed to return to Toledo, that Paniagua be released by the hands of the inquisitors, that his cocoa be restored and that the corregidor and alcalde mayor be duly punished. This accomplished nothing and two months later it again appealed to the king for the release of Paniagua and the restoration of the senior inquisitor, but this time it professed its zeal to see that in future the tribunals should practise more moderation.[1218] The lesson was a hard one, but it had a still harder one, in 1734, when Philip decided that a salaried official should be tried by the ordinary courts.[1219]
Step by step the old-time privileges were being curtailed. Soon after the accession of Fernando VI, some trouble arose at Llerena over the taxation of familiars. It seems to have been aggravated in the usual manner and, when it reached the king, it was of a character that induced him to issue a decree, October 5, 1747, by which the Council of Castile was given jurisdiction over the officials of the Inquisition. This called forth a heated remonstrance, dated November 1st, which must have proceeded from the Inquisitor-general Prado y Cuesta, for no other subject would have dared thus to address his sovereign. The writer tells him that the decree is unworthy of his name and his faith, nor is it well that the world should see him, in the first year of his reign, discharge such a thunderbolt against the Holy Office, such as it had never received since its foundation, leaving it prostrated by the shock. He affirms before God, and would wish to write it with his blood, that the service of Jesus Christ and the prosperity of the king and his kingdoms require that the decree be returned to the royal hands, without a copy being allowed to remain.[1220]
Although this decree was not effective as to the salaried officials, the Inquisition was falling upon evil days. It no longer inspired the old-time awe; it was no longer striving to extend its prerogatives, but was fighting a losing battle to maintain them. A writer of about this period deplores its decadence; its commissioners and familiars serve without pay and the only reward for their labors and the cost of making their proofs of limpieza is the exemptions of pure honor granted by the kings, but now scarce one of these is observed and no fit persons seek the positions, although they are much needed, for there are not a tenth part of those allowed by the Concordias.[1221] There is probably some truth in this, for Inquisitor-general Prado y Cuesta, in appointing, at the request of the tribunal of Valencia, Fray Vicente Latorre as calificador or censor, asks why, when there are so many learned canons and professors in Valencia, who formerly were eager in seeking the position, it had now fallen so greatly in estimation.[1222]
COMPETENCIAS
It was difficult for the Inquisition to reconcile itself to the tendencies of the age and several cases, about this time, in which the tribunal of Valencia refused even to admit competencias, asserting that its combined ecclesiastical and royal jurisdictions rendered it the sole judge of all that concerned its officials, show that the old spirit still lingered and found expression whenever it dared.[1223] Carlos III, however, was even more assertive of the royal prerogative than his brother Fernando. We have seen his orders of 1763 concerning municipal and police regulations which included the prohibitions of carrying concealed weapons and exporting money, in all of which familiars were wholly removed from the jurisdiction of the Inquisition, and in 1775 a competencia in Córdova caused him emphatically to order the inviolable observance of this decree.[1224] All this led to the change in the commissions of familiars as regards carrying arms, which was brought about, in 1777, by the authorities of Alcalá la Real and Seville refusing to register commissions issued by the tribunals of Toledo and Seville, because they were not in accordance with the new regulations. In place, as of old, of blustering and coercing the magistrates, the Suprema collected from all the tribunals the formulas employed by them and framed a new one, phrased in a very different spirit and in accordance with the royal edicts.[1225]
That the endless quarrels which we have been considering ought to be settled in an amicable manner was so self-evident that, from an early period, persistent efforts had been made to accomplish it, resulting in the “competencia” so frequently alluded to above. Originally it would seem that there was no established procedure and that the Inquisition settled for itself all questions arising with the magistrates. After the first opposition had been broken down these were not numerous, until the attribution of the fuero to the officials, and the enormous multiplication of familiars and other unsalaried officers, gave occasion for collisions with the courts. The earliest attempt that I have met to provide a method of settlement is a cédula, issued about 1535 by the empress-regent in the absence of Charles V, ordering that, when there was a dispute about jurisdiction, the president and judges of the royal court should meet the inquisitors and arrange matters harmoniously, so that it should not be known that there had been a difference between them. It was in conformity with this that, in 1542, when Joaquin de Tunes was tried in Barcelona for the murder of Juan Ballell, a familiar, the inquisitor, Miguel Puig, held a conference with the regent and judges of the royal chancellery, prior to the arrest, and the custody of the accused was settled without difficulty. It was impossible, however, to preserve peace between classes mutually jealous, and we have seen (p. 435) the troubles which Prince Philip endeavored to settle by the cédula of May 15, 1545. This favored the royal jurisdiction and produced complaints from the Suprema as when, in 1548, it represented to Charles V that in Granada the judges made the cédula a pretext to intervene in the business of the tribunal, whenever any one made a complaint, requiring the inquisitors to interrupt their work and come to the Audiencia, when they were ordered not to proceed and, if this was disobeyed, the judges raised a great disturbance. All this would cease if the old rule were restored that any one feeling aggrieved must appeal to the Suprema where he would get justice.[1226] Prince Philip’s cédula of 1553 settled this as far as concerned matters of faith, but neither it nor the Castilian Concordia of the