History of the Inquisition of Spain. Henry Charles Lea
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seats of tribunals. The Suprema accepted this cheerfully but, when a decree of January 19, 1712, revoked all exemptions, it remonstrated and was told that, while the king recognized the claims of the Inquisition to all the privileges granted by his predecessors, the existing urgency required the withdrawal of all exemptions and, as the law was absolute, he could make no exceptions. Although this covered the salaried officials, it seems to have been the familiars who complained the loudest; possibly now that the tribunals could no longer protect them they were exposed to special discrimination. It was a question of money, however, rather than of hardship, for a system of composition had been developed under which by paying the cuartel or utensilio—an assessment proportioned to the wealth of the individual—the billet was escaped.[968] When the urgency of immediate peril was passed these decrees were either withdrawn or became obsolete. The claim of exemption revived and with it the active efforts of the tribunals to protect those whose exemptions were disregarded and to punish the officials who disregarded them.[969]
In 1728 Philip V made a well-intentioned attempt to relieve the oppression of the poor arising from the numerous classes of officials who claimed exemption from the common burdens, including the billeting of troops. As for the familiars, he says, who all claim exemptions and give rise to disturbances, attacks on the local magistrates, with excommunications and other penalties, and perpetual competencias, all this must cease. Yet he admits their exemption and only insists that it must be confined to the number allowed by the Concordia of 1553; that limitation had never been observed and the inquisitors had appointed large numbers in excess of it, in spite of perpetual remonstrance, and Philip now ordered that tribunals should not issue certificates to more than the legal number and should not take proceedings against the local magistrates.[970] As usual the royal orders were disregarded. The tribunal of Valencia threatened with excommunication and fine the magistrates of Játiva and San Mateo, at the instance of some familiars on whom soldiers had been quartered, and, on learning this, Philip addressed the Suprema in 1729 stating that the records showed that familiar were entitled to no exemption; even if they were, the tribunal had exceeded its powers in employing obstreperous methods in defiance of the royal decrees. There must be no competencia; the Valencia tribunal must be notified not to exceed its jurisdiction and the Suprema itself must observe the royal orders. After the delay of a month, the Suprema forwarded the royal letter to Valencia, sullenly telling the tribunal to report what could be done and not to act further without orders.[971]
For two centuries the Inquisition had been accustomed to obey or to disregard the royal decrees at its pleasure and to tyrannize over the local authorities. The habit was not easily broken and it was hard to conform itself to the new order of things. A formulary of about 1740 contains a letter to be sent to magistrates granting billets on familiars, couched in the old arrogant and peremptory terms and threatening excommunication and a fine of two hundred ducats. Familiars, it says, are not to furnish quarters and beasts of burden, except in extreme urgency when no exemptions are permitted, and this it assumes to be in accordance with the royal decrees, including the latest one of November 3, 1737.[972] I can find no trace of a decree of 1737 and we may assume that it was this obstinacy of the Inquisition that induced Philip, in 1743, to reissue his decree of 1728 with an expression of regret at its inobservance and the disastrous results which had ensued; he added that, when the houses of the non-exempt were insufficient for quartering troops, they could be billeted on hidalgos and nobles.[973]
BEARING ARMS
The Inquisition still adhered to its claims, but Carlos III taught it to abandon its comminatory style. When, in 1781, the authorities of Castellon de la Plana billeted troops on familiars, the Valencia tribunal adopted the more judicious method of persuading the captain-general that they were to be classed with hidalgos and he issued orders to that effect. This did not please Carlos III, who brushed aside the claim to exemption by a peremptory order that the familiars of Castellon de la Plana should subject themselves to the local government in the matters of billets and that there should be no change until he should issue further commands.[974]
This would seem in principle to abrogate all claims to exemption, but Spanish tenacity still held fast to what it had claimed and, in 1800, when José Poris, a familiar of Alcira, complained that the governor had quartered on him an officer of the regiment of Sagunto, the Valencia tribunal took measures for his relief.[975] The times were adverse to privilege, however, and in 1805 the Captain-general of Catalonia sent a circular to all the towns stating that familiars were not exempt. The magistrates accordingly compelled them to furnish quarters and beasts of burden, and, when the tribunal complained to the captain-general and adduced proofs in support of its claims, he responded with the decrees of 1729 and 1743, which he assumed to have abrogated the exemption and he continued to coerce the familiars. The same process was going on in Valencia and, when that tribunal applied to Barcelona for information and learned the result, it ordered its familiars to submit under protest. Then followed a royal cédula of August 20, 1807, limiting strictly what exemptions were still allowed; the Napoleonic invasion supervened and under the Restoration I have met with no trace of their survival.[976]
Another privilege which occasioned endless debate and contention was the right of officials and familiars to bear arms, especially prohibited ones. This was a subject which, during the middle ages, had taxed to the utmost the civilizing efforts of legislators, while the power assumed by inquisitors to issue licences to carry arms, in contravention of municipal statutes, was the source of no little trouble, especially in Italian cities.[977] The necessity of restriction, for the sake of public peace, was peculiarly felt in Spain, where the popular temper and the sensitiveness as to the pundonor were especially provocative of deadly strife.[978] It would be impossible to enumerate the endless series of decrees which succeeded each other with confusing rapidity and the repetition of which, in every variety of form, shows conclusively how little they were regarded and how little they effected. Particular energy was directed against armas alevosas—treacherous weapons—which could be concealed about the person. In the Catalan Córtes of 1585, Philip II denounced arquebuses, fire-locks and more especially the small ones known as pistols, as unworthy the name of arms, as treacherous weapons useless in war and provocative of murder, which had caused great damage in Catalonia and had been prohibited in his other kingdoms. They were therefore forbidden, not only to be carried but even to be possessed at home and in secret, and against this no privilege should avail, whether of the military class or official or familiar of the Inquisition or by licence of the king or captain-general, under penalty for those of gentle blood of two years’ exile, for plebeians of two years’ galley-service, and for Frenchmen or Gascons of death, without power of commutation by any authority. Three palms, or twenty-seven inches of barrel, was the minimum length allowed for fire-arms in Catalonia and four palms in Castile. Philip IV, in 1663, even prohibited the manufacture of pistols and deprived of exemptions and fuero those who carried them, while as for poniards and daggers, Philip V, in 1721, threatened those who bore them with six years of presidio for nobles and six years of galleys for commoners.[979]
BEARING ARMS
These specimens of multitudinous legislation, directed against arms of all kinds, enable us to appreciate how highly prized was the privilege of carrying them. In an age of violence it was indispensable for defence and was equally desired as affording opportunities for offence. That the Inquisition should claim it for those in its service was inevitable and it had the excuse, at least during the earlier period, that there was danger in the arrest and transportation of prisoners and in the enmities which it provoked, although this latter danger was much less than it habitually claimed. The old rules, moreover, were well known under which no local laws were allowed to interfere with such privilege,[980] and the Inquisition had scarce been established in Valencia when the question arose through the refusal of the local authorities to allow its ministers to carry arms. Ferdinand promptly decided the matter in its favor by an order, March 22, 1486 that licences should be issued to all whom the inquisitors might name—for the time had not yet come in which the inquisitors themselves issued licences.[981] Probably complaints arose as to the abuse of the privilege for the instructions of 1498, which were principally measures of reform, provided that, in cities, where bearing arms was forbidden, no official should carry them except when accompanying an inquisitor or alguazil.[982] As indicated by this, policy on the subject was unsettled and it so remained for a while. November 14, 1509, Ferdinand ordered that the ministers