Volume 1 / Book 2 — CHAPTER IV. CONFLICTING JURISDICTIONS. (continued 2)

CATALONIA

That the Córtes of Monzon, in 1563-4, should protest energetically against these abuses was natural. Indeed, a Catalan named Gaspar Mercader carried the protest so far as to say, among other odious things, that the Inquisition had been introduced only for a limited time which had expired and that it should be abolished, for which the tribunal arrested, tried and punished him.[1130] In spite of this interference with the freedom of debate, the general disaffection, as we have seen, led to the visitation of de Soto Salazar. In Barcelona he found that not the slightest attention had been paid to the orders of the Suprema based on the report of Cervantes. Advocates, familiars and commissioners continued to be appointed in profusion, without investigation as to fitness. When an inquisitor visited his district he carried with him blank commissions which he distributed at will. All these, with their families, were protected and defended by the tribunal in civil and criminal cases, nor was this all, for it would seem that any one who claimed the fuero, whether he was entitled to it or not, was admitted and, in the absence of lists filed with the magistrates, the latter had no means of resisting the arrogant and peremptory demand of the tribunal to surrender cases. Instances were given which showed that the tribunal was a court where justice—or rather injustice—was bought and sold and there had been no reform in the excessive fees which had scandalized Cervantes.[1131]

That it should be hated was inevitable. In 1566, Govilla, Bishop of Elna, defending himself for acts committed when he was inquisitor of Barcelona, declared that the Inquisition was even more odious in Catalonia than elsewhere.[1132] This hatred sometimes expressed itself more forcibly than by complaints. In 1567, the evocation of a case, which the local authorities claimed as their own, led to the fiercest excitement which the viceroy fruitlessly sought to allay and appealed to Philip II for his immediate interposition. Disregarding the inviolable secrecy of the Inquisition, the Diputados, with the veguer, forced their way into the palace, penetrated to the audience-chamber where the inquisitors were trying a case, and inventoried and sequestrated everything, even to the private property of the Inquisitor Padilla in his apartments—apparently a seizure of temporalities under an order of the Banch Reyal. Even more flagrant was the insult committed when the messenger and the secretary were conveying from Perpignan to Barcelona two government officials accused of impeding the Inquisition and also a prisoner under a charge of heresy. Near Gerona, one of the Diputados, at the head of an armed band, seized the whole party and carried them back to Perpignan, where they were paraded through the streets with blare of trumpets, as though criminals on the way to execution, and were then cast into prison, where they lay until discharged without accusation. This was a most serious assault on the dignity of the Holy Office and even worse was permitting the escape of the heretic, but it was obliged to submit without vindicating its authority.[1133]

Such being the temper of the Catalans and such the provocation to meet lawlessness with lawlessness, it is not surprising that, when the Concordia of 1568 was prepared for the three kingdoms, Catalonia would have none of it. When, in September, it was submitted to the Diputados, they were incensed and proposed to send envoys to the king to remonstrate against it. There was a universal outcry that it was contrary to the constitution and privileges of the land; they would observe it in so far as it was in their favor, but as to the rest they were ready to lose life, property and children rather than to submit to it. In February, 1569, the inquisitors wrote that the people would not be content until they had driven the Inquisition from the land; as for themselves they proposed to go on as they had previously done until the Concordia should be accepted, to which the Suprema cordially assented.[1134]

CATALONIA

This attitude of mutual defiance was not conducive to peace. In 1570, there arose a quarrel so bitter that the Diputados invoked the protection and interposition of Pius V, and he urged Philip II to come to some understanding with them, in view of possible serious consequences. Philip took the position that they were so excited and so obstinate that any concessions would lead only to further demands, but he asked the pope to dismiss the envoys, referring them to him with recommendation for favorable consideration, so that anything that he might yield would be to the Holy See and not to recalcitrant subjects. The situation was critical; the rebellion of Granada was exhausting his resources, there was acute apprehension of attack by a Turkish fleet and the Catalans were soon afterwards called upon to contribute to the defence of the coasts, but if any concessions were enforced on the Inquisition they have left no traces. In fact, the Venetian envoy, Leonardo Donato, in his relation of 1573, states that, after the Catalans had spent a hundred thousand ducats in these efforts, the Inquisition imprisoned those who had been most active in the matter and that they subsequently refused to leave the prison without a formal declaration that they had not been arrested for heresy.[1135] Dissension naturally continued. In 1572 we hear of a demand from the Diputados that the inquisitors should show them their commissions and take an oath to obey the constitution of Catalonia, because they held rents on the Diputacion; the inquisitors acceded to the first of these and were rebuked by the Suprema because it was a demand that had been persistently refused before and they must not do it again. Then, in 1574, there came a complaint from all the cities that familiars refused obedience to the local laws respecting prices, pasturage and other matters as required under the Concordia, to which the Suprema superciliously replied by instructing the inquisitors that, as the people had rejected the Concordia, they need not observe it.[1136] Then, in 1585, as we have seen (p. 416) the Córtes obtained an advantage in excluding familiars and officials from public offices.

In this spirit of undisguised hostility both sides were aligned for a decisive struggle in the Córtes of 1599, under the new royalty of the youthful Philip III. As the Catalan efforts failed and the Inquisition was left in possession of its usurped powers, the details of the contest have no interest except as an exhibition of shameless duplicity, by which the king tricked his vassals. They hoped to win favor by a subsidio of a million libras to the king and a hundred thousand to his bride, besides shrewdly granting ten thousand to the Marquis of Denia (soon to become Duke of Lerma) and six thousand to the Vice-chancellor of Aragon,[1137] but they reaped nothing but deceit. Long discussions resulted in a series of articles, divided into two categories, to one of which Philip gave unqualified assent and to the other his assent as far as concerned himself, with a promise to procure that of the inquisitor-general and pope. It was proposed to withhold the pension of six hundred libras granted in 1520, if the papal confirmation were not procured within a year, but Philip declared that no such guarantee was necessary, for the letters which he had ordered to be written to the pope were so strong that no influence could counteract them. His despatches to his ambassador were sent through the Diputados in order to satisfy them, but they assuredly were not allowed to see others which instructed the ambassador to be circumspect in urging the matter. He also sent word to the inquisitor-general that the delivery of these despatches had been delayed in order to give him time to express his views. The Suprema, in appealing to Clement VIII to withhold confirmation, did not hesitate to say that Philip had endeavored to escape under cover of the inquisitor-general and pope and had finally signed only in so far as concerned himself. Indeed, in a subsequent official paper, it was unblushingly asserted that he had done so only to get rid of the Catalans. Under these influences it is needless to say that the confirmation never came and the subsidio was the only practical result of the labors of the Córtes.[1138]

One of the articles required the execution of the Concordia of 1520, which embraced that of 1512, the fulfilment of which the Catalans had never ceased to demand, and the manner in which these solemn compacts were argued away is instructive. In 1566, Govilla, Bishop of Elna, who had been inquisitor of Barcelona, calmly asserted that the articles of 1512 had been revoked as prejudicial to the free exercise of the Inquisition. The Suprema, in urging Clement VIII to refuse confirmation of the new Concordia of 1599, argued that the transactions of 1512 and 1520 were invalid through simony, as the Córtes had obtained the assent of Ferdinand in 1516 (sic) and of Charles in 1520 by conditioning subsidios on it. Leo’s bull of condemnation in 1513 was relied upon and that of confirmation in 1516 was dismissed as obreptitious and surreptitious. So Cardinal Adrian’s action in 1520 was represented as conditional on confirmation by the Holy See, and as in no way binding on the Inquisition. So, in 1632, the Barcelona tribunal drew up a statement to be laid before Philip IV by the Suprema, adroitly mixing up the affairs of Aragon and Catalonia and telling him that the Córtes of 1518 demanded the revival of the articles of 1512, that Charles refused to swear to them, that Juan Prat interpolated others, for which he was imprisoned and that the effort failed. In transmitting this the Suprema added that the fact that the Córtes never ceased to demand the enforcement of the articles showed that they had never been observed.[1139] From first to last it was a history of deception, in which kings conspired with inquisitors to betray their subjects, without even the excuse that the faith was concerned in these details of secular jurisdiction.

CATALONIA

The Catalan temper was not soothed by the disappointment of 1599, and the refusal of redress prompted resort to forcible measures. There was a contest in 1608 in which the Banch Reyal uttered a sentence of banishment against the inquisitors; a vessel was made ready for their deportation but, when the day came, they barred their door and hung over it a portière of black velvet to which was attached a crucifix. The city showed its piety by placing candles in front of the sacred emblem and the chapter sent priests to pray before it. No one ventured to disturb it; the Diputados, the chapter and the city authorities interposed, and an accommodation was reached.[1140] A more savage quarrel arose, in 1611, in consequence of the veguer disarming the coachman of an inquisitor. The city authorities seized the temporalities, laid siege to the palace of the Inquisition, sentenced the inquisitors to banishment and proclaimed it with trumpets through the streets. This they justified to the king by telling him that the Holy Office had been instituted for a limited term which had expired, so that it should be abolished in Catalonia and the cognizance of matters of faith be restored to the episcopal courts, all of which, we are told, gave his majesty much concern.[1141]

Mutual detestation did not diminish and, when the Córtes of 1626 were approaching, the inquisitors anxiously urged the Suprema to impress upon the king that the peace and preservation of Catalonia depended upon the maintenance of their temporal jurisdiction. The deputies, they said, were holding daily juntas and accumulating stores of documents from the archives, asserting that the time had expired for which the Inquisition was instituted, and if they accomplish their intention they will destroy it wholly. That they were really alarmed is visible in their asking the Suprema to secure some compromise. The Suprema duly represented the danger to Philip IV, who in reply gave assurance that no prejudicial change would be approved, for his unceasing desire was to promote the exaltation of the Inquisition. After the Córtes had assembled, the tribunal reported, June 27th, that they had drawn up a series of articles effectually disabling the jurisdiction of the Inquisition and that they declare that they will not vote a subsidio until the king shall have confirmed them. The articles deemed so obnoxious scarce amounted to more than the Concordia of Castile so long in force, save provisions that the inquisitors should be Catalans and should take an oath to obey the laws, and that disputes of jurisdiction should be settled by a junta consisting of an inquisitor, a judge of the Audiencia and the Bishop of Barcelona. Moderate as they were, Philip kept his promise and referred them, September 23d, to Diego de Guzman, Archbishop of Seville, acting head of the Suprema in the vacancy of the inquisitor-generalship, so that, on the adjournment of the Córtes, the whole matter remained suspended.[1142]

An attempt at compromise was made in what was known as the Concordia of Cardinal Zapata, arranged, December 24, 1630, between him as inquisitor-general and the Council of Aragon. This made no substantial change in the jurisdiction of the Inquisition but was directed chiefly to restraining the misuse of excommunication on the one side and the recourse to the Banch Reyal on the other, by providing that all disputed cases should be settled by competencias conducted according to the received form of procedure, under penalty for a first offence of five hundred ducats on the tribunal refusing, and suspension from office for a second. This left untouched the roots of trouble and accomplished little, in consequence, it is said, of the delays and evasions of the inquisitors, and frequent recourse continued to the Banch Reyal, especially by creditors.[1143]

CATALONIA

The Córtes of 1626 had not been dissolved and they met again in 1632 to conclude their unfinished business. As usual, the tribunal and the Suprema prepared for the struggle by earnest appeals to Philip, who responded with assurances of special care in all that concerned the Inquisition. The Suprema had the hardihood to tell him that the Concordia of 1512, on which the Catalans based their claims, had never been confirmed, but it was within the truth when it said that it had never been observed. It declared moreover that the articles framed by the Córtes would so prostrate the tribunal that it would have to cease its functions. A memorial by the secretary of the tribunal, Miguel Rodríguez, gives a deplorable account of the social condition of Catalonia, where the barons and gentlemen, the cities and church foundations, he says, possessed excessive powers and where the bishops were also barons. The hostility of the nobles and cities to the familiars was manifested by the daily murders committed on them and their children and the burning of their houses. But for the protection of the Inquisition they would be exterminated, for its jurisdiction was the only one respected. Fathers endured the murder of their sons, sons that of their fathers and wives that of their husbands, for fear of greater evils and, in addition to this, was the turbulent temper of the population. The viceroys had nominal power, but it was exercised only on the common folk and not on the powerful, whom no one dared to accuse or to bear witness against. All this busy preparation was superfluous; the Córtes were dissolved without gaining their object.[1144]

The Inquisition, as usual, had triumphed, but peace was impossible between the incompatible claims of rival jurisdictions. In 1637 the Suprema complained of the continuous series of troubles and of the disregard of the Concordia of Zapata. This time the offender was the viceroy, the powerful Duke of Cardona, who had imprisoned a familiar for carrying a pistol and refusing to surrender it, and had arrested two servants of the receiver, fining one and discharging the other. When the tribunal sent to him a priest bearing a monitorio with excommunication, he shut the priest up, incomunicado, in a room of the palace. Then he invited to dinner the fiscal of the tribunal and shut him up likewise. He ordered the inquisitor to withdraw the excommunication and, on his refusal, he pronounced sentence of banishment, posted four hundred men around the Inquisition and made ready a vessel to carry him to Majorca. The inquisitor assembled five bishops who declared that Cardona had incurred the excommunication of the bull Si de protegendis and the inquisitor so declared him, though for the avoidance of scandal he forbore to publish it. Under the intervention of the bishops the sentences of banishment and excommunication were mutually withdrawn, and the viceroy released the priest and fiscal, boasting that he had carried his point. Thereupon the Suprema asked the king to execute on Cardona the penalties of the Concordia of Zapata and greater ones in view of his unprecedented acts and also that the ipso facto censures of the canon Si quis suadente and the bull Si de protegendis be published in order that he might seek the salvation of his soul. To this the weary king could only reply by deprecating these unseemly quarrels and ordering that viceroys should not try the cases of familiars—Cardona apparently having undertaken to do this only because there was no other authority that ventured to do so, although the offence was one which forfeited the fuero.[1145] Soon after this, in 1639, a still more serious trouble broke out in Tortosa, in which the magistrates were involved and the people rose against the Inquisition, but while this was in progress the Catalan rebellion broke out and prudence counselled abstention from severe measures of repression.[1146]

Whatever share the Inquisition may have had in stimulating the disaffection that led to the rebellion, the unredressed grievances which so excited the Córtes nowhere appear on the surface. The proximate cause, as has been stated above, was the burning of the churches of Montiró and Rio de Arenas by the Neapolitan troops quartered on the people; some consecrated hosts were found reduced to coals and the peasants, who had suffered from the outrages of the unpaid soldiery, rose in arms, cut them off in detail, styled themselves the Exercit Christiá and bore on their banners the Venerable Sacrament, with the legend “Senor judicau vostra causa” and claimed that their object was to protect the people and defend the Catholic faith. In fact, the Inquisition was invited to prosecute the guilty authors of the sacrilege and undertook to do so, but of course the culprits could not be identified and it was reduced to excommunicating them in bulk. It was against the representatives of the king that the initial riots of June 7 and 8, 1640, were directed, when the judges of the royal Audiencia and the Viceroy, the Count of Santa Coloma, were murdered. The inquisitors at once proffered their services to the Diputados and, at the request of the latter, they wrote to the king and inquisitor-general praising the efforts of the Diputados to preserve peace, not knowing that for months they had been organizing the rebellion in correspondence with France. When too, in September, a tax was laid to put the land in a state of defence, the assent of the tribunal was asked as to levying it on familiars.[1147]

CATALONIA

There was thus no open hostility towards the Inquisition, but, at the same time, there was no respect for its inviolability. When the mob rose again on Christmas day, to put to death all Castilians, there was a report that two thousand of them were concealed in the Inquisition. Led by a coachman of one of the inquisitors, the people broke into the Inquisition, maltreated the officials, hanged some of them, emptied the money chests and found in the secret prison a solitary Castilian on trial for heresy. Him they carried to the town-council who returned him to the tribunal and garroted the coachman.[1148]

When, on January 23, 1641, terms of submission to France were concluded, the Inquisition was provided for. Having cut loose from Spain, it was impossible to permit the tribunal to remain subject to the Suprema in Madrid, and the clause respecting it was that all inquisitors and officials should be Catalans, jurisdiction should be restricted to matters of faith, and it should be directly under the Roman Congregation of the Holy Office.[1149] Still the inquisitors remained at their posts; for five months they had had no word from the Suprema; they expected to be called upon to take the oath of allegiance to King Louis and they sent their secretary, Juan de Eraso, to Madrid for instructions, suggesting that they had better move to Tarragona or Tortosa. Philip ordered them to remain and they resolutely obeyed, but the situation grew constantly worse and, on November 7th, they made another appeal, representing their danger, their destitution, their inability to perform their functions, and their expectation that they would be forced to kiss the hands of the Marshal de Brézé, the approaching French governor. This was confirmed by Don Antonio de Aragon, who had just returned from Barcelona; on two occasions the mob had set fire to the Inquisition and heresy was rampant, for many of the French troops were Calvinists and Calvinism was openly preached. The Suprema characteristically debated the question under four heads—Shall the Inquisition be removed to Tarragona or Tortosa? Shall the inquisitors kiss the hands of the French governor? Does their lack of means to prosecute relieve them from prosecuting native or French heretics? Shall testimony against such heretics be taken in Madrid and action be based on it? After elaborate discussion the fourth question was decided in the affirmative and the other three in the negative. Juan de Mañozca was appointed to gather testimony in Madrid, and the inquisitors were told to stand their ground and do their duty, using censures and interdict if necessary. If driven from the town, they were to carry with them the records so as to be able to work elsewhere.[1150]

One of the inquisitors, Dr. Cotoner, had left Barcelona for his home in Majorca. The other two, with most of the officials, stood to their post and, in August, 1643, they were called upon to utter fearful curses on unknown parties supposed to have committed a sacrilegious theft of consecrated hosts.[1151] Towards the end of September, however, they were expelled, to give place to a native tribunal, and it was done with a refinement of cruelty. There were ten in all—seven subordinates and the son of one of them, besides the two inquisitors—who had stood faithful to their duty. They were put on board a vessel, with orders to land them in Portugal, which, like Catalonia, was in revolt against Spain. Although the crew consisted of Catalans and Frenchmen, they were persuaded to put into Cartagena, with a promise of being allowed to sell their cargo there. The reception of the refugees was most inhospitable; the vessel was seized and the cargo and effects of passengers and crew were embargoed: much red tape had to be cut and it was not until December that the conclusion was reached that the crew had rendered an essential service exposing them to punishment by the rebels, wherefore the vessel was released and they were allowed to dispose of the cargo.[1152]

The refugees were without salaries or resources and it was not without difficulty and delay that the Suprema, professing its own inability to help them, secured from Philip some moderate ayudas de costa to keep them alive. Then, in March, 1644, it ordered them to open a tribunal at Tarragona, at the same time representing to the king that this would cost forty-five hundred ducats in silver for the first year, and four thousand annually thereafter, which might be supplied from the two millions of maravedís coming from the tribunal of Cartagena—apparently some recent large confiscation—as otherwise they would die of starvation. They were doubtless thus provided for and did what they could to restore the old-time dread of the Holy Office. It had sadly diminished in these evil days for, in this same year, 1644, in the neighboring town of Tortosa, Inquisitor Roig of Valencia complained that, on reaching there during his visitation, the magistrates did not come to receive him, they assigned him no lodgings and they refused to publish his proclamation.[1153]

CATALONIA

Meanwhile, in accordance with the terms arranged with France, the Catalans had organized a national Inquisition. Doctor Paulo Ferran and Doctor Joseph Pla were appointed and application was made for the usual papal faculties. These were granted and, when the briefs were received, September 26, 1643, they were installed and the Castilians were expelled. The new tribunal had not much to do. It did not meddle with the Calvinists in the French armies, but it vindicated its authority by an auto de fe, celebrated February 23, 1644, in which one victim was garroted and burnt and there were two penitents. There was another, November 7, 1647, in which there was an execution for unnatural crime and six men and five women penitents, mostly for bigamy and sorcery. The only other evidence of activity that I have met is an investigation ordered by Pla, at the request of the parish priest of Pineda, resulting in the trial of Anthoni Morell.[1154]

When the troubles of the Fronde compelled Mazarin to withdraw the French armies, the rebellion collapsed, in spite of the obstinate determination of the Catalans to sever relations with Castile. When Barcelona surrendered, October 11, 1652, Catalonia was left at the mercy of the conqueror, but Philip, with true statesmanship, restored it to its ancient privileges and liberties, save a few exceptions which have no bearing on our subject.[1155] Inquisitor Pla had lingered at Gerona, continuing his functions in virtue of his papal brief. He was found there by the Marquis of Olias y Mortara, who only ventured to suspend him and wrote to the king, October 12, 1652, for instructions, adding that the prompt re-establishment of the Inquisition would conduce greatly to the pacification of the land. The Council of Aragon, November 16th, approved of this and the next day Philip instructed the inquisitor-general to make the appointments and despatch the inquisitors at once.[1156] There were financial difficulties, however. January 18, 1653, the Suprema reported the appointments; the infection of heresy by the French promised much work, but there was an utter lack of money; the tribunal would cost six thousand ducats a year, while its resources were but two thousand, for the separation of Roussillon lost it a thousand and it had two thousand more in Barcelona loans which were incollectable; there was prospect however of large confiscations, for many Catalans had fled to France who would be prosecuted and, on the strength of this, the king was asked for four thousand a year.[1157] The adjustment of these questions probably required time, for it was not until August 2d that the new inquisitors took possession of their office, riding in state through the city, with drums and trumpets and the standard of the Holy Office, followed by all the familiars and officials of Barcelona, and making public proclamation in the customary places. The next day, Sunday, the Edict of Faith was read and on Monday they commenced their functions. Of the Catalan inquisitors, Pla died within a few days and Ferran was arrested at night as were many others, some of whom were sent to France and others were deported to Majorca. Apparently their official acts were not recognized, for familiars of their appointment continued for some years to apply for reinstatement.[1158]

CATALONIA

No sooner was the tribunal re-established than the old troubles recommenced. Abuses must have been flagrant to call forth from Philip, June 2, 1661, a cédula ordering the exact observance of the Concordias and restraining the excessive use of excommunication.[1159] The quarrels which arose were prolonged and complicated by every possible device. On February 15, 1664, Juan Matheu, actual receiver and acting alguazil mayor of the tribunal, was murdered. On most slender suspicion, the next day, it arrested Joseph Guimart and Joseph Massart; the Audiencia claimed the case and the tribunal refused to enter into a competencia until the Banch Reyal threatened the inquisitors with banishment. Then they averted the preliminary conference by questions of etiquette, repeatedly disregarding the orders of the Suprema, until the intervention of the queen-regent enforced obedience. The conference was at last held and the papers were transmitted to the Suprema and Council of Aragon to decide as to the jurisdiction. While this was pending, the inquisitors started another trouble. They had confined the prisoners in the secret prison as though guilty of heresy. This was a grievous hardship and the queen ordered them transferred to the common prison; the inquisitors reported that this had been done and then, on pretext of information as to a plot to escape, brought them back to the secret prison. When the Suprema heard of this it wrote in a tone of mingled anger and fear, lest it should be discovered by the Council of Aragon; the prisoners must be moved back again; the affair had become too important, the Council of Aragon had made too many efforts and the queen imputed it all to the Suprema as they would see by her enclosed order. Then the competencia was suspended by the escape of the prisoners, March 9, 1666, and the last we hear of the matter is their negotiation for a pardon, in 1668, on terms of which the viceroy advised the acceptance, in order to avoid decision of the competencia. It was doubtless so settled, for competing jurisdictions had brought the administration of justice into such shape that it was better to let criminal accusations remain untried than to decide between the rival claims.[1160]

These quarrels were not merely occasional but were continuous and perpetual. A letter of June 18, 1667, happens to mention that there were then four or five competencias delayed by the question whether in the conferences the royal judge should bring his own notary.[1161] Perverted ingenuity was constantly devising new points over which strife could be created. Prisoners on trial in the royal gaols were sometimes borrowed by the tribunal to be prosecuted for blasphemy or other trivial offence against the faith. In 1666 a case of this kind gave rise to a question as to the exact form of receipt to be given for the body of the culprit, when it was pushed to such a point that the Suprema ordered the excommunication of all the judges of the Audiencia, and the Council of Aragon complained to the queen-regent about the oppressive abuse of censures and asked her to provide that for the future the mutual obligations of the two tribunals should be equal and reciprocal.[1162]

CATALONIA

When the Inquisition took such pains to make itself detested, one is scarce surprised to learn, from a complaint of the Suprema in 1677, that in Barcelona it had so fallen in public esteem that it was able to procure but one familiar and that the alguazil mayor had asked to be relieved from carrying his wand of office, for no noble was willing to be seen walking with him when he bore it.[1163] This hostility it continued carefully to cultivate. In December, 1695, the Diputados and judges addressed to Carlos II a complaint of the multiplied excesses of the tribunal, which trampled on the laws and liberties of the land, causing such scandals that they could no longer be endured in silence. This had been especially the case since Bartolomé Antonio Sans y Muñoz had been inquisitor, whose methods can be appreciated by a single example. Captain-general Marquis of Gastañara, had imprisoned a Frenchman named Jaime Balle, on a matter of state, Spain being at the time at war with France, with strict orders to keep him incomunicado. Muñoz suddenly demanded an opportunity of taking testimony of him. Gastañara was absent and no one had authority to violate his instructions, but the regent of the royal chancery and the gaoler offered, if Muñoz would declare it to be a matter of faith, to endeavor to find some means of compliance. This assurance he refused to give, even verbally, and he threatened the regent with excommunication. The Audiencia invited him to a conference, which he refused and it then cited him before the Banch Reyal, with the customary warning of banishment and seizure of temporalities. Muñoz responded, December 29th, with a mandate to the regent ordering him, under pain of excommunication, to allow the deposition of the prisoner to be taken and he followed this, within an hour, with an excommunication published in all the pulpits and affixed to all the church-doors. The next day this was re-aggravated and the regent was publicly cursed with the awful anathema formulated for hardened and impenitent sinners. The Audiencia rejoined with the decree of banishment and seizure of temporalities, under the customary term of fifteen days. The tribunal answered this with a threat of interdict on the city; it convoked all the superiors of the religious Orders and arranged with the clergy for a great procession when it should take its departure. It kept its doors closed and even refused to receive the messengers of Gastañara, who had hastened back to Barcelona, but he delayed further action until he should communicate with Madrid and receive the royal orders. When they came, on January 11, 1696, he was at Montealegre, a couple of leagues from the city; they were sent to him by a special courier and he returned the next morning and made secret arrangements for their execution. At 2 P.M. he sent word to Muñoz that he wished to see him on the king’s service. At 4.30 P.M. Muñoz came, bringing the fiscal with him. A scrivener was introduced who read to him the king’s order, which he said he was ready to obey. Gastañara told him that he must start at once; a coach was at the door to which he was escorted with all honor; lackeys with flambeaux were ready and a guard of twenty-five musketeers. Gastañara gave him money and he was provided with all comforts, even to a courteous gentleman as a companion to enforce all proper respect for him. As he was leaving the palace, his violent temper burst forth in regrets that he had not been allowed time to cast the interdict on the city. He was driven to the embarcadero, placed on board a vessel that had been made ready and was conveyed to the nearest Valencian port. It is symptomatic of Spanish conditions that in war-time the captain-general was obliged to abandon all other duties and devote a day to kidnapping a troublesome priest, and this is emphasized by the fact that the inquisitor-general rewarded the conduct of Muñoz by appointing him to one of the most desirable tribunals of Spain.[1164] Possibly this affair may have influenced Carlos II in reissuing, in 1696, his father’s injunction of 1661 to observe the Concordias exactly and to be more sparing of excommunications.[1165]

Philip V was scarce seated on the throne when he found himself confronted with the eternal question of Catalan hostility towards the tribunal. A consulta of the Suprema, October 16, 1701, warns him that the inquisitors of Barcelona report that, in the Córtes about to assemble, efforts will be made to limit its usefulness and he is exhorted to follow the example of his predecessors.[1166] Whatever was done was of little consequence for, in the war which broke out soon afterwards, Catalonia enthusiastically acknowledged the Archduke Charles as Carlos III and became the stronghold of the Austrian party. The situation of the rebellion of 1640-52 was duplicated. The tribunal was withdrawn, but seems to have been replaced by a local organization, for an article of the Córtes of 1706, duly approved by the Austrian Carlos, regulating the insaculacion for public office, recognizes its certificates respecting its officials.[1167] Of course it could exercise no jurisdiction over the heretic English allies; it has left no traces of its activity and was replaced by a revival of the episcopal cognizance of heresy. As to places beyond the control of the Austrian party, a provision of the Suprema, March 16, 1706, extended the jurisdiction of the Saragossa tribunal over all that should be recovered from the enemy until such time as the Inquisition of Barcelona should be re-established.[1168] The desperate resistance of the Catalans postponed this until 1715, and when the tribunal was reinstated it found in the secret prison two captives, Juan Castillo a bigamist and Mariana Costa accused of sorcery, both of them confined by order of the vicar-general of the diocese.[1169] As all the liberties and privileges of Catalonia were abolished by the conquerors, its subsequent relations with the Inquisition offer no special characteristics.

MAJORCA-CASTILE

Majorca had no Concordia and its tribunal was free to claim what extent of jurisdiction it saw fit, limited only by the resistance of the civil authorities, which, as we have seen, was energetically expressed at an early period. As defined by Portocarrero, in 1623, in practice it asserted complete jurisdiction, active and passive, in civil and criminal cases, over its salaried and commissioned officials and their families; over familiars, in criminal matters, active and passive; in civil, passive only, with exclusion of their families.[1170] The occasion of his book was a violent struggle between the viceroy and the tribunal, which presents the ordinary features of these contests for supremacy between rival departments of the government. In a search for arms in the house of Juan Zuñez, receiver of confiscations, some were found. The viceroy at once arrested him, sentenced him to leave the island within twenty-four hours and shipped him away. The inquisitor promptly excommunicated the viceroy; the royal fiscal appealed; the viceroy and royal judges summoned the inquisitor to a conference preparatory to a competencia or to appear in the Banch Reyal and defend his proceedings. On his refusal the Banch Reyal pronounced sentence of banishment and seizure of temporalities, which was published with sound of drum and trumpet. They also issued an edict declaring the censures null and void and ordering the clergy to disregard them; they refused to consider themselves excommunicated, they attended mass and apparently had the support of the people and clergy, for no attention was paid to the interdict cast on the city by the inquisitor.[1171] What was the final result does not appear, nor does it much matter; the significance in these affairs is the spectacle presented to the people of lawless collisions between the representatives and exponents of the law.

In Majorca the most impressive cases of this kind occurred between the Inquisition and the ecclesiastical courts and will be considered hereafter. It suffices here to say that broils with the secular authorities were constant and contributed their share to occupy and distract the attention of the central government. It would be superfluous to enumerate those of which the details have chanced to reach us; they would merely prove that, considering their small size and scanty population, the Balearic Isles were not behind their continental sisters of Aragon in adding to the perplexities of the monarchy.

This somewhat prolonged recital of the struggles of the kingdoms of the Crown of Aragon gives an opportunity of realizing the stubborn resistance, to the arrogant pretensions of the Inquisition, of provinces which still retained institutions through which public opinion could assert itself. The people of the kingdoms of Castile had been reduced to submission under the absolutism of the House of Austria and, though they might at times complain, they could make no effective efforts to ameliorate their position. When, in 1579 and again in 1583, the Córtes of Castile complained of the arrest and immurement in the secret prisons of individuals in every quarrel with an official of the Inquisition, to the permanent disgrace of families, Philip II merely replied that he would make inquiry and take such action as was fitting.[1172] The only resource was to raise contests in individual cases and these were frequent enough and violent enough to prove that there was the same spirit of opposition to inquisitorial encroachment and the same pervading discontent with the abuses flourishing so rankly under inquisitorial protection. Instances of this could be cited almost without limit, but one or two will suffice as examples of the multiform aspect of these quarrels and the temper in which they were fought over. It should be borne in mind that, in these struggles as in those of Aragon, 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 a crime without incurring irregularity. This was clear and peremptory enough, but, in place of obeying it, Arce y Reynoso replied, May 4, 1645, that this would be a great and unheard of violation of the rights of the Holy Office. The woman was not dead but was in Valencia, where the tribunal was busily collecting evidence; to hand Muñoz over to the secular judges for trial and execution would incur the same irregularity as sentencing him; the case would be tried by the Suprema, which had a wide range of suitable penalties that did not infer irregularity; meanwhile Muñoz would be safely guarded and he trusted that the king would not set so pernicious an example.

When Philip rejected this appeal and repeated his order, a learned and elaborate argument was prepared to show that he had no power to interfere. It took the ground, to which we have already referred, that the temporal jurisdiction of the Inquisition over its officials was a grant from the papacy; it was exclusive and unlimited and no secular ruler could deprive the Holy Office of it; the pope had power to make this grant and the king had none to remove this or any other case from its cognizance, for he was not supreme over the ecclesiastical and papal jurisdiction—the truth being that the papal commissions to the inquisitor-general conferred power to remove and punish subordinates but said nothing as to its being exclusive, and equally fallacious was the citation of three authorities whose utterances had no bearing on the question at issue.[1178] This audacious reliance on the ignorance of Philip and his secular advisers was successful. Philip made one or two efforts more, but Arce y Reynoso held good. A memorial, in 1648, on the general subject, from a member of the Council of Castile, tells the king that his repeated commands in the case of Muñoz had been disobeyed and that, although the criminal had so long been in the hands of the inquisitors, he had not yet been sentenced, which he held to be clear proof that their aim was to defend their officials from the royal justice and not to punish them.[1179]

CASTILE

How liberal was the construction placed on this term of titular official was illustrated when, in 1622, at Toledo, the corregidor arrested the butcher of the tribunal for intolerable frauds on the public. The inquisitor demanded the prisoner and the papers, published the corregidor in all the churches as excommunicate, seized the alguazil and apparitor who had made the arrest, cast them into the secret prison, tried them as if for heresy, shaved their heads and beards and banished them and refused to their families any evidence that would preserve their posterity from infamy. There was danger of a rising in Toledo against the Inquisition, but it was averted; the Council of Castile protested and a junta was held which adopted measures to prevent a repetition of such outrages but, as usual, no attention was paid to them.[1180]

It would be superfluous to multiply examples of the perennial struggle which was distracting the energies of the government and weakening the respect for law in every quarter of Spain. Each tribunal contributed its share, and there was an unending stream of cases pouring into Madrid for settlement. Each side blamed the other for this anomalous condition. In 1632, the Suprema, in defending the tribunal of Valencia for its protection of criminal familiars, bitterly complained that the object of the Concordias was the relief of the tribunals, the punishment of offenders, the quick despatch of cases, and the diminished oppression of pleaders, but that this had been converted into perpetual strife, regardless of forms and rules of procedure.[1181] For this it was itself primarily to blame, for though there were doubtless faults on both sides, the cases recorded in the reports and the arguments of the Inquisition show that it was the chief offender. Its aggressive powers were too much greater than those of its adversaries, and its methods were too sharp, for the secular authorities often to risk the consequences of being in the wrong.

THE SPIRITUAL COURTS

There was another direction in which the Holy Office sought to interfere with the administration of justice. So complete is the independence of secular authority claimed by the Church for those in holy orders, that a licence from a bishop is held to be necessary before a cleric can obey a summons to appear as a witness in a lay court, even in civil cases.[1182] The Inquisition included this among the exemptions of all connected with it, whether lay or clerical, and even extended it to familiars. The privilege seems generally to have been conceded, as respects the salaried officials but, as applied to familiars, it was too grotesque not to excite opposition. The Concordia of 1568, as we have seen, provided that familiars should testify before secular judges without requiring licence from inquisitors and that the latter should not prohibit them from so doing, which infers that it was an abuse requiring correction and also that officials were conceded to enjoy the exemption. The power to summon a witness necessarily includes that of coercing him to testify, and this was exercised by imprisoning recalcitrants, which came to be regarded as an infraction of privilege. In 1649, in the case of Claudio Bolano, a familiar imprisoned for refusing to give evidence, the tribunal of Valencia formed a competencia, pending which he was released under bail to both jurisdictions. The question was of difficult solution and the competencia dragged on for ten years without settlement. Then, in 1659, the same thing occurred and another competencia was formed, in which the most that the Inquisition would concede was that, when the evidence was indispensable, a notary should be sent to the familiar’s house to take it in secret, basing this upon the danger to which witnesses were exposed in the violent factions of the time.[1183] The question, however, was settled, in 1699, in the case of Felipe Bru. At Játiva, on August 14, 1698, Don Luis Salzedo, Lord of Pamis, was shot and killed when standing at a window of his house. Don Vicente Monserrat, judge of the Audiencia of Valencia, found Bru, who was a familiar, a contumacious witness. He was first given the town as a prison, then his house, and finally was confined in chains. He appealed to the tribunal, which ordered his release within three days, under pain of excommunication and five hundred ducats. A competencia was formed which, in November, 1699, was decided in favor of the royal jurisdiction. It was probably in consequence of this discussion that, on July 15th, a royal decree was issued compelling familiars to give evidence in secular courts. Even this did not abate the pretensions of the Inquisition for when, in 1702, Joseph Pérez of Montesa, a familiar, was ordered, under penalty of a thousand ducats, not to leave that town because a deposition was wanted from him, he appealed to the tribunal of Valencia which, with the usual threats, commanded the revocation of the order. On this being refused, Pérez went to Valencia and had himself incarcerated in the secret prison, where he was inaccessible. The Audiencia pursued the matter, there was considerable correspondence and preparations for a competencia, but finally the affair was settled by sending Pérez to the house of the regent of the Audiencia, where he made his deposition. To the end, however, the tribunal maintained the position that, if any constraint was used, it would resist and protect the familiar unless a competencia decided to the contrary.[1184]

It was not the secular courts alone that had these perpetual conflicts with the Inquisition. Like Ishmael, its hand was against every man and every man’s hand was against it—but, in fact, this was to a great extent the case between all the different jurisdictions among which the various classes of society were parcelled out by their several privileges and exemptions. Next to the royal courts ranked the spiritual courts in the number and complexity of debatable questions with the Inquisition. With these there were two sources of contention, for they not only claimed by prescriptive right exclusive jurisdiction in all temporal matters over all who wore the tonsure, but there was a broad field for discussion in the somewhat hazy delimitation of spiritual offences justiciable by one or the other. This latter subject will engage our attention hereafter; at present we are concerned only with the questions arising from the personnel of the Holy Office. Notoriously lax as were the episcopal courts with offenders of the cloth, the Inquisition had the reputation of still greater indulgence with those who were under its protection; clerics who were also officials therefore preferred its tribunals, giving rise to frequent quarrels in which the inquisitors treated their clerical opponents as remorselessly as they did the secular officials and judges. The episcopal Ordinaries, provisors and vicars-general contended that they had, except in cases of faith, exclusive jurisdiction over all clerics; that the temporal jurisdiction of the Inquisition was a royal grant which could not supersede the canon law and that the papal commissions only gave faculties for punishing official malfeasance. To this unanswerable argument the inquisitors paid little heed and the prelates were worse off than the judges for these at least had the Councils of Castile or Aragon to struggle for them, but the Councils admitted that they had no standing in ecclesiastical quarrels. The natural recourse of the prelates for protection was to Rome, but this was a subject of intense jealousy, traditional in the Spanish monarchy, and Philip III, in a cédula of January 21, 1611, addressed to all the prelates of his dominions, told them that they must appeal only to the Suprema and forbade them to carry any case to the Holy See.[1185]

THE SPIRITUAL COURTS

There could thus be no competencia; the conflicts between the two jurisdictions were one-sided and were conducted by the tribunals with the same overbearing arrogance as that displayed towards secular magistrates. The first summons on the provisor or vicar-general inhibited him, under pain of excommunication and a heavy fine, from further action, ordering him, within twenty-four hours, to remit the case to the Inquisition and to discharge the prisoner under bail to present himself before the tribunal, while the notary was required to surrender all the papers. If this was not obeyed, it was followed by another, commanding obedience within six hours, in default of which all beneficed priests were required, under similar penalties, to publish the provisor and notary as excommunicates and to place their names on the lists as such. A circular letter was also addressed to all priests, chaplains and sacristans of the district, to admonish all persons, within six hours and under pain of excommunication, to avoid the provisor and notary, to make no pleadings before them, to hold no communication with them and not to furnish them with bread or wine, fish or flesh, while a public edict to the same effect was issued to all the people. In case of continued obduracy, these measures were promptly followed by an edict to all the clergy, ordering them to anathematize the provisor and notary with tolling bells and extinguished candles, proclaiming them accursed of God and his saints—“accursed be the bread that they eat and the bed on which they sleep and the beasts on which they ride, and may their souls perish in hell like the candles in the water: let them be comprehended in the sentence of Sodom and Gomorrha and of Dathan and Abiram, whom the earth swallowed for disobedience, and may all the curses of Psalm Deus laudem meam (Ps. CVIII, a fearful commination) light on them!” If this did not suffice within twenty-four hours, an interdict followed, tolling bells and performing divine service in low tone with locked doors, until otherwise ordered. In case this failed, the last step was a cessatio a divinis, or cessation of church services in the city where the offenders lived, in order to coerce them with popular clamor.[1186] It was difficult for either lay or clerical officials to contend with opponents who wielded such weapons as these.

The irresponsible exercise of such powers inevitably led to their abuse. In the Concordia of 1568 it is highly suggestive to find a clause forbidding inquisitors to issue, as they have been accustomed, to familiars and officials, general inhibitions protecting them from the ecclesiastical courts; such inhibitions are to be special and issued only in each case as it may occur. Equally significant is another which says that in no case belonging by law to the provisor shall the inquisitor intervene against his will.[1187] The strained relations resulting between the ecclesiastical body and the Holy Office are alluded to in the project of reform, presented to the Suprema in 1623, which says that the clerical commissioners and their notaries bring about many conflicts with the ecclesiastical judges and, as there are no Concordias, the inquisitors are wont to arrogate to themselves greater jurisdiction than belongs to them, which causes much murmuring and resentment of the prelates and clergy. The writer piously wishes that this could be avoided, but he evidently has no remedy to propose.[1188]

A conflict caused by one of these local notaries in 1609 amply justified the murmurs of the prelates. The priest of Cabra, who occupied the almost nominal position of local notary, was a notorious incestuous concubinarian, who had not for eight years celebrated mass or recited prayers. The provisor of Córdova commenced a prosecution and threw him into the episcopal gaol, when he claimed the fuero of the Inquisition. The provisor had been on friendly terms with the three inquisitors and sought an amicable settlement of the matter when, by a trick, they obtained possession of the papers and inhibited him from further proceedings. He appealed to the Suprema and was excommunicated. Four times the Suprema ordered the inquisitors to abandon the case and remove the censure, but they persistently disobeyed. All the officials of the episcopal court were ordered to hold no communication with him, which threw the whole business of the diocese into confusion, for the bishop was absent and the provisor was his representative. The culprit escaped from the episcopal gaol and was harbored by the tribunal. Passion was becoming acute; a band of familiars and officials broke into the episcopal palace and endeavored to carry off the provisor, but he was rescued by the canons in a dilapidated condition and took to his bed. Then the inquisitors pronounced the magic word—a matter of faith—which brought to their aid the corregidor and municipal authorities, who came with a troop of soldiers and carried him off on his bed, to the sound of drums and trumpets. He was taken to the Inquisition and confined for two months in a small cell, tried without opportunity for defence and sentenced to forfeit his office of provisor, to four years of banishment and other penalties, and copies of the sentence were circulated throughout the city. The bishop had sought to come to his rescue by excommunicating the inquisitors; they disregarded the censures, threatened to prosecute him if he did not remove them and did prosecute some of the canons as conspiring against the Inquisition, because they had been elected by the chapter to aid the bishop in defending the provisor.[1189]

THE SPIRITUAL COURTS

Such a sentence against a church dignitary of high rank required confirmation by the Suprema, which must have been given, for appeal was made to Philip III. He rendered some satisfaction by dismissing and banishing all secular officials who had been concerned in the arrest and wounding of the provisor, but the inquisitors, whose mere tools they had been, were left undisturbed.[1190] Yet it was impossible that an affair which had aroused the attention of all Spain should pass without an attempt to prevent the recurrence of such scandals. There had been a threat, and possibly more than a threat, to appeal to Rome in defence of the bishop and clergy of Córdova, which led to the cédula of January 21, 1611, alluded to above, restricting their recourse to the Suprema. In urging this the Suprema, in a consulta of November 15, 1610, admitted that these troubles arose from the aggressions of the tribunals and their unnecessary multiplication of nominal officials; it had recently issued three cartas acordadas on the subject and had written to all the bishops asking reports of such excesses so as to remedy them. Philip in reply authorized the Suprema to draft such a cédula as it desired but ordered it to be so framed as not to encourage the inquisitors, who were every day intervening in matters beyond their competence for the purpose of extending their jurisdiction; it was this that gave rise to these troubles, nor would they cease till the cause was removed.[1191]

Thus it was admitted on all hands that the fault lay with the tribunals, yet the wrong committed by that of Córdova remained unredressed and unpunished. Philip permitted himself, in spite of his better judgement, to be persuaded to cut off all recourse to the court of last resort in Rome, and some nominal relief must be offered to the oppressed churches and prelates. The memorial from Córdova had concluded with a prayer for some law to prevent these discords and to maintain the episcopal jurisdiction over the clergy, as the king had promised in a letter transmitted through the Council of Castile. The promise was kept after a fashion, though not until after a delay which shows how prolonged was the resistance encountered. In a carta acordada of November 28, 1612, the tribunals were informed that in order that the ministers of the Inquisition may not sin through confidence of impunity, and to prevent the conflicts which disturb the peace, the Suprema has resolved that in the cases of unsalaried clerical officials, the episcopal ordinaries shall have exclusive jurisdiction over offences relating to clerical duties and offices, to simony and spiritual matters, while inquisitors shall have cumulative jurisdiction with the ordinaries, depending on priority of action, in public and scandalous offences, such as incontinence, usury, gambling and the like.[1192] This remained in force nominally at least, until the last, but the allusion to the perpetual troubles arising from this source, in the project presented to the Suprema in 1623, shows how futile it was in curbing the aggressions of the tribunals.

Throughout Peninsular Spain the episcopal jurisdiction was thus left defenceless to the encroachments of the Inquisition, but the Church of Majorca was fortunate in obtaining the protection of Rome, leading to a series of conflicts, waged on less unequal terms, which are worth consideration as revealing a peculiar phase in these affairs. There was a long-standing quarrel between the cathedral canons and the Inquisition. In 1600, one of the former, Pere Enseñat, assisted in the escape of a man who had wounded a familiar, whereupon the inquisitor, Francisco de Esquinel, threw him in prison and made him give bail in three hundred ducats. In 1605, another canon, Francisco Sanceloni, had a verbal altercation with Bernardo Luis Cotoner, advocate of prisoners, for which Esquinel imprisoned him, tried him and condemned him in the costs, with his past incarceration as a punishment. The indignant canons addressed a strong remonstrance to the Suprema. They had an old privilege, confirmed by the Council of Trent (Sess. XXV, De Reform. cap. 6) that they could be arrested only by the Ordinary sitting in judgement with two of their number; in matters of faith they admitted subjection to the Holy Office, but they claimed exemption in civil and criminal cases. The number of familiars and officials, and their petulance arising from the protection of the tribunal, rendered it impossible to be always incurring the expense and dangers of appeals to Rome for the preservation of their privileges. This was ineffective and, in the course of another outbreak in 1630, there was a correspondence between the Congregation of the Roman Inquisition and the nuncio at Madrid respecting an appeal from the canons. In this the nuncio reported that he had applied to Inquisitor-general Zapata, who promised to instruct the inquisitor not to molest the canons.[1193]

THE SPIRITUAL COURTS

If he did so, he was disobeyed as usual and, in 1636, a canon named Domenge was involved in a civil suit before the tribunal, resulting in a judgement against him of five thousand reales, the execution of which he resisted by force. This brought on him a prosecution, in spite of protests interjected by the bishop and chapter, which was carried on appeal to the Suprema, where he was condemned in seven hundred reales which he paid. Meanwhile, notwithstanding the cédula of 1611, the bishop and chapter had applied to Rome for a brief declaring that the canons were subject to the Inquisition only in matters of faith. The question was exhaustively discussed, in the Congregation of the Holy Office, with Luis de los Infantes, the Roman agent of the Inquisition. The conclusion reached was that the Majorca tribunal had no jurisdiction over the canons save in matters of faith and this was duly embodied in the brief Cum sicut dilecti, March 31, 1642, which is preserved in the Bullarium. It names the bishop and dean or treasurer as executors, with power to inflict censures and to invoke if necessary the aid of the secular arm. It was received in Majorca with general rejoicing; it was printed and circulated and a syndicate was formed by the clergy to obtain, without regard to expense, a similar one for the whole ecclesiastical body, an effort which was successful in the following September.

The brief was duly served on the inquisitor, who refused to recognize it as not having been transmitted through the Suprema; besides he asserted that it was surreptitious and obreptitious as having been granted without a hearing of the other side and moreover it was in derogation of the bull Si de protegendis. In a consulta of December 11th, the Suprema represented energetically to Philip IV the manner in which his predecessors had compelled the surrender of papal letters adverse to the Inquisition; it asked him to have the present one suppressed and to instruct the prelates that all cases of difference must be referred to it, that no recourse be had to Rome, under the penalties decreed by Ferdinand, that the Viceroy of Majorca be required to compel the chapter to desist and that the ambassador to Rome be instructed to obtain the revocation of the obnoxious letters.

Unluckily for the Suprema the times were unpropitious. Majorca was too near to rebellious Catalonia for the imperious methods of the Holy Office to be judicious. Philip replied that the revival of Ferdinand’s laws would cause trouble and the remedy sought must be practicable. The inquisitor of Majorca had been guilty of gross excesses and must be ordered to exercise moderation, and he suggested a junta of members of the Suprema and Council of Aragon to devise a Concordia. Whether such compromise was reached does not appear; if it was, subsequent events show that it was not observed by either side and no reference to it occurs. The papal briefs were maintained and ten years later, after the collapse of the Catalan rebellion, instructions of April 23, 1652, to an ambassador departing for Rome, order him to labor for their revocation; their evil example was contagious; the Knights of St. John in Majorca were seeking to obtain a similar favor through the Maltese ambassador, which must be resisted in every way, for it would be followed by all the other Orders.[1194]

The Suprema continued to treat the papal briefs as surreptitious and, in 1658, Arce y Reynoso enjoyed a momentary triumph in a contest by summoning the vicar-general to Madrid and forcing him to come.[1195] Under the feebler government of the queen-regent, his successor Nithard was not so fortunate, in a fierce quarrel which involved the whole island in confusion and embroiled the rival departments of the government. May 9, 1667, on a feast-day, in the church of San Francisco, Don Jorje Dameto struck his son-in-law, Don Joseph Vallejo, with a crutch, causing effusion of blood and thus polluting the church. Both gentlemen were familiars. The inquisitor, before noon-day, ordered the arrest of both; in the afternoon Bishop Manjarre cited Dameto to appear for sacrilege and violation of the church. The rival jurisdictions locked horns and proceeded to extremities. The viceroy and Audiencia, with the bulk of the community, sided with the bishop, but disturbances were commencing and they repeatedly urged postponement of action until the government could be heard from, but the inquisitor refused. The bishop published him as excommunicate, anathematized him and caused the psalm of malediction to be repeatedly sung against him, but the inquisitor continued to celebrate mass, exhibited himself conspicuously in public, forbade the bishop entrance into his own church and threatened to suspend his sacerdotal functions. On August 29th the bishop assembled a synod where arrangements were made to send an envoy to Rome to prosecute the case, with a printed statement of all the proceedings, a copy of which was furnished to the Council of Aragon.

THE SPIRITUAL COURTS

From Madrid, Nithard imperiously summoned the bishop to appear before him and plead his case. Under the canon law, the Inquisition had no jurisdiction over bishops, without a special delegation of papal faculties, and Manjarre was justified in declaring the summons null and void. Although, as an ecclesiastical question, the Council of Aragon had no direct competence, still as the peace of Majorca was seriously threatened and the viceroy was involved, it took a hand in the matter and thus were presented the gravest questions with regard to the relations of the Inquisition with the episcopate, with the Holy See, and with the secular authorities.

Secure in the blind obedience of the queen, Nithard adopted the most aggressive attitude, and the queen submissively did whatever he required, for he assured her that the case was the most serious that had arisen since the foundation of the Inquisition and that, on its rightful decision, depended the preservation or extinction, not alone of the Majorca tribunal, but of all those under the crown of Aragon. To emphasize this he summoned the bishop to appear before him, personally or by procurator, within a term designated, in default of which he would be prosecuted in contumacia. To this the queen, in October, added her commands to the Council of Aragon; as the preservation of the Catholic faith required the maintenance of the authority of the Inquisition, the Council was ordered to write to the bishop to comply with the summons, and to the viceroy to assist the tribunal if necessary; the bishop must not appeal to Rome and if he had done so the letters must be intercepted and placed in her hands.

The Council of Aragon did not obey. It held the matter until January 21, 1668, when it presented a consulta warning the queen of the consequences of her action and pointing out that the pope was the sole judge of bishops in important cases, as were provincial synods in trivial matters. Nithard, however, was superior to the Council of Trent, and the Suprema commenced a criminal prosecution of Bishop Manjarre, while, on February 5th, an answer was prepared for the Council of Aragon, couched in a tone of bitterness and scarcely veiled contempt, which showed how fierce were the passions at work. The queen was assured that her action was in accordance with all previous royal provisions and she was asked to order the Council of Aragon to obey and not to interfere hereafter with ecclesiastical controversies. Before this missive was delivered, however, news came from Majorca that the culprit Dameto had withdrawn his appeal to the tribunal and had applied for absolution to the bishop, who considered the whole matter as settled. This was a staggering blow from which it took Nithard a month to recover, but finally he sent the consulta of February 5th with a postscript of March 12th, arguing that a subject cannot impair his judge’s jurisdiction by accepting another and consequently that the situation was unaltered.

The queen of course adopted this view and repeated her orders, but again the Council disobeyed her and presented, March 18th, a consulta adjuring her in solemn terms to reflect calmly, for she was making the inquisitor-general a judge of all the bishops in her dominions, not only as to conflicts of jurisdiction but also as to criminal accusations, without his holding faculties from the pope, while, at the same time, she was forbidding appeals to the Holy See which was the only proper judge. She was warned that it was impossible to exaggerate the importance of the questions at issue and she was implored, before making so momentous a decision, to consult the Councils of Castile, Italy and the Indies, for the interests of the whole monarchy were involved as well as the supreme power of the pope. To this her reply was merely a repetition of her former orders and a demand for a duplicate of the letters of the Council to the Viceroy. For the third time it disobeyed her and sent none and there are intimations that it was engaged in arousing the whole Spanish episcopate to a sense of the impending danger.

Then the affair suddenly assumed another phase. On March 7th the queen had written to her ambassador in Rome to procure the abstention of the pope from the matter, but, on that very day, the Congregation of the Inquisition, with the approval of the pope, had pronounced invalid the censures fulminated by the inquisitor. It was late in May before this was communicated to the queen by the nuncio, who said that the pope had recognized the gravity of the assault by an inquisitor on the episcopal dignity and the magnitude of the ensuing scandal, and had caused the whole subject to be carefully considered by the Congregation with the above result. The pope had felt deeply, not only the indignity offered to the episcopal office, but also that the fiscal of the Inquisition had applied to the queen to summon the bishop before it, solely on the ground of his having appealed to the Holy See. In the name of the pope the nuncio therefore asked the queen to order inquisitors not to proceed against bishops and to reject the application of the fiscal.

THE SPIRITUAL COURTS

Even this did not shake the determination of Nithard to reduce the episcopate to subjection. A long and argumentative consulta was presented to the queen, proving that the papal decision was surreptitious and therefore invalid, and that anyhow the decrees of the Roman Inquisition had no currency in Spain. The old prohibitions of appeals to Rome were invoked and the queen was told that one of the most precious jewels of the Spanish crown was at stake, for, unless the regalías were preserved, the Inquisition must disappear, delinquents would be unpunished, religion would suffer and, with the loss of its unity, there would no longer be obedience to the throne. The queen was therefore urged to stand firm; the prosecution of the bishop must not be suspended and the Council of Aragon must be forced to obey the royal commands.

Nithard was ready to risk an open breach with the Holy See in his audacious ambition to render the Inquisition supreme in the Spanish Church. How far the queen would have suffered herself to be carried in the execution of his plans cannot be told, as the documents fail us here. His career, however, was drawing to a close. In February, 1669, he was driven from Spain amid universal execration, yet the prosecution of Bishop Manjarre was not abandoned, for the Inquisition was not accustomed openly to admit defeat. It dragged until his death, December 26, 1670, when it was quietly dropped.[1196]

Practically the intervention of Rome gave the victory to the Mallorquins, of which they took advantage. In 1671 there arose another quarrel over a fine incurred by a canon who was also a consultor of the tribunal. Both sides exchanged excommunications and Inquisitor-general Valladares, profiting by his predecessor’s experience, showed moderation. On the plea that it was a matter of government rather than of jurisdiction, the Suprema ordered the tribunal to abandon the case and remove the censures imposed on the canons, but the latter were not content with this and procured from the Roman Holy Office a decree declaring invalid the censures of the inquisitors and valid those of the executors of the brief. The Council of Aragon communicated this to the queen who submissively signed a letter, January 25, 1672, to the chapter, expressing her confidence that in its use they would pay fitting attention to the peace and advantage of the Church.[1197]

The Inquisition was not accustomed to defeat and it chafed under this, as was shown when, in 1690, a quarrel arose because a priest of Minorca, named Juan Bruells, used insulting words to the commissioner, Rafael Pons. For this he was prosecuted and the case threw all the islands into confusion. The viceroy, the Audiencia and the clergy all united against the Inquisition. The Ordinary of Minorca, as executor of the brief of 1642, forcibly released Bruells, forbade the inquisitor to proceed and, on his disobeying, excommunicated him. About this time the Mallorquin tribunal had claims to consideration arising from its vigorous proceedings against Judaizers and the large resultant confiscations. The Suprema espoused its cause with the usual energy and, in repeated consultas to Carlos III, denounced the papal briefs as surreptitious and invalid, full of defects and nullities. The feeble king issued repeated commands for the prosecution of Bruells and the surrender of the briefs, but no one paid attention to them. The Mallorquin clergy procured from the Congregation of the Inquisition a decree validating the censures pronounced by the Ordinary and annulling those of the inquisitor; the pope confirmed this but subsequently suspended it at the earnest solicitation of the Spanish ambassador, at the same time ordering his nuncio to make the king understand that the Congregation had supreme power to decide all questions of jurisdiction. The affair did not result to the satisfaction of the Inquisition for the last we hear of it is a bitter complaint by the Suprema, March 11, 1693, of the contumacious Mallorquins and the miserable condition to which they had reduced the Inquisition. In Minorca, the clergy and their dependents were so hostile that Pons could not find a church in which to celebrate mass, while the officials were shunned as excommunicated heretics.[1198]

MILITARY ORDERS

Another jurisdiction with which there were occasional quarrels was that of the army, for soldiers were exempt from the secular courts. In such competencias settlements were made by a junta of two members each of the Suprema and the Council of War, with final reference to the king in case of disagreement. I have happened to meet with but few cases of this and they seem never to have attained the importance of those with the secular and ecclesiastical courts. One occurred in 1629, arising from disputes with the garrison that had occupied the Aljafería since the troubles of 1591. A somewhat curious case was that of Don Fernando Antonio Herrera Calderon, of Santander, who was alguazil and familiar and who resigned, in 1641, from his military company, although warned that, by so doing during hostilities, he would be tried by the Council of War. It naturally claimed him and the Suprema endeavored to protect him.[1199] It would seem that, towards the end of the eighteenth century, the exemption of the military was causing special troubles, for a royal cédula of February 9, 1793, declares that, to put an end to them, in future the military judges shall have exclusive cognizance of all cases, civil and criminal, in which soldiers are defendants, except inheritances, and that no tribunal or judge of any kind shall form a competencia concerning them under any pretext.[1200]

There was yet another independent jurisdiction with which the Inquisition occasionally came into collision. In Spain the Military Orders formed so important a body that, among the State Councils, there was one of Orders, which had exclusive jurisdiction over their members. It will be recalled that one of Ferdinand’s most efficient measures to ensure the peace of the kingdom was to obtain the perpetual administration of those of Santiago, Calatrava and Alcántara, while the queen assumed that of Montesa. Yet he was not disposed to favor their claims of exemption in temporal matters from the jurisdiction of the Inquisition. A letter of September 15, 1515, to the tribunal of Jaen, says that certain confiscations involve property held by knights of the three Orders who may claim exemption and refuse to plead before the judge of confiscations; if so they are not to be listened to and, if necessary, are to be prosecuted with the full rigor of the law.[1201]

In civil and criminal matters the members of the Orders asserted exemption from the jurisdiction of the Inquisition, leading to disputes more or less acrimonious. In 1609, at Córdova, Don Diego de Argoté, a Knight of Santiago, with levelled pistol, prevented the arrest of one of his servants by officials of the tribunal. A competencia resulted which, when carried up to Philip III, was decided by him in favor of the Council of Orders. To this the Suprema replied in a consulta, fortelling the entire destruction of the Inquisition in case the decision was allowed to stand and so worked on Philip that he reversed his decree and allowed the Suprema to prosecute the culprit.[1202] The complication caused by these class privileges is illustrated in the case alluded to above, occurring in 1648, at Cuenca, of Muñoz de Castilblanque for the murder of the priest Jacinto. He was a Knight of Calatrava which led to an additional competencia, when the junta could not agree and the king had to decide.[1203]

In their contests with the Orders, the tribunals were apt to exhibit the same unscrupulous spirit as in those with other contestants. In Majorca Doctor Ramon Sureda, canon, chancellor and judge of competencias, was likewise conservator of the Military Orders. In 1657 he complained that, in conflicts of jurisdiction, the inquisitor would not form competencias with him in order that the papers might take the regular course of transmission for settlement by the Suprema and Council of Orders. The king and queen therefore, as administrators of the Orders, instructed him in such case to send to the inquisitor three successive messages and report them and their replies to the Council; if, in spite of this, the tribunal continued to prosecute the case, he was to proceed against the inquisitor and the viceroy was to render him all proper support. The inquisitor ingeniously evaded this in the case of Gaspar Puygdorfilio, a Knight of Santiago, in 1661, by refusing to receive any messages, saying that he received them only from the viceroy. Sureda’s report of this was left unnoticed and the inquisitor adopted the same device, in 1662, in the case of Francisco de Veri, a Knight of Montesa, prosecuted for wounding a familiar who had drawn a sword upon him. He refused to receive messages and proceeded to sequestrate Veri’s property, including his crops and cattle. To save them from destruction the viceroy interposed and the Council of Orders appealed to the queen, as administrator of the Order, to take some action that should enable such questions to be settled peaceably, but apparently without result.[1204]

MILITARY ORDERS

As though the exempted classes were not numerous and troublesome enough, there was a project, in 1574, of adding another which, if carried into effect, would have altered the destiny of Spain by subjecting it eventually to the Inquisition and reducing the nominal monarch to the position of a roi fainéant under a Mayor of the Palace. It is a most impressive illustration of the spirit of the age that such a project should have been formulated, that it received enthusiastic support and that a sovereign so jealous of his prerogative as Philip II should have even allowed it to be debated, much less have let it assume a menacing shape and have given it serious consideration. A Military Order was to be established under the name of Santa María de la Espada Blanca, with a white sword as a symbol, like the red sword of Santiago. At its head was to be the inquisitor-general, to whom all members were to swear allegiance and whose orders in peace and war all were to obey. To him likewise they were to assign their property, receiving back at his hands what was necessary for their support, and after death their widows were to be pensioned by him. They were to be exempt from all jurisdiction save his, which was to be delegated to priors appointed in all the provinces. The ostensible object was the defence of the faith and of Spain, for which they were at any time liable to be called to the field, or to serve in garrison, under the orders of the inquisitor-general. Thus the Inquisition was to be furnished with an organized force, sworn to blind obedience and released from all other obligations. The only requisite for membership was limpieza, or purity of blood, free from all taint of Judaic or Moorish contamination, or descent from those who had been sentenced for heresy. At this period limpieza was becoming a popular mania; the cost of proving it through four generations was considerable, and there was strong temptation in the promise that the expenses of all applicants would be defrayed from the common fund.

The project may seem to us too wild to merit a thought, but it responded so perfectly to the temper of the time that it was enthusiastically adopted by the provinces of Castile, Leon, Biscay, Navarre, Aragon, Valencia, Catalonia, Asturias and Galicia. Procurators from these provinces submitted it to Philip for his approval and were supported by representatives of forty-eight noble houses and of the archiepiscopal sees of Toledo, Santiago, Seville, Saragossa, Valencia, Tarragona and Granada. It was debated earnestly and at much length, but the argument of Pedro Vinegas de Córdova decided its fate. He pointed out the troubles which were already arising on the subject of limpieza, causing jealousies, hatreds and contentions, to be increased enormously if the population was thus to be divided into two classes; also the fact that the royal courts would have left to their jurisdiction only the New Christians, while the Old Christians would have their special judges and, if the comparatively few existing familiars caused such all-pervading troubles, what the effect would be of increasing without limit the number of the exempt. On the one hand the ambitious and able men among the New Christians, being thus cast out, would foment disaffection and disturbance; on the other, if the old Military Orders had been a source of danger to the monarchy, what would be the effect of creating a new one, united and vastly more numerous and subject as vassals to an inquisitor-general, whose power was already so great, and who would control the property and have jurisdiction over all members, while in case of rebellion the frontiers and strongholds would be in his hands? This reasoning was unanswerable; Philip ordered all papers connected with the project to be surrendered; he imposed perpetual silence on its advocates and wrote to the ecclesiastical and secular bodies to abandon it, for justice and protection would never be lacking.[1205]

We shall probably do no injustice to the Inquisition in attributing to the profits accruing from the exercise of its temporal jurisdiction the ruthless vigor with which the tribunals sought to vindicate and extend it. The remarks of the Visitor Cervantes with regard to Barcelona, in 1561 (p. 468), indicate how lucrative it could be made and how welcome was the addition of fees and fines to the somewhat meagre salaries of the officials. This explains the reckless violence which became habitual in the conduct of quarrels, because this not only was an assurance to the parties concerned as to the vigor with which they were defended, but it also served to discourage the secular authorities from resisting encroachments. It also explains the multiplication of the unsalaried officials such as familiars, commissioners and their notaries, assessors, deputies etc., which no laws or Concordias or regulations could restrain, for each one was a possible source of profit to the tribunal and a probable cause of disturbance in his vicinage, through the comfortable assurance of immunity from the law.

EVILS OF THE SYSTEM

The natural result of this was that unprofitable business was neglected for profitable, and the suppression of heresy was postponed to the trial of civil and criminal cases which yielded fees. We have seen how Cervantes reported that in Barcelona this seemed to be the real duty of the tribunal and that there was nothing else to be attended to; his animadversions produced no amendment and, in 1567, de Soto Salazar repeated the complaint.[1206] This continued unchecked. The project of reform presented to the Suprema, in 1623, expresses the wish that other tribunals would follow the example of Saragossa, where one of the inquisitors was delegated every four months to conduct this business, so that prisoners on trial for heresy could have their cases despatched and not be kept languishing interminably in prison, which, as we shall see, was one of the sorest abuses inflicted on them.[1207] This pious wish was fruitless and the records of the Inquisition for the following century show how large a portion of its activity was devoted to these cases and to the competencias incessantly springing from them.