Volume 2 / Book 4 — CHAPTER II. THE TRIBUNAL. (continued 2)

Besides these officials who were concerned in the primary business of the tribunal as a bulwark of the faith, there were others whose functions may be briefly dismissed here. The finances necessarily required a special organization, consisting of a receiver of confiscations, subsequently called the treasurer, whose duties in the active period were of the utmost importance, entitling him to a salary which sometimes was even larger than that of the inquisitors.[724] The fines and penances also amounted to large sums for which, in the earlier period, there was usually a special receiver, for they were kept as a separate fund, but finally they likewise passed through the hands of the treasurer. The receiver had to pay his own assistants and agents but, in the enormous amount of complicated business thrown upon him, he was aided by the abogado fiscal, a salaried official of legal training, while the notary of sequestrations had charge of sequestrated property until its confiscation was pronounced, and further served as a check upon the receiver. The intricate claims arising from these seizures were settled in a separate court of confiscations, known as the juzgado, presided over by the juez de bienes or judge of confiscations and furnished with its notary and nuncio. We sometimes also meet with a procurador del fisco and also with a superintendent of property. All this, which, especially at first, formed so large a part of the business of the Inquisition, will be more conveniently considered in detail hereafter.

We have seen how much of the activity of the tribunals was consumed in the civil and criminal business of their officials, and it necessarily formed a separate department, which had its notario de lo civil and secretario de las causas civiles, the latter office being suppressed in 1643.[725]

SALARIES

The qualifications for holding office in the tribunal were simple. From some of the cases of hereditary transmission it would appear that the minimum age was nineteen or twenty. Limpieza, or purity of blood from admixture of Jewish or Moorish or heretic strain, was the chief essential, as will be seen when we come to consider that important subject. Legitimacy was also a requisite in both the official and his wife, although dispensations could be had for its absence.[726] By a carta acordada of June 15, 1608, those who were unmarried could not marry without permission of the Suprema; they were obliged to furnish proof that the bride was limpia and, if a foreigner or the daughter or grand-daughter of foreigners, a dispensation was necessary, of all of which the appointee was solemnly notified when he took the oath of office.[727]

There was also a well-intended informacion de moribus concerning applicants for office. When the inquisitor-general proposed to make an appointment in a tribunal he notified it; it then issued a commission to some one at the residence of the nominee, with an interrogatory asking whether he was a person modest, quiet, peaceable, of correct life and habits and what was known as to his limpieza, which, when returned, was forwarded to the inquisitor-general. As the witnesses examined were, however, presented by the applicant, the whole was scarce more than a formality.[728]

In spite of the constant complaint of the meagreness of the salaries, they seem to have been fairly adequate, at least during the first century and a half of the existence of the Inquisition. The rapid fall in the purchasing power of the precious metals necessitated frequent advances and I have met with allusions to these in 1548, 1567, 1581, and 1606, after which they seem to have remained stationary until 1795, although the vellon coinage reduced still further the value of the currency.[729] The salary of an inquisitor, which, in 1541, was 100,000 maravedís, including ayuda de costa, by 1606 had become 300,000 or 800 ducats. This was not extravagant, but was fairly remunerative. In 1630, Arce y Reynoso, when occupying one of the highest professorships in Salamanca, as catedratico de prima de leyes, received only 300 ducats.[730] It must be borne in mind that most of the lower officials had a comfortable additional source of revenue from the fees which they were entitled to charge for nearly all their work outside of cases of faith and, when the arancel or fee-bill of 1642 sought to regulate these charges it was generally disregarded and the inspectors winked at its violation, charitably alleging the increased cost of living as an excuse.[731] The inquisitors and fiscal, on their side, usually held some canonry or other benefice which served to make good all deficiencies. In fact towards the middle of the eighteenth century, when the salaries had become really inadequate, a writer ascribes the inefficiency of the Inquisition to the fact that the inquisitors-general were obliged to appoint ignorant men who happened to possess prebends or other benefices.[732]

AYUDA DE COSTA

There were also the gratifications for house-rent, illuminations, bull-fights and mourning, which the officials of the tribunals enjoyed, like those of the Suprema, although not on so liberal a scale, while the ayudas de costa replaced the propinas.[733] There was also a kindly liberality in granting extra ayudas de costa to those in need and to their widows and children when they died. Applications of this kind were perpetual and innumerable; they were made to the Suprema, which naturally found little difficulty in being charitable at the expense of others.[734] It would be needless to enumerate examples of what was of such constant occurrence and these liberalities, together with the exemptions and the economies in the cost of the necessaries of life, rendered the financial position of the officials reasonably secure. Perhaps the resources of the tribunals might have justified larger salaries if they had not been drawn upon to supply the extravagance of the Suprema and been squandered on other objects with careless profusion characteristic of the age. Thus, in 1633, a Doctor Pastor de Costa, of the Royal Council of Catalonia, obtained from Inquisitor-general Zapata, on the plea of services rendered by his father, a grant of a hundred ducats a year, in silver, on the tribunal of Barcelona. Doubtless it was suspended during the Catalan revolt to be subsequently resumed and, in 1665, he applied to Arce y Reynoso to confirm it to him for life, but Arce only ordered it to be continued for four years. Not content with this, he asked for an ayuda de costa on the ground of his poverty.[735] It is not surprising that Philip V, as we have seen, in his attempted reform of 1705, forbade all grants of over thirty ducats without his confirmation.

The ayuda de costa, of which we hear so much, was either a more or less definite increase of salary, or a special gift for cause, or else a simple merced or benevolence. While the salary was a matter fixed and due, the ayuda was always to a certain extent arbitrary and was used as an incentive to compel the performance of duties regarded as onerous. We see the germ of it in Torquemada’s instructions of 1485, prohibiting fees and bribes, for the king provides a reasonable support for all and in time will give them mercedes.[736] An advance is marked in the Instructions of 1498 where, after specifying salaries, it is added that the inquisitors-general, when they see that there is much labor or necessity, can grant such ayudas de costa as they deem proper.[737] Accordingly about this time, while we find no regular ayudas given, there are constant examples of special ones, sometimes of large amounts, granted for the most varied reasons, of which two or three instances will suffice. Thus Ferdinand, April 30, 1499, in ordering the payment of the salaries in Seville, includes 40,000 maravedís of ayudas de costa for one of the inquisitors, but none for any one else. August 10, 1502, Juan Royz, receiver of Saragossa, is given an ayuda de costa of 10,000 sueldos to meet expenses incurred in illness and, on September 27th, an official of Seville is gratified with 20,000 maravedís to help him in his marriage.[738]

It cannot have been long after this that the ayuda de costa was becoming a regular annual payment as an increment of the salary. December 3, 1509, an order for the payment of arrears to Diego de Robles, fiscal of the Suprema, speaks of there being due to him his ayuda de costa for 1506 and half of 1507, at the rate of 20,000 maravedís per annum. The first formal statement of it as a settled thing, that I have met, occurs in this same year 1509, in the list of salaries made out for the attempted Inquisition of Naples, where the ayuda de costa is designated for each official. It varies from a little over half the salary to considerably below that proportion and for two of the officials there is none. Yet it was not a universal custom for, in the salaries assigned to the Sardinia tribunal, September 10, 1514 there is no allusion to ayuda de costa.[739] That the custom, however, was gradually establishing itself as a substantial addition to the regular salaries is deducible from formal lists of the ayudas de costa of the Suprema and the Valladolid tribunal in 1515 and, by this time, it may be regarded as fairly established, although innumerable special grants continued, such as one of 75,000 maravedís, June 30, 1515, to Alonso de Montoya, notary of the Seville tribunal, to assist in his marriage.[740] Confiscations, at the time, were fruitful, and the laborers were not deprived of their share in the harvest, if only to stimulate their industry. Reimbursements of travelling and other expenses also frequently took the form of ayudas de costa although, as the grants were made in round sums, it is evident that no accounts were rendered and that the payments were arbitrary.[741]

However customary the annual payments had become, they still were regarded as a special grace to which the recipients had no claim of right. In 1540, the officials of Barcelona complained to Inquisitor-general Tavera that the receiver refused payment on the ground that the grant had expired with the death of Manrique, in 1538, and that it required confirmation, which Tavera hastened to give, February 12, 1540. In fact, a number of orders issued by Tavera, in 1540, would indicate that this was the accepted view of the matter.[742] Another marked distinction at this time is that the ayudas de costa are ordered to be paid out of the fines and penances inflicted for the “gastos extraordinarios” of the tribunals, while the salaries come from the funds arising out of the confiscations.

RECORDS

For awhile there was a regular scale of fifty ducats for the inquisitors, thirty for the fiscal, alguazil, notaries and receiver, fifteen for the nuncio and ten for the portero and alcaide but, in 1559, this was increased by twenty per cent. Care was taken to make it understood that it was a grace and not a right and the ordinary formula was that it was given in view of the labor in determining the cases of the auto de fe of the previous year and when, in 1561, Calahorra was exceptionally active and celebrated a second auto, it was rewarded with a supplementary ayuda of half the customary amount.[743] The grant was dependent on the receipt of detailed reports of all the cases in the previous auto, which were frequently accompanied with an humble petition for it, setting forth the insufficiency of the salaries and the cost of living, and begging the Suprema to obtain the grace from the king, who was technically the giver.[744] Subsequently, as we have seen, it was made conditional on rendering monthly reports and on the discharge of the duty of visiting the district and other matters apt to be neglected, such as rendering prompt statements of accounts and of properties. Finally, in the later period, when the tribunals were under close supervision of the Suprema, it sometimes took the form of a Christmas-gift.[745] Perhaps the most remarkable of all ayudas de costa was one granted by Carlos IV, in October 1807, in the midst of his troubles with his son Fernando, when the shadow of Napoleon was already darkening Spain and the treasury was empty. It was possibly with the object of securing the fidelity of the Inquisition that he ordered an ayuda de costa of 100 ducats to be given to every official of all the tribunals who did not enjoy an income of 7000 reales outside of his salary.[746] In the existing condition of Spanish finances the money could probably have been better employed.

The perfected system of records kept by the tribunals so greatly increased the effectiveness of the Inquisition and rendered it such an object of dread, that some reference to it is indispensable. Its development was slow. At the start, amid the enormous labors of the slenderly manned tribunals, there could be little thought bestowed on the preservation and arrangement of the records of their operations. In the Instructions of 1484 the only allusion to them merely prescribes that the notaries shall enter on their registers all orders issued by the inquisitors to the officials.[747] As the registers accumulated, the Instructions of 1488 require all writings and papers to be kept in chests, in the public place where the inquisitors transact business, so that they may be at hand when wanted; they are never to be removed and the keys are to pass through the hands of the inquisitors to the notaries, all this being under pain of deprivation of office.[748] Ten years later we hear of a chamber assigned to their safe keeping, with three keys, held by the fiscal and the two notaries, so that all must be present when they are consulted.[749] By this time indexes to facilitate references to the rapidly growing mass of papers had become necessary, and an article in Deza’s instructions, in 1500, shows that this had become recognized.[750] The disabilities inflicted on descendants of culprits rendered it essential that genealogies should be traceable, but the incredible crudeness of these early lists shows how informal was the rapid work of that awful time. One kept at Toledo, about 1500, contains such entries of the individuals despatched as “un porquero del alguazil que tiene un ojo remellado,” “un converso retajado,” “un converso judyo,” “un sastre,” “un platero sobrino de lope de cuellar platero.” In Valencia, from 1517 to 1527, the index to the fifth volume of persons denounced shows equal indifference to the identification of individuals catalogued as “le boges, mare y filles,” “la condesa que lleve el habito penitential,” “el bachiller que esta en companya del calonge Proxita,” “uno que ha sido flayle,” “un remendon sastre, esta delante la rexa de mosen Penaroja,” etc.[751]

RECORDS

After some contradictory decisions as to furnishing papers or information from the records to competent courts applying for it, the Suprema, in 1556, forbade the tribunals, without its express order, from giving any information tending to prove that any one had not been condemned or reconciled, or penanced or arrested by the Holy Office—a most cruel regulation in view of the tremendous consequences to the posterity of those who had fallen under suspicion of heresy and had been tried or even arrested. An order by the Suprema, in 1576, to the Valencia tribunal to erase from its records the name of Maestro Jusepe Esteban, because he had not been arrested for a matter of faith, is suggestive of the fearful power which the Inquisition possessed of inflicting infamy on whole families and of the importance of the accuracy of its registers.[752] The abuse of its power in this respect is indicated, as we have seen above, by the instructions which sometimes followed visitations, to remove from the records the names of those who had been improperly prosecuted for offences not of faith.

It was not easy to preserve the completeness of the records. Officials were apt to regard them as personal property and to keep them, like the notary of Calatayud who thus secured for his son the reversion of his office. In 1512, Ferdinand desired from a tribunal complete statements concerning the finances; there arose delay, during which the notary of sequestrations died, whereupon he ordered that the receiver should have all the papers or copies of them and, if the heirs of the notary refused to surrender them, execution should be levied on his estate for the whole of his salary received during his incumbency.[753] It was not only the notaries, however, but other officials who took and kept documents. In 1517 Cardinal Adrian complained of this and ordered that papers should never be removed from their depository, except to the audience-chamber for the purpose of conducting a trial.[754] This was disregarded and, about the middle of the century, the instructions to inspectors require them to order inquisitors, under pain of excommunication, to return all papers that they had taken and to discontinue the practice.[755] Even inquisitors-general were guilty of this, for Philip II issued an order March 6, 1573, on the executors of Ponce de Leon, to allow his papers to be examined and everything pertaining to the Inquisition to be removed—an order which can only be regarded as revealing a general custom, for Ponce de Leon died, January 17, 1573, before entering upon his office.[756]

The looseness which had prevailed during the early period is strikingly manifested when, in 1547, the Suprema made an attempt to gather in and preserve its past records. A commission was issued to its secretary Zurita, reciting the importance of having an inventory of all the papal bulls, briefs, registers and other papers relating to the Inquisition, which had been in the custody of the secretaries and other officials. There is, it says, information that many of these are at Calatayud and others at Huesca, among the papers of Calcena and Urries, the secretaries of Ferdinand and Charles V, and Zurita is ordered to collect these and is armed with full powers to examine witnesses and inflict penalties. All holding such papers are required to surrender them, under pain of excommunication and a hundred ducats. The inquisitors of Saragossa are instructed to assist him with censures, while letters to various parties indicate that the task is expected to be arduous. The instructions are not clear as to whether he is expected to seize the papers or merely to make inventories of them, but there can be little doubt that whatever he laid his hands on was kept.[757] What success attended his mission we have no means of knowing, but we probably owe to it many of the important documents illustrating the early history of the Inquisition.

In addition to this source of incompleteness, it seemed impossible to compel the tribunals to keep their records in proper shape. In 1544, Dr. Alonso Pérez, in an inspection of Barcelona, found them in complete disorder. Another inspection, in 1550, showed still greater confusion. In 1561, Inspector Cervantes described them as being in such a state, without indexes and inventories, that it was impossible to find anything. After the visit of Salazar, the Suprema, in 1568, took the inquisitors sharply to task for not having yet provided indexes and registers; it ordered them to do so at once and to furnish a certificate to that effect within twenty days of receipt.[758] The certificate was doubtless supplied, but we may question whether the work was done. Possibly Barcelona was worse than other tribunals, but the memorial of 1623 to the Suprema states that in many of them there are processes, books, papers, informations of limpieza etc., requiring to be inventoried, sorted into bundles and reduced to order, causing great inconvenience.[759]

RECORDS

Meanwhile the masses of papers had been accumulating more rapidly than ever. In 1570 the Suprema had ordered nine books to be kept—one of the commissions of officials, their oaths and royal provisions, one of commissioners and familiars with full details, one of the votes in the consultas de fe, one of letters from the Suprema and another of letters to it, one recording the inspections made of the prisons, one of the orders issued on the receiver, one of the pecuniary penances inflicted and one of the autos de fe, with statements as to the culprits and their punishments. Besides these the alcaide of the prison was to keep lists of those relaxed and penanced with three indexes. All this was exclusive of the voluminous records of the trials which it was the duty of the fiscal to keep in order.[760] Then, in order to accommodate the increasing bulk, it was ordered, in 1566 and 1572, that there should be four apartments in the camara del secreto, one for pending cases, one for suspended ones, one for those finished, divided into the relaxed, the reconciled and the penanced, and the fourth for papers concerning commissioners and familiars and informaciones de limpieza.[761] In 1635, alphabetical lists of all persons tried were ordered to be kept, with dates and references to the papers of the case, commencing with 1620. The order had to be repeated in 1636 and 1638, with further instructions in 1644, and these lists furnished additional means for tracing the antecedents and kindred of those who were brought before the tribunals.[762] But more potent than the mandates of the Suprema to keep the archives in order and thoroughly indexed was the mania which arose for limpieza, or purity of blood which, as we shall see hereafter, pervaded all classes and furnished a source of very profitable business to the officials, for the Inquisition was the ultimate arbiter and its records contained the evidence.

Gradually these records became an immense storehouse of minute and detailed information concerning all heretics and suspects and their kindred. Under the Instructions of 1561, the first thing in examining a prisoner was to require of him an account of parents and grandparents, brothers and sisters, uncles, aunts and cousins, with their wives and children and whether any of them had been arrested or penanced by the Inquisition.[763] Then, when the accused was brought to profess conversion and to beg mercy, his confession was not accepted unless he gave information, to the best of his ability, as to all other heretics, whether kindred or strangers, whom he had known or heard of, with details as to their culpability. All this was carefully entered and indexed, until the records became a fairly complete directory of the suspects of Spain. A Jew arrested in Granada might compromise twenty others, scattered from Compostella to Barcelona, each of whom when seized became a new source of information, and the intercommunication established between the tribunals placed the records of all at the service of each. This vastly increased the effectiveness of the Inquisition and rendered the chances of escape slender indeed. The trials of the seventeenth century, when the system became fairly perfected, show that, although the arrest of a few might scatter their accomplices, the Inquisition was ever on their track and change of name and habitation was unavailing. As soon as a suspect was arrested and his genealogy was obtained, the sister tribunals were called upon for reports, and testimony poured in, reaching back, perhaps, for twenty or thirty years, concerning himself and his kindred. The net of the Inquisition covered the land and its meshes were fine. Go where they would, hide themselves as they might, the Judaizers lived in the knowledge that it was ever remorselessly in pursuit and that its hand might fall upon them at any time.

RECORDS

In the eighteenth century the system was elaborated by what were known as the Libros Vocandorum. When any one was denounced to a tribunal or came forward spontaneously, his name, description and offence were transmitted to all the other tribunals, which entered them in alphabetical registers, arranged under the first baptismal names. These entries give the name, the date, a brief description of the person, and the nature of the charge, with a blank to be filled in with the result of the trial, which was also reported to all. Thus each tribunal possessed a digested record of the current business of the whole Inquisition, clearly arranged for ready reference, and, as the years passed, it afforded at a glance the means of ascertaining whether any culprit had been in the hands of the Holy Office before, and of facilitating researches into limpieza. The importance of the Libros Vocandorum was so fully recognized that the Suprema required the monthly reports of the fiscal always to specify that they were kept posted up to date. These registers were not arranged uniformly in all the tribunals, but the usual plan was that adopted in Valencia, where there was one general index in two volumes and a third for confessors accused of soliciting women ad turpia in the confessional.[764] Thus all the tribunals co-operated and, with their machinery of commissioners and familiars in almost every town and village, they formed one harmonious organization for the detection and punishment of culprits. Human ingenuity could scarce devise a more perfect system of promptly suppressing all deviations from the standards established by the Inquisition.