Volume 4 / Book 9 — CHAPTER I. DECADENCE AND EXTINCTION. (continued 2)

It was difficult to evolve order out of the chaos of destruction, especially where the papers had been scattered, so that evidences of indebtedness and accounts were lost, interfering greatly with efforts to reclaim property. In November, 1814, we find the Valencia tribunal issuing an edict requiring the return of all books and papers and records within fifteen days, under pain of excommunication and two hundred ducats; as to the furniture and other effects, they were to be restored under threat of legal proceedings. Although Valencia had been for two years under French occupation, it seems to have been more prompt than some others in getting its finances into intelligible condition. In November the Suprema calls upon it for a detailed schedule of resources and expenses and, in the latter it is not to omit the contribution required by the Suprema, amounting to 130,896 reales, and meanwhile it is not to pay out anything for salaries or other purposes without awaiting permission. Under this it was allowed, January 21, 1815, to pay salaries up to the end of 1814, and in May to make further payments. Yet in 1816 we find it reduced to seeking a loan wherewith to meet the salaries and a sum of thirteen thousand reales demanded by the Suprema.[944]

The Suprema itself, despite the contributions which it sought to levy from the tribunals, was in a condition of penury so absolute that, on July 3, 1815, it announced that it had no funds wherewith to pay the salaries of its officials or the postage on the official communications from the tribunals, which must therefore in future arrange with the Post-Office to prepay the postage and settle monthly or quarterly. This, however, as it explained August 19th, applied only to what was addressed to it as, under a decree of May 19, 1799, letters to the inquisitor-general and other heads of councils were carried free.[945]

RESUMPTION OF FUNCTIONS

There was gradual improvement, but it was slow. A carta acordada of September 3, 1818, says that the Suprema cannot view with indifference the deplorable financial condition of nearly all the tribunals, whose diminished revenues force them to allow the meagre salaries of their officials to fall into arrears, nor can it close its ears to the clamors of these unfortunates, reduced as they are to the deepest indigence. Seeking for partial remedies, it must insist on the avoidance of all expenses not absolutely indispensable, and the suppression of all superfluous offices. One of these is the notariate of the court of confiscations; when it falls vacant it is not to be filled, and its duties are to be performed by the secretary of sequestrations, whose salary will consequently be raised by fifty ducats. This was a somewhat exiguous conclusion of so solemn an exordium, seeing that the actual work of the tribunals could readily have been performed by less than half the officials who swelled their pay-rolls, but it is not without interest as showing how persistently the old inflated organization was maintained, and was struggling to support itself on the remnants of its once prosperous fortunes. Under such a system, poverty naturally continued to the last. When the Revolution of 1820 broke out, and the Seville tribunal contributed six thousand reales to the committee organized to resist the rising, it had no funds and was obliged to borrow the money on interest. As almost the first act of the successful revolutionists was to suppress the Inquisition, the lenders in this case doubtless found themselves to be involuntary contributors.[946] At this time the Seville tribunal had a force of twenty-eight officials, with a pay-roll of 92,300 reales, while the amount of its work may be gathered from the fact that the revolutionists found only three prisoners to release.[947]

Thus amid difficulties and tribulations the tribunals one by one resumed their functions. In October, 1814, Seville was prosecuting Lt. Colonel Lorenzo del Castillo for propositions; Saragossa was receiving the self-denunciation of Mathias Pintado, priest of Bujanuelo, for heregia mista, and Valencia was suspending the sumaria of the Capuchin Fray Pablo de Altea for mala doctrina, while in December Murcia was prosecuting Don Josef de Zayas, a prominent lieutenant-general of the royal army, for Free-Masonry.[948] Business, however, at the first was scanty. In the book of secret votes of the Suprema, there is an interval from December 22, 1814, until February 16, 1815. As the months of 1815 passed on, the breaks grow shorter and, by the summer of 1815, the decrees follow each other closely. Valladolid seems to have been dilatory in getting to work for, although it had three inquisitors drawing salary, no case came up from it until January, 1817, and, from this one it would seem that it had not been in operation until October, 1816.[949]

The prosecution of such a man as Zayas shows that the reorganized Inquisition did not hesitate to grapple with those in high place, and another early case illustrates this still more forcibly. During the French occupation the Duke and Duchess of Sotomayor and the Countess of Mora had obtained possession of the books and indecent pictures accumulated in the Madrid tribunal. Apparently they refused to surrender them; the tribunal prosecuted them and rendered a sentence, subject to the royal permission, that these objects should be seized, but in such a manner as not to attract attention or to provoke resentment. The Suprema confirmed the sentence, ordering its execution by a single inquisitor, accompanied by a secretary, so as to reconcile the respect due to the parties with the secrecy that was essential.[950]

A politic act was the issue of a general pardon for all that had “impiously and scandalously” been uttered and done against the Inquisition under the fatal circumstances of the recent troubles.[951] It could afford to assume this attitude of magnanimity, seeing that the Government was pitilessly avenging it on its most prominent adversaries. When the Government failed in this duty, the Inquisition had no hesitation in nullifying its edict of pardon. We have seen its prosecution of Ruiz de Padron, until it found that the Bishop of Astorga was rendering this superfluous, nor was this by any means an isolated case. In August, 1815, we find the Suprema acting on sumarias from Canaries, in the cases of Mariano Romero, a priest, for a sonnet against the Inquisition, and of Francisco Guerra for a sonnet and an epitaph of the same character. So, in November, 1815, there is a prosecution of the Duke of Parque Castrillo for congratulating the Córtes on the abolition of the Inquisition and for a general order to the troops, December 2, 1812. His case dragged on until June 10, 1817, when its suspension was ordered.[952]

FERNANDO’S FAVOR

Yet it was not easy to revive the old-time veneration for an institution that had been so buffeted and roughly handled by the press and the Córtes. A couple of cases in Madrid, in 1814, of women in whose shops scandalous pictures and objects were exhibited, would seem to indicate that its commands were not obeyed with alacrity.[953] It was doubtless with a view of overcoming this indifference that Fernando himself assumed the office of an inquisitor, February 3, 1815, when he visited the Suprema, presided over its deliberations and participated in its decisions, examined all the offices and expressed his royal satisfaction with the methods of procedure. By royal permission the Suprema sent its president and three members to return the visit and express its gratitude for a mark of royal favor such as Ferdinand the Catholic nor any of his successors had ever made. A full report was printed in the Gaceta of February 16th, copies of which the Suprema sent to the tribunals with orders to read it to the officials and place it in the archives.[954] With the same purpose, he erected, as we have seen, the Congregation of San Pedro Martir to a knightly Order, with a habit and badge and, on April 6th, the feast of St. Peter Martyr, he presided over the Congregation, with his brothers Carlos and Antonio, wearing the insignia. In communicating this to the tribunals, the Suprema rendered it especially impressive by ordering them to commence the payment of salaries earned since July 21st and to continue it monthly.[955] Noble courtiers doubtless found that assuming office in the Inquisition was an avenue to royal favor, and we speedily see many of them submitting their genealogies for this purpose. The great Duke of Berwick and Alva, Fitzjames Stuart Silva Stolberg y Palafox, thus seeks the office of alguazil mayor of the tribunal of Córdova; the Marquis of Altamira does the same for the position of honorary secretary in that of Madrid, and we happen to hear of the Count of Mazeda, a grandee of the first class, serving as alguazil mayor of the tribunal of Santiago, and the Marquis of Iscar as honorary secretary to the Suprema.[956]

In spite of all this, the Inquisition could not regain its former position. Not only was it not respected but it dared not to enforce respect. Two Edicts of Grace for Free-Masons were issued, January 2d and February 12, 1815, when the Valladolid tribunal sent those for Medina del Campo and its district to its commissioner Victor González to be posted. The vicar-general and Ordinary, Doctor Josef Suárez Talavera, as ecclesiastical judge, demanded that they should pass through his hands, and when they were posted they bore the MS. subscription “Fixese, Doctor Suárez,” thus assuming that it was by his permission, and arrogating to himself a jurisdiction superior to that of the Inquisition. When this was reported to the tribunal it ordered González to take them down and replace them with unsullied ones, which he did. Thereupon Suárez sent him word that, but for starting on a journey, he would make him repent and that, had he known of his being in Medina he would have cast him in prison and seen who could get him out. The tribunal meekly swallowed this flagrant insult; it was under instructions to perform no act indicating jurisdiction superior to that of the Ordinaries, so it quietly gathered evidence verifying the facts and sent the papers, September 15th, to the Suprema.[957]

The Inquisition recognized and felt acutely its altered position. In a report to the king on the subject of visitos de navios, made by the Suprema, in 1819, there are repeated confessions of powerlessness; the times are so unfortunate that its regulations fail to effect their object.[958] The same consciousness of weakness is manifest in the conduct of the occasional competencias which still occurred. In such of these as I have had an opportunity of examining there are a studied courtesy and evident desire to avoid giving offence, without wholly abandoning the claims of the Holy Office.

MISGOVERNMENT

To the same cause we may, at least partially, ascribe the marked tendency to mitigation of punishment—except in the case of political offenders—and to avoid all unnecessary hardship and humiliation of culprits. When, in March, 1819, the Madrid tribunal pronounced a severe sentence on Teodoro Bachiller, for propositions, the Suprema moderated it greatly in every way, in order, it said, to make him understand its benignity in taking care of his honor and of the comfort of his family. In January, 1817, Lorenzo Ayllon was tried in Seville for abusing a priest while celebrating mass and endeavoring to snatch away the host—offences for which, of old, he could scarce have escaped the stake, but now he had only absolution ad cautelam, a reprimand, two years of presidio followed by six years of exile, and the Suprema relieved him of the vergüenza which had been included. Even more marked was the case of Diego Blásquez, postmaster of Villanueba de la Serena, who with some others committed the sacrilege of burying a dog with funeral rites. The Llerena tribunal commenced a prosecution and sent the sumaria to the Suprema, which contented itself with ordering a courteous note to be addressed to the secular and ecclesiastical judges, expressing a hope that they would not permit a repetition of such scandals.[959] It would be easy to multiply similar instances, but these will suffice to show how completely, in dealing with offences against the faith, the spirit of the Inquisition had been tamed, and how factitious was the claim that its existence was essential for the preservation of religion, when there were over half a hundred episcopal tribunals perfectly competent to try such offences and perfectly ready to treat them with greater severity.

Meanwhile Fernando’s reign had continued as it commenced. Under the influence of a camarilla of low-caste and ignoble favorites, who pandered to his vices and enriched themselves by trafficking in offices and in contracts and in justice, his government was a compound of brutality and imbecility, and the affairs of the nation fell into complete disorder. All the abuses that had flourished under Godoy were intensified and coupled with persistent cruel persecution of those designated as Liberals, who filled the gaols through constantly recurring lists of proscriptions. De Martignac, who, as royal commissioner, accompanied the Duke of Angoulême in the invasion of 1823, was a thoroughly well-informed and unprejudiced observer, who after a vigorous description of the misgovernment of Fernando sums up by saying “We can conceive the influence of such a régime on the prosperity of the land, and yet it is difficult to realize the extent of disorder, wretchedness and weakness to which it fell. It was necessary to resort to arbitrary taxes, to exorbitant duties which destroyed commerce, to loans raised without credit. It was impossible to provide for the most pressing necessities of the State; everything was neglected or abandoned; the army was unpaid; the navy, destroyed at Trafalgar, remained in ruins; the administration, destitute of all means of action, did nothing and could do nothing to improve conditions, or even to preserve what there was. From this arose the discontent of the people.”[960] It can scarce excite surprise that the crazy enthusiasm of Fernando’s welcome in 1814 had evaporated.

The Revolution of 1820.

During this disastrous period, every year saw an attempt at revolution. In 1814 it was tried at Pampeluna by General Mina, who escaped; in 1815 in Galicia by Porlier, who was executed; in 1816 in Madrid by Richard, who shared the same fate; in 1817 in Catalonia by Lacy, who was shot; in 1818 in Valencia by Vidal, who was put to death. Again in Valencia a plot was formed to break out January 1, 1819, but it was betrayed and thirteen of the conspirators were hanged. O’Donnell, Count of la Bisbal, an able soldier and unscrupulous intriguer, was privy to this, but averted suspicion and was appointed to command an expeditionary force collecting at Cádiz for Buenos Ayres, against the revolted colony. With customary negligence, transports were not provided; the troops lay idle for months, discontent spread and a formidable conspiracy was organized, which counted on la Bisbal’s support; he concluded that loyalty was safest and seized the leading plotters, for which he was rewarded with the grand cross of Carlos III., but suspicion arose; he was removed and replaced by the incapable Count of Calderon.

The situation, however, was growing impossible, and revolution was in the air. A portion of the troops were cantoned at las Cabezas de San Juan, a town not far from Cádiz. There, on January 1, 1820, Rafael de Riego, commander of the battalion of Asturias, assembled his men, made an inflammatory harangue, and they all declared for the Constitution. He made a dash for Arcos, where he captured Calderon and three of his generals, effected a junction with the battalions España and Corona, under Colonel Antonio Quiroga, and failed in an attack on Cádiz. Delay and irresolution followed, until January 27th, when Riego, at the head of fifteen hundred men, marched to Algeciras, where he remained until February 7th. Defeated in an attempt on Málaga, he reached Córdova on March 7th, with some five hundred despairing followers. No effort was made to capture them; the garrison and citizens looked on placidly, while Riego refreshed his men and headed for the Sierra Morena; they dropped off during the march and he was left with fifty followers; so far as he was concerned, the movement was a failure.

REVOLUTION ACCOMPLISHED

Still, its preliminary success had aroused the slumbering elements of discontent. On February 21st revolution broke out at Coruña and spread to Ferrol and Vigo, when the Count of San Roman abandoned Galicia without a struggle. Saragossa followed on March 2d, the captain-general and garrison joining the magistrates and people. When the news reached Barcelona, on March 10th the people rose and sacked the Inquisition, but did no injury to the officials.[961] Within a few days Tarragona, Gerona and Mataró followed the example, the garrisons participating in the movement. In Navarre, Mina’s account of the rising shows that there was prearrangement, and that the municipal authorities and military officials were fully in accord. When he reached Pampeluna with a large force, gathered on his way from the border, he found that the revolution had already been peacefully accomplished on March 11th. Meanwhile la Bisbal, seeing that the movement promised success, spared no promises to obtain command of the forces concentrating in la Mancha to put down Riego’s rising. He received the appointment and, on reaching Ocaña, he induced the regiment Alejandro to cry “Viva la Constitucion.” The revolution was accomplished and was bloodless, save a hideous massacre at Cádiz of the unarmed multitude, perpetrated in cold blood by Don Manuel Freyre.[962]

During the two months of this desultory movement, which prompt action could so readily have suppressed, the court was nerveless and incapable. When the news came of the rising in Galicia, Fernando issued, February 28th, a plaintive appeal, promising amendment. His terror increased as evil tidings came pouring in, and on March 3d he published a decree bewailing the state of the kingdom, and announcing that he had ordered the Council of State to prepare a comprehensive scheme of reform. This was followed, March 6th, by another calling an immediate convocation of Córtes. It was too late; he found himself abandoned by all, even by his Royal Guard, which General Ballesteros reported was planning to retire to Buen Retiro and send a deputation asking him to swear to the Constitution. This was decisive and, on the night of the 7th, he issued another decree announcing his intention to do so. This was received, on the 8th, with popular rejoicings, but, as no further action was taken, an impatient mob, on the 9th, surrounded the palace with seditious cries and threats. The guard was impassive; Fernando was deserted and was absolutely alone when the crowd began to mount the stairs to demand that he should swear to the Constitution, but they were restrained on learning that he had ordered the reassembling of the Ayuntamiento of Madrid as it had existed under the Constitution. Its members were got together and proceeded immediately to the palace, where Fernando received them with warm expressions of affection; he took the required oath of his own free will, and ordered Ballesteros to make the army do the same. A general illumination and bell-ringing for three nights were ordered, and the people dispersed, not, however, without first visiting the Inquisition, releasing the prisoners and scattering the archives. Only two or three prisoners were found and these were political. Rodrigo tells us that the mob wanted them to pose as victims of persecution, but they prudently refused, and a neighboring cobbler was persuaded to exhibit himself as the presiding figure of the celebration.[963]

INQUISITION SUPPRESSED

On the same day, March 9th, Fernando issued a decree abolishing the Inquisition. This bore that, as its existence was incompatible with the Constitution of 1812, for which reason it had, after mature deliberation, been suppressed by the Córtes, and in conformity with the opinion of the Junta this day established, he ordered that, from this day, the Suprema and the Inquisition be suppressed throughout the monarchy, setting at liberty all prisoners confined for political or religious opinions, and transferring, to the bishops in their respective dioceses, their cases to be determined in accordance with the decree of the Córtes.[964] This was followed, March 20th, by a royal order providing for inventories of all property pertaining to the Inquisition, and reviving the decree of February 22, 1813; the Bureau of Public Credit was to take possession of and administer the property, until its destination should be determined by the Córtes shortly to be assembled, while the salaries of officials were to be continued. When the Córtes met, a decree of August 9th included this with other escheated property, to be sold at auction by the Junta nacional de Crédito.[965]

During the slow progress of the Revolution, the Inquisition seems to have been watching events with full consciousness of the fate in store for it if the movement should prove successful. A letter of January 19th, from the Seville tribunal to the Suprema, states that it had delayed the arrests of the Trinitarian, Fray Juan Montes, and of Don Tomás Díaz in consequence, at first of the epidemic, and then of the insurrection, to which the Suprema replied, January 24th, that it left future action to the prudence of the tribunal.[966] Considering how feeble at the time was the demonstration of Riego, this shows that its ultimate consequences were fully apprehended. Still the Inquisition continued at work, but the last case acted upon by the Suprema was its confirmation, February 10th, of a sentence rendered January 28th, by the Toledo tribunal, on Manuel de la Peña Palacios, priest of Ontoba. As the last act of the dreaded Holy Office, after a career of three centuries and a half, it has an interest beyond its inherent trivial character, and it will be found in the Appendix.

At least one liberated prisoner gave expression to his delight at his release. Don Antonio Bernabeu, a priest, had been a member of the Córtes of Cádiz and had been arrested with the others in May, 1814, but seems to have been released in about six months. He was a Jansenist of an extreme type and, in 1813, had printed a pamphlet to prove that the State could seize all ecclesiastical property and reduce the overgrown numbers of the clergy, putting those who were left on moderate salaries. The tract was a terrible indictment of the Church for its greed of accumulation, its neglect of duty and its departure from the old standards in concentrating all power in the pope, which he attributed to the Isidorian Decretals. On his release from prison, December 14, 1814, he hastened to denounce himself for this to the Inquisition and was placed in reclusion. In 1816 he denounced himself a second time for matters at first omitted. The fiscal presented the accusation, April 20, 1817, rather cleverly drawn, for it demanded precise definition of his opinions on the wide range of subjects, in which he charged the Church with deviation from primitive times, and specific proofs of his somewhat vague declamation as to abuses. To satisfy this would require the resources of a large library and years of research, while Bernabeu was confined in a convent and was denied even a copy of his offending pamphlet, besides being exposed to all manner of persecutions by his fellow inmates. His trial was still pending when the decree of March 9th liberated him; he was promptly returned as a deputy to the Córtes of 1820, and he celebrated his release by reprinting his pamphlet, with an account of his sufferings and his answers to the charges of the fiscal.[967]

SUICIDE OF LIBERALISM

It would carry us too far from our subject to recount in detail the extravagancies and follies with which the triumphant Liberals invited the cruel reaction that awaited them. Moderation, perhaps, was scarce to be expected of men, smarting under the persecution of the last six years, and suddenly brought from fortresses and presidios, or from exile, to take charge of the Government, and to frame laws for the nation. That they should in turn persecute their persecutors was natural but impolitic; mutual hatreds were inflamed, and the land was divided into factions between which harmony and forbearance became impossible. The long centuries of despotism and the repression of independent thought and action had rendered the people incapable of the large measure of self-government provided by the Constitution. So-called patriotic societies were rapidly formed—de Lorencini, de San Fernando, la Fontana de Oro, la Cruz de Malta, la Landaburana and others—which in reality were Jacobinical clubs, where the most radical measures were advocated, and the most violent means of effecting them were urged. An unbridled press was busy in adding fuel to the flames and in stimulating the ardor which sought to realize anarchical dreams. Masonry had been busy in preparing the revolution, and with its success Masonry became the avenue to power and place; its lodges multiplied and were rapidly filled. Then, with the progress of advanced ideas, Masonry became too conservative for the exaltados, who left it and established the Comuneros, whose statutes formed a state of revolutionary character within the State. They rivalled the Masons in numbers and influence, and the virulent struggle for supremacy between the two bodies at times paralyzed the Government and neutralized the forces of order. The disorderly element existing in all communities was utilized whenever there was an object to be gained, and mob rule became of frequent occurrence, not only in Madrid but in nearly all the cities. The orders of the Government were obeyed or disregarded as suited the temper of the populace or of its instigators. Officials commissioned as captains-general or governors or magistrates were admitted or rejected; orderly administration was becoming impossible, and everywhere turbulence reigned supreme. Liberalism was committing suicide.

Yet Liberalism had need of its undivided strength to maintain itself against the opposing forces. Fernando, while playing the part of a constitutional king, was constantly plotting to throw off the yoke, and was entertaining secret relations with those who were striving to overthrow the Government. Successive Córtes seemed to take pleasure in exacerbating the hostility of the clergy, whose influence over the mass of the people was unbounded. Much of this legislation was no doubt salutary in itself but, at the moment, it was dangerous, and the blows succeeded each other so rapidly that the sufferers might well regard it as systematic persecution. August 31, 1820, a law organizing the national army exempted from service only such clerics as were actually in holy Orders. One of September 26th subjected all clerics, secular and regular, to secular jurisdiction for offences incurring corporal punishment. Within a week, another decree suppressed a large portion of the monastic Orders, and the Mendicants who were left were subjected to the bishops and consolidated into houses of not less than twelve inmates, and this was followed by other special decrees of suppression. The property of the suppressed houses was applied to the Crédito público and, when Fernando refused his signature, a popular tumult was organized which frightened him into acquiescence. October 26th it was ordered that dispensations for marriage within prohibited degrees should be issued without charge to those applying in forma pauperis, thus cutting off a large source of income. When bands of insurgent royalists began to make their appearance, and were joined or led by priests, the bishops were ordered, April 20, 1821, to report what steps they had taken to punish them and, within eight days, to issue edicts requiring their flocks to obey the law. Then, on June 29th, without papal authority, a contribution of thirty million reales was levied on the clergy and, on the same day, the tithes were reduced one-half, while allowing some compensation in the removal of certain imposts. The clergy, not unnaturally, promoted disaffection, and to check this, decrees of November 1, 1822, authorized the Government, at discretion, to transfer from one place to another all parish priests and ecclesiastics, the cost of maintenance of those thus deported being thrown upon the bishops.[968]

QUARREL WITH THE CHURCH

In fact, the irreconcileable claims of State and Church rendered hostility inevitable. It was impossible for the latter to understand that, when it entered politics and became a political factor, it had to be treated like other political bodies. The theocracy of the middle ages had so long enjoyed power without responsibility that its immunity became part of Latin doctrine. Elsewhere the impracticability of this had been demonstrated, but in Spain the Church has never ceased to struggle for the maintenance of medievalism, or has understood that sedition in the pulpit should not be treated differently from sedition in the tribune. It refused to recognize that self-preservation is the first law of governments as of individuals, and that they cannot allow artificial privileges to work their destruction. The theory of the Liberals was that external ecclesiastical discipline was subject to the civil authority, while internal discipline was reserved to the Church. The Church asserted that in all things it ruled itself, and that any secular interference was a laying of profane hands on the Ark. The gage of battle was virtually thrown by Veremundo Arías, Archbishop of Valencia, who, on October 20, 1820, addressed to the Córtes a long manifesto, upholding all the extreme claims of the Church, and denying the distinction between external and internal discipline. On November 10th he was arrested and, on the 24th, was put on board ship and sent to France. This was the commencement of a persecution in which many bishops suffered. Alvárez de Palma of Granada was set aside and replaced by the liberal Archpriest Vinegas. Uriz y Lafaga of Pampeluna was summoned to Madrid but, on the road, was rescued by royalists and conveyed to France. Blas Beltran of Coria was banished. The Bishop-elect of Santa Marta (Colombia) received his sentence of exile on his death-bed in Plasencia. Cienfuegos of Cádiz had to fly to save his life. Pablo de Sichar of Barcelona fled and remained absent until 1823. Rentería y Reyes of Lérida was carried under guard to Barcelona, narrowly escaped execution, and was detained in Málaga until 1823. Ramon Strauch y Vidal of Vich was imprisoned in Barcelona, then sent to Tarragona and on the road, under a pretext, was made to descend and was shot with his attendant. Others who were exiled were Jaime Creus of Tarragona, Ceruelo de la Fuente of Oviedo, Rafael de Velez of Ceuta and Castillon y Salas of Tarazona.[969] It is true that the worst of these acts were committed by mobs or irresponsible parties in the growing disorders of the times, but they remained unrebuked and unpunished.

A government which thus treated its clergy was not likely to maintain friendly relations with the Holy See. One of the earliest measures of the new government was an act of August 17, 1820, suppressing the Jesuits.[970] Pius VII met this with a letter of September 16th to Fernando, deploring the perils that threatened religion and the Church and reciting the obnoxious measures taken, for which he had ordered his nuncio to make reclamation, but without effect.[971] Relations were not improved when, April 21, 1821, a decree suppressed all payments, whether in money or other equivalent, for papal bulls for archbishops, bishops, matrimonial dispensations and other rescripts, in lieu of which the paltry annual sum of 9000 silver dollars was offered.[972] This was unwise but still more so was the sending to Rome as ambassador of Joaquin Lorenzo Villanueva, towards the close of 1822, when the intervention of the Holy Alliance was impending. At Turin he was met by a papal order forbidding him to come further and asking the ministry to appoint some one else. Evaristo San Miguel, the Secretary of State, insisted; the papal foreign secretary replied that the opinions expressed by Villanueva in the “Cartas de Don Roque Leal” and in the Córtes were such that the Holy See could never receive him. To this the answer was to send to the nuncio his passports with orders to leave Spain. The rupture with Rome was complete and, in the eyes of pious Spaniards, the government had justified the clerical definition of the Constitution as heresy.[973]

The clerical temper thus stimulated is fairly exhibited in a little pamphlet by Padre Miguel Canto, parish priest of Callosa de Segura, celebrating the downfall of Constitutionalism. He is fairly drunk with joy and consigns the Liberals to the bottomless pit for eternity with vigorous delight. That the civil power should dare to assume any control over the externals of the Church fills him with astonishment and rage, all the greater in view of the suffering which it inflicted, especially on the regulars. Canto tells us that the fabric of his church had enjoyed a revenue of four thousand pesos, and that it was reduced to such poverty that he had not wherewith to provide wafers and wine for the sacrament, or oil for the lamps.[974] Yet the resources of the Spanish Church were such that it still had ample funds for political uses. When, in October, 1823, after his release by the French, Fernando travelled from Cádiz to Madrid, he received in voluntary offerings from the chapters of Toledo, Seville, Granada, Jaen and Cuenca, 11,970,000 reales in silver, although the land was in a condition of complete exhaustion.[975]

DEVELOPMENT OF REVOLT

It is not difficult to believe that the pulpit and the confessional were energetically used to inflame and organize the disaffection that rapidly succeeded to the enthusiasm for the Constitution. The new administration was no more efficient than the old. Ministries, hampered with the underhand intrigues of the king, perpetually guarding against eager rivals, and speedily engrossed with suppressing the armed resistance springing up on every hand, had little opportunity of rectifying the abuses which had made Fernando unpopular. To the people at large the only visible result of the revolution was that the Liberals in turn were persecuting the Serviles. The nobles, moreover were alienated by the suppression of Mayorazgos and Vinculaciones, or entails and perpetual charges on lands, a reform which had long been urged by statesmen such as Jovellanos.[976] Willing and receptive listeners to clerical invective were abundant, and movements to overthrow the Government speedily began taking shape. Before the year 1820 was out, in Galicia there was organized a Junta Apostólica and in Burgos there was a crazy conspiracy of some frailes and a general.[977] Soon wandering bands of insurgents sprang up, among whom members of the clergy were conspicuous, as though it was a holy war. Suppressed in one place, they appeared in another, waging a guerrilla warfare like that against Napoleon. The land was torn with faction, and Liberals and Royalists seemed to emulate each other in contributing to its ruin. Early in July, 1822, the royal guards, with the secret connivance of the king, endeavored to gain possession of Madrid; after a sanguinary conflict in the streets they were defeated, when Fernando, from a balcony of his palace, stimulated the nationals in pursuit of the flying wretches. Civil broils are apt to be pitiless, but in Spain they assumed a ferocity not often witnessed elsewhere. If the Royalists in Catalonia massacred in cold blood the garrison of the Seo de Urgel, a Liberal noyade in Coruña despatched fifty-one political prisoners, many of them ecclesiastics and persons of distinction.[978]

The revolt was constantly assuming proportions more alarming, especially in Catalonia, where it had the almost unanimous support of the peasantry. The insurrectionary bands coalesced into a force of five thousand men styling itself the Army of the Faith which, on June 21, 1822, captured the Seo de Urgel and made it their stronghold. There, on August 15th, was organized a royalist Regency, composed of Creus, the exiled Archbishop of Tarragona, the Baron of Eroles, a soldier of some reputation, and the Marquis of Mataflorida. The Counter-revolution thus adopted a public and official character; the Regency assumed to speak for the king, held in durance by the Jacobins—in fact, as early as June 1st he had authorized Mataflorida to organize it, and was in constant communication with it, through one of the officials of the court. It obtained quasi-recognition abroad; it negotiated a loan of 8,000,000 with the Parisian capitalist Ouvrard and, with the support of Pius VII, it opened negotiations with Austria and Russia, offering surrenders of territory in exchange for aid.[979]

Spain was rapidly drifting into anarchy. The Government was too weak to suppress disorder, whether committed by friends or foes. Compromise between the factions was not to be hoped for, and even patriots could see that the only path to order lay through intervention from abroad. That this was impending became more and more evident. The example of Spain had been followed by Naples and Portugal, and then by Piedmont, in forcing on their sovereigns constitutions like that of 1812; the Holy Alliance took the alarm; the Congresses of Troppau in 1820 and of Laybach in 1821 ordered armed intervention, and the new institutions of Naples and Piedmont were readily overthrown. In May, 1821, communications from Russia to Spain, and a Russian circular to the courts of Europe, openly expressed dissatisfaction at the success of armed rebellion, with scarcely veiled threats of action in case the Córtes should prove disobedient to the monarch; and the conflict with the royal guard, in July 1822, gave the foreign ministers in Madrid a pretext for warnings which were diplomatically veiled threats of intervention.[980] Preparations for it were already on foot in France. An epidemic of yellow fever in Barcelona served as an excuse for establishing a cordon sanitaire on the border, gradually strengthened until it became an army of observation and in reality a support for the Catalan insurgents, as Mina found when he conducted a successful campaign which in the beginning of 1823 forced the Regency to take refuge in France.[981]

INTERVENTION OF THE HOLY ALLIANCE

The Congress of Verona met in the autumn of 1822. The Urgel Regency sent there the Count de España as its representative to urge that Spain should be restored to the condition prior to March 9, 1820; the Government sent no envoy, relying on the friendly aid of England, represented by the Duke of Wellington. Without his knowledge the Allied Powers signed, on November 22d, a secret treaty, in which they declared against the sovereignty of the people, representative government and the freedom of the press, and in favor of the clergy as an instrument for enforcing the passive obedience of the subject; and each signatory pledged itself to a subsidy of twenty millions of francs annually to France, to which was assigned the duty of suppressing these destructive principles in Spain and Portugal, and of restoring the Peninsula to the conditions prior to 1820.[982] Even yet intervention was not certain, for France was not eager for the task, and there were some negotiations looking to modifications of the Constitution, but the Liberals would not listen to such suggestions. Châteaubriand, however, that curious compound of idealism, bombast and vanity, who, as French foreign minister and representative at Verona, takes to himself all the credit for the enterprise, is especially careful to point out that its real object was the restoration of France to the hegemony of the Continent, after the abasement of the Restoration by foreign bayonets—an object which he assumes was fully accomplished.[983]

Early in January, 1823, four notes from the Allies were presented collectively, offering, in more or less offensive fashion, the alternative of a return to absolutism or invasion.[984] These portentous communications were received with the utmost nonchalance. On the night of their reception, Secretary of State San Miguel carried them to the Grand Orient and drew up his replies, in which Fernando is said to have cunningly stimulated defiance to banded Europe. Whatever might be the decision of France, San Miguel said, Spain would tranquilly follow the path of duty and justice; its rule of conduct would be firm adhesion to the Constitution of 1812 and refusal to recognize the right of intervention on any side.[985]

These would be dignified and resolute words in a united nation facing a coalition but, under the circumstances, they were mere idle vaporing. The Government, in fact, was barely able to make head against the insurrection, save in Catalonia. Navarre, Biscay and Aragon were in open civil war, with forces equally balanced. In Murcia, the famous robber Jaime Alfonso was posing as the defender of the faith; in Castile, the Cura Merino and el Rojo de Valderas were levying war; in Andalusia, Zaldivar held his own in spite of repeated defeats; in Toledo and Cuenca, Joaquincillo and the Cura Atanasio were maintaining the rebellion; in Sigüenza the insurrection of Cuesta was organizing and was soon to break out. In short, the whole of Spain was in convulsion.[986]

The only explanation of the attitude of the Liberals is that they were living in a fool’s paradise, and seem to have welcomed intervention in the belief that it would kindle national feeling and restore national unity. Hallucination was carried to the point that they anticipated a popular rising like that of 1808, that the forty thousand insurgents in arms would turn against the invader, even that the French troops would abandon their standards for those of Spain, and that England, which had calmly seen the Constitution overthrown in 1814, would provoke a war with all Europe in its defence. They closed their eyes to the fact that, in 1808, the clergy aroused the masses against the French and were now their warmest allies, eager to revenge systematic persecution; that the throne was secretly undermining them, and that they were without resources, for the treasury was exhausted, the army scarce existed save on paper, the magazines were empty, and the party in power was rent into bitterly opposing factions. A kind of delirium seized the deputies when San Miguel on January 9th laid the correspondence before the Córtes, and his replies were clamorously approved without distinction of party.[987]

THE FRENCH INVASION

Yet this effervescence soon subsided. A decisive victory gained by the insurgents at Brihuega, not far from Madrid, on January 24th, threw the capital into a tremor and, on February 16th, the Córtes adopted a decree looking to the transfer of the Government in case of necessity.[988] New Córtes opened their sessions March 1st and their first thought was to place themselves in safety, carrying with them Fernando, both as a hostage and as necessary to the assumption that the government of Spain travelled with them. Resistance on his part postponed the move until March 20th, when the exodus to Seville took place. There they remained until June, when the approach of the French necessitated a further flight and, on the 9th, Cádiz was selected as the place of refuge. This time Fernando resolutely refused to fly from his liberators and, as coercion of the monarch was incompatible with the theory that he was still governing, it was assumed that he was incapacitated by reason of a temporary delirium; he was deposed and a Regency was appointed which ordered the transfer to Cádiz; on the 12th the king and royal family left Seville; the Córtes adjourned to meet in Cádiz June 18th; in four days Fernando was declared to be again in his right mind and the Regency resigned. The spectacle of a flying Government dragging with it a captive king, whom it recognized as still actively reigning, was worse than ludicrous; it gave to Fernando a claim on the sympathy which he had forfeited, and served as an incentive and an excuse for cruel reprisals.[989]

Meanwhile the army of invasion had been gathering on the border under the Duke of Angoulême, nephew of Louis XIV. From Bayonne, on April 2d, he issued a manifesto to the effect that he did not come to make war but to liberate a captive king, to restore the Altar and the Throne, to release the priesthood from exile, and the whole people from a domination that was preparing the destruction of Spain. On April 7th the army crossed the Bidassoa, consisting of 91,000 men, of whom 35,000 were Spanish royalists. Its discipline was perfect and its conduct admirable. Everywhere it was received as a liberator, with cries of “Viva el Rey absoluto, Viva la Religion y la Inquisicion.” Resistance was impossible and, although five armies had been organized, none worthy of mention was attempted, except in Catalonia, where the indomitable Mina prolonged the useless struggle until November, and at Cádiz, where the so-called Government was battling for existence. Siege was laid there on June 23d, and was prolonged until October 1st, when Fernando was ceremoniously conveyed to the camp of his French deliverers. Yet, if rhetoric could have repelled the invaders, they would have been glad to escape from the eloquence which accompanied a solemn declaration of war on April 29th, when Flórez Calderon boasted that the breasts of the deputies would make an impenetrable rampart around the constitutional King and his family.[990]

If the French came as pacifiers, they made a mistake in bringing with them a Junta Provisional of four rabid royalists, formally installed at Ozarzun, April 9th. It assumed to be the Government and issued a manifesto rescinding all the acts of the Revolution and restoring the conditions prior to March 7, 1820.[991] It used its authority in such unsparing proscriptions that even the royalists became alarmed and appealed to de Martignac, the royal commissioner accompanying Angoulême, pointing out the evils to be apprehended from such ferocity. Quarrels within the Junta afforded an excuse for superseding it, and Angoulême, on reaching Madrid, empowered the Councils of Castile and Indias to nominate a Regency, at the head of which was the Duke del Infantado. This body, on June 4th, published a manifesto promising to use its power to prevent persecutions and excesses, to maintain internal peace, execute the laws and make the royal power respected.[992]

These were fair words, belied by acts. The whole arrangement had been dictated by secret instructions from Fernando, and proscription and persecution continued as active as ever. The Regency confirmed a measure of the Junta organizing bodies of so-called Royalist Volunteers, whose duties consisted in arresting and imprisoning all whom greed or malevolence might designate as objects of suspicion, in which work they were aided by the mob, always ready for violence and rapine. In Saragossa fifteen hundred persons were dragged to prison by the populace led by priests and frailes. In Navarre, the guerrilla chief known as el Trapense committed revolting excesses. In Madrid and Córdova the gaols were crowded with prisoners. This work went on in most of the towns, as the national forces retreated, the victims being mostly citizens of wealth and position, while the pulpits resounded with exhortations to persecution and extermination and the French troops, in so far as they could, restrained the outrages.[993]

RELEASE OF FERNANDO

Despite his reluctance to interfere, Angoulême felt called upon to put an end to the cruelty and impolicy of these persecutions and, on his way to Cádiz, he issued from Andujar, August 8th, a decree forbidding arrests by the Spanish authorities without authorization from the commandants of the troops of the districts, who were instructed to liberate all political prisoners, and to arrest those who contravened these orders, while all periodicals were subjected to the inspection of the commandants. The foreign ministers, however, protested against this as an invasion of Spanish independence, which emboldened the Regency to remonstrate in a haughty and insolent manner. The Royalist Volunteers of Navarre, in a manifesto of August 20th, were prodigal of insults and menaces to the duke; a memorial addressed to him, August 23d, signed by Eguia and a large number of military chiefs and priests, stigmatized his effort at pacification as an attempt to perpetuate an impious faction, and demanded the restoration of the Inquisition. Wherever there were no French troops the decree was ignored and finally Angoulême, whether instructed by his court or afraid openly to oppose the Regency, issued an explanatory order, which virtually annulled the decree. Evidently there was to be no peace for the distracted land.[994] Even the Regency felt it necessary to disclaim responsibility for the horrors enacting on every hand. August 10th, it ordered the prosecution of the rioters who, at Alcalá, Guadalajara and Torrejon had committed terrible excesses under pretext of avenging the transfer of the king to Cádiz and, on August 13th, it commanded the people to restrain their zeal in making arrests but, while it was powerful to excite passion it was powerless to enforce order.[995]

When, in view of the hopelessness of further resistance at Cádiz, Fernando was informed, September 28th, that he was at liberty to seek the French camp, a tumult arose and a demand for guarantees. He summoned the ministers, telling them that he desired to give assurances and ordering José María Calatrava to draw up a decree declaring of his own free will and, on the faith of his royal word, that he would adopt a form of government assuring the happiness of the nation, the personal security, the property and the civil liberty of Spaniards, with complete oblivion of the past. The amnesty was rendered complete with elaborate details and, when it was presented to him for signature on the 30th, he said that, to remove all doubts, he would make some changes with his own hand, which he accordingly did, rendering some of the clauses clearer and more emphatic.[996] When, on the next day, he was received by Angoulême, he shut himself up with the Duke del Infantado and Victor Damien Saez, his former confessor, whom he appointed universal minister and, before the colloquy was over, there was drawn up and signed a decree of two articles; the first declared null and void all acts since March 7, 1820; the second confirmed the proscriptions of the Junta of Ozarzun and the Regency. Printed copies of this, together with that of the day before, were circulated to the no small perplexity of all concerned. Then General Bourmont, the French commander, learned that Ferdinand had passed secret sentence of death on some prominent liberals there present, whereupon they were conveyed on naval vessels to Gibraltar and saved from his sanguinary vengeance. This was but a foretaste of the wrath to come.[997] Prescriptive and oppressive measures followed each other and the persecution inaugurated by the Regency was sharpened and systematized.

Ten Years of Reaction.

The French had already discovered that they had raised a demon whom they could not exorcise. They had restored unconditionally to absolute power a prince who was utterly faithless, whom no promises could bind, who cared only for the gratification of his passions, and who was surrounded by vindictive counsellors, eager for the blood and spoils of their countrymen. The prisons were crowded to repletion and the untamed ferocity of the multitude, stimulated by the pulpit, was let loose upon defenceless victims. It was a scandal in the face of all Europe and was felt acutely. Effort was made to repair the mischief, but with scant success. Fernando, on leaving Cádiz, had written to Louis XVIII, expressing his gratitude, and Louis seized the opportunity, in his reply, to impress on him his own example and that of their ancestor Henry IV, as the only means of bringing peace to a distracted land, warning him that a blind despotism weakened instead of strengthening royal power. Angoulême had manifested his disapprobation of the decree of October 1st, and a coolness arose between him and Fernando, which went on increasing. They parted, October 11th, Angoulême refusing all honors on his homeward journey, and leaving Bourmont in command. The French army was gradually reduced, but the last detachments did not leave Spain until November, 1827.

CHÂTEAUBRIAND’S FAILURE

Secure in this protection, Fernando was deaf to remonstrances. It is true that, when the ambassadors of the powers met him in Seville, under their pressure, he issued a decree, October 22d, holding out expectations of what he would do on reaching Madrid, but promises cost him nothing and these were as futile as those of September 30th. To emphasize the necessity of conciliation, the French cabinet prevailed upon the Russian ambassador, Pozzo di Borgo, to visit Madrid, in the name of the Holy Alliance. He arrived there October 28th and held long conferences with Fernando and Victor Saez, urging clemency and a general amnesty, but he met, in reply, with nothing but vague generalizations.[998]

If the welfare of a nation had not been at stake, the reflections of Châteaubriand on the success of his enterprise, and his correspondence with Talaru, the French ambassador, might well raise a smile. He was disgusted, he said, with having to do with a monarch who would burn his kingdom in a cigar, and he declared that the sovereigns of today seem specially created to destroy a society ready to perish. In Spain, the political sore is the king and it is almost impossible to apply a remedy. At first he assumed that he could dictate a policy, and asserted that he would not tolerate the follies of the king nor allow France to appear as an accomplice in stupidity and fanaticism. Talaru was to speak as a master; if the ministry was not to his mind, he was to have it changed, the threatened withdrawal of the troops being what would force Fernando to listen to reason. He soon found, however, that behind the ministry was the camarilla—the real power that could not be dislodged—and that the clergy was also a body to be reckoned with. Châteaubriand’s effervescence wore itself out against the impenetrability to reason and argument of Fernando and his advisers, and his demands shrank to asking for a decree of amnesty—it would be badly framed, he knew, but at least it would have the appearance of doing something. After months of urgency, at last Fernando agreed to it. A fairly liberal scheme was drawn up but, after it had been submitted to the revision of the friends of Don Carlos, of the bishops, of the secret Junta de Estado and of the Council of Castile, its framers could scarce recognize it. While it offered pardon to all participants in the disturbances since 1820 in support of the Constitution, there were fifteen excepted classes, some of them vague and comprehensive. It ordered the discharge of all prisoners not comprised within the exceptions, but this was not obeyed. It ordered the bishops to contribute to bring about union, but few of them did so. It was dated May 1, 1824, but was not published until the 20th, and the interval was employed all over Spain in gathering evidence to bring individuals under the excepted classes, so that they could be arrested simultaneously with the publication of the decree; the prisons were filled with new victims, and the courts were overwhelmed with prosecutions. The courts, moreover, were supplemented with military commissions, whose procedure was informal and summary. The Gaceta de Madrid, between August 24th and October 12, 1824, chronicled 112 executions by shooting or hanging. Whatever scanty favor was shown to Liberals in the decree was more than counterbalanced by another of July 1st, granting pardon for all assaults and injuries committed on them or their property except when murder had resulted.[999] The Royalist Volunteers thus had full licence, and the Liberals were virtually outlawed.

DEMANDS FOR THE INQUISITION

Proscription and persecution were systematized in a manner without precedent, by the compilation of lists of all suspects. During the constitutional period, Fernando had kept a Libro Verde, noting down the names of all who displeased him, thus marking them for future vengeance. On his restoration to power, a secret Junta de Estado, consisting chiefly of ecclesiastics, was formed, whose business it was to gather information against all who were opposed to absolutism. Denunciations were invited from priests and frailes, from enemies and from the lowest class of informers, to whom inviolable secrecy was promised, and all the scandal and false evidence thus accumulated was recorded opposite the name of the party, for use as occasion might require. The list was divided into districts, and copies were sent to the respective intendants of police, who contributed such further names and charges as they could gather from all sources however vile. Thus every man’s liberty and property were at the mercy of secret and irresponsible informers. It was a Libro Verde on a scale which the Inquisition itself had never imagined, and the system was more thorough and more dangerous to the innocent than that of the Inquisition.[1000] Such was the condition of Spain during the terrible ten years, from 1823 to 1833, known as the Epocha de Chaperon—Chaperon being the president of the military commission of Madrid and notorious for his cruelty.

One result of this is well set forth in a singularly outspoken representation addressed by Javier de Burgos to Fernando, January 24, 1826. He had been sent to Paris to negotiate a loan, and he ascribes his failure, not so much to the poverty of the land, as to the absence of peace essential to prosperity, and this arose from the successive proscriptions which had desolated Spain. Now, he says, simple police orders deprive of common rights whole classes, and subject them to penalties which in well-ordered countries can be inflicted only by tribunals. Much is said of the league of European bankers against Spanish credit, but this has only been made invincible by the efforts of the six or eight thousand proscribed exiles in England, France and Belgium. A few days ago the journal which represents commerce and industry said “As for Spain, it continues to fall rapidly into barbarism. It is a second Turkey, only more miserable and worse governed.” Mexico, Colombia, Peru and Chile obtain loans, even though their independence is not recognized, but Spain cannot get a maravedí.[1001] It is creditable to Fernando that he took this plain-speaking good-naturedly and subsequently gave the writer the cross of Carlos III, but he was impervious to the good advice.

The decrees of the Regency and of Fernando, restoring the conditions prior to March 7, 1820, and invalidating all subsequent acts, seemed necessarily to revive the Inquisition. Its officials, however, hesitated to resume their functions without positive orders, and it was known that the French were opposed to its restoration. Numerous petitions for it were made to Angoulême, but he evaded categorical replies, saying that he would procure the liberation of the king and leave him to determine what would best promote the happiness of the nation.[1002] After Fernando’s release, felicitations came pouring in, warmly thanking him for his proscriptive measures and among these were many urging that the Inquisition should be set to work. If, at the moment, he desired to meet these wishes, he was restrained by the earnest opposition of the Allies, who especially shrank from the responsibility of resuscitating an institution so universally abhorred. As Châteaubriand wrote to Talaru, December 1st, “We will not permit our victories to be dishonored by proscriptions or that the fires of the Inquisition be raised as altars to our triumphs” and, on December 11th, he declared it to be necessary that the royal confessor should not be an inquisitor.[1003]

Fernando, however, seems already to have questioned whether the Inquisition would really be of service to him politically and, as religion with him was merely a matter of policy, he preferred to let the question slumber, without committing himself. It is related that once, when a bishop of extreme views was urging upon him the utility which the Inquisition had always been to the crown, he walked across the room to a balcony and, looking up at the serene sky, exclaimed “What a cloud! a great storm is coming.”[1004] His intentions, however, were indirectly manifested, by a decree of January 1, 1824, which withdrew from the Crédito público the administration of the property of the Inquisition and placed it with the Colector-general de Espolios, who was charged to pay the salaries of all the officials of the tribunals.[1005] This indicated that there was no intention to restore the institution to activity, and to this Fernando adhered, notwithstanding the urgency which continued.

THE INQUISITION DORMANT

In fact, as the reaction established itself, Fernando could not but recognize that he had nothing to gain from the Inquisition and might risk something. His one object was unlimited absolutism. Circumstances had enabled him to attain this to a degree which none of his predecessors had enjoyed. The defeat of the Liberals was so complete, and the servility of the Royalists so great, that he could disregard whatever remnants of the old Spanish institutions had still placed some restraints on the crown. There was no secret made of this. A royal order of October 17, 1824, destroyed at a blow all the municipal self-government of Spain; the Ayuntamientos of the towns were no longer to be elective; those in office were to choose their successors in thirds at a time, and the appointees were subjected to revision by the royal Audiencias while, in the preamble, the object of this was openly stated to be that there should disappear for ever from Spanish soil the most remote idea that sovereignty resided elsewhere than in the royal person, and the people should know that not the slightest alteration would ever be made in the fundamental laws of the monarchy.[1006]

The only claim of the Inquisition to efficiency, greater than that of the police and royal tribunals, was in its delegated faculties from the pope and, to a monarch thus resolved to concentrate in his own hands all power, it was naturally distasteful to employ for political ends foreign authority which, nominally at least, was not under his own control. This objection he might have disregarded, if he had reason to expect from the Inquisition any special service, but such there was not. While there still was law in Spain the Inquisition might be useful as being above the law, but now that law was merely the sic volo, sic jubeo, the Inquisition was superfluous, while its secret procedure was more tardy and cumbrous—perhaps even less certain—than that of the military commissions; and the system described above of lists of suspects with evidence gathered from every source by thousands of informers was far more comprehensive in plan and in detail than anything that the inquisitorial organization had ever attempted.

The Inquisition thus had nothing to offer and, careless as was Fernando of the public opinion of Europe, even he could recognize the wisdom of avoiding the odium of re-establishing an institution so generally condemned. To the victims it made little difference whether their judges were called military commissioners or inquisitors; their offences were justiciable by either, for the pulpits resounded with the doctrine that all Constitutionalists and Liberals were Jansenists and heretics—a doctrine justified by a royal order of May 2, 1824, to the bishops, requiring them to celebrate, in their dioceses, Missions calling the Liberals to repentance.[1007]

Yet there was a lurking Jansenism in this tacit assumption that the regalías enabled the king to prolong at his pleasure that suppression of the Holy Office which, in 1813, had been proved by learned theologians to be in violation of the canons and of the authority of the Holy See. The clerical party was restless and dissatisfied, the more so because, as Fernando’s theory of government was to render his own power secure by promoting discord among his followers, he occasionally favored the moderate Royalists against the extremists. The latter were not content even with the prevailing cruel persecution, and longed for one more searching with the Inquisition as its instrument. The secret organization known as the Junta Apostólica, or Angel Exterminador, had cast its eyes upon Don Carlos as a leader who could realize their aspirations, for he was completely under priestly influence and belonged to the extreme faction, besides being heir presumptive in the probable case of Fernando dying without issue. Carlos, however, though not a man of strong character, was strictly honorable and was bound to Fernando with ties of a mutual affection which endured to the end. He was quite content to await the chances of succession, but his wife Francisca of Portugal and her sister the Princess of Beira, widow of the Infante Pedro, were ambitious. His apartments in the royal palace were the centre of intrigues, in which he did not personally participate, while Fernando who, through his spies, was kept informed of them, did not interfere, confiding in his brother’s loyalty and his own ability to crush attempts against himself.

RISING IN CATALONIA

In 1824 and 1825 there were movements and risings of the extremists in various provinces, which indicated concerted action and were suppressed with more or less facility, except in Catalonia. There the hidden leaders of the conspiracy found a population discontented with what they deemed the lukewarmness of the Government, which they were told was now controlled by Free-Masons. The old members of the Army of the Faith, moreover, deemed themselves insufficiently rewarded for their services, and organized under the name of Agraviados, forming the nucleus of a “Federacion de Realistas puros,” more royalist than the king. Towards the end of 1826 there was circulated a manifesto from the Federation urging the necessity of placing Don Carlos on the throne; its organization rapidly extended, and April 1, 1827, was appointed for the rising, which was readily suppressed and a free pardon was granted to the insurgents. The pacification was but temporary. In July, at Manresa, a Junta superior was formed, and in August the tolling of the bells summoned the somatenes or levies en masse to arms, when a portion of the troops joined the insurrection, which was soon supreme in Catalonia. A report made, August 27th, by Dehesa, fiscal of the court of Barcelona, states that the war-cry of the insurgents was “Long live the Inquisition! Death to the Constitution! Death to the negros! Death to the police!” They were told that the rising was by order of the pope and that the king was surrounded by Free-Masons; it was supposed to be the work of the clergy, who desired the re-establishment of the Inquisition, and to make themselves all-powerful by working on the fanaticism of the ignorant mountaineers.[1008]

That the situation was becoming dangerous is manifested by the only kingly act in Fernando’s record, for he resolved to visit Catalonia himself, after sending the Count de España there with full powers. He reached Tarragona September 28th, being received everywhere with enthusiasm, though there was an abortive project of abducting him by a large body of Royalist Volunteers assembled as though to do him honor. From Tarragona he issued a proclamation to the effect that those who should not lay down their arms within twenty-four hours must expect no mercy, and that he would deal with their leaders as he saw fit. The secret societies had already issued orders of pacification; organized resistance was abandoned, nine of the chiefs were hanged and the land was speedily at peace. Carlos took no part in the rising, but he knew of the plans and had not opposed them, and the name of Carlists was thereafter used to designate the extreme royalists.[1009]

It is significant that, when Fernando ordered the bishops to exhort their subjects to peace, some of them obeyed, but Pablo de Jesus de Corcuera y Caserta, the prelate of Vich, refused in a letter of October 6th, on the ground that he could not conscientiously do so. Fernando, he said, had not kept his promises; he had assembled a junta to examine all books in circulation, yet poisonous ones, like that of Thomas à Kempis, were allowed to be read; he had ordered the restoration of everything to the conditions prior to March 7, 1820, yet the Inquisition had not been re-established; other royal short-comings were pointed out and, in the face of all this it was impossible for a bishop not to take part in temporal matters; to preach obedience as required would be to compromise the episcopate and to become the instrument of the enemies of God, nor would it avail anything, for it would be impossible to make the people think otherwise. These outspoken sentiments of the fiery bishop explain much that is saddest in modern Spanish history; he was not punished for them but, when the Count de España came to Vich he summoned the recalcitrant prelate before him and reminded him of the fate of Acuña of Zamora, which might be repeated if it so pleased the Catholic king.[1010]

After this there was no further demand for the restoration of the Inquisition, as Fernando’s determination was recognized as unalterable. For awhile however it had not accepted its suppression as final, and it still sought to perform some of its functions in hopes of being again revived. This is demonstrated by the Valencia register, laboriously and faithfully compiled and brought up to the end of 1824, and the same seems to have been done in Madrid for, in a document of 1817, there is an appended note referring to the Madrid register of January 31, 1824. As the salaries were continued, an organization was kept up and a show was made of performing some kind of work. The Valencia register thus contains several cases in which it acted in 1824, though it modestly styles itself “este tribunal eclesiastico” and not “Santo Oficio.” Thus Valero Andreu was accused to it of a blasphemous proposition and was duly sentenced. The criminal court of Valencia regarded it as still functioning and, when in trials there came evidence of matters cognizable by the Inquisition, the proofs would be sent to the tribunal which would summon the offender and pass judgement on him, the penalty however being not more than a reprimand. Three cases of this kind are recorded, the latest being July 3, 1824.[1011] We may fairly assume that in some, at least, of the other tribunals, trivial work of this kind was similarly performed.

REMNANTS OF THE INQUISITION

Some papers connected with a quarrel between the officials of the Majorca tribunal give us an insight into its internal condition in 1830. Its business consisted in the collection of the censos and other sources of revenue. There were many of these—loans to towns and villages as well as to individuals throughout the islands; payments were apt to be tardy and the labor of collection was considerable, frequently involving legal proceedings. The inquisitor had disappeared, although from another document we learn that he was named Francisco Antonio Andraca and that he was drawing his salary elsewhere. The existing head of the tribunal was a juez subdelegado, a representative of the old juez de bienes; there was a treasury and an auditing department with an administrador tesorero, Juan Antonio Togores, who was disabled and represented by his son, José Antonio Togores. The secretary of the secreto was Bartolomé Serra y Bennassar, acting as auditor ad interim, whose clerk was Pedro Mascaro, notary of sequestrations. The only other official was the portero, Sebastian Banza. Togores claims that, when the buildings were destroyed in 1820, he incurred many enmities by efforts to compel restitution of plundered materials—among others a Count of Ayamans was sued for purloining building stone. Togores constructed a wall around the site, and the heaps of stone and tiles still lay scattered there. Outside of the enclosure, a couple of small buildings were erected for offices, with a warehouse below for the storage of the rescued materials. One of the charges against him was that he had used the site of the old garden of the senior inquisitor to raise vegetables and flowers for himself.[1012] There is impressiveness in this glimpse of the old officials clinging to the ruins of what had once been so formidable.

From this quarrel we learn that the central authority of the Inquisition was the General Superintendent of the Property of the Inquisition—apparently a subordinate of the Colector-general de Espolios, to whom the assets were confided by the decree of January 1, 1824. In 1830 this General Superintendent was an old inquisitor, Valentin Zorilla, and he had as fiscal another inquisitor, Vicente Alonso de Verdejo. The Inquisitor-general, Gerónimo Cavillon y Salas, Bishop of Tarazona, was still drawing his salary of 71,491 reales 24 mrs. and did not die until 1835. Of the Suprema there were but two survivors, the Dean Ethenard and Cristobal Bencomo, Archbishop of Heraclea, who by 1833 had disappeared, leaving Ethenard alone. There was still a relator, a private secretary of the inquisitor-general, a keeper of the archives, and four minor officials. All these, however, were mere pensioners. The active organization consisted of the superintendent and his fiscal, with a treasurer and receiver-general ad interim, Don Angel Abad, whose accounts for 1830 show that he had received by drafts drawn upon the several tribunals

From Valencia35,000rs.

Córdova26,000

Barcelona28,000

Granada60,000

America93,417.17

Santiago52,000

Murcia60,000

Majorca50,000

Saragossa84,000

Canaries112,635.17

Logroño, Madrid, Cuenca and Llerena apparently contributed nothing. The sums credited to America and Canaries were probably old balances. The receipts from prebends must have gone directly to the Superintendent, for the decree of final extinction in 1834 shows that they were still held for the benefit of the Inquisition. There were other sources of revenue, principally from censos, of which the most notable was one of the Count of Altamira, from whom was collected, in 1830, the sum of 272,335 reales 25 mrs., being arrearages that seem to run back to 1818. He was still hereditary alguazil mayor of the Seville tribunal, in which capacity he was receiving a yearly salary of 4411 reales 26 mrs. The Duke of Medinaceli, as alguazil mayor of the Madrid tribunal, was still drawing his yearly stipend of a thousand reales and personally signing monthly receipts. There are scattering entries of payments to officials of various tribunals, showing that they were gradually thinning out, and refugees from the American Inquisitions were kept on the pay-roll.[1013] Such was the moribund condition of the Holy Office on the eve of its extinction.

While the Inquisition was thus suspended, the more zealous bishops replaced it with so-called Juntas de fe, based on the same principles, with secrecy of procedure and exercising jurisdiction in the external as well as internal forum. No record of the proceedings of these anomalous tribunals seems to have been preserved except in the case of Valencia, where the archbishopric was held by Simon López, in reward for his defence of the Holy Office in the Córtes of Cádiz. Almost his earliest act on assuming his new dignity, in 1824, was to issue a pastoral confirming the junta de fe, established by his predecessor Veremundo Arias, and empowering it to receive denunciations. He took the presidency with Dr. Miguel Toranza, the former inquisitor of Valencia as his colleague, Dr. Juan Bautista Falcó as fiscal and Dr. José Royo as secretary.[1014]

JUNTAS DE FE

Thus the old tribunal was revived under another name, and it speedily proved that such juntas were more dangerous than those of the Inquisition, as they were not subject to the supervision and control of the Suprema. A poor schoolmaster of Rizaffa, named Cayetano Ripoll, had served in the War of Liberation and had been carried as a prisoner to France, where he became a pervert. He abandoned Christianity for Deism, while at the same time he was a living embodiment of the teachings of Christ, sharing his scanty pittance with the needy, and constantly repeating “Do not unto others what you would not have done unto you.” He did not seek to propagate his beliefs, but he was denounced to the Junta by a beata for not taking his scholars to mass, for not making them kneel to the passing viaticum, and for substituting in his school the ejaculation “Praise be to God” instead of “Ave Maria purissima.” He was arrested September 29, 1824, and his trial lasted for nearly two years. The testimony confirmed the denunciation and showed that the only religious instruction which he gave his pupils was the Ten Commandments. During his prolonged trial he made no complaints; he shared his meagre prison fare with his fellow-prisoners; he openly avowed his convictions, and the repeated efforts of the theologians to convert him were futile. The sentence bore that the tribunal had consulted with the Junta de Fe and concluded that he be relaxed, as a formal and contumacious heretic, which had been confirmed by the archbishop. There was no hypocritical plea for mercy, and the Sala del Crimen of the Audiencia, to which he was handed over, gave him no hearing or opportunity for defence. Its function was purely ministerial, and he knew nothing of its action until the sentence was announced to him that, within twenty-four hours, he was to be hanged and burnt, but the burning might be figurative by painting flames on a barrel, in which his body should be thrust into unconsecrated ground. He listened to this with the patient resignation that he had exhibited throughout his trial, and his last words on the gibbet, July 26, 1826, were “I die reconciled to God and man.”[1015]

This barbarity scandalized all Europe and proved to be the last execution for heresy in Spain. While it gratified the zealots, who were clamoring for the resurrection of the Inquisition, it displeased Fernando, who caused the Audiencia to be notified that the Government recognized no such tribunals as the juntas de fe.[1016] In spite of this rebuke, the episcopal juntas continued to exercise an irregular and irresponsible jurisdiction, until the sufferers sought from the Holy See the protection denied to them at home. Pius VIII listened to their prayer, whether from motives of humanity or of establishing in Spain the jurisdiction which the Inquisition had sought so sedulously to exclude, and, in a constitution of October 5, 1829, he recited the numerous prayers reaching him from those persecuted in Spain for matters of faith, asking that they might have opportunity of appealing from sentences rendered by archbishops and bishops, before being subjected to punishment. To save them from the expenses and delays of appeals to Rome, he empowered the tribunal of the Rota, in the papal nunciature, to hear all appeals in matters of faith, even twice, thrice, four or five times in succession, until three concording sentences should be rendered.[1017] Fernando was less sensitive than his predecessors as to papal encroachments, and he gave this the force of law by a royal order of February 6, 1830.

Cristina.

QUESTION OF SUCCESSION

The death of Queen Amalia, May 17, 1829, was an abundant source of intrigue, for a fourth marriage of Fernando might prove fruitful and thus destroy the prospects of Don Carlos. The efforts of the Carlists to prevent it were vain and, on December 9th, Fernando married his neice, the Neapolitan princess, María Cristina de Bourbon, whose sister Carlotta was the wife of the Infante Francisco de Paula, the second brother of Fernando. There was soon prospect of an heir to the throne, and the uncertainty as to sex rendered it advisable to determine in advance whether the Salic law excluding females from the succession was in force or not. The ancient Spanish law, as expressed in the Partidas, provided for the succession of a daughter in the absence of sons or of children of a son.[1018] Under this, Spain had seen the glorious reign of Isabella the Catholic and the unfortunate one of Juana la Loca, and female succession, in default of male children, was firmly established in the tradition of the nation until 1713, when María Luisa of Savoy persuaded her husband Philip V to effect a change. Much pressure was required to bring this about, but a pragmática, agreed to by the Córtes, provided that only in the event of the total default of male representatives should the daughters of the last reigning sovereign succeed, according to age, and all laws to the contrary were annulled.[1019]

In 1784 there was talk of revoking this pragmática, but it was postponed until after the accession of Carlos IV, when the Córtes of 1789 petitioned for the revival of the law of the Partidas. The king assented but, to avoid giving offence to reigning houses whose possible claims to the succession were thus cut off, it was kept a profound secret, although filed away in the archives.[1020] This was the position when Fernando, to assure the succession to a possible daughter, by a pragmática of March 29, 1830, ordered that of 1789 to be published and commanded the literal observance of the law of the Partidas.[1021] The proceedings of 1789 were freely denounced as fraudulent by the Carlists, they were confident in the support of two hundred thousand Royalist Volunteers, and they regarded the new pragmática as a reason for more energetic organization.

In due time, on October 10th, a girl was born, known to history as Isabel II. Carlos believed that his rights had been sacrificed and, though he refused to snatch at the sceptre during his brother’s life-time, he assured his partizans that he would not permit his neice to mount the throne. Fernando’s health was rapidly giving way under repeated attacks of gout and, on September 17, 1832, his life was despaired of. The prospect was most critical. Propositions were made to Carlos about sharing the government, but he declared that conscience and honor would not permit him to abandon rights given to him at his birth by God. In the perplexity of the situation, Calomarde, who for ten years had been the king’s most trusted minister, represented to Cristina the terrors of the inevitable civil war, and the dangers to herself and her children, for she had recently given birth to a second daughter, María Luisa Fernanda. She yielded, Fernando assented and signed a paper annulling the pragmática of 1830, which was read to the assembled ministers on the night of September 18th, under the strictest injunctions of secrecy, but it was treacherously divulged, and copies were posted about the court. Cristina’s servants commenced packing her effects for departure and Carlos, in his apartments, was saluted as king.

Fernando however commenced to rally; many nobles offered their lives to Cristina and formed an association to defend the claims of Isabel. Carlotta, who was in Andalusia, hastened to Madrid, reaching it on the 22d and, being of a determined character scolded Cristina and threatened Calomarde—it is even said that she cuffed him in the face, when with ready wit he quoted Calderon—“White hands inflict no disgrace.” Fernando agreed to recall the decree, when she obtained the original and the copies and destroyed them. This only led the followers of Carlos to prepare to assert his claims by force, and there was no time to be lost in organizing a party to resist them.[1022]

This necessitated a reversal of the policy of the last ten years, identified with Calomarde—in fact the period was often designated as the Epocha de Calomarde. The ministry was dismissed; Calomarde was banished to his native place, and then was ordered to the citadel of Minorca, but he was concealed in a convent from which he escaped to France. Fernando, on October 6th signed a decree constituting Cristina regent during his illness; the next day she issued a general pardon of all political prisoners and, on the 15th, a general amnesty, including the exiles who were allowed to return, the only exceptions being those who at Seville had voted to replace the king with a regency, and those who had commanded bodies of troops against him, all of whom Fernando obstinately refused to pardon. This complete reversal of policy led to some premature insurrectionary movements by the Carlists, but they were easily suppressed.[1023]

ISABELLA RECOGNIZED

The declaration of September 18th had been destroyed, but it had not been invalidated. To effect this in the most impressive manner an assembly was held on December 31st of all the great officers of the Government, representatives of the grandees, and deputations of the provinces, in which Fernando presented a holograph paper setting forth that advantage had been taken of his desperate illness to threaten him with civil war and induce him to sign a revocation of the pragmatic sanction of March 29, 1830; now, convinced of his inability to alter the immemorial customs of the land, he pronounced the nullity of the declaration which had been snatched from him by surprise. Then he signed and rubricated the paper, all present were asked whether they had understood its purport, and the next day, January 1, 1833, the proceedings of the Córtes of 1789 and their confirmation by Carlos IV were published.[1024]

The next step was the assembling of Córtes to take the oath of allegiance to Isabel, and for this summons were issued April 4th appointing June 20th. Carlos was got out of the way by inducing Dom Miguel of Portugal to invite him, but, when Fernando desired to remove him still further to Italy, a long and very curious correspondence ensued between the brothers, couched in the most affectionate terms, in which Carlos evaded obedience. He was the only absent member of the royal family when the Córtes met, where all, including bishops, grandees, nobles and the procurators of the cities duly took the oath of allegiance. The whole kingdom followed the example, and the Biscayans, under the historic Oak of Guarnica, spontaneously recognized Isabel as the heiress of Biscay. Yet sparks of rebellion manifested themselves in one place after another, and there were symptoms of insubordination in the army, showing that the Carlist organization was at work and was awaiting only the death of Fernando.[1025]

By the beginning of September he was scarce more than a living corpse and on the 29th the end came. The obsequies were held on October 3d, the leaden coffin having a glass plate through which the face could be seen and verified. The Duke of Alagon, as captain of the body-guard, commanded silence and, in a loud voice exclaimed Señor! Señor! Señor! As there was no reply, he added “Since his majesty does not answer, he is truly dead.” Despite the leaden coffin, the stench was such that several persons fainted.[1026] It might be said that his malignant influence lasted until the grave covered him—or, perhaps, the truth is more fully expressed by Benito Pérez Galdos: “That king, who deceived his parents, his masters, his friends, his ministers, his partizans, his enemies, his four wives, his people, his allies, all the world in fact, deceived also death, who thought to make us happy in delivering us from such a devil, for he left us his brother and his daughter, who kindled a fearful war, and the legacy of misery and scandal is yet unexhausted.”[1027]

DEFINITE EXTINCTION

It is not our province to enter into the horrors of the savage Carlist war, which broke out forthwith and lasted until the Convenio de Vergara in 1839. The rapid sketch which we have given of its antecedents suffices to show how Cristina, in order to make head against the extremists, was perforce obliged to consolidate a party composed of the moderate Royalists and the Liberals, while the progress of events threw her more and more into the arms of the latter. The solemn proclamation of Isabel’s succession, October 20th, was accompanied by measures restricting the oppressive powers of the Royalist Volunteers, restoring the laws respecting mayorazgos and other reforms of the Constitutional period. That this process, once begun, should continue with accelerated momentum was inevitable, and also that it should sweep aside the poor remnants of the Inquisition. This was so much a matter of course and, in the comatose condition of the institution, was of importance so slender, that the memoir writers and historians of the period, if they allude to it at all, do so in the briefest and most perfunctory manner. Yet the profound roots which it had struck in the national life, and the hold which it had acquired on popular veneration, are manifested in the fact that the struggle for its extinction had extended over a period of more than twenty years, and required for its consummation a change in the ideals of a majority of the people. The time for this had at last come, and the final dissolution was accomplished with only so much of discussion as to show that the opinions of those called upon to decide were virtually unanimous in principle and only different as to the opportuneness of the measure.

At a meeting of the Consejo de Gobierno, July 9, 1834, there was submitted the project of a decree for the extinction of the Inquisition and the disposition of its property. This was considered, July 11th, when the majority, consisting of the Archbishop of Mexico, the Duke of Bailen, the Marquis of las Amarillas and Don José María Puig, approved of the decree, with some unessential modifications. The minority, consisting of the Marquis of Santa Cruz, the Duke of Medinaceli and Don Francisco Xavier Caro, opposed the article extinguishing the Inquisition, on the ground that it was already extinguished, matters of faith were treated in the episcopal tribunals, and it was inopportune to call public attention to an affair which all the world regarded as settled, while the application of the property ought to be submitted to the approaching Córtes. At the next meeting, held July 13th, a dictamen was adopted, embodying the views of the majority and suggesting certain amendments, of no special moment in principle, which were virtually accepted by the Regency.[1028] No time was lost in making the final draft, which was published July 15th. The preamble recited the desire of the Regency to strengthen the public credit in all ways compatible with justice; that the late king had considered the imprescriptible episcopal jurisdiction and the laws of the land sufficient for the protection of religion; that a decree of January 4, 1834, had committed to the bishops censorship over writings on religion, morals and discipline; that the labors on the criminal code, now completed, established appropriate penalties for assaults on religion, and that the Junta eclesiastica, created by decree of April 22d, was occupied with proposing what was deemed necessary to this end. Therefore the Regent, in order to provide a remedy, in so far as the Real Patronato extended and with the concurrence of the Holy See, as far as this was necessary, after consulting the Council of Government and the ministers, decreed—

Art. I. The tribunal of the Inquisition is declared to be definitely suppressed.

Art. II. Its property is appropriated to the extinction of the public debt.

Art. III. The one hundred and one canonries annexed to the Inquisition are applied to the same object, subject to the royal decree of March 9th last, and for the time expressed in the Apostolic bulls.

Art. IV. The employees who possess prebends or obtain salaried civil offices will have no claim on the funds of the Tribunal.

Art. V. The other employees will receive from the sinking fund the exact salaries corresponding to the classification which they will establish with the Junta eclesiastica.[1029]

Such was the brief and decisive decree which terminated the existence of the institution created by the piety of Isabella and the fanaticism of Torquemada.

VICISSITUDES OF TOLERATION

There still remained the juntas de fe of the bishops, some, at least, of whom persisted in maintaining them, with the old inquisitorial methods, in spite of the constitution of Pius VIII and the royal decree of February 6, 1830. Their continuance was incompatible with the rapidly increasing anticlerical spirit of the dominant party, and they were prohibited by a decree of July 1, 1835, in which, after alluding to the disregard of the papal and royal utterances, Cristina ordered that they should cease immediately wherever they had been established. The ordinary episcopal courts were required to observe the law of the Partidas, the canons and the common law in all cases of faith and others, of which the extinguished Inquisition had had cognizance, conforming their procedure to that in other ecclesiastical matters and admitting the appeals allowed by law. Cases of solicitation were provided for by a clause providing that, where scandal or offence to morals might ensue, a prudent secrecy should be observed, the hearings to be held with closed doors, in the presence of the accused and his counsel, from whom nothing was to be withheld.[1030] Thus the last trace of inquisitorial procedure was forbidden on Spanish soil.

After so many centuries of conscientious intolerance, the lesson of toleration was hard to learn. On August 14, 1836, the Motin de la Granja forced Cristina to proclaim once more the Constitution of 1812, with its prohibition of any religion save Roman Catholicism. This instrument, with all its crudities, was soon found to be unworkable, and the Constitution of 1837 marked an advance, in its simple declaration that the State obligated itself to maintain the cult and ministers of the Catholic religion, which was that of Spaniards. Then came a reaction and, when the Constitution was revised in 1845, the principle of intolerance was reaffirmed. The European disturbances of 1848 strengthened this spirit in the Church, and it found expression in the penal code of 1851, of which Articles, 128, 129, 130 and 131 inflict imprisonment and exile for any attempt to change the religion of Spain, for public worship in other faiths, for apostatizing from Catholicism, or for publishing doctrines in opposition to it.[1031] The Spanish bishops were even encouraged to call for the revival of the Inquisition under their management, but this would have been superfluous.[1032] That the law was quite sufficient for the repression of Protestant propaganda was shown, in 1855 by the long imprisonment and exile of Francisco Ruet at Barcelona. It is true that in 1856, during the brief return of the Liberals to power, a Constitution on a more tolerant basis was framed, but a speedy reaction prevented this from going into effect, and the instrument of 1845 remained in force until the revolution of 1868. Ruet’s chief disciple was Manuel Matamoros, who made numerous converts in Málaga, Granada and Seville, but, in 1860, prosecution caused to fly to Barcelona, where he was thrown in gaol and taken back to Granada. Some twenty more were arrested, among whom were his two principal aids José Alhama and Trigo. Matamoros and Alhama were condemned to eight years of presidio and Trigo to four, while similar sentences were pronounced in Seville on Tomas Bordallo and Diego Mesa Santaello. The affair made a sensation throughout Europe; the Evangelical Alliance bestirred itself and a deputation representing nearly every nation assembled in Madrid to intercede for the convicts. The pressure was so great that, on May 20, 1862, the sentence rendered three weeks before was commuted to nine years’ of exile, which enabled the Evangelicals, from the safe refuge of Gibraltar, to maintain relations with their secret converts.[1033] That under this reaction the resuscitation of the Inquisition was seriously considered, may be assumed from the publication, in 1859, of a pamphlet containing the speech of Ostolaza, in the Córtes of Cádiz, in favor of the Inquisition, and those of Muñoz Torrero and Toreno against it, with the manifesto of the Córtes, thus contributing to the debate, under the guise of impartiality, the weight of argument against the Holy Office.[1034]

When came the revolution of 1868, the Constituent Córtes, after a vigorous debate, affirmed, May 8, 1869, the principle of religious liberty by the decisive vote of 163 to 40. In the new Constitution, proclaimed June 6th, the free exercise, public and private, of faiths other than Catholicism was guaranteed both to foreigners and Spaniards.[1035] Under this the Código penal reformado, which is still in force, provides penalties of fine and imprisonment for any interference with religious belief, whether by constraint to acts of worship or impeding those of the individual’s chosen faith.[1036] Finally, in 1876, still another Constitution, which has endured to the present time, after declaring Roman Catholicism to be the religion of the State, prohibits the molestation of any one for religious opinion or for the exercise of his cult, in so far as Christian morals are respected, but it does not permit public ceremonies other than those of the State religion.[1037]