Note 51 — Chapter I · SICILY.

Franchina, p. 169.—“Havemos proveydo y mandado que los inquisidores del dicho Reyno no hobiesen de conocer, dentro termino de cinco años, de ninguna cosa que hoviere pena de muerte contra ningun persona natural de dicho Reyno.”—A Latin version is printed by Páramo, p. 204.

The phraseology of the decree would seem to suspend the spiritual as well as the temporal jurisdiction of the tribunal and historians have generally so regarded it. This however is impossible as the former was a delegation from the pope over which the emperor had no control and any attempt to do so would have been equivalent to abolishing the Inquisition, while the auto of 1541 shows that it continued to exercise its spiritual jurisdiction. It assumed however that its capacity to suppress heresy was fatally crippled by depriving its officials of the privilege of its exclusive forum, as expressed in a document quoted by Franchina (p. 69)—“Notandum est quod quando in anno 1535 fuit limitata seu suspensa jurisdictio temporalis hujus Sancti Officii in aliquibus casibus per invictissimum imperatorem Carolum V felicis memoriæ, jurisdictio spiritualis causarum fidei fuit in suspenso et quasi mortua.” So a consulta of the Suprema to Philip III, October 2, 1609, refers to Charles having deprived the Sicilian Inquisition of its temporal jurisdiction, resulting in such recrudescence of heresy that he was obliged to restore it.—Archivo de Simancas, Inquisicion, Lib. 927, fol. 323.

Inquisitor Páramo, in a letter of November 8, 1600, to Philip III, states the case to be that Charles was misled by false accounts of the misdeeds of the familiars and deprived them of their immunities but, on being better informed, he restored them.—Ibidem, Lib. 41, fol. 258.