Note 402 — Chapter VI · MEXICO.

Torquemada, Lib. XIX, cap. 29. For almost all the early inquisitors of Mexico the tribunal was the stepping-stone to the episcopate. Bonilla, who went, in 1571, as fiscal, became inquisitor in 1573 and Archbishop of Mexico in 1592. Alonso Granero, who went as inquisitor in 1574, became Bishop of Charcas the same year. Santos García was inquisitor in 1576 and Bishop of Jalisco in 1597. Alonso de Peralta, who was inquisitor in 1594, was made Archbishop of La Plata in 1609, and Lobo Guerrero, who was inquisitor in 1593, became Archbishop of Santafé in 1598.

It illustrates the character of the men occupying these positions that when Granero left Mexico for his bishopric he went by land and in Nicaragua he assumed still to be inquisitor, condemning people and fining them to defray his travelling expenses. An unlucky notary named Rodrigo de Evora wrote some satiric couplets about him, whereupon he was thrown in prison with chains on hands and feet, tortured till he was crippled with dislocated joints and then exposed in a public auto and condemned to 300 lashes and six years of galleys. The scourging was administered with excessive severity and Evora had to beg his way to Mexico to appeal to the tribunal there. He evidently was stripped of his property and among other things of four cases of Chinese ware, which Granero appropriated to his own use.—Medina, op. cit., 76-78.