Torquemada and the Spanish Inquisition 20

Torquemada and the Spanish Inquisition 20

FERDINAND OF ARAGON AND THE INFANTE DON JUAN.

 

From the Painting in the Prado Gallery attributed to Miguel Zittoz.]

 

They informed the Pontiff of the methods that were being pursued;

they set forth how the inquisitors in their eagerness to secure

convictions proceeded entirely upon their own initiative and without

the concurrence of the assessor and diocesan ordinary, as had been

prescribed; how they were departing from all legal form, imprisoning

unjustly, torturing cruelly and unduly, and falsely stigmatizing

innocent men as formal heretics, thereafter delivering them to the

secular arm for punishment, in addition to confiscating their property

so that their children were left in want and under the brand of infamy.

 

The Pope gave ear to these plaints, convinced himself of their truth,

and made his protest to Ferdinand and Isabella. He announced in his

brief that he would have deprived the inquisitors of their office

but that he was restrained by consideration for the Sovereigns who

had appointed them; nevertheless, he was sending them a brief of

admonition, and should they again give cause for complaint he would

be constrained to depose them. In the meantime he revoked the faculty

given the Sovereigns of appointing inquisitors, protesting that when

conceding this he had not sufficiently considered that already there

were inquisitors in the Sovereigns’ dominions and that the General of

the Dominicans and the Spanish provincials of that order had the right

to make such appointments. The bull that he had granted was therefore

in opposition to that right, and would never have been granted had the

matter been sufficiently considered.[76]

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER IX

 

THE SUPREME COUNCIL

 

 

The Sovereigns appear to have submitted without protest to this papal

interference and to the revocation of the faculty bestowed upon them of

nominating the inquisitors in their kingdom. This submission was hardly

to have been expected from their earlier attitude, but there are two

reasons, either or both of which may possibly account for it.

 

It will be remembered that there was a considerable number of

New-Christians about the Court and in immediate attendance upon the

Queen, one of whom was her secretary Pulgar. What view Pulgar took of

the Seville proceedings we know, and it is not too much to assume that

his view was the view of all Christians of Jewish extraction. These

New-Christians and others may very well have urged upon the notice of

the Sovereigns the cruelties and injustices that were being practised,

drawing their attention to the decree that made innocent children

suffer for the offences of which their parents had been convicted--a

decree which, hideous enough when the parents were actually guilty,

became unspeakably hideous when that guilt was no more than presumed.

 

In view of such representations the Sovereigns may have found the papal

rebuke unanswerable and the Pope’s action justified.

 

Then, again, they may have taken into consideration the projected war

upon Granada, the last province of the peninsula remaining in Moorish

hands. Funds were urgently required for this campaign, and the

confiscations that were daily being effected by the Holy Office were

rapidly supplying these--for the early victims of the Inquisition, as

we know, were persons of great wealth and distinction.[77]

 

Now the papal brief, whilst it cancelled the royal prerogative of

appointing inquisitors, did not attempt to divert the course of this

stream of confiscated property, nor, indeed, made any mention of

the matter. So that they may have hesitated to oppose themselves to

measures which they recognized as just and which continued to supply

them with the means for what they looked upon as a righteous crusade.

 

Bigotry and acquisitiveness were again joining forces, and, united,

they must prove, as ever, irresistible.

 

But on February 11, 1482, the Roman Curia issued another brief

addressed to the Sovereigns, wherein--entirely ignoring what already

had been written--it was announced that the General of the Dominicans,

Fr. Alonso de Cebrian, having represented to the Pope the need to

multiply the number of inquisitors in Spain, his Holiness had resolved

to appoint the said Fr. Alonso and seven other Dominicans to conduct

the affairs of the Holy Office in that kingdom, commanding them to

exercise their ministry in conjunction with the diocesan ordinary and

in accordance with the terms set forth in the briefs that were being

addressed to them.[78]

 

One of the eight Dominicans mentioned by the Pope was Fr. Tomás de

Torquemada, who by now was become confessor to the King and to the

Cardinal of Spain.

 

This brief, following so rapidly upon that which revoked the

Sovereigns’ power, may have caused Ferdinand and Isabella to look upon

it as the second move in an intrigue whose aim was to strengthen the

ecclesiastical arm in Spain to the detriment of the royal authority.

 

On April 17 Sixtus sent the promised instructions to the inquisitors of

Aragon, Cataluña, Valencia, and Mallorca. These indicated a procedure

in matters of faith so contrary to common law, that no sooner did the

inquisitors attempt to carry them into execution than there was an

uproar which afforded Ferdinand grounds upon which to indite a protest

to the Holy Father.

 

A reply came in the following October. Sixtus wrote that the briefs of

last April had been drawn up after conference with several members of

the Sacred College; that these cardinals were now absent from Rome,

but that on their return the matter should be further considered.

Meanwhile, however, in view of the results that had attended those

briefs, he was informing the inquisitors that they were exempt from

acting upon the terms set forth in them and instructing them to

proceed, as formerly, in co-operation with the diocesan ordinaries.

 

But in the meantime, for all the Pope’s protest against the excessive

severity of the Seville tribunal, this severity continued so

undiminished, not only in Seville but also in the districts under

the jurisdiction of other inquisitors, that there was a continuous

emigration from Spain of the wealthy New-Christian families. Many

of these repaired to Rome to appeal to the Pontifical Courts and to

procure there an absolution which should accord them immunity from the

Spanish tribunals of the Holy Office.

 

But even when this absolution was procured a large number of these

emigrants never thought of returning to Spain, considering it wiser to

settle in a country in which they were in less danger of persecution.

 

Although it is certain that the Sovereigns can have had no prevision of

what actually was to happen as a consequence--though not in their own

day, nor for some time afterwards--although they may have been very

far from foreseeing that by driving out these energetic, industrious,

intelligent men they were depriving the country of the financially

able, wealth-producing element of the community--still they did

undoubtedly perceive what was immediately before them; and they began

to fear the possibility of their country’s being drained of its present

wealth if these emigrations were to continue.

 

So Isabella wrote to the Pope entreating him to establish a court of

appeal in Spain, and thus dispose that proceedings started within the

kingdom could there be carried to their conclusion without the need

for these appeals to Rome. To this the Pope replied in affectionate

terms on February 23, 1483, promising to give the matter every

consideration.[79]

 

Shortly thereafter he held a conference of the Spanish Cardinals, the

principal of whom in wealth, importance, and distinction was Roderigo

Borgia, Cardinal of Valencia. At this conference several provisions

were agreed upon, and these were embodied in the briefs dispatched from

the Vatican on May 25 following.

 

The first of these was to the Sovereigns. It contained a gracious

assent to their petition, and exhorted them to be zealous in this

matter of the Faith, reminding them that Jehu had consolidated his

kingdom by the destruction of idolatry, and that the Sovereigns would

meet with the same good fortune, as already God was giving them many

victories over the Moors to reward their piety and the purity of their

faith.

 

The second was to Iñigo Manrique, Archbishop of Seville (having

succeeded in this see to the Cardinal of Spain, who was now Archbishop

of Toledo), appointing him judge of appeal in _Causas de Fé_.

 

The remaining briefs were addressed to the Archbishop of Toledo and

the other Spanish archbishops, commanding them, to the end that the

functions of the Inquisition should be discharged with integrity,

that in the event of there being in their ecclesiastical provinces any

bishops who were of Jewish descent, they should suavely admonish these

not to intervene in person in the proceedings of the Holy Office, but

to allow themselves to be represented by their principal officials,

provisors, and diocesan vicars-general--always provided that none of

these was of Jewish blood.

 

This decree was natural enough, and there was some occasion for it,

considering the number of Spanish families of Jewish consanguinity as

a consequence of marriages between Christians and _conversos_--many

of these marriages having been contracted between Castilians of good

birth and the daughters of wealthy baptized Jews. It is a decree that

entirely contradicts Pulgar’s assertion that Torquemada was of Jewish

extraction.

 

The appointment of Manrique as judge of appeal was a very brief one,

nor did it work satisfactorily and accomplish what the Queen desired.

In the following August came another papal brief, stating that,

notwithstanding that appointment, fugitive New-Christians from the

Archbishopric of Seville continued to arrive in Rome and to make their

appeals to the Apostolic Courts, protesting that they dared not address

these to the appointed tribunal in Seville, for fear of being treated

with excessive rigour.

 

Many stated that, by virtue of the ban against them for having left

the city, they were fearful of being flung into prison unheard. Many,

again, had already been tried during their absence and burnt in effigy,

and they were apprehensive that if they returned their appeals would

be refused a hearing, and they would be sent at once to the flames in

execution of the sentence already pronounced against them.