The Project Gutenberg EBook of A History of the Inquisition of Spain; vol. 1, by Henry Charles Lea This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license Title: A History of the Inquisition of Spain; vol. 1 Author: Henry Charles Lea Release Date: July 24, 2013 [EBook #43296] Language: English Character set encoding: UTF-8 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A HISTORY OF THE INQUISITION VOL. 1 *** Produced by Chuck Greif, Broward County Library and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net bookcover THE INQUISITION OF SPAIN WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR A HISTORY OF THE INQUISITION OF THE MIDDLE AGES. In three volumes, octavo. A HISTORY OF AURICULAR CONFESSION AND INDULGENCES IN THE LATIN CHURCH. In three volumes, octavo. AN HISTORICAL SKETCH OF SACERDOTAL CELIBACY IN THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. Third edition. (In preparation.) A FORMULARY OF THE PAPAL PENITENTIARY IN THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY. One volume, octavo. (Out of print.) SUPERSTITION AND FORCE. Essays on The Wager of Law, The Wager of Battle, The Ordeal, Torture. Fourth edition, revised. In one volume, 12mo. STUDIES IN CHURCH HISTORY. The Rise of the Temporal Power, Benefit of Clergy, Excommunication, The Early Church and Slavery. Second edition. In one volume, 12mo. CHAPTERS FROM THE RELIGIOUS HISTORY OF SPAIN, CONNECTED WITH THE INQUISITION. Censorship of the Press, Mystics and Illuminati, Endemoniadas, El Santo Niño de la Guardia, Brianda de Bardaxí. THE MORISCOS OF SPAIN. THEIR CONVERSION AND EXPULSION. In one volume, 12mo. A HISTORY OF THE INQUISITION OF SPAIN BY HENRY CHARLES LEA. LL.D. ——— IN FOUR VOLUMES ——— VOLUME I. ——— New York New York THE MACMILLAN COMPANY LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., Ltd. 1922 All rights reserved PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA COPYRIGHT, 1906, BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. —— Set up and electrotyped. Published January, 1906. PREFACE. IN the following pages I have sought to trace, from the original sources as far as possible, the character and career of an institution which exercised no small influence on the fate of Spain and even, one may say, indirectly on the civilized world. The material for this is preserved so superabundantly in the immense Spanish archives that no one writer can pretend to exhaust the subject. There can be no finality in a history resting on so vast a mass of inedited documents and I do not flatter myself that I have accomplished such a result, but I am not without hope that what I have drawn from them and from the labors of previous scholars has enabled me to present a fairly accurate survey of one of the most remarkable organizations recorded in human annals. In this a somewhat minute analysis has seemed to be indispensable of its structure and methods of procedure, of its relations with the other bodies of the State and of its dealings with the various classes subject to its extensive jurisdiction. This has involved the accumulation of much detail in order to present the daily operation of a tribunal of which the real importance is to be sought, not so much in the awful solemnities of the auto de fe, or in the cases of a few celebrated victims, as in the silent influence exercised by its incessant and secret labors among the mass of the people and in the limitations which it placed on the Spanish intellect—in the resolute conservatism with which it held the nation in the medieval groove and unfitted it for the exercise of rational liberty when the nineteenth century brought in the inevitable Revolution. The intimate relations between Spain and Portugal, especially during the union of the kingdoms from 1580 to 1640, has rendered necessary the inclusion, in the chapter devoted to the Jews, of a brief sketch of the Portuguese Inquisition, which earned a reputation even more sinister than its Spanish prototype. I cannot conclude without expressing my thanks to the gentlemen whose aid has enabled me to collect the documents on which the work is largely based—Don Claudio Pérez Gredilla of the Archives of Simancas, Don Ramon Santa María of those of Alcalá de Henares prior to their removal to Madrid, Don Francisco de Bofarull y Sans of those of the Crown of Aragon, Don J. Figueroa Hernández, formerly American Vice-consul at Madrid, and to many others to whom I am indebted in a minor degree. I have also to tender my acknowledgements to the authorities of the Bodleian Library and of the Royal Libraries of Copenhagen, Munich, Berlin and the University of Halle, for favors warmly appreciated. Henry Charles Lea. Philadelphia, October, 1905. CONTENTS OF VOL. I. BOOK I—ORIGIN AND ESTABLISHMENT. Chapter I—The Castilian Monarchy. PAGE Disorder at the Accession of Ferdinand and Isabella 1 Condition of the Church 8 Limitation of Clerical Privilege and Papal Claims 11 Disputed Succession 18 Character of Ferdinand and Isabella 20 Enforcement of Royal Jurisdiction 24 The Santa Hermandad 28 Absorption of the Military Orders 34 Chapter II—The Jews and the Moors. Oppression of Jews taught as a duty 35 Growth of the Spirit of Persecution 37 Persecution under the Spanish Catholic Wisigoths 40 Toleration under the Saracen Conquest—the Mozárabes 44 The Muladícs 49 The Jews under the Saracens 50 Absence of Race or Religious Hatred 52 The Mudéjares—Moors under Christian Domination 57 The Church stimulates Intolerance 68 Influence of the Council of Vienne in 1312 71 Commencement of repressive Legislation 77 Chapter III—The Jews and the Conversos. Medieval Persecution of Jews 81 Their Wealth and Influence in Spain 84 Clerical Hostility aroused 90 Popular Antagonism excited 95 Causes of Dislike—Usury, Official Functions, Ostentation 96 Massacres in Navarre 100 Influence of the Accession of Henry of Trastamara 101 The Massacres of 1391—Ferran Martínez 103 Creation of the Class of Conversos or New Christians 111 Deplorable Condition of the Jews 115 The Ordenamiento de Doña Catalina 116 Utterances of the Popes and the Council of Basle 118 Success of the Conversos—The Jews rehabilitate themselves 120 Renewed Repression under Ferdinand and Isabella 123 The Conversos become the object of popular hatred 125 Expulsion of the Jews considered 131 Expulsion resolved on in 1492—its Conditions 135 Sufferings of the Exiles 139 Number of Exiles 142 Contemporary Opinion 143 Chapter IV—Establishment of the Inquisition. Doubtful Christianity of the Conversos 145 Inquisition attempted in 1451 147 Alonso de Espina and his Fortalicium Fidei 148 Episcopal Inquisition attempted in 1465 153 Sixtus IV grants Inquisitorial Powers to his Legate 154 Attempt to convert and instruct 155 Ferdinand and Isabella apply to Sixtus IV for Inquisition in 1478 157 They Require the Power of Appointment and the Confiscations 158 The first Inquisitors appointed, September 17, 1480 160 Tribunal opened in Seville—first Auto de Fe, February 6, 1481 161 Plot to resist betrayed 162 Edict of Grace 165 Other tribunals established 166 Failure of plot in Toledo—number of Penitents 168 Tribunal at Guadalupe 171 Necessity of Organization—The Supreme Council—The Inquisitor-general 172 Character of Torquemada—His quarrels with Inquisitors 174 Four Assistant Inquisitors-general 178 Separation of Aragon from Castile 180 Autonomy of Inquisition—It frames its own Rules 181 It commands the Forces of the State.—Flight of Suspects 182 Emigration of New Christians forbidden 184 Absence of Resistance to the Inquisition 185 Ferdinand seeks to prevent Abuses 187 The Career of Lucero at Córdova 189 Complicity of Juan Roiz de Calcena 193 Persecution of Archbishop Hernando de Talavera 197 Córdova appeals to Philip and Juana 201 Revolt in Córdova 202 Inquisitor-general Deza forced to resign 205 Lucero placed on trial 206 Inquisitorial Abuses at Jaen, Arjona and Llerena 211 Ximenes attempts Reform 215 Appeals to Charles V—His futile Project of Reform 216 Conquest of Navarre—Introduction of Inquisition 223 Chapter V—The Kingdoms of Aragon. Independent Institutions of Aragon 229 Ferdinand seeks to remodel the Old Inquisition 230 Sixtus IV interferes 233 Torquemada’s Authority is extended over Aragon 236 Assented to by the Córtes of Tarazona in 1484 238 Valencia Popular Resistance 239 Resistance overcome 242 Aragon Tribunal organized in Saragossa 244 Opposition 245 Resistance in Teruel 247 Murder of Inquisitor Arbués 249 Papal Brief commanding Extradition 253 Punishment of the Assassins 256 Ravages of the Inquisition 259 Catalonia Its Jealousy of its Liberties 260 Resistance prolonged until 1487 261 Scanty Results 263 Oppression and Complaints 264 The Balearic Isles Inertia of the Old Inquisition 266 Introduction of the New in 1488—Its Activity 267 Tumult in 1518 268 Complaints of Córtes of Monzon, in 1510 269 Concordia of 1512 270 Leo X releases Ferdinand from his Oath 272 Inquisitor-general Mercader’s Instructions 273 Leo X confirms the Concordia of 1512 274 Charles V swears to observe the Concordia 275 Dispute over fresh Demands of Aragon 276 Decided in favor of Aragon 282 Catalonia secures Concessions 283 Futility of all Agreements—Fruitless Complaints of Grievances 284 BOOK II—RELATIONS WITH THE STATE. Chapter I—Relations with the Crown. Combination of Spiritual and Temporal Jurisdiction 289 Ferdinand’s Control of the Inquisition 289 Except in Spiritual Affairs 294 Gradual Development of Independence 298 Philip IV reasserts Control over Appointments 300 It returns to the Inquisitor-general under Carlos II 301 The Crown retains Power of appointing the Inquisitor-general 302 It cannot dismiss him but can enforce his Resignation—Cases 304 Struggle of Philip V with Giudice—Case of Melchor de Macanaz 314 Cases under Carlos III and Carlos IV 320 Relations of the Crown with the Suprema 322 The Suprema interposes between the Crown and the Tribunals 325 It acquires control over the Finances 328 Its Policy of Concealment 331 Philip IV calls on it for Assistance 333 Philip V reasserts Control 336 Pecuniary Penances 337 Assertion of Independence 340 Temporal Jurisdiction over Officials 343 Growth of Bureaucracy limits Royal Autocracy 346 Reassertion of Royal Power under the House of Bourbon 348 Chapter II—Supereminence. Universal Subordination to the Inquisition 351 Its weapons of Excommunication and Inhibition 355 Power of Arrest and Imprisonment 357 Assumption of Superiority 357 Struggle of the Bishops 358 Questions of Precedence 362 Superiority to local Law 365 Capricious Tyranny 366 Inviolability of Officials and Servants 367 Enforcement of Respect 371 Chapter III—Privileges and Exemptions. Exemption from taxation 375 Exemption from Custom-house Dues 384 Attempts of Valencia Tribunal to import Wheat from Aragon 385 Privilege of Valencia Tribunal in the Public Granary 388 Speculative Exploitation of Privileges by Saragossa Tribunal 389 Coercive Methods of obtaining Supplies 392 Valencia asserts Privilege of obtaining Salt 394 Exemption from Billets of Troops 395 The Right to bear Arms 401 Exemption from Military Service 412 The Right to hold Secular Office 415 The Right to refuse Office 420 The Right of Asylum 421 Chapter IV—Conflicting Jurisdictions. Benefit of Clergy 427 Ferdinand grants to the Inquisition exclusive Jurisdiction over its Officials 429 He confines it to Salaried Officials in criminal Actions and as Defendants in civil Suits 430 Abusive Extension of Jurisdiction by Inquisitors 431 Limitations in the Concordia of 1512 432 Servants of Officials included in the fuero 432 Struggle in Castile over the Question of Familiars 434 Settled by the Concordia of 1553 436 The Concordia extended to Navarre 438 Struggle in Valencia—Concordia of 1554 439 Concordia disregarded—Córtes of 1564 441 Valencia Concordia of 1568 442 Disregard of its Provisions 445 Complaints of criminal Familiars unpunished 446 Aragon—its Court of the Justicia 450 Grievances arising from the Temporal Jurisdiction 452 The Concordia of 1568 454 Complaints of its Infraction—Córtes of 1626 454 Case of the City of Huesca 456 Córtes of 1646—Aragon assimilated to Castile 458 Diminished Power of the Inquisition in Aragon 461 Catalonia—Non-observance of Concordias of 1512 and 1520 465 Disorders of the Barcelona Tribunal—Fruitless Complaints 467 Catalonia—Hatred of the Tribunal—Catalonia rejects the Concordia of 1568 469 Córtes of 1599—Duplicity of Philip III 471 Increasing Discord—Fruitless Efforts of Córtes of 1626 and 1632—Concordia of Zapata 472 Rebellion of 1640—Expulsion of Inquisitors—A National Inquisition established 476 Inquisition restored in 1652—Renewal of Discord 479 War of Succession—Catalan Liberties abolished 483 Majorca—Conflicts with the Civil Authorities 484 Contests in Castile—Subservience of the Royal Power 485 Exemption of Familiars from summons as Witnesses 491 Conflicts with the Spiritual Courts 493 Cases in Majorca—Intervention of the Holy See 498 Conflicts with the Military Courts 504 Conflicts with the Military Orders—Project of the Order of Santa María de la Espada Blanca505 Profits of the Temporal Jurisdiction of the Inquisition 508 Abuses and evils of the System 509 Fruitless Efforts to reform it in 1677 and 1696 511 Repression under the House of Bourbon 514 Competencias for Settlement of Disputes 517 The Temporal Jurisdiction under the Restoration 520 Refusal of Competencias by the Inquisition 521 Projects of Relief 524 Chapter V—Popular Hostility. Causes of Popular Hatred 527 Visitations of the Barcelona Tribunal 528 Troubles in Logroño 530 Preferences claimed in Markets 533 Trading by Officials 534 Character of Officials 536 Grievances of Feudal Nobles 537 General Detestation a recognized Fact 538 Appendix. List of Tribunals 541 List of Inquisitors-general 556 Spanish Coinage 560 Documents 567 ABASEMENT OF THE CROWN VIOLENCE AND TREACHERY THE INQUISITION OF SPAIN. BOOK I. ORIGIN AND ESTABLISHMENT. CHAPTER I. THE CASTILIAN MONARCHY. IT were difficult to exaggerate the disorder pervading the Castilian kingdoms, when the Spanish monarchy found its origin in the union of Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon. Many causes had contributed to prolong and intensify the evils of the feudal system and to neutralize such advantages as it possessed. The struggles of the reconquest from the Saracen, continued at intervals through seven hundred years and varied by constant civil broils, had bred a race of fierce and turbulent nobles as eager to attack a neighbor or their sovereign as the Moor. The contemptuous manner in which the Cid is represented, in the earliest ballads, as treating his king, shows what was, in the twelfth century, the feeling of the chivalry of Castile toward its overlord, and a chronicler of the period seems rather to glory in the fact that it was always in rebellion against the royal power.[1] So fragile was the feudal bond that a ricohome or noble could at any moment renounce allegiance by a simple message sent to the king through a hidalgo.[2] The necessity of attracting population and organizing conquered frontiers, which subsequently became inland, led to granting improvidently liberal franchises to settlers, which weakened the powers of the crown,[3] without building up, as in France, a powerful Third Estate to serve as a counterpoise to the nobles and eventually to undermine feudalism. In Spain the business of the Castilian was war. The arts of peace were left with disdain to the Jews and the conquered Moslems, known as Mudéjares, who were allowed to remain on Christian soil and to form a distinct element in the population. No flourishing centres of industrious and independent burghers arose out of whom the kings could mould a body that should lend them efficient support in their struggles with their powerful vassals. The attempt, indeed, was made; the Córtes, whose co-operation was required in the enactment of laws, consisted of representatives from seventeen cities,[4] who while serving enjoyed personal inviolability, but so little did the cities prize this privilege that, under Henry IV, they complained of the expense of sending deputies. The crown, eager to find some new sources of influence, agreed to pay them and thus obtained an excuse for controlling their election, and although this came too late for Henry to benefit by it, it paved the way for the assumption of absolute domination by Ferdinand and Isabella, after which the revolt of the Comunidades proved fruitless. Meanwhile their influence diminished, their meetings were scantily attended and they became little more than an instrument which, in the interminable strife that cursed the land, was used alternately by any faction as opportunity offered.[5] The crown itself had contributed greatly to its own abasement. When, in the thirteenth century, a ruler such as San Fernando III. made the laws respected and vigorously extended the boundaries of Christianity, Castile gave promise of development in power and culture which miserably failed in the performance. In 1282 the rebellion of Sancho el Bravo against his father Alfonso was the commencement of decadence. To purchase the allegiance of the nobles he granted them all that they asked, and to avert the discontent consequent on taxation he supplied his treasury by alienating the crown lands.[6] Notwithstanding the abilities of the regent, María de Molina, the successive minorities of her son and grandson, Fernando IV and Alfonso XI, stimulated the downward progress, although the vigor of the latter in his maturity restored in some degree the lustre of the crown and his stern justice re- established order, so that, as we are told, property could be left unguarded in the streets at night.[7] His son, Don Pedro, earned the epithet of the Cruel by his ruthless endeavor to reduce to obedience his turbulent nobles, whose disaffection invited the usurpation of his bastard brother, Henry of Trastamara. The throne which the latter won by fratricide and the aid of the foreigner, he could only hold by fresh concessions to his magnates which fatally reduced the royal power.[8] This heritage he left to his son, Juan I, who forcibly described, in the Córtes of Valladolid in 1385, how he wore mourning in his heart because of his powerlessness to administer justice and to govern as he ought, in consequence of the evil customs which he was unable to correct.[9] This depicts the condition of the monarchy during the century intervening between the murder of Pedro and the accession of Isabella—a dreary period of endless revolt and civil strife, during which the central authority was steadily growing less able to curb the lawless elements tending to eventual anarchy. The king was little more than a puppet of which rival factions sought to gain possession in order to cover their ambitions with a cloak of legality, and those which failed to secure his person treated his authority with contempt, or set up some rival in a son or brother as an excuse for rebellion. The work of the Reconquest which, for six hundred years, had been the leading object of national pride was virtually abandoned, save in some spasmodic enterprise, such as the capture of Antequera, and the little kingdom of Granada, apparently on the point of extinction under Alfonso XI, seemed destined to perpetuate for ever on Spanish soil the hateful presence of the crescent. The long reign of the feeble Juan II, from 1406 to 1454, was followed by that of the feebler Henry IV, popularly known as El Impotente. In the Seguro de Tordesillas, in 1439, the disaffected nobles virtually dictated terms to Juan II.[10] In the Deposition of Ávila, in 1465, they treated Henry IV with the bitterest contempt. His effigy, clad in mourning and adorned with the royal insignia, was placed upon a throne and four articles of accusation were read. For the first he was pronounced unworthy of the kingly station, when Alonso Carrillo, Archbishop of Toledo, removed the crown; for the second he was deprived of the administration of justice, when Álvaro de Zuñiga, Count of Plasencia, took away the sword; for the third he was deprived of the government, when Rodrigo Pimentel, Count of Benavente, struck the sceptre away; for the fourth he was sentenced to lose the throne, when Diego López de Zuñiga tumbled the image from its seat with an indecent gibe. It was scarce more than a continuation of the mockery when they elected as his successor his brother Alfonso, a child eleven years of age.[11] The lawless independence of the nobles and the effacement of the royal authority may be estimated from a single example. At Plasencia two powerful lords, Garcí Alvárez de Toledo, Señor of Oropesa, and Hernan Rodríguez de Monroy, kept the country in an uproar with their armed dissension. Juan II sent Ayala, Señor of VIRTUAL ANARCHY CHARACTER OF PRELATES Cebolla, with a royal commission to suppress the disorder. Monroy, in place of submitting, insulted Ayala, who as a “buen caballero” disdained to complain to the king and preferred to avenge himself. Juan on hearing of this summoned to his presence Monroy, who collected all his friends and retainers and set out with a formidable army. Ayala made a similar levy and set upon him as he passed near Cebolla. There was a desperate battle in which Ayala was worsted and forced to take refuge in Cebolla, while Monroy passed on to Toledo and, when he kissed the king’s hands, Juan told him that he had sent for him to cut off his head, but as Ayala had preferred to right himself he gave Monroy a God- speed on his journey home and washed his hands of the whole affair.[12] The ricosomes who thus were released from all the restraint of law had as little respect for those of honor and morality. The virtues which we are wont to ascribe to chivalry were represented by such follies as the celebrated Passo Honroso of Suero de Quiñones, when that knight and his nine comrades, in 1434, kept, in honor of their ladies, for thirty days against all comers, the pass of the Bridge of Orbigo, at the season of the feast of Santiago and sixty-nine challengers presented themselves in the lists.[13] With exceptions such as this, and a rare manifestation of magnanimity, as when the Duke of Medina Sidonia raised an army and hastened to the relief of his enemy, Rodrigo Ponce de Leon besieged in Alhama,[14] the record of the time is one of the foulest treachery, from which truth and honor are absent and human nature displays itself in its basest aspect. According to contemporary belief, Ferdinand was indebted for the crown of Aragon to the poisoning of his brother, the deeply mourned Carlos, Prince of Viana, while the crown of Castile fell to Isabella through the similar taking off of her brother Alfonso.[15] A characteristic incident is one involving Doña Maria de Monroy, who married into the great house of Henríquez of Seville, and was left a widow with two boys. When the youths were respectively eighteen and nineteen years old they were close friends of two gentlemen of Seville named Mançano. The younger brother, dicing with them in their house, was involved in a quarrel with them, when they set upon him with their servants and slew him. Then, fearing the vengeance of the elder brother, they sent him a friendly message to come and play with them; when he came they led him along a dark corridor in which they suddenly turned upon him and stabbed him to death. When the disfigured corpses of her boys were brought to Doña María she shed no tears, but the fierceness of her eyes frightened all who looked upon her. The Mançanos promptly took horse and fled to Portugal, whither Doña María followed them in male attire with a band of twenty cavaliers. Her spies were speedily on the track of the fugitives; within a month of the murders she came at night to the house where they lay concealed; the doors were broken in and she entered with ten of her men while the rest kept guard outside. The Mançanos put themselves in defence and shouted for help, but before the neighbors could assemble she had both their heads in her left hand and was galloping off with her troop, never stopping till she reached Salamanca, where she went to the church and laid the bloody heads on the tomb of her boys. Thenceforth she was known as Doña María la Brava, and her exploit led to long and murderous feuds between the Monroyes and the Mançanos.[16] Doña María was but a type of the unsexed women, mugeres varoniles, common at the time, who would take the field or maintain their place in factious intrigue with as much ferocity and pertinacity as men. Ferdinand could well look without surprise on the activity in court and camp of his queen Isabella, when he remembered the prowess of his mother, Juana Henríquez, who had secured for him the crown of Aragon. Doña Leonora Pimentel, Duchess of Arévalo, was one of these; of the Countess of Medellin it was said that no Roman captain could get the better of her in feats of arms, and the Countess of Haro was equally noted. The Countess of Medellin, indeed, kept her own son in prison for years while she enjoyed the revenues of his town of Medellin and, when Queen Isabella refused to confirm her possession of the place, she transferred her allegiance to the King of Portugal to whom she delivered the castle of Merida. At the same time the Moorish influence, which was so strong in Castile, occasionally led to the opposite extreme. The Duke of Najera kept his daughters in such absolute seclusion that no man, not even his sons, was permitted to enter the apartments reserved for the women, and the reason he alleged—that the heart does not covet what the eye does not see—was little flattering to either sex.[17] The condition of the common people can readily be imagined in this perpetual strife between warlike, ambitious and unprincipled nobles, now uniting in factions which involved the whole realm in war, and now contenting themselves with assaults upon their neighbors. The land was desolated; the husbandman scarce could take heart to plant his seed, for the harvest was apt to be garnered with the sword and thrust into castles to provision them against siege. As a writer of the period tells us, there was neither law nor justice save that of arms.[18] In a letter describing the universal anarchy, written by Hernando del Pulgar from Madrid, in 1473, he says that for more than five years there has been no communication from Murcia, where the family of Fajardo reigned supreme—it is, he says, as foreign a land as Navarre.[19] That the roads were unsafe for trade or travel was a matter of course; every petty hidalgo converted his stronghold into a den of robbers, and what these left was swept away by bands of Free Companions.[20] Disorder reigned supreme and all-pervading. The crown was powerless and the royal treasury exhausted. Improvident grants of lands and revenues and jurisdictions, to bribe the treacherous fidelity of faithless nobles, or to gratify worthless favorites, were made, till there was nothing left to give, and then Henry IV bestowed licenses for private mints, until there were a hundred and fifty of them at work, flooding the land with base money, to the unutterable confusion of the coinage and the impoverishment of the people.[21] The Córtes of Madrid, in 1467, and of Ocaña in 1469, called on Henry to resume his improvident grants, and those of Madrigal, in 1476, repeated the urgency to Ferdinand and Isabella, who had been forced to follow his example. To this the sovereigns replied thanking the Córtes and postponing the matter. They did not feel themselves strong enough until 1480, when at the Córtes of Toledo, they resumed thirty million maravedís of revenue which had been alienated during the troubles, and this after an investigation which left untouched the gifts to loyal subjects and only withdrew such as had been extorted.[22] Respect for the crown had fallen as low as its revenues. A story told of the Count of Benavente shows how difficult it was, even after the accession of Isabella, for the nobles to recognize that they owed any obedience to the sovereign. He was walking with the queen when a woman came weeping and begging justice, saying that he had had her husband slain in spite of a royal safe-conduct. She showed the letter which her husband had carried in his breast, pierced by the blow which had ended his life, when the count jeeringly remarked “A cuirass would have been of more service.” Piqued by this Isabella said “Count do you then not wish there was no king in Castile?” “Rather,” said he, “I wish there were many.” “And why?” “Because then I should be one of them.”[23] In such a chaos of lawless passion it is not to be supposed that the Church was better than the nobles who filled its high places with worthless scions of their stocks, or than the lower classes of the laity who sought in it provision for a life of idleness and licence. The primate of Castile was the Archbishop of Toledo, who was likewise ex officio chancellor of the realm and whose revenues were variously estimated at from eighty to a hundred thousand ducats, with patronage at his disposal amounting to a hundred thousand more.[24] The occupant of this exalted position, at the accession of Isabella, was Alonso Carrillo, a turbulent prelate, delighting in war, foremost in all the civil broils of the period, who, not content with the immense income of his see, lavished CONDITION OF THE CHURCH DISREGARD OF THE PAPACY extravagant sums in alchemy. Hernando del Pulgar, in a letter of remonstrance, said to him, “The people look to you as their bishop and find in you their enemy; they groan and complain that you use your authority not for their benefit and reformation but for their destruction; not as an exemplar of kindness and peace but for corruption, scandal, and disturbance.” When, in 1495, the puritan Ximenes was appointed to the archbishopric, one of his first acts is said to have been the removal, from near the altar of the Franciscan church of Toledo, of a magnificent tomb which Carrillo had erected to his bastard, Troilo Carrillo.[25] His successor in the see of Toledo has a special interest for us in view of his labors to purify the faith which culminated in establishing the Inquisition. Pero González de Mendoza was one of the notable men of the day, whose influence with Ferdinand and Isabella won for him the name of “the third king.” While yet a child he held the curacy of Hita; at twelve he had the archdeaconry of Guadalajara, one of the richest benefices in Spain, which he retained during the successive bishoprics of Calahorra and Sigüenza and the archbishopric of Seville; the see of Sigüenza he kept during the whole tenure successively of the archiepiscopates of Seville and Toledo, in addition to which he was a cardinal and titular Patriarch of Alexandria. With his kindred of the powerful house of Mendoza he adhered to Henry IV, until they effected the sale of the hapless Beltraneja, who was in their hands, to her father, Henry, for certain estates and the title of Duke del Infantado for Diego Hurtado, the head of the family, after which Pero González and his kinsmen promptly transferred their allegiance to Isabella. His admiring biographer assures us that he was more ready with his hands than with his tongue, that he was a gallant knight and that there was never a war in Spain during his time in which he did not personally take part or at least have his troops engaged. Though he had no leisure to attend to his spiritual duties, he found time to yield to the temptations of the flesh. When, in 1484, he led the army of invasion into Granada he took with him his bastard, Rodrigo de Mendoza, a youth of twenty, who was already Señor del Castillo del Cid, and who, in 1492, was created Marquis of Cenete on the occasion of his marriage, amid great rejoicings, in the presence of Ferdinand and Isabella, to Leonor de la Cerda, daughter and heiress of the Duke of Medina Celi and niece of Ferdinand himself. This was not the only evidence of his frailty of which he took no shame, for he had another son named Juan, by a lady of Valladolid, who was married to Doña Ana de Aragon, another niece of Ferdinand.[26] With such men at the head of the Church it is not to be expected that the lower orders of the clergy should be models of decency and morality, rendering Christianity attractive to Jew and Moslem. Alonso Carrillo, the archbishop of Toledo, can scarce be regarded as a strict disciplinarian, but even he felt obliged, when holding the council of Aranda in 1473, to endeavor to repress the more flagrant scandals of the clergy. As a corrective of their prevailing ignorance it was ordered that in future none should be ordained who could not speak Latin—the language of the ritual and the foundation of all instruction, theological and otherwise. They were forbidden to wear silk or gaily colored garments. As their licentiousness rendered them contemptible to the people, they were commanded to part with their concubines within two months. As their fondness for dicing led to perjuries, scandals and homicides, they were required thereafter to abstain from it, privately as well as publicly. As many priests disdained to celebrate mass, they were ordered to do so at least four times a year; bishops, moreover, were urged to celebrate at least thrice a year, under pain of severe penalties to be determined at the next council. The absurdities poured forth in their sermons by wandering priests and friars were to be repressed by requiring examinations prior to issuing licenses to preach, and the scandals of the pardon-sellers were to be diminished by subjecting them to the bishops. The bishops were also urged to make severe examples of offenders in the lower orders of the clergy, when delivered to them by the secular courts, and not to allow their enormities to enjoy continued immunity. The bishops, moreover, were commanded to make no charge for conferring ordinations; they were exhorted, and all other clerics were required, not to lead a dissolute military life or to enter the service of secular lords excepting of the king and princes of the blood. As duels were forbidden, both laity and clergy were warned that if slain in such encounters they would be refused Christian burial.[27] That this effort at reform was, as might be expected, wholly abortive is evidenced from the description of the vices of the ecclesiastical body when Ferdinand and Isabella subsequently endeavored to correct its more flagrant scandals.[28] It was wholly secularized and only to be distinguished from the laity by the sacred functions which rendered its vices more abhorrent, by the immunities which fostered and stimulated those vices and by the intolerance which, blind to all aberrations of morals, proclaimed the stake to be the only fitting punishment for aberration in the faith. While powerless to reform itself it yet had influence enough to educate the people up to its standard of orthodoxy in the ruthless persecution of all whom it pleased to designate as enemies of Christ. Yet in Spain the immunities and privileges of the Church were less than elsewhere throughout Christendom. The independence which the secular power in Castile had always manifested toward the Holy See and its disregard of the canon law are points which will occasionally manifest themselves hereafter and are worthy of a moment’s consideration here. I have elsewhere shown that, alone among the Latin nations, Castile steadily refused to admit the medieval Inquisition and disregarded completely the prescriptions of the Church regarding heresy.[29] In the twelfth century the popular feeling toward the papacy is voiced in the ballads of the Cid. When a demand for tribute to the Emperor Henry IV is said to be made through the pope, Ruy Diaz advises King Fernando to send a defiance from both of them to the pope and all his party, which the monarch accordingly does. So when the Cid accompanies his master to a great council in Rome and kicks over the chair prepared for the King of France, the pope excommunicates him, whereupon he kneels before the holy father and asks for absolution, telling him it will be the worse for him if he does not grant it, which the pope promptly does on condition of his being more self-restrained during the remainder of his stay.[30] There is no trace of the veneration for the vice-gerent of God which elsewhere was inculcated as an indispensable religious duty. When such was the popular temper it is easy to understand that the prohibition to carry money out of the kingdom to the pope was even more emphatic than in England.[31] The claim to control the patronage of the Church, which was so prolific a source of revenue to the curia, met throughout Spain a resistance as sturdy as in England, though the troubled condition of the land interfered with its success. In Catalonia, the Córtes, in 1419, adopted a law in which, after alluding to the scandals and irreparable injuries arising from the intrusion of strangers, it was declared that none but natives should hold preferment of any kind and that all papal letters and bulls contravening this should be resisted in whatever way was necessary.[32] In Castile the Córtes of 1390 forcibly represented to Juan I the evils resulting from this foisting of strangers on the Spanish Church, but his speedy death prevented action. The remonstrance was renewed to the tutors of the young Henry III, who promptly placed an embargo on the revenues of foreign benefice-holders and forbade the admission of subsequent appointees. This led to a compromise, in 1393, by which the Avignonese curia secured the recognition of existing incumbents by promising that no more such nominations should be made.[33] The promise made by the Avignonese antipope was not binding on the Roman curia and the quarrel continued. Even if the recipient was a native there was little ceremony in dealing with papal grants of benefices when occasion prompted, as was shown in the affair which first revealed the unbending character of the future Cardinal Ximenes. During his youthful sojourn in Rome Ximenes procured papal “expectative letters” granting him the first preferment that ECCLESIASTICAL JURISDICTION LIMITED ECCLESIASTICAL IMMUNITY should fall vacant in the diocese of Toledo. On his return he made use of these letters to take possession of the arciprestazgo of Uceda, but it happened that Archbishop Carrillo simultaneously gave it to one of his creatures and, as Ximenes refused to surrender his rights, he was thrown into a tower in Uceda—a tower he subsequently, when himself Archbishop of Toledo, used as a treasury. As he continued obstinate, Carrillo transferred him to the Pozo de Santorcas, a harsh dungeon used for clerical malefactors, where he lay for six years, resolutely refusing to abandon his claim, until released at the intercession of the wife of a nephew of Carrillo.[34] Evidently the Castilian prelates had slender respect for papal diplomas. About the same time, during the civil war between Henry IV and his brother Alfonso, when Hernando de Luxan, Bishop of Sigüenza, died, the dean, Diego López, obtained possession of the castles and the treasure of the see, joined the party of Alfonso, and, with the aid of Archbishop Carrillo, caused himself to be elected bishop. Meanwhile Paul II gave the see to Juan de Maella, Cardinal-bishop of Zamora, but Diego López refused to obey the bulls and appealed to the future council against the pope and all his censures. He disregarded an interdict launched against him and was supported by all his clergy. Maella died and Paul II gave the bishopric to the Bishop of Calahorra, requesting Henry IV to place him in possession. So secure did Diego López feel that he rejected a compromise offering him the see of Zamora in exchange, but the possession of Sigüenza happened to be of importance in the war; by bribery a troop of royalist soldiers obtained admittance to the castle and carried off López as a prisoner.[35] It was the same even with so pious a monarch as Ferdinand the Catholic. When, in 1476, the archiepiscopal see of Saragossa became vacant by the death of Juan of Aragon, Ferdinand, with his father, Juan II, asked Sixtus IV to appoint his natural son, Alfonso, a child six years of age. The claim of the papacy to archiepiscopal appointments, based on the necessity of the pallium, was of ancient date and had become incontestable. In the thirteenth century Alfonso X had admitted it in the case of the archbishops, but when Isabella appointed Ximenes to the see of Toledo in 1495 the proceedings showed that the post was considered to be in the gift of the crown and the papal confirmation to be a matter of course.[36] So in the present case the request was a mere form, as was seen when Sixtus refused. The defect of birth could be dispensed for, but the youth of Alfonso was an insuperable objection, and Sixtus appointed Ansias Dezpuch, then Archbishop of Monreal, thinking that the services rendered by him and by his uncle, the Master of the Order of Montesa, would induce the king to assent. Dezpuch accepted, but Ferdinand at once sequestrated all the revenues of Monreal and the priory of Santa Cristina and ordered him to resign. On his hesitating, Ferdinand threatened to seize all the castles and revenues of the mastership of Montesa, which was effectual, and Sixtus compromised by making the boy perpetual administrator of Saragossa.[37] Isabella, despite her piety, was as firm as her husband in defending the claim of the crown in these matters against the papacy. When, in 1482, the see of Cuenca became vacant and Sixtus IV appointed a Genoese cousin to the position, Ferdinand and his queen energetically represented that only Spaniards should have Spanish bishoprics and that the selection should be made by them. Sixtus retorted that all benefices were in the gift of the pope and that his power, derived from God, was unlimited, whereupon they ordered home all their subjects resident in the papal court and threatened to take steps for the convocation of a general council. These energetic proceedings brought Sixtus to terms and he sent to Spain a special nuncio, but Ferdinand and Isabella stood on their dignity and refused even to receive him. Then the Cardinal of Spain, Pero González de Mendoza, intervened and, on Sixtus withdrawing his pretensions, they allowed themselves to be reconciled.[38] They alleged that whatever might be the papal rights in other countries, in Spain the patronage of all benefices belonged to the crown because they and their predecessors had wrested the land from the infidel.[39] So jealous, indeed, were they of the papal encroachments that among the subjects which they submitted to the national synod assembled by them in Seville, June, 1478, was how to prevent the residence of papal legates and nuncios, who not only carried off much money from the kingdom, but threatened the royal pre-eminence, to which the synod replied that this rested with the sovereigns to do as their predecessors had done.[40] It is easy thus to understand why, in the organization of the Inquisition, they insisted that all appointments should be made by the throne. In other ways the much-prized superiority of the canon over secular law was disregarded in Spain. The Córtes and the monarch had never hesitated to legislate on ecclesiastical affairs, and the jurisdiction of the ecclesiastical courts was limited with a jealousy which paid scant respect to canon and decretal. Nothing, for instance, was better settled than the spiritual cognizance of all matters respecting testaments, yet when, in 1270, the authorities of Badajoz complained of the interference of the bishop’s court with secular judges in such affairs, proceeding to the excommunication of those who exercised jurisdiction over them, Alfonso X expressed surprise and gave explicit commands that such cases should be decided by the lay courts exclusively.[41] So little respect was felt for the immunity of ecclesiastics from secular law, in defence of which Thomas à Becket had laid down his life, that, as late as 1351, an ordenamiento of Pedro the Cruel concedes to them that they shall not be cited before secular judges except in accordance with law.[42] On the other hand, laymen were jealously protected from the ecclesiastical courts. The crown was declared to be the sole judge of its own jurisdiction, and no appeal from it was allowed. In the exercise of this supreme power laws were repeatedly enacted providing that a layman, who should cite another layman before a spiritual judge, not only lost his cause but incurred a heavy fine and disability for public office. The spiritual judge could not imprison a layman or levy execution on his property, and he who attempted it or any other invasion of the royal jurisdiction forfeited his benefices and became a stranger in the kingdom, thus rendering him incapable of preferment. The ecclesiastic who cited a layman before a spiritual judge lost any privileges or graces which he might hold of the crown. The layman who attempted to remove a cause from a lay court to a spiritual one was punished with confiscation of all his property, while any vassal who claimed benefit of clergy and declined the jurisdiction of a royal court forfeited his fief. In re-enacting these laws in the Córtes of Toledo, in 1480, Ferdinand and Isabella complained of their inobservance and ordered their strict enforcement.[43] No other nation in Christendom dared thus to infringe on the sacred limits of spiritual jurisdiction. Yet even this was not all, for the secular power asserted its right to intervene in matters within the Church itself. Elsewhere the ineradicable vice of priestly concubinage was left to be dealt with by bishops and archdeacons. The guilty priests themselves, even in Castile, were exempt from civil authority, but Ferdinand and Isabella had no hesitation in invading their domiciles and, by repeated edicts in 1480, 1491, 1502, and 1503, endeavored to cure the evil by fining, scourging, and banishing their partners in sin.[44] It is true, as we have seen above, that these laws were eluded, but there was at least a vigorous attempt to enforce them for, in 1490, the clergy of Guipuzcoa complained that the officers of justice visited their houses to see whether they kept concubines (which of course they denied) and carried off their women to prison, where they were forced to confess themselves concubines, to the great dishonor of the Church, whereupon the sovereigns repressed the excessive zeal of their officials and ordered them in future to interfere only when the concubinage was notorious.[45] A yet more significant extension of royal authority was exercised when, in DISPUTED SUCCESSION FERDINAND’S 1490, the people of Lequeitio (Biscay) complained that, though there were twelve mass-priests in the parish church, they all celebrated together and at uncertain times, so that the pious were unable to be present. This was a matter belonging exclusively to the diocesan authority, yet the appeal was made to the crown, and the Royal Council felt no scruple in ordering the priests to celebrate in succession and at reasonable hours, under pain of banishment and forfeiture of temporalities, thus disregarding even the imprescriptible immunities of the priesthood.[46] So slender, indeed, was the respect paid to these immunities that the Council of Aranda, in 1473, complained that magistrates of cities and other temporal lords presumed to banish ecclesiastics holding benefices in cathedral churches, and it may well be doubted whether the interdict with which the council threatened to punish this infraction of the canons was effective in its suppression.[47] One of the most deplorable abuses with which the Church afflicted society was the admission into the minor orders of crowds of laymen who, without abandoning worldly pursuits, adopted the tonsure in order to enjoy the irresponsibility afforded by the claim acquired to spiritual jurisdiction, whether as criminals or as traders. The Córtes of Tordesillas, in 1401, declared that the greater portion of the rufianes and malefactors of the kingdom wore the tonsure; when arrested by the secular officials the spiritual courts demanded them and enforced their claims with excommunication, after which they freely discharged the evil doers. This complaint was re-echoed by almost every subsequent Córtes, with an occasional allusion to the stimulus thus afforded to the evil propensities of those who were really clerics. The kings in responding to these representations could only say that they would apply to the Holy Father for relief, but the relief never came.[48] The spirit in which these claims of clerical immunity were advanced as a shield for criminals and the resolute firmness with which they were met by Ferdinand and Isabella are illustrated by an occurrence in 1486, in Truxillo, where a man committed a crime and was arrested by the corregidor. He claimed to wear the tonsure and, as the officials delayed in handing him over to the ecclesiastical court, some clerics who were his kinsmen paraded the streets with a cross and proclaimed that religion was being destroyed....