For awhile there was a regular scale of fifty ducats for the inquisitors, thirty for the fiscal, alguazil, notaries and receiver, fifteen for the nuncio and ten for the portero and alcaide but, in 1559, this was increased by twenty per cent. Care was taken to make it understood that it was a grace and not a right and the ordinary formula was that it was given in view of the labor in determining the cases of the auto de fe of the previous year and when, in 1561, Calahorra was exceptionally active and celebrated a second auto, it was rewarded with a supplementary ayuda of half the customary amount.[743] The grant was dependent on the receipt of detailed reports of all the cases in the previous auto, which were frequently accompanied with an humble petition for it, setting forth the insufficiency of the salaries and the cost of living, and begging the Suprema to obtain the grace from the king, who was technically the giver.[744] Subsequently, as we have seen, it was made conditional on rendering monthly reports and on the discharge of the duty of visiting the district and other matters apt to be neglected, such as rendering prompt statements of accounts and of properties. Finally, in the later period, when the tribunals were under close supervision of the Suprema, it sometimes took the form of a Christmas-gift.[745] Perhaps the most remarkable of all ayudas de costa was one granted by Carlos IV, in October 1807, in the midst of his troubles with his son Fernando, when the shadow of Napoleon was already darkening Spain and the treasury was empty. It was possibly with the object of securing the fidelity of the Inquisition that he ordered an ayuda de costa of 100 ducats to be given to every official of all the tribunals who did not enjoy an income of 7000 reales outside of his salary.[746] In the existing condition of Spanish finances the money could probably have been better employed.

The perfected system of records kept by the tribunals so greatly increased the effectiveness of the Inquisition and rendered it such an object of dread, that some reference to it is indispensable. Its development was slow. At the start, amid the enormous labors of the slenderly manned tribunals, there could be little thought bestowed on the preservation and arrangement of the records of their operations. In the Instructions of 1484 the only allusion to them merely prescribes that the notaries shall enter on their registers all orders issued by the inquisitors to the officials.[747] As the registers accumulated, the Instructions of 1488 require all writings and papers to be kept in chests, in the public place where the inquisitors transact business, so that they may be at hand when wanted; they are never to be removed and the keys are to pass through the hands of the inquisitors to the notaries, all this being under pain of deprivation of office.[748] Ten years later we hear of a chamber assigned to their safe keeping, with three keys, held by the fiscal and the two notaries, so that all must be present when they are consulted.[749] By this time indexes to facilitate references to the rapidly growing mass of papers had become necessary, and an article in Deza’s instructions, in 1500, shows that this had become recognized.[750] The disabilities inflicted on descendants of culprits rendered it essential that genealogies should be traceable, but the incredible crudeness of these early lists shows how informal was the rapid work of that awful time. One kept at Toledo, about 1500, contains such entries of the individuals despatched as “un porquero del alguazil que tiene un ojo remellado,” “un converso retajado,” “un converso judyo,” “un sastre,” “un platero sobrino de lope de cuellar platero.” In Valencia, from 1517 to 1527, the index to the fifth volume of persons denounced shows equal indifference to the identification of individuals catalogued as “le boges, mare y filles,” “la condesa que lleve el habito penitential,” “el bachiller que esta en companya del calonge Proxita,” “uno que ha sido flayle,” “un remendon sastre, esta delante la rexa de mosen Penaroja,” etc.[751]

After some contradictory decisions as to furnishing papers or information from the records to competent courts applying for it, the Suprema, in 1556, forbade the tribunals, without its express order, from giving any information tending to prove that any one had not been condemned or reconciled, or penanced or arrested by the Holy Office—a most cruel regulation in view of the tremendous consequences to the posterity of those who had fallen under suspicion of heresy and had been tried or even arrested. An order by the Suprema, in 1576, to the Valencia tribunal to erase from its records the name of Maestro Jusepe Esteban, because he had not been arrested for a matter of faith, is suggestive of the fearful power which the Inquisition possessed of inflicting infamy on whole families and of the importance of the accuracy of its registers.[752] The abuse of its power in this respect is indicated, as we have seen above, by the instructions which sometimes followed visitations, to remove from the records the names of those who had been improperly prosecuted for offences not of faith.

It was not easy to preserve the completeness of the records. Officials were apt to regard them as personal property and to keep them, like the notary of Calatayud who thus secured for his son the reversion of his office. In 1512, Ferdinand desired from a tribunal complete statements concerning the finances; there arose delay, during which the notary of sequestrations died, whereupon he ordered that the receiver should have all the papers or copies of them and, if the heirs of the notary refused to surrender them, execution should be levied on his estate for the whole of his salary received during his incumbency.[753] It was not only the notaries, however, but other officials who took and kept documents. In 1517 Cardinal Adrian complained of this and ordered that papers should never be removed from their depository, except to the audience-chamber for the purpose of conducting a trial.[754] This was disregarded and, about the middle of the century, the instructions to inspectors require them to order inquisitors, under pain of excommunication, to return all papers that they had taken and to discontinue the practice.[755] Even inquisitors-general were guilty of this, for Philip II issued an order March 6, 1573, on the executors of Ponce de Leon, to allow his papers to be examined and everything pertaining to the Inquisition to be removed—an order which can only be regarded as revealing a general custom, for Ponce de Leon died, January 17, 1573, before entering upon his office.[756]

The looseness which had prevailed during the early period is strikingly manifested when, in 1547, the Suprema made an attempt to gather in and preserve its past records. A commission was issued to its secretary Zurita, reciting the importance of having an inventory of all the papal bulls, briefs, registers and other papers relating to the Inquisition, which had been in the custody of the secretaries and other officials. There is, it says, information that many of these are at Calatayud and others at Huesca, among the papers of Calcena and Urries, the secretaries of Ferdinand and Charles V, and Zurita is ordered to collect these and is armed with full powers to examine witnesses and inflict penalties. All holding such papers are required to surrender them, under pain of excommunication and a hundred ducats. The inquisitors of Saragossa are instructed to assist him with censures, while letters to various parties indicate that the task is expected to be arduous. The instructions are not clear as to whether he is expected to seize the papers or merely to make inventories of them, but there can be little doubt that whatever he laid his hands on was kept.[757] What success attended his mission we have no means of knowing, but we probably owe to it many of the important documents illustrating the early history of the Inquisition.

In addition to this source of incompleteness, it seemed impossible to compel the tribunals to keep their records in proper shape. In 1544, Dr. Alonso Pérez, in an inspection of Barcelona, found them in complete disorder. Another inspection, in 1550, showed still greater confusion. In 1561, Inspector Cervantes described them as being in such a state, without indexes and inventories, that it was impossible to find anything. After the visit of Salazar, the Suprema, in 1568, took the inquisitors sharply to task for not having yet provided indexes and registers; it ordered them to do so at once and to furnish a certificate to that effect within twenty days of receipt.[758] The certificate was doubtless supplied, but we may question whether the work was done. Possibly Barcelona was worse than other tribunals, but the memorial of 1623 to the Suprema states that in many of them there are processes, books, papers, informations of limpieza etc., requiring to be inventoried, sorted into bundles and reduced to order, causing great inconvenience.[759]

Meanwhile the masses of papers had been accumulating more rapidly than ever. In 1570 the Suprema had ordered nine books to be kept—one of the commissions of officials, their oaths and royal provisions, one of commissioners and familiars with full details, one of the votes in the consultas de fe, one of letters from the Suprema and another of letters to it, one recording the inspections made of the prisons, one of the orders issued on the receiver, one of the pecuniary penances inflicted and one of the autos de fe, with statements as to the culprits and their punishments. Besides these the alcaide of the prison was to keep lists of those relaxed and penanced with three indexes. All this was exclusive of the voluminous records of the trials which it was the duty of the fiscal to keep in order.[760] Then, in order to accommodate the increasing bulk, it was ordered, in 1566 and 1572, that there should be four apartments in the camara del secreto, one for pending cases, one for suspended ones, one for those finished, divided into the relaxed, the reconciled and the penanced, and the fourth for papers concerning commissioners and familiars and informaciones de limpieza.[761] In 1635, alphabetical lists of all persons tried were ordered to be kept, with dates and references to the papers of the case, commencing with 1620. The order had to be repeated in 1636 and 1638, with further instructions in 1644, and these lists furnished additional means for tracing the antecedents and kindred of those who were brought before the tribunals.[762] But more potent than the mandates of the Suprema to keep the archives in order and thoroughly indexed was the mania which arose for limpieza, or purity of blood which, as we shall see hereafter, pervaded all classes and furnished a source of very profitable business to the officials, for the Inquisition was the ultimate arbiter and its records contained the evidence.

Gradually these records became an immense storehouse of minute and detailed information concerning all heretics and suspects and their kindred. Under the Instructions of 1561, the first thing in examining a prisoner was to require of him an account of parents and grandparents, brothers and sisters, uncles, aunts and cousins, with their wives and children and whether any of them had been arrested or penanced by the Inquisition.[763] Then, when the accused was brought to profess conversion and to beg mercy, his confession was not accepted unless he gave information, to the best of his ability, as to all other heretics, whether kindred or strangers, whom he had known or heard of, with details as to their culpability. All this was carefully entered and indexed, until the records became a fairly complete directory of the suspects of Spain. A Jew arrested in Granada might compromise twenty others, scattered from Compostella to Barcelona, each of whom when seized became a new source of information, and the intercommunication established between the tribunals placed the records of all at the service of each. This vastly increased the effectiveness of the Inquisition and rendered the chances of escape slender indeed. The trials of the seventeenth century, when the system became fairly perfected, show that, although the arrest of a few might scatter their accomplices, the Inquisition was ever on their track and change of name and habitation was unavailing. As soon as a suspect was arrested and his genealogy was obtained, the sister tribunals were called upon for reports, and testimony poured in, reaching back, perhaps, for twenty or thirty years, concerning himself and his kindred. The net of the Inquisition covered the land and its meshes were fine. Go where they would, hide themselves as they might, the Judaizers lived in the knowledge that it was ever remorselessly in pursuit and that its hand might fall upon them at any time.

In the eighteenth century the system was elaborated by what were known as the Libros Vocandorum. When any one was denounced to a tribunal or came forward spontaneously, his name, description and offence were transmitted to all the other tribunals, which entered them in alphabetical registers, arranged under the first baptismal names. These entries give the name, the date, a brief description of the person, and the nature of the charge, with a blank to be filled in with the result of the trial, which was also reported to all. Thus each tribunal possessed a digested record of the current business of the whole Inquisition, clearly arranged for ready reference, and, as the years passed, it afforded at a glance the means of ascertaining whether any culprit had been in the hands of the Holy Office before, and of facilitating researches into limpieza. The importance of the Libros Vocandorum was so fully recognized that the Suprema required the monthly reports of the fiscal always to specify that they were kept posted up to date. These registers were not arranged uniformly in all the tribunals, but the usual plan was that adopted in Valencia, where there was one general index in two volumes and a third for confessors accused of soliciting women ad turpia in the confessional.[764] Thus all the tribunals co-operated and, with their machinery of commissioners and familiars in almost every town and village, they formed one harmonious organization for the detection and punishment of culprits. Human ingenuity could scarce devise a more perfect system of promptly suppressing all deviations from the standards established by the Inquisition.

CHAPTER III.

UNSALARIED OFFICIALS.

The functions of the calificador or censor were important. When the sumaria, or preliminary array of evidence against the accused, was collected, the theological points involved were submitted to three or four calificadores, who pronounced whether the acts or words testified to amounted to heresy or suspicion of heresy. If there was doubt or disagreement, another group was called in, to whom the opinions of the first were given, along with the evidence. If the conclusion was that the matter did not concern the Inquisition, the case was dropped or suspended; if it held that there was heresy, expressed or implied, arrest and trial followed. We have seen the working of the system in the cases of Carranza and Villanueva, in both of which it played so momentous a part. In addition to this was the censorship of books. Any work against which suspicion was aroused was submitted to them and, according to their decision, it was approved, expurgated, or suppressed.

To perform these duties properly required learned theologians, and they seem to have enjoyed the opportunity of displaying their erudition in prolix and elaborate opinions, developing vast ingenuity in discovering traces of the beliefs of the Marcionites and Carpocratians and other forgotten heresies in the careless propositions submitted to their criticism. As a matter of course only ecclesiastics were eligible and, in 1627, the minimum age was fixed at forty-five.[765] The duties of this profitless office were not light, if we may believe the experienced Fray Maestro Alvarado. In 1811 he complains that, if a book is sent to a calificador, no matter what his other engagements may be, he must devote a month or two to reading it and forming a judgement, expressed in an elaborate opinion, such as would command for a lawyer two or three thousand reales. Or, some modern philosopher utters scandals and the calificador must investigate his words and acts and point out the errors as a guide for the inquisitor; if a trial follows, the calificador must wait on the tribunal and rack his brains to decide whether the culprit’s explanations are valid; if he is contumacious, conferences must be held with him until he is converted or found incapable of conversion, and all this without recompense.[766]

The calificador was thus an important and laborious assistant in the current work of the tribunal, and it is somewhat remarkable that, although reckoned among the officials, with a recognised place in public functions, there should be doubt whether he was entitled to the fuero. Yet, in 1662, when Doctor Vicente Cortes, a cathedral canon and calificador of the Valencia tribunal, was involved in a suit, it declined to defend him. It reported to the Suprema that it was ignorant whether calificadores were entitled to the fuero and the Council replied, asking on what ground the privilege was claimed.[767]

The need of calificadores was not likely to be felt in the early period, when almost the whole business of the Inquisition was with Judaizers and Moriscos, whose guilt was assumed from their adherence to well-known customs and rites. The first allusion I have met occurs in 1520, when the inquisitors were ordered to make no appointment without submitting to the Suprema the petition of the applicant.[768] There is no reference to them in the Instrucciones Antiguas, but in the Nuevas of 1561 their employment is fully developed.[769] As the appointment was in the hands of the inquisitors, there was a tendency to undue multiplication and, in 1606, there was an effort to check this by calling for reports as to the number existing and how many were necessary, pending which no applicants were to be admitted. This resulted, the following year, in an order limiting the number to eight in each tribunal; only the most eminent theologians were to be selected and appointments were to be made only to fill vacancies. Again, in 1619, reports were called for and emphasis was laid on the importance of the position and the necessity of discrimination in the choice. This received scant attention, and the memorial of 1623 to the Suprema recommends the reduction of the number to three or four in each tribunal and the exercise of great care in appointments, for lack of which they had fallen so greatly in public estimation. Nothing was done and, in 1630, the fiscal of the Suprema called attention to the fact that but few tribunals had made the reports demanded in 1619; meanwhile the necessity for reform had increased and he asked that information be called for again so that, with full information, the Suprema might remedy the evils existing.[770] The futility of the effort to limit the tribunals in the exercise of their patronage is visible in the statistics of 1746, where Valencia has forty calificadores, Saragossa has twenty-nine and even the little tribunal of Majorca has twenty-four. If Llerena has none and Logroño only two, this is explicable, as we learn from another source, by the absence in those places of men competent for the position. Yet not much attention was paid to the selection of suitable material if we may believe an official report presented to Carlos IV, in 1798, which says that it is notorious that calificadores are mostly people of little learning, full of preconceptions and errors, who have had money enough to take out proofs of limpieza.[771]

In the medieval Inquisition all sentences were agreed upon in an assembly of experts summoned for the purpose by the inquisitors, prior to holding the auto de fe in which the sentences were executed. This custom was naturally followed in Spain, and these consultas de fe, as they were called, will be considered hereafter when treating of the conduct of trials. At present we have merely to consider the consultores who assisted the inquisitors in passing judgement.

At first they had no permanent connection with the Inquisition. The inquisitors had an unlimited power of summoning all persons in whatever capacity, but sometimes it was not easy to obtain the services of competent men, especially when migratory tribunals were sitting in places where jurists were few, and the Instructions of 1488, in response to complaints on this score, tell inquisitors in such cases to send the papers to the Suprema which will decide on them.[772] At this time the inquisitors were theologians and, to supplement their lack of legal knowledge, it was customary to call in lawyers; the incongruity of laymen sitting in judgement on matters of faith was waived, and they were freely employed, the inquisitors summoning such doctors and maestros and licenciados and bachilleres as they saw fit, who served without pay and might never be called in again.[773] In 1502 the Barcelona tribunal complained that it sometimes had difficulty in securing the services of the lawyers of the Audiencia, whereupon Ferdinand wrote to his lieutenant-general that, as it is a work of God and the service is required only two or three times a year, he must see that the inquisitors get them whenever they are wanted.[774] In 1515 the same trouble showed itself at Valladolid, where the inquisitors were in the habit of calling in the judges of the high court, who endeavored to evade the duty by alleging certain royal cédulas, prohibiting their engaging in other functions than those of their office. Ferdinand was appealed to and promptly ordered them to serve when called upon, but they were not to be obliged to absent themselves from court, during the hours of its sessions.[775] Apparently there was no eagerness to perform gratuitous service which brought with it no privileges.

When in time jurists were preferred in the tribunals, the inquisitors called in theologians, mostly from the regular Orders who, to a great degree, monopolized the learning of the Church. Even with these there was sometimes difficulty and, in 1544, the Suprema asked the Dominican vicar to rebuke the Prior of San Pedro Martir for forbidding his frailes to serve.[776] It had already been found that the chance selection made, when a consulta de fe was to be held, was unsatisfactory. The permanent office of consultor was created and was rendered attractive by attaching to it the privileges and immunities of the Holy Office; formal commissions were issued by the inquisitor-general and the appointee swore to the faithful discharge of his duties. The earliest commission that I have met is one issued, April 2, 1544, to Doctor Miguel de Nuedes, Archdeacon of Murviedro, as consultor in the tribunal of Valencia.[777] This continued for some twenty years when confusion and contradictions arose. January 16, 1565, the Suprema writes that neither it nor the inquisitor-general is accustomed to notify any one of his appointment as consultor; the inquisitors can appoint properly qualified persons whenever they are needed. In 1566 this was followed by admonitions as to the care necessary in examining into the fitness of aspirants and then, in 1567, inquisitors were scolded for making appointments without reporting them and awaiting orders. This was repeated in 1571 but, in 1572, Rojas asserts positively that consultors are not selected by inquisitors, but are appointed by the Suprema.[778]

The Suprema continued to retain control but ceased to issue regular commissions for, in 1645, a writer informs us that the consultor and calificador are received and sworn in on the strength of a letter from the Suprema.[779] Finally however, the matter was restored to the inquisitors. A Formulary of about 1700 contains the form of a commission issued to consultores. It is drawn in the name of the inquisitors who confer on the recipient the powers necessary for the discharge of his duties and order all secular officials to yield him all the honors, graces, franchises, exemptions, liberties and prerogatives inherent in his office. He was obliged to furnish proofs of his purity of blood and, if he was married, of that of his wife, thus giving another example of the capacity of laymen to act in judgements of faith.[780]

With the progressive centralization of business in the Suprema, the consulta de fe gradually diminished in importance and, as we shall see, in the eighteenth century it became virtually obsolete. The table of officials in 1746 shows that, at that time, there were only eighteen consultores in all the tribunals and, of these, eight were in the little Inquisition of Majorca.[781]

The office of commissioner was peculiar to the Spanish Inquisition and, although its powers were strictly limited, it was an important factor in keeping the authority of the Holy Office constantly before the people and in detecting offenders in obscure places where they might otherwise have enjoyed security. It was not part of the original organization and there is no reference to it in the Instructions. It is true that, in 1509, Ferdinand addresses a certain Beltran de la Sala, of Perpignan, as commissioner of the Inquisition, but he is also “hoste de correos” or in charge of couriers on the important line between Spain and Italy.[782] He was therefore not a commissioner in the later sense, but probably was employed to look after the sequestrations which had been extensive in Perpignan. As the tribunals became sedentary in their extensive districts, the need of representatives scattered everywhere made itself felt, and the first suggestion seems to have come from Valencia. The Suprema represented, December 4, 1537, to Cardinal Manrique, the size of the district of Valencia, where the difficulties of intercommunication were such that it never had been and never could be properly visited. It was therefore proposed that, in the cathedral towns, commissioners should be appointed with power to publish the edicts and to take testimony and ratifications with notaries. The cathedral clergy would probably furnish proper appointees, serving without pay, as the duties would be only occasional.[783] This corresponds so nearly with the plan adopted that it may safely be assumed to be its origin.

Authority was given to inquisitors to appoint commissioners, but apparently at first the limitation on their powers was ill defined. The visitation of Barcelona, in 1549, showed that they undertook to arrest and prosecute, in fact to make themselves inquisitors in their little districts and, in 1550, the Suprema instructed the tribunal to grant faculties only to receive denunciations, collect evidence and send it to the Inquisition for its action.[784] This remained the rule until the end. In the cartillas, or detailed printed instructions, they were forbidden to make arrests unless three conditions coexisted—that the case clearly pertained to the Holy Office, that the evidence was ample, and that there was apprehension of flight. Even then they were warned to act only on mature deliberation, and they were forbidden to sequestrate property, though they were to keep an eye on it. If an arrest took place, the prisoner and the evidence were to be transmitted to the tribunal under guard of familiars, without being allowed to communicate with any one. In addition the commissioner could hear the civil cases of familiars, up to the value of twenty libras and execute his decisions. All this was concisely expressed in the commission issued to him.[785]

As in everything else, it was impossible to enforce compliance with wholesome regulations. Cervantes, in the report of his Barcelona visitation of 1561, says that commissioners paid no attention to the limitations of their powers. They were thoroughly untrained and ignorant of their duties and had no hesitation in appointing other commissioners. As they had authority to appoint a notary and an alguazil, they set up little courts throughout the land, armed with the awful authority of the Holy Office, and it requires no stretch of the imagination to conceive the tyranny and extortion with which they afflicted the people.[786]

Not much was gained when, in 1561, the Suprema ordered that they should be appointed only in places where it was necessary and that they must be quiet and peaceable persons; or, in 1565, when it prescribed great care in issuing commissions, which must be so limited as to prevent them from appointing deputies.[787] Salazar’s report of his inspection of Barcelona, in 1566, shows that the evil continued unchecked; commissioners were appointed in unnecessary numbers, often by a single inquisitor during a visitation, and sometimes they were ignorant laymen, although the office inferred that it should be reserved exclusively to those in holy orders.[788] It is not strange that this new infliction, which seemed to bring the terrors of the Inquisition to every man’s door, should form the subject of vigorous remonstrances, and the Concordias of 1568, by their enumeration of what was forbidden, show the abuses under which the populations were suffering. That of Valencia provided that there should be such officials only in Tortosa, Segorbe, Teruel, Gandía, Castellon de la Plana, Denia and Játiva, with two in the city of Valencia, and that they should be called deputized commissioners and not, as heretofore, lieutenant inquisitors. That of Aragon limited them to Lérida, Huesca, Tarazona, Daroca, Calatayud, Jaca, Barbastro and towns on the French frontier. Both provided that in future they should not try cases, or make arrests save to prevent flight, nor should they grant licences for the importation or exportation of provisions and other matters. They might have an assessor and a notary, enjoying all privileges and exemptions, and, if an alguazil was needed, they could assign that post to a familiar without enlarging his exemptions.[789] All this is eloquent of the methods by which these would-be local inquisitors had magnified their office to the vexation of the people.

Catalonia rejected the Concordia of 1568 and, in the Córtes of 1599, it demanded that neither rectors of churches nor frailes should be appointed as commissioners. To this the Suprema, in its memorial to Clement VIII, replied that the object was to prevent the Inquisition from having proper commissioners, as Catalonia was too poor in the requisite material to exclude these classes in places where there were no cathedrals or collegiate churches.[790]

In 1572, the Suprema made an effort to check the multiplication of these officials by decreeing that they should be appointed only in the chief towns of archpriestly districts, but it promptly receded from this and, the next year, authorized them wherever it seemed necessary, which amounted to unlimited permission. An order, in 1576, that they were not to be defended in prosecutions for concubinage is suggestive as to the prevailing morality and, in 1584, they were instructed to keep in constant correspondence with the tribunals, reporting everything that occurred in their districts, which indicates how comprehensive a system of espionage was established.[791]

The Suprema, in a carta acordada of March 24, 1604, made a serious attempt to check existing evils. It called attention to the abuses in appointing commissioners, notaries and familiars, whose multitude and general unworthiness resulted in greatly impairing the authority of the Inquisition. In future, commissioners were to be appointed only in the chief towns of the partidos, or local judicial districts, or at least four leagues apart. Inquisitors should bear in mind that their duties embrace cases of the utmost importance, requiring men of intelligence, virtue and silence; they should have benefices or revenues sufficient to live with the dignity befitting their high office.[792] The prescription as to number and location received scant obedience. We chance to meet with them in obscure places like Cobeña and Fuentelsas, and a list of them in the little province of Guipúzcoa, which has but four partidos, amounts to seventeen. An experienced writer, in 1648, after reciting the limitations, states that there are places where there are three or four, disguised by appointments nominally to neighboring hamlets.[793]

Although without salary, the office had become attractive, not only on account of the importance and immunities which it conferred, but also because a large part of the attendant labor brought in satisfactory fees. In the eagerness to prove limpieza, investigations into genealogies were perpetual; nearly all these passed through the Inquisition and were confided to the commissioner nearest to the birth-place of the applicant. He was expected to pay roundly and the commissioner was entitled to sixteen reales a day for his time, or to two ducats if he had to leave his residence. Moreover the knowledge thus acquired of the genealogies of his neighbors gave him power to render them uncomfortable, as we may gather from a carta acordada of 1622, forbidding commissioners to make notes of the ancestry of those who were not officials of the Inquisition and threatening dismissal for stigmatizing any one as a Jew, Moor, Converso or descendant of such.[794] At sea-ports and frontier towns, also, the commissioners had a considerable source of revenue from fees for the examinations requisite to prevent the entrance of heretics and heretic books—fees which, as we shall see hereafter, were the abundant source of complaint. These positions the inquisitor-general reserved for his own appointment and finally also those in the cathedral towns and larger cities.[795]

In the effort at reform made by Philip V, investigation was made into the character of the commissioners, their notaries and the familiars and, soon after this, in 1706, the Suprema asserted that, in Castile, there was not one fourth of the number permitted by the Concordia of 1553, which it attributed partly to the War of Succession then raging and partly to the molestation to which they were exposed.[796] Unquestionably the number declined rapidly during the eighteenth century, as will be seen by the table in the Appendix where, although Saragossa still has thirty-eight and Barcelona twenty-eight, the other tribunals report only from two to seven, except the Canaries, where the scattered group of islands necessarily demanded a considerable number. This diminution may be explained by the growing habit of appointing temporary commissioners in any place where work was to be done. Moreover the increasing facilities of communication favored local centralization in the tribunal, even as general centralization was stimulated in the Suprema. Denunciations were readily sent by mail and temporary commissions were issued for their investigation. So, too, in the matter of limpieza, the tribunal could dispense its patronage more profitably by sending out from head-quarters special commissioners who earned a larger per diem at the expense of the applicant. To accommodate this new development, when in 1816 a new cartilla of instructions for commissioners was printed, it was provided at the end with a number of blank commissions which could be detached and filled in for use. A hundred copies were supplied to each tribunal, twenty of them bound to be used as a whole and eighty in sheets to be thus cut up. Within a month one tribunal applied for a further stock and fifty copies were sent.[797] Little as the inquisitors of the time had to do, they were evidently devolving their duties upon others more generally than ever.

In a previous chapter it has been seen that of all the officials of the Inquisition those who occasioned the most frequent trouble and who aroused the most strenuous animadversion were the familiars. They were the most numerous, they were largely drawn from the turbulent element, seeking the position for the protection afforded against secular justice, and they abused their privileges accordingly. For more than two centuries they were an object of dread to all peaceable folk, and no stronger evidence can be furnished of the subjection to which the Inquisition had reduced Spain than the tolerance of this dangerous class, whose services were overpaid by the immunities which relieved the Inquisition from paying salaries.

In the medieval Inquisition the inquisitor had the right to surround himself with armed guards, whether to protect his person or to execute his orders. They were reckoned as members of his family, thence obtaining the name of familiars, entitling them to immunity from justice. They were dreaded and hated, not without reason, for the position was attractive only to the ruffian and brawler, nor was anything gained when, in 1213, the Council of Vienne warned inquisitors to be moderate and discreet in their use of the privilege.[798]

Of course the old Aragonese Inquisition enjoyed this prerogative and when the new institution was organized it inherited the right. This, moreover, was developed in an entirely novel manner, for the familiar was not attached to the person of the inquisitor. Appointments were made all over the land, the Inquisition thus obtaining, without cost, a small army of servitors, scattered everywhere, sworn to obedience and ready, at any moment, to perform whatever duty they might be called upon to render. They served, moreover, as spies upon their neighbors and were eager to manifest their zeal by volunteer action, for it was a commonplace of the canon law that the heretic could be arrested by any one.

It was impossible that such a class as this, released from the restraints of law, should not prove troublesome and even dangerous. Inquisitors appointed them at discretion, furnished them with licences to bear arms and turned them loose on the community. It would have been some slight protection if registers of these appointments had been kept, and the names of the appointees furnished to the magistrates, so that it could be known whether those who claimed immunity were entitled to it. It was impossible, however, to induce the inquisitors to do this. Ximenes and the Suprema ordered the names to be entered in a book and a copy to be furnished to the corregidors and Ferdinand, in a general order of July 11, 1513 emphasized this, but to no purpose and it was repeated endlessly with the same result.[799] The inquisitors steadily refused obedience, for it would have imposed some check upon multitudinous and indiscriminate appointments which had a recognized money value. The result of all this appears in a letter of Ferdinand, in 1514, to the inquisitors of Toledo, informing them that the royal and municipal authorities complained of the number of turbulent fellows, carrying licences signed by only one inquisitor, who went around in bands disturbing the peace and, if the civil magistrate endeavored to restrain them, the tribunal at once interposed, leading to dissensions between it and the ministers of justice, to the great injury of the city and its vicinity. Ximenes had already endeavored to check these disorders without success, and Ferdinand now insists that his orders must be obeyed, that all such licences must be signed by the three inquisitors, a record of them must be kept and a copy be furnished to the corregidor.[800]

The same troubles existed in the Aragonese kingdoms where, it will be remembered, the Córtes of Monzon, in 1512, endeavored to remedy them in the Concordia, by providing that for Aragon there might be twenty armed familiars in Saragossa, while in other towns, where the tribunal was in actual session, there might be temporary appointments, not exceeding twenty for the whole kingdom. Notwithstanding the acceptance of this agreement by Ferdinand, its confirmation in 1516 by Leo X, and its solemn ratification in 1520, it never received the slightest respect from the Inquisition, and its only interest lies in its proof of the popular anxiety for relief and that a very moderate number of familiars sufficed at a period of great activity in the work of the Holy Office.