We have already (Vol. I, pp. 315, 321) seen how, in the eighteenth century, the Inquisition, in the cases of Macanaz and the works of Barclay and Le Vayer, and in that of the Catechism of Mesengui, took sides against the royal prerogative. Although in the former Philip V weakly yielded, Carlos III in the latter, not only temporarily suspended Inquisitor-general Bonifaz, but took steps to protect more thoroughly the crown against papal encroachment, and to limit the censorial powers of the Inquisition. November 27, 1761, he laid down the basis of subsequent legislation in instructions to the Council of State to frame a law adequate to the necessities of the case. In consequence, the Pragmática del Exequatur of January 18, 1762, ordered that no bull, brief or papal letter, addressed to any tribunal, junta, judge or prelate, should be published without having first been presented to the king for his approval by the nuncio, while those for individuals should be submitted to the Royal Council to see whether they affected the Concordat, or prejudiced the regalías or the good customs and usages of the kingdom. This was followed by a cédula of August 18th imposing restrictions on inquisitorial censorship, but both of these were withdrawn by decree of July 15, 1763—a decree obtained by the royal confessor, Padre Eleta, working on the king’s superstition by representing the loss of Havana as an evidence of divine wrath.[1449] This respite, however, was not of long duration. At a junta called, in 1768, to consider matters growing out of the expulsion of the Jesuits, the Counts of Floridablanca and Campomanes presented a memorial calling attention to the surreptitious introduction of several papal briefs, and to the disastrous influence of the censorship in flooding the land with ignorance. The result of the discussion was the re-enactment of the Pragmática del Exequatur, with more enlarged provisions, and a cédula of June 6th providing that the Inquisition should not prohibit any work by a Catholic of good repute, without giving him a hearing or, if he were a foreigner or dead, without appointing for him an advocate of competent character. The circulation of books was not to be suspended under pretext that they were undergoing examination; in those to be expurgated the objectionable passages were to be speedily designated, so that the current reading of them should not be interrupted, and any special propositions condemned were to be clearly indicated, so that they could be expurgated by the owners. Prohibition was to be confined to errors and superstitions and lax opinions prejudicial to religion and morality, and no edict was to be published until it had been approved by the king.[1450]

These reforms were in the spirit of those by which Benedict XIV, in the bull Sollicita ac provida, had endeavored to soften the rigor of the Roman censorship, but they were largely impracticable. They excited lively opposition, especially the provision allowing the circulation of books during the process of examination, and Llorente tells us that, for the most part, the Inquisition eluded their restrictions. It was of course impossible for the king to pass judgement on all the condemnatory edicts which followed each other in rapid succession and were submitted to him without explanation or record of the author having been heard in his defence.[1451] This latter provision however seems to have been observed. In 1775 we find the Suprema sending to Valencia certain conclusions commencing “Sistema phisicum de hominis generatione,” together with the papers concerning their condemnation and the cédula of June 16, 1768, so that the party could be heard in defence.[1452] The author, however, was not allowed to print and circulate his defence, though he might have licence for enough copies to supply the members of the Suprema; in a case in which he distributed them through the universities they were called in and suppressed, and if he attacked the witnesses and calificadores, he was liable to the savage penalties of the bull Si de protegendis.[1453] Yet to the end the author was entitled to a hearing. In a case occurring at Llerena, in 1816, the Suprema instructs the tribunal to suppress a certain pamphlet in the next edict, but it is to ask the author, Dr. Martin Batincas, whether he desires to defend it; if so to furnish him with the censures, but not the names of the calificadores, when the matter will take its regular course. The provision for a defender in the cases of deceased and foreign authors was similarly maintained. In 1816 the Suprema instructed the Madrid tribunal to take up the case of a book entitled “El Niño instruido,” which had been suspended on account of the troubles; now a new edition had appeared, which must be seized and a copy of the censures be furnished to the General of the Barefooted Carmelites; if he should not desire to put forward a defender, the tribunal was to appoint a defensor de oficio. So scrupulously was this observed that, in 1817, a single copy of a French book, printed in 1801, entitled “Du Mariage dans ses rapports avec la Religion et avec les lois nouvelles,” found in possession of Canon Miguel Cortés, was duly condemned by calificadores when Padre Cento was appointed to defend it and, on his refusal, proceedings appear to have been dropped.[1454]

During this later period, the Inquisition and the State were in firm alliance, against their common enemy the Revolution, and the State made full use of the Inquisition as a political instrument, although it had its own elaborate and effective censorship. This employment of the Inquisition was a new development, for in the earlier time, the instances in which inquisitorial censorship was called upon for political service are surprisingly few. In the case of Antonio Pérez, it was inevitable that the Inquisition should prohibit his writings and unauthorized accounts of his persecutions. There was less excuse for suppressing, in 1609, Padre Mariana’s volume of essays on account of his criticism of the ruinous debasement of the coinage.[1455] There was unworthy complaisance to the Holy See when, in 1606, the Suprema forbade the possession by any one of the papers and memorials issued by Venice, in its quarrel with Paul V, on the pretext of their being scandalous to Christendom, and an even greater misuse of its power when it arrested and prosecuted Francisco de la Cueva, a lawyer whom the Venetian ambassador had employed to write in defence of the Republic.[1456] On the eve of the Catalan revolt, in 1640, the protest of Barcelona to the king was suppressed as coming under the rules of the Expurgatorio, being seditious, insulting and scandalous, and this precedent was followed with all writings on the subject during the revolt.[1457] On the whole, however, throughout the first three centuries of its existence, the political use made of the Inquisition, in this and other ways, was wonderfully small.

It was otherwise when the upheaval came which threatened the stability of all monarchical institutions, and nothing was more dreaded than public opinion, which might develop into action. All the agencies at command of the State were felt to be needed, and Carlos IV hastened to open the way for the Inquisition by declaring, in an edict of 1789, that all which contributed to spread revolutionary principles was heresy, being a doctrinal error, contrary to the teachings of the Apostles Peter and Paul, and this was speedily reduced to practice by an edict of the Inquisition ordering the surrender of all papers coming from France and conveying revolutionary ideas.[1458] Watchfulness on importations, especially from France, by both royal and inquisitorial officials, was redoubled, and for years new methods were constantly devised to keep the population in ignorance of events beyond the Pyrenees.[1459]

It was in vain. French newspapers and books were smuggled across the frontier, and forbidden speculations on the laws of nature and the rights of man were widely disseminated. When the crisis came, with the deportation of the royal family and the Napoleonic invasion, there was a leaven of liberalism sufficient to find expression in the demand for a new order of things. The Extraordinary Córtes, elected by universal suffrage and assembled at Cádiz in 1810, lost no time in framing a law for the freedom of the press. Yet the tradition of the necessity of censorship was so strong that the decree of February 22, 1813, suppressing the Inquisition, transferred to the bishops the jurisdiction over censorship as well as over heresy. The law on the press had provided a control by the State over all printing, and works on religion were subjected to a second episcopal examination, with full power of condemnation and suppression, while elaborate provisions were made for an authoritative Index.[1460]

This cumbrous scheme never had vitality, and the Restoration of 1814 restored to the Inquisition its jurisdiction over the press. As soon as it could spare time, during the labor of reconstruction, it addressed itself to the suppression of the revolutionary literature of the previous six years. A carta acordada of October 25, 1814, ordered the tribunals, as speedily as possible, to notify the Suprema of all objectionable books, pamphlets and papers that had been written or printed in their districts, with all details as to authorship and place of publication. From this was compiled a list of a hundred and eighty-three prohibited publications, including thirty-five journals, but an edict of July 22, 1815, described this as incomplete; the faithful were referred to the rules of the Index as defining whatever had been omitted, and all such were to be surrendered within six days, under the traditional penalty of excommunication and two hundred ducats; all the old regulations and Indexes were declared to be in force and, on August 3d, each tribunal was ordered to suppress all objectionable matter printed within its district.[1461]

The correspondence of the Suprema, at this period, shows minute and constant watchfulness over the press, and a large part of the labors of the Inquisition, during its brief resuscitation, was devoted to censorship, mostly of a political character. The Constitutionalist refugees, who had fled from the vengeance of the reaction, were busy, with such slender means as they could command, in propagating their ideas, as the Protestant refugees had been in the sixteenth century, and there was the same anxious vigilance to counteract their efforts, while the danger was greater, for a large part of the population was known to secretly share their views. Thus, in 1818, circulars were received in Madrid, announcing the appearance in London of a weekly entitled El Español Constitucional. Immediately the Royal Council sent out orders to the judicial and military authorities to seize all copies, and the Juez de Imprentas did the same to his subordinates, all of which resulted in finding enough of the circulars to show that they had been widely distributed. Then the aid of the Inquisition was invoked and, on August 3d, the Suprema ordered the tribunals not only to seize all copies but to arrest everybody concerned. Then, on September 13th, the king reported that the wicked refugees in London, who had been, through lack of funds, obliged to abandon the project, had recently obtained contributions and had resumed it, wherefore fresh diligence was enjoined. Two days later the Suprema forwarded this to the tribunals, with orders to exert themselves in seizing the circulars and periodical and also the accomplices in the so-called conspiracy. Again, on November 4th, the Suprema called renewed attention to its former letters and enclosed a royal order stating that the London ambassador reported the appearance of the second number of the journal, and insisting on every precaution to prevent its circulation in Spain. There is no trace, however, of any copy of the mysterious periodical being captured by the Inquisition, or of the arrest of any one concerned. Simultaneously with this, on November 5th, the Suprema transmitted another royal order stating that letters intercepted in the mails contained prospectuses of a periodical entitled “Gabinete de Curiosidades politicas y literarias de España y Indias,” to be issued in London by Gallardo, former librarian of the Córtes. The Suprema consequently issued instructions enjoining the utmost vigilance in seizing the prospectus and copies of the periodical.[1462] The happy faculty of confusing the spiritual and the temporal, so valuable to the medieval Church, had evidently not been lost to the Spanish monarchy.

Although in general the Inquisition carefully abstained from intrusion in the field of morals, yet in censorship it undertook to guard the public from that which might contaminate virtue as well as from what affected faith. This was justified by the rules of the Tridentine Index as well as of that of Clement VIII, in 1596, where lascivious books and illustrations were to be prohibited or expurgated.[1463] Literature however largely escaped, at least until the later period. The Celestina of Francisco de Rojas, of which more than thirty editions were printed in the sixteenth century, its popularity leading to its use as a schoolbook notwithstanding its somewhat crude indecency, escaped attention, until the Index of 1640 ordered the expurgation of about fifty lines, and it was not prohibited until that of 1790.[1464]

Art attracted earlier attention, especially when its employment in sacred subjects lacked dignity, however stimulating it might be to the piety of the unlettered public. The first allusion I have met to this function of the Inquisition occurs in 1568, when Inquisitor Moral, in reporting his visitation of San Sebastian, mentions penancing Gracia de Caldiere for possessing a pintura deshonesta, whereupon the Suprema told him that he should have sent the picture to it—apparently, as a matter of censorship, it reserved the decision to itself.[1465] The next is a carta acordada of 1571, ordering the suppression of some figures on linen of the Crucifixion and the Trinity, in which the calificadores had discovered symbols of Lutheran doctrines, and a series of twelve wood cuts of the Passion, with an epitome on the backs in Latin and French.[1466] This is emphasized in the Expurgatory Index of Quiroga, in 1583, of which the twelfth rule is directed against all representations of sacred persons or objects which savor of irrision or irreverence.[1467] Spanish piety, in fact, occasionally manifested itself in somewhat grotesque form, as in certain images on linen of the Christ-child, in military uniforms, the suppression of which was ordered in 1619.[1468] In 1649, the Suprema was scandalized at the great irreverence and diabolical indecency, with a savor of sacrilege, of ribbons which were called “bowels of angels” or “hearts or entrails of apostles,” and, under the customary penalties, it forbade asking for, buying or selling ribbons with such names. A few weeks later it prohibited all razors or knives on the handles of which were engraved images of Christ, the Virgin, the saints or the instruments of the Passion; all found in the shops were to be seized, and the commissioners at the ports were to see that none were imported.[1469]

After the more serious work of the Inquisition was accomplished, in the elimination of Judaism, Protestantism and Islam, its energies were more actively employed in this direction. In 1787 we find the Valencia tribunal prosecuting Francisca Lazaro for indecent songs. In 1803 the Caprichos of Goya, the leading artist of the period, wounded inquisitorial sensibilities; he was summoned and his prosecution was commenced, but he was saved by the intervention of Carlos IV. Two of the last acts of the Valencia tribunal in 1820 were proceedings against the “Rime e Prose del Doctor Tomaso Crudeli,” which it pronounced to be obscene and impious, and the condemnation of a book called Il Zibaldone, for lascivious propositions. The theatre also became subject to inquisitorial censorship. In 1817 a tragedy entitled “La Obstinacion de un Padre” was presented on the Valencian stage, October 9th and 10th; it seems to have excited disapproval and, on the 13th, the MS. was presented to the tribunal for its censure. In Madrid, the Suprema acted as a preliminary censor; in 1815 we find it ordering the local tribunal to examine the opera “El hombre de mal genio y buen corazon,” and the comedy “El no de las niñas” and, on the report that the fiscal had no objection to their representation, it gave its assent. So, in 1819, the Suprema returns to the Seville tribunal its calificacion of four saynetes, or farces, with orders to put it into more intelligible shape, to vote on it and return it for final decision.[1470]

Works of art, however, were the principal objects of inquisitorial Puritanism. In 1793, the Valencia tribunal formed a process concerning a certain snuff-box with a scandalous picture, supposed to be in possession of Don Jacinto de Castro, governor of the sala del crimen. Solicitude for the public morals was so acute that, October 2, 1815, the Suprema approved a decree of the Madrid tribunal, ordering all the hairdressers of the city to remove from their windows, or alter to decency, the wax busts which they exhibited as specimens of their art—apparently because they made too exuberant a display of their charms. Artists and dealers in pictures were held to a strict accountability. But a week before the last case, the Suprema had considered a prosecution by the Seville tribunal of Juan Rodríguez and Domingo Alvarez of Cádiz, the former for painting and the latter for exhibiting in his shop a picture called Diana, provocative by its posture and nudity. They were ordered to appear before the commissioner of Cádiz, who should reprimand and absolve them from the excommunication incurred, and warn them that a repetition of the offence would be visited with the penalties provided by Regla XI of the Expurgatorio—banishment and five hundred ducats fine. Six months later, Pasqual Franchini for two pinturas obscenas was fined a hundred ducats and, as he was ordered to be set at liberty, it is evident that he had been imprisoned; he pleaded poverty and his fine was kindly reduced. Three months later, Santiago Schmidt and his son Josef were sentenced, by the Madrid tribunal, for selling to the Prussian ambassador an indecent picture for eight thousand reales; for this they were fined two thousand reales, which the Suprema benignantly reduced to fifty ducats.[1471]

Doubtless in this case ambassadorial privilege saved the purchaser from prosecution, for the possession of objects regarded as immoral was calidad de oficio, and the records are full of cases against those who owned snuff-boxes, watches, packs of cards etc., with indecent figures or inscriptions, as well as of pictures, engravings and books with plates that offended the modesty of the censors. No doubt much of what was condemned was thoroughly vicious and disreputable, but the resultant purification scarce compensated for the invasion of private life and the stimulus to the detestable habit of espionage and denunciation, through which alone such matters could come to the knowledge of the tribunals. Much good art, moreover, was undoubtedly sacrificed by ignorant censors, for the objects thus condemned were destroyed. In 1805 at Valencia a painting on copper of the Adultery of Venus was thus ordered to be effaced, and when this was done the sheet of copper was delivered to the alcalde del crimen, to be restored to the owner. Akin to this was the tearing out of objectionable plates from books, which happens to be mentioned, in 1819, in the case of Don Luis Monfort, a captain of artillery.[1472]

Thus the censorship of the Inquisition was all-embracing, from the most dangerous heresies of Luther and Calvin, the popularization of Scripture, the relations between Church and State and the liberalism of the modern era, down to the veriest trifles. It was an engine of immense power, constantly applied for the furtherance of Obscurantism, the repression of thought, the exclusion of foreign ideas, and the obstruction of progress. It was accompanied by a state censorship, based upon the law of 1558, perfected in innumerable successive regulations, of a character most vexatious and embarrassing to authorship, and this duplication of censors exercised a most deplorably depressing influence on literature and culture. Authorship was discouraged by the uncertainty whether works, on which perhaps years of labor had been spent, would secure a licence to print; the business of publication was rendered extra-hazardous by the fact that a book, printed with due licence from the state, might at any moment be prohibited by the Inquisition and the whole edition be seized and destroyed, while purchasers who had bought such a licensed book were liable to be deprived of it without compensation. Thus, between the state and the Inquisition, whether working in unison or at cross-purposes, the intellectual development which, in the sixteenth century, promised to render Spanish literature and learning the most illustrious in Europe, was stunted and starved into atrophy, the arts and sciences were neglected, commercial and industrial progress was rendered impossible, and the character which Spain acquired among the nations was tersely expressed in the current saying that Africa began at the Pyrenees.

APPENDIX.

STATISTICS OF OFFENCES AND PENALTIES.

(See p. 93).

It is manifestly impossible to compile the statistics of inquisitorial activity during the centuries of its existence and amid its numerous tribunals, but some fragmentary figures may serve to illustrate the comparative frequency of the offences with which it had to deal and the character of the punishments which it inflicted. As regards the latter it will be remembered that the sentences usually comprised several penalties.

Offences.

The following summary of cases acted upon by the tribunal of Toledo is condensed from the “Catálogo de los causas contra la fe seguidas ante el Tribunal del Santo Oficio de Toledo” (Madrid, 1903) prepared by Padre Fresca, S. J., and Don Miguel Gómez del Campillo, from the original records. As the earliest case is of 1483 (p. 192) and the latest of 1819 (p. 81) it would appear to cover the whole activity of the tribunal, but it is manifestly imperfect, in view of the masses of Judaizers reconciled and the effigies burnt of the dead and fugitives, in the early years of the organization (Vol. I, pp. 165-72, 183). In a minor degree this is also shown by comparison with tables below of portions of the period from other sources. These latter also have interest as indicating changes in the character of offences at successive periods.

The classification of Señor Gómez del Campillo is as follows:

A MS. volume in the Library of the University of Halle (Yc, 20, Tom. I) contains the reports to the Suprema by the tribunal of Toledo of its operations, from the auto de fe of September 4, 1575, to that of February 7, 1610. The auto of 1595 is however missing and the report of the last one is incomplete, breaking off at the tenth case. So far as it goes, the record for these 35 years embraces 1172 cases, an analysis of which yields the following results:

In Legajo I of the Archivo histórico Nacional, Inquisicion de Toledo, there is a volume of which the introductory lines state that on February 8, 1648, Gonzalo Bravo Graxera, then inspecting the tribunal, reminded the inquisitors that a carta acordada of May 22, 1570, required a register to be kept of all penitents appearing in the autos, with their punishments. Thereupon a book was procured for the purpose and the record commenced. It extends from 1648 to 1794 and is doubtless complete. An analysis of this yields the following results:

In the Royal Library of Berlin Qt. 9548 is a volume containing relations of sixty-four autos held in various tribunals, between 1721 and 1727. During this period inquisitorial energy was mainly directed against Judaism, as will be seen from the following summary of the cases:

Punishments.

In the Toledo record of 1575-1610 the sentences include

The Toledo Record from 1648 to 1794 yields the following summary:

The sentences in the sixty-four autos de fe between 1721 and 1727 include:

DOCUMENTS.

(MSS. of Library of University of Halle, Yc, 20, Tom. XI). (See p. 94).

CHRISTI NOMINE INVOCATO.

Ffallamos, attento los auttos y meritos del dicho processo que el dicho promoter fiscal provó bien y cumplidamente su acusacion y querella, Damos y pronunciamos su intencion por bien provada, en consequencia de lo qual que devemos declarar y declaramos el susodicho Don Gaspar Centellas ser herege y estar suficientamente convencido por suficiente numero de testigos y demas desto haver confessado, affirmado y defendido pertinazmente ante nos las dichas proposiciones hereticas y por tales condenadas y declaradas y que le devemos condenar y condenamos que el dia del aucto de la fe salga al cadahalso con insignias de relaxado y que alli le sea leyda publicamente esta nuestra sentencia por la qual le declaramos por herege abominable, pertinaz, obstinado y endurecido y por ello haver cahido y yncurrido en todas las penas en que cahen y yncurren los semejantes hereges ympenitentes y pertinaces, y porque por todas vias se ha procurado con el susodicho con toda solicitud y cuydado de attraerlo y reduzirlo a nuestra santa fe catolica, ofreciendole toda benignidad y misericordia de que el no se ha querido ni quiere aprovechar y pues la santa madre yglesia no tiene otra cosa ni remedio de que usar con el susodicho, pues el la menosprecia, sino relaxarlo à la justicia y brazo seglar como à miembro podrido, ynfecto, pestifero y nocivo, porque otros no se dañen ni padezcan con el, por esta nuestra sentencia, como à herege pertinaz y obstinado, lo relaxamos al muy ilustre señor Don Joan Lorencio de Villamasa, Visorrey y capitan general por su Magestad en esta ciudad y Reyno ò al muy magnifico Mossen Quille Ramon Catalan, justicia criminal en esta dicha ciudad, ò à quien la punicion y castigo del dicho crimen pueda pertenecer y pertenezca y à su señoria pedimos por merced y al dicho justicia muy affectadamente rogamos y encargamos que con el susodicho se manden haver y ayan misericordiamente. Otrosi por quanto el dicho delicto y crimen de la heregia excede y es muy mayor sin comparacion que otro alguno por ser cometido contra la divina Magestad y por su graveza por que en las personas de los perpetradores del no puede ser suficientemente punido ni castigado y la pena del sestiende à los bienes, progenie y posteridad de los que lo cometen, por esta nuestra sentencia declaramos sus bienes ser confiscados à la camara y fisco Real de su Magestad desde el tiempo que cometiò los dichos delictos con los quales mandamos acudir al magnifico Mossen Bernardino Gutierrez recetor deste S^to Officio en su nombre, y los hijos, hijas, nietos y nietas del dicho don Gaspar Centellas, herege ympenitente pertinaz y obstinado, descendientes por linea masculina en segundo grado y por feminina en primero, ser privados de todas y qualesquier dignidades, beneficios y officios ecclesiasticos y seglares que sean publicos y de honrra que los susodichos tienen y possehen, y ser inabiles e yncapaces para ympetrar, tener y posseher otros de nuevo, ni poder ser justicias, jurados, clerigos ni notarios ni otro ninguno officio publico de onrra, e no poder traer sobre si ni en su persona oro, plata, perlas, piedras preciosas, seda, grana, chamelote ni paño fino, armas, ni cavalgar en cavallo, hazer ni traer otra cosa alguna de las que por derecho e ynstructiones deste S^to Officio le son prohibidas, y por esta nuestra sentencia definitiva juzgando ansi lo pronunciamos, sentenciamos y mandamos en estos escritos y processo pro tribunali sedendo.

El Licenciado Aguliera. Don Miguel Vich.

Sentencia dada y promulgada por el Señor Inquisidor el licenciado Bernardino de Aguilera los dia mes y año susodichos en presencia de las partes susodichas las quales passaron por ella.

Presentes fueron por testigos à la publicacion de la dicha sentencia los discretes Miguel Perez de Huermeda, Pere Lopez y Francisco Pastor notarios y muchos otros vezinos de Valencia. Passo ante me, Miguel Bellot, notario.

II.

(See p. 161).