Another grievance of the Inquisition shows how completely the tables were turned. September 23, 1648, the Suprema represented in a consulta that the tribunal had been notified to reduce the number of its officials and familiars to the prescribed four hundred and fifty, which had not been done under the plea that the number was insufficient, that the Concordia did not order the dismissal of the overplus and that the incumbents could not be deprived of their rights. Still there was little doubt that persistent refusal would lead the Diputados to obtain a firma compelling a selection and until this was done no familiar would be allowed to enjoy their privileges—in fact a number of towns had already assumed this position and others were taking steps to obtain firmas. The Suprema endeavored to show the illegality of this on the ground that the Concordia of 1646 was not valid in the absence of confirmation by the inquisitor-general. Philip submitted this to the Council of Aragon and merely transmitted its answer, in non-committal fashion, to the Suprema for its information. This took the ground that only the secular and royal jurisdiction was concerned; the king had confirmed the laws which provided that the acquiescence of the inquisitor-general was unnecessary; if parties were aggrieved they could apply to the court of the Justicia.[1118]
ARAGON
Under these conditions, the laws of 1646, by restricting the tribunal to its proper functions, were a severe blow to its predominance, diminishing the terror which it inspired and affecting in some degree its finances. The continual suits brought before it had afforded a rich harvest of fees for its officials and the fines imposed had been a resource to its treasury. All this fell off greatly and, in 1649, the Suprema reminded Philip that, in 1646, it had predicted this result and he had promised indemnification by a fixed income to be paid by Aragon or by the royal treasury; although it did not regard the laws as binding in the absence of confirmation by the inquisitor-general, and had resisted their execution in every way, still they were executed and the officials were suffering keenly from their diminished fees, wherefore it asked the king to grant to the four notaries and messengers eight hundred ducats a year out of the fund for the Catalan refugees. This demand, and the impudent assertion of the nullity of the laws which he had approved, provoked Philip into one of his rare assertions of kingship. The Catalan fund, he replied, could not be touched; he would listen to other suggestions for the relief of the incumbents but not of their successors; he was master of the secular jurisdiction granted to the Inquisition for his service and could make laws and abrogate them at his pleasure.[1119]
Philip had learned a lesson and the laws of 1646 were duly executed. When, in 1677, there was another convocation of the Córtes of Aragon, the Suprema, in a suppliant tone contrasting strongly with its former arrogance, begged Carlos II to influence them to condescend to a modification. It gave a most dolorous account of the condition of the Saragossa tribunal resulting from that legislation. It forebore to discuss whether the officials had given just cause of complaint, but the total destruction of the Inquisition was curing one malady by introducing a worse one, and the Inquisition of Aragon had been destroyed. The number of officials was reduced below that at the time of its foundation, and its poverty was so great that wages were unpaid and the tribunal would probably have to be abandoned. The treasurer was compelled to collect its income and debts through the court of the Justicia, where it was impossible for him to carry on so many suits, so that only those paid whose consciences compelled them. The reduction of the officials impeded its usefulness; possibly there were fewer culprits but certainly there were fewer convictions—less in Aragon than in the other provinces—and a single one who escaped correction was a matter of greater consequence to God than the enjoyment of the fuero by five hundred persons. It was impossible to fill the allotted number of familiars, for the fuero in criminal matters left to them was rather a disadvantage, for they died in prison owing to the interminable delays in settling the numerous competencias, while other defendants were released on bail. At the same time the deprivation of the active fuero exposed them to the effects of the general hatred felt for them. It was inconceivable that, in so pious a nation, this hatred could be caused by their functions, but its existence was a matter of experience and, in the absence of protection, the risks to which it exposed them prevented men from seeking the position. The Inquisition did not desire jurisdiction, but it could not exist without revenue and officials, and it therefore prayed the king that proper measures of relief be discussed in the Córtes, or a junta could be formed from both parties and a new Concordia be framed. Even allowing for customary exaggeration, this paper shows how greatly the Inquisition had outgrown the functions for which it had been imposed upon the people.
The concessions asked for were singularly moderate—that the treasurer should not be required to make collections through the court of the Justicia, that more familiars be allowed—though it had just been said that they could not be had—that they be admitted to bail during competencias, and a timid suggestion respecting the firma and manifestacion. The time, however, was not propitious even for demands so modest. The youthful Carlos II had just relegated his mother to a convent and her favorite Valenzuela to the Philippines; all power was in the hands of Don Juan of Austria, who held the inquisitor-general Valladares to be his personal enemy. The appeal of the Suprema was received unsympathetically and it seems to have gained nothing. That the Aragonese were content with the situation appears from the fact that the only complaint made by the Córtes regarded the non-observance of a law of 1646 prescribing the number of natives to be employed by the tribunal, and this arose merely from greed of office, for they suggested that, for each foreigner appointed in Aragon, an Aragonese should have a corresponding berth in a tribunal elsewhere.[1120]
CATALONIA
The legislation of 1646 remained a finality. As late as 1741 the Suprema remonstrated against the Audiencia of Saragossa for impeding the jurisdiction of the tribunal by employing the firma, which, with customary disingenuousness, it characterized as an innovation.[1121]
Catalonia was as intractable as Aragon, while its more pronounced spirit of independence rendered it particularly troublesome. Although it lacked the institution of the Justicia, it had a somewhat imperfect substitute in the Banch Reyal, or King’s Bench, which was used in the appeals por via de fuerza from the spiritual courts. The Audiencia summoned the ecclesiastical judge before it and his disregard of the summons was followed by a decree of banishment and seizure of temporalities. The inquisitors denied their liability to this, the Catalans asserted it, and the endeavor to enforce it was a serious cause of quarrel. It was not without influence, for a memorial, in 1632, from the inquisitors complains that the Duke of Maqueda, when viceroy in 1592, had employed it against the tribunal, since when the veneration felt for the latter had greatly declined, and a complaint of the Catalan authorities to Carlos II, in 1695, describes it as the sole refuge and protection of the people from the oppression of the inquisitors and ecclesiastical judges.[1122]
We have already seen the Concordia reached in 1512, abolishing most of the then existing abuses; how it was sworn to by king, inquisitor-general and inquisitors, and how a similar oath was to be taken by all future inquisitors; how Leo X obligingly released them all from their oaths; how Ferdinand, just before his death, accepted the conditions, in December, 1515, and the complaisant pontiff, in the bull Pastoralis officii, confirmed them, and how Barcelona,