REFUSAL OF COMPETENCIAS
The Inquisition carried its point. Philip, by decisions of 1645 and 1658, admitted that there could be no competencias in the case of salaried officials and the Suprema enforced these decisions by a carta acordada of August 7, 1662, pointing out that they must not be entertained where such officials were concerned; at the same time tribunals were warned to exercise moderation and not to employ censures without consulting it, unless delay was inadmissible.[1240] Even Philip however had to intervene against the consequences of his own acts, in 1664, when the portero of the tribunal of Logroño killed in his house a priest, apparently through jealousy. The alcalde mayor prosecuted the murderer and arrested his wife; the tribunal excommunicated the alcalde and cast an interdict on the town. The Council of Aragon formed a competencia and claimed that during it the censures should be raised according to custom, but the Suprema refused on the ground that there could be no competencia. Philip was appealed to and ordered the censures raised for the unanswerable reason that as judges under excommunication could not hold their courts, if it were allowed thus to paralyze all judicial business it would have arbitrary control over all cases and frustrate all legal remedies.[1241] This decision was disregarded. It seems extraordinary that any community would endure for centuries the indefinite stoppage of the administration of justice, constantly occurring through the reckless abuse of the power of excommunication, as when, in 1672, we find the queen-regent applying to the inquisitor-general to know how she is to answer the complaints of the town of Logroño at the prolonged suspension of the powers of the corregidor who lay under excommunication, seeing that there is no conclusion of the competencia which has been so long pending.[1242]
The Inquisition evidently aggravated as far as it could the public distress as a means of establishing its claims. In an effort to limit the abuse of refusing competencias, there was a junta formed, in 1679, from the Suprema and Council of State with the assistance of some theologians. This admitted that there could be no competencia in the cases of salaried officials, except when they held public office and were prosecuted for malfeasance, but it laid down the rule that, when the Suprema refused a competencia, the Council of State could appeal to the king who could appoint a junta to decide this secondary question. A limited time was allowed to the Suprema to state its reasons for refusal and during a competencia the accused was to be liberated on bail and all censures were to be raised.[1243] This removed some of the hardships, but the Suprema seems to have sought to evade it by sullenly refusing to form the juntas with the Royal Councils, for another decree of Carlos II ordered it to attend when summoned so that these affairs might be settled.[1244] It was in vain that, in 1730, the Council of Castile urged that competencias be admitted in all cases, for Philip V decided that the agreement of 1679 should stand.[1245] Probably not much was gained in the latest attempt to settle these perennial quarrels by Carlos IV in 1804, who ordered that when a conflict arose between a royal court and a tribunal, in a matter not of faith concerning an official, the court should refer the case to the governor of the Royal Council and the tribunal to the Suprema. These should then select an examiner who was to report to the Secretaría de Gracia y Justicia for the royal decision.[1246]
PROTRACTED DELAYS
The evils of the system were admitted on all hands, but it was so vicious in principle that remedies were impossible. The customary juntas of two members each from the Suprema and the Council of Castile or of Aragon was at best a clumsy device, onerous on the Councils and usually leading only to procrastination. To systematize it, in 1625, a permanent Junta Grande de Competencias was formed of two members from each Council, whose duty it should be to despatch all cases, and rules for it were framed in April, 1626, but it was short-lived. In 1634 Philip IV ordered the formation of a junta of two members each of the Suprema and Council of Castile to formulate a plan of relief, but, on June 9th of that year, the Suprema reported that it had never been able to accomplish a meeting of the Junta. Then, in 1657, the Junta Grande was resuscitated and we meet with an allusion to it in 1659, but it appears to have been abandoned soon afterwards.[1247] Ingenuity was at fault to alleviate the evils inseparable from the permanent antagonism between the rival jurisdictions. Of these evils the one most keenly felt was the interminable delay in the settlement of cases. The councils from which the members were drawn were crowded with their more legitimate business; there was rarely accord in the junta; the matter would be argued without expectation of agreement; each side would be obstinate; perhaps the case would be referred to the king or years would pass before a settlement would be reached; perhaps, indeed, it would be silently dropped without a decision, especially when a decision might be undesirable because one or both sides feared a troublesome precedent. Meanwhile the case remained petrified in the condition existing at the time the competencia was formed. Until the so-called Concordia of 1679 permitted the release of prisoners on bail, if any one had been arrested, he remained in prison, perhaps to die there as sometimes occurred. In 1638 the Inquisition complained of this, when its officers happened to be the prisoners, for competencias were always slow of settlement and the work of the tribunals was crippled for lack of their ministers, while their poverty precluded their giving adequate salaries to substitutes.[1248] It was not until 1721 that a remedy for this procrastination was sought by Philip V in a decree reciting the long delays and the frequency of cases remaining undecided by reason of a dead-lock in the junta, wherefore in future when a junta was formed, he was to be notified in order that he might appoint a fifth member, thus assuring a majority.[1249] It does not seem however that this accomplished its purpose and, when Carlos III consolidated the cumbrous framework of government by instituting the Junta de Estado, composed of the ministers of the several departments, Floridablanca enumerates, among the benefits accruing, the expediting of cases of competencia and avoiding the interminable delays caused by the etiquette of the tribunals and the intrigues of the parties concerned.[1250]
I have dwelt thus in detail on this subject, not only because it absorbed so large a portion of the activity of the Inquisition, but because of its importance in the relations between the Holy Office and the other institutions of Spain and in explaining the detestation which the Inquisition excited. If the people regarded it as a whole with awe and veneration, as the bulwark of the Catholic faith, their hatred was none the less for its members, and the perpetual struggle against the tremendous odds of its power, supported by the unflinching favor of the Hapsburgs, bears equal testimony to the tenacity of the Spanish character and to the magnitude of the evils with which the Inquisition afflicted the nation.
CHAPTER V.
POPULAR HOSTILITY
THE preceding chapters illustrate some of the causes that provoked popular hatred of the Inquisition, but these were by no means all. It enjoyed, as we have said, enthusiastic support in the exercise of its appropriate functions in defending the faith, but apart from this, it had infinite ways of exciting hostility. This was the inevitable result of entrusting irresponsible power to men, for the most part overbearing and arrogant, who owed obedience only to the Suprema and who early learned that, while it might disapprove of their acts, it always supported them against complaints and, while it might administer rebuke in secret, it hesitated long