STRUGGLE IN SARAGOSSA
In spite of this assertion of absolutism, Charles’s orders were treated with contempt. The Córtes met at Azuaga, refused to obey his angry commands to disperse and sent to him Don Sancho de la Caballería with the unpleasant message that the servicio would be withheld until he should grant justice to the kingdom. His finances, in the hands of his Flemish favorites, were in complete disorder. The Emperor Maximilian had died January 22d and the contest for the succession, against the gold of Francis I, was expensive. Moreover, in expectation of the servicio, Chièvres had obtained advances at usurious interest so that the expected funds were already nearly exhausted and, as soon as the electoral struggle ended in Charles’s nomination, June 28th, there came fresh demands for funds to prepare for his voyage to assume his new dignity. Chièvres therefore eagerly sought for some compromise to relieve the dead-lock, but the Aragonese on the one hand and Cardinal Adrian on the other were intractable. The high-handed arrest of Prat had fatally complicated the situation.
Charles yielded in so far as to order that Prat should not be removed from the kingdom and several tentative propositions were made as to the trial of Prat which only show how little he and his advisers realized the true condition of affairs. With wonted Aragonese tenacity the Diputados adhered to the position that the accuracy of the record should not be called in question and that the only point to be determined was whether the Inquisition rightfully had any jurisdiction in the matter. At the same time, to show that they were not seeking to elude payment of the servicio they agreed on September 7th to levy it, at the same time begging Charles to release Prat.
They were probably led to make this concession by a victory which they had gained in Rome. Both sides had been vigorously at work there, but the Aragonese had the advantage that Leo X at the moment was incensed against the Spanish Inquisition because of the insolent insubordination of the Toledo tribunal in the case of Bernardino Díaz, of which more hereafter. His own experience showed him of what it was capable and the request of the Córtes for the confirmation of the Concordia was to a great extent granted by three briefs, received August 1st, addressed respectively to the king, to Cardinal Adrian and to the inquisitors of Saragossa, reducing the Inquisition to the rules of the common law. Charles did not allow the briefs to be published and, when the Diputados presented to the inquisitors the one addressed to them, they refused to obey it without instructions from Adrian, whereupon, on August 8th, the Diputados applied to Rome for some further remedy.
Although the briefs were thus dormant they became the central point of the contest. On September 24th, Charles despatched to Rome Lope Hurtado de Mendoza as a special envoy with long and detailed instructions. He had been advised, he said that the pope intended to issue a bull revoking all inquisitorial commissions, save that of Cardinal Adrian; that in future the bishops with their chapters in each see were to nominate two persons of whom the inquisitor-general was to select the fittest and present him to the pope for confirmation; the acts of these inquisitors were to be judicially investigated every two years, and their procedure was to conform to the common law and to the canons. The elaborate arguments which Charles urged against each feature of this revolutionary plan show that it was not a figment but was seriously proposed with likelihood of its adoption. Moreover he said that influences were at work to secure the removal of the sanbenitos of convicts from the churches, against which he earnestly protested; Ferdinand had refused three hundred thousand ducats offered to him to procure this concession. In conclusion Charles declared that no importunity should shake his determination to make no change in the Inquisition and he significantly expressed his desire to preserve the friendship of his Holiness.
What secret influences were at work to effect a complete reversal of papal policy it would be vain to guess, but Mendoza had scarce time to reach Rome when he procured a brief of October 12th, addressed to Cardinal Adrian. In this Sadoleto’s choicest Latinity was employed to cover up the humiliation of conscious wrong-doing, in its effort to shift the responsibility to the shoulders of others. Charles’s letters and Mendoza’s message had enlightened him as to the intentions of the king with regard to the preservation of the faith and the reform of the Inquisition. He promised that he would change nothing and would publish nothing without the assent of the king and the information of the inquisitor-general, but he dwelt on the complaints that reached him from all quarters of the avarice and iniquity of the inquisitors; he warned Adrian that the infamy of the wickedness of his sub-delegates redounded to the dishonor of the nation and affected both him and the king; he was responsible and must seek to preserve his own honor and that of the king by seeing that they desist from the insolence with which they disregarded the papal mandates and rebelled against the Holy See.
STRUGGLE IN SARAGOSSA
While thus the three briefs were not revoked they were practically annulled. The indignation of the Aragonese at finding themselves thus juggled was warm and found expression, January 30, 1520, in discontinuing the collection of the servicio. Charles was now at Coruña, preparing for his voyage to Flanders and thither, on February 3d, the Diputados sent Azor Zapata and Iñigo de Mendoza to procure the liberation of Prat and to urge Charles to obtain the confirmation of the Concordia. To liberate Prat without a trial was tacitly to admit the correctness of his record, yet, on April 21st, Cardinal Adrian issued an order for the fiscal to discontinue the prosecution and for the inquisitors to “relax” Prat. This order was presented May 1st to the inquisitors, but the word “relaxation” was that used in the delivery of convicts to the secular arm for burning; Prat stoutly refused to accept it and remained in prison.
Charles embarked May 21st and the rest of the year 1520 was spent in endeavors by each side to obtain the confirmation of their respective formulas of the Concordia and in fruitless attempts by Charles to have the three briefs revoked. Though unpublished and virtually annulled they were the source of great anxiety to the Inquisition. The correspondence between Charles and his Roman agents shows perpetual insistance on his part and perpetual promises and evasions by the pope, sometimes on the flimsiest pretexts for postponement, the secret of which is probably to be found in a report by Juan Manuel, the Spanish ambassador, on October 12th, that the pope was promised 46,000 or 47,000 ducats if he could induce the king to let the briefs stand. Thus it went on throughout the year and, when Leo died, December 1, 1521, the briefs were still unrevoked.
A year earlier, however, December 1, 1520, he had confirmed the Concordia, in a bull so carefully drawn as not to commit the Holy See to either of the contesting versions. It was limited to the promises embraced in Charles’s oath and, as regards the articles, it merely said that the canons and ordinances and papal decrees should be inviolably observed, under pain of ipso facto excommunication, dismissal from office and disability for re-appointment. Either side was consequently at liberty to put what construction it pleased on the papal utterance.
Charles meanwhile had been growing more and more impatient for the servicio so long withheld; he had written to Adrian and also to the inquisitors, ordering that the Concordia of Monzon (1512) and that of Saragossa, according to his version, should be strictly obeyed, so that the abuses thus sought to be corrected should cease and the people should pay the impost. The inquisitors dallied and seem to have asked him what articles he referred to for he replied, September 17th, explaining that they were those of Monzon and Saragossa, the latter as expressed in the paper signed by Adrian and Gattinara. When, therefore, he received the papal confirmation of December 1st he lost no time in writing, December 18th, to Adrian and the inquisitors announcing it and ordering the articles to be rigidly observed without gloss or interpretation, so that the abuses and disorders prohibited in them may cease, but he was careful to describe the articles as those agreed