As regards the great army of familiars, it was of course impossible to prevent them from trading. In fact traders eagerly sought the position in view of the advantages it offered of having the Inquisition at their backs, whether to escape payment of debts or to collect claims or to evade customs dues, or in many other ways, not recognized by the Concordias but allowed by the tribunals. The Suprema occasionally warned the inquisitors not to appoint men of low class, such as butchers, pastry-cooks, shoemakers and the like, or traders whose object was protection in their business,[1267] but no attention was paid to this; a large portion of the familiars was of this class, and the space occupied in the formularies by forms of levy and execution and sale and other similar matters shows how much business was brought to the tribunals by the collection of their claims.[1268] The opportunities thus afforded for fraudulent dealings, for evading obligations and for enforcing unjust demands were assuredly not neglected and may be reckoned among the sources of the animosity felt for everyone connected with the Holy Office.
In the remarkable paper presented, in 1623, to the Suprema by one of its members, many of the abuses of the Inquisition are attributed to the indifferent character and poverty of the officials. It would be well, the writer says, to appoint none but clerics, holding preferment to support themselves and unencumbered with wife and children. They would not, when dying, leave penniless families, which obliges the inquisitor-general to give to the children their fathers’ offices, thus bringing into the tribunals men who cannot even read; an increase of salaries, also, would relieve them of the necessity of taking bribes under cover of fees, and thus would put a stop to the popular murmurs against them. The inquisitors moreover should have power of removal, subject to confirmation by the Suprema, for now their hands are tied; their subordinates are unruly and uncontrollable. The greatest injury to the reputation of the Holy Office arises from its bad officials, who recognize no responsibility. No one should be appointed to office, or as a familiar, who is a tailor, carpenter, mason or other mechanic; it is these people who cause quarrels with the secular authorities, for they have little to lose and claim to be inviolable. In short, if we may believe the writer, the whole body of the tribunals, except the inquisitors, was rotten; none of the officials, from the fiscals down, were to be trusted, for all were eagerly in pursuit of dishonest gains, robbing the Inquisition itself and all who came in contact with it, and to this he attributed its loss of public respect and confidence.[1269]
COMPLAINTS OF FEUDALISM
Matters did not improve, for the Suprema always defended the tribunals from all complaints, and its tenderness towards delinquents assured them of virtual impunity. At length, as we have seen, in 1703, Philip V made an attempt at reform. It was probably owing to this pressure that, in 1705, the Suprema issued a carta acordada prohibiting a number of special abuses and pointing out that, in regard to the proprieties of life, neither inquisitors nor officials obeyed the Instructions, consorting with improper persons and intervening in matters wholly foreign to their duties, thus rendering odious the jurisdiction of the Holy Office.[1270] From various incidents alluded to above it is evident that this produced little amendment but, when the vacillation of Philip V was succeeded by the resolute purpose of Carlos III and his able ministers, the power of the Inquisition to oppress was greatly curbed.
It was not alone the commonalty that had reason to complain of the extended jurisdiction claimed by the Inquisition. The feudal nobles, whose rights were already curtailed by the growth of the royal power, were restive under the interjection of this new and superior jurisdiction, which recognized no limitations or boundaries and interfered with their supremacy within their domains. Thus in 1553, the Duke of Najera complained that, in his town of Navarrete, the commissioner of the Inquisition had insulted his alcalde mayor and then, with some familiars, had forcibly taken wheat from his alguazil. Inquisitor-general Valdés wrote to the tribunal of Calahorra to investigate the matter and punish the officials if found in fault; the alcalde and alguazil were not to be prosecuted save for matters pertaining to the Inquisition and this not only in view of its proper administration but because he desired to gratify the duke.[1271]
A still more serious cause of complaint, to which the nobles were fully alive, was the release of their vassals from jurisdiction by appointment to office. In 1549, the Countess of Nieva appealed to Valdés, setting forth that Arnedo was a place belonging to the count; it was within three leagues of Calahorra and there had never been a familiar there until recently Inquisitor Valdeolivas had appointed some peasants in order to enfranchise them from the jurisdiction of their lord. It was not just that, while the count was absent from the kingdom on the king’s service, his peasants should be thus honored in order that they might create disturbance in the villages and interfere with the feudal jurisdiction.[1272] It may well be doubted whether her request for the revocation of the commissions was granted, but that her prevision of trouble was justified is seen in a case before the tribunal of Barcelona, in 1577, in which Don Pedro de Queral, lord of Santa Coloma, a powerful noble of Tarragona, endeavored to secure the punishment of two of his vassals, Juan Requesens, a miller, and his cousin Vicente. They were both familiars and seem to have been the leaders of a discontented opposition which rendered Don Pedro’s life miserable. The trees in his plantations were cut down, his arms, over the door of his bayle in Santa Coloma, were removed and defaced, libellous coplas against him were scattered around the streets, but the cousins, being familiars, were safe from his wrath. Don Pedro died but the trouble continued between his widow, the Countess of Queral and a new generation of Requesens, who succeeded to their fathers’ office of familiars. Finally, in 1608, she succeeded in convicting Juan Requesens of malicious mischief, but her only satisfaction was that he was reprimanded, warned and sentenced to pay the costs, amounting to 115½ reales.[1273] Such a case shows how feudalism was undermined and we can conceive how nobles must have writhed under the novel experience of rebellious vassals clothed with inviolability.
PERSISTENT ANTAGONISM
It is easy therefore to understand the detestation felt for the Inquisition by all classes—laymen and ecclesiastics, noble and simple. It was fully aware of this and constantly alleged it to the king when defending the tribunals in their quarrels, and when urging enlarged privileges as a protection against the hatred which it had excited. In its appeals against the curtailment of its jurisdiction in Aragon, it did not hesitate to admit that it had been hated there from the beginning and that its officials were so abhorred that they would not be safe if exposed to secular justice and, even as late as 1727, it repeated the assertion of the persistent hostility of the Aragonese.[1274] In Logroño, the inquisitors reported to the Suprema, in 1584, that it was a common saying among the people that their life consisted in discord with the tribunal and that it was death to them when there was peace.[1275] It was the same in Castile. The Córtes, in 1566, when encouraging Philip II to constrain the Flemings to admit the Inquisition, gave as a reason that his success there was necessary to the peaceful maintenance of the institution in Spain, thus intimating that, if the Flemings rejected it, the Castilians would seek to follow their example.[1276] In the same year the familiars alleged that the detestation in which they were held led them to be singled out for especial oppression in the billeting of troops and, in 1647, the Suprema declared that nothing seemed sufficient to repress the hatred with which they were regarded, in support of which it instanced an unjust apportionment, in Cuenca, of an assessment of a forced loan.[1277] This hostility continued to the last, even though the decadence of the Inquisition in the eighteenth century diminished so greatly its powers of oppression. A defender of the institution, in 1803, commences by deprecating the hatred which had pursued it from the beginning; even in the present age, he says, of greater enlightenment, there is crass ignorance of its essential principles and a mortal opposition to its existence.[1278]
Thus, notwithstanding the Spanish abhorrence of Jews and heretics, the dread which the Inquisition inspired was largely mingled with detestation, arising from its abuse of its privileges in matters wholly apart from its functions as the guardian of the faith.