Chapter 46
Section 46 of A History of the Inquisition of Spain, Volume 4. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Eric Bjornsson. A History of the Inquisition of Spain, Volume 4 by Henry Charles Lee. Book 8, Chapter 10, Spheres of Action, Political Activity, Part 1.
Joseph de Maestra, in his profound ignorance of the Inquisition, started the theory that it was a mere political agency. Apologists like Heffelé, Gams, Harrigenrother, and others have eagerly elaborated this idea in order to relieve the Church from responsibility for its misdeeds, wholly overlooking the deeper disgrace involved in the assumption that for three centuries
the Holy See assented to such misuse of delegated papal authority and stimulated it with appropriations from ecclesiastical revenues. They based their arguments on the difference between the Old and the New Inquisition, the former consisting of inquisitors selected by Dominican or Franciscan provincials, and the latter organized with its inquisitor general and supreme council,
appointed by or with consent of the sovereign, so that its whole core was virtually composed of state officials, forgetting that their authority consisted of apostolical faculties, delegated by the popes and exercised without restraint through their recognition by the state. Renke falls into the same error and so do Marenbrecher and some other Protestant historians, apparently in an overstrained effort at impartiality and without investigation of the facts.
In the Catholic reaction since the time of Heffelé, the most advanced writers of that faith no longer seek to apologize for the Inquisition, and to put forward royal predominance to relieve it from responsibility. They rightly represent it as an ecclesiastical tribunal which discharged the duty of preserving the religious purity for which it was created. The synchronism of the development of the Inquisition and of absolutism in Spain
renders seductive the theory that the one was the product of the other, but this is wholly fallacious. Nowhere in the transformation of the state does the Inquisition appear as a factor. Isabella, as we have seen, laid the foundations of monarchism when she subdued the anarchy pervading Castile by the vigorous assertion and extension of the royal jurisdiction. Ferdinand eliminated some of the most troublesome elements of feudal power
when he incorporated in the crown the masterships of the great military orders. The restiveness of the nobles under the unaccustomed restraint manifested itself when, in 1506, they flocked to Philip and Juana. Had the Inquisition been a political force, Ferdinand would have used it, for Inquisitor General Deza was devoted to him, in place of which he suspended it. After the death of Philip I, during the retirement of Juana and the absence
of Ferdinand, the nobles attempted to reassert themselves, but, when he returned, the severe punishment of the Marquis of Priego, the great Duke of Medina-Sidonia, Don Pedro Guiron, and others, was a severe blow to feudalism, redoubled after Ferdinand's death, when Jimenez as governor raised a standing army and crushed the rebellion of the Guirons and their allies, punishing them with the destruction of the town of Villa de Frades. What remained of feudalism disappeared
under the steady policy from Charles V and Philip II, and keeping the great nobles aloof from the higher offices of state, and employing them in military service abroad or in viceroyalities, until they became mere courtiers, wasting their substance and adding to the splendor of the throne. In all this there is no trace of the Inquisition, nor is there in the rise and suppression of the Communidades, which destroyed the privileges of the communes and left the crown supreme.
The communeros had no grievance against the Inquisition, nor had any share of their defeat and punishment, although Charles V applied to Leo X for special briefs empowering it to act and one was granted, commissioning Cardinal Adrian to try and punish ecclesiastics concerned in the movement. Even when Acunia, Bishop of Zamora, was prosecuted, as we have seen, the Inquisition was not charged with the work, as Rankin mistakenly asserts.
The revolt arose from the coercive measures applied by Charles to the Cortes of 1518 and 1520, by which he reduced to impotence the only representative and deliberative body of the nation. Thus the last obstacle to autocracy was swept away, and thenceforth royalty was supreme. The process was a normal development, such as accompanied the downfall of feudalism throughout Europe, and from first to last, it accomplished itself without aid or opposition on the part of
the Inquisition. Much has been made of the saying attributed to Philip II, that he kept his dominions in peace with four old ecclesiastics, and the Suprema was fond of referring to this, when putting forth claims for its services, but it meant nothing except that the Inquisition maintained religious unity, which, in that age and in view of the troubles in France, the Netherlands, and Germany, was not unnaturally regarded as the sole guarantee of internal quiet.
In fact, the Suprema, when quoting the remark in 1704, says expressly that Philip uttered it in reference to the turbulence of the Huguenots. That Philip himself did not regard the Inquisition as a political instrument sufficiently appears in his private and confidential instructions of May 7, 1595, to Geronimo Manrique de Lara, when appointing him Inquisitor General. His anxiety is solely for the faith, and there is not the slightest intimation that political service
would be expected. Yet the average statement has few scruples in employing any agency at hand to effect his purpose, and to this the Spanish monarchs were no exception. When it suited them to use the Inquisition, they did so, but in view of their control over it, their employment of it was singularly infrequent prior to the advent of the Bourbon dynasty. In the old Inquisition, with which writers like Heffelé endeavored to establish a contrast in this manner,
Philip the Fair used it to destroy the Templars, the regent Bedford to burn Joan of Arc, and Alexander VI to rid himself of Savonarola, three cases to which no parallels exist in the annals of the Spanish Holy Office. The nearest approach to them is to be found in the trials of Carranza, Antonio Perez, and Villanueva. In the first and last of these, as we have seen, Inquisitors General instituted action for their own purposes, and the monarchs were brought in
to their support. The case of Antonio Perez will be discussed presently and need not be further referred to here. Still, a tribunal whose undefined powers and secrecy of action fitted it so perfectly for use as a political agent could scarce exist for centuries without occasionally being called upon, and the only legitimate source of surprise is that it was so rarely employed and that the objects for his intervention were usually so trivial. Ferdinand occasionally found it a
convenience in settling questions outside of its regular functions, as when Marco Paggrin appealed to him in a dispute with the authorities of his city, and Ferdinand wrote, August 31, 1501, to the inquisitor of the place, charging him to examine the question and do justice, for which he gave him full royal power. So when, in 1500, complaints reached him from Valencia of injustice in the assessments for a servicio, he ordered the papers to be submitted to the
Inquisitor, who was to report to him, and in 1501 he called for a report from the Inquisitor of Lurita as to the necessity of certain repairs to the castle. When, in 1498, he was endeavoring to carry out in Aragon the reform of the conventional Franciscans, which Jimenez had undertaken in Castile. They had obtained papal briefs restraining him. He applied to the Pope to revoke the letters and meanwhile obtained others from the nuncio, which he transmitted to the tribunal of Saragossa
with the instructions to act promptly. The Inquisitors carried on the reform much to his satisfaction, and when the Frails got the public authorities to protect them, he instructed the Inquisitors to represent that they were acting under apostolic authority, that there was no violation of the liberties of the kingdom, that they were salaried by the king, not only for the Inquisition but for whatever duties he might assign to them. They were therefore public officers,
and if the Saragossa authorities should endeavor to create scandal, they would be duly punished. This distinction between inquisitorial and non-inquisitorial functions, however, did not prevent him, when occasion required, from enforcing outside operations with inquisitorial authority. In 1502, when prosecuting in the same way the Franciscan Reform in Sardinia and the Bishop of Asania. In virtue of a surreptitious papal letter, released from the castle of Fassar,
the Franciscan vicar, Ferdinand wrote with much indignation to him and to the governor of Cabo de Lugador, It was great audacity to intervene in a manner concerning the Inquisition, without consulting him or the Inquisitor General. The prisoner must be recaptured forthwith and be held until the Inquisitor and Reformador Apostolico comes. This indicates the dangerous tendency to extend inquisitorial activity beyond its original limits, and it is remarkable that a monarch
entertaining these conceptions and engaged in struggle with feudalism should not have frequently sought the assistance of the holy office. The only definite case that I have met with of its political use occurred in 1507, when Caesar Borgia escaped from the castle of Medina del Campo to Novare, and was made commander of his army by Jeanne d'Albray, whose sister Charlotte he had married. Ferdinand vainly endeavored to obtain his surrender, and then caused a prosecution to be
brought against him in the Inquisition for heretical blasphemy and suspicion of atheism and materialism. As César came to his death, March 12, 1507, while besieging the castle of Viana, which held out for Louis de Beaumont, and the prosecution was abandoned, we can only conjecture where the outcome might have been. Navarre was also the scene of a trivial political use of the Inquisition in 1516, when, as we have seen, volume 1, page 227, it was instructed to
ascertain the names of those friendly to Jean d'Albray. End of section 46.
